making progress

I mentioned that we got a new couch and that I am now known as "The Couch Nazi" and some of you asked to see it, so here she is!

 Isn't is PRETTY!!?? In the past, we've had some vintage sofas. One was $10 and one was $20. They worked in our 1969 Colorado home. They weren't working anymore. They both were badly in need of repairs and reupholstery and I didn't have the time or desire to take on the skill set. And professional reupholstery is super pricey (for a reason!) so we decided to say goodbye to those sofas and buy one we loved.

This room is not quite done, but it's lookin' pretty good! I'm going to hang the yellow curtains from our Colorado house and paint that TV stand (thrift store find in Virginia) a deep teal color. The rolling cart makes a perfect coffee table. It's more orange than it looks in the photo. We found that at Target, along with the awesome basket underneath, which holds quilts and was on clearance for $12! I would also like to recover the throw pillows that came with the couch, I just haven't found a fabric that sings to me yet.

 That rolling cart was so awesome, that we went back and grabbed the teal one (I dunno why it's so Crayola blue in the pic) to help with the Lego situation. Casey (who's a genius, obviously) put the top on upside down so their Legos don't fall off the side. Smart!! We have three huge bins of Legos (the under-bed size), plus several small bins to hold bigger sets that they want to keep separate. We don't allow Legos in the bedrooms (huge mess) and they really like to build in the main rooms anyway, where the rest of the fam is. In our Virginia house, we started calling the living room, "the Lego room" because they were just eeeeeverywhere! This cart is really helping a lot. It can roll behind the couch by the window or even into the hall closet, which we call the Harry Potter closet because it goes all the way under the stairs. That closet is where the big Lego bins live also. and I still have a living room and coffee table, hooray!

What are your creative Lego solutions??

I sewed!

A few evenings ago, I ditched all the other move-in work to be done and determined to get my sewing room in order. Because Casey was playing Super Mario with the kids (quality time, don't tell me it isn't!) and I knew I could have some time up there alone. Casey was insistent when we accepted this house and got the floor plan that the girls would share a room so that I could have a sewing room