I got my motor running…several times today.

Today, I used my juicer for the first time since I brought it home (courtesy of this website and for a change, it is not Pinterest)

And I made homemade apple juice.  (The boys liked the taste, but missed the “real apple juice” color.  Nevermind that this was made from real apples!)

Then, I used my blender…

and I made smoothies. (This is actually not my blender, but mine is old and the same brand…and sitting in the sink to be washed.)

And, then finally, I used my food processor…twice.

We are having homemade latkes and pear “applesauce” for dinner.  (However, the recipes I did find on Pinterest.)

All three kitchen appliances got used more today than in most of 2011.

Also, I wielded one of these.

so that I could cut the old mailbox post into smaller pieces.  The mailbox project was months ago (October, 2011) and the rotting post has been sitting on the side of the house for a LONG time.

And I never did post how that project ended.  I wrote about it here, but this is the finished project.

This was actually a very gratifying project.  It was done in one weekend.  I painted the numbers by hand.  Best of all, I did not have to redo them – first time was a charm.

Back to the old post that I chopped up today.

For my power tool finale, I took out this little guy…

And I chopped down some trees.  (No “during” pictures here either.  Trust me, it was not pretty.)  We have several weed trees infiltrating the corners of the yard.  Now they are weed stumps.  (You can also see that Turtle got a haircut today.  Notice the before in the smoothie picture?)

That makes five power-operated machines in one day.  I guess I had my own personal (pint-size) power trip today.

Hope your days was as electrifying as mine.

Mom’s fridge questions answered

My mom thought it looked weird in the pictures.

“Is it brown?”

“No, I am just not good at taking photos of refrigerators.”

Her other questions…answers only.

“It is stainless steel on the front, black on the sides.”

“No, it does not have an in-door water or ice dispenser.”

“Yes, it has an ice maker”

“Yes, I like that it opens to the right.”  (That way we can push it against the wall on the left and free up more wall space to the right.)

And, finally, “Yes, I like the single door, bottom freezer.”  I think.

Last April, I wrote about seeing this kind of fridge in a Susan Sarandon commercial for milk.  I liked it then in theory.

Now, I have 30 days 27 days to determine if I  like it in reality.

If not, we’ll take it back and get something else.

Purty.

Here she is.

Thank goodness for those long-term financing arrangements.  While I love having her in the house, she is way ahead of schedule.

Isn’t she a beaut?

This is what her predecessor looked like…

Despite the alcohol (again) in the photo, there is not a whole lot to love in this picture.

Now:

She’s purty.

Out with the old…

While I did not take true before pictures, I did stop for a moment to snap what the inside of the old fridge looked like as I was attacking it with a chisel and a hammer.

Ew.

And more ew.

Between the water leak, the thaw, the re-feeze and the bag of coffee splitting when we chiseled out the re-frozen stuff, we had a real mess on our hands.

But all is well that ends well.

And all is well now with the old refrigerator because as of yesterday morning, it looked like this.

And tonight, I plan on taking a photo of the newest addition to Chez boss lady, our new fridge.

PS- Do not judge me on the contents of the fridge. 🙂  Contrary to the evidence presented above, I really do feed my family more than frozen pizza, meat and tequila.

 

More dreamy kitchens

Since December, I have had a kitchen that is functional.  However, many of our design decisions still lie ahead. 

Counters.

Floors.

Backsplash.

Island or no island?

So I am still clipping and dreaming, dreaming and clipping.

Here are some more of both clips and dreams.

First is a home featured in the July, 2009 issue of Traditional Home magazine.  While I am committed to the cherry colored cabinets I have now and cannot copy the breezy white look of this space, I love the small marble tile backsplash and raised table in front of the sink.  I think those features are options for me us at Chez Boss Lady. 

Also, I love the TV and microwave built-in.  We are not sure yet whether to put our microwave over the stove or on the counter and this is not an option I had thought of yet.  It makes a lot of sense though.  I can still have the hood over the range, and yet I do not have to give up precious counter space for a giant regularly used appliance.

