Gallery Wall Updates

The last time I showed you my living room gallery wall (in 2012) it was looking like this:

Well, over time I've changed a few things here and there and I wanted to share how it's looking these days.

Some of my new art I found as free printables, like this cool peacock! (found here)

Yes, I still have a Thanksgiving printable from Eighteen 25 up, but I'm about to change it to a spring themed printable.

As a nod to my job at NASA, I bought these 2 cool prints from Etsy. One is of space shuttle and the other's a cool little astronaut dude. :)

I also purchased this print of the metro system in Moscow, Russia. After traveling there for work in 2012, it's neat to walk by this reminder every day.

I love the updates and it's always nice to support Etsy artists when I can. :)

Guest Bin

Ever since January I've been on an organizing kick. I guess maybe it's because of the new year and everything? Anyway, what's been happening is I'll see some place that is totally messy and that I would normally ignore, but nowadays I instantly pull everything out and have to organize it right then. I don't know what happened to me, but it's a good thing while it lasts. :)

So anyway, about a month ago one of my friends was over late and she was too tired to drive home so she just spent the night. This isn't too unusual for me and it's the same person most of the time, haha. I have a couple things for guests who stay with me, but they are scattered all over the house. I decided that I would gather all the stuff I have for guests into one bin that guests can access while they are here. And then I thought, why didn't I do this already??

I was also tired of looking at my linen closet (which is where I am storing this guest bin), but I'll deal with that on another day....

Here's part of the mess. Yes, I do need that much contact solution and don't you store your Lucille Ball DVDs in your linen closet?

I couldn't leave the house for this project cause we've been having bad weather here in North Alabama and we weren't prepared for it. The roads were all icy so I searched through my house for stuff I could steal for the guest bin.

I found this green basket, small teal bin and a white vase.

The green and teal bins came from Target and the white vase was from Ikea.

Here are all the items I already had. I am going to buy some more things when I can get out again. I want to put in some hand lotion, ibuprofen, more toothbrushes and maybe a few other things.

Here are the items in their new home!

Here's the bin in the linen closet. I got rid of a few unnecessary things to make it fit and it felt good to purge a little. I will be proud to hand this over to my next guest :)

Cabinet Cleaning

This isn't the most exciting update, but I still thought I would share it. My kitchen cabinets used to always have spots on them and I would just use a microfiber cloth and water to try and get rid of them, but the cabinets would still look streaky and sad. I googled "green cabinet cleaner" and found the following recipe on a few different sites:

1/4 cup white vinegar
1/2 tsp. olive oil

I took 2 microfiber cloths and used one to apply the cleaner and one to buff the cabinets dry.

Here's what the cabinets were looking like before.

Not really sure what that is...

Getting ready to mix up the solution!

And the after

I love the way this makes my cabinets look. The vinegar cleans and the olive oil shines up the cabinets really nicely!

Thanksgiving

So I realize it's pretty late to be posting about Thanksgiving, but I'm going to anyway because 2013 was the first year that I hosted Thanksgiving at my place and I was pretty excited about it. My family usually plans these kinds of things at the last minute so I wasn't stepping on anybody's toes by offering to host this year. Also, my family is pretty small (at least those of us who get together for Thanksgiving) so it wasn't a huge ordeal.

It was pretty fun getting together a menu and planning everything! So first of all, the decorations.

Ever since my BFF's wedding shower, I always have some sort of bunting hanging in my dining room. I think it's just cause I having some extra color in there since the only other ways I do that are with the art and various table runners. I created this one with some extra papers I had.

I went shopping with my mom and we found this fabric that features all the traditional Thanksgiving colors (well, to us anyway) and so I got some to create 2 runners out of. I made one for the food table and one for the dining table. I don't have a sewing machine so I just used hem tape and it held up really well.

When I was picking up some of the food at Publix (my favorite grocery store....) I spotted these red-orange flowers and picked some up to arrange on the table. I'm definitely no florist, but I thought they were a nice touch.

For place settings, I just put out my everyday plates and silverware. I don't have china or another set of dishes, so this is it. :)

I made my grandmother's red velvet cake like I enjoy doing for most holidays. There was an incident though where before the meal was served, my diabetic grandfather cut into it and ate a piece. That was an interesting moment. :) Don't worry, he was fine.

Here I am with the finished food table! I was really pleased with how everything turned out. My mom and sisters arrived early and helped me with the cooking so it wasn't too overwhelming. They also brought the meat so my vegetarian self wouldn't have to make it.

We had mashed potatoes, spinach salad, squash/zucchini casserole, roasted broccoli, veggie casserole, my grandma's biscuits, ham and green bean casserole. My mom also brought a cheesecake for us.

I planned my menu out a few weeks early so that gave me time to get stuff on sale for the meal. I am a coupon-er still and so if I can save money on something I was going to get anyway, that just makes my day. I'm really glad I did it that way or I would have spent a lot of money on food at the last minute.

The other thing is, a lot of this was foods that I tend to have on hand anyway so that helped too.

We had a really great time eating, playing board games and just hanging out together. I love my family. :)

The main thing I learned from this experience was timing. I have a hard time with big meals like these getting everything finished at around the same time. Do any of you have tips for that?

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I found this recipe a few years back on allrecipes and I've made it for parties, to bring to work and just when I want something sweet to eat. I love this recipe and thought I'd share it with you guys.

I'm actually on the hook to bring some to work this week. See, I'm a bit of a prankster at work and there are a few people in particular I like to pick on. Usually they don't fight back, but in this case my victim did. How did it start? Well in September I hid this co-workers keyboard and mouse and of course, was promptly accused of it. I denied it, they found the mouse and keyboard so all should have been well. Then, a month later I discovered that my Marvin the Martian doll had been stolen because I received an email with pictures of it bound and gagged and a ransom note. I ignored it and figured they'd give me my doll back, but they didn't so I have to bake cookies in order to get him back.

Not that any of you will need this recipe for that particular situation.....

Recipe makes 4 dozen cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup butter, softened 1 cup white sugar 1 cup packed brown sugar 2 eggs 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda 2 teaspoons hot water 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Directions:

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2) Cream together the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Dissolve baking soda in hot water. Add to batter along with salt. Stir in flour and chocolate chips. Drop by large spoonfuls onto ungreased pans.
3) Bake for about 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are nicely browned.

If you're wondering about the ornaments and Christmas-y penguin napkins, I took these pictures right after Christmas.

Guest Room

This isn't a huge update, but I thought I would take some nicer (that's subjective, isn't it?) pictures of the guest room, which isn't really a guest room anymore because I have a roommate now. I still thought it would be nice to post these better-looking photos. The last post about this room had really dark pictures cause it had rained the day I took them.

Natural light works wonders, eh?