Saturday, March 30, 2013

Decorating Easter Eggs

I know that I promised a full house tour on Wednesday, but our family is in town for Easter, and we are delightfully distracted. It will have to wait for next weekend. Tomorrow will be our 3rd year hosting Easter and we are really excited to plan and prepare another Easter menu for our family and friends. Check out last year's here and the menu here.

To hold you over till the big Easter post, I will share with you the eggs we dyed last night. I found the idea through Apartment Therapy which led me here. And they turned out like this:


Then I let Christian help and they turned out like this:


Can you guess which ones are mine and which ones are his? For the first time in a quarter century of dying Easter eggs, I read the instructions on the back of the dye. They suggested vinegar for ultra vibrant colors, lemon juice for vibrant colors, and water for pastels. It worked great! I had never used anything other than water before and was always soaking them for forever to get the colors I wanted. Happy Easter!

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Spring Breeze

The list is mostly complete (as good as it's going to get) and the house looks and feels like Spring. Tomorrow we're going to post a full house update in picture. We haven't done this in a year so and much has changed around here.

My grandma stitched these spring-y pillow cases for us and the quilt was made by my great grandma

Here's how the list looks now:

Spring clean

All over
Dust shelves, blinds, vents, moldings, light fixtures -- anything that collects dust and you usually ignore.
clean window treatments (including your shower curtain)
Wash windows

Living room
Clean out cabinet
clean behind couch
Vacuum cushions


Bedroom
Organize drawers
Dust chandelier
Burnt out bulbs 
Flip mattress
Change winter bedding to spring
Change clothes from warm to cool and pack away seasonal clothes
Donate/sell unwanted clothes 

Dining room
Check smoke detector batteries
Vacuum rug

Kitchen
Clean out fridge
Clean behind fridge

Organize paperwork: alphabetize and eliminate
Spray paint file cabinet Monday


Bathroom
Clean out chest
Clean out medicine cabinet and makeup bag

Laundry room
Vacuum 

Outside
Compost
Buy herbs
Plant herbs 



File Cabinet Redo


I wish I could say I got this cabinet somewhere cool, like the side of the road, but it's from Sam's Club and it's been an eyesore since the day we got it. I've had dreams of painting it for a year and a half now, and they have finally come to fruition this spring break. Check out the process and the finish product:

Before: Blah, boring!


Saw the use of foil on Real Simple, would have rather used painter's tape all over





Love the subtlety of the result:

 

And one last view, in it's natural habitat:


Spring Clean Day 2

My spring clean for the body ended on Sunday night like this:

Kale + quinoa, avocado, and turkey burger
Better luck next season! It wasn't a bad cleanse, I really wasn't hungry, I just had a raging headache by 7pm and couldn't stomach spending 3 days of my spring break feeling that way. So, I gladly caved (there's even a Coke Zero off camera) and moved on to the bigger and better elements of spring cleaning: the house!

Here's the big, bold list I made on Sunday. I crossed off the items we have taken care of so far:

Spring clean

All over
Dust shelves, blinds, vents, moldings, light fixtures -- anything that collects dust and you usually ignore.
clean window treatments (including your shower curtain)
Wash windows

Living room
Clean out cabinet
Broken drop ceiling tile
clean behind couch
Vacuum cushions

Bedroom
Organize drawers
Dust chandelier
Burnt out bulbs 
Broken drop ceiling tile
Flip mattress
Change winter bedding to spring
Change clothes from warm to cool and pack away seasonal clothes
Donate/sell unwanted clothes 

Dining room
Paint chairs I've given up on this idea for now
Broken drop ceiling tiles
Check smoke detector batteries
Vacuum rug
Kitchen
Clean out fridge
Clean behind fridge
Fix broken drawer given up on this as well 
Organize paperwork: alphabetize and eliminate
Spray paint file cabinet Monday


Bathroom
Clean out chest
Clean out medicine cabinet and makeup bag

Laundry room
Vacuum
Spray paint lamp not happening  

Outside
Compost
Buy herbs
Plant herbs 

As you can see, we've made some good head way. I saved all the cleaning, cleaning for today. And by Wednesday when the family gets here for Easter, we'll be breathing easy in a super clean, and organized house! We took our clothes to Buffalo Exchange and traded them for store credit. They didn't take much, but we got $50 to spend in the store! The rest we took to Goodwill. Here are some pics of what's been going on so far:

sweaters ready to be stored for summer
Clothes to be traded and donated
Buffalo Exchange loot,  C also got a pair of jeans for $11!
Finally rehung this mirror, which fell off the wall during Isaac


This year we're going small with the garden, since every other year has been a fail in our low light back yard, check out last year's here. We planted basil, cilantro, parsley, and oregano. The big plant is a schefflera that I rooted from my own plant, which was rooted from my mom's, which was at my grandpa's funeral in 1990. Rooting for these plants is simple and involves cutting off a branch and putting it in water. The new addition is for Cynthia (hopefully we can keep this a secret until Sunday). 






