Anniversary Road Trip & Thrifted Finds, Classic Chicken Cacciatore

Anniversary Road Trip & Thrifted Finds-
We finally had some rain today!!! SO exciting after poor air quality for weeks. Dave and I are celebrating our 26th wedding anniversary tomorrow. I'm so grateful I married such a wonderful, devoted person. My best friend, great Dad and Granddad! Three years ago, to do something really different, we went up to the mountain town of McCall to spend the night. The hotel rates are off season and no tourists. Cold, nice and quiet! We had a gorgeous drive up Saturday and spent the night, coming back Sunday. Saturday afternoon, after lunch, we drove around Payette lake-

Ice on the N side of the lake

 Sunday, gray skies and a little rain-

My fave fish sculpture

smooth as glass

Our comfy hotel roomed with soaker tub and salt water pool, Dave enjoyed the swims! 

We found a new thrift store there! I got these three winter cuties for a whopping $3.00 total!

Tabletop snowman, hand made in the USA 

Small quilt (crib blanket/tablecloth?), 2 sided, winter motif-

Details- 

Backside-

Back side

Snowman spoon rest-

Classic Chicken Cacciatore-
Perfect dish for a cold night! I served with ww pasta and Italian bread. I made this with lots of out own homegrown, frozen tomatoes. So juicy I had to add tomato paste! Lots of mushroom in my crock pot with all of it.  Recipe here Classic Chicken Cacciatore, and for the 2nd round I added Kalamata olives and capers for something different! Topped with some Feta cheese, yummy! Sadly the crock pot handle broke off, so I finally (after 15-20 years) bought a new, smaller one. With two of us I just didn't need the huge one. I'll keep it until after the holidays and will repurpose it. My new baby, 4.5 Qt., $20.00 at Target, hopefully will last me til I'm too old and decrepit to cook! I'll make some chili this weekend before turkey day!

Winter Is Here- Sort Of, Tweaking Bathroom Remodel Decor, Planning A Backyard /Coop Re-Do,Great Finds!

Winter Is Here, Sort Of-

Our weather has been so dry, dry, dry lately that it's strange watching all the snow back East. It's been in the fifties lately during the day the thirties at night, so winter is definitely here. Our 14 degree cold snap last month really affected some of our trees locally. If you look at our huge maple tree, some of the leaves are just wilted, little color. Not normal! Other people noticed that some of their trees didn't really have a chance to change color as much as usual either. We still have all of our cold weather gear out. We're loving our new warm comforter I bought off season and kitty Anya is always finding a warm spot in the sun. We're waiting for a first big rain storm to arrive. Still allergy season sadly. We packing up the garden work bench today and I covered with plastic-

Bye bye tools

Last night we had a taste of summer by opening our 1st can of our organic peaches I canned. Amazing in a light syrup, just like fresh!!! So good...... paradise peaches...

Tweaking Bathroom Remodel Decor-
We finished up the bathroom remodel and I did the reveal last week. I wanted to tweak a few things though, so here is more of an updated version! I moved a few things around on the rack above the toilet and moved the print down. I realized there was a really big gap between the top of the toilet and the wall rack, so problem fixed! I bought some new knobs at Hobby Lobby for the new Ikea cabinet, green/blue ceramic and a really nice shade, I was not a fan of the old, cheap black metal ones-

 I moved my wood fish I bought at the coast where I could see it better, driftwood-ish...

I wanted some kind of a glass float to put in the bathroom. They're not hard to find but the ones that I found were really overpriced. I looked on eBay and I found these faux ones instead! Nice sized for a small bathroom-

I think for now we're  all done!!!

Planning A Backyard /Coop Re-Do-
Recently I was reading an article about keeping small livestock and how much easier it is. I started thinking about the layout of our background, and the fact we will probably need to rebuild the coop soon. It's held up really well for quite a few years, but it's showing wear, wood rot in small areas. We know we need to put it on a different type of foundation. I started thinking we should build a new Coop/shed where are shade area and cold frame is-

That would open up more sunny space for the garden for growing vegetables and would give the chickens a cooler area in the summer. It would also be away from the main easement fence, and less visible to hawks overhead. We'd reconfigure the chicken fencing as well. Dave's on board, and he's designing, and may do that next summer. It would be easy enough to build a second coop while the first one is still up. We'll probably build on some shed space, since we don't have a shed at this point. That would be a great use of space! And we could, of course, use a lot of recycled materials.

Tea Cups, $10.00

Great Finds !!!
I do tons of thifting and eBaying for great deals. I only recently found out that Ikea has started shipping items across the U.S.! They have a $5 shipping fee up to a certain amount of weight, I'm not sure what. I did find some really cool items that I was going to order, but was really disappointed that you can't order any of their holiday items online. If you follow this blog you know that I really love Scandinavian holiday stuff! I was really excited to find some great things and I added them to my shopping basket. When I went to check out there was a big note of these are unorderable online,  bummer. I ordered a few random things, including a new shower mat. We had bought one when we were in Portland coming back from the coast fit perfect was heavy and was only $7. These are the more fun items that I was able to get online, all found at Ikea.Us

12" tray, $7.00 for next spring, was not in store

Huge Godtagbar vase, $10.00, goes with 2 other smaller ones I bought previously, 

love the lumpy handmade clay look, and traditional Swedish folk art design

I discovered this website last year LTDcommodities (I'm not an affiliate).  I found a few fun items for winter and the holidays. A bowl/dish combo for my homemade soups! I've decided to make a pot of something each weekend. This was Minestrone and cheddar biscuits last week-

Two bowls for $12.99, nice heavy stoneware, two colors per set, I bought one of each-

Cute Christmas truck, made of solid wood, $6.00-

Fabric banner, $6.00- 

Two Troll towels, $9.00-

DIY Bathroom Remodel Reveal!!!

