Random Abandon

I am just hopping into this post with random abandon. It seems to be the theme of my life at the moment. With the flooring project that seems to keep growing I am doing my best to keep up with it all :) 

This is the dill I picked the other day and am trying a freezer method of preserving it. I tend to have a little trouble with freezer burn. My in-laws suggested "vacuum sealing" my freezer bags by using a straw to suck out the air. This is my first attempt at this as well. 

Remember the pizza party last week? We cut up a bunch of veggies and let guests make "decorate" their own pizzas. There were a couple of cups leftover veggies that didn't get used in the pizza...including all of the mushrooms (a complete mystery to me). In my effort to clean out the fridge, I came up with a couple of delicious meals to use up the leftovers.

I even had a little bit of the dough left. I ended up making the best pizza of the bunch (in my opinion). I rolled out the dough and brushed it with garlic infused olive oil that I had made for the salad-topped pizza. Then I covered it with fresh spinach and a bunch of the leftover peppers, onions and mushrooms. Sprinkled it with mozzarella cheese and baked it. I loved it! Seriously, I want to eat it every day.  My husband, on the other hand, would never eat it due to "fungus infestation."

My pizza didn't use up all the chopped veggies, so I made an egg scramble for breakfast the next day. I sauteed the veggies and then tossed in a couple of eggs. It, too, was delicious. Now I am thinking I need to prep "leftover veggies" to keep on hand at all times.

I think our Millie pup has been a bit out of sorts with our demolition phase of our flooring project. However, I did catch a contented moment on the couch the other day. She sits like this all the time and is starting to make a permanent indention on the arm of the couch. I can't seem to make her stop because she looks so cute :)

We have some wild-ish daylilies next to our driveway. It is a small bed that my husband keeps trimmed and under control. However, my I think my neighbor is hinting that we should cut them down because they are wild. I don't think that is going to happen.

My hydrangea is in full bloom. For some reason it doesn't make the big puffy heads of flowers, but I still love it. My husband gave it to me for my first birthday that we were together. It has since been dubbed the "relationship bush" - kinda like the "love fern" in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.

Clearly our relationship is in good shape :)  Well, it might be a little out of control, but I am afraid to trim it for fear it won't bloom.

What's new in the garden?  Second crop of lettuce (planted a couple weeks after the first) is doing well. I kinda love how the lettuce leaves are all standing at attention in this picture.

My eggplant is blooming. I can't wait to see a baby eggplant emerge. I still haven't decided how I am going to prepare it and forever change my mind about my current dislike of eggplant.

The tomatillos are just makin' babies like mad. I am going to have to find a way to preserve my salsa verde this year.

My first squash didn't make it. I am hopeful this one will continue to grow and be delicious. There are several more babies growing. I think you are supposed to pinch a few, but I just can't make myself do it.

The most exciting garden news is the ripening of 4 glorious Sun Gold tomatoes. I can't wait to share them with my husband tonight.. To keep it real, I didn't pull out the grass growing up in the middle of my plant before taking the picture. Weeding is not my favorite part of gardening.

We had borrowed my in-laws shop vac and when my father-in-law needed it back he brought this lovely new machine over :)  My one concern is that when he brought it over he said "happy birthday". Since, my birthday is closest, did he mean me? Did I really just get a shop vac for my birthday?!!??

I don't even know what to say about this. Just put my husband and niece together and this is the sort of stuff that happens and gets recorded.

So there is a random tour of my current life... Have a great weekend, everyone :)

Flooring on the Roof?

When we went to bed Sunday night we were feeling great about our progress. Floor stripped down to concrete, leak repaired...project was ooking good. 

Then Monday morning, I noticed this situation on the floor at the base of the wall under the previous leak. Definitely more water.

We knew it wasn't condensation from the a/c because my husband had done a great job completely insulating it on Sunday. 

Back up to the attic to look for a leak. It had rained about 3 inches last night so we figured there had to be a hole where the rain was getting into the house. While examining the various pipes/exhaust lines that go out the roof we found one with a bit of daylight peaking in on one side of the pipe.

And that is how our flooring project moved to the roof. 

My husband got busy with the caulking gun and Through the Roof sealant.

 I don't think any more rain is coming through there!

