[Livin' the good life] Pre-Christmas Visit

The week before Christmas, my little sister and brother came to visit us. They flew in the day after they finished their finals at BYU, with minds relieved and bodies tired. After the airport pickup, we decided to spend the day in Chicago. We went to the German market at Daley Plaza, saw "the bean", walked along the lake, did a little shopping, saw the Macy's tree, and of course stopped by for some deep dish pizza Chicago-style.



One evening, we decided to have an IRON CHEF CHALLENGE. We watched an episode of Iron Chef America and then headed to the store. Bethany and I were on a team and Neal and Luke were our competitors. We were in charge of the Entree and the boys were in charge of Appetizers and Dessert. Both teams picked out a "secret ingredient" for the other team to use in their dish(es). We chose cream cheese for the boys and they got us a bag of Cheetos. Lovely.





We took turns in the kitchen creating our concoctions and the boys went first with their appetizers.
Neal got stuck cutting the onions. It made him cry. ;)




The made us a Cream Cheese and Asparagus Fritter that was surprisingly insanely tasty.




Seth was pretty entertained during the cooking madness:



Bethany and I went next, and we decided to incorporate the Cheetos into each element of our dish -- the protein, the starch and the sauce.
So, we made: Cheeto Crusted Chicken with Cheeto Cheesy Potatoes, and a Spicy Chili Cheeto sauce.

Don't adjust the color on your screen, that is really the color of our dish. -- But c'mon, our secret ingredient was CHEETOS! What do you expect?
Let's just say, it tasted a lot better than it looked. Especially the sauce. That was a kick'n sauce -- if I may say so myself.



The boys rounded out the meal with a Creamy Strawberry and Ice Cream parfait.



Me, with our not-so-impartial judge. He just couldn't decide who won, but secretly I'm declaring the girls as triumphant for embracing the secret ingredient whole-heartedly. :)



Overall, it was such a fun thing to do and I highly recommend it. (It would also be a fun double-date idea...)

The rest of the week went way too fast, but that's only because we were having so much fun.

Highlights of the week: Our attempt at a gingerbread house masterpiece (I say attempt because it was about a mile off of being a "masterpiece"); staying up late talking and laughing harder than I've laughed in a long time; seeing Neal laugh harder than I've ever seen him; bowling and considering breaking 100 as a HUGE accomplishment -- we are all a little rusty --; Tripoly with the candy we were supposed to use for the gingerbread masterpiece; and more...

It was a great week -- thanks for coming you guys!

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Posted By Emily to Livin' the good life at 12/27/2011 09:56:00 AM

[Livin' the good life] House Tour Day #4

Our family room is where we spend 90% of our time. It was absolutely one of the reasons we bought this home. We actually did the least amount of reno in this room, we only had to paint and touch up some of the stain. When we bought the home it was painted a bright -- and I mean BRIGHT -- peach/pink. It was almost florescent.



We toned down the peach and decided to go with a neutral creme. I felt this allowed the fireplace and ceiling to be the star instead of trying to compete. The only other challenge in this room was the space planning. It is a large, wide open room, so we had to figure out how to make the best use of the space. Since we decided to make the former dining room into our living room, we put our dining table here as well as our sectional from our old home. In the back corner we created an office area for Luke, and adjacent to that we created a little reading niche with two chairs.











This concludes our house tour for now. We are almost finished with our kitchen -- just a couple of projects to finish up -- so we'll share that as soon as we get it done.

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Posted By Blogger to Livin' the good life at 11/14/2011 02:23:00 PM

[Livin' the good life] Veteran's Day

I hope everyone has had a great Veteran's Day. I think it is so fitting that Veteran's Day is in November -- the month of Thanksgiving. I am so grateful for all of the men and women that have served our country and fought for the freedoms and opportunities that we enjoy every day. Sometimes it is easy to lose sight of how lucky we are to live in this great country. I love America and I am deeply grateful to all of our Veterans.