DIY Bathroom Remodel Reveal!!!
I'm happy to share with you our new master bathroom remodel! If you check my previous two posts you can see the process. The large bathroom is down the hall, the "master" is a powder room" basically. We did the large bathroom five years ago, also with Ikea components. We did everything ourselves, except for the flooring and toilet install. We had the flooring guy do both, since there were multiple layers of vinyl and a larger flange for the toilet. It didn't cost that much, and it was worth it. We'd done our laminate plank flooring thru the house, not too hard. We paid cash, no financing done. I am really loving the wall color! A soothing blue/gray, and the overall vibe is very serene. It's basically all done except for some new knobs that I will be buying for the bathroom cabinet. This weekend Dave and I finished up a few odds and ends related to the remodel, and got everything moved back from around the house. Since there was a low minimum fee we also had him stretch the carpet in our two spare bedrooms. No more bumpy carpets! Soon I'll get them steam cleaned and then all done. I really deep cleaned the bedroom after raising all the dust. Saturday I spackled an area next to the bathroom cabinet that was still a little bit rough. A bit more tweaking, then painted the area. One of the things we discovered is at our new Ikea bathroom cabinet is about four or five inches shallower than our original one was. It has tons more storage and actually makes the bathroom look bigger, which is a double bonus! Bathroom before photos 2015 Mini-Bathroom-Makeover  Tons of storage in the drawers, paper liner included-

Dave did have to adapt the plumbing a little bit since it came out of the side of the wall and also had to notch the drawer of the cabinet-

HUGE bottom drawer

Dave also drilled a round hole in the side of the cabinet (VERY carefully) for the pipe-

We had to do this on the other cabinet and I've seen on the internet that that's a pretty common thing. Luckily it doesn't affect the structural integrity. There's so much more drawer space, it's not even funny. I don't have to get down on my knees to find our supplements, etc. Ikea runs their plumbing laterally and then drops it down, versus American plumbing, which goes straight down.  Dave installed the new Ikea faucet  on the counter top before we lifted it into place. I love the curves on it, and so much more water pressure!

I'm sure the old faucet had clogs in the aerator, even though we'd flushed it several times. For $39.00 it was a steal. We've had great luck with our other Ikea bathroom faucet. We caulked the counter to the cabinet, but only on the front, in case we need to pull it for plumbing repairs. Dave's idea, good to plan ahead. Sunday we hung up my new bird shelf. A few months ago, when we were thinking about doing this, I thought I'd like to get a shelf with birds. I actually found one, at Hobby Lobby. I needed something really shallow due the small space, it was a perfect fit and half price with a coupon! Sunday we hung everything up. Added a piece of driftwood, homegrown lavender, mini wreath and a mini prayer flag-

 Crab shell Dave found on the beach for me!

 I had also found this driftwood-inspired seashell plaque at Hobby Lobby, which I LOVE-

Wood fish on the rod from the Oregon coast trip

I was trying to bring in the look of driftwood since I'm going for a coastal motif. I put some other items up on top of my cabinet over the toilet. I reused the print, bought the lighthouse candle holder, and seahorse, also from Hobby Lobby. I'll hang some dried flowers on the rod soon, or maybe some fabric-

Home grown lavender in Ikea vase I bought on the way back from coast trip-

Ivy on adjacent wall-

The other items I already had, my little hanging rack and clock back up by the sink area-

Sunday I was able to find a small cotton rug at Ross, a discount store, for $4! I wanted something rounder since it's a square bathroom and I love the crochet edging, kind of vintage looking-

We re-used the Ikea medicine cabinet which we bought last year, light fixture above the sink and the towel rod, no point replacing them-

 Re-used my old Ikea vase and flowers-

We did buy a new Moen toilet paper holder,  the exact same one as the other bathroom. Much easier to load and very minimal looking-

Cheap, black Ikea knobs will be replaced-

 All four will go-

I put this ceramic one from Hobby Lobby on the medicine cabinet last year, I may try and find the same ones, or something else coastal vibe style-

There's also the new toilet, which works great, and the trend now is chair height toilets which I wasn't aware of-

According to at least one plumber it's because of the obesity level in the United States which is really pretty sad. The one really great thing about the toilet is that it flushes really well, there's a large tube inside and the entire tank empties really fast. We learned doing research that when your toilet gets old the smooth inside glaze part of the ceramic gets really rough. Solid waste tends to get trapped more. We also thought that since we have a little bit lower water pressure our toilet was clogging due to that. It was actually because the toilet was just getting older. So all in all we're really happy with it and it has a slow close lid as well!