One of the Only Ways I Like Sweet Potatoes

If there is one thing my family can agree on, it is that no sweet food is allowed for dinner. Only dessert. Does that make sense? As in...we don't eat foods with sweet marinades, no pumpkin dinner rolls with maple sugar butter, no carrots with brown sugar, no sweet potatoes with marshmallows on them. I can't even remember ever even having marshmallows in the house growing up, for that matter.

Because of the "No sweets for dinner!" rule, I never had sweet potatoes until I met Alan. I thought I hated them, only because I didn't know of other ways to cook them. Alan told me there were other ways. I was hesitant.

I found this recipe and have adapted it along the way, and it is one of my favorites. Any time we have sweet potatoes on hand, I will usually make these. They're my favorite.

PS, although I said I don't like sweet things, this recipe does have a bit of brown sugar in it. Alan also taught me that a tiny bit of sugar in recipes will help bring out other flavors and also give a good crispness to certain things when baked...like these!

Hot Crash Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients:
2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced about 1 inch thick
1 tablespoons light brown sugar
1 tablespoon New Mexico chili powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon granulated garlic
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
Using a saucepan, use enough water to cover your potatoes, salt the water and bring to a boil. Add potatoes and set the timer for 10 minutes – time from when you put the potatoes in, not from when the water starts to boil.As the potatoes boil, mix your spices together in a small bowl.

These ended up taking about 12 minutes, though you may need to pull some out as they feel "done". You want them to be somewhat soft but not cooked through. Stick a fork in 'em...you'll know if they're done or not. Let them cool off for 10 minutes or so – they will hold together a little better for the next step.

After they cool, squish em! I use a fork and make little criss-crosses in them, like you do with peanut butter cookies. As you do it a little bit at a time, the potatoes will start squishing down more and more for you. Try not to squish 'em too much though, you want them to hold together into disks.

Drizzle each of them with a tiny bit of olive oil and then sprinkle each one with the spice mixture, pressing it lightly on the surface. Carefully turn them over and coat the other side with the oil and the spices. Roast them in the oven, set at 375º for about 15 minutes, turn them over and roasted them another 10 minutes, till they had a nice crust on both sides from the caramelization of the sugar and spices.Aren't they so pretty? Every time I make them I add/subtract other spices. The other night I made 'em with more garlic than chili powder...I recommend sticking with the original recipe. It's tried and true!

PS: Try not to make them with those crazy huge sweet potatoes that show up in the megastores around the holidays. I get mine from the local health food center, which makes a lot of difference. The ones that are more than 2 inches in diameter are hard to squish and don't caramelize as much.

Christmas is quickly approaching

I absolutely love decorating for Christmas time. For that one month of the year, my home is shiny and pink and green and teal and red and purple and lights and ornaments and wreaths and trees. Love it. Here are several Christmas decoration ideas that I love.

Random Lovelies

I am notorious for saving photos off of various websites and blogs that I read daily/stumble upon, and here are some that are have been saved to my hard drive as of late.

This is simply adorable.

Hello there, bright yellow amoire. I love you.

Simply love this lampshade.

These are some gorgeous beauties.

I love catch-all type furniture/bookcases/etc

I also really love typography.

And this chair, too.

It's Been Awhile...

Just realized that it has been THREE weeks since I posted. So sorry.
To summarize the last 3 weeks:
1) Took a vacation from work.
2) Enjoyed every minute.
3) Got lots done.
4) Painted the living room (golden yellow)
5) Painted the den (rhubarb-ish red)
6) Ran all my errands
7) Went Black Friday shopping. Only went to 2 places. Scored major.
8) Made a great rug (more to come on this later)
9) Got our plumbing fixed!!
10) Got all my much needed hemming/taking in/sewing done.

It has been an incredibly productive last three weeks. Can't wait for the next 3!

If It's Not One Thing, It's Another

I recently won a Home Depot gift card from work, which is always awesome, but it came at a fantastic time because I am close to broke! I am close to broke, but really wanting to paint the living room. I knew that we needed another 5 gallon bucket of Kilz primer, something that I use in almost every single paint job I do...and I've got a ton left on the house! So, I spent the gift card on the primer, and figured that come pay day, I could buy the actual paint color for the room.

Today, I was working on moving all the furniture and boxes (yes, we still have not finished unpacking boxes. we're terrible.) into the center of the room to lay down drop clothes while Alan was working on another project. He came through the room and noticed that trap door in the floor (where an old furnace used to be) that covers the crawl space hole was warping. He lifted it up to investigate, and low and behold... there was a lake under our house. Fantastic.

So. We investigate and find that there in no longer much pipe working as a drain for the bath tub. There's a 6 inch section of pipe just completely gone, eaten away with age. And it's been that way for awhile. Every single time we shower or bathe, our water is running under the house.

And to top that (of course!) the pipe that brings in ALL of the water into the house has sprung a pretty big leak.

