Time To Start Over

Spring has arrived here, finally, although today is a bit chilly and damp, kind of going right through me.

I love days like this for it's coziness, curl up on the couch and watch a good old movie

or to bake a wonderful Gluten Free Banana Choc Chip Walnut Bread

But days like this are not good for Fibromyalgia, not one bit. It was close to 90 degree's yesterday then today

in the 60's and chilly and damp,

bad weather for me.

The Fibro doesn't seem to want to just stay steady, I know I won't get better from it but it's getting worse.

I had to cut back on work, significantly, and I hope to be able to hang on to what I do have and not have to quit completely but time will tell.

So I decided to get back into my sewing. Making my handbags and selling them.

I have four orders right now, so I'm happy, and I hope to be able to have some more.

It'll allow me to work from home, do what I love doing and do it at my pace.

So we'll see what this starting over will do.

I have beautiful fabrics that I'm having customers choose from.

Prices vary from $30.00 to 40.00 depending if using trim and if so what type of trim. The price includes shipping in the USA, out of the country, sorry, I'll have to charge you for the shipping.

To see photos of my bags go to

www.flickr.com/mycasabella

if you like what you see message me here on my blog.

 

Purple and white:

Trim can be added and solid handles as well 

 

Dragonflies and Lady Bugs:

Perfect for that little girl

Hot pink trim and pink handles will make this adorable 

 

Shabby Chic:

Pinks, green's and white.

Handles will be the fabric over the shoulder handle, can add pink or green trim as well 

 

Pink Family:

From top left Brown/Pink Polka dots with matching butterfly fabric

Brown/Pink/Green Polka dot with matching floral print fabric

Pink/Brown and White stripe with matching Floral fabric

Brown/Pink gingham and Toile

Coral and Brown/Coral and Green fabric

I would use dark brown handles either solid or beaded with pretty coordinating trims 

 

Green's:

Two left prints go together, green/pink/dark brown and robin's egg blue

Two right fabrics go together, a tweed green and brown with a cotton duck green, brown and cream fabric

Dark brown handles and coordinating trim will add the finishing touch 

 

Blues:

Two far left go together, blue, cream, dark brown, taupe stripe with the retro flowers fabric

Two far right are blue, dark brown polka dots with the blue and brown toile fabric

Dark brown handles and coordinating trim will be beautiful 

 

Brown:

Two far left, the Vienna Fabric, shows different Vienna scenes

Two far right, brown, pink, cream and green's

Dark brown handles and coordinating trim will finish these off 

 

Pinks and Black:

Two far left go together, black with pink polka dots and pink and black toile of the Eiffel Tower

Black, pink, green and white retro swirl is on its own, makes a lovely full purse

Add black handles and fun trim to the Eiffel tower fabric and black handles to the swirl 

 

Teapot:

The fabric in the middle is the main fabric with either the red or green to coordinate.

Add brown handles or black with trim and it's lovely 

 

Cottage:

Red and cream gingham with red and cream toile.

Add light brown handles and a pretty trim and its complete 

 

Red

Red and cream fabric will make a great one piece purse. 

 

Black and Whites:

So these go like this, the top left gingham goes with the two under it, toile prints.

The chevron print goes with the black with white damask print

The white with black polka dots goes with the white with black print damask

The black with white polka dots goes with the Eiffel Tower print

and the bottom two can either go together or make one bag on it's own.

Add black handles and some fun trim and it's done 

Have a lovely evening!



Spring Gardening

I drive past this garden center for work once a week and I've had to control myself from stopping in because the weather was still chilly, nights were still in the low 30's

BUT finally weather has been steady low 60's nights are in the upper 30's to low 40's and I could plant Spring flowers.

I LOVE LOVE Ranunculus flowers, they look like roses and the colors they come in are amazing.

They just put them out and I had to control how many to buy.

I have two wall hanging planters so I bought the same flowers for both but in different colors.

Here's the Pink planter:

A Ranunculus in the center, Prim Roses on either side

and Pansies front and center.

This one is at the side of our home, at the side deck.

 

Here's the Orange planter:

Same flowers in this planter, this one is at the front of our home.

