Rearranging!

So, we moved out house around. Remember how I said we had a trillion books and it looked like a tornado in a library?

I told you! If I counted correctly, we have 9 bookshelves FULL of books, and we moved every single one of them. We were trying to work fast, so we said we wouldn't really organize the books when we put them back on. We'd just get them back on the shelves, out of the floor, and we'd organize them later. Yeah. Have YOU ever tried to tell my dad NOT to organize something? So, putting the books back, while organizing them to some extent, took quite a while. Our house was upside down for a few days!

During our coffee break, which occurs even when the house is upside down, Rylie climbed up on the couch beside me and I took some pictures of her..and us.

She's adorable!

I still don't have any pictures of the rest of the house (besides, we're still waiting to being some big furniture into the house, so some rooms aren't finished) but I did finish my area. Remember that cabinet I started refinishing, oh, about 17 years ago? Well, after I got everything else in my room done, I really wanted to get that cabinet in here, so I went to the barn and finished it one afternoon. It. Looks. Horrid. I mean, BAD. I soooo should have painted it instead of staining it. But, I didn't...so I have it in my room like it is, and it still holds everything I need it to hold. :)

I guess my room would bother some people...nothing matches...at all! All the wood furniture is different. It doesn't really matter that much to me...it's because I always buy cheap! The new cabinet is one I bought at an auction, for $15. My dresser is another auction find, and I think it was $35. My sewing table is one I bought from a lady at church, for around $50, I think. My white chest of drawers is one I've had for...forever, I think. Mom and Dad bought it at Walmart years and years ago...I think! Dad made the bed I have probably ten years ago, for him and Mom. They got a new one, so I got the one they had. I want to eventually put my daybed in my room, but not before we have company for Thanksgiving. :) A daybed isn't couple-friendly. :D

So, anyway! Here are the pictures! To preface, you used to be able to see the side of my bed from the hallway, if you've never been here before. Now, you see:

This is my "doorway" (over which I hope to hang a pretty quilt)

My "new" cabinet. I decorated (i.e. hid some of the uglier parts) with vintage lace...also an auction find. I LOVE auctions! (You can see a little of how terrible the staining turned out...the paint that was on it had thoroughly soaked into the grain, making sanding it out...um....impossible. So, the stain didn't soak in like it was supposed to.) Right now it's holding baskets full of my sewing stuff...mostly fabric.

Now, the far corner. My dresser, a handy organizer thing my aunt bought for me a looong time ago, my grandpa's (he said it's mine, though) classical guitar, my window with a hopefully gone-soon window unit, and part of my bed. The organizer thing had been living in Mom's room for ages now, since I didn't have anywhere to put it until now. Now it's full of my yarn. :D

Daddy even hung my fiddle-holder! I've been wanting that up for three years!

Now, the view from standing in that corner, looking at my doorway. I also have yarn stored on top of my "wall." There is my hamper...I tried putting it in the bathroom, but Mom wouldn't let me. It's green, and the bathroom's not. Apparently, that was a problem. :) Oh, and my lovely green hat on the bedpost. (I like green, if you've never noticed.)

The opposite corner: note the yarn storage. :) Also pictured, my sewing table and machine, sewing bag that holds all of my thread and all sorts of sewing related stuff. The white dresser is serving as a writing table thing for now. All of my stationary and writing stuff is there. The usual stuff you'd find on a writing table, I guess. I'm bringing my chair up from the barn (where it's parked in front of leather machine right now) and it will go in front of the sewing table or the writing table, depending on what I'm doing.

Yarn storage:

I'm liking my walls. We were going to just wait and buy some sheets to put up, but I found some fabric Mom bought years ago and it worked perfectly! Granted, it needed ironing, but we were so excied to find it, we didn't even care! Anyway, back to why I like them...you can pin stuff on them, or put magnets on either side and tack important stuff up. :) Neat!

Close-up of my organizer thing. (Good grief, Tara...what do you call it?!)

It holds just some of my insane yarn collection. The bottom two boxes are crochet thread (which I should probably get rid of...I never use it these days.) The next box is new cotton, the next is cotton that's been opened and used out of, along with some other skeins that don't fit anywhere else, and the next box is all unique, NICE yarn. Oh, and my shawl pin/stick thingy.

Close-up of my sewing table...the box of pink stuff is yarn that I'm going to sell on Ebay. Hopefully. The basket under that is some of my knitted stuff...shawls, hats, etc.

Close-up of my clean dresser. Clean meaning no stacks of paper. I know my runner thing needed ironing too. Good new is, I have two china cups, so if any of you want to stop in for a cup of coffee or hot tea, we'll have a fancy cup to drink it in. :) The blue thing is a candle, which I'll talk about later. The jewelry box used to be my aunt's, and she gave it to me when she got married, I think.

My baskets in my new cabinet. I need to get some more at yard sales or thrift stores (when I go find a quilt for my door)...

