corn chowder

I'm making a pact not to make anymore sweets for a while.  As tempting as it is to try out all the amazing recipes on pinterest, I'd like to lay of the sweet stuff for a bit and try making some more filling, hot meals.  I made this soup a couple weeks ago and I've made different versions of it since then. I really like how easy it is to play around with soup.  I subbed in carrots for onions the second time I made it and it still tasted really great!  Chowders are just the best for warming up my insides during the colder months.  So thick and filling and radiates the warmth from your insides out.  I think I might try to make clam chowder next, maybe with an Alaskan vibe to it.  I absolutely love clam chowder and I've always liked it best when it has a bit of an Alaskan spin to it.  A little taste of home.

Maybe I'll do a bunch of my favorite Alaskan-y recipes.  I have a bunch of recipes from my Mom and Grandma that remind me so much of home... halibut, salmon, crab, lox and bagels, etc, etc.  A couple years ago for Christmas my Grandma and Grampa gave me a recipe box, which was carved by my grampa and filled with my Grandmas recipes!  I'm ashamed to say that I haven't made a single one of the recipes yet, but I'm going to change that, effective immediately.  I really love my Grandma's take on sort of homestead Alaskan cooking.  She's allergic to fish, so she couldn't make any of the Alaskan fish dishes (a shame, since my Grampa, Dad, and Uncle were all commercial fishermen!).  Alaska back in the mid 1900's didn't have a lot of fresh produce options and stuff, so she made do with whatever they had available.  It's so neat to see how creative she was, working with whatever she had (awesome stuff like slim jim chili, pioneer mac and cheese, and beans and wieners).  As a kid I remember looking so forward to getting some of her amazing

Scotch-a-roos

in the mail, and just the other day my mom mailed us a care package with a tupperware full of scotch-a-roos in it!  I felt an overwhelming sense that someday I'd be sending my kids and grandkids care packages filled with scotch-a-roos...

(adapted from 

Suzie the Foodie

)

1 (15.4 oz) can of corn, drained

4 strips of bacon

1 onion, finely chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 cup flour

3 cups chicken broth

1 large potato, diced

2 bay leaves

2 tsp sriracha

1. Crisp 4 slices of bacon in a large soup pot and remove. Throw your onion in the bacon grease and saute for a minute, then add the garlic and season with a bit of salt and pepper to your liking.

2. Add the flour and stir it around for about a minute, then add the chicken stock and your diced potato. Let this simmer for about 10 minutes.

3. Add the corn and your bay leaves, and two teaspoons of sriracha. Don't be afraid, it won't make it super spicy, just give it a bit of a zing. Let this simmer for another 15 minutes.

4. Remove the bay leaves and blend about 1/2 - 2/3 of the soup in a blender (or you can use an immersion blender if you have one), and stir the pureed soup back into the pot with the rest of the soup.

Crunch up the bacon you crisped at the beginning to use as a garnish along with some grated cheddar and some chopped green onion, or if you're like me and only have cilantro, that works too.  Tastes amazing with some crunch bread to it soak up!

Our Dining Room Transformation!

This space is still very much a work in progress, but I love being able to look back at what it looked like when we bought the house, and appreciate how far we’ve come. This room is * technically * the living room, but it’s smaller space and right by the front door, so having the entry there takes away some space too, so we decided to flip them, and put the living room next to the kitchen and move the dining room to the front of the house.

For us, having a dining table is nice for hosting friends, and doing crafts and projects, but we don’t use it on the daily, so moving the living room to the center of the home, right next to the kitchen, made way more sense. We use the living room and kitchen all the time, so putting them close together was perfect for us.

Because this wasn’t designed as a dining room we didn’t have a hardwired light over the table, so I found one at the thrift store for $5 and strung it up with a hook! It’s a plug in lamp so I plugged it into a smart plug so now we just tell Google to turn on the dining room light and it turns on! Way easier than going through the work to install a hardwired light. We may still eventually install one, but for now this works great!

You can kind of tell, but the ceiling was sagging a bit, which is why the old faux beam they had up looks super weird and bent. We jacked the ceiling up and put up a lighter cedar faux beam. We also took out the pony wall that divided the two rooms, and another tiny pony wall that was right by the front door, which made that space extra claustrophobic.

The disgusting, dog scented, dog fur saturated carpet was the first thing to go. It was even more disgusting IRL, and yes, all the stuff in the house was left when we bought it as-is, so we had to fill a couple dumpsters with all that crap as well as the stuff we demoed.

I’ve got more projects up my sleeves for the dining room, but those are on the back burner with some more pressing projects in line first, but I’m so happy with how far we’ve come since those photos on the first day!

