Nighstands on Sargent Street

That title is about as scary as I'm going to get this Halloween. Unless of course you want to see the before picture of our master bedroom.

Terrifying isn't it? 

In my husband's defense, when he built the house he did put carpet in our bedroom. But, after being a bachelor pad for 3 years with dogs...need I say more?  As soon as we were married I was itching to get rid of the carpet. One weekend, J decided to go on a camping trip and leave me at home all by myself. This is what happens when I get bored! I pulled up our carpet, and got those floors ready for some wood!

Fast forward to last Christmas...J told me he would build me new nightstands for our room that would complement our new bed a little better than the "whatever I had in the shed" nightstands we had been sporting.

I was so excited! I was going to be able to design nightstands and have exactly what I wanted! While I love finding vintage pieces and refinishing them, sometimes a vintage piece just doesn't cut it. We don't have a huge house, so our furniture really needs to be aesthetically pleasing and provide us with much needed storage. I designed two nightstands that I thought would look great with the direction I was going.

I didn't want matchy-matchy nightstands, but I did want to them to have some similar features. Here is what we came up with:

I am so proud of how well they turned out. I want our room to be sophisticated and calming, and I think these pieces are a perfect fit. (I apologize for the horrible pictures! My camera broke, so I had to use my phone to take these.)

I actually used Annie Sloan's Chalk Paint and wax on these pieces. Since we were painting raw wood, we went ahead and used a primer for the first coat. Then topped it off with ASCP Old White. On the mirrored door piece, I used ASCP Dark Wax all over. On the 3-drawer piece, you can see, I only used it around the drawer molding and the radius corners. I used ASCP Clear Wax on the rest of the piece.

I have a few more smaller projects to work on before the room is completely finished, but I am finally seeing it come together!

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I posted new pictures of the night stands that are MUCH better quality than these. You can find them here. Thanks! 

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Recipe Round-up! {Mexican Rice}

Do you ever dread Mexican night because you can't stand the taste of boxed rice? I know I used to when I was young. My mom would make the Rice-a-Roni Spanish rice. BLAH! I always thought it was so disgusting. I have to say, I even had a hard time getting rice down at Mexican restaurants. Something just didn't taste right.

Naturally, being a Texas girl, I pride myself on my ability to make a mean Mexican dinner. I never attempted rice though, because I thought, "What's the point? I'm going to hate it any way." That was until my good friend, Melinda, convinced me there was Mexican rice worth tasting in the world. She told me tales of her Tia's (Aunt's) rice that was so flavorful you could make an entire meal just on the rice. I asked her to snag a copy of the recipe for me, but apparently you have to be a member of the family to get the full recipe. There was a secret ingredient in her rice that I wasn't allowed to know about. How rude!

It was ok. Our friendship was stronger than a secret ingredient. So, I made it my mission to find the best Mexican Rice recipe that would rival Melinda's aunt's recipe.  Melinda got to be my taste tester, so it was win, win for everyone. This is the recipe I came up with after trying a few and Melinda giving me a few pointers on how to improve.

The basic recipe I found in Food & Wine's Quick from Scratch Chicken Cook Book. It's part of the Arroz con Pollo recipe, but I made a few tweeks to make it perfect.

 

Ingredients:

Olive Oil
Bacon - 4 to 5 strips (I use Turkey Bacon)
1/2 Onion - Chopped
1 Green Bell Pepper
1 Red Bell Pepper
1 cup chicken broth
1 cup hot water
1 packet or cube of Sazon Goya (found on the Ethnic/Mexican Food aisle at your grocery store)
1 can Tomatoes with Green Chiles (Rotel)
3/4 can Tomato sauce
1 cup long grain rice

First things first....chop your vegetables.

Next, heat a skillet on medium-high heat and add your bacon. If you use Turkey Bacon, you will need to add a little Olive Oil to keep the bacon from sticking. 

Once the bacon cooks for about 3-4 minutes, add your onion. Let the onion saute with the bacon for 3-4 minutes then add the bell peppers.

Allow the bell peppers to cook for about 5 minutes or until they begin to soften.

Now add the tomatoes with green chiles, tomato sauce, chicken broth, water and Sazon Goya.

 Last, stir in your rice...notice I might have added a little more than 1 cup. I love this stuff!

Here is what your skillet should look like at this point...

Let it come to a slight boil, then cover and turn down heat. Let it simmer for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally, to make sure the rice doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan.

 Once the rice has absorbed all the liquid your rice is done!

On a side note: The Sazon Goya contains MSG. Boo!! I didn't notice it until this last time I made it. I'm trying to find a good alternative to this ingredient, but haven't found anything yet. If I do, I will update the recipe.

Hope you enjoy this rice as much as we do here at our house!

Oooo that's Pinteresting!

If you go to my Pinterest page, you'll see I have a few boards with titles like: Projects, Things I'd Like to Make, etc. Every so often I get a whim to try something new. Why not, right? When things come with such detailed instructions, and you follow them exactly, don't you expect them to go perfectly? I do! But, sometimes, no matter how hard we try, it just doesn't seem to turn out the way we expected. That's life. (Can I get an AMEN??) So, this little story if you haven't already guessed is about a Pinterest project that didn't quite work out. I'm hoping you can learn from my mistakes! As you know from my previous post, we have been redecorating our master bedroom. With the new look, I needed new lamps! I wanted to get rid of the black and gray lamps I had for something a little lighter. I found this mercury glass lamp at Kohl's on clearance for $27! Can you believe it? Lamps this size go for almost $200 at Pottery Barn!

I was so excited to snag this deal right up. The problem was, they only had one.

But, no worries! I had an old lamp that my Granny gave me that was similar in size, and I had seen a trusty tutorial on how to turn anything into mercury glass! Win, win, win!

So, I set out on a mission to turn this...

into

I followed the tutorial exactly.  I promise! I purchased a can of Krylon's Looking Glass Spray Paint. You can find it at your local craft store (Hobby Lobby, Michael's, etc.). I even did a test run on an old mason jar I had, and it turned out ok. Not perfect, but ok.

It says to lightly spray the area with water. Check.

Next, spray a light coat of the paint onto the piece. Check. Oh, wait, the paint is starting to drip where the water is. Maybe that's ok? Maybe that's the mercury effect?? I'm going to push through.

Let dry and repeat above steps until desired results appear.

Well, after TWO CANS of spray paint (about 10 light coats), my desired results, well....left lots to be desired!

It doesn't look like Mercury Glass at all! It just looks like a poorly painted silver lamp. ARGH!

Pinterest you failed me this time. But, I still have faith you can show me the path to be a thrifty decorating genius! Just not this time my friend, not this time.

Any one else have a Pinterest project gone wrong? Please tell me I'm not the only one!

Build-a-Bed

Master Bedroom Makeover

Our bedroom makeover has been a long process. Primarily because I keep changing my mind on what I want! We started off with a sleigh bed, and black and white bedding. Then I decided I didn't like the black and white after all.  Last year, we decided to swamp out the queen sized bed for a king. Good news was we had a king headboard laying in our garage I had picked up at our local thrift store. I pulled it out, refinished it, and we attached it to our wall. The only problem now was the bed frame. I HATE metal bed frames! So, my sweet long-suffering husband agreed to build me a bed! It's like build-a-bear for adults!

We had picked up some spindles at an antique store, and decided those would be the perfect legs for our new bed.

 This is the bed frame before we painted...

And head board and bed frame finished and installed...

 

Next, we'll be building new and much needed nightstands!

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