P.S. My "house tour" got interrupted by the fact that my power cord died this week. A new one is on the way, so hopefully I'll have my computer up and running soon. (I had no idea how dependent I am on my laptop!)

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Posted By Blogger to Livin' the good life at 11/11/2011 06:44:00 PM

[Livin' the good life] House Tour Day #3

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Posted By Emily to Livin' the good life at 11/04/2011 09:16:00 AM

[Livin' the good life] House Tour Day #2

The first room(s) we tackled in our house was the entryway and living room. When we bought the house, the previous owners used this room as a formal dining room, but we thought that was a little strange walking right into the dining room, so we decided it made more sense as a living room.
It was all decked out with popcorn ceilings, gaudy chandeliers, skinny mirrors and all the walls were covered in peach and teal floral wallpaper. HELLO 80's!


(This picture doesn't even do it justice. It was pretty bad...)

These pictures are during the process. Our first job was to redo the ceilings to get rid of the popcorn ceilings. We also decided to paint out the trim in this room because we wanted the room to be bright and inviting.

We had to tape off all the windows, doors, floors and fixtures for the ceiling process. This project took SO long because we had a steep learning curve and it was all trial and error. So our front room and entryway looked like this for about a month:

This is the adjoining hallway -- with MORE wallpaper. JOY!

More "befores"

This was the entryway during this process -- doesn't this look inviting? :)

Our next job was to remove all that wallpaper. Wow, that is so not a fun job. But, we eventually got it down to the bare bones and we were able to start painting, installing the crown molding and baseboards. Once we got all that finished, it was the fun part -- bringing in the pretty.

Entryway progress now:

Living Room:









Before and After again:



I think our favorite thing about this room is that it is bright, sunny and cheerful. We spend a lot of time in here reading, playing guitar (Luke) and watching cars go by (Seth).

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Posted By Emily to Livin' the good life at 11/03/2011 10:41:00 AM

[Livin' the good life] House Tour Day 2

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Posted By Emily to Livin' the good life at 11/03/2011 10:16:00 AM

[Livin' the good life] What we've been up to...

We didn't post much in September or October, but that's mostly because we were super busy working on our bathroom renovation and finishing up other projects. We bought our 1970's ranch house about 2 1/2 years ago and slowly but surely, have been renovating and updating it room by room. This week, because of requests from my family, we're going to post the progress we've made so far -- starting with the bathroom. So, if you aren't interested in house pics, just skip the next few posts...

The hall bathroom we affectionately dubbed "the blue bathroom", and it's pretty obvious why:





My handy hubby and I started to tear out most of that blue. We took off the wall tile, tore out the blue toilet, countertop and ripped up the floor.





In the middle of a renovation, we always have to take a deep breath and remind ourselves that it gets worse before it gets better.

And finally done! After all the messy demolition, it was time to put it all back together. The walls were pretty damaged after removing the wall tile, so we decided to install beadboard wainscotting.

One of the things we've done as we've renovated our entire house is to be discriminating about what to tear out and what to keep. Not everything has to be new. We both really liked this blue, sort of retro tile on the back wall, so we decided to keep it. Also, the vanity was in pretty good shape, so I just gave it a light sand and re-stained the doors to give it a brand new look. New sleek hardware also helps. We also continued the beadboard panel across the side of the tub to give it a built-in look.

We went with a large format tile - 12" x 24" - and we both really like it. (It was also quicker to install and has fewer grout lines to clean!)

I chose to go with hooks in this bathroom instead of the traditional towel bar because you always need somewhere to hang wet towels -- not dry ones.

We added a shelf above the toilet for the fresh towels and a few bathroom necessities.



Luke and I took some photographs while in Chicago and I just had them printed in black and white and used simple white frames.

Overall, we are pleased with how it all came together in the end. It was a lot of work, but there is something so rewarding about having a vision and seeing it through to the end. We scored the granite countertop, lighting, faucet and a few other things over a year ago because they were on uber clearance -- so we've had the vision for a while. It's nice to finally have it come to fruition.

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Posted By Emily to Livin' the good life at 11/02/2011 10:52:00 AM