An Easter Bonnet Can Tame the Wildest Hare

Or chicken, I guess.

So, Easter came and went with much hullabaloo.  The flyskim in-laws were in-town from California to spend the holiday, and they split their stay between our house and Mr. flyskim's sister's house, 12 blocks away.  This means that the kitchen remodel was put on hold (we got all of the cabinet doors back up and the new light fixture installed!) while they visited and we recovered.  Work starts in earnest again tomorrow after we get the car DEQ'd.  Sewing was also on hold because Mr. flyskim and I slept in the sewing room (it doubles at the guest room and while it's okay for the flyskim dad, I am not putting my mother-in-law up there with the cat boxes).  So what did happen?  Baking.

So, just a little out of focus.

As I may or may not have mentioned before, Mr. flyskim's family is orthodox Christian (Serbian to be exact), and this year, Serbian Easter and regular Easter fell on the same date.  His family has a reunion each year at Serbian Easter.  The location changes each year, and the number of people who attend depends on where it's being held.  This year, the party was up here in Portland, and because most of Mr. flyskim's family is in California, our group was rather small, about 25 people.  I made Almond Cake  with fresh raspberries.

This is the easiest cake ever (one bowl, one pan, no frosting or prepping of ingredients other than measuring) and one of the most versatile.  I made the same cake last Christmas Eve and served it with almond ice cream and chocolate and butterscotch sauces.  It can even be made a day or two ahead because it's even better if it's had some time to sit.  Just don't put any fruit or other toppings on it until you're ready to serve.  Oh, and it's pretty tasty, too.  The only reason that there was any left was because (1) I made another dessert; and (2) Despite my being the person designated to bring dessert, no fewer than three other people also brought multiple desserts.  More on that later.

Raspberry bread pudding with a vanilla cream sauce.  This was good, and it got rave reviews from the family, but I'm not super-satisfied with it.  It's the first time I've made a bread pudding, and it was apparent to me that I've got a few kinks to work out of the next one.  I used the wrong kind of bread, so the egg/cream mixture didn't fully soak into the crust.  I'd also prefer to find a recipe that doesn't use nearly two quarts (that's right, quarts) of heavy cream between the pudding and the sauce.  Maybe with a bourbon sauce next time.  Also, I didn't really love the raspberries. 

Be warned, I'm going to vent a little.  As I mentioned above, three other people brought desserts that we didn't plan for.  We had a grand total of seven desserts.  For 25 people.  That's like 8-10 servings for each person.  Every dessert except for mine was store bought, not home made.  And not from a good bakery, either.  From a local market with a mass-market set-up.  I love to bake, so I get the desire to whip up something that you ordinarily wouldn't make at home, and I'll never turn my nose up at a store-bought birthday cake (frosting = yuuummm!!!).  But I don't understand why someone would bring a last-minute, tacked-on dessert to a family event that they know is not being widely attended without checking to see if it was needed.  Were they expecting the hosts not to have planned something ahead of time?  (With Mr. flyskim's cousins that's always a possibility.)  Were they thinking that there would be nothing good?  (Also a possibility.)  Did they not want to bring wine (which would not have been turned away no matter how much wine showed up.)  But again, perhaps they should have asked and then they all wouldn't have had to take mostly untouched cakes and cupcakes home.  I suppose that I should be comforted by the fact that the only desserts that dents were made into were mine, but it's the principle.

And one last item.  Last night, in honor of the Royal Wedding, I made scones.  I use a mix.  Don't judge me.  Fisher brand is my favorite.  The scones from this mix are not too sweet (there's little worse in scones than a piece of cake masquerading as one), wonderfully moist and only need water to put together.  I threw in some chopped dried cherries and slivered almonds and replaced a little of the water with vanilla and almond extracts.

You knead these a little, divide them into three equal rounds and cut them into quarters before baking.  The box makes 12, and they're quite tasty, particularly when still warm.  I like them with jam.

So, scones to warm a cold morning, and we've had plenty of those here lately.  Cold mornings, not scones.  Oh well.  I'm going to use the rest of my afternoon off to get back to my dress-in-progress.  It's supposed to hit 75 degrees next week, and I'll want a new dress to show the warm weather how happy I am to see it.  Oh, and speaking of dresses?

Just stunning.

Yes, I took the day off for this.  Don't judge me.

Apparently, I Have No Pride, part 2

Sunday's the end of the week, right?  That being the case, I'm calling this update right on time which is no small miracle given the state of things around here.  As I mentioned, we're giving our kitchen a little spring refresh.  New countertops, fresh paint, a few needed updates.  Nothing big.  Except it is.  I don't know how people who do actual remodels do it.

We're painting the cabinets ourselves, and our entry, living and dining rooms have been doing double duty as a paint assembly line.  We have 21 cabinet doors, and each one required sanding, priming and two coats of paint.  Front and back.  Mr. flyskim took care of the sanding, but I've been in charge of the paint job.  I seriously wonder how they do this on the house selling shows in just a couple of days because this took me nearly two week working a couple of hours each night and two full Saturdays.  I just put the primer coat on the cabinet bases in the main part of the kitchen.  Paint begins tomorrow, and I couldn't be happier to see the end of this.

Here's the view of our dining room from the living room.  All the paint, and we've had to take a lot out of the kitchen to keep it from getting covered in paint and dust.  That's the last cabinet door drying on the saw horses to the left.

