More Bed News

I just realized that sounds like "more bad news" which is kind of funny. I don't really have bad news. I guess kind of both. Let's start with the "not so great" news.

I'm not sleeping in my bed. I will not be sleeping in my bed on Dec 1.

That hurt to type. I worked on it all weekend long and finished the painting (HOLLA!) and let that dry and then it was time to poly. Praise Jesus. We brought our Christmas tree home and attempted to decorate Sunday night so on Monday night, the mister went outside with a clean brush and the can of poly. He quickly got the base and footboard done. The weather was not looking so fantastic so we decided that we'd just stay up, let the poly dry enough, and move them into the house. So we waited and waited and WAITED and the damn thing just would not dry. So we went to bed.

At 5:30, the man is waking me up to help him move the bed because y'all, that storm was coming fast. The footboard was on top of a table so it was fine but the frame was just resting on some 2x4's so we were worried about water coming up the inch or so that it was from the ground. This was good and bad. Bad because holy shit, solid wood frames are HEAVY but good because once it was out of the humidity, it was dry within 30 minutes. Eff you, Louisiana humidity. But of course we now have to do a second coat of poly because my finger touched the edge and there's a perfect print of mine in the poly. Good times.

There's no point in even attempting to do anything else with it until the rain stops and the humidity drops. Since it's 97% at the moment, I don't see that happening today. Or tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow afternoon. I don't even know what the new timeline is.


Ok, on to the good! Y'all remember these nightstands?

Ahem, they now reside in my bedroom. Holla!

Homegirl emailed me Wednesday and told me that she had someone else interested in only the bed. She wanted $300 for both and while they are definitely worth that much, it just wasn't in our budget so I was honest and told her I loved them and really wanted them but just couldn't pay more than $200 for the set and I totally understood if she didn't want to take that little. And she was like, "fine but no less than $200" and I was like, "sold! where do you live?" and we picked them up Friday night. And I fucking love them. They are so nice! I seriously cannot believe that she even got rid of them. I feel like I stole them from her because they are totes worth like $300 apiece. Ok, maybe not that much but definitely more than $100.

Hopefully I'll have more good bed news tomorrow!

Bed update (& other randoms)

Random "let's redo the bedroom" updates:

1. Painting furniture is hard. Now I know why the local unfinished furniture store charges $200 per piece for them to paint it. And they probably have a fancy sprayer.


2. The mister puttied and sanded all three pieces of our bed by Friday. Friday night I primed the footboard. Saturday I spent all day painting. I was able to get two coats of paint on the footboard (holy pain in the ass) and also prime and get two coats on the base of the bed. They look fantastic. We decided to go with a slightly off white color, Swiss Coffee from Behr. No thanks to the uber helpful (not) paint guy. I really hate Home Depot. Lowe's needs to build closer to me so I can stop shopping there.


3. The headboard is fucking heavy so I had to wait for the mister to help me. Sunday I was sore from painting while laying on the concrete outside so I spent the day making an assload of rolls for Thanksgiving. And two pie crusts. When he got home Sunday night he helped me move the headboard into a position where I could either lean it against our house or a table. Let's label that as "where things went south"...
   
   I tried to lean the headboard against the table so I could start priming and promptly cracked the post on the bottom. Which led me to freak and move too fast which sent the rest of this thing slamming into the side of my house. No worries, headboard is fine. My siding is now missing a chunk but whatever. The post is also fine. I'm just a drama queen. Mister sanded it down and it looks as good as new. We determined at that point that I could not paint this thing by myself.
   
   So we'll have to do it together, which is fine except that means I have to wait till he gets home each day which is usually closer to 6:30 and then we eat dinner and then put the girl to bed and by then it's 8, and we're both tired, yo. And we're about to leave for two days for Thanksgiving so that's two days lost. I was hoping to be sleeping in my new fab bed by this weekend but at this rate I'll be lucky if it's Christmas. So I'm a little frustrated to say the least.


4. Timeline: hopefully we can prime the headboard tonight and maybe paint coat one (the primer dries really fast). Then coat two tomorrow night. Poly on Thursday night/Friday then another coat of poly after that one, hopefully on Saturday. Then it needs to cure outside for a couple days. So maybe by Dec 1? That would be awesome. However I also MUST put up my Christmas decor this weekend soooo....yeah. I need a PA.