Obviously, we were disappointed that our first fix wasn't a fix. However, we were extremely thankful we got that heavy rain, so we could find and repair the actual problem before laying the new floor. 

We cut carpet in sections that are hopefully small enough for the trash man to take away. All the rolls have to be tied closed. After I tied this one that barely held the roll tight, my personal Eagle Scout/husband took me through a crash course in Knots 101. 

 Apparently, what I tied was not a square knot. Getting the hang of square knot was a little awkward.
 And here is success!

I am determined to not let this project totally undermine my weight loss efforts. I don't have enough energy for all the manual labor and intentional exercise. So for now, I am going to have to let the labor be my exercise and concentrate on my eating. It has been hot and my body has been craving lighter summery foods, like grilled meats, fruits and vegetables. Friday night I made this delicious dinner - nutritionally prepping ourselves for a long weekend.  

Lemon Basil Pork Chops  We really liked this recipe. I thought the flavor from the marinade would be bolder (more lemony) I actually liked that it was a little milder and really enhanced the pork. I had pork steak on hand so I used that instead of chops. I am determined to clean out our fridge and freezer. I think the marinade would be good on chicken too. 

I served the pork with my old grilling standby - asparagus and corn on the cob.

I was super excited to find this recipe for a pineapple/carrot smoothie. I was especially intrigued by the use of carrots. I made it for breakfast Saturday morning to get me off to a healthy start. The ingredients looked delicious.

And so did the finished product. Sadly, the flavor didn't quite live up to the hype in my mind. I am not sure if it was an ingredient quality issue  The pineapple might have been a tad overripe. I love the idea of using carrots and I am planning to incorporate them into future smoothies. I am sure I will be tweaking this recipe and trying again. I can't get those ingredients and the gorgeous color out of my head.

Full disclosure we did go out to dinner last night at my suggestion. We went to our favorite Mexican place. I ordered a very reasonable meal without all the extras, so I feel okay about that. Every reno budget has to include a line item for eating out, right? 

We won't be doing much on our project the next couple of days. My husband has some long work days. This morning he got up at 3 a.m. to take a group to the airport before his work day of cleaning buses started at 6:30 a.m. Tomorrow he is taking my sister's family to the airport about the same time.

Our next order of business is to get our flooring picked out. We had anticipated spending much more time tearing out the old floor so we weren't in a rush to buy the new flooring. We are hoping to paint next weekend, but of course, I can't choose paint until I know what the floor looks like. Decisions...decisions...

Are We Really Doing This Again?

It is that time again. Time for another big DIY project. A couple of years ago we completely redid our bathroom

We started with this......

And ended up with this. My husband did all that tile work himself - it looks just as good close up!

It might have taken us a couple of years to recover, but we are ready to try another big one. We will be replacing 750 square feet of funky old carpet with wood laminate flooring. Saturday morning bright and early we made the first cut into the carpet.

I was so nervous about what we would find. Our house is built on a concrete slab. When we redid the bathroom floor my husband had to chisel off a thin sheet of plywood that was secured to the concrete. I was dreading the weeks of work it would take to do that throughout the whole house.  I was super excited to see these wood tiles pop right out. They reminded me of a slide puzzle.

There was a moment of panic when I saw this black funk. Mold??? Thankfully, it turned out to be the adhesive while had deteriorated.

Oringinally, we planned to do the whole house at one time. However, by the time we had moved and removed furniture in the living/dining room a bajillion times, we decided we would tackle the bedrooms after the floor is finished in the living/dining room. Then we will move everything from the bedrooms to the living room one time.

I spent several hours with the shop vac. After we took out the parquet flooring there were piles of dirt and black dust.

By the end of the first day all of this funk was out of the house. No matter how clean you think your house is when you get the carpet outside you realize it is so dirty and smelly. I am thrilled to have it gone!!

The second day I tackled the entry way - don't be jealous of our green door with the red trim. All the trim will be replace too :)  I was nervous this linoleum would be like the bathroom, but it was on top of parquet and rolled right up :)

At some point, someone built a wall to separate part of the living room into a little office (currently the command center). We discovered they built the wall right on top of the carpet and parquet. Now we have to leave that little bit under the wall or there would be about 3/4 of an each gap under the wall. There was some pretty labor intensive of trimming next to the wall.

