Vegetarian Chili-ghetti!!!

I think this is my new favorite recipe! I had this can of vegetarian chili in the cabinet forever and we moved to Portland which is PERFECT chili weather, so I decided to bust it out of the cabinet and try something. I found these fun noodles in the store the other day and decided they would go perfect with the chili!

I cooked the noodles and the chili, placed the chili on top of the noodles, like spaghetti sauce, add some cheese to the top and voila! My husband is completely addicted, the next day he had me buy 3 more cans of chili :D

Oregon!!!

Sorry everyone, I know its been a while since I posted. Life has been crazy, my husband and I sold our house in Salt Lake City and moved to Portland, OR! We're just living in a small apartment til we get jobs and then the house search begins :) I will keep posting on other things, non house related though til then. Like SHARK KITTY...

I did come up with a new soup recipe that was DELICIOUS!!! And its pescatarian approved!!! BONUS!!! It had Shrimp, Cod, Shrimp Ramen, Curry, Garlic, Ginger, Coconut Milk, Red Peppers, and Snow Peas, mmmm. Pretty good for my first recipe creation :D

Easter Time!!

My family is coming up for Easter this year, so I thought I'd create a new wreath for the occasion :)

I love it! Then again I do love almost anything with glitter on it...

Xbox Controllers

I'm a big video game girl, but just because I like games doesn't mean that I have to have ugly consoles and controllers hanging around. So I modded mine and my husbands controllers. When I say I modded them, I picked out the stuff and handed it to my hubby and he did the inner workings of it lol. They turned out even cooler than I expected. The Xbox is taken care of, now I need to find out how to mod playstation controllers. :)

Nail tape

I bought some different colors of nail tape to try them out.

I really like the results, but no matter what I do the ends come up and only last about a day. Am I doing something wrong? Has anybody had a different experience with this stuff?

Progression on the dining room

We have a four bedroom house for two people and two cats. So we have a bedroom, guest room, office and completely empty odd shaped room. It drives me nuts that its empty, its just weird even walking by it. So after a long time of asking my husband to let me make it a dining room he finally said yes! He's so sweet to me <3
Here's the room before:

And my favorite part of the room was this:

We took the light off to replace it and there was GLITTER popcorn ceiling under it. TERRIBLE!
We painting it Wintergreen Ash with a black on black damask wallpaper accent wall. I saw the wallpaper on sale at wallpaperstogo.com and had to have it even though I had no idea what to do with it, so when we started doing this room I realized it was the perfect place for it. Archie helped us put up a ceilling lamp.

Here it is so far:

I'm working on some art to hang on the walls and I have a vase to spray paint for the center piece and some curtains to put up, but I'm happy with the results. I'll keep you updated!

You've cat to be kitten me right meow

I'm a crazy cat lady, not the one that has 30 and smells weird, but the kind that spoils her cats and talks to them like they understand....but would never buy them crazy dog outfits just to take a photo of them in it.

Okay maybe I would. When I saw that people had made cat beds out of old suitcases I knew I had to try it! The suitcase I found was gross and blue and the fabric inside was falling apart and I knew I had to have it. One 5 dollar suitcase, two can's of spray paint, some legs from home depot and the discovery that I'm really good at sewing despite never touched a sewing machine before and VOILA cute kitty beds!

  

Although after the first day Chesi (right) would switch back and forth in them so that Archie (left) couldn't use either one. So he's had to find other places to sleep in...

When one door closes

This weekend I was painting our bathroom cabinets black and realized I still had almost a whole gallon of paint left so I decided to paint the inside of our front door. Best decision ever! I think it brings the whole room together. After seeing it I may paint all the doors in the house black.

Dining Table Saga Continues

Originally I was thinking black and white modern fabrics for the dining chairs but when I was in Johann's this weekend I fell in love with this fabric.

AND ITS ON SALE!!! BONUS!!!

So I bought two yards and headed home and started taking the old fabric off.

Only to find MORE gross fabric!

When we started taking the we realized the wood was cracking and we'd have to make new bases. Also, the glamour of my fabric had worn off and I had realized the white fabric on white chairs would look washed out and white fabric is a bad idea because of stains and such, any little thing would show. So I decided to recover them until we cut new bases just to see how that fabric works. If it works I'm going to get some of it in pink or teal! Here's the test results and I love how much better it is already and I haven't even painted yet.

Cardboard?

The odd surprises of home ownership come when & where you least expect it. After one summer of living in our new house, we knew that something was not right with our swamp cooler, but we looked at it multiple times and the motor was good and everything seemed to work well. So my husband crawled into the attic and had no idea what he was about to discover. They had made the ducting out of cardboard, which makes sense because cardboard and water work really well together... NOPE.

So after a long, hot weekend of my sweet husband & brother working in the attic, we have a working cooling system again! YAY!!!

Taking A Step Outside

When we bought the house it was winter, & the lawn was covered in snow, so when the snow melted, we got to see the tragedy underneath. The grass was dying & patchy, & in some areas non-existent. The previous owners had been parking on the lawn & they had an oil leak, so the whole area was dead. Their were a TON of dead rose bushes, a shed falling apart in the back yard, & big pieces of metal and bolts everywhere.

The Beginning!

When we bought the house it was winter & the lawn was covered in snow, so when the snow melted we got to see the tragedy underneath. The grass was dying & patchy, & in some areas non-existent. The previous owners had been parking on the lawn and they had an oil leak, so that whole area was dead. Their were a ton of dead rose bushes, a shed falling apart in the back yard, & big pieces of metal and bolts everywhere. This is the listing picture with the snow.

Here's a picture of it a few years back, before the rose bushes died.

First we declared war against the shed and the rose bushes.

 

Then we gave the grass life again. A couple hundred dollars, some white spray paint, one bucket of red paint and one wreath later its looking pretty cute! We went from being the ugly duckling on the street to the shining star. <3

Here's the progression.

 

Here's the most recent from last fall.

Add two years and some love and voila! Before and Now.