5. I'm getting a massage when all this is done.


6. None of the previously talked about dressers were available. Still searching. I did find an awesome set of nightstands that I wouldn't even have to redo but they are part of a set and the seller wasn't sure if she wanted to split it up. Which I understand. She said she'd split them if the set hadn't sold by the end of the week. Fingers crossed.

 They are fab.

Bed

We had the bedroom chat on Sunday of this week. On Wednesday, the mister was off of work. I called him from my office and asked what he was doing. His exact response was "I'm building a bed, I can't talk right now."

Um. Say what?

And then six hours later, this happened:

I am pleasantly shocked. It looks flipping amazing. He's still doing wood filler and then he has to sand it so hopefully I can get my paint on this weekend. I've been brushing up on my (nonexistent) furniture painting skills from YHL. And I'm hitting up the Home Depot this afternoon. Lord help the high school dropout working in the paint department today.

But isn't it fabulous?! I luff it.

Dressers

I found some viable dresser options on Craigslist. I think that if it's an option (depending on the dresser), that we'd like to remove a top drawer and stick a dvd player in there.

This one actually also has two matching nightstands. I'm really digging that little door and the chevron wood pattern.

Matching nightstands: Maybe remove that bottom drawer? IDK...

Second one: Again with the cute little door. And all those little drawers! Buying hardware for that could be pricey though.

Three: Obviously I have a thing for tiny doors.

What do we think?

Bedroom Redo

Apparently I'm averaging one post a month here (if you ignore July completely). Commitment is practically my middle name.

I started reading Young House Love a few months ago and holy smokes, I am so hooked to that site. Who knew that I had some dormant DIY-er living inside me?! Obviously "DIY-er" is a term I use loosely. Even though thanks to that site plus Pinterest, I'm all "of COURSE we can install our own stainless steel countertops" but the fact of the matter is that my handyman slash plumber slash electrician is totes on speed dial.

Anyway, the husband and I have been talking about a bedroom redo for quite some time now and then last week one of the drawers on his thirty year old, pressed wood (we're fancy like that) dresser broke and yesterday we actually sat in the room and chatted about what we'd like to do. "Like" being the operative word. I need a place to hammer this out so you're welcome for this way too long post about my bedroom. Sorry there's no sex involved.

Current situation: Bad.

Our bedroom has by far gotten the least attention since we bought the house 4 1/2 years ago. Let's see, we have our bed (a queen & no room for a king) which is basically a mattress, box spring, and frame. No actual head/foot board. Mismatched nightstands. Aforementioned dresser. A vanity and stool that my mom bought me for my twenty something birthday (20? 22?). A file cabinet and bookshelf that belong in the "office". Oh, and another dresser that we actually like, a tv that we don't watch (more on that later), a free standing mirror, and a tall jewelry holder thing that was my grandmother's. OH, and two matching lamps that I lurve as well as matching curtains that match our new bedspread. Which is basically what started all this.

I want to keep: bed, lamps, curtains, mirror, dresser, jewelry holder.
Replace: second dresser, nightstands.
Get rid of: file cabinet, bookshelf, vanity & stool.
Acquire: an actual bed, matching nightstands, starburst mirror, new dresser, new tv, bench for edge of bed, chair, ottoman (maybe), lamp, side table.

Our current bedspread is paisley with blues and greens and I love it so very much. I want to paint the walls a gray color and the trim white, which I assure you will lead to painting all the trim in the house white, which will be a giant pain in the ass but let's pretend that's not the case. So, gray walls, light blueish/green bed linens. So far, so good.

 From here because pottery barn's website is an asshole.

Our current bedding looks a lot like the Sienna Paisley duvet from PB (except with more blue than green) however that shit is expensive AND in person is really not as nice as on their site. Mine is from Marshall's and I'm obsessed with it. Moving on.

The husband is fairly handy and has been wanting to make a bed for us for quite some time now however 1) he's a procrastinator and 2) I'm a skeptic so that hasn't happened yet. Plus I just wasn't really able to envision our room with this particular bed in it BUT then I found this blog and I'll be damned if homegirl doesn't have: 1) (almost) the same wall as me, 2) same light color scheme, and 3) THE BED. Behold:

Found here.

