Monday, January 12, 2015

Pinterest is not an obsession of mine


No really, Pinterest is not an obsession of mine.
The moon is laughing at the cat. I'm sure I'm the cat in this instance.  I'm totally not giving in that I have an obsession.
It's true I have over 5000 pins and even truer that I have an additional 6000+ likes, but who's counting?!

I am a very conscientious Pinner and that's the reason I have so many likes.  I make sure to follow each link of a pin that I want on my boards and make sure they go right to the photograph and/or the exact page of that information I've pinned.  I don't want to lead anyone to spam links or to the front page of a blog when what we all wanted was the recipe on how to make that really awesome looking casserole that promised to have the neighbors love you even when you forget to bring your trash bins back from the curb! Seriously, don't you hate it when you see something Fabulous and it links to nothing?


So when I'm in the looking mode, I just click on the little heart as I scroll through.  Later when I have time and desire, I go back and investigate the liked photo.

Recently I discovered that my likes had gotten a bit out of control. Over 6K? That's crazy.
So this past week, while my dear boyfriend has been sick and the TV volume has been so low it might as well have been on mute, I decided to sort through and investigate those likes.

The internet is really an awesome place.
I love how enchanted I am with every new idea.


Honestly, I had a blast going through so many of the liked pictures.  I daydreamed about my ledge of Mason jars, filled just slightly with sand and a perfectly lit votive in each.  About how my front entry could be so clean and organized and how I might get out the sewing machine and make some Valentine bunting for the mantle I'll build with reclaimed pallets.

Sooo, I do dream a bit, but it's a lot of fun.

I have a DIY board for kids stuff.
I don't have kids.
I don't live near my nieces.
I'm never going to make any of those things, but I. had. to. pin. them!


I have little hearted more main dishes than I will ever be able to prepare.  
At this moment I have 272 pins on my New to Me Recipes board. That means I have never tried that exact recipe and more than likely I have never had it at all.
My New to Me Recipes don't stop with that board.  I pulled out a few key categories and they have their own board like - Pasta (New to Me), Desserts (New to Me), Macaroni and Cheese, Quinoa, Potluck Foods, Drinks and Gluten Free.


I do have a board titled  Good Food - I've made it.  That's for the recipes that I've tried and I've liked.  Chances are I've liked it a lot!  The Graveyard Taco Dip was really good - but the fun part was making all the little headstones and the tree.  Mine looked FABULOUS!  I was so excited.  I took it to potluck and not a drop of it made it back home.  It was that good.  Buuut, it's not in my Good Food list yet.  I've gotta do that.

I don't have a board for the ones we didn't like.  If I find we didn't like something I just take it off completely. The Good Food board only has 28 pins on it.  Now I know I've got a lot more than that, but just like the investigation part - sometimes it takes a little bit of time to get everything organized.

So that's what I've been doing with some of my time lately.  I doubt I'll be spending a whole lot of time on Pinterest in the next couple of weeks as Steve seems to be doing a whole lot better today, so I won't need to be finding quiet work for awhile.  This house could really use one of those 1950's Housewives with the sparkling cleaning products to help us out.

Enjoy exploring around Pinterest.
Have a great day!
Kristin

Tuesday, January 06, 2015

Another kitchen update - wall color

The Kitchen Re-Do

It's been nearly a year since we painted the countertops black and planned on getting the wallpaper off and get some paint on those dull walls.  I peeled some of the paper off many months ago and that's about as far as I got.  One day, in that small span of time between Thanksgiving and Christmas I got a wild hair to tear apart the kitchen. I don't know what I was thinking!  It was just after Thanksgiving that we tackled the wallpaper removal process and amazingly it wasn't too bad!

The bare sheet rock walls had not been primed, but the builders made huge swaths of paint or primer or something around the cabinets, the ceiling and the door frames and trim. So really we only had to deal with a couple of spots that were just drywall.  We spent two days just filling in the divots, holes and other uneven spots and sanding everything as smooth as possible.  It was well worth all of the work - the walls look awesome now that they are painted.  




As soon as we finished painting the kitchen we were in a frenzy to get ourselves ready for Christmas events with our transplant community.  Then, I got a dreaded cold followed six days later by Steve getting the dreaded cold.  Needless to say, the kitchen has remained in a state of not-quite-ready-to-be-photographed-bliss. This photo above, that I shared with Facebook, is all that I have right now.  

Now that we've lived with the kitchen for a few weeks, in it's unfinished state, we've pretty much decided that I'm going to need to paint the cabinets a nice creamy white/off-white.  I have Annie Sloan Chalk Paint already purchased, so that's what I'm going to use.  It'll be so much easier to use than latex and a whole lot less smelly.  I have a small door in the same wood that I'm not using - I took the door off my medicine cabinet in the bathroom - so I can paint that and show Steve.  If he likes it, like I'm sure he will, then I'm going to get going.  I am not going to wait another year to get this project finished.  

The paint color that we used on the wall is: 
Home Depot Behr Brand - Tropical Tide #520D-5. 


I wanted to go one shade darker than this, but Steve wasn't sure.  I love the color we did choose as it's even better in that room than I imagined.  We had originally thought about going more blue, like the Liquid Blue in the next column, but I was really afraid it would look too much like Dawn Dishwashing Liquid!  The green/blue really was the right choice for us.  

I will give another update, with a lot more photos in the coming weeks.  I'm over my cold, Steve is too.  We're anxious to get the house put together again.  It's been a work in progress since I moved in over 6 months ago.  It's time.  It's beyond time.

I hope you have a wonderful start to your New Year 2015. I'm looking forward to this year.
Kristin