Best Thrifting Scores! Installing A New Microwave, Kitchen Project- Turning A Desk Into A Buffet !

 

Best Thrifting Scores! 

We had some donations to make and I had the thrift store bug. I am redoing an area in the kitchen and wanted to add a little bit more French Mediterranean decor items . We decided to go out New Year's Eve day and dropped off some donations at our local Idaho Youth Ranch. We went inside and there just wasn't much in the store. They had a fire sometime in the summer at their warehouse and had asked people to stop donating. I don't know if they just never recovered or what happened but I've never seen their store that empty except for tons of clothing. We decided to go to Goodwill up the street. Oh wow wow wow were they ever stocked up!!! 

I started going through the home decor section and first found this really pretty pitcher made in Mexico for water for our dining table. Really nice size, $4.00-

Next I found a Ziploc plastic bag section of the store where they put all kinds of random things together. I found a brand new Teavana brand steeping tea brewer. Basically you put your loose tea in, fill with water let it steep. It comes with its own little coaster. After it's steeps when you set it on top of a mug and the weight of the liquid releases the tea through the stainless steel filter in the bottom. Pretty ingenious! It was brand new along with a few other crafting goodies, $3.00! New it is $20.00. The really nice thing about it is it's small and solves the problem of bulk teas that I like to brew. When I use a tea ball or tea spoon filter it seems like something always leaks through with chunks of tea in the bottom of the cup. The filter worked great!

Next I found a shadow box that was going to go perfect for a little vintage World War II French hen print that I found online. I inserted the photo, I'm going to add things like wheat sprigs, seeds and broken eggshells. So far it's really cute! In French at the top of the photo it says solve your barnyard problems. Then down in the middle it says something about a girl's school. At the bottom it says I Am A Brave Little Hen I don't eat much but I produce a lot. I stumbled on this print and loved it! We'll play around with the frame, which was $1.50.

As far as Mediterranean/French I found a cabbage leaf serving platter, $4.99. Many of these kinds of ceramics are made in Majorca, Spain-

Found a really cute whitewashed flower with galvanized metal and a jute center, $3.00. Really reminds me of a bakery we go to in McCall (Stacy's Cake's). They have lots vintage baking tins and make flowers out of them for decorations. It's up in the dining room now-

I found a faux lavender pot for $1.99-

 

And then a Fleur delis-style statue/baluster for $3.00. I wasn't sure about the green but it's growing on me. I had planned of painting it white but I think I like the green. Time will tell...

Next I found a serving platter, about 11 inches across that I will hang in my wall once I get a plate holder. It's a really nice brand, lots of available online, for $4 it was a bargain. At Home Depot a while back I bought a faux miniature olive tree that will also dress up the space this will be going-

Last for a couple dollars I found a Rachael Ray olive oil picture, like new and my favorite color! Washed really well with very hot soapy water and just like new, is $20.00 new! 

 

On the actual free side of things I found this nice free printable online. It's for my frame I already had for the holidays. I had originally put one with the same French wording but it just didn't print out right. I finally found one I like and it was free! Will save that for next year-

I was looking for a greenery swag for my living room but all of the Christmas items were completely gone. Will have to wait for next year. My entire haul (small items not shown) was $30.00!

 

 

Installing A New Microwave- 

Dave and I were relaxing nicely, about ready to eat on New Year's Eve, when suddenly our microwave arced and that was the end of that. I was cooking some veggies. We had it for about 13 years so we got our money out of it, for sure. So New Year's Day we spent shopping for a new microwave. I had pulled up a few models on YouTube and did a little research the night before. All our appliances are white so we were sticking with that. I noticed that a lot of the newer microwaves have recessed handles which I really like. Lower profile is always good for me. We stopped at Lowe's to look and see what they had and we lucked out. We found one in stock for $279 with the recessed handle! Dave and I installed it New Year's Day and it works great, and much quieter. Also made me finally really deep, deep clean my range top and stove. I took all the knobs off and scrubbed with really hot soapy water and a toothbrush. Scrubbed down the upper section really well, the bottom drawer and door. Looks much much better. All in all Santa came a bit late with that, but we got a good deal and got what we wanted. There is a series called Profile that we really liked with all of the digital keypads down along the bottom in a thin strip but they are much more expensive and it wasn't that important to us. Happy that we have one installed and it works!

 

 

Old dead one

 

We pulled the old one and proteced the glass top stove

 

New one out of box, Whirlpool

 

Installed and we cleaned up!

 

 

 

My inspiration from Romantiskahem.blogspot

 

Kitchen Project- Turning A Desk Into A Buffet! 