 

And a box of pansies as well on our deck:

 

We have issues with lots and lots of squirrels here and they love to deconstruct my flower pots, last summer they dug them up and I'd find them on the ground,

needless to say I started to hate squirrels.

So this year I'm trying  this

I added shards of broken ceramic planter, so far it's worked, it sounds cruel though, hubby says to me "I can't believe you'd do that to those poor little furry cute animals what if it slices itself and gets hurt"

I said "well he shouldn't be in there digging in the first place"

So far it's worked, we'll see for how long though.

I've also planted some perennials we'll see how they do. Still have a lot of work to do and more space for more plants.

But it was nice to finally get out after a long, snowy winter and dig into the soil and do some yard clean up.

Southwest Spaghetti Pie (Gluten Free)

It's been awhile since I've posted recipes on here, but today I thought I should share this easy and delicious

comfort food.

 

It came out of a small magazine called "Hometown Cooking" not sure if they still publish that.

Anyway, they had this recipe in it and it is so good!!

Here it is:

(I tweaked it a bit for my taste, I'll put those in parenthesis)

 

Southwest Spaghetti Pie

 

8 oz of dried Spaghetti (I used GF Brown Rice Spaghetti)

1/2 cup milk (you can use non dairy if you need to)

1 egg

1 lb ground pork (I used beef it's what I had)

1 large onion, chopped (1 cup)

1  medium red or green pepper chopped (3/4 cup)

1 clove garlic (I used 4 cloves, love garlic)

1 Tbsp chili powder (if you can't handle heat just use half)

1/2 tsp ground cumin (I added more to taste)

1/2 tsp dried oregano (I used 1 tsp)

1/2 tsp salt ( I added to taste)

1/4 tsp ground pepper

1 (15 oz) can tomato sauce

1 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese

(I had Italian mix on hand)

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

 

Directions:

Cook spaghetti, (now some people who've cooked Gluten Free spaghetti have gotten quite frustrated, if you'd like to try it here is the way to cook it, water HAS TO BE BOILING, add salt to the water and a little bit of olive oil or whatever oil on hand, it helps prevent sticking. The trick with GF pasta is the water needs to always be boiling while it's cooking and you HAVE to stir every two minutes, to make sure the noodles don't stick. They won't stick if you follow these rules. Make sure there is enough room in the pot for the noodles to move around, do not cook any pasta in a small pot, it doesn't work well.

For this recipe I cooked the noodles for 10 minutes, they need to be al dente, which means when you bite into it, soft on the outside with a little firmness inside. This will cook through in the oven. It's simple, and so good, I do not miss regular pasta since I started eating GF pasta)

For all those who I may offend right now, sorry, but I broke the pasta in half, I know that's against the rules but for a casserole it's easier if you break them in half, in my opinion.

 

OK, after the pasta has cooked, drain well. Return pasta to the pot, add milk and egg and stir quickly into the hot pasta.

Transfer pasta to a lightly greased 3 quart baking dish.

In a large Skillet cook meat, onion, pepper and garlic until meat is cooked through.

Drain any fat. Add spices and cook for 2 minutes. Stir in tomato sauce next, (I added a teaspoon of sugar, helps with the acidity) cook 2 more minutes.

Spoon meat over top of pasta,

In a bowl combine the shredded cheeses and top meat with the cheese.

Bake uncovered for 10 minutes, or until bubbly. Let it stand for 5 minutes before cutting into.

ENJOY!!

 

It has a spicy kick to it and very flavorful. Leave me a comment and tell me if you liked it.

I served it with Gluten Free cornbread, it was so good!

We'll have more tonight.

Bath Remodel and Sewing

So another before and after. Been here now almost two years and it never ends.

Always something to do, which is fine that's the point of having your own home, right?

I've been home for a week, sick, so sick I couldn't lift my head up. I thought I may have actually gone through a winter and not catch a cold.

WELL, this cold has made up for that. Coughing and sounding as if there is a dog barking inside of me. UGH!!

Anyway,

I was going through some pictures of projects and realized I haven't post any of them.

First one is of the half bath.

