Painting Oak Cabinets - Part 2: The Fall...maybe?

Remember back when I was so excited to paint the guest bathroom cabinets? It went so smoothly and within a few days I had practically brand new cabinets. On that high I jumped right in and decided to paint our master bathroom cabinets as well. And that's where the circle of insanity started. But first let's take a quick look at where we were a year ago.

Yuck yuck yuck. Brown walls, towel racks falling off the walls, and those oak cabinets. But then we painted! And it was infinitely better! But those cabinets still mocked me.

And they continued to mock me, even throughout the painting process.

It all started out fine, I even got Kacey to sand down everything for me (yay for Tom Sawer-ing out the work!). The cabinet base was primed and painted pretty quickly, but it all went downhill with the drawers and doors.

In the few weeks between painting the guest bathroom and the master bathroom the outside temperature decided to rise about 20 degrees. Full blown Phoenix summer was in full swing at 115 degrees at 6pm. I had been painting the doors in the garage, which now became a human sized oven a la Hansel and Gretel. But instead of being inside a delicious candy house, I was stuck painting as quickly as I could to try to prevent the paint from drying as soon as it touched the wood. Since I could only stand to be outside for 10 minutes at a time, this went on for days. It stretched into weeks. I wanted to break the doors in half from my fury, but that would have left me with no doors and a messy bathroom with nowhere to hide my stuff.

Eventually I put the last coat on the front of the doors and Kacey helped me screw in the hardware. Are the new cabinets amazing and make our bathroom look 1,000,000 times better? Yes. Was it worth it? Uhhhh, not sure yet, ask me in a few months when I've stopped cringing every time I go into the garage. (But yes, it was worth it, absolutely.) For now though, let's forget about those times and instead bask in the glow that is non orangey oak cabinets. I'm sort of giddy when I look at how far this bathroom has come!

Linking up with Inspire Me Please - Linky Party 

Literary Inspirations - BSC Kristy's Great Idea - Claudia

"Claudia answered it again, this time wearing a baggy yellow-and-black-checkered shirt, black pants, red jazz shoes, and a bracelet that looked like it was made from a telephone cord. Her earrings were dangling jointed skeletons that jumped around when she moved."

On to the fun outfits! We covered Kristy first last week in honor of her being president of the BSC, but Claudia is vp, so she's up next. As I said last time, Claudia is my favorite for a variety of reasons - mainly her sense of style and her affinity for junk food. My kind of girl. For some reason though, this outfit seems tame. I seem to remember really insane combos like mismatched shoes on purpose and stuff like paper mache snakes braided into her hair. Or something like that. Maybe in the next book...

Mexican Spiced Egg Muffins

Do you ever not eat breakfast because you're running late for work and it's all you can do to make sure you have pants on, much less eat a wholesome breakfast? Is that just me?

After the third straight day of eating a bag of dry Cocoa Puffs in the car during my commute I figured it was time for a change. (Note, that change was not to stop buying Cocoa Puffs.) What started as an attempt to be an actual adult and eat more than sugar coated flour turned into one of my favorite grab and go breakfasts - the infamous egg muffin! Ok, so I have no idea what these are actually called, so I'm sticking with egg muffin. You basically make omelets in a muffin tin and then store those little buggers in a ziplock bag in the refrigerator and eat them all week long. A-freaking-mazing.

These ones have a Mexican flair to them with barbacoa, chili powder, garlic, and oregano and are lip smackingly tasty. I wish I had one right now, but alas, I made these last week and they're long gone. They're easy to make and extremely addictive.

First, whisk your eggs and milk together and add the spices.

I used prepackaged barbacoa (spiced shredded beef) from my grocery store, but you can use any shredded meat. Chop up the onions and kale.

  Then layer away! I start with the meat, then the onions, then the cheese, and lastly the kale.

Pour the egg mixture over everything. I find a soup ladle makes this much easier. 

Bake in the oven for 15-18 minutes and eat them all!!!

These hold up very well in the fridge and are just as good the next day (and the next) after being heated in the microwave for 30 seconds. A much healthier alternative to Cocoa Puffs.

Recipe:
8 eggs
1/2 cup milk
2 TBS oregano
2 teaspoons chili powder
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
salt and pepper to taste
Barbacoa (or any shredded beef, pork, or chicken)
shredded cheese (I used cheddar)
1/2 onion
1 bunch kale
Optional - salsa for topping

- Preheat oven to 350
- Whisk eggs and milk together, add spices. Chop onion and kale - enough for each muffin cup to hold a few pieces
- Spray muffin tin with nonstick cooking spray
- Layer meat, onion, cheese, and kale into each muffin cup
- Pour egg mixture on top of meat/veggies
- Optional - top each cup with a spoonful of salsa 
- Bake for 15-18 minutes
- Let cool slightly then remove from tin. Eat immediately or store in an airtight container in the refrigerator. To reheat, microwave for 30 seconds

4th of July

I hope everyone had a great extended 4th of July weekend! We spent part of the time with friends, which involved swimming, eating too much delicious food, and some pretty intense guys vs girls Sequence battles. Sunday we headed up north to Cottonwood to escape the valley heat. Joke was on us though, because impending storms meant the heat and humidity was worse than home. Not to be deterred, we wandered around the old main street part of town and did our fair share of wine tasting. Definitely making plans to go back there. 

Literary Inspirations - BSC Kristy's Great Idea - Kristy

"I glanced at Mary Anne. She and I were still in our school clothes. I was wearing jeans and sneakers......and I was wearing a blue hair band."


And we're back with another nostalgic run of the Literary Inspiration series. I had so much fun doing the American Girl books a few years ago that I decided to turn to another one of my favorite childhood series - The Baby-Sitters Club books!

Did you love these as much as I did? They were apparently very polarizing books in the 3rd and 4th grade, and you either loved them and pretended to be the characters or hated them. Clearly, I loved them. It was my dream to be Claudia because she had the best outfits, was super artistic, had her own phone in her room, and had junk food hidden everywhere. The fact that I wasn't asian or the least bit artistic was apparently not an issue, and I was determined to be just like her. Only maybe with better grades.

One of the best parts of the books were the outfit descriptions. All the main characters got one, and if you were really lucky, sometimes there would be two or three outfits for one of the girls. Usually it was Claudia or Stacy, which is fine because they always had the best outfits anyway. And even though I want to start out with one of their outfits, I'm going to start at the beginning with book #1 - Kristy's Great Idea, and the founder herself, Kristy Thomas. Right now the plan is to do a set for each girl as described in the first book and then move on to the next book. I know there are like 200 of these things, so I have no idea how long this will last (or how many of these books I can find at the library).  But we'll try for the first 4/5 books and then see where we're at.