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kitchen

before & after, DIY, kitchen, renovation

Before & After: A New Backsplash to Brighten Up the Kitchen

03/27/2018

With all my posts about planning for the bathroom project, you’d think that I would have spent this past weekend working in that room. Well, you’d be wrong. A funny thing happened on the way to the hardware store. When I went to buy the hex tile for the bathroom floor I happened upon the perfect white subway tile for the kitchen backsplash. With our friend’s advice about finishing one room before moving on to the next echoing in my mind, I decided to buy the subway tile and finish the backsplash before doing any work in the bathroom. Continue Reading…

kitchen, renovation

Kitchen Mini-Renovation: We’re Going to Need a Backsplash

01/12/2018

Here’s a little don’t-always-believe-what-you-see lesson for the internet age. Note how nice the wall looks in the photo above. The space above the newly installed countertop looks smooth and cleanly painted, right? You might even think that if I would just touch up that little bit of door frame to the left in the photo, I’d be all good to go. If this were a photo on Instagram, you might comment with something like, “Wow! It looks like you’re almost done!”

Well, what you see online and in social media posts may not always be as it seems. Take this wall for instance. While some patchwork and a fresh coat of paint has it looking “internet good,” reality is a totally different story.

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how to, kitchen, recipes, setting up home

Super Simple Tomato Salsa for Canning

08/27/2017

Simple Tomato Salsa for Canning

Every year that we’ve planted a garden at the house (for those of you not keeping score, the number is 4), I’ve announced that I’m going to have a salsa garden. Each spring I’ve started out by planting all the ingredients for salsa. I excitedly bury my pepper and tomato seedlings in the garden and declare that this will be the year that we’re swimming in salsa! But something always ends up going wrong. The garlic doesn’t come up or the tomatoes under-deliver in their bounty.

Well, mark it in your calendars, folks, that 2017 is the summer of the salsa garden at the Delbert Meier house. The tomatoes have come in strong, garlic is abundant and the peppers have performed. And what I’ve lacked in ingredients from our own garden, I’ve managed to pick up at farmers markets.

Salsa is one of those simple recipes that makes you question ever buying it from a grocery store. In addition to the veggies, it’s really just some vinegar, salt and herbs all mixed up to make a yummy dipping sauce. I improvised my recipe for salsa so my measurements aren’t exact. I did check the label on the side of a jar of salsa to confirm that I was on the right patch with ingredients. But from there, it’s all a matter of taste.

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