A House with... Character?

Yesterday, June 1st, my husband and I went over to our new (rental) house to pick up the keys! YAY! We are planning to move in gradually, as our current lease doesn't end until mid-July. Moving in slowly lets us minimize chaos and stress, and allows our dog some time to visit the house a few times before irreparably traumatize him move. Plus it lets us move small stuff in our cars so we can avoid renting the BIGGEST UHAUL EVAR when we move for realsies.

Here's a shot of the house:

It was built in the 50s, but clearly the last major decorating was done in the 70s. There is shiny shiny wallpaper in the living room, the closets have these funky plastic accordion doors, one bathroom is pink-and-black while the other is blue-and-black, and I don't even want to talk about the kitchen. The entire thing is being replaced (THANK GOD) so I didn't take a lot of photos of it, but just.... here:

That floor. Those cabinets. It's just.... it's so special, you guys.

Further quirkiness is to be found in the basement, which has, for no apparent reason, a whole separate kitchen! Just, y'know. In case the entire other kitchen isn't working. There is also a full bathroom in the basement. IN THE LAUNDRY ROOM. I can't make this sort of thing up.

The yard is fully-fenced, which is great for our adventurous little dog, and has a big patio and a shed.

We are especially excited about the patio, since we plan to throw some BBQs! As soon as we buy a grill...

The yard is big, and great, but like the interior it's got.... quirks. There are a number of what I imagine were once well-tended gardens that have, shall we say, run amok:

The owner assured me yesterday that there's actually a little brick terrace somewhere under all that!

There are also a number of odd little "arbors" built by the owner's late husband, and some distinctly DIY patio extensions. It's... special.



Happily, it's rental house! So I don't have to care! I will be doing my best to design around/cope with the many quirks of this house, and keep the yard at bay but mostly I am just excited to have lots of new space to work with!

The house is so much bigger than our apartment (duh), so we are planning to have exciting new adult-type features like a guest room/home office, and not-so-adult features like a man cave. I don't even KNOW what we're gonna do with the basement yet! I'm planning to document that whole process here on the blog.

We went over there yesterday to move a single symbolic box and take measurements of the principle rooms so we (read: I) can figure out some furniture placement ideas. We also let Bilbo explore a bit, and he was somewhere between excited/curious and why-are-we-still-here-let's-go-home. Progress?

On the Menu This Week

So, June 1st is the beginning of my quest to eat only homemade foods! I am going to make an effort each week to keep track of what I'm cooking, when I cook it, and how it turned out! I mostly keep my recipes on Pinterest which is a little haphazard so this will help me keep track of things.

For now I will only be posting the recipes that I make here on the blog, and not the stuff my husband makes, because my husband is one of those toss-it-in-and-see-what-happens sort of cooks, like his father. Occasionally he will find a recipe online and use it, but generally he just mixes spices and measures ingredients to taste. If he ever comes up with a truly stellar combo I will do my best to document it so I can post it here!

The way our schedule is now, I cook two nights a week, my husband cooks another two nights a week, and the rest of the week we eat leftovers or fend for ourselves (aka, eat pasta). I may add in additional cooking days since this schedule was conceived with the idea that we usually eat out on Saturdays anyway, and that's something I will be (mostly) avoiding from now!

Anyway! Here's what I'm planning to make this week:

Breakfast

So the plan at present is to make a baked good, like a scone or muffin, on Sunday and just eat one every morning for breakfast. I usually eat breakfast after I get to work in the morning, so it's important that I have something that is portable and ready-to-eat, or at least easily microwaved. As such, for this week I have chosen to make: Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Scones
 

Don't they look scrumptious? I love chocolate, and I love cinnamon, so I have high hopes for these scones!

Dinner #1

The first dinner I'm making this week is a new recipe for me, Panko Stuffed Chicken Breasts! I have never tried stuffing chicken breasts before, but these look sooooo yummy. 

Dinner #2

The final dinner I'll be making this week is Spinach with Chickpeas!  Except I am leaving out the raisins. Cause ew.

