Pictures lately

Forgot to upload my pictures recently

Goodbye Chair that now smells like lemon

We decided.  The chair and ottoman did not make the cut.  They're posted back on Craigslist now.  The chair was pretty comfy, but the color severely clashed in our bedroom, the shape looked odd in our living room, and Doogan would have destroyed it had we put it in the other guest room (where he sleeps).  For some reason this particular chair (maybe it had hidden smells?) inspired jumping and gnawing which our other furniture doesn't.  I will miss his very cute game of hiding under the chair and sticking his paw out to make the fabric flaps flap.  If you walked by, his little paw would dart out and tag you too.  Very cute.

*UPDATE* - the chair sold in one day.  And we made $5 extra.

Craigslist, Friend or Foe?

I've posted before about Craigslist and how it's usually extreme hit or extreme miss with me. I've gotten some great things off it, like our awesome master bedroom furniture and the comfy queen mattress we got for the guest room. Then I've kinda had some "misses" where I made the effort to go get stuff (or I sent Blake to go get it) and then once I get there the item is not quite what I imagined but I feel so obligated to buy it I end up taking it home anyway. That happened with our 5 drawer file cabinet that was outrageously heavy, and a tiny end table that was cute - just only a portion of the size I thought it was going to be. The items though were close enough to what I was wanting, so I said what the heck.

That kind of happened yesterday to me again. Blake and I have been searching for some more seating for our living room--a chair with an ottoman. We also would like to create a little "reading nook" for me in our bedroom with a cozy chair and lamp and small end table. I had pictured getting some sort of wingback chair or small recliner. So when a cute, butter-tan colored chair and ottoman set showed up on Craigslist I jumped at it! $25? Why not? It might work in the living room or bedroom!

So we get to the guy's house after work and he's a cute older man. On the phone he told me the chair was in great condition but needed some cleaning. We get there, and even in the dim lighting of his house, I could tell the chair and ottoman were very very dirty. He explained that that was his grandson's chair to eat in. I looked at Blake, he shrugged (he never offers any opinion during Craigslist runs), so I figure what the heck-- for $25 I'll see if we can clean it up.

Blake grabs the chair (which is very light) and I grab the ottoman; 3 of the 4 casters fall out of the ottoman and the man says, oh I'll grab those for you...and walks out with us. I start to feel the second or third inklings of "Uh Oh". We get the set out in the sunlight and the man waves goodbye and Blake and I are left staring at the grungy, stained furniture that I just handed over $25 for. Blake still doesn't say anything and I'm starting to sweat. "Oh well," I say optimistically, "if we can't get the stains out, we can just resell it." Blake replies, "Mmm hmm."

So we get the set home and we set it up in our living room. We both silently kind of eye it. It's really dirty. Doogan, our kitten, sees the new scenery and approaches cautiously. He takes a whiff, and contemplates. I comment that I'll just get some cleaner on my lunch break the next day but Blake insists he has to know NOW if it will clean up. So, we get back in the car, leave the beguiling butter-tan chair and rinky-dink ottoman that had called my name so alluringly before, and drive to Walmart to get some upholstery cleaner.

$3 later, with a can of "Tuff Stuff" in our hands, and a brush, and a stack of white kitchen towels, we attack the chair. After 2 hours, our spirits are conflicted. It seems to be looking a lot better, but we can't objectively tell if it is clean enough to keep. I don't really have a definite end to this story yet. I think we'll do another round of cleaning tonight. I don't know if it is "Living Room-worthy" but, it would definitely be bedroom worthy for now until we find something better! Here are the pictures of the set the seller posted. See, you can't tell in the pictures how dirty it was. I'll try to get some shots of it clean tonight. If anything, the shape of the chair is nice.

Red Meat Marinade

I came across an interesting red meat marinade. I used it on boneless ribs. But you could use it on any red meat I would bet. I wanted to cook this quickly, so instead of plopping the ribs in the crockpot, dousing with the marinade, and cooking on low for 6-8 hours, I tried it in the oven. The ribs had a lot of gristle in them so they could have been better, but they didn't dry out. They tasted good for what they were!

