Lemon Blueberry Pound Cake

• I  always excited to find a recipe that I really enjoy. Especially when it is easy to throw together. I came across this recipe on chef-in-training.com and had to try it.
• I love everything lemon, and I usually prefer desserts that aren't too sweet. 

 This had great flavor and texture and, in my opinion, was just sweet enough :). 

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• Ingredients:
• 1 cup butter at room temperature 
• 1¾ cups sugar
• zest of one lemon
• 3 eggs
• ½ teaspoon vanilla. 
• ¾ cup buttermilk
• 2 cups fresh blueberries
• 2½ cups flour
• 2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt

Lemon Glaze  

• 1½ cup powdered sugar
• 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 Tablespoon lemon zest
• 1 Tablespoon milk
• ¼ teaspoon vanilla

Directions: 

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. In the bowl of a standing mixer, mix butter, sugar, and lemon zest together for 3 to 5 minutes until creamy. 
3. Add eggs one at a time and beat an addition minute after each egg. Add vanilla. 
4. In a separate large bowl, wisk together dry ingredients. 
5. Add flour mixture alternatively with the buttermilk to the wet ingredients.
6. Lightly flour blueberries to keep them from sinking in your bread pan. Fold them into the batter. 
7. Grease and flour large bread pan
8. Pour in batter.  (I filled one bread pan 3/4 of the way, and had some batter left over, so I made 4 muffins. 
9. Bake at 350 degrees F for 55 to 60 min. I baked the muffins for 15 min. 
10. Let loaf cool and drizzle with glaze.    I actually decided not to glaze the muffins, so I could eat them for breakfast without feeling like I was having dessert. Ha. 

Lemon Glaze

1. Whisk glaze ingredients together until smooth.

I will definitely be making this again soon. It is a perfect spring/summer treat. :)

Here is the link to the original recipe 

http://www.chef-in-training.com/2014/05/lemon-blueberry-pound-cake/  

Painting the House

Due to some unforeseeable timing issues, all of our painting plans had to be expedited a bit, in order to get everything done in time to move into our house at the end of this month. 

This was the week for the brick masons to start taking down and rebuilding the fireplace, the week that Simon and our contractor would be putting up a beam in the kitchen, and now, the week for painting the house.  

Needless to say, we have a lot going on.

Thankfully, we also have a lot of really spectacular friends.

Because of the age of the house, and the style differences between us and the previous residents, we made the decision to paint the entire house from ceiling to baseboard.  I  think it will have the most powerful effect on making the house look fresh, and feel like our own. 

Up until now, we have done a lot of demolition, cleaning, scraping, and undoing yucky things from the past owners. But now is the chance to finally pull something back in order. Only working in the house on the weekends has really made it easy to not get burnt out on the renovations.

It also means, however, that the pace seems slow. 

Every week we go back and it seems as though the messy house we have taken apart is still the same messy house we started with.   Despite all of the work that we put in, despite all of the money we have spent on materials and tools, it just seems like it's in a constant state of disarray. Painting seems to be the first step to completing a project. Of course, all of the demolition and undoing is for a good cause, and in the end will come together for a great effect. But we are in the phase right now of plastic draped floors, no light fixtures, and messy everything. 

While I have been incredibly excited about finally getting some paint up on the walls, picking out paint for every room in the house, when you've never had a house of your own to paint, can be a little overwhelming.  I made a lot of friends at Home Depot while talking myself through most of the color choices.  But, after lots of Pinterest browsing for paint colors that I liked and an embarrassingly long time in various hardware stores, the paint was decided upon, the supplies was purchased, and painting weekend was begun.

What I thought would be a day of hard work with various helpers in and out over the course of the day, turned out to be a lot of hard work and a rockstar group of friends who stayed an entire Saturday getting dusty and painty to get our house in order. Seriously, between prepping the ceilings and walls, taping off where we needed to, painting the ceilings, and painting the walls (not to mention trim work) I cannot even imagine where we would be if we had done it just the two of us.  Instead though, we got an incredible amount of work done and the house is really starting to take shape! I am so thankful for wonderful friends willing to sacrifice their weekend to put in some hard work with us. They have been a huge blessing through this whole process and I don't know where we would be without them. 