 

Mostly because I have to buy spinach anyway for the chicken breast recipe and also because we have a huge can of chickpeas I have been meaning to get rid of. I won't be able to use them all for this recipe (it is a BIG can!) which leads me to....

Snack Food

I want to make a new snack food every week. I enjoy having snacks, and I find them pretty essential at 3 pm on a weekday when I'm STARVING and have hours to go before dinner! I think having healthy, filling snacks will keep me from being so hungry when I leave work, which in turn will keep me from ordering pizza!

With that in mind, and with a big pile of chickpeas to eat, I want to try Roasted Chickpeas!









Chickpeas are protein-rich, which is great for filling up on. Plus more cinnamon, you guys. Yum yum!


Well that's the menu round-up! I will check back in a bit to review the results of these recipes and explain any ways I would to tweak them etc. Happy eating!

Going All Homemade, All the Time

So as I pointed out in first entry, I am planning to take a major step in my eating habits, starting in June: I plan to try to only eat food that I have made myself, from scratch, and eschew all processed foods.

I realize this will be hard. Like, super hard. I honestly may not even be up for it. But I'm sure as hell gonna try.

So, to answer the important burning questions: Why am I doing this? Why start eating only homemade food?

Let me first say that I am not a conspiracy theorist.  I don't think that some shadowy entity has duped us all into eating cheese product and soy everything and whatever they put in "chicken" nuggets. There are lots of things commonly found in pre-processed and pre-packaged food these days that are undoubtedly not all that healthy, but I think the reasons they go largely unchallenged have more to do with a free market economy and general nutritional ignorance than some kind of global conspiracy to make us all fat.

That being said, I think very few of us take much time to really examine what's in the food we eat. Studies on the harm of things like high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils are not exactly being enthusiastically funded, so I won't make any scientific claims here, but I think the correlation between the rise of such food substitutes and preservatives and the width of the average American waistline should not be dismissed. I consider this homemade food experiment a way to examine how my own body responds to food that lacks these chemicals. I am NOT expecting some kind of miracle diet here, but I admit that the potential health benefits of eating unprocessed food are a major player.

Another aspect of why I want to try only eating food I make myself is the concept of eating mindfully. This idea promotes eating without distraction, taking time to appreciate and savor one's food instead of absently scarfing down meals while staring at a screen (guilt as charged...). Mindful eating focuses mostly on the consuming end of things, but I think a lot of benefits can be had from "mindful cooking," that is, knowing exactly what ingredients and more importantly how much time and effort went into creating the food on your plate. I think cooking it all at home will force me to be aware of the food that I buy, that I cook, and that I eat, and how to make the best of all those processes.

So, that's the why. What about how? How exactly will this whole plan work? What will you eat? What won't you eat? What's the reasoning here?

The basic answer is that I'm about to seriously increase my grocery bill! But mostly it just means that all my food will either be something that requires no cooking or processing, like a nice juicy apple, or a meal or snack I can cook for myself at home.

The breakdown of what I will and won't eat is still a little fuzzy right now. I have definitively ruled out some foods and committed to cooking others from scratch. There are others I am still on the fence about, and may make a decision later on in the experiment.

First, the verboten: Obviously restaurants and fast food places are out. I may, due to politeness and social obligation, end up visiting some of these places, but that will be the exception, not the rule. Also ruled out are most snack foods, cereal, juice, pudding, and pretty much anything that comes out of a vending machine.

Some things I plan to continue eating, with homemade versions: Bread, sauces and condiments, some snack foods, peanut butter, baked goods,  and probably others as I think of them.

There are some other foods I could make one day but I just don't currently have the time, equipment, or let's face it, in some cases the willpower, to make at home. In these cases, I plan to buy these at a store, but will take pains to purchase brands that minimize chemicals and preservatives. Some of those foods are: jelly, ice cream, pasta, cheese, and I'm sure some other stuff I will think of riiiiight before I eat it.

So them's the basics. I have a lot of thoughts about this eating homemade experiment, but this post is already too long, so I will save them for another time.

