A Country Cupboard

Our garden has been fairly abundant in its first season.  We have certainly had masses of cucumbers.  I have canned dill slices, dill spears, bread and butter pickles, sweet relish and many jars of Christmas Red Pickles... which do not taste like pickles in the least.   

Dill slices, red pickles, bread 'n butter and relish

One taste of a red pickle and you will swear you have just bitten into a delicious cinnamon flavored apple! Tom remembers his mom making red pickles; it's one of his favorites.  The recipe is labor intensive and 3 days long, but I assure you they are well worth the effort.

The tomatoes promise to be a good harvest as there are many lovely, perfect green spheres on the plants.  I plucked my first two yesterday.  There will {hopefully} be plenty to put up for winter, so we can make fresh spaghetti sauce and salsa during those chilly days spent inside.

Tomorrow will be a rare Saturday for the hubby and I - we are both off work!  Of course, we requested the day off.  Our initial plan was to head south, to the Ponca City (Oklahoma) rodeo.  Alas our temps are still in the 100s so sitting outside under the blistering sun doesn't sound like a fun time.  We'll forego the rodeo and instead drive up to Wichita early morning for the Olde Towne Farmers Market; I'm hoping to pick up a bunch of pickling cucumbers and make some whole dills.  (We neglected to plant pickling cukes this year. That will be rectified in next year's garden.)  I'm sure the Farmers Market promises to entice with plenty of other fresh produce and fruit.  After that, we'll enjoy a free lunch with a gift card I have for the Texas Roadhouse.

Then we'll head home so hubby can finish the front porch railing that he made...

and his garage renovation, which is really quite exciting when you consider what our garage HAS been... a giant storage shed with lots of boxes and miscellaneous furniture, a scary place that also housed rats and mice and large bugs.  He has torn down the low plywood ceiling and reinforced the roof supports, taken out drywall and installed OSB board for the walls, replaced some rotted boards, removed cupboards and a sink, and today he bought the first batch of outside knotty barnwood siding. I've been taking photos all along, so I'll post some before and afters in a few weeks.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer and staying cool in these extreme temps!  

Beautiful autumn is just around the corner, hooray!

naked lady lily in front yard

P.S. The winner of the kitteh name contest (even though we used our own chosen name of CiCi) is Smart Mouth Broad... I'll get your jar of strawberry jam mailed once the temps cool down! 

  

Country Kitchen Peek-a-Boo Part II

Here's another view of the kitchen, looking towards the stove and the back porch. As you can see, the prior owners had installed beautiful {gag} paneling with blue wood trim and a vibrant sunflower border. Can you sense my sarcasm here? In a normal decorating situation I LOVE sunflowers, but not in this instance!

I have an old whitewashed spice cabinet that
we'll be hanging above the stove. The door will
look much nicer when it's painted and the trim is hung.

I've painted the entire back porch and the other side of the back door. The reason I haven't painted this side of the back door is that Tori insists on jumping up on it - if you enlarge the photo, you can see how damaged the wood is right below the window. Obviously if I paint it, she's just going to scrape the new paint right off! The only stopgap measure I can think of would be to put a piece of plexiglass over the new paint, only right below the window.

Any other suggestions, aside from the impossible ~
training Tori not to jump up?

The carpet was downright disgusting... the only good thing??
I could let the dogs in with wet feet and not worry!!

Country Kitchen Peek-a-Boo

We still have lots to do to finish our kitchen renovation, but I wanted to put up a quick post that shows you how far we've come...

circa July 2008

circa NOW

We still need to put up trim for the ceiling, the floor and around doorways. I am really loving the laminate floor that hubby installed 2 weeks ago. We bought it at Lowe's in September 2008 and it lived behind the living room couch until December 2009! It's so nice to see it on the kitchen floor instead of the boxes in the living room. I had almost forgotten about the rug I had brought with me from Ohio. It was rolled up under the guest bed. I'm so glad I remembered - I was looking at rugs at Lowe's a few weeks ago when it hit me - hey, I HAVE a rug already!

We did as much as we could on our own, to keep the costs down. Obviously hubby installed much of the new stuff -- the ceiling fan, the light fixture above the sink, the new faucet, the floor. He put up new drywall everywhere -- he tore down the tile ceiling, paneling on the walls and the old drywall. I painted the kitchen cabinets as we really could not justify the cost of all new cabinets. We bought new hardware through Ebay.

I just hate the process... what a mess!!!

The kitchen chair and benches were found at our local Dillon's grocery store a few weeks ago. The newest Dillon's in Derby, Kansas, has a section called the Marketplace with furniture and home items. They had a huge sale a few weeks ago, and we got the most fantastic prices on our table and chairs, it was unbelievable. AND we got Dillon's gift cards for our furniture purchases. $10 for every $50 we spent. What a deal!! :)

I don't think you can really see them in this picture, even if you enlarge it... but my fan pulls are of a bucking bronc and a cowboy boot. I brought them with me from Ohio. I guess you could say my heart was always in the west. :-)

I'll post more pics over the next week. I'll probably ask for some advice from my readers. The walls still need to be finished with my pics and such - I don't have things hung the way I want them yet. But all in all, we both really love the way it has turned out.