Monday, March 31, 2014

This is Spring


The quiet hope of a spring rain...

Theses intervals of spring weather are promising as they assure that warmer weather is soon to come. 

I could never live without the gift of the four seasons. I truly live through each of them, reveling in the present, yearning for the one to come, and sentimental for those that have passed. 

It's a beautiful rhythm. 



Monday, March 17, 2014

Simple Pancakes

As you know, we are a family that enjoys our pancakes. Depending on the time of year, the toppings vary (diced Pink Lady apples with walnuts during late winter/early spring, blackberries in summer, and festive  pomegranates in early winter), but the pancake remains the same - until now that is.

Over the past year, we've had wheat and egg sensitivities in our family and so have needed to adapt our standard pancake recipe. We've started using Martha Stewart's simple pancake recipe, with a few alterations. They include replacing whole wheat flour with all purpose gluten free flour, and substituting flax meal combined with water for the egg.

For the all purpose gluten free flour, we use the Bob's Red Mill version. I like this one because unlike many gluten free products and flours, it does not contain rice flour. After learning about the concerns with arsenic associated with rice (whether conventional and organic), we have been moderating consumption of foods that are derived from it.

In place of one egg, we use 1 tablespoon of flax meal with 3 tablespoons of water (after mixing and letting sit for a few minutes before adding to batter). Replacing the egg with flax is a really easy system that we use for many recipes and it works wonderfully well.

Plus, it's good for you!

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

The Dining Room

Here are a few pictures of our dining room before we moved in. It's an northeast facing room so it gets most of its direct light in the mornings. The door leads to a small covered porch, which also decreases light into the room. 

This photo is of the west end of the room, and is off of the kitchen. If you place a ball on the east end of this room, it will run towards the fireplace - it's that slanted! 

Here is the west side. The front door of the house is visible through the door to the right. Beyond the small foyer is the formal living room. 

As with the rest of the house, I love this room and planned a few touches to personalize the space while we are staying here - on a budget of course! Among my thoughts from the very beginning were to replace the pressed tin chandelier and coordinated pressed tin sconce (they are being stored for now). I did a post on the sconce a few weeks ago. I absolutely love the primitive attributes of historic homes such as this. In celebrating those attributes though, the pressed tin fixtures do not resonate with me quite as much. 

I also wanted to make the room light and bright and very cozy. I knew that it would be a room for enjoying our meals, but also lots of snacks, coloring, painting, etc. 

Everything in the room except the chandelier, the sconce, the rug and the reproduction Queen Anne table are recycled from our old house. 

The chandelier came from Lowe's because we had a store credit that we needed to use. It was under $100. I added chandelier shades to make it feel a bit cozier, and to coordinate with the sconce I had already purchased (I found a great buy for the shades here). 

The sconce comes from ReStore as I mentioned in the earlier post. The story behind it is that when I told Mike I wanted to replace the pressed tin sconce, he said that we shouldn't spend the money because its a rental house - unless of course, I found something for $8. 

Well, wouldn't you know it, I did find something for $8. It wasn't perfect, a little shiny, but most definitely meant to be. 

We still have a great many of our things in boxes. Every now and then, I'll open a new box but for the most part, we have everything we need (if only I could find my box of vases...). 

I thought about putting our new painting above this mantle but it looks very happy over the mantle in the living room. The painting we used is a little dark, but is a nice size to match the proportion of the large hearth. 


Our old secretary is now our only bookshelf. It holds everything from cookbooks to parenting books. They are shelved as they came out of the box! The cabinets beneath house table linens and overflow kitchen wares (things that aren't used daily like baking tins, etc.). 


The mirror and the writing desk belonged to my Great Grandmother. 

Below the desk, I keep a large wicker basket that holds our crafting supplies. 


The painting beneath the recycled sconce is hanging there because, simply, there was a nail. Its a nail that had several coats of paint on it. 

Although I wouldn't have necessarily thought to hang a painting beneath the sconce, I like the unexpected placement it offers. It's a house that's been lived in a long time - things lose balance and symmetry and just evolve. That's what the placement of this painting symbolizes for me. 


We found the reproduction Queen Anne table on Craigslist. We've had it since November and it has received a lot of use. This is of course where we have meals, but the table is also where we paint, color, make crafts, etc. The blemishes you can see in the finish are where the crafting takes place! The blemishes don't bother us as it was purchased for exactly this kind of use. 

I do think we should rotate it however so that the table is used evenly on both sides! 

The shutters offer so much charm to the room. I will definitely remember the effect for our future house. They were custom built for the homeowner and are just wonderful. I close them when it gets dark (this room faces the street) and open them first thing in the morning. 

The rug we bought from Home Goods is working out quite well. It receives a great number of spills - sweet potato, strawberry, pesto, tomato sauce, etc. and cleans up well. 

Here's a photo with the high chairs in place.

We purchased the high chairs from an unfinished wood furniture store and painted them white. They are on the same side of the table because our dumplings like sitting next to each other. But also, the room is slanted and I'm afraid of placing a highchair on the down side of the table - hence all of the chairs being on the up side of the slant. 

I would consider replacing the high chairs with additional IKEA parson chairs but they aren't available anymore. I have only been able to find the armless version. I've searched Craigslist and Ebay, but no luck. I would love two more. 


With all of the lights aglow. 

We spend a great deal of time in this room. For the minimal budget we gave ourselves to make it our own, we feel pretty content with the results. 

One thing left on the to-do list is to actually have a fire in the fireplace. It is in good working order but the homeowner said that they stuffed insulation up in the chimney many years ago so we would have to pull that out to have our fire. 

Neither Mike nor I have been brave enough as we fear what will come with it! It's too bad because I had visions of cozy meals in front of the fireplace when we first looked at this house to rent. 

To Do: 
Light a fire in the fireplace and have a cozy meal. 


Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Antique Lamps


Over the past few weeks, we've had several of our antique table lamps re-wired. It started with on of our lamps being quite a challenge to turn on. We would have to turn the switch to just the right point in order for the bulb to come on, which would usually take several turns.

I discovered that this means that the switch is bad and can be a fire hazard because the lamp may be on when the bulb isn't illuminated. 


A more obvious sign that it is time for updates is a tattered cloth cord with exposed wiring. 


Another trick to determine if your cord should be replaced is to bend it in half. If you see cracks form in the bend, it's probably time to update.


We've been replacing our old cloth and vinyl cords with new cloth cords. The reproduction cloth versions come in various colors (my local antique light repairman had a selection of brown, gold and white in his shop).

In addition to updating the cords and plugs, we've also updated bad switches with new three-way switches. I honestly had never considered this before, but it was an option that I thought we'd try. Now that most of our table lamps are three-way lights, I absolutely love the versatility it offers in the lighting a room.

The cost of updating a table lamp has run us between $25 and $35 each, depending on how much gets updated. The cost is well worth it for the peace of mind that safety brings, along with the added aesthetic benefit of the lighting versatility.

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