I saw the photo at the top a while back. It gave me an idea and so here's the reveal! Here's the history first- When we bought our house we inherited a desk in the dining room which we decided to keep. For a long time it was good to have our computer there, work online, pay bills and be able to chat with each other-

 

Earlier this year we decided to move the computer into the home office that I used to work remotely. When I changed jobs and went to work in an office we decided we could really use that space in the kitchen for other things. I'd always wanted to put in a buffet there. The plan right now is to put a slab of butcher block type wood and replace the counter. Eventually I'd like Dave to remove the cabinet, pull out the rolling cart and add some finished shelves. I found the fabric at Joanne's and loved it! I bought a white tension rod and sewed it up! I wanted something sort of Mediterranean-ish.

 

 

Kind of reminds me of the ocean

 

 

Hides lots of stuff! Next sewing project will be re-upholstering my two dining chairs, they need some love! After winter decor is put away I will put out my French/coutry decor-

 

Flowers bloomed in time for New Year's!

Heat Dome/Garden Progress, A More Resilient Kitchen, Dehydrating Eggs!

From Survival Quote Series Year Zero

Heat Dome/Garden Progress-

I don't know about anybody else but we have been under the heat Dome that's been all over the news. It's been in the 100°s for the last 2 weeks. But we lucked out today, it was in the '80s and it RAINED this morning! Not a lot of rain, but enough to really cool things down. We have just been watering, watering and watering the yarden. I've been taking extra cool care of our chickens. I use a water mister near their shade area, hose it down once or twice a day, and give them cool treats. Our tomatoes been growing like crazy in the heat! Typically tomatoes don't set fruit over about 80° or so, luckily there were lots of baby tomatoes already on the vine. It's made a HUGE difference in the production in the garden with more SUN. We did a major professional prune a while back. What a difference!!! 

We finally had our first harvest! I picked one medium sized tomato and two lemon cucumbers. The lemon cucumbers are doing amazing, they are growing so fast! I decided not to plant any pickling cucumbers since I found a wonderful local farm where I can buy them fresh. I made the best fermented pickles ever last year using their cukes! We have a good amount of peaches on the front peach tree, just starting to change colors. Our apple tree is running a little bit light on the harvest this year. That's nature. That's why I wanted to plant three different kinds of fruit trees. The blackberries are ripening now as well. Pretty soon I will be canning fruit! I also bought a pressure cleaner so I'm going to start canning some meats and non-acid vegetables. I hope to be also canning soups for the winter. With potential blackout/brownouts/fuel shortage good to have easy, healthy fast foods on hand. If you're not getting prepared for some future difficulties better late than never! I heard about a shortage coming of Garbanzo beans so I bought about eight lbs. of dried in the bulk section. They're tucked away in glass jars with O2 absorbers. I also got a great deal on Augason Farms freeze dried strawberries, $20.00 for a #10 can, nice deal. Still on Amazon clearance. Never to late to get things in order...

A More Resilient Kitchen-

When we bought our house almost 20 years ago there was a built-in desk in the dining room/kitchen. That worked out pretty well and we decided to use it for that. Later I really wanted to remove all of that and put in a buffet, but we never put new counters in the kitchen. I had hoped we would be able to do solid countertops and turn that area into a buffet for storage. Fast forward to now. I decided since I'm not working from home anymore to move our kitchen office into the spare bedroom. I'm hoping we'll be able to put some butcher block where the current countertop is. In the meantime I decided to take back my kitchen. We moved the computer system into the home office, where I previously worked at my job. That opened up the entire counter. I cleared everything off and wiped everything down. It's amazing how many dust bunnies were under there! I even had room to put out my radio/CD player!

I made 2 loaves of bread in the new (thrifted) bread machine there, Honey Oat bread (recipe in my Pinterest bread folder)-

Great flavor and crumb!

Next I used the same recipe, but used 1 cup WW flour and 1 teaspoon dough enhancer, excellent result!

Hole from the paddle, great otherwise! 

I will keep playing around and plan to make some herb breads too. One of the things I wanted to start using the area for is for dehydrating-

Orange slices for winter teas

It will be really handy to have that area for cooling home-canned bloing jars instead of the top of my dining table. When we have lots of company over in the winter for the holidays I can use it as a serving area. So far so good! I'm leaving the dehydrator there for now so I can run various batches including eggs. More on that below...

18 eggs in there!

Dehydrating Eggs!

I've seen a few different blogs and YouTube videos that had information on how to dehydrate fresh eggs. I decided to try that! Since we have a bumper crop of our own organic eggs it's a good shelf stable way  to preserve them! Basically I ran about 9 of our eggs at a time through our Magic Bullet until blended, 18 totla in the 1st batch. I had previously bought some silicone trays for inside my food dehydrator, link here Dehydrator Trays I had the trays stacked and simply carefully poured the eggs in. The temperature I read everywhere was to do about 140° for about 18 hours or so. Probably depends on the humidity where you live. Here's the photos of the process-

Mostly dry, checking for doneness

dry and crispy, looks like corn flakes!