Sanding Ceilings

As if taking down the popcorn treatment wasn't enough ceiling fun, we have now moved on to sanding.  Although taking down the textured popcorn finish was an aesthetic choice, the sanding step is not; In order to paint the ceiling after taking down all of the popcorn, sanding is necessary.  

For one, there is popcorn residue (ew).

  But also, removing the ceiling texture treatment reveals all of the imperfections on the ceiling.  You are, probably, able to see where the main support beams are, where old light fixtures may have been, etc.   Because the texturing of the ceiling hid all of that, there was no real reason for the ceiling to be perfectly smooth or uniform before.  

 Our home had a lot of random things, like hooks screwed into ceilings, or areas where the joint tape was showing through.  Of course we wanted to fill in those holes with spackle, along with the little gouges that were made during the removal process, so we had to sand those areas afterwards anyways.  Overall, the sanding allows the painting process to go a lot smoother and allow the final result to look cleaner.  

It is much easier than taking down the popcorn.

It is much messier than taking down the popcorn.

Supplies:

- a roll of fine grain sand paper

-sanding sponges

- 2 extension poles

-2 ceiling sander attachments

-goggles that seal around your eyes

-face mask or respirator

-Spackling ( we like the kind that starts pink and dries white)

-putty knife

Before we did anything to the ceilings we had laid plastic film over all of the floors.  The popcorn was so messy that we had to take up all of the film to dispose of the popcorn.   So before we could begin the sanding we had to lay plastic down again.  This will be the same plastic we keep on the floors during all of the painting, so the plan is not to have to do this step again.  It is so time consuming!

Our friends Patrick, Diana, and Michael came over last Saturday and helped us lay the plastic, spackle the ceiling, and begin the sanding.  It was a huge help and most definitely a time saver.

The guys were tackling a project in the other room, so Diana and I were left to sand, after all the spackling had dried.

We donned all our safety gear which, in this case, is more for self preservation and stamina than protection from any actual hazards.

  There is so much dust that you would only be able to stand it a few minutes without any face protection on.   Diana and I both felt like we had plaster in our mouths after only a bit of sanding, even with the masks.  Messy stuff y'all. 

I found the whole process easiest if I stood on a step stool and used the extension pole - it gave me a good angle.  No matter the method, ceiling work is a killer on your shoulders, so being able to smoothly  sand back and forth without getting stuck is really a must.  Being 5'2", trying to use the pole while standing on the floor was just not working out. Once I found what worked for me, the whole thing went really quickly.  

The sanding was spread over the course of 2 work days.  It took about 4 or 5 hours (mostly working alone) to sand the dining room, hallway, living room and bedroom.  Nothing compared to taking down the popcorn!

So this is a, rather dark, picture from the hallway that shows the ceiling with dried spackle over cracks and grooves. 

Here is a shot, post sanding.
This is not the same area as the first picture, but this spot looked the same.  The ceiling imperfections are still there, of course, along with the white areas that are now smooth with spackle, but you can really see the difference.  It looks so much smoother and will take to the paint so much better.

  The next step is to wipe down the ceilings so there is not dust.
Then, PAINTING!  woohoo!

From Bedroom to Den: Part 2

 

Before            &           After

After the Popcorn Ceiling project was completed, we went back to finish up the kitchen, and soon-to-be den, project.  A couple of weeks ago we took down all of the panel board and plaster board from the "bedroom" side, thus starting the From Bedroom to Den project.

So, to start on the kitchen side, we first had to tear down the plaster board.  We knew from speaking to the contractor, that the chimney had once been a fireplace for the bedroom side and a stove for the kitchen side.  

Once we started tearing down the plaster we found where the stove had been connected.  It was full of ashes, so we had to start by getting a lot of them out.    

Simon scraping the ashes into the a bucket.  

The next step was to take out all of the insulation.  Ew.  

Ashes and insulation: both messy, unpleasant business

After we were insulation-free, we had to cut out the studs.  The studs on the old bedroom side of the wall are holding up the second floor, so we can't take those down until we put up a supporting beam.  But the other side, the one in the kitchen is just studs, so out they came.   

Before     &    After

It is starting to look less and less like a wall every day.  Next step, first floor chimney. 