When the new countertops came in, we had to move the microwave.  Since we started painting almost immediately after, it's been living on the floor ever since.  Those planks on the floor are trim I'm going to use to make an awkward part of our breakfast nook look like a built-in piece of furniture (that's the plan, but who knows about the execution). 

Here's the half-painted breakfast nook.  It's actually pretty far along at this point.  What you're missing here is that off to the left, we've got a bookcase just sort of hanging out in the middle of the rest of the kitchen surrounded by all of our different paint cans.

There it is!  And there's Hyde supervising and starring in the photoshoot.  He's such a multi-tasker.  Again, this picture doesn't tell the whole story.  You can't see the large pile of donation items waiting to be taken down for storage in the basement until we can fit in a trip to Goodwill.  Those two paint swatches on the wall behind the bookcase are tests for the main part of the kitchen.  We picked the one on the right.  It's At Sea by Benjamin Moore.  The stripes in the arch were the tests for the breakfast nook color.

Speaking of At Sea, here is it on the arch wall in the breakfast nook.  The edging isn't done here, so you can still see some of the old orange peeking through.  I finished the edging in this room before dinner today.  These two colors are a perfect match for our backsplash tiles, and I'm not sure that the picture does justice to how pretty the combination is.

Here's the other wall of the breakfast nook.  These are the first completed cabinets, and I'm really pleased with how they turned out.  It was such a relief to get the doors back on so that I could put a few things away.  This is an odd little space.  We have upper cabinets and a counter, but no lower cabinets.  That's because under the counter and on the other side of the wall is the stairway to the basement.  There's beadboard under the plastic drop cloth, and I plan to paint that and the currently orange wall under the cabinets the same cream and trim them so they match the cabinet doors.  I hope that this ends up looking like an armoire rather than a hasty craft project.

 

Living with open cabinets has been an experience.  It's forced me to be more organized because you can't hide anything.  This picture was taken last week, so there have been some big changes.  Now the cabinets are completely empty, and they've all been primed.  I'm getting those doors back up on Wednesday, even if it kills me.

And one last progress shot.  The new dishwasher.  We've been replacing our appliances one at a time over the past couple of years, and the dishwasher was the last thing to go.  This one is so quiet, we have to stand next to it to figure out if it's running.  And sometimes, I have to actually touch it.  It's a little scary.  But it's so pretty. 

There's one last big push over the next couple of days.  We have to stop no matter where we are in things on Wednesday because the in-laws are coming up for Easter, and we'll need a couple of days to clean.  I don't expect to get everything done by then by a long shot, but if I can get the cabinets done and the breakfast nook close to finished, I'll be very well pleased.  Oh, and very sad.  Because of the kitchen scramble, there's been no sewing at all.  But I have the Monday after Easter off work, so I plan to be stitching like a madwoman.

Apparently, I Have No Pride

Or I would never publicly post photographic evidence of how we've been living these past couple of weeks. But first thing's first.  Here are the before shots.  We've been working on a cheap and dirty kitchen remodel.  We were originally going to just rip the whole thing out and start from scratch (except for our appliances) this summer, and we'd been saving up for that project.  But some issues have come up that have made the idea of spending a lot of money redoing a perfectly useful  (albeit old and a little crusty) kitchen more than a little unattractive.  So, we decided to see what we could do on the cheap.  We're lucky, because the layout works for us.  Here's the kitchen before.

We stripped the door frame a while ago but ran out of paint.  Our plans are to repaint all the trim, so we're actually a step ahead of the game there.

The refrigerator and range are fairly new, so those were always going to stay.  But that blond oak has been driving me batty for years.  And while I don't like the laminate floor, while we've been working on the house, it's been a godsend.  You can drip pain and stain on it and drag heavy pieces of furniture across it with no noticeable damage.  You can even take a scrubby pad and cleanser to it.  We'll be keeping this for a while longer and replace it when we're closer to wrapping up the entire downstairs.

Our current color scheme is orange and turquoise.  Honestly, the entire kitchen was turquoise when we bought the house.  Walls and countertops.  (Actually, we've since found that a lot of the house was turquoise before we bought it and the prior owners just did a sloppy "Designed to Sell" treatment before putting the house on the market, but that's another story.)  While I love blue, I couldn't cook in that. After much trial and error, orange was the only wall color that really worked with the existing countertop.  We're not orange anymore.

The dishwasher was the last appliance we replaced.  This is where the crusty comes in to play.  Oh, and that baseboard?  That's a plank from the laminate floor.  Like I said, sloppy "Designed to Sell."  And totally unnecessary.  We never thought we'd find a house that was decorated to our taste, and neither Mr. flyskim nor I is put off by wild paint colors or bad surfaces.

So, here's the new color scheme.  We're going with blue/green with ivory painted cabinets and a black laminate countertop.  We've already had that installed, and it really gives the look of soapstone.  We'll be tiling the backsplash with the above glass subway tiles.  And then there's the paint.  It's only partially done, but I think it's going to be wonderful.  I'll post the WIP pictures by the end of the week, but here's a sneak peek.

Not that this was an issue after painting our kitchen orange, but no one will be able to say we're afraid of color after this.  Pip is just thankful that it no longer looks like Halloween every time she walks into the room.

So, This is What My Blog Looks Like When it's Asleep

Sorry about the absence.  We're in the middle of a kitchen remodel, and there's been no time for anything else, inlcuding working on my half-finished Easter dress.  Which will see completion this weekend if I have anything to say about it.  Right now, most of our cabinet doors are scattered around the living room, and we have to side-step saw horses and cats everywhere we go.  Picture of the carnage tomorrow.