Category Archives: home improvement

Life is grand, a baby grand, that is!

Dang these weekends go by fast! And how many of you could see the moon?

It was soooo bright! I took this at a little before 6 am.

We spent Sunday early morning at Panera for breakfast (later than 6am, though).

We were up early. I was up at 5 am on a Sunday. How sad is that? I know it is because I didn’t make the best food choices on Saturday (too much chocolate) and I have found that I sleep poorly on those nights with constant waking and overheated. You would think that is incentive enough to not do that, right?

We then went to our home away from home (aka Home Depot) to pick up this weeks’ workings for the half bath. We should be able to have the inspector come this week to laugh at us and tell us to start over check out our plumbing.

Made up some lunch. I did some coconut flour bread, which I will post the recipe for this week. Kind of like a cornbread biscuit, really.

Plus buffalo style chicken breast with just a drizzle of blue cheese dressing on it. I am almost out of hot sauce!

Yesterday brought a new addition for our home that was kind of spur of the moment. A little background here: John and I both have music degrees, but we don’t play our original instruments anymore. John started playing piano a few years ago with an electronic keyboard. (We were going to wait until we moved into what will someday be our permanent home to get a real piano.) He then bought a very nice full span electronic keyboard, which started having issues one year after buying it. He contacted the company and they replaced the keyboard, and the same thing started happening with the new one. Obviously a defect in manufacturing. Now the company is of little help. Lame.

So, he stopped playing. He really misses it and especially with me playing the guitar a lot, he was going to buy a new keyboard for $300. Well, I figured why not get an upright to have in the house, as many of them are for sale for not too much used. I checked out on Craigs List and sent John some links. Lo and behold – there was a baby grand piano for $200 a few towns away. Friday we contacted the guy and looked at it yesterday.

It needs a serious tuning, but it is in awesome shape and a complete steal at $200! Even with the cost of moving it will be awesome and John can play. The man who owned it needs to room and just wanted to recoup his costs to move this piano. What a deal!

Now we just need to get the piano movers out to retrieve it. My real ulterior motive for getting this is that whenever we do move out of our current house, we will now have to pay for movers to do everything instead of doing U-Haul and doing it ourselves like we have always done in the past (which I keep saying I will never do again).

Latte love this afternoon:

Almond milk. I use the unsweetened, plain almond milk. I added some whey protein and it almost tasted like milk that way. I have sort of thought about trying a dairy-free challenge just for kicks, but I don’t know.

Dinner time! These are apple chicken sausages that are quite good.

Tonight is some relaxing! We can’t do much more in the half bath until the inspector gives us the okay, so we can goof around now

Did you do anything spontaneous this weekend?

Birds of Prey and renovation update

I can’t believe how fast this weekend went by! We got quite a bit done on our half bath installation. Saturday marked the day to put down the main drain line.

That meant to go down here:

I thought for sure my butt wouldn’t go down that hole. I still have that distorted view of myself. But, I was first to go down and hang the pipe – and I fit!

That hole would have had to have been a lot bigger if I was still 250 pounds.

It was kind of icky down there, but exciting to get so much stuff done. We dry fit a lot of the plumbing:

I found a newspaper down there from 1935!

Pretty cool.

Took some time to make a good dinner last night – palak chole! It is actually quite easy and quick to make.

Sunday was also filled with things.

The usual bagel (and my mom came with!):

Then a little more work on the pipes before heading out to Raptor Fest!

This was so cool. Most of these are rehabbed birds that were injured and cannot be released again due to their injuries, so are now used for education purposes. A couple are captive-bred birds. Of course, now I don’t remember what some of these are. So, help me out if you can.

Red Tail Hawk:

Eurasian Eagle Owl (obviously not native)

The owls are so focused and their eyes are amazing. Descended from dinosaurs? I can see it. We then watched some more owls in a small presentation (pictures not so good there).

Video of the Eurasion owl. They are licensed by the DEC to have this owl.

Very cool. Notice how the owl’s ears are asymmetric? I didn’t know that almost every owl is like that, presumably so that can tell if a sound is coming from above or below. This owl can hear a mouse under the snow at 100 yards away!

Definitely and enjoyable weekend (and the snow is starting to melt – yay!!).

Question: Did you have a great weekend?

Bagels and sprouts!

It’s Wednesday, or Bagel Day at casa Finding Radiance. Both John and I rode the bike trainers before breakfast today. Usually I ride in the morning and he rides in the evenings, but he happened to be up. I got in 10 miles in 41 minutes this morning.

Then it was time to hit Orange Cat for breakfast. They were out of my blueberry bagel – wahhh! But I did have cinnamon raisin:

Love these signs:

We spent a nice morning chatting as well. Lots of decisions to be made around here.

Lookie what I found growing!