DIY Minimal Scandinavian Slatted Headboard

When we moved into the flip house, we left pretty much all our furniture at the other house so it could be a fully furnished Airbnb. We ended up getting an old Ikea Hopen bed frame for free from a friend who didn’t need it anymore, but I knew I wanted to replace the headboard with something unique and more scandinavian-inspired. I’d seen a slatted Ikea headboard before, but upon some research found out it was discontinued, so I set out to make my own! I figured it’d be pretty simple since it was just wood slats, and it was!

What you’ll Need:

12 8ft 2x2’s
2-3 8ft 1x2’s
1.5in wood screws

If you want to make this very affordably, get 2x2 furring strips. They’re usually under $3 each, but furring strips are made of pretty low quality wood, so you’ll need to dig through them to find ones that aren’t warped, cracked, or with a bunch of knots. If you want fancier wood, you can find pine 2x2s in the trim section that can be more like $11-12 each. I wanted to make this on the cheap so I opted for the furring strips.

1. Depending on how wide you want your headboard, you may need to cut the 1x2’s down. I wanted mine to be 8ft so I didn’t need to cut my 2x2s shorter.

2. Cut your 1x2s down. I cut mine down to 3 ft so they would stick down below the slats about 6 inches and sit behind the back of my bed frame between the frame and the wall to keep the headboard in place. I kept the middle three 1x2s 3 ft long, and trimmed the ones closest to the end on each side down so those two didn’t stick out below the bottom slat. If you don’t have a bedframe where this method would work, you can cut the middle 1x2s so they go from the top of the headboard, all the way to the floor, appx 44in.

   If you want the 1x2 verticals to disappear more, you can paint them the color of the wall behind your headboard before attaching them.

3. Lay out your 2x2s how you want them for your headboard and make sure the ends are all even. I spaced them out about 3/4 inch, using a piece of 1x2 to space the 2x2s evenly.

4. Once all the 2x2s were set up, I placed my 1x2s on top, starting with the one right in the center, then spacing the others 18 inches apart. I used pencil to draw a line along each side of each 1x2 marking where they went (in the illustration I drew four 1x2s, but I realized later that I actually used five).

5. Start by screwing the two outside 1x2s onto the 2x2s. I’d recommend pre-drilling the 1x2s, as I was lazy and didn’t and had a bit of splitting on a couple of my 1x2s. as I was screwing, I put the spacer 1x2 between the 2x2s as I was screwing to make sure they were spaced exactly.

6. With the two outside 1x2s attached, the spacing will be set and you can screw the remaining three 1x2s on, and you’re done! Flip it over and put it behind your bed! I didn’t anchor mine because it’s pretty well stuck between my bed and the wall, but you can also screw the 1x2’s to the wall between the slats in a few spots to make sure it stays put.

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More DIY this way….

Bottle brush tree holiday tablescape

I love creating fun tablescapes and the holidays are a perfect time to bring together a bit of creativity and joy for entertaining. One of the best parts of this tablescape is that everything can be reused as regular Christmas decor, which I definitely did after hosting my annual Friendsgiving.

Another awesome thing is that I already had most of the elements and just brought them together! The base is actually a macrame wall hanging that I just folded up, I had thrifted all the candlesticks previously, I had most of the bottle brush trees from last year (and bought a few more from the Target dollar spot to fill it out), and the felt trees were a DIY craft project I did last Christmas season!

A few tips for putting together a stunning tablescape:

• Don’t skimp on the candles, they bring such a warm glow and instantly create atmosphere. I always have lots of candles when I’m entertaining.

• Vary heights and create levels. When you vary the heights of items in your tablescape, it allows the eye to keep moving. I made sure to spread out the different sizes of trees so there were different levels throughout the vignette.

• Add texture! While the macrame base was mostly hidden, it still added a lot of texture and warmth. The felt trees have a wonderfully cozy texture, and the bottle brush trees had their own unique texture and sparkle that complimented the other softer textile elements.

• Greenery! Okay so this table doesn’t technically have greenery like most of my designs, but I grabbed some sparkly white faux branches from Michaels to bring in that natural plant-based element. Even though they’re totally obviously fake, they still read as a plant element. A super easy way to add real plants without breaking the bank or having to learn floral styling? Buy a bundle of eucalyptus branches and lay them in the middle of the table, interspersed with your other decor elements. It fills the space beautifully, adds a lovely touch of green, and bonus: you can dry it and keep it as year-round decor!

The pink ... panther?

Guess who finally said goodbye to bright yellow hair?! Probably the only person you know with bright yellow hair: me. I dunno guys! I was just feeling the winds of change and I actually made a snap decision to go pink after I’d been planning to go purple/grey for a while.

I used Arctic Fox hair color again, this time in Electric Paradise. The yellow was Cosmic Sunshine and it was a great color, very fade proof (almost … too fade proof? I was hoping I could get it to wash out so I could go silver/grey but alas, the dye is TOO good, lol). I’m excited to see how this one fades. I really like a faded pastel pink, so we’ll see how it looks after a month or two!