The last time I posted it was to confess that I've stopped cooking. It forced me into a state of reflection and since then I've cooked a few really great meals.
Week one was sweet potato kale soup (step one, throw things in a pot; step two, hope it works), tuna noodle casserole (from scratch, except the noodles--ain't nobody got time for that!), and chili with stew meat. It was very snowy and dreary here, can you tell?
Week two was this sausage and spinach soup. I followed the recipe exactly and it was delicious! I also made this lasagna (except with full fat everything because I like full flavor things), and a quiche inspired by this one.
Week three was special because I cooked double batches to feed both us and a family who just welcomed their second boy! I made broccoli quinoa casserole and wrapped up breakfast burritos for the week. The parents were pretty clearly exhausted, but I was so impressed at how well they are doing with a two-year-old and an infant. It's pretty amazing how we humans can adapt to any situation! And the little one is just perfect!
The big house projects lately have been (1) taking down Christmas, (2) cleaning up mud, mud, and more mud that the animals track in, and (3) remaking our living room.
Number (1) is sad, Number (2) is overwhelming and underwhelming all at once, but Number (3) has been fun!
Our front room is one long room. We have a sweet little entryway, and then we've divided up the room into two separate living spaces.
When we moved in, we had the two spaces set up as so:
Not bad, but not a great use of the space either. The tall furniture on this side of the room also loomed over the shorter midcentury furniture on the other side of the room
This side of the room was fine, but the distance from the couch to the coffee table to the chairs was way to much. I also sold my giraffe quilt, so she now resides in South Carolina.
Then we made some changes in the house, which moved out all of the furniture in the first photo. First, we transitioned one of our empty bedrooms (we only have three bedrooms, but one was empty...we don't have a lot of stuff yet!) to a hobby room. So, away went the table and the sewing machine to that room.
Then Christmas came in, and I moved out the teal credenza because it just didn't go with my Christmas decor. Then the Ikea Kallax shelf was just sitting there by itself, so I moved it to the other side of the room, where it resides now behind the swivel barrel chairs.
These are the "during" pictures, when things got moved around for Christmas.
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This is the same side of the room, with the coffee table between the couch and chairs and the Kallax shelf unit relocated to behind the chairs.
Between the last set of pictures and this one, I also acquired four midcentury dining chairs from a thrift store, and the beautiful midcentury Danish dining table that was my grandparents. The lack of furniture on this side of the room was fine until the Christmas tree and "fireplace" had to go.
Our solution was five Billy bookcases from Ikea. I drew inspiration from the Ikea catalogue, Design Sponge, and Apartment Apothecary. This was a one-day project, and I think it turned out great!
Cohabitant assembling the shelves
I think the bookcases make the space feel both bigger and more yet more comfortable! I love them, but now I have to work on styling them. Cohabitant and I have moved so many times over the last few years that we have unfortunately not hung on to many of our books (and I have no idea how this process happened...when you're moving you're delirious and that must be why I still have a copy of "Archaic and Classical Greek Art" yet lost my copy of "To Kill a Mockingbird").
I also fixed the gallery wall behind the couch. When I put it up, I didn't arrange the frames around a straight line, I didn't have enough frames, and it was way too high over the couch. This is the after:
(complete with wrinkled quilts!)
The next projects up are hanging the green lantern up on the other side of the shelves, making curtains for the windows, and making a plan for the bedroom that now has the teal credenza.
Oh, and I also have to reupholster one of those swivel barrel chairs. The puppy decided she doesn't like that chair anymore and this happened during my second day at my new job:
(see all that mud on the rug too! I told you it's bad!)
