Shepherd's Pie Winter Night Dinner

It was my turn to cook dinner and since I was working from home today, it was the perfect time to come up with something fun, different and warming since it's freezing outside this week! Let's be honest though for a second, I don't cook very much. Not because I don't like to, but because Mr. K is just so darn good at it! Seriously though, he loves to cook and he's great at it. Great at coming up with meals on the fly, while I always need to follow a recipe. But that's ok because I enjoy following a recipe and trying new things (to a certain extent).

Anyways, tonight I made Shepherd's Pie. I was going to make a bunch of mini pies, but decided to just make two and then make the rest in a big pan. I followed a couple of different recipes, so I've combined those here. Mr. K is usually the mashed potato maker in the house, but he said that I may have taken over that duty. I was pretty impressed, if I do say so myself ;)

I have to admit though, the only photos I took are over the mini-Shepherds pies I made. I forgot to take a picture of the big one. BUT it looked just like this, only in an 8x8 ceramic dish.

Yields: 4-6 Servings
Temperature: 450 degrees
Cook Time: 15 minutes

Mashed Potatoes: 
3 large potatoes, peel and cubed
1/2 C. Sour Cream
1/4 C. Milk
1 tb butter

Filling:
1 3/4 lb. ground beef
salt and pepper
1 carrot, peeled and chopped (I had a bag of baby carrots in the fridge so I just chopped about 10-15 of those)
1 medium onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 C. chopped mushrooms (about 4 large mushrooms)
1/2 C. Frozen peas
1 tsp paprika
2 tb butter
2 tb flour
1 C. beef broth
2 tsp Worcestershire
1/2 C. shredded cheddar cheese (I actually forgot to use this, and it turned out just fine!)
2 tb chopped fresh parsley leaves

Preheat oven to 450 degrees

1. Boil potatoes in salted water until potatoes are tender, about 15 minutes 
2. While potatoes are boiling, heat skillet over medium-high heat. Add ground beef to pan and season with salt and pepper. 
3. Brown meat - toss in carrots, mushrooms, onions and garlic 
4. Cover and cook this mixture for 5 minutes, stirring frequently 
5. Stir in peas, parsley and paprika 
6. In a second, smaller pan, heat butter and flour for about 2 minutes (make sure not to burn the butter!). Add in the Worcestershire and beef broth. Whisk until thick, about 1-2 minutes. Add the gravy to meat pan. 
7. Drain potatoes, put into a bowl (I just put them back into the pot I boiled them in), mix in sour cream, butter and milk, mash until smooth 
8. Pour meat mixture into casserole dish, and top with mashed potatoes. Top potatoes with cheese. 
9. Cook until potatoes are browned on top 
10. Let cool and enjoy! 

Mudroom Makeover

Happy Fall!!! Tis the season for boots, sneakers and winter jackets galore.  We found ourselves having a pile of our shoes in the mudroom (the small area when coming in from the garage), my purse, and our work bags on the island chairs, and our keys strewn about the kitchen. We had this bench in our basement being unused, so we measured it and decided that it would fit perfectly in the mudroom. With this, we have a place to put our shoes and our work bags when we come right in the door.

Here's the transformation!

Before:

Ha! Don't mind Mia, she's taking the opportunity to sneak into the garage. 

After:

The chalkboard frame is also from Home Goods. Our favorite!  

Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll have completed my DIY cushion for this bench. I had an unproductive trip to G Street Fabrics last weekend for a pattern I like, so hopefully I'll find something on my next trip. I want to continue the blues and yellows into here too, and I'm thinking an indoor/outdoor fabric will be the best because I see this getting a lot of wear and tear over time. I'm thinking something in this realm of patterns:

Credit: Savvy Design

Credit: Seawater Style

Credit: Home Design Handbook

Butler's Pantry Makeover

We wanted to continue the living room color scheme - blues and yellows - into the kitchen and butler's pantry. This was the second piece of wall decor we hung (behind the mudroom chalkboard frame you'll see in another post), so we thought this would be a good spot to try to it out and see if we like the colors and everything. So far, we love it!