Detail of my lace cover-up on the cabinet doors...

My fiddle :)

Mine and Dave's closet is directly across from my doorway. I took a goofy picture.

Please note: the messy stuff on the top of the other wall, behind me in the picture, is NOT mine. :) We will eventually hang the curtain up higher, closer to the ceiling, once the guys build some sort of jig thing to hold it up.

I think that's it for my room. It's not big, and it's still cluttered with too much stuff. But it works for me for now. :) It's working real good. I like it.

Rylie wanted in on the picture-taking.

She found my lovely green hat. She liked it as much as I do!

And I told her to smile...

TweetiePie. :)

Oh....my candle!

Someone bought this for me a long time ago...I don't even remember who now. Anyway, it has a tea candle in the bottom, and heats up the little teapot thing on top. Well, I put a cotton ball in the teapot, soaked with essential oil, and put a little water in it to keep anything from burning or anything like that, and it smells sooo good!

Anyway, my room smells musty now, with the sheets of fabric for walls. They'd been stored for a while! So, I dabbed a cotton ball with Peru Balsam and Cinnamon oil, put it in the teapot, added a little water, and lit 'er up. :) My room is smelling better and better...

Okiedokie! I think that'll wrap this one up. Now I think you know enough about my room to be able to find just about anything in it if you need to!

Talk to y'all later!

Slop!

We've tried for years to come up with a better name for this yummy meal, but with no luck. We finally gave up...it's been Slop for years, and so it will stay!

This was originally written and posted November 7th, 2010, but I made Slop again last week and decided to repost the recipe now. I kept the pictures like they were last year (with a tiny bit of tweaking,) but I will insert other ideas and thoughts as they come to me. :) Enjoy!

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away (350 miles..wow!) there lived a man with a mother-in-law. (Weird, I know) This mother-in-law was cooking supper one evening, when the son-in-law peered over her shoulder at the pot on the stove, and said “What is that??? Looks like slop!”

Well, the mother-in-law is my grandmother, the son-in-law is my dad, and Slop is now a multi-generational favorite meal around here. Over the years it has evolved into what I’m posting today. Slop was originally a bunch of leftover stuff from the fridge, and it is now a complete recipe, sometimes still containing leftovers, in the Mexican family. Slop is a wonderful party food; it makes a lot, everyone loves it, and everyone wants the recipe. And, it’s an incredibly easy meal to throw together in a hurry! If you’ve never had slop (and I’m pretty sure you probably haven’t, unless you’ve been guests in our house!) you really need to give it a try. It’s better than it sounds…I promise!

Start off by browning 2 pounds of ground beef…

While that’s cooking, I mix up a homemade taco seasoning sort of thing…

2 teaspoons chili powder…

A teaspoon of cumin…

A teaspoon of garlic powder, and another of oregano…

Then season the meat with Tony Chachere’s (notice the lack of salt in the seasoning we mixed up…) and then the taco seasoning…

After the meat’s cooked, drain if neccessary, and return to the pan. Here’s what we’re going to put in…

A jar of salsa…I usually mix mild and medium salsas when I cook. You can adjust the amount of salsa to the desired thickness of the finished product, but start with 24 oz. You can thin it up later, if you want…

Now, we used to put a can of cheese soup in here, and then we switched to a jar of the “Lays” cheese dip, and now I started using the “Mexican Dipping Cheese” found in Walmart over by the cream cheese. It’s a block of cheese stuff, and I’d chop it up and put it in. I was a blondey here and I heated it up with milk first. Mom came in and said “why didn’t you just chop the cheese up and throw it in???” Um…yeah! What a smart idea! I ended up putting in the whole block of that cheese. (I know just cut it up in small chunks and throw it in with the meat and stuff. I get smarter as I get older, I guess.)

2 cups of cheese. This was leftover in the fridge, already grated up, and it’s a mix of regular cheddar and raw cheddar. Use whatever you like…

Now 1-2 cups of rice. This rice was also leftover, a Mexican rice that Mom had made earlier in the week. You can use white, brown, mexican…or just leave it out! It does make if go further, though! (We like to take a cup or so out any time we cook rice and put it in the freezer, just to have on hand.)

A can of refried beans…

Yes, I did have to get a spoon to get that out.

And some cilantro! This was leftover, so I don’t know how much I used. The more the better, I’d say! I’d put in a whole bunch usually. A whole bunch, like the bunch it comes in in the store… :)

2 cups of sour cream…

And that’s it! Stir it all in very carefully, if your pan is the size of mine!

Now it has to do is heat through, and it’ll be ready! Don’t worry if it’s a little thick now, because it will get thinner as it heats. This is how we serve it…use your imagination!

Some of us like it on top of tortilla chips with sour cream…

Others like everything separate, and assemble while they eat… (sour cream, jalapenos, and guacamole pictured)

Still others like their’s right out of the pan…

He’s real excited…he’s bananas.

You need to try it…Slop is really good!

