New Blog!

My sister has decided to join me in my blogging adventures. Join us at Create.Bake.Celebrate to follow my life in the big city and my sisters in the country!

Ellie!

So I must admit that the amount of cooking I have been doing has gone way down. One of the reasons is David's house. We are in the process of moving old furniture out, new furniture in, cleaning, painting, getting renovation quotes, and landscaping. So needless to say that is keeping us very busy. But the other very exciting thing keeping us busy is our new puppy, Ellie.

 

We got Ellie from The Dancing Bear Rescue in Stafford, VA. She was born in the shelter and is a 16 week old golden retriever and lab mix. So far she has been very sweet and while not housebroken has only had a few accidents. Luckily Grace and Ellie are starting to become friends and Ellie is mimicking Grace which is definietly helping with the house training.

So, as the house projects wind down and Ellie ages I will defintiely be posting more recipes. And as summer approaches I am hoping a lot of those involve griling!

Bedside Table

For the striped guest bedroom we needed a bedside table.  David has random small table in the living room that we had thought of throwing out but with a little white paint it made the perfect side table. Below is the transformation!

Starting the sanding process

A Few Coats of Paint and a Cute New Knob

Guest Bedroom Stripes

While I haven't been cooking much lately I have been extremely busy! David and I are really getting to work on updating his house and the first full room we tackled was the guest bedroom. The guest bedroom is tiny but has a lot of charm with a sloped ceiling and beautiful hardwood floors. I spent some time on pintrest and found a blue and white striped room and decided I had to try it. David wasn't completely sure but agreed to let me have a little fun. We decided to only paint 2 of the 4 walls since the room was small and we didn't want to overwhelm it. Below is the transformation:

Guest Bedroom Preparing to Paint

Painting the Edges

We totally thought that this room was almost white it would be easy to paint over it. Well 3-4 coats of paint later we learned how difficult painting a room white could be. We also learned having two perfectionists paint a room leads to a lot more painting :)

The Room is Finally White!

Since the room has a slight slant in the ceiling we decided to start the stripe at the top of the lowest wall. This left about 11.5" at the top of the taller wall. So, we decided to go with 11.5" stripes for the wall. We used a yard stick and level to mark all the stripes....yes a laser level would have made this project much easier!

Removing the Tape

We Love our Stripes!

We are still working on furnishing the room but we did get a bed in. David is also replacing the window with the old window unit in it so that wall will look much better soon!

The Closet With the Matching Blue Shelf

Starting to Move the Furniture in

I am working on painting an old bedside table to match the room. I am also getting a dresser that is currently in my parents storage unit and a few other items to finish the room. Hopefully I will have a completely finished room soon! More pictures to come!

Stuffed Portabello Mushrooms

When I found this recipe I was very skeptical. However, these stuffed mushrooms were extremely easy to make and delicious. They are also super healthy and really filling! This is going to be one of my go to recipes.

Ingredients:

1 tsp canola oil

1/2 pound sweet turkey sausage, casings removed

4 oz nonfat cream cheese

1 small tomato, seeded and chopped

1/2 c shredded reduced fat cheddar cheese

2 tbsp chopped parsley

4 drops hot pepper sauce

4 large Portabello mushrooms (1 lb, 4" diameter) stems removed and wiped clean

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Spray baking sheet with nonstick spray.

2. Heat the oil in a nonstick skillet. Crumble the sausage into the skillet and cook, breaking apart with wooden spoon, until the sausage is browned. Transfer to a medium bowl. Stir in the cream cheese, tomato, cheddar cheese, parsley, and hot pepper sauce until blended.

  

3. Place the mushrooms on the baking sheet. Fill the cavity of each mushroom with the sausage mixture, mounded slightly. Bake until the mushrooms are tender and the filling is hot, about 25 minutes.

This recipe was fast, delicious, and healthy! Love it!

Baked Shrimp in Lemon Garlic Sauce

I needed a quick recipe that was low in calories and didn't require too many ingredients and luckily I found the baked shrimp in lemon garlic sauce recipe. It is super easy and fast!

Ingredients:

1 lb shrimp, peeled

cooking spray

1/4 c lemon juice

2 tbsp light butter, melted

3 garlic cloves

1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

3/4 tsp lemon pepper

1/4 tsp ground red pepper

2 tbsp parsley chopped

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

2. Arrange shrimp in single layer 13x9 baking dish coated with cooking spray. Combine lemon juice and next 5 ingredients. Pour over shrimp.

3. Bake for 8-10 minutes. Sprinkle parsley over top and serve.

I chose to serve it over pasta and without the parsley since I didn't have any available. It was delicious and left plenty of leftovers which I plan to incorporate into another dish tomorrow.



Spice Storage

As David and I continue to organize his house we found a creative way to store our million spices. So after painting the inside of the pantry we decided to utilize the inside of the pantry door. We decided to paint the door using a magnetic paint.

Once the paint dried we attached magnetic spice containers and a pad of paper for making our grocery list. We still needed to put the spices in the containers in the picture below but you can still get a great idea of what an awesome storage solution this is.