Jerabek House, Traditional Home, July 2009

Finally, I found this lovely kitchen in ad in Home (I think) magazine. Again, I cannot do much in the way of white, but I was intrigued by the use of not just two, but three totally different types of counters in the same space. There is the stainless steel in the back, the marble on the island and the butcher block on the side table. 

What do you think of the look?  Too much?  Chez chic?

Ah, so many ideas and so little money.  😉

Yummy, dark delights

The title of this post could have gone a lot of ways.  You might even be thinking that I am going to blog about the dark chocolate “crack bark” that I plan to make sometime later this week, but I’m not.   (Though I do plan to make the pretzely, chocolatey, salty, caramelly goodness and it will hopefully stick around long enough for me to take a picture and post it.)

I am referring to the newly hung, lovely dark cherry stained cabinets in my kitchen.

Let’s go back to the beginning.

The farthest right corner of our house used to be in the dining room.  This particular corner was not all that exciting.  You can see on the far right that there was a sliver of a wall.  It divided the then dining room from the living room.

See here. (This is from the corner in the photo above, looking out. Please disregard the text…that is for another post.)

We decided in our infinite wisdom to swap the location of the kitchen and dining room.  My thinking was that I could build a whole new kitchen in the old dining room while still using the old kitchen and then we’d never have to move out during renovation!  Plus, there was room to expand into the existing living room, a room we hardly used.  Brilliant!

So I drew up some plans and then we started demo.  It was a little unnerving surprising how eager Vader was to help.

First we took the divider wall down and ripped the room apart in order to make the new kitchen bigger.

We stripped it of wall paper.  First was the grass paper, which I kinda liked.  Then we found the best of what wall paper in 1976 had to offer.  

We plumbed it. (This is actually the wall opposite the corner in the photos above.)

 We cleaned up the walls. 

And after painting, here is how it sat for the last two months.

But now…

 

 

Cabinets!!!

We have cabinets filled with dishes and glasses and bowls!  No longer do I have to go in to the linen closets to get a plate.  No longer do I have to unpack 3 boxes to find all of the parts to an appliance. 

In truth, the kitchen is far from done.  We still have to order two more units: the last of the upper cabinets and the drawer unit for the lower cabinets.  (That is what will go where the cart sits now.)

We want to put a vented microwave over the stove (and free up room on the counters.)

We need floors.

And counters.

And of course, we want to replace the lovely chandelier.

But who cares.  I have cabinets!

In other news, I crafted this weekend! Inspired by my friend, I took on a wreath and I must admit, from afar, it ain’t half bad!

Up close, there are dozens of little hot glue threads all over the thing and a broken ornament or two, but who cares.  I have cabinets!

Breakers times two

As I mentioned last week, I attended an association annual meeting at The Breakers from Wednesday to Friday.  It was lovely.  I was even able to sit by the ocean for a spell and read a book.

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The other “breaker” was Vader.  On Sunday, we decided to pull up the large, formerly white-ish tile in the kitchen.  (When HH pulled up three tiles last year to install the wood floors in the living room, it took him three hours – one per tile.)

As it turns out (and much to our delight,) Vader is quite adept at tile demolition and because the rest of the tile in the kitchen was floated over the slab, it was easier than the tiles HH did last year.  Vader was eager to do ALL of the work – in fact, he insisted that no one help him.  And who am I to argue with that?  After he took out 30 or so tiles, we stopped the destruction and at least kept the tiles in the hallway and under the kitchen table.  Vader made sure that we both knew he was ready to go whenever we were ready to take on the rest.  It is a beautiful thing to see one of your own children find an enjoyable hobby.  🙂  Perhaps we can teach him plumbing next?

My new favorite kitchen

This is my new favorite kitchen.  I think it was in a recent edition of Southern Living or Better Homes and Gardens – anyone know?

It is a departure from the black and white kitchen I have been coveting for the first half of 2011. 

