Paint Catastrophe (Sorta...)

Back in September when I had my painting spree in the living room/dining room/kitchen I did not paint the wall that connects to the stairwell. Exhibit A:

I wanted to eventually paint it a neutral tan color. Welll...... I got some swatches and thought the perfect choice was Benjamin Moore's Silver Fox. So I bought a gallon and this past Saturday, I went to town painting that wall.

Um, no.....

When it dried it had all these purple undertones and was not what I was looking for at all. I was so devastated, I didn't even want to consider another tan color. But I did anyway. I got some more swatches and my two favorites were coastal fog - a tan color from BM and stonington gray - a gray (obviously) color from BM. I bought a sample of each color and got them up on the wall. Once they dried I knew instantly what I wanted. Stonington Gray! It was love. Well, for me anyway.

Here's an in-progress photo, hence, mess everywhere. Just keepin' it real.

And all done and cleaned up.

The painting in the first photos is actually one made by my best friend. I most likely will add it back there, but we haven't gotten to that yet.

 

I am loving the new color and so glad it's finished!

So Pretty... Can't... Look... Away.....

How about some eye candy?

Um, prettiest basement ever? Yeah.

Cozy.

 Looove the paint color.

This looks like a vacation home on the beach. I need to go here.

Bright and airy.

Ah...

Pantry!

Well, I got 7 inches of snow at my house Sunday night and it has yet to melt. It's very rare for to see snow like that so I've been delighted to have it. Couldn't get in to work on Monday and didn't get in until 10 today.

But my pantry is organized (nice segue there, huh?).

It started like this:

 I guess the philosophy was to pretty much just throw stuff wherever there's room...

Here's my lunch bin. No I cannot explain why I had 5 containers of peanut butter...

It was high time to organize that bad boy with organizing rule number 1) group like with like.

I finally organized the cereals into thes awesome Oxo containers. Woah, that's a lot of Cheerios....

After:

The pantry makes it look like I'm going to die of starvation, but hey, I'll die of starvation with the pantry organized.

This isn't the prettiest labeling ever, but it works. In these other Oxo containers I keep all-purpose flour, self-rising flour and sugar. I just cut the labels off the bags they came in and stuck them inside to keep it all straight.

I grabbed that tin from upstairs and used it to hold any sauce packets or small packets. The blue box below it holds oatmeal packets and bags of popcorn.

Feels good to have that taken care of!

Packing it Away

I finally found the strength to put away the Christmas tree and such. It was my first Christmas in this house and so it was super hard to get rid of everything! The tree made the house look so cozy, but alas, it was time. I had bought these green bins at Target a few weeks back and I used the under-the-bed size to pack away most of the Christmas decor.

 I just took the ornaments off, removed their hooks and then placed them into the bin.

Then I took off the lights and wrapped them up then they went in as well. I separated some of the ornaments into plastic bags since I used them for other decor in the house.

I also have a bag for extra lights and a bag for ornament hooks.

So there it is all packed up. Sad to see it go, but glad it's all packed away so nicely.

The Murder Mystery Partay!

If I haven't revealed this already, I love hosting parties (well I guess I just love parties in general) and this one was really fun for me. As I mentioned before, we hosted a New Year's Eve party last Friday and it was a Mardi Gras themed murder mystery dinner party (say that 10 times fast...). I had bought the kit for my friend Kelly's birthday last year and we finally got around to using it for this event.

Here's a picture of the house decked out for the event. We bought plenty of Mardi Gras beads and masks for everyone.

The kit was great in my opinion; it included a party planning guide to explain how to structure the night's events, recipes, decorating ideas and costume ideas for each character. The kit also had a "police report", clues, name tags and a character booklet for each person. Everybody dressed up as their character and really got into it so that made it much more fun.

Here's my sister McKenna and I. I was Elise St. Gresch, the maid and she was Connika Gothika, the eccentric novelist from next door.

 Out of the recipes included with the booklet, we made 2 of them. The garlic bread on the left and the jambalaya on the right. As the jambalaya included meat I didn't have any, but everyone else said it was really good.

We made this vegetarian gumbo for myself and I loved it. It was spicy enough to give it flavor, but not too spicy and all the vegetables were really tasty. It made a TON though, so if I were to do it again, I would definitely halve the recipe.

This is the beginnings of a King Cake, a Mardi Gras must in my opinion... ;-)

A few of us decked out in our masks! From left to right, Melissa DuPre - the wife, Alexis DuPre - the daughter, the maid, Cayenne Pepper - the chef and Bourbon DuPre - the jazz musician

The completed King Cake. It doesn't look like much, but we made it with a lot of love and it tasted great anyway. =]

 Here I am with Stephen J. Peek - the attorney and Bourbon.

I don't want to give it all away in case anyone decides to play the game themself, but it was definitely a lot of fun trying to solve the mystery and getting all into character and everything. We also played New Orleans jazz music the whole time and having the Mardi Gras themed food certainly helped us get into character.

Happy New Year!

Hope your New Years was fun too! =]