Sprouts! So happy to see these. Happy enough that John proclaimed me a geek. These are my snapdragons. They sprouted much sooner than expected. Obviously I need to cull, but the seeds are smaller than poppyseeds and hard not to get too many in there. I need to winnow these down to 36 plants. I will plant some other seeds this week. Grow strong little seedlings!

Lunch break included some of the new SeaPak Popcorn Fish.

You must find these! They are made from chunks of fish, not pressed and formed minced fish. You know I am not a big fish lover, so me really liking these says something. Maybe it is the hot sauce, though.

Update on the half bath. Our washer is now disconnected and pipes cut, so that means laundry down the street.

Here is the scary hole I put in the floor:

Crew forekitty is inspecting the job. This is where the toilet drain is going to go. We are running pipe underneath, which means we have to go down in this hole! 😯 😯 😯

The framing around the pantry area:

I am standing in the area that will be closed off for the bath. Don’t laugh that the shelves are still in there. We just need to work this way for now. John did most of the framing. I cut a hole in the floor and then was doing wall repair.

Enjoying the process so far! The most awesome thing about this project to date is that John rooted out some old work pants and found his wedding ring in the pocket that has been lost for almost 2 years! Now we match again.

Wonder twin powers – activate! (anyone else remember that?)

Latte time. Showing John doing his husbandly duty instead of the finished product 😀

With a new item.

These are Special Dark buttons. Found them at K-Mart last night. They are like M&Ms, only with a crispier coating.

I might have had more of these…with some peanuts… 😳

Dinner time included some cooked chicken and broccoli with some coconut rice. I am testing a recipe for someone’s Iphone app, otherwise I would share it right now.

Tasty.

John is out for poker, so I have some soap to finish up, seed planting, and some walls to work on. I sure know how to have fun! Here is some red clover tea that I made today:

Question: Anything sprouting in your area yet?

Chock full weekend

We got up to a lot of shenanigans this weekend! I had a job interview in the morning on Saturday at a garden center to work in the nursery through the growing season. She will let me know later this week. It would be nice to do, but if nothing comes of it, that is okay.

On Saturday, John and I started the demo on the laundry room. I love how the real ugly comes after demo:

Bye-bye foam fake wood vinyl floor! We have been moving those shelves around to avoid having to move them to another room. It’s working okay so far, but we shall see.

This used to be a porch at one time, but it was enclosed sometime in the home’s past. So, we got to see the original porch floor.

So purty. We had to take a break and treat ourselves to lunch – so it was off for pizza wraps!

So good. Then we did more work and finished up all the floor demo removing the underlayment as well.

I love doing renovations! I flipped 2 houses and that was such a rewarding experience for me, even though it was incredibly physically demanding.

Sunday brought some bagels, baking, planting, and more renovation!

I made these low carb rolls from a cookbook recipe that I will be sharing on Thursday. They are kind of like cream puff rolls. Very interesting and quite easy! With cheese and broccoli.

Did some seed planting! Got the snapdragons started. They need 12 weeks indoors.

This is my first time doing snaps from seeds. They are about the size of poppyseeds or smaller. I am growing plants for my garden and for my mom’s garden this year and I have 3 more kinds to do.

Then it was back to renovations! We started the framing for the wall and door. Going to try putting in a pocket door; hope it works

Handy m’am!

This weekend went buy awfully fast, I have to say. Guess that is what happens when you cram stuff into it!

I made up a quick dinner tonight of some sauteed shrimp and more broccoli!

I ate pretty well this weekend, so that was good. Some weekends I eat a lot and others not so much. Of course, keeping busy sure can help with that! I am so excited about doing this house project! We ran out of wood, so no more work tonight. Guess I should do some relaxing! If only tomorrow wasn’t back to work 😀

Bagels and building permits

It’s Wednesday, so you know what that means! I was up raring for a bike ride. If only it could be outdoors. It was 2 degrees out this morning, so that just wasn’t happening LOL! I hopped on the trainer for 10 miles and read. I have to say I am loving reading while on the trainer. The time goes by so fast, and I don’t lose speed (which is what I was worried about). I just have to be careful not to drip sweat on my reading material. 😳 Then we were off to bagels! Carb up day today. I had a wheat bagel. These are made locally and tasted very fresh. Nummy. I was sad when it was gone. We also stopped afterward at the county building and are given the go ahead to start on our laundry room remodel! I am so excited to start ripping it apart. 😈 We are walling off this portion to a separate room and adding a toilet and sink. Then this part will become a pantry with doors so anyone who comes to visit doesn’t have to look at all my oat products. Of course, things could possibly come to a screeching halt once we open up the floor and see what has to be done to put in the waste pipe. With a 100+ year-old house, you just never know. But I shall be optimistic. 😀 This should make for some good blog fodder, at any rate.

