Green Thumb Reward

Our first year at being amateur gardeners has paid off and we've had a few scrumptious (and cheap!) meals using our home-grown plants.

This is one of our favorites - caprese.  We used our own ripe, red tomatoes, placed a chunk of yummy, fresh mozzarella cheese on each slice, and then topped them off with a drizzle of olive oil, a sprinkle of garlic salt, and our own basil.  Mm, mm!  It's a great appetizer or snack!  A word of advice though, always use a cutting board when cutting the tomatoes and cheese.  A long trip to the Emergency Room last year and several stitches taught my good-lookin' and good-cookin' husband the hard way.  :)

Also sooo good:  Chicken and Pasta with Pesto

After grinding about a cup of basil leaves together with olive oil, garlic salt, and some chopped garlic, we smothered some pesto over some chicken breasts before we cooked them and then threw the rest in some hot, cooked linguine and, oh boy, was it good.

The only draw-back, we used almost all of the basil our little potted plant had produced. 

Luckily it springs back pretty fast and there's still enough for a few sprinkles in another dish or two.  But it did look a little sad.

Anyone else have any delicious dishes you've made using your own, home-grown plants?  I'd love to know! 

All In A Day's Work

I woke up this morning and started getting ready to go see Jesus when my husband (who had already left the house) informed me via text message that he had our only set of car keys in his pocket.  So, my plans for the day changed and without a car to run errands and being stuck in the house, of course I zero-ed in on a small project I could get done in a day.  :)

Yesterday, a few of my pals and I went on a see-what-we-can-find-for-cheap shopping spree to a local treasure of a discount store.  We all walked out with a bag or two in hand and me, well I walked out with a bag and a side table...a Target side table I found for 5 beans that is.  The top was a little knocked-up but nothing a good coat of paint couldn't hide.

So after scrubbing and sanding down the top, I applied not one...

...but two coats of primer to make sure my paint stuck and also because I wanted my table a cream color instead of the black it was.

So, after about an hour of painting coats with drying time in-between, this is what evolved:

Since it's going in our living room, I wanted it to match the hutch I painted that sits on the opposite side of the room so I used the same paint - Cream In My Coffee by Valspar.

Then, just as I did to the hutch, I distressed my little three-legged find by using a fine-grained piece of sand paper and lightly sanding each edge just so that a little of the underlying black would come through.

Cost - five buckaroos, some paint and primer I already had, and an hour of my time.  It's all in a day's work for this Bean!

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'Bean In Love' Blog Housekeeping Note:
I just learned how to allow my readers to subscribe to my posts through email, meaning that if I publish a new post it can be emailed to you if you subscribe!
I'm not a daily blogger so I thought it would be easier for some of you to have the subscription instead of checking in everyday...Rock.  :)
All you have to do is go to our home page and hit up the "Subscribe" tab.  It should be easy from there.  Happy Subscribing!

Home Office Project: Signing Off

The month of July is now gone and it's time to move on to another room.  Our office looks so much better than it did and I'm satisfied with the work I've done.  It's been a super busy month for us with a trip to Florida for me while Anthony was in Georgia and Tennessee.  At the end of the month we had Vacation Bible School and a parish trip to New Orleans which sucked up all of our time and energy.  On top of all this, Anthony has been busy reading and studying for his Masters', hence why the office this month was completely my project.  But we got through it all and are the better for it.  It's hard to believe I even had time to paint and concoct a space to get our business done but I did.  Decorating and painting is my time to relax...if you can call it that.  I love doing it and it's, for the most part, mindless work so it's easy on the brain.  Anyways, here are some before and after pictures to document the mini-transformation.

Before

After

Before

After

Small changes but everything jives much better and it's so much more inviting, especially when we have to be in there to update our Budgeter or pay bills.

Here's a close up of more "floralizing" I did.  I put together the fabric flower on our pillow cover the same way I put together the one on the lamp.  Find out here if you didn't read that post. 

If you've been following along with our home office project, you'll notice we didn't get everything done we/I wanted - the homemade headboard, a homemade cushion for the window seat, picture frames up on the walls, spiffying up the bookcase, and new "real" closet doors.  Those projects will come another day, another month...in other words, when we find the materials we need either on sale or for cheap.  We're really excited about August's project in our bedroom, which I'll spill more on later.  Until then, ta-ta for now! 

Bringin' In Some Estrogen

Anthony is good at a lot of things...okay, everything!  Apparently he came out of the womb with a trophy and has collected them in winnings since because we have all shapes and sizes. 

See them?  Yep, they're all lined up on top of our office bookcase.  He parted with a lot of them when we moved last year and just kept the ones he felt were the most meaningful and so now that's what we've got.  The reason I'm telling y'all this is to show why our office is needing some feminine detail.  The walls are a pretty neutral color and the green in the bedding and curtains could go either way.  Since I'm in this room just as much as my 'super-man' husband, I'm pretty-ing it up a little.

Last night I was busy scheming and planning on some kind of high while Anthony was sleeping and showed some of what was taking shape in my head.  Read about my night here.  Well, I'm finished with part of my idea and it involves our new lamp.

We were given the lamp, which I spray-painted white, and I found and bought a lamp shade.  It was 3 bucks at my fave discount store here and this is why:

A two inch tear on one side.  However, 3 bucks for a Target lamp shade is el-cheapo, especially when I know I can someway, somehow fix or hide the tear.

So, after I devised my late night plan, I cut one inch strips of fabric about two feet long from the excess fabric I had leftover from making our curtains and pillows and put a simple stitch through one side, making a sort of long ruffle.  I purposely left the other side unseamed to give my "ruffle" a sort of unfinished-but-pretty look.

Then, I hot glued the "ruffle" in a circular pattern directly over the tear in the shade.

Then, after all of my rounds of gluing and a little maneuvering, this is what I got:

Bye, bye little tear and hello pretty, little, feminine flower!  It looks a little lonely so I might add a couple more smaller ones but at least for now I've hidden the tear!  By the way, I got my inspiration for this project from a dress I have that has flowers constructed like this with toile.  This just affirms that inspiration can be found anywhere!

Pretty feminine, huh?  Well, there's more little fabric flowers to be made to fulfill this little plan in my little brain.  Can you guess where else I have plans to "floralize"?  Watch and see!

Late Night...Snack?

I'm pretty wide awake.  It's past my bedtime.  My husband fell asleep shortly after we came home from swimming at a friend's house tonight (to be precise, around 7:30 p.m.).  So, nothing is stirring, not even a mouse.  When what do my wandering eyes appears...ok, just kidding.  (St. Nicholas was the saint of the day today at Vacation Bible School so he's on the brain.)  Since I am who I am and I do what I do, instead of feasting on a midnight snack I'm just sitting here experimenting.  I have two small, rectangular pieces of fabric leftover from my full-sheet-into-curtains-and-pillows extravaganza and I've got an idea so I thought I'd share it.  I'm not quite positive if what's in my brain is going to look kosher in real life but that's what late nights are for...to figure it out. 

Here's what I've concocted (so far...the night is young):

So, as always in my blogging world, stay tuned to find out what happens.

P.S.  For your late-night treat I'd like to introduce the newest member of our office/bedroom transformation:

A bedside lamp!  Newly spray-painted white and topped off with a Target shade I found for 3 bills.  Also about to be bean-i-fied...come back and find out how!