Beyond Rice and Tofu

Hello, world! Sorry I have been away the past couple weeks, but we have had company – and we worked them like slaves!

No, really, we did.

Well, somewhat. You see, my husband’s parents came to town for their annual visit and we like to do home improvement projects with them while they are here. I should probably rephrase that… my husband and his father are really good at doing home improvement projects together! My mother in law and I are good at buying supplies and new home goods and supervising their work!

We’ve been in this house for about two and a half years now and there are a variety of cosmetic things we have wanted to do. But my husband and I prefer to work outside on the yard instead of inside and so we haven’t done much inside. My in-laws help to motivate us, especially since we have more helping hands to get things done! Last year they helped us figure out a good lighting solution for our kitchen, which had horrible, poorly located, contractor-grade lighting. And of course, while we were at it, we had to repaint the kitchen ceiling too, because for some reason, the previous owners liked to paint the ceilings the same color as the walls and the dark beige ceiling in the north-facing kitchen didn’t help the lack of proper light in the kitchen.

This past week we tackled a couple of projects. We, by which I mean they, my husband and father in law, hung cabinets in my tiny laundry room – now I can easily reach the detergent and rag towels – and I can hide all the dog paraphernalia in the cabinets – yeah! I love hiding things out of sight!

We also are preparing to get our concrete floors stained and sealed later this month and figured it was a good time to do a  couple of other things before that chaos begins. Like repaint the office/third bedroom. Once again, the ceiling had been painted, and this time it was dark blue. Along with one wall. I am not sure how I lived with it so long, actually. Probably only because I placed two giant bookcases on that wall which hid most of the blue. But nothing could hide that dark blue ceiling, except a couple of coats of paint! Now the office has four nice creamy walls, a white ceiling (I love white ceilings!), and fun, new curtains, which my mother-in-law and I shopped for while the boys were working on the cabinets.

We (they!) also hung a ceiling fan where there had previously been a horrid old light fixture. It looked like something that would be in your grandmother’s house that hasn’t changed in about 30 or 40 years. I am already loving the fan! This room doesn’t get the best circulation and we can’t leave the window open very far in here since the rain frequently beats this side of the house during monsoon season (now), so the fan feels wonderful here as I type.

Please don’t notice the messy, messy desk…I am a “piler” – I organize by piles. But I have 4 weeks to get this room organized and some stuff thrown out before we have to move our entire house into the garage so we can get our floors finished. Firm deadlines motivate me. But wish me luck. I am not good at organizing and throwing things away.

We also tackled another project that has been lingering for over a year now too. Once again, we had these horrible 1990’s-era brass and oak handles on our cabinets. They matched the cabinets fine, but they just looked so 90’s. (I guess the house was built in ’98.) But, they totally dated things. So over a year ago, I found some brushed nickel handles that looked really nice and changed all the cabinet handles in the kitchen, except for two. The two on the small, ‘fake’ cabinet fronts in front of the kitchen sink, the ones above the big doors below into the cabinet. You know which ones I mean? We could not find a tool small enough to get between the sink and the cabinet to be able to unscrew the handles. (Why the fake handles are there in the first place is a whole other question.) And we also had a sneaking suspicion that one of them was not screwed on, but glued on, for some reason. (Please, think before you do weird home improvements!! We often ask ourselves, why did they think that was a good idea?) So we decided to tackle removing the sink and replacing it, just to FINALLY change out those two stray, fake cabinet handles. Of course, my mother-in-law thought we might as well get a whole new sink and faucet while we were at it. So I let her twist my arm and we picked one out for the boys to install. Luckily it all went fairly smoothly and I now have a new, pretty, shiny, non-hard-water-stained sink and faucet to go with my final two cabinet handles! Yeah! Project finished after a year!

So after all that, we did take at least one day to do something fun. We drove up to Taos and visited the town and Pueblo, between summer thunderstorms. We also ate some yummy, gluten free food at Rellenos Cafe (more to come on that). My husband and I have visited Taos previously but we normally just headed for the hills for some hiking. This time we stopped at Taos Pueblo and took a look around. It was such a beautiful spot and I would recommend stopping and touring. It is one of the few Pueblos where you can take photographs (for a fee) and so I’ll leave you with a couple of my favorite photos from the day.

Tomorrow it is back to reality and back to the daily grind. And I will be posting more now that we’re back to a regular schedule. See you around!