The New House

The hubby and I have been married for almost two years, and we have lived that entire time in an apartment that's part of a complex of high-rise buildings. The apartment itself is nice and pretty spacious, we have a balcony, washer/dryer in the unit, etc. The complex has nice amenities too: tennis courts, a pool, a gym, and it's located near grocery stores, restaurants, fast food, liquor stores (crucial), etc. Neither my commute nor the husband's are particularly stellar, but it's hard to find a good commute in this area. Our complex allows pets, so we have ourselves a 2-year-old cairn terrier named Bilbo (because we're nerds).

Anyway, the place is nice enough, and it has served us well, but we're interested in moving on. Bilbo is not super well-suited for apartment life; he barks at kids in the hallway and has a truly epic hatred of bicycles, which he (so very helpfully) warns us about from his vigilant post on the balcony. Taking a dog downstairs to pee/walk from the 12th floor is not exactly fun either. Hubby and I are generally okay with apartments, but both of us have been itching to have more of our own space lately, and as we approach our late twenties (AUGH) we are increasingly interested in expanding our little corner of the world. Also, as hubby-dearest inches closer to finishing his PhD, our income has increased in the last 6 months and we have yet to devote it toward anything in particular.

Plus we like throwing BBQs. I mean, who doesn't?

So: we want to rent a house. Cue frantic and stressful search. We decided to move to a nicer area, which is also more affluent and thus in high demand. That means that rental properties go FAST. I spent about 3 weeks constantly, and I do mean constantly, checking craigslist and a bunch of other online housing sites for houses. Some of them would disappear literally in hours. On top of all that, these sites are also riddled with scams, full of listings that can be really quite sneaky, with legitimate-looking phone numbers and email addresses. Legitimate-looking, that is, until the "landlord" responds to your email by claiming that you can drive by the house but you can't go in. Yeah, okay buddy.

Anyway, after several failed attempts at securing a house in time, and a couple of awkward visits to some totally undesirable properties, I finally found a keeper: 9603 was built in the 50s, and clearly last redecorated in the 70s. It's got 3 bedrooms and 2 full baths upstairs, hardwood floors, a basement, lots of storage space, in-home washer/dryer, etc. The yard is huge, fully-fenced for Bilbo, and has a lovely patio and a shed. The house has some odd "quirks" of decor and design, and the gardens have run amok (we'll talk about all that later), but overall it's a good property.

In the coming weeks, I am planning to post some before/progress photos as we slowly move in. We've decided to gradually move stuff to the house, both because of overlapping leases and because the landlady will be doing some very necessary upgrades to the house. Like the oh-so-70s kitchen, oy.

I am just ITCHING to get in that house so I can at least measure the rooms and start making plans! We will be getting the keys on June 1st, and it can't come soon enough!

Here It Is!

So, I started a new blog!

Bopping Around the House is my blog about, well, things I do (or aspire to do) at home. That could include lots of things, such as crafts, DIY, cooking, baking, eating/diet, yard work, gardening, home decor, cleaning, organization, and lots of other domestic pursuits!

My husband and I will soon be moving to our first (rental) house, and there is just SO much to be done! I have been getting excited about decorating and furnishing all the new spaces, not to mention the exciting novelty of having a YARD. A yard and garden which need, to put it nicely, a lot of quality TLC.

On top of this, I am starting a new mission for the month of June 2014, and probably beyond: I am going to strive to only eat food that I make myself at home, and avoid processed foods and things that contain preservatives, high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, and other chemicals I can't pronounce. I will explore some of the techniques, challenges, ideas, and of course recipes that I encounter along the way.

What's more, between decorating the new house and actually having SPACE, I am hoping to revive what little crafting ability I have and learn lots of new skills too! I enjoy the satisfaction (and the bragging rights!) of having made something myself, and I am looking forward to breaking out my glue gun and MAKING things!

That's the sort of thing I expect to discuss regularly on this blog, but no promises that I won't also occasionally post cute photos of my dog Bilbo or my thoughts on the latest movie etc. It is MY blog after all :)

Thanks for visiting!