Sunday, March 24, 2013

Spring Cleaning

Sorry it has been so long! Our desktop computer crashed :( this is where we do all our blogging and photo editing, so it is a major bummer. We are taking it to the Genius Bar tomorrow; hopefully it is not fatal. We have a few posts that were ready to go, but are on that computer, so stay tuned for those. For now, let's talk about Spring Cleaning. This is my favorite cleansing season and since Spring Break started on Friday, I have much planned in regards to cleaning, organizing, and purging.

First up, spring cleaning for the body. I found a 3 day smoothy cleanse by Dr. Oz. I'm in the middle of Day 1 right now, and so far so good. What I like about this cleanse is I'm not hungry, and it wasn't too expensive. What I don't like about this cleanse, is that I would rather be eating a cheeseburger. If you find a cheeseburger cleanse, please let me know.

Here are some of the ingredients:


And here's the plan:


Using this list from apartment therapy and some ideas from the nest's list of 100 Days of Organizing I plan to spend the next two days getting everything back to neutral. During my spring clean frenzy the goal is to eliminate as much clutter as possible. And not just the clutter that has accumulated in the last 3 months, but all the visual clutter that is better suited to winter: meaning during the spring and summer I prefer for there to be less out. Less books, less vases, less trinkets. Hopefully I will have time left over to paint a table, or two.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

On a Boat


Our friends Joe & Ava got hitched this past weekend. The service was an intimate family affair at the French Quarter Wedding Chapel. We joined them afterwards at the reception; a private dinner cruise on the Natchez Riverboat. Then off to Bourbon Street with the wedding party for cocktails and brass. It was great to be able to share this amazing evening with the newly weds, their family, and friends. Congratulations Joe & Ava!

The Natchez in the Nati
bride & groom


La on Deck
La in the Engine Room

fried chicken
Brassoholics @ the Royal Sonesta
Bourbon St.
unicorn approved nuptials



Monday, March 4, 2013

From the Real Pile

Had a great weekend but...
After a weekend of hanging out...

and wild midnight rumpuses...

it's hard to get out of the real pile.

No need to roar terrible roars, gnash terrible teeth, or roll terrible eyes for highlights of the weekend are just around the bend.

 Maurice Sendak illustrations from google image.


Saturday, March 2, 2013

A Week in Meals: Feb 25-28

This week I had every intention of cooking 3 vegan meals (I'm trying to get us to be vegetarians at least three nights a week for health, environmental, and cost concerns). Unfortunately, we added chicken to our chopped chicken salad (so good!) and turned our tofu lettuce wraps into steak salad. We did have one vegan meal, the minestrone soup with quinoa pasta. However, if there had been Parmesan in our fridge it would have been perfect! Better luck next week; vegan meals planned are: a veggie loaf, mushroom stroganoff, and apple bean bake. Here's what the Hardy's had this week:


The last time we were in Mobile, Cynthia made this amazing dressing that was like a salad in itself. She makes it from memory from a cook book called The Well Fed Bridegroom, which she purchased at a cooking demo in New Orleans and later lost in a fire. I recreated this twice this week and would recommend you do the same. Here's a pic, followed by the recipe:


Recipe:
Olive oil or canola oil (I used half and half) 
2 garlic cloves smashed, infuse the oil while you get the rest of the ingredients ready
chop and add however much of the rest you see fit:
green onion
shallot
fresh or dried thyme
fresh or dried parsley 
chopped olives (one night I used kalamata, one night I used green, both were good)
scoop of sweet pickle relish
splash of pickle juice
splash of sweet relish juice
capers
cracked pepper
squeeze of lemon
pinch of powdered sugar 
red wine vinegar (we just poured some wine straight from the bottle)

Friday night: Sushi picnic in bed 



Saturday morning breakfast: coffee and beignets  

I think Christian's are better than Cafe du Monde