Making a Rustic Sign

I made a sign! Yeah! below is the process...via photos. I need to take the final photo yet. :)

I used 3 pine boards that were scrap in my husbands garage. Before painting them take a quick measurement with them lined up in their "forever position".

I chose 3 acrylic colors and slopped them randomly on the boards.

I then put 2 layers of white acrylic paint over the other colors. While the layers of paint were drying I jumped on Publisher to create my template. Remember the measurements we took down? That is your "custom ttemplate's" size. 

Create your Word art or text boxes and place accordingly on your custom template . Print. Set aside. 

After the paint dried, I drilled 3 holes Iin the sides of the boards. I then connectef the boards to each other with pegs. This kept me from adding depth to the sign. Be sure to use wood glue when placing the pegs in place. 

 

Attempt #1: Gluten Free Yeast Bread

Inspired by a recipe found on allrecipes.com

Attempt #1 Gluten Free Yeast Rolls
Pre-Heat Oven 425
Bake 8-10 minutes

2 T coconut oil
3 T honey
1 C hot water

2 1/4 t yeast

1 egg

1 t salt
2 1/4 white rice flour
1 t xanthum gum

Grease a muffin tin (set of 12) -- I use coconut oil for greasing my pans.

Melt the coconut oil.
Add the honey and hot water. Let them cool and then add yeast. While the yeast is dissolving, beat one egg and set aside. Mix your salt, flour and xanthum gum together.

Return to the yeast mixture. Add the egg and slowly turn in the flour mixture. Let rest for 15 minutes. After resting divide. Roll into balls and place in the muffin tin. Let rest for another 10 minutes.

Place in oven to bake. Enjoy warm.

Review to come: Wow, those turned out VERY dense. They were edible, but dense. Need to make some adjustments.

Family Photos 2013

My dear friend, Elysha at Eternal Blessings Photography, took our family photos this fall. She is absolutely fabulous. Even with a grumpy 2 year old we received a ton of prints. If you are in or around Colorado Springs, I highly recommend her! Here are a few for you to view. 

T & the Lovely C

Tyler is "madly" in love. This is C. He talks about her non-stop. Apparently they are getting married and he is going to be a Stay-at-home-dad. I totally wouldn't complain if they did get married...I absolutely love the family. They just need to wait until after college. :)

Learning to Can

Our family tries our best to eat perservative free and organic. It can be a struggle in this day and age where the FHA okays several chemicals (linked to cancer, ADH, etc...) in our food. That is another bpog altogether. My goal is to have a garden and learn to can so we can be as clean in our diet as possible. When we moved to our new hoke last June a dear friend gave me a fabulous house warming gift...a canning kit with cookbook! My words can not express my excitement and appreciation for this wonderful gift. Now to study and learn how to can properly so I do not poison my family! Aah! 
I'm sure I will be fine. ;) I must call and schedule to have my lovely friends school me in the craft of home canning.

Gluten-Free Pumpkin Pancakes

We eat gluten-free here and there. The less amount of wheat in our diet the happier our tummies seem. I looked up several regular pancake recipes, swapped out a few things for healthier choices and came up with this yummy recipe. Thank you to http://www.chewoutloud.com for her recipe! Super yummy and great when altered!

1 1/2 C whole milk
2 TB vinegar
1 cup pumpkin puree
1 egg
2 TB coconut oil
6 TB brown sugar
2 cups Red Mills Gluten Free all purpose flour
1 tsp Xanthum Gum
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cloves
1 1/2 TB cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger (I used fresh grated ginger)
1/2 Sea Salt

Whisk dry ingredients together, add wet ingredients, let it sit for a few minutes while your griddle heats and cook away. The batter is thick and little bit dense due to the fava beans in the GF flour. Let them cook on a lower heat to ensure thorough cooking.

A Table Makeover

I was yard saling and spotted this table for free. Something told me to snatch it up and quick. Its a good thing I did. Unknown to me, I had a friend who was in need of a kitchen table. I stripped, sanded, touched up the legs with paint and re-stained this one for her. I hope she likes it! 

New Bookcase

I have been wanting to add some height to our decor. I knew I wanted shelves but wasn't hopeful in finding the tall skinny shelves I needed. Then I walked up to these skinny giants at a yardsale! The owner was originally asking $25/piece, but said she would make me a "deal". I offerred $30/both and she said yes! Score!

While I love the height and width on these giants, I am not too keen on oak. It seems so...blah! 

I do,however, LOVE rustic, pallets, antiques, vintage...you get the idea. With the ideas brewing and after consulting with my handy hubby,  I made a plan. 

The bookshelves didn't need to be sanded or primed. The finish just happened to be perfect for gripping the paint. I wanted an off white or at least something that wasn't going to blind me everytime the sun hit it. (FYI: its new home is in the sunroom.)

While we were in town and visiting Lowes...(Randy needed to pick up extra field fence for our fence project...shoot! I need to give you a finished photo--don't I?) Sorry--I digress....I asked Randy to grab an "antique-white" paint--eggshell finish. As always he picked the perfecct color! 