Marinade:
1 can tomato soup
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp chili powder (or more if you like it more spicy)
(you can half this recipe if you're only cooking a small amount of meat)

To cook ribs or steak in the oven:
-Pull out baking pan, about the size of the meat you want to make
-fill about 1/4 inch with water (to help keep the meat moist while baking)
-take out some foil and put thawed meat on it
-carefully pour marinade over the meat so it won't leak out of the foil (you can opt to set aside some extra marinade to pour over ribs when they're done)
-place foil in pan with water
-make a sort of "tent" with the foil, do not crush foil on top of meat and do not seal the tent foil. Just lightly pinch seams together so the steam will stay inside the tent but has an avenue of escape so the foil won't burst while baking-bake at 325 for one hour
-open foil tent and cook at 375 for another 20 minutes

I cut the ribs up in bite sized pieces and served over steamed rice. It was pretty decent. I thought the marinade was the best part!

In other news, absolutely nothing has been going on this week :) And I'm enjoying the down time. Scheduling of concerts has been picking up so that is always good. We have a trip planned this weekend so I'll try to get some pictures. I try to think of our concert trips as mini-vacations. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't :) This time of year is always hard on me because the last national holiday was January 1st...and then the next one is Memorial Day on May 31st--and there are no scheduled holidays in between at work. It just makes for a very tiresome stretch. I have to carefully budget each of my vacation days to make them last all year since we travel so much for concerts but I may be able to take one just to get me through May. And, this week 2 people at my work were let go because of budget cuts so everyone is on edge and concerned. I'm very sad to see them leave, they're my age and fun to be around. We are down to a pretty small office staff of about 12 now.

Gotta get some work done now...

Procrastinating

I'm procrastinating starting to book today, and that is why I'm posting another blog. Once I post it, I'll get to work. Really I will.

1. Meal Plan until Payday. We've had a lot of company lately - which has been awesome!! - but also has stretched my grocery budget. That, but mostly the fact that I bought a bunch of groceries I didn't plan what to do with, and now they're eaten, but no real meals are made (you know how it goes).
Tuesday - Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup (again)
Wednesday - marinated boneless ribs (found them in my freezer)
Thursday - pork chops. THESE pork chops!!!
Friday - Payday!! But I'll probably still just make breakfast for dinner or something.
Sat-Sun - Concerts in Arkansas!!
Monday - going grocery shopping!

2. My favorite things lately:
-Phil Wickham (Christian Singer, www.philwickham.com)
-Hot Chocolate (Land O Lakes brand, any flavor!)
-COFFEE (8 o'Clock brand, Columbian flavor)
-my kitties
-sitting outside with my kitties
-looking at all the pretty flowers at the street stands
-imagining how to decorate our house
-grilling chicken on our charcoal grill! (Blake does it, I just eat it)-Watching "21 Jump Street" old episodes-Book club! I look forward to it so much every time. We're reading this book next:
-my pastor and his wife

-Blake!

Follow up about Crockpot Cake

So the decimated remains of my crockpot cake are not the end of my story last night. Oh no. Since the cake cooked about 2 hours faster than I anticipated, I had to figure out how to keep it semi-warm and moist until our friends came over for dinner. I put it in a plastic cake display thing, shaped like a dome. Similar to this but plastic and not airtight:So I put the cake crumbs into that and figured, well, the oven should be an airtight option, so I put the cake dome inside the oven and assured myself I'd remember to take it out before I started preheating the oven for the sweet potato fries I was going to make....



15 minutes later at 425 degrees, I remember because of the melting plastic smell pervading my house. And now here is what my cake dome looks like:

The top and bottom pieces-

The bottom piece-

The top dome part-

Oddly enough, the cake wasn't ruined at all and went nicely with the ice cream our guests brought. :) But now I need another cake dome thing. Lesson learned.

Cake in the Crockpot

Okay, twice now I've tried cake in the crockpot due to exuberant reviews from Crockpot Lady. Now, I'm not knocking the taste, but presentation is slightly lacking:

I will say, however, the recipe (Peanut Butter Cup Cake) was yummy and technically did totally work in the crockpot. I just can never get the cake out without demolishing it. So from now on I'm just going to do cakes in the oven like normal people.

*Follow up* Post dinner reviews: Our guests raved that this cake was the most MOIST cake they'd ever eaten :) I do attribute that to making it in the crockpot.