I still love this one and I want to incorporate ideas from it into the new kitchen at our house, but I cannot get around the white counters – which will be ruined at Chez Boss Lady  – and white marble backsplash – which is going to be WAY expensive.

So back to my new favorite:

The warm wood tone on the floor is gorgeous.  Unlike the basket weave tile in the black and white kitchen, I think I can use a wood laminate or score the real thing at a discount in this color on Craigslist.  That black tile would have been hard to find.

I also like the cabinets even though they are white.  I liked the black lower cabinets in the other kitchen because we’d be able to “hide” residue from dirty hands and unplanned art that find their way into the kitchen.  Even though the white cabinets are tougher to clean, in this kitchen, they use an antique white that will hide things better than my artic white cabinets now. 

I also love the fabric and the color that it brings into the kitchen.  I could easily see using a tile back splash in that glassy green.  The tricky part will be the counter tops.  How can I find that earthy brown granite color on the cheap?  Think, think, think.

The last part is the lighting.  While I really liked that industrial outdoor light in the black and white kitchen, I was picturing the boys swinging off it.  Plus, I am not a big fan of exposed light bulbs behind glass.  You can see every bid of dust, every beginning of a cobweb, every fingerprint.

The fabric drum one in the new kitchen is also cool, but we are likely to get it dirty with the occasional bit of flying food.  Even without airborne food, it will never be cleaned.  I am playing around with a more rustic fixture, like one from this company below.  I actually really like the red one in the top left corner.  Perhaps I can buy it in black and or cream to match the cabinets or the hardware?

 Ah, more kitchen daydreams.  These days, kitchen planning is a fair distraction from the overwhelming stressors in my life: increased job duties, health issues for my father-in-law, big questions about Vader’s schooling and so on.  A little daydreaming is in order.

Not so fast.

Summer is here and life is moving along nicely in most areas at Chez Boss Lady.

Vader is in summer camp.

HH is working on an idea that we are really excited about.

Splash and Turtle are keeping us busy, busy, busy.

But even with all of the goings-on, we have not seen many folks lately.

Were you wondering about us?

Where did we go?

And why didn’t we have Vader’s birthday party at home, like we’ve done every year before?

Why we have not asked you to come over and hang out?

We want to.  I mean, we really, really, REALLY want to have you over.

But that would mean that we’d have to fess up about the progress (or lack thereof) on the renovations at Chez Boss Lady.

So.

Just in case you were wondering, let me share why you have not been round these parts lately.

 

Befuddled about a fridge

We are shopping for a new refrigerator. 

With a price range of anywhere from $800 to $3000, this is not a small purchase.  In addition, the fridge uses about 20% of typical any household’s energy and we hope to save a few bucks by buying one that is energy-efficient. 

We thought we knew what we wanted – a side-by-side unit.  With a side-by-side fridge, the boys could get in and out of both the fridge and the freezer, at least at the bottom, and we’d be off the hook for having to run to the kitchen every time they wanted a snack or drink. 

But then…

Yesterday, I saw a commercial that Susan Sarandon has out for milk which got me thinking differently about the whole situation.  

  Susan looked so happy getting her gallon of ice cold milk out of the unit that had a fridge on top and the freezer drawer at the bottom.  It was not the french door kind either.  It was like the old fashion units, flipped upside down.

Now I am confused.

Real Simple had a review of shopping for appliances in their March 2008 issue.  Of course, I clipped it. 

Source: Monica Buck

They outlined several things: what size you would need for a small family compared with a large one, how shelving arrangement changes functionality, energy efficiency and the care and maintenance of the materials.  (I know that we want an Energy Star rated unit and I am looking only for stainless or faux stainless finishes.) What it did not have was any helpful hints on the pros and cons of the kinds of fridge designs – side-by-side, top freezer, french doors with bottom freezer, single door with bottom freezer.

What do you like about your fridge?  Anything you would suggest we avoid?  Any insight, large or small, is much appreciated.