Taking Down A Chimney: Part 2

Although Simon and Michael successfully took off the top of the chimney and patched up the roof, we eventually still need to take the entire chimney down.  Simon tackled the second floor part of the chimney, about 6 feet, on Sunday.  

The majority of the work is carrying all of the bricks down the stairs into the Bagster.  

I was not incredibly upset that Simon did this on his own that day.  :)

No more chimney upstairs.  :)

We are trying to save and clean up as many bricks as we can so we can reface the fireplace with original bricks from the house.  So far we have over 80 and we still have the rest of the chimney on the first floor.  I think we willl have plenty; maybe even some extra for landscaping.   

How to Make a Gift Card Wreath

Our church just hired a new preacher.  He and his wife moved here from out of state for the position, with three young children.  One of the things the life groups did for them was provide them with giftcards or memberships to places in town to get them plugged in, and to make it feel like home.  

I was part of the group recruited to help them get settled, and rather than just giving them a pile of giftcards I wanted to find a nicer way to present it to them.  I had never made a gifrcard wreath, but I thought it could be a cute, welcoming way to put the cards all together.  

So I went to Dollar Tree (seriously, a great place to begin crafts) and bought a couple of packs of close pins.

Then I went to Hobby Lobby (another great place for craft shopping) and bought a wire wreath, a wooden letter "A", and burlap bow.  

I used Mod Podge and one of those mini books of themed scrapbooking paper to cover the clothes pins. 

I traced the size and cut our a bunch of little strips. 

 I used a little foam brush and painted on 2 or 3 coats of Mod Podge, letting it dry completely after each coat.  

I went through both packs of clothes pins, leaving some uncovered, because it went nicely with the other colors, and only used 3 double-sided pages from the paper pack.  So, it really didn't take much.    

I alternated the clothes pins, short and tall, around the wire wreath.  I just clipped them on, I didn't glue them at all.  

I painted the "A" to match the scrap booking paper and tied the bow onto the top.  I didn't put any clothes pins on the area where the bow was, because I didn't think it was necessary.  If you wanted to be able to take the bow off, you would want to put them all the way around.  

I cut a 2-inch thick strip of burlap from some extra that I had at home.  I folded it in two and connected it with a knot to the wreath, behind the bow.     

I hot glued the "A" on top of the clothes pins.  

Once the paint and the glue dried, I clipped all of the gift cards into the middle and it was finished.  

Taking Down a Chimney

There is a big, brick chimney on the front of our house.  A fire places was one of the must-haves on my house hunting list, and the pretty one in out living room is exactly what I had hoped for!

  There is one other fire place that was closed up in the middle of the kitchen and den by some previous owners.  You can see the little chimney in the picture above. 

We will have to put some money into the fireplace in the den to get it back in working order, and we just cant do that for two, so it had to go.  Plus, from a floor plan perspective, it would be really difficult to work around.  

So Simon and our friend Michael went to work Thursday taking it down.  

It needs to be taken down from top to bottom, so the work has to begin on the roof. 

I don't think anyone involved really loved that part of the whole thing, but they were both troopers. 

Brick chunk by brick chunk they sledge hammered away the chimney. 

After that they had to patch up the roof. 

They needed:

OSB to cover the whole

2x4s for bracing 

Tar paper to seal it

And shingles to protect it (and make it pretty) 

Here is an action shot. Haha. This is where the chimney used to be, but no more! 

Woohoo! 

I don't have a picture yet of the new roof because just moments after the finishing touches, the rain came! 

Thankfully it had not come before, and we quickly were able to find out if they had done a good job. Haha. They had! No leaks. :) 

Or friend Patrick (not pictured) came that day and helped out too. He helped bring order to the chaos of bricks, shingles, and junk thrown off the roof that were decorating the front yard and driveway. 

A big thanks to everyone who has already helped us out with our work! We really appreciate the help and enjoy the memories. 

The next step will be to continue taking down the chimney on the second floor and then down through the kitchen: a less time-sensitive chore since it is all inside. That will be finished around the same time as the brace for the ceiling downstairs (see "from bedroom to den"post).  

It seems crazy that our Christmas vacation time as flown by so fast, but we did get a lot done, and have laid the ground work for quite a bit more.