Printable Recipe!

Where Am I?

So, I'm pretty sure y'all are wondering where I've been, and why I've been so very unnaturally quiet.

Or maybe you haven't been wondering that at all; rather, you've been relieved. "Yay!!! She finally SHUT UP!"

But then again, you're only here on my blog if you want to know what I've been up to and where I've been, so we'll assume, for now, that you haven't been wanting me to quit blogging so often, which is what has happened this past week or so.

Well, last week...I don't remember what happened, but I'm pretty sure there's a good reason I didn't blog. I only don't blog when there's a good reason. Maybe it was because the boys have some battle fighting computer game that they spend hours on...all three boys, so that's hours times three. True, I have my computer, but it's slow and gives me fits and I don't like to blog from it. It takes years to write a decent size post from my computer. And you can forget the pictures. Random surfing is fine sometimes, but only if you're not in a hurry. :)

So anyway, church was Sunday, and I don't usually blog on Sunday afternoon...obviously.

Yesterday and today, our house has looked like a library caught in a tornado. Seriously. (We have a gazillion books.) You'd have thought we lived in Kansas. For the past few weeks, Mom has been walking around the house with a tape measure, measuring everything with a weird, psychotic look on her face. It was scary. She wouldn't even tell us anything she was thinking about, with all that measuring. Well, finally, she broke down and told everyone her crazy plan for moving the entire...and I do mean entire...front to back...house around. At one point, when she was measuring in the living room, I asked her if I got the living room for a bedroom, but no such luck.

I'll tell you our problem. Our house in GA was bigger than this one. When we moved, we rented a stroage unit here in town and have had that for the three years we've been here. Well, now the guys have the barn weather-proofed enough to bring our stuff home to store, but there's some furniture stored that Mom didn't want to be in the barn. The problem is, we have a dining room set...china cabinet and buffet, that matches our table. The table that's been sitting in the kitchen (in the way) for the past three years. There's also a couple other small things that will need to be inside when the storage stuff comes home...hope chest, antique sewing machine, etc.

We have grand plans to build onto our house. In these plans, there's a dining room, as well as a library area, and there would be a master bed and bath in the basement, (so we'd have more than two bedrooms) along with a laundry room. Well, these plans aren't going to happen tomorrow (or in the foreseeable future) and we still need to cram all of our stuff in this small area. Sooo....enter Mom with psychotic face.

In the past two days, our large living room has been transformed into a small living room, library (with computer desk,) and dining room. The back bedroom that the boys and I share (a huge bedroom all the way across a double-wide) has been turned into two smaller bedrooms with sorta-walls. What are "sorta-walls?" Well, we have three of those wire racks that roll, that house all of Mom's soap stuff. The racks have been rolled into the center of the room, my bookshelves made another wall off of those walls, and I now have an almost-room. All of the sorta-walls are covered with fabric. I have an overly large "doorway" where I think I'll hang a quilt.

I'm sure this isn't making any sense whatsoever, so as soon as we're completely finished, I'll get pictures and post them. If you've been to our house before, it will be easier to understand what we've done...if you haven't...well, shame on you!

Oh, and since the big table is coming out of the kitchen, guess what? We get an island! I have always wanted an island in our kitchen! We figured we can have a 2'x5' or 6' island, and still have plenty of space to work, and that way we get all the storage from the cabinets in the island as well! Not to mention the storage in the china cabinet and buffet we're bringing home! I told Dad I wanted a checkerboard butcher block thing for the whole counter-top on the island, but I don't think I'll get that!
It will still be a few days before we're done moving stuff. We can't bring the big furniture home until Dad gets his truck out of the shop (should be sometime this week.) I'm not sure when they'll build the island, and there are a couple other things that have to be done...phone line has to be moved, TV will be mounted in an obscure corner, etc. That's one great thing about the new plan...the focal point isn't a TV. Right now the TV and computer are all the same, but we're mounting the TV in a corner, so it can be pulled out only when we use it (once or twice a week) and we got a smaller monitor for the computer, which will be in the library. We're doing some finagling with internet modems and LAN cords so that we can do Netflix through the TV. I guess a lot of folks go through thr game systems for the internet hooked to the TV (or so the guy at Walmart says) but we don't have any of that stuff.

Anyway, I now have more of a room that I've had in the past three years, which is a little exciting. I'd always had my own room, so moving here was a change. I'm also having to put all of my sewing stuff back in my room, instead of the living room, so there's a lot of stuff back there. I'll just have to get pictures soon!

I left candles burning and I still need to make my bed (I washed the sheets while I was moving everything) so I'd better get back there and get busy again. I have a few recipe posts ready to be posted...it's just getting the time block (when no one else is on the computer!) to post them!

See y'all later!

A Man and His Dog

So, our fridge in the house has been out, which means multiple trips to the porch fridge while one is cooking, because you always forget what you needed until you remember it.

Last night as I was cooking, this was the porch scene. Enjoy.