I ran the chunks thru the Magic Bullet again (clean and dry), came out perfect. I added to O2 absorbers in the glass jars. Just treat like raw eggs and cook. You can use in baked goods, for scrambled, eggs etc. 

Great video here from one of my fave Youtubers with lots of info!  From RoseRed Homestead-

Garden Re-Hab Phase One & Pond Repair, Spring Cleaning Spices & Organizing Kitchen Cabinets, 1949 Step Saving Kitchen Video

 

Garden Re-Hab Phase One & Pond Repair-

We found a pond leak after we filled it last week, one more thing to do, sigh. We had seen some repair products on TV as and decided to do some research. Dave went to Ace Hardware and was able to buy some Flex Tape as well as the liquid version. Since Dave was able to find the exact leak spot (hopefully) he decided to start with using the tape-

Link to the pond (before flagstone install) where you can see the shape Early shot of our pond  He cleaned off the plastic and let it dry and cut a piece big enough to hopefully cover everything and seal really well-

We let it dry overnight. Dave filled it tonight, we'll see how it looks the next several days. If that doesn't fix the leak he's going to coat the entire inside with a Flex Seal "paint" material. If that doesn't work we're going to buy pond liner and do the whole thing. We love the pond so much! Our neighbors do as well, since one of ours told us that he loves listening to the sound of the water running in the summer from his deck. We were lucky enough to get the pond and a pump at a yard sale several years ago really cheap. We did eventually buy a second pump as well as some other sprayers. Once the weather warms up enough we'll buy water lettuce and fill it in.  Nice calm area right by our deck when we come out.

Phase one- Dave and I shopped around and found a great deal at Costco for Emerald Arborvitaes. They were $25.00 each, 4' tall, much cheaper than anyone else. They kept selling out, so we had to go back. One guy in front of Dave bought 12! I had wanted Bamboo but couldn't find what I wanted. While I'm not a fan of these shrubs (WAY overused commercially IMO) I decided they would be a goof fit for the space-

Also bought a Dwarf Alberta Spruce for another spot

The previous shrubs were basically for privacy from the house behind us- 

Before

First we called DIG LINE! You can see the orange paint above on the ground. Luckily we had enough space without killing anything. The new shrubs will get taller and about 4' wide, we can prune if needed. The GREAT thing is they will be green year round! No more brown fence all winter long. Se here was the process. Dave started by pruning the old shrubs down to the ground with hand clippers-

More cutting with pruning shears-

Down to the big woody base. Dave used an ax, a pry bar and then a chain saw on the bigger pieces-

All three planted, will mulch and bark dust soon-

Dave straightened the middle one tonight

Dave will tear out the rest of the cold frame soon. Next will be the new garden. This is the basic garden plan that will be in front of the shrubs-

More info here Our Garden Re-Hab

More coming soon!

Stuff

Spring Cleaning Spices & Organizing Kitchen Cabinets- 

I have been watching some YouTube videos on organization and minimizing lately. It's inspiring! They can also suck you into a black hole as I have found. One woman does videos of mopping her home over and over again. Put me to sleep... Anyway, I digress.  I've been reorganizing a few little areas here and there. One of the things I really needed to do was take everything out of part of my upper food kitchen cabinet to see what I had. I realized that some of my spices were probably old and lost their potency. I also knew I had some duplicates. In the interest of minimizing I decided to take everything out and see where I was at, see photo above-

Misc Stuff 

That didn't take too long and I laid everything out then I cleaned off my rotating Lazy Susan things. Hit them with a hot soapy sponge and wiped down the shelves as well. When it was all over I was able to throw out some old spice's, recycle some empty glass spice jars, and wound up with lots of extra room. Now I can really see what I have! Before shots- 

After- 

I also organized some of our new smoothie ingredients and moved the blender over by the sink. I've tried Goji berries and Beet powder added to fruit and protein powder.  Gave me more energy! Nice to have it all organized to see what's there. I like the jars better than bags. Both of us are wanting to eat healthier and I've been craving more fruit smoothies with protein powder in it. I've got a few extra supplements that I bought that I had heard of add. 

 

I also re-organized the inside freezer (chest freezer in the garage).  I found some things with freezer burn which I tossed and then I re-organized. Everything was kind of mixed together. Now fruits and nuts on the left for baking and smoothies, everything else on the right. Much better!!! 

If video on your side doesn't work you may need to turn off your pop-up blocker

1949 Step Saving Kitchen Video-

I stumbled on this and wow, they had some good ideas back then! Watch for the tilt out bins under the windows, my fave! What do you think?