The biggest obstacle we came across while hanging this one was that the hole that we were going to be drilling was right over an outlet, which according to my pre-drywall photos was very, very close to electrical wires. We debated just hanging the piece with Command velcro strips I picked up at Home Depot, but there's too much glass underneath,  so if it ever fell, we'd lose a lot of liquor.... I mean, we'd have a lot of glass to clean up ;) And no one wants that.

It's really amazing how wall art can really start making a room feel more homey. And for the record, we love Home Goods, and that's where we got this piece, the chalkboard frame you'll see next week, and a few other things for the powder room. For right now, the price can't be beat until we're ready to settle on something really expensive, which we're not ready for.

Here's the transformation!

Before:

After:

Living Room Productivity

Hello!
It's been so long since I've updated this blog, but I've found so much more motivation now. It's a beautiful, sunny, Fall morning outside, I have a cup of coffee next to me, the cats are running around, there's Country music playing from the TV, french toast is smelling beautifully behind me and we're preparing for a productive and fun day ahead of us! There's no better way to start this day than to take in and appreciate our home, what has become of it over the last six months. Yes, I can't believe we've been in here for six months already. It's been flying by, but we have already made so many memories. We've hosted so many of our closest friends in our guest rooms, had great conversation with each other and with our friends at the kitchen island and have started to learn what home ownership truly means.

The sun was shining beautifully through the windows earlier, so I had the inspiration to finally take some pictures around the house and actually update the blog. I had such good intentions when I started this blog, thinking that I would have all the time in the world to update, but alas, life has gotten in the way. At least I've found it again, so be prepared for some updates over the next few week, especially on DIY projects I've bravely taken on!

My update for today is the living room. We finally got a new coffee table - replacing the glass one - and an accent chair I've been looking forever for. The "reading corner" (if it will ever actually be read in, I don't know) is still being added to - with a cute side table and maybe a basket for a blanket and books. The living room itself might not look to different, but it's feeling more like home to us every day.

 Living Room View:

I absolutely love everything about the Fall season, and these decorations are making me so happy!

Coming up on the blog will be our updated Butler's Pantry, Mudroom, second guest room and a few DIY projects I'm working on. So happy to be starting this up again and share with you our house that's slowly but surely becoming our home :) Happy Sunday! 

Fall is Here!

So, technically not for a few more days, but the weather and temperature outside is telling me otherwise. I am so excited, I am a huge lover of all things Fall: sweaters, jeans with boots, leaves (though our new neighborhood probably won't have any aside from the 50+ year old trees surrounding the edge of the neighborhood which will definitely be absolutely gorgeous), pumpkins (and most things that have pumpkin in them or in the name).

I also am a huge lover of all things Pinterest. Surprise, surprise. I realized that I have a board for Christmas and another one for Holidays in general, but I don't have one just for Fall. So that happened this morning. Decorations, fall recipes, you name it, it will be on there. I found these super cute leaf placemats and coasters from Bed Bath and Beyond that I haven't yet ordered, but they're in my "save for later" cart, which I can bet will be ordered within the next week. Perfect timing for when we return from our second-to-last wedding of the year.

We've finally started updating our home - the accent chair I've been dying to have? - finally here! Our guestrooms - two out of three rooms are "done" (for the time being). We only need to put the headboard together that we've had for, oh, almost a month for the second guestroom. I can't wait to take more pictures and post these updates. It's been a long time!!

Progress is being made!

So we've been on a huge decorating hiatus because we just got overwhelmed - as did our wallets - so we stopped making these big decisions. BUT we've started up again and I can't wait to show you what we've come up with. As a tease, what we've been working on...

• 2nd Guestroom 
• Living Room coffee table (to replace our current glass one) 
• Kittens (that's right, we adopted two kitties) 
• To be decided this week: basement TV stand because the aforementioned item(s) are just too curious and love all of the cords and cables that are on the ground right now. 

I just got the notification that our coffee table has shipped, so hopefully we'll have updated photos this weekend!! Nothing is better than updating the blog (finally) with a kitten or two in my lap :) 

Until later... 

House Updates Galore!

After going through photos on my computer, I realized there is a good number of pictures I haven't posted. They're not super exciting, and they're not the most up to date - those will come later. But it's fun to look back and see how things have progressed. Notice how I didn't say how far we've come, because we really do have a long way's to go, but for now it's comfortable and it's becoming home more each and every day.