  I almost fainted. Our molding isn't quite as fancy pants as hers (and we surely don't have all that badass lighting) but we do have a tray ceiling and two windows so yay for that.

ps-the plans for building that bed are over at ana-white.com

THE VISION: gray on the walls, my fab light blue curtains, dark (matching!) stained nightstands with my current fab blue lamps, a badass starburst mirror above the bed, that bed (in white), current light blue/green bedspread, and a bench at the end. That's the back wall. I lurve it. Or at least the idea of it.

Mirror

Kind of like this except we have windows. And my husband doesn't like the upholstered bed which I just can't even discuss because really, what's not to love?

THE VISION

OH, OH, and then I stumbled across this blog where this chick is recommending paint colors for the aforementioned, way too expensive, Sienna bedding!

 Dunn Edward Rainy Season

Anyway, to make this dream a reality here's the list of "to do's": paint, build a bed, find nightstands on the cheap (craigslist), refinish nightstands, get a badass starburst mirror, find a bench on the cheap, probably reupholster said bench.

So that's kind of a lot just for one wall but it is the most important wall so there's that.

Moving clockwise, we have wall numero two. Which currently houses the free standing mirror, the dresser we like, and the jewelry box. Mirror and jewelry box need to be moved to another wall but the dresser can stay where it is. And we'd need some artwork there but that will come way, way, way later. So that wall is pretty easy. That dresser is tall (5 drawers) and a dark stain. Hopefully we could get the non-existent nightstands to at least compliment, if not match, that color.

 Current dresser:

Found here

Wall number three currently has: a basket with magazines in it, the pressed wood dresser, a tv we don't watch, the vanity and stool.

Here's the deal with the tv. We cancelled cable so we could afford THE daycare in our 'hood a year and a half ago and kind of never looked back. This tv is a million years old and I've never made the effort to get whatever hardware I'd need to watch the Today show or GMA (holla to Robin) which is all I'd really want it for. On the rare occasion we do watch the tube, it's in the living room. Oh, and I'd like it to watch dvd's with the babe in bed. So the tv needs to be craiglisted. But I would totes get a new tv so I can watch my morning shows and the news at night. Ha, ok not really, more like Jimmy Fallon. Whatever. The news depresses me.

Anyway, here's the plan for that wall: throw the current dresser (it's so ugly, y'all), get a badass dresser on the craigslist, paint it some awesome color (you see how Pinterest and YHL collide so easily?!), get a new tv for on top of the new badass dresser, make a little reading corner where the vanity currently is with a chair, lamp, and side table. And ottoman if it will fit. No biggie if it doesn't. The chair situation will come a LOT later also. But I do really like this one:

Here

That dresser is pretty high on the list since the mister is currently missing a drawer. I would very much like to get matching hardware for all 4 pieces of furniture (2 dressers, 2 nightstands) to bring them all together. And the dresser for that wall would need to be short and long. I am fond of this dresser makeover:

Found here

This is what we're going for, maybe even a shorter dresser than what they have:

 Found here

We even discussed making the dresser white like the bed. But I like the idea of some color as well. Who knows. Anyway...

Finally, wall four which is the current catchall. On this wall we have: file cabinet, bookshelf, random drawer thingy from college. All that shit needs to go to another room in the house. The mirror and jewelry box will go on that wall. We need some art there too but again, that is far, far away. I actually currently have some pics of the kiddo which I do love but we need better frames for sure. The room is really not that big (note to self: measure) so there's not a lot of space for stuff there anyway. OH and we also need new carpet like wHoa. I think that's on my master to do list for the house (what? you don't have one?!).

Ok, so that's the vision. If I knew how to work polyvore, I'd totes make a mood board or whatever that crap is but I don't and I don't really have time to learn so just roll with that. I will attempt to create some uber professional (ha!) looking floor plan with Paint or WordArt or some other 1994 program.

What do you think?!

Flourless Chocolate Cake

I originally made this for a bridal shower and cut them into bites which is perfect because this is a seriously rich dessert. Then I made it for a party but the part was canceled at the last minute so...yeah, it didn't go to waste. Then we went to a relative's house for lunch and her son is allergic to gluten so I brought this since he doesn't get to indulge in many treats. It was very well received. :)

Flourless Chocolate Cake
From: Annie's Eats

Ingredients:
8 eggs, cold
1 lb bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
16 tbsp unsalted butter, cut into 16 pieces

Seriously, that's it. Just three ingredients.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment beat the eggs at high speed until the volume doubles to approximately 1 quart. Takes at least 10 minutes.

