Summer Entertaining

This weekend was kind of a bust but we salvaged Friday night with a few friends for an impromptu evening of conversation. We started the night with a bit of Sangria and then mixed appetizers including some Fajita nachos. The evening got a little cooler but the company was warm and interesting. Thank goodness since Saturday it must have rained an inch or two.

The Sangria:

1 bottle of Merlot

2 cans of Ginger Ale

1 can sliced pinapple with juice

1/2 pound of sliced strawberries

1/2 bag frozen berries

2 organges sliced 1/4 inch

We are loving the new patio although not quite finished to our liking but we are working on it!



Outdoor life

It's that time of year for chilling on the patio. While it is not quite 100% as of yet but the urge is too hard to resist. We bought a super comfortable patio set and the grass is coming in nicely if a little patchy. We are replanting some of the things we lost last year due to the work being done and have been financing several nurseries throughout the region with our purchases. This year though, we are shopping way smarter and buying baskets of sale plants to divide up instead of individual plantings.  The Farmer's Market at Aksarben had a wealth of herbs and the like. So we are patiently waiting for the days of heat and humidity to wash over us but meanwhile we are enjoying the temperate season in the present.

Off Topic discussion...Upholstery

So in the last few months, we sold our kitchen set and painted our old Farm table black. In the meantime we have been sitting in close to a hundred chairs searching for the perfect sit in case we would linger at the table, post feast.  We needed two upholstered chairs and 4 wooden ones. The search has been long and hard but finally we found the upholstered chairs at Marshall's by chance. They were not the right color but the price was right and they were comfortable.

Note the carpet limits fabric choices.

I convinced my lovely bride that recovering would not be an issue but was prepared to eat those words as I took the first chair apart. (I took the chance that if I only wasted one by my ineptness we would only be out $100.

Finding the perfect fabric was a bit of a challenge as we had differing ideas on color and style. I wanted a bolder colorful fabric, forgetting that we had a patterned rug under the chair that clashed with all my ideas. My wife was more conservative and we finally agreed on the fabric shown below. The problem, when we left the store to ruminate, someone bought the bolt. I found it in Kansas and had it shipped to our JoAnn's fabric store. when it arrived last week, the game was afoot. It took pretty much all evening to remove the current covering without damage to use a pattern and then paint the legs black to match the table.

I finally brought the painted frame in and started the laborious process of recovering. I learned a lot about construction and tricks used to shape the fabric to the frame from taking the old chair apart. While not exactly 100%, it does not look half bad. Slipcovers would have been so nice but the shape of the chairs prohibited a tight fit. This resulted in a nice tight fit and shaping by sewing tabs to seam between the seat and back portion and pulling them tight through the frame. Next is the application of the backing with tacks.

Added the furniture nail trim

Fresh and clean

A slow cooking week for us....

I had made a whole batch of Chili Colorado Burritos and enchiladas but none of the kids were available to eat so we froze them all for a later date. I set aside a bowl of chili for Brenda but that did not even get eaten. We have been preoccupied with the deck removal and patio installation porject. Seems to be taking longer than we expected and our daily routine is interrupted and my grill is barely accessible so I have not been cooking as usual. We are learning to cook for two now and the fridge does not seem nearly so full. Any leftovers that I plan for lunch sometimes get taken for an after work dinner if one of the kids has been doing multiple shifts. Twelve hour nights can take its toll.

Since we are still in the early stages of empty nest syndrome, I feel a little obligated to have enought for stop by company and just in case situations. They are getting less and less but for someone who loves to cook, its tough scaling back. I am definitely a large scale cooker, the bigger the better and I really love doing multiple meals at the same time. On Saturday I had made a few pizzas, the crust is really quite nice lately so I must have turned a corner, chicken wings and started the Chili Colorado for burritos. Seemed like the kitchen was a mess all day though.  Mackenzie came over after the game but wasn't hungry so we had lots to snack on for the rest of the weekend.

I did get a Natural Gas installation on the patio and converted the new grill to Natural Gas so I am excited about that part of the project. We were a little diappointed to not find patio furniture this late in the year and my search for the perfect outdoor lighting has been a bust so far but gives me something to plan for all winter.

Not quite done yet

Kitchen updates

We painted cabinet doors all weekend and yesterday. Got a few hung before clearing out everything in the kitchen in anticpation of the floor refinishers coming today but they cancelled. The floors will be out for a week or so. Everything we own to make it through is now in a very crowded family room.  We have to reschedule again but this time at my convenience, not theirs.  Meanwhile we have to decide if we want to put the kitchen back together or live in limbo. At least the doors will be finished and installed by then.

Change is a way of life......open sesame

Going...going...gone

Getting ready for some major kitchen improvement. First, remove those pesky cupboards.