Lunch time! Laughing cow egg/egg white omelet.

I split a pear with John. He asked if I wanted half, so I decided to have that. I should have had a whole one because I wanted more 😀 Then I had some nuts. I am starting to crack out on these. Must be careful.

<insert whine> I got stuck with one of the worst dictating PAs for work today. I am not sure why, but I judge the quality of their work based on the quality of their dictations. I figure if they consistently dictate sloppily, rushed, or just poorly – then that is someone I will avoid going to them for medical care. Isn’t that weird?

Two of my favorite things for a snack today: Only a few more months until I can pick my own!

John set up to make coconut chicken curry for dinner tonight.

From this recipe. Changes are lined through.

Coconut Curry Chicken

1 ½ cups white rice brown rice (ours was already cooked and frozen)

2 teaspoons curry powder

One (13.5 ounce) can coconut milk

4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cut into strips

2 teaspoons five-spice powder

1 jalapeno, chopped (seeds removed for milder flavor) didn’t have

½ large white onion, finely chopped

Salt

Pepper

In a medium saucepan, bring 3 ¼ cups salted water to a boil. Add the rice, bring to a simmer, cover and cook for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, heat 1 tablespoon olive oil over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until translucent. Stir in the curry powder and cook for 1 minute. Add the coconut milk and jalapeno and cook until reduced by half, about 7 minutes. Toss together the chicken, five-spice and ½ teaspoon salt and ½ teaspoon pepper. In a large, heavy skillet, heat 2 tablespoons olive oil over medium-high heat until shimmering. Increase the heat to high and stir-fry the chicken until just cooked through, about 6 minutes. Stir in the coconut sauce.

I had mine with sauteed brussels and no rice. Sprinkled with a few cashews on as well. Easy and tasty!

Now I am off with my mom for a lecture at the library (not the library!!) on perennials. Should be fun! thinkspringthinkspringthinkspring

Question: Are you handy around the house?

Flashback Friday kitchen edition!

I decided to take today off from exercise, since it is the start of my weekend and I ran 6+ miles yesterday. I am rethinking how much I run a little bit. So, it was a lazy morning at home, and I used the rest of the sweet potato I cooked yesterday to make some sweet potato muffins! I used fresh cranberries, too.

These came out almost more like biscuits. Very dense and heavy, but tasty. I think they would be a great snack for after a workout. I’ll post the recipe this weekend.

I got a new ingredient to try this week call glucomannan (konyaku?). It is recommended in a book I am reading by Cassandra Forsythe Women’s Health Perfect Body Diet .She is one of the coauthors for NROLW, so I wanted to read her book. It is a fibrous thickener and I used it in a green smoothie:

That got super, super thick! I actually ended up putting it in a bowl and eating it with a spoon. It was just like pudding. Gives me some fun ideas to try. 1 tsp of this stuff will gel 1 cup of liquid, so I think I used too much for my smoothie. It has no taste, unlike the shiratake noodles made from the same stuff.

When I was baking this morning, I was remembering how our kitchen looked when we moved into this house 3 years ago. Fun fact – do you know that I never stepped foot in this house before we bought it? Since we were purchasing long distance (IL to NY), each of us came out and looked at places separately. We ended up buying a house John found on his trip, and I only had pictures to go on. Guess that means I trust John knows my taste enough 🙂

I don’t mind a rehab challenge (I have renovated 2 houses doing most of the work myself), so I was okay with seeing this as the kitchen:

Note there were no upper cupboards! And that floor was not wood or even laminate. It was vinyl and not even secured down, so it would bunch up under your feet or when you moved something. We won’t even talk about the stove that would set off the smoke alarm any time you baked something, or the fridge that kept food around 50 degrees 😯 The price was right, though. For a few months, we had dishes stacked on the counter in wooden crates. Martha Stewart would have popped a blood vessel if she visited us.

We bought unfinished cabinets for the top and painted them white, then we painted the lower ones as well. Got a new stove and fridge, painted the hood over the stove white to match (and moved it). Painted the walls. Then we put down vinyl tile on the floor. Would have loved ceramic, but not in the budget.

We did not spend a lot on this kitchen, probably about $1500 including the appliance, but we brought the value up dramatically just by a little sweat equity! It’s funny that I absolutely hated the countertops (you see the tile in most food pictures), because I think it is floor tile. But once the rest of the kitchen was done, I am okay with living with the counters for a while.

Are you tired of seeing the BBQ chicken salad for dinner? Hope not, cause that is what I had!

All in all, I had a very good day. We got the bikes down and I think we might go for a ride tomorrow! Have to bundle up, but I am so itching to get on my bike. I have missed my friend for the last few months.

Tomorrow I will be running my own 5K virtually with Shelley for blogger run day!

Pixie wishes all of you a good weekend! She says “Relax a little…”