The Living Room

With all the work outside in the garden and under the pecan tree, we figure the inside of the house needs some attention too. And after all the Labor Day Projects back in September, Kyle and I realized how much could be done in one weekend. It was hard work for Kyle and my dad but they got to relax quite a bit too. Kyle said we should have project weekends like that more often. I agreed. Mostly because I've been dying to paint the living room, lol...

I've been thinking about redecorating our house for oh, about a year now. Since we have in fact lived in this house for almost a year.

So far in addition to the latest projects, we've recaulked the shower, hung a shower curtain rod, installed blinds, and planted a garden. It's a lot. But on the decor side of things we're still quite a bit lacking.

Let's just say that we haven't yet put a nail in the wall... like all the picture frames and artwork that I own just leans up again the walls in our living room waiting to be hung. Or waiting for pictures.

I can't blame Kyle, he would hang them in an instant but it's me trying to make the decision first.

What "look" are we going for? What's our color scheme? What style of home do we want? I have no idea. I just have a few pins on Pinterest and a few on Houzz of houses that I know I like.

How to make that happen I have no idea. But this is what we are starting with...

So I made what some people would call a "mood board" or an "idea board." And I know it's not super professional or done in Photoshop or anything. I've got Paint and Microsoft Word at the moment so forgive me. But this is what I'd like for our living room.

Let me explain.

1. I love the wall color. But I realize that we don't have feet of crown molding, and I'm okay with that. And I understand the wall looks blotchy, but that's just because remember I'm working with Paint.

2. The carpet is the same color that we already have. They put it in right before we bought the house, so we're rolling with it. Not ripping up brand new carpet just to have wood floors, plus I kind of love carpet (I'm always cold).

3. The couch pictured is not my dream couch or anything, but it's close to the color/shape of the couch and matching love seat we already have. And I think when we replace them we'll be going the tan route anyway, so hence the couch representation in the mood board.

4. That beautiful white piece of furniture on the right just represents the buffet that I got last year at a garage sale. I'm thinking of painting it a crisp white. Put I kind of like the rough look it has too...

5. The gallery wall. I love it. I have the frames. I'm in the process of painting them. It is happening.

6. The pillows. I'm not planning on having a million pillows on the couch, but they represent the colors I want to accent with all of the living room with lamps and pillows and other things too. It pulls all the colors together nice in the picture.

7. The coffee table. It's to represent the one we have already as well. Mostly so I could see if it would work. The one we have is weird. It's shaped like an octagon and it's oddly large while also being oddly small. I thought about painting it white, but I love it's color so much like it is. So I'm fighting for it. We'll see.

And that's about it. There will be more once it becomes real. And the first step is finding the right paint color. But don't worry, I've only been staring at paint swatches for hours/days asking Kyle, "this one, or this one." When they actually all kind of look the same...

We've got the ideas, and some of the supplies, now it's just picking a weekend and picking our first project. Painting? Gallery wall? Curtains...

Happy Redecorating, or at least dreaming.

Monday Wednesday Friday

So maybe you noticed something around here lately...

I'm trying a new thing.

It's called "posting more than once every two weeks."

Genius right?

You may have noticed the changes over the past few weeks, but I wanted to try it out first before I told the whole entire internet about it, lol. Posts will be up each Monday, Wednesday, Friday morning so if you read in the mornings, at lunch, or in the evenings it'll be there waiting for ya.  Sure there will be some little extras posted anytime, but who knows?

I realized that most people were waiting on me to post an update to facebook about a new post rather than checking the blog; probably because you got disappointed checking it every day with no new posts (every day, lol). So I wanted to let you know that you can click the link on facebook or just go right to the source.

Feel free to stop by anytime, (it's hintofhess.blogspot.com) but know that I'll be getting posts up on MWF because so much is going on around here that I want to tell you about! No need to wait for the facebook update, although I'll of course still be posting the facebook update because it's so darn convenient ;)

Happy Reading... hope you like it.

Texas Nutcracker

So this post doesn't concern a Christmas ballet to remember the Alamo or anything. We're talking a different kind of nut cracker... pecans to be exact.