Amazing Neighbor came over and told us how to fix it and gave us plenty of advice on it. Now, does Alan want to get down in the 2 foot crawl space and work in the mud on something he hasn't ever done before, or do we call a plumber to replace all the piping? The answer to that question will be worked out in time. In the mean time, we have had to shut off the water to the house. Ugh. I'll keep you advised on how we make out in this situation.

And in case you were wondering, I didn't get to prime the living room for painting. I suppose I'll get to that later.

Things I Am Loving

Things that I would like to do/make/have:Don't want the baby, just the Zzzs....

I love this couch. So much.

These are fairly easy to make with thread, glue and balloons.

We're planning on having a carpenter friend build some bookshelves into our spare bedroom. This would be so great.

Love the colorful pillows on the white couch.

I love gallery style hung pictures.

Our kitchen table needs a coat of paint. I may work chalkboard paint into it.

Again, I love gallery hung pictures.

Well, this one speaks for itself. Amazing.

I just really like the mix of casual jeans with dressy-ish cardigan.

Gallery, much?

What a great entry way.

The Dead Dads Club

My father died six years ago. Six years and four days ago, exactly. It took me a very long time to grieve his death. He had pancreatic cancer, a type that is particularly aggressive, and almost never forgiving. He was originally given 6 - 9 months to live, and ended up living 18 months. He was blessed with that extra time, as were we. I feel as though I grieved him being gone even before he was gone. I knew that some day soon, he would not be here with me any longer. I knew that he wasn't going to make it to my senior prom, my wedding, or the day that I brought home my first child. I had to deal with those thoughts even before he was gone. And in my 17 year old way, I tried.

I still believe that I preferred knowing the cancer would eventually take him away from us. It gave me time to deal with the fact that I would come home one evening and his light by his chair in the living room would not be on, and he would not be sitting in it reading or watching the Discovery channel. I knew that sometime soon, I would walk into the kitchen for a glass of water in the night, and he would no longer be there, listening to James Taylor until he grew sleepy.

And that's pretty much how it happened. Those little moments after his death, when I would walk into the kitchen at midnight expecting him to be there, brought a subtle grief with them. Did they accumulate into those stages of grief that you hear about? No. I feel as though I didn't really grieve his death until years later. Something as silly as my first breakup brought that on. I didn't even like the boy that much, but I suppose I just really wanted my dad there to console me, or beat him up, I don't know which. Either would have been nice.

I still miss him, but six years later, the missing is different. I would love to have him here working with Alan and I on the house. He knew a lot more about this stuff than we do. I recently read about Roseanne Cash's book, Composed, on a friend's blog. My friend's brother recently passed away, and she had read the book and had this to say about it. "...Most of the memoir seems to be about Johnny Cash and growing up in reaction to him. The things Rosanne chose to do or not to do mostly seem based on a desire to either get away from or get back to what her father did. I guess that’s the way it is with most of us and our parents, only most of us don’t have to do it under a spotlight.

There was one particular passage towards the end of the book that I read several times. She is talking about her reaction to the death of her father and she writes,

“You begin to realize that everyone has a tragedy, and that if he doesn’t, he will. You recognize how much is hidden behind the small courtesies and civilities of everyday existence. Deep sorrow and traces of great loss run through everyone’s lives, and yet they let others step into the elevator first, wave them ahead in a line of traffic, smile and greet their children and inquire about their lives, and never let on for a second that they, too, have lain awake at night in longing and regret, that they, too, have cried until it seemed impossible that one person could hold so many tears, that they, too keep a picture of someone locked in their heart and bring it out in quiet, solitary moments to caress and remember. Loss is the great unifier, the terrible club to which we all eventually belong.”

I feel this everyday. I think of my dad every day. Although the grieving process is done, and I dealt with it long ago, I still miss him like any daughter would. But I feel that what Roseanne Cash has written here is so true. I feel it every day.

Repainting the Kitchen

Heyo! Kitchen is all painted. AGAIN. It turned out that my super exciting plan to paint the kitchen pumpkin orange was not such a good one. The kitchen is so small, that I really hated the whole kitchen being such a bright color. I decided that having one wall orange, and painting the rest of the kitchen an off-white would be the way to go. So, I did. Yup...two months after painting the kitchen, I repainted it. But I love it now. It looks great. So...I got that going for me. Just three more rooms to paint. Ugh.

Our Family is One Larger

Last week, our family grew by one. We adopted an adorable 9 month old Lab/Redbone Coon Hound mix. He is absolutely adorable. Shelby, as we've named him, has some serious magical powers. His main power is being able to turn me into a Jewish mother. Seriously. Right now I believe he is God's gift to me. He is the smartest dog ever....and Good Lord, look at that face! Most handsome boy ever!

(Not so) Little known fact: Alan and I are crazy about animals. Shelby's addition to our family now makes it a menagerie. We now own: 1 dog, 1 cat, 2 rats, 2 guinea pigs, and we also feed and care for 2 stray cats. And did you know our home is only about 800 square feet? Shelby makes it 36 feet walking around those 800 square feet. Good thing we have a big very spacious backyard that Shelby really seems to enjoy.

