Stacerella

So, my bestie since grade three is coming to visit this weekend to check out the new digs, so that means we have to get crackin’ and start/finish the main floor. We have been meaning to do this space up right, but we decided the garden and our achy body needed more attention right now, so we were letting it slide.

Motivation is a fickle woman, isn’t she? Yeah… so… here is what we’ve got so far.

This is our dining room / living room L shaped space. These are the walls on outside of our tiny kitchen (please ignore the mess in the kitchen wherer we stuffed the table, end tables, microwave and toaster oven stand, books, ect.).

The base colour on the wall is some creamy taupe the previous owners painted the house when they staged it, and it works well in our analogous colour scheme, so we matched it with Coronado Dunes from the Behr line. It creates a lovely harmonious colour palette throughout the space as you move around.

We chose to paint all of the small and half walls facing west and east and leave the longer north and south walls untouched. We have one more wall to paint in that space and a few touchups to do before we continue it down the hall into the foyer, but we’re kinda digging the final product so far.

Oh, and note how the tv floats off of the wall. Without any cables showing. I will post about that soon. It’s quite interesting and Joe is very proud of his ingenuity and master network and cabling skillz.

We have a fair sized backyard at our new home. We’re not home during the first 6 days, and we’re running errands on Sundays, so we knew it wasn’t imperative we pick up a high end patio chair and table set with umbrella. We really only require a table with a chair to sit at to eat outside on some nights.

The perfect fit for our needs found us at the local Home Depot. And it was on sale. It was easy to bring home, assemble and then weather proof. We can always drill a huge hole in the middle to insert a pole should we decide we’d like an umbrella later on, too.

This is me applying the first of two coats of the weather proofing sealer. It turned out nicely when it was all done. So far the only thing that’s sat on the table has been our garden plants, but now that they’re in the ground, we’ll have to start eating outdoors from now on.

Using the Every Day Food recipe for Flounder With Onion-Tomato Ragout as my template, I made lovely and flavourful white fish dish.

I swapped out the vinegar for freshly squeezed lemon juice all over the fish while it was cooking in the pan, and a bit more on top of it all after it was plated to ensure maximum brightness.

This is a keeper. Simple, fast and tasty. You can’t ask for more on a busy weeknight when you’re pressed for time and your belly is rumbling.

Final thought: chunk this up as is and throw it into warmed up tortillas for instant fish tacos.

We bought this to hang in our foyer stairway. It’s hard to imagine that it’s a bit small for the space, but we love the look of this clock so much, we left it there. Eventually we won’t notice its scale after we get everything in that area all squared away.

Ricotta-Spinach Stuffed Chicken, from the Every Day Food recipe collection, served with roasted carrots, onions and baby potatoes, and with a side Caesar topped with fresh dressing and shaved Parmesan cheese.