While that's mixing...

Preheat the oven to 325° F.  Do one of two things:

A) If you want to serve it like a round cake, grease the sides of a springform pan and line the bottom with parchment paper.  Wrap the outside of the pan tightly with heavy duty foil and set in a larger baking pan.

B) If you want to serve it in bite size pieces, make a sling in a square pan with parchment paper. Set in a larger baking pan.

Either way, Bring a pot of water to boil.


Meanwhile, melt the chocolate and butter in a double boiler.  Heat until smooth and very warm (~115*).  Transfer the chocolate to a larger bowl and fold about a third of the beaten eggs using a large rubber spatula until only a few streaks of egg are visible.  Fold in half of the remaining eggs, and then the last half.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the surface with a spatula.  Pour enough boiling water into the larger pan surrounding the pan to come about halfway up the sides of the pan.  Bake until the cake has risen slightly, the edges are just beginning to set, and an instant-read thermometer inserted halfway into the center reads 140° F. This should take about 22-25 minutes but watch it carefully.  Remove the pan from the water bath and set on a wire rack; cool to room temperature.  Cover and refrigerate overnight to mellow the flavor.  The cake can be refrigerated for up to 4 days.

Prior to serving, either...

A) Remove the sides of the springform pan, invert the cake onto a plate to peel off the parchment paper, and reinvert onto a serving platter.  Sprinkle lightly with confectioners’ sugar.  Use a sharp, thin knife to slice the cake.

B) Remove cake from pan using sling. Place on a large cutting board and use a sharp, thin knife to slice into square bites. Serve in mini muffin cups.

Very delicious. Very decadent. Perfect for any occasion.

Pumpkin Scones via Starfucks

So yesterday was kind of a shitty day and I was all ready to post my reasons why but then I realized that it would make sense to no one. So I'm going to post this scone recipe instead. I made a couple changes to the original recipe so that's what's posted. But feel free to click her link since she's one of the best foodie blogs I've come across in a while. It's delicious. I had 1 1/2 yesterday and another one today. Today is also a better day even though nothing has changed since yesterday. Is it the scones? Probably not but let's say it is.

Pumpkin Scones
From: Iowa Girl Eats

Ingredients:
2 c flour
7 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground ginger
6 tbsp cold butter, cubed
1/2 cup canned pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie filling)
3 tbsp half & half (or whole milk or cream or FF half & half or whatever milk substance you have on hand)
1 egg


For the plain glaze:
1 c + 1 tbsp powdered sugar
3 tbsp half & half

For the spiced drizzle:
1 c + 3 tbsp powdered sugar
3-4 tbsp half & half
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
pinch ground ground ginger
pinch ground ground cloves

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a Silpat mat and set aside.

In the bowl of a large food processor (or in a large bowl) combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger. Pulse (or whisk) to combine. Add cold butter and pulse until well incorporated and mixture is the texture of cornmeal. If you don't like dirtying your food processor, use two knives or a pastry cutter to blend butter in.

In a separate bowl, whisk together pumpkin puree, half & half, and egg (side note: I only had fat free half & half so I did 2 tbsp of the fat free half & half and one tbsp of heavy whipping cream; I highly doubt it made a difference). Add to flour mixture and pulse until just combined.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and gently knead 4 or 5 times to bring the dough together (another side note: my dough was very, very sticky and I had to add a lot more flour to get it to where I could work with it). Flatten into a circle 1″ thick. Using a pizza cutter or bench scraper, cut the dough into six or eight pieces, whatever floats your boat (I did eight).

Place the wedges onto the prepared baking sheet and bake for 14-16 minutes, or until just starting to turn golden brown. Remove to a cooling rack to cool completely.

While scones cool, whisk together the plain glaze ingredients (I ended up adding more half & half to get the consistency right), then once they are completely cool, spoon on top and spread slightly. Let harden for 10 minutes.

Whisk together the spiced drizzle ingredients and drizzle on top (again with the more half & half). Let harden completely, about 1 hour, before serving. Store in an air-tight container for 1 day (if they last that long).

Enjoy with coffee. Or share with coworkers.


Many moons ago, my friend slipped and called it Starfucks (she was probably drunk) and I could not stop laughing (I probably was too) and ever since then, it's been called Starfucks and should be called that forever and ever, amen.