decor: couch update

There have been two recent additions to my couch that have made a big difference.

First, I saw this beautiful old quilt in the guest room at my parents' house over Christmas. The colors coordinate really well with my orange-and-blue living room. My mom was hesitant to hand it over at first ... but ... I can be very charming.

The quilt is now living on the back of my couch. I bought my couch when I moved to D.C. five (!) years ago, and over time, the cushions have become a bit saggy. Maybe I could just add some more stuffing, but for now, the quilt is doing a good job at making the couch look neater.

Second, I now have a boatload of pillows on my couch.

I used to think I didn't want a lot of pillows on the couch for practical reasons. Tony and I share the couch when we watch TV or movies, and I thought it would get too crowded with two humans and a half dozen pillows on a small couch. So all I had on the couch were two matching floral throw pillows. Here's a photo of Jamie playing his guitar my couch before Christmas to give you an idea of what my couch used to look like. In hindsight, it looks pretty plain.

But Jen bought me this pretty ampersand pillow for Christmas, which prompted me to experiment with adding more pillows.

I brought out from storage some more pillows (which were DIY projects with fabric and stuffing from Jo-Ann Fabrics) in a mix of colors and patterns.

It looks like some place you want to curl up and read a book/take a map/watch a DVD.

But, let's be honest, that's only what my couch looks like when I know guests are coming over or when I'm going to take a picture for, say, a blog post. Most of the time the pillows end up tossed on the back of the couch to make more room, which actually makes it very cozy. The too-many-pillows problem that I was worried about hasn't turned out to be a problem at all. 

dining out: dc-3

When my parents came to visit earlier this month, they got in around dinnertime Friday. They'd been in the car for six hours, so we decided to get dinner somewhere quick and casual. I suggested DC-3, the hot dog place on Barracks Row, and they loved it.

The restaurant's name and decor are based on 1940s commercial air travel. Airplanes made traveling across the country easier, and the restaurant links all of those cities via their hot dogs. Like a New York coney dog or a Cincinnati chili dog.

Tony, always the adventurous eater, ordered the bulgogi and kimchi dog. Couldn't stop raving about it, particularly the buttered roll.

And the man ordered fried pickles. He and my dad devoured them.

This place is vegetarian-friendly. I ordered a veggie dog with veggie chili. (And a random pickle just because.) Really happy with it. I've had the falafel dog on a previous trip - also tasty.

We were there right before Lent started, so my dad ordered a Mardi Gras-themed dog.

And my mom went with the Cincinnati coney dog, easy on the onions.

DC-3 is a crowd pleaser, and a good dining option if you're looking for food quickly.

home improvement: crown molding

It was a big home improvement weekend in our house, guys. Crown molding went up downstairs!

The project is 90 percent finished -- all we need to do is paint it. But I couldn't wait to write about this project.

I knew that the house would look better with crown molding, but I didn't realize how much better until it was on the walls. The room looks tied together and finished, and I love it so, so much.

My dad has put up crown molding in pretty much every room in his house, so he's an expert, and he said he'd come down to help with the project. The thing about putting up crown molding is that the molding and supplies aren't that expensive -- we paid less than $100 for all of the materials -- but the labor can be the expensive part. So we're lucky to have an expert in the family who was willing to help us out.

When Tony and I were in Ohio for Christmas, I went to the local hardware store with my dad, and I picked out the molding I wanted. Our ceilings are 9 feet downstairs, so I wanted large molding. I went with the 5 1/4-inch size. I decided against solid wood and went with MDF particleboard. MDF is straighter than solid wood and easier to work with. You need solid wood for baseboards and other trim that could get banged up, but nothing is going to damage molding on the ceiling.

Here's a shot from Saturday morning, as the pieces started to go up!

Tony and my dad used a nail gun with an air compressor to attach the molding. A row of nails in the drywall and a row of nails in the ceiling.

(Victor, by the way, was not impressed with the presence of the air compressor. It would rev up randomly and loudly, which means Victor spent much of Saturday under our bed. Here he is on Sunday afternoon, still looking unimpressed with the whole project, haha.)

(And here he is sitting on the spiral staircase, keeping an eye on Tony as he does some finishing touches - wiping down the spackling. The cat loves this staircase, by the way. He gets a birdseye view of the entire house. Also, when he's laying on the steps, he refuses to move out of the way for a person walking up the steps. It's kind of funny.)

Anyway, enough about the cat. Here's a picture of Tony being manly with the compound miter saw.

Here's an in-progress shot. You can see the slight variances in the ceiling height. Ceilings in houses (especially old houses) aren't exactly even. See the shadow between the molding and the ceiling where the molding doesn't quite reach the ceiling?

At this point, my mom and I left to go shopping. Because putting up crown molding is really a two-man job, and there were two extra people in the small space.

So I'm not sure what Tony and my dad did over the next few hours, but this is what our patio table looked like when my mom and I came back Saturday afternoon:

And this is how the inside of the house was looking:

Here's a before photo:

The gap between the ceiling and the molding disappeared. My dad used a tube of caulking to fill in those gaps.

And Tony filled all of the nail holes with lightweight spackling.

Here's a before shot of part of the room:

And some after pictures:

Before:

After:

And as a bonus, there was just enough molding left over to put it up in the half bath downstairs. So now the entire first floor is done. Which leaves us with just two bedrooms, the full bath and the upstairs hallway that are un-crown molded. Maybe down the line.

Oh and here's what one of the walls in the bathroom looks like right now. Someone is planning a makeover! I'm leaning toward the grays ... but that's a project for another day.

recipe: scalloped potatoes

Before we get started, let me just say, if your New Year's resolution was "eat healthy" ... you should skip this recipe. Ain't nothing healthy about it.

So last fall, I made a tasty tasty macaroni and cheese that used a bechamel white sauce. I made the recipe once with cow's milk, and once with soy milk, and there was no discernible difference. Which was an exciting discovery for me because the soy-based bechamel can be a good way to make creamy recipes without any dairy. So for the past several months, I've been trying/inventing recipes with bechamel sauce, but none have turned out well enough to post on the blog.

Until today, my friends.

I was talking to my mom about bechamel one day, and she said she makes it for her scalloped potatoes.

So I turned to whom I presume is the authority on the matter of scalloped potatoes and bechamel: Julia Child. Except her recipes for scalloped potatoes (which she calls gratin dauphinois, how fancy) doesn't use bechamel. She says to just use boiling milk.

But I really wanted to use bechamel, so I made some adaptations to Julia's recipe. (Is that blasphemy -- tweaking a Julia Child recipe?)

The result? OMG, delicious. Mmmm, crispy brown edges.

Scalloped Potatoes

Inspired by Mastering the Art of French Cooking

For bechamel sauce

• 1 cup milk (or soy milk)
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 1/2 tablespoons flour

For filling

• 2 pounds potatoes
• 5 tablespoons butter, cut into pieces
• 1 teaspoon salt
• pepper to taste

Peel potatoes, and use a mandoline to slice into super thin 1/8-inch slices. Store in a bowl of cold water until ready to use.

For the bechamel sauce, begin heating milk in a saucepan over medium-low heat.

In a separate saucepan, melt butter. Add flour, continue stirring, and cook for 2 minutes while mixture froths. This is called the roux. Remove the roux from the heat.

Turn the heat up on the milk, so it begins to boil around the edges.

Add hot milk to the roux, and whisk vigorously until the mixture is smooth.

Put saucepan over the heat again, continuing to stir with the whip, and boil for 1 minute. Remove the bechamel from the heat.

Grease a 9-by-9 casserole dish with 2-inch sides.

Drain the potatoes, and pat dry on a dish towel.

Layer half of the potatoes in the casserole dish. Spread half of the bechamel. Dot with half of the butter. Add 1/2 teaspoon salt and pepper to taste. Repeat with the remaining potatoes, bechamel, butter, salt and pepper.

Bake at 425 degrees on top rack, uncovered, for 30 minutes. Then broil for 2 minutes, turning the dish 90 degrees after 1 minute.

Julia says it serves 6, but it's more like 4 or 5.

life: meet my turkey

Say hello to our Thanksgiving turkey!

PSYCH! That's a butternut squash.

Tony and I are on our own this year for Thanksgiving. Work schedules are keeping us in D.C. for the holiday instead of in Ohio with our family. And since I'm the one cooking Thanksgiving dinner, ain't no turkey on the menu.

Today we'll be having butternut squash risotto, cornmeal spoon bread, almond green beans, cranberry sauce, caramel pecan pie, and egg nog. Most of these are new recipes for me, and I'll post the keepers on the blog. (I have particularly high hopes for the cornmeal spoon bread and the caramel pecan pie.)

But damn do I miss my family today. I miss my spot at the kids' table. I miss the inevitable conversation about Cleveland news personality Wilma Smith. (I don't know why they always must talk about her. But they do. Every Thanksgiving. For decades.)

But I have Tony and the cat and a beautiful house, and for that I am grateful. We are happy and in love and have several episodes of Downton Abbey to enjoy today.

And we will have a little bit of Ohio in our home today. Tony's family has a tradition to do a craft together every Thanksgiving, and we got a package in the mail yesterday from his aunt with the supplies we'll need to do our craft from afar. It was sweet of her.

Happy Thanksgiving, world.

decor: mantel

I have a very large gold eagle in my living room.

And. It. Is. Outstanding.

This is the story of my fireplace. Or at least, the top half of my fireplace. The bottom half isn't ready for prime time yet.

I have an exposed brick wall and fireplace in my living room, which is one of the house's natural charms. It also was an intimidating decor challenge because it was a completely blank canvas. Here's a photo of the living room that I took during our home inspection:

That's a cubby to store wood right next to the fireplace opening, which makes the space awkward. It would've been nice to find an old, ornate frame mantel to surround the fireplace opening, but I didn't think it would look right with an unadorned cubby next to it. I eventually decided that a floating mantel above both the fireplace and the cubby would work best with the space, and I set my dad loose on the project. He worked some woodworking magic and came up with this beauty.

Once the mantel was up, the living room got its focal point.

And then the decor elements started coming together, after some trial and error. 

The antique mantel clock was an obvious choice. This was a Christmas present from my parents/Santa several years ago, and I love it. It requires a key to wind it up, and the tick-tock is like the heartbeat of the house. I can wake up at 3 o'clock in the morning, listen closely, and I know the clock will be ticking.

As for the frames, I found them at thrift stores and yard sales. The gold gives the space some glamour, and the pictures I have in them keeps everything young.

And the creme de la creme is my gold eagle.

And here's how the eagle came to be. I told you how Tony and I went to Ohio this fall to see Adrian and Gretchen. Adrian had recently quit his job to start his own business as an auctioneer, which is an inspiring, entrepreneurial story for another time. At any rate, before the auction, I was looking at the online catalog of what he was going to sell, and I saw a cast iron eagle. It's the kind of thing you see hanging over people's garages or barns when you drive through the heart of the country. And then I imagined how unexpected and modern and just fabulous it would be to paint the eagle gold. And to hang it over my fireplace. So I got this idea in my head, and I mentioned it to my parents, and it turns out, my dad just happened to have an extra fiberglass eagle laying around. (I know - what. But he did.)

So I brought it back to D.C. and DIY'd myself a gold eagle with some shiny Martha Stewart paint from Home Depot. And that is how an eagle landed in my living room.

Now, the wood burning fireplace is functional, but Tony and I decided that we aren't going to use it. We won't block it off, though, so the next owners can use it. So I've been playing around with what I can put in the fireplace and the cubby to utilize the space for extra storage and still look nice in the centerpiece of my home. And I'm still moving things around to see what looks best. I'll do another post when I have it figured out, though!

recipe: roasted pumpkin seeds

My friend Valerie -- who grew up down the street from me in Ohio and by sheer coincidence now lives down the street from me in D.C. -- came over last Sunday for an evening of pumpkin carving and a seasonally appropriate dinner. (I made minestrone soup in the crock pot and and homemade pull-apart rolls -- recipes coming soon!)

Valerie and I each carved pretty awesome pumpkin faces. Tony also carved a pumpkin. But I can't think of a nice way to describe it with words. Pictures are at the end of this post.

And after we finished carving the pumpkins, we ended up with a boatload of pumpkin seeds, which means ... roasted pumpkin seeds!

(Sidenote! I have a thing for vintage Pyrex bowls. And this Amish pattern is probably my favorite pattern of them all.)

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

• Pumpkin seeds
• Salt

After scooping the seeds from your pumpkin, wash away all of the pumpkin guts.

Place pumpkin seeds on cookie sheets. Sprinkle with salt and toss with a rubber spatula to coat. Ensure seeds are in a single layer

Bake at 275 degrees for 40 minutes or until seeds are dried out, stirring once.

<3

Now, and I know you're dying to see what our carved pumpkins look like. 

Ta-da!

And I know you're thinking, wtf is wrong with that pumpkin closest to the camera? Yeah, that was Tony's pumpkin.

Valerie's cute Nightmare Before Christmas pumpkin is in the middle, and mine is on the end. (Pumpkin carving tip, courtesy of Valerie -- rub vaseline on the exposed areas of the pumpkin to hold off the rot.)

Here's a close-up of my pumpkin:

That face, by the way, is kind of my signature thing. Triangle eyes, triangle nose, big grin with a few teeth.

Observe, Halloween 2011:

Halloween 2006:

Halloween 2005 (with what appears to be a bonus Harry Potter-inspired scar):

Hey, if you find a good thing, stick with it.

<3

So I have the pumpkins on the porch. The inside of my house isn't quite so festive, but I do have a few Halloween decorations. My favorite: these small vintage jack-o-lanterns. My mom bought a box of them at a flea market for $1, and she gave me three, which I have in my living room, dining room and kitchen.

And on my dining room table, I have a pile of gourds. I tried setting them out in a bowl for a centerpiece, but I didn't like how they looked, so I just put them in a pile, and I kinda dig it.

So now we're all set for Halloween! Except for the candy for the trick-or-treaters. That has to be a last-minute purchase because chocolate doesn't last in this house for too long.