My No-Budget French Country Bedroom Makeover, Basil Harvest/Pesto Time!

My No-Budget French Country Bedroom Makeover-
Recovering from hand surgery has been kind of challenging, and I was glad I was home for the week.  I'm grateful my work benefits include extended sick leave. Sometimes you see a lot of things that need to get done, but you can't do them yourself so they just have to wait. Dave has been really great with picking up the slack, but he's been working all week. I kept looking at our spare bedroom and realized I could do something, even with one good hand. I had painted the bedroom several years ago into a very white yellow, still love that color so I was not about to repaint that! It had turned into a bit of a storage area-

Baby themed art/mobile

Baby stuff

More stuff

Sometimes you think you know what you're going to need and then needs change. That was the case with our spare bedroom, that we turned into sort of a grand baby nursery. I was looking at the space the last couple of weeks and realized we really weren't babysitting that much anymore. Time for the baby decor to be reorganized or given away. We wanted to keep the crib, the books, the toys, etc. I really like French Country/farm decor and have so many fun pieces, mostly thrifted. I decided it was time to redo the bedroom. My challenge to myself was to do without spending any money. I could re-do it since many of the items in the bedroom could either be donated, given away or stored elsewhere. That would give me more of a clean slate to work from. Since we had bought a new queen comforter cover from Ikea I decided to re-use the old one on the twin bed. The ticking fabric would be a nice neutral accent, went from bright blue comforter to white/blue ticking-

I wanted to keep the existing wire bookcase as it has nice lines and is a good size. I empted it out, then sorted and refilled-

Removed the prints and exercise machine

Donations

Donated machine we never use, we may get a used treadmill we can leave out

Stored prints

My sewing machine stays in the room since that's a good place for it-

The corner of the room with all of the baby gear was downsized-

We didn't need tiny blankets anymore, just kept the larger napping blankets and moved them. I hung up some prints that I have been storing and that gave the room a definite more adult look. So I'll probably tweak it more overtime. For now I really like it and will continue to see what works for all of us!

Basil Harvest/Pesto Time!

Winter is definitely on the horizon since we had our first hard freeze yesterday! I had the basil plants on the deck covered up with plastic the last two days, but it was time to harvest. Since I am still using primarily one hand Dave and I set up a pesto making station tonight after dinner. One sinkful-

I used my favorite recipe and we made a nice big batch using this recipe Rosie's Pesto. We did the one plant that was really large and got 6 jars out of that batch. We ran out of fresh lemon juice so I will buy some more today and we can finish up the other batch. It smells amazing in the kitchen, like garlic and fresh basil! This freezes so well if you haven't ever tried it I'd really encourage you to make some. Freezing in the small batches works great so you can use it for pastas, or smear it on roasting chicken. That's one of my personal favorites! It's also great on broiled Italian bread. Bon appetit!