Our new pecan cracker came in!!

We ordered it online here and I have actually been stalking the tracking number to see when it would arrive in the mail. It's here, and we love it.

It is called Texas Nut Sheller "York," and I have no idea what the 'york' stands for. But it is much more industrial than our original crackers...

I mean it kind of looks like our new cracker is a shark or something trying to eat our old little cracker... I don't know what we were thinking with the small one.  As a rule follower, I flipped the package over the read the instructions. They were severely lacking.

Lucky for us, we had watching this little video before buying the great Texas nut cracker. At first I thought it was funny that someone would have a video cracking pecans on YouTube. Then after, getting the "no instructions box" I headed back to the video.  It's informative, but here's the run down from our side of things.

First you just clip off one end of the pecan, as shown, lol. The cracker is spring loaded so that it doesn't snap too hard, which comes in handy later (because I am soooo strong.)

You just clip off the very end, trying not to clip into the actual 'meat' of the pecan goodness, but making a little hole.

Then repeat with the other side. Simple.

Okay then you just slip the whole pecan inside the little cracker and squeeze. See how it's not actually in the teeth. And it cracks it. This is where the spring loaded action comes in. With our old cracker I had to squeeze so hard that once I cracked the shell I'd crush the pecan inside! You know, like a defensive tackle who can't stop rushing the quarterback and runs into him after he lets go of the ball and gets a penalty for it #toomuchfootball

So the spring in the new cracker allows tons of strength for the shell cracking and then eases up immediately to keep the pecan 'meat' in tact. I was really really impressed. There's kind of a finesse to the whole thing, but it's real easy to learn.

Then you just carefully remove the cracked shell from around the pecan center. There are two halves to the pecan and there's a little shell like thing separating the two halves. So it helps to go ahead and pull that out. You don't eat that... it tastes like bark.

So there ya have it. The latest addition to the Hess House. Our Texas Nut Cracker, and actually, we got TWO ;)

Happy Pecan Season. Gotta beat the squirrels to 'em.

Trying to Make my Own Chinese Food

Since I had off of work for Christopher Columbus Day, I figured I had time to try a new recipe. Around here I've been making the same dinners for a while now. So I figured since Kyle was out of town that night, I'd experiment.

I figured if it passed my taste test then I'd make it for Kyle. Mostly because I made him eat dijon mustard curried apples and chicken over rice once before and after tasting it myself, I still feel bad about that one... he was such a trooper.

So I hopped on Pinterest and found this post for a Sweet and Sour Chicken recipe.  Seemed easy enough. People commented on the recipe and said it was good. I'm all about Chinese food, and all about a recipe that doesn't call for super-fancy-expensive ingredients if I don't even know if I'm going to like it yet...

So I figured I'd try it and well, it almost lead to a grease fire which is pretty darn crazy. When I say 'almost let to a grease fire' I mean that after heating the oil I decided to toss in a few drops of water to see if it was hot enough, and we had some crazy crazy popping and smoke. (Which is why you never, ever try to put out a grease fire with water...) But I was there ready with my cornstarch/flour to dump it all over the pan and put out the fire as needed. No fire... no dumping needed. Oh well.

I followed her recipe and then took into consideration some of the comments. Like her recipe says to dip the chicken in the cornstarch then the egg, but everything I've ever done has had me dipping the meat in the egg first then the flour/cornstarch/etc. So I did it my way. Commenters also said to cut the white vinegar so I only used 2 tablespoons. Seemed to work out okay...

Looking yummy yet?

Then I figured that adding pineapple would be great, and I love broccoli. So after baking everything in the recipe together in the baking dish for the first 15 minutes uncovered, I added some chunks of pineapple (from the can) and fresh pieces of broccoli and covered it with foil for another 15 minutes in the oven.

Put it all over brown rice and it was wonderful.

My kitchen looked like this afterwards, but for a girl living in a town with only Chinese buffets (no little to-go places) I think I did pretty well. My stomach was very happy. And I had plenty of leftovers...

Go ahead, try actually doing something you pinned on Pinterest. Funny how it takes forever to try something new around here...