We've updated the basement since these photos were taken - we've put the bookshelves together, and moved SO many more boxes down there! We'll show an update later but for now, this is the progress we've made. We still need to get a TV stand/entertainment center for our TV, but that's been put on hold because of our lifestyle right now. We've been spending the majority of our TV-watching time upstairs in the living room, so we're going to put our strength, effort and money into that room right now (in addition to an office), until we start clearing out the basement and making it more of a space we'll hang out in. It's only two of us here, so we don't need multiple spaces for downtime quite yet.

Basement Progress:

The next set of updates is our kitchen - we've added island chairs, and they've been awesome! We had a hard time deciding what we should do, and I think I've said before that in a perfect world, we would have gotten different ones, but it wasn't in the budget, and won't be for awhile, to spend $150-200 on a chair. We bought two different ones to try them out - they were two totally different styles - and ended up with this one. They are so comfortable, and that's what mattered most to us because we spend so much time sitting at the island - or rather, I do, watching Mr. K cook!

The most amount of work has probably gone to the outside, mostly the backyard but also the front yard! We've gotten really into flowers and herbs, so I'll share a few with you now, and then post the updates later to see how much they've grown until now! 

Before the mulch:

We used Garden Pro by Harvest, Espresso Brown mulch. We really liked the color of it, plus it was "on sale" at Home Depot for 4 for $10. I say "on sale" because the bags are usually $2.50, but doesn't the 4 for $10 sound so much better?!? Anyways, we were told at Home Depot that we had to be really careful and only handle it right out of the bag with gloves (I wouldn't have done it without gloves regardless, but it was a good tip) because of the dye that was in the mulch. After it got wet and then dry again, it would be fine. I still have to wash those gloves soon!

After my amazing mulching skills:

If you have any good tips about growing sod and keeping it super healthy, feel free to drop me a line! The sod was put down in mid-late April and we still have a few patches that are struggling and there are still lines between the pieces of sod. Soon and very soon we hope to have a regular-looking lawn full of healthy, beautiful green grass!! 

A close-up of our trellises - the flowers are mandavilla flowers combined with annuals around the edge of the pot (They've since grown, especially the one on the far right in this picture, so I can't wait to show you soon!): 

Decorating: Shifting Priorities

I keep thinking almost every day that it's been yet another day (weeks at this point) since I've written a post. To be honest though, not much has changed in the house since the last update. The majority of the changes have actually happened in the backyard which I'll be sure to post soon. We've added fun plants and lots of herbs, and have a table and chairs that we've already enjoyed a few times. We're starting to pick back up where we left off in terms of furnishing the house. Our priorities have shifted a bit, sort of.

The living room is our main priority now since we find ourselves spending the most amount of time upstairs in that room even though our basement is outfitted with our new couch and TV. But the living room is just so convenient, and we're still looking for the perfect TV stand for the basement in order to really tie everything together. But back to the main priority... we're looking for a new coffee table and end table set. Not necessarily a matching set, but some sort of combination. Right now we have a glass coffee table which is very pretty, it just doesn't suit the needs of the room. But it's working for us for the time being, so we're thankful for that. We're really into the natural, distressed wood sort of look, or anything that's more casual and shabby-chic, cottage-esque feel, if you will. We found a set on Craigslist that's only 2 years old from Pottery Barn, that's antique white/distressed wood so we're crossing our fingers that we get it.

When we moved we said we wouldn't buy any furniture from Craigslist for our house, but certain things like this we're okay with because we know it's good quality and it's really exactly what we're looking for. And sometimes you come across some great deals on really amazing furniture. We'll see though - they had the ad up and it didn't say a retail price or what price they're looking for; they just said to make an offer. I feel like we're bidding on a house, not knowing what other people have bid. I find that a bit strange but oh well.