I will be honest. I was pretty worn out by Sunday and might have gotten a bit grouchy at times. I definitely needed a little sanity break. I decided to turn one of our carpet rolls into an homage to the PDX carpet guy. You can see Pee Dee a mascot of sorts made from the old Portland airport carpet on Running to Get Waisted's blog. Apparently many Portlanders were quite attached to that carpet. I think at this point Millie is a little embarrassed to be my dog :)  But it was a good diversion and helped me get back in the groove for a whole lot more work! For the record we are not keeping a single scrap of that funky carpet!

We had a small leak in the hallway that also needed to be repaired. First, my husband insulated the duct work above the leak area. It seemed that condensation from the a/c was leaking into the ceiling/wall.

 My husband did a nice job of repairing it. This is the first coat of tape and mud waiting to be sanded and remudded.

Sunday night our living room had this lovely concrete floor. We had watched several YouTube videos about preparing a concrete slab for wood laminate floor installation. I was terrified we would have fill miles of cracks and do serious leveling. Turns out the concrete is in great shape. We have just a few issues to address.

We were officially exhausted. It has been a grueling weekend. I am very proud of how much we got accomplished.

What does all this have to do with weight loss and fitness?  

When you are that busy you don't have time for snacking. It would also be a major operation to clean up enough to grab snacks. We were filthy. 

It has been a two day long workout. Moving furniture. Pulling up flooring, Carrying everything outside. More furniture moving. Vacuuming. Bending. Crawling.  We did it all. 

However, with the house in such turmoil it was easy to grab food one our many trips to Home Depot or the hardware store. Thankfully, all the exercise and minimal snacking helped me to a .2 pound loss.

I am determined to do what I can to keep this project from giving me a licence to eat terribly. More about that tomorrow....

MIL Birthday Party

We had a little birthday party for my mother-in-law last night.  I decided to have a pizza party. My husband is a traditional pizza kind of guy, but I like to test out other kinds. Mary at Runs to Get Waisted recently posted the most delicious looking pizza with greens on top. She used arugula and spinach. My version was a three cheese pizza (fresh mozzarella, fontina and parmesan) topped with lettuce and spinach lightly dressed with a balsamic vinaigrette. I almost didn't post this picture because the lighting is terrible and it definitely doesn't show the pizza to advantage. Please just trust me - delicious. Even my FIL liked it :)

I also made a BBQ chicken pizza with fresh pineapple, bacon, red onion, jalapenos and topped with fresh cilantro. So good!

We also made a variety of other more traditional pizzas. So there truly was something for everyone.  Of course, every birthday needs a cake. My MIL loved this lemony goodness. The recipe said to poke holes in the top before glazing. I could never get the holes to fill up so this is my holey cake.

After dinner we played a couple rounds of one of our favorite party games - Telestrations. The first person sketches a word or phrase, the next person writes down what they think the picture is, the next person draws that guess, and so on. It is fun to see how well people can keep it going....or not.

Some of my favorites from last night:

Sea Witch

  Skiing on the pyramids

My husband likes to interject a little crazy into the game. He swears he is just guessing what he thinks the person before him drew. I don't remember what the picture really was, but this was his "guess".

Really?  Do you really think that is what the original game card would have said to draw??  Then my poor niece, who always ends up sitting next to him, has to draw whatever crazy thing my husband writes down.

Love the expression on the poor fish! I will admit he does spice up the game :)  It is also fun to see our various levels of drawing skill in action. For the record, none of these elephants were drawn by me. No names - I must protect the innocent and guilty :)

Today when I came home from work my poor garden was wilting. Even though it rained early this morning today's sun was brutal on the garden. I grabbed the hose and soaked everything!

While I was watering I discovered the first green bean of the season. I didn't even realize they were blooming. Beans can be pretty sneaky.  I hope I didn't ruin them. You aren't supposed to touch the plants when wet - it spreads disease. I had already watered them when I saw the bean.

My friend posted a picture of her dill yesterday. She has a ton of it. She cuts it, rinses it and lets it dry overnight. Then she cuts off the big stems and freezes it. When she needs dill she takes a piece out of the freezer and snips it just like fresh dill. This is my first time trying the technique. Stay tuned for my review.

Sorry, I forgot to post this yesterday. We got engrossed in starting out flooring project. Stay tune as the project unfolds.