These babies took exactly one quart of paint!

Now that I had the paint completed, I needed to find my final supplies. What I though would be a hassel to find ended up being quite simple! Our new neighbor had an abundance of old fence and said I could have a few panels! Yippee!! 

I grabbed a hammer and started pulling this dusty things apart. I only ran into a few spiders--one Black Widow--eek! After I sweeping them down and pulling nails, I laid them out inside the bookshelf to judge lengths and staggering the seams. I trimmed them up with a miter saw,  pieced  the trimmed pieces back together until I was happy...then used two tubes of liquid nail to hold them in place. (Two was a bit excessive, but I wanted to make ensure they were going to stay put.)

After placing every spare heavy item I could find on the glued fence pieces, I allowed tgem to cure overnight. The next morning, I sat the bookshelf up and wah-lah! They were staying in place!

Dilemma number two...now my shelves were too deep and needed to be trimmed down to fit. Using my handy tape meausre I measured the narrowest point, lined up the shelf on the table saw and cut to size. Because the fence was left in its original condition the depths varied. I had to meaure each shelf individually and cut to size. The only suggestion I have--should you take on this project--is to verify where you want the shelves to permanently sit--you can't add depth back onto a shelf once cut. Of course, you can always cut more off! :) 

All of the shelves cut...and...

The bookcase in its forever home! I will be using this beauty for homework organization and art supplies! Love it! 

Fence Installation (part one)

This post has just a few snap shots of the fence installation in process. The completed photos tomorrow! 

Our little helper. He grabbed my hat and his cowboy boots to come out and help us out. 

Pulling the fence tight with the come-a-longs. 

Cutting the wires and tying them onto the post one by one. You have to do this randomly starting from the middle and moving out. This is an important step. you do not want to loose tension along the top or bottom of the fence. Things will start to sag--fence wise...not lady parts. ;) 

To Die For Carrot Cake

We were invited to our neighbors house for a BBQ and get-to-know-you-time. It was such a great time. We are extremely blessed to have wonderful people on all sides of us. Thank you to Jeff, Paula and Gracie for having us. It was a great time.
While they supplied the bulk of the yumminess, I did get to bring dessert. I searched and searched for a "healthier" recipe, but finally just adapted 2 recipes I found to one that I liked. Next time, I will try gluten-free flour instead of pastry flour.

Carrot Cake
Pre-heat Oven 300 degrees
Bake 50-60 minutes

2 cups sugar
1 cup apple sauce (unsweetened)
1/2 cup virgin coconut oil
4 eggs

2 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp sea salt
2 tsp ground cinnamon
3 cups shredded carrots (about 5 large carrots)
4 ounces almond slices (I soaked mine in the wet ingredients while mixing the dry)

Cream the wet ingredients together.
Add almonds to wet ingredients.
In a separate bowl, combine the dry ingredients then slowly add to the wet ingredients. After the dry and wet ingredients are mixed well, stir in the carrots.

Pour in a greased (coconut oil) cake pan (9x13).
After it is baked top with cream cheese icing. Nom Nom!

*Note I will be playing with this recipe to make it gluten-free and will keep you updated.

**In addition, the cake was quickly devoured.

Sun Room Before & After

And so it begins...We completed an immense amount of work and I'm not sure where to start or how to document--bare with me! Let's start with the sun room.  The sun room sits right off of the kitchen and connects to the garage and basement. We are currently using it as a "homework" station/ art room.

What a view! 

That vintage lamp had to go!

Randy shortening the wall. Glad that is gone! It really does make our house feel larger.

This floor took forever to remove. I dreaded coming to work on it every day--blah!

Before priming the floor we had to level out the floor (see bottom right corner). When they originally built the home they did not ensure their floor was leveled. This had to be fixed before install our wood floors.

Finally, all of the floor was removed and Zinser BIN used to cover cat smells. Notice we knocked out a wall? The walkway was small. Now, it's open!

When we removed the electric baseboards quite a bit of the drywall came off with it. To our surprise the framework was rotted from excessive leaking from the windows. We had to tear out the frame and rebuild it and re-caulk all of the windows and siding. Here I was stuffing the insulation back into place. 

Liam was a true sport. He would find a cubby and play with his cars. 

Almost there.

Looking from the kitchen & into the Sun Room. Notice the electric baseboard and vintage low-hanging light are gone. We ran into the light one-too-many times. Plus it was out-dated and yellowed. 

Don't look at the kitchen! That's the next post. :) 

The wall behind the basement door is a perfect location for tracking our children's growth. The wall that we knocked out was still wide enough to sit my rolling-island/work-station. Currently my easel and art supplies sit on the bottom shelves along with a few games. 

I think I may hang my vintage metal signs above the windows...not sure yet.

The views are just breathtaking. We are very grateful that we found our new home.

Didn't Randy do a lovely job on the floor? LOVE! 

So here it is...your before and after photo...:)