Besides the coffee table and end tables, we're really looking to complete the room with a rug, a reading nook complete with an accent chair and cute side table with a basket for blankets and a book. We have a great floor lamp already in that corner, so we just really need to complete the look. But wow, finding a rug has probably been the most difficult part. We stopped looking for awhile but now we're really picking up steam, it's just been so hard to decide if we want a solid color, bordered rug or patterned. We were leaning away from patterned and more towards a bordered because a patterned 8x10 might get a little too crazy in terms of matching other accent pieces with it. But a bordered one might be too boring. And I'm not sure if a solid color will do what we want it to. However, after starting to look at rugs again online, we've been looking at everything!

I think our biggest problem is knowing HOW to decorate, what goes with what, and what is acceptable to actually put together. We're learning, and we'll get a good theme going on sometime soon!

As for painting, because a lot of people have asked us when we're going to paint - that won't be happening for awhile. We've already noticed a fair amount of nail pops all around the house, to be expected as the foundation settles, and even though we haven't seen cracking yet, that's expected too at some point in the next 10 months. Since our first floor is so open, we're going to wait the full year until we paint because we don't want to have to patch it ourselves (when the builder fixes the cracks or nail pops, they will only paint over the with the standard color, not the one we paint it with ourselves). We decided though that we might start with the upstairs bedrooms as practice if we decide the downstairs is something we could indeed tackle ourselves.

Basically how this whole new house thing works with our builder, is that we have a 60 day warranty check, and then a one year check. At the 60 day they'll do things like fix doors that might be off (our powder room door is a tad off in terms of how it closes. It's a bit higher off the ground on one side than it is the other. They might hammer in the nail pops and fix some hardwood flooring that starts to separate (again, to be expected). They said they know the areas that are most prone to it throughout the house depending on where the floor joists are. All of the crack repairs aren't done until the one year mark though because they will continue to happen. It's so interesting to go through this process and see how much a house shifts over the course of just a couple of months so far. Yeah, it's annoying to see the studs through the wall and the nail pops throughout the house, but it's just the way it goes. It's what we signed up for!

(Edit: We didn't end up getting the coffee table and end tables that we really liked :/ We definitely didn't offer enough money, but oh well. We'll find something even better!)

Online Furniture Shopping

Furnishing a home is tough work! It's expensive too, and in a perfect world we would have every piece that we want, when we want (yesterday), where we want it. But, the beauty of not being able to do that is giving us some time to be flexible and realize what it is that we truly want in our house, what we're willing to splurge on, and prioritize those rooms and items that we really want and need. I'd say our priorities have already shifted since we moved in, and we ended up getting a couple of our key items off the list early, so we find ourselves kinda cruising right now. But that's what happened to our neighbors too, they said. They did a lot in the first couple months, and they've kinda slacked off for a bit. We're already in that position, but we're okay with it.

The next items to come in our list of priorities: 

Living room coffee table - right now we have the glass one, which is so pretty! But we're finding that it's not so functional for the space that we've turned our living room into. We hang out upstairs a lot more than I think we planned on. We watch a lot of our shows upstairs (in the living room) instead of going into the basement. We want our living room to reflect more of a comfortable and casual kind of place, so we're thinking a wooden type piece, something like this: 

Coffee Table from World Market

Love the Coffee table - image from arhitekturaplus

Dining Room chairs - we have a set of 4, plus two dining room tables, but I'm not so much a fan of the chairs. They're not the nicest (they're pretty), but just not what we're going to want long-term. I thought about how cool it would be to resurface an older set, if I found some at an estate sale, antique shop, etc. But I'm not sold on that anymore. Instead, here are a few options I thought of: 

Dining Chairs #2 by krista-montes featuring italian furniture

The patterned ones would be the heads of the table (although i'd like something pretty different for the heads, maybe with arms, or semi-arms. 

Also, an accent chair for the living room is what I'd love right now to create a reading nook of sorts with a cute side table and a basket for magazines/blankets, etc. But again, we're needing to find a rug that we love too. All in due time... 

My point really for this post was to showcase the websites I frequent for furniture, and to gather other input as well. What other sites (fairly priced) am I missing out on!?

Joss & Main

One Kings Lane

Hay Needle (love their styleboards)

World Market

Wayfair 

Stores: Target, Kohls, C&B 2, West Elm (sometimes, usually their sale section)

What other ones are good? I'm sure I'm forgetting some off my own list.