I've been on the lookout for a pretend engagement ring lately. Sounds silly, right? Yea...it kind of is. But, working retail, I have strange men ask me if I'm single and wanna date...while they're busy stealing. No....really. That's the type of men coming my way. And I am more than happy with my man, and don't expect a real engagement ring anytime soon. So, I've been looking for a ring to wear while at work. Of course, I was more interested in rings that are MUCH cuter than plain, fake engagement rings. Although I really don't like rings, I think these from verameat are so adorable.

Not a ring, but a necklace...of a Hatchet Wielding Centaur Pirate, of course!
And here, we obviously have a hippopotamus shark monster eating a woman.

Hardware 'O Plenty

We've been slowly working on making shelving for the kitchen out of old palette wood, recycled and then planed down to smooth, workable wood. The shelving needs to sit on top of corbels (the pretty triangle looking things) of course, and I have not been able to find any that are my style at local hardware stores. We recently went to Oklahoma City's fantastic Architectural Antique and Dead People's Stuff Store (that's actually the real name, folks) to look for antique corbels, but found none that suited me. Anthropologie has some that are perfect. Well, perfect, besides about 3 times the price I would like to pay for them. I need 9 of them, so paying more than $10 a piece is lookin' a bit high for me. But look at these corbels...I'm planning on checking in on them occasionally and looking for sales.

They've also got some AMAZING knobs that I am seriously considering spending about 14 paychecks on. I need them. Oh... right... and these house numbers as well. Here, Anthropologie...just take my entire savings.

I Miss the Internet!!!

Before we moved into the house, we decided to wait to have the internet and cable hooked up for awhile, thinking that it would help us stay focused on getting things finished. Turns out the joke was on us. Now when we get home from work, we are simply too exhausted and we make the mistake of sitting down our very comfy couch and falling into each other. Then we get little to nothing done. Even without the distractions of television and internet, we are fairly useless in the evening. ...and my blog is suffering because of the lack on internet. But, things could be worse. We got the washing machine hooked up today, so I can finally do a load of laundry without having to drive 40 miles to my mother's house. That is seriously exciting for me! I have always liked doing laundry, and having the capability to do so without travel expenses/time added in is very nice! Everything is coming together, slowly but surely.

30 Things Before I'm 30

The last year has gone impossibly fast. And I'm sure the year to come will go just as fast as this last one has. Do you realize that it is almost September? In 2 months I will be 24. And with time going by as quickly as it has, the next 6 years will zoom by as well. So, I have started one of those Lists. Not a Bucket List, per say. Honestly, I don't even like to say "Bucket List." I don't like the way it sounds coming out of my mouth. It is a strange combination of words, in my opinion. But anyway. I have started a list. To finish before I am 30. I think that if I cap it before....say....death...I may actually do them. And do them in a timely manner. So, here it is. The list of 30 Things Before I'm 30.

1) Take a road trip on Rt. 66

2) Go to a farmer's market/flea market

3) Spend a Christmas in New Mexico

4) Visit different places of worship: Buddhist temple, muslim mosque, jewish synagogue, etc.

5) Drink nothing but water for a whole month

6) Complete “Couch to 5K”

7) Fast once a month for a year

8) Make a time capsule

9) Do an herbal detox for two weeks

10) Take a dance class

11) Get a massage

12) Learn basic sign language

13) Read at least 3 banned books a year

14) Learn all 50 states, their capitols, and where they are on a map (I used to know this!)

15) Read 10 of Time Magazine’s top 100 books

16) Watch 10 “Independent Spirit Award” best documentaries, winners or nominees

17) Watch 10 “Independent Spirit Award” best films, winners or nominees

18) Watch 10 of IMDB’s top 250 movies

19) Acquire 10 of my childhood favorite movies

20) Hit the road and travel wherever it takes me for a weekend

21) Treat myself to a weekend at a B&B

22) Write a cookbook of my favorite recipes

23) Create and use a master grocery list

24) Have a candlelit dinner

25) Make a completed family tree

26) For every item I complete, put 100 dollars into savings

27) Put up a clothesline

28) Make my own organic cleaning supplies

29) Get a henna tattoo

30) Ride in a hot air balloon

The First Step is Admitting I Have a Problem

So, I have a confession to make. I am addicted to painting furniture. It's not incredibly serious, but I know that I need to take action over this, before it overcomes me. I don't know what it is, but if I don't like the finish of wood furniture, I am instantly thinking about what color I could be painting it. It's usually dressers and chairs, mostly. This isn't always such a problem to have painted furniture...but what if one day all I have is a house entirely made up of box of crayon-colored furniture and all I want is dark wood? I know that I am way too lazy to strip and sand off the paint in all the little crevices and get it back to bare wood. I don't have the "get up and go" enough to do that. So... I will simply try to curb my addiction to painting furniture and lust after these be.a.u.tiful pieces.