Oh that was a scary room. Very 70's with the gold and black.

Gold wallpaper, thankfully this was the only room in the house that had wallpaper.

Black vanity and mirror, and wait for it

Black toilet seat with that nasty cushion on it!!

Oh it was awful. Absolutely gross. And like everywhere else in this place,

it smelled.

So after removing the wallpaper, and the toilet and the strange toilet paper holder

Martha Stewart Moss green paint, new fixtures and new light.

Same vanity just painted white and painted the frame around mirror white as well.

 

And of course a new toilet. Painting above is from a friend who's dad is a very talented artist, I love his stuff and it went great in here with the colors.

Then later I bought some fabric to cover the vanity with. It's the only original thing in this house, other than the hot tub downstairs.

We plan on replacing the vanity, but in the meantime, I wanted to hide it, even though I painted the cabinet I still didn't like the way it looked.

Colors in there are moss green with eggplant color. Love those combinations.

Still have to finish some trim in here as well as throughout the house.

Also did some skirting in the laundry room.

Sink Before

Sink After

Well, that's it for now. There will be more, especially with the warm weather coming I hope to have a lot done with our back yard.

 

 



Master Bedroom Redo (Again)...:) And Painting Furniture

It's been one year and nine months that we've been living in our home and I've all ready redone the bedroom twice.

The first time we had no choice it was just gross, but because of the rush to move in, their was no taking my time in picking out paint, so I chose what I thought was a pretty blue, but it was too much blue for this room.

So I had plenty of time to pick out something that I hoped I would just love, and I did.

Since we had the paint brushes out I thought I might as well paint our furniture.

It's something I've wanted to do for a very long time, and honestly when it came time to do it, I had to really talk myself into it,

I even went onto Pinterest and looked at before and after of furniture similar to mine

and I finally did it.

So the furniture:

I purchased this antique dresser over 10 years ago for our guest room. And many times I've thought of painting it but never did.

As you can see, it's all ready for a paint job.

I didn't sand it, I used Liquid Sand Paper which you can purchase anywhere they sell paints.

I love that stuff!!!

Rubbed it all over the furniture I was planning on painting, let it dry and them primed everything. The paint I bought all ready had primer in it but I didn't want to take any chances on wood bleeding through.

So all primed and ready to go

I'm sure many of you notice the missing hardware on the right drawer.

When I tried to put it back on it would not work, then hubby noticed the screw was bent so we have to buy a new one.

When I removed the hardware before painting I realized someone put them on upside down, so I fixed that and I love how it turned out.

I'm still debating on the antiquing process. Not sure yet if I want to do that or just leave it.

The other piece of furniture, hubby was a little freaked out that I was going to paint it.

The Armoire!

The 1990's pine armoire from Broyhill.

We bought this set together after we were married for a couple of years.

After a few years with the set we gave my parents the dresser and lingerie chest but kept this.

So after years of pine it was time for a change and although the furniture in our room does not match, I wanted them to have the same color. I was tired of mismatched wood pieces.

After:

Again trying to decide to leave it alone or antique it a bit?

Then we needed new furniture on either side of the bed and went to IKEA for that.

We bought the TARVA line, unfinished wood so you can paint it or stain it.

It's a very simple set that I painted, ordered hardware through EBay and the only thing they need are molding. So I need to go and pick something out

Priming then painting the dressers and drawers while watching Netflix on our laptop, time flies that way

So the after below, it needs something in the middle, between the hardware, deciding if I should put molding on just the top drawer or all drawers

I love this hardware, it's furniture jewelry 

The drawers are nice and deep and it is well needed storage 

 

So now the bedroom Before:

I like how the blue looked in pictures but not in person

So after

 

I really like this color, the bathroom also got repainted in the same family just one shade lighter.

So the only thing to do here is refinish the floors, again and add base board trim.

So glad we finally got this done. It's a real pain to paint this room because the ceilings go real high and you need a special ladder to reach those areas so we're happy this worked out because we plan to live with this color for a very long time!!!

So what do you think, antique the furniture a bit or not?

Add molding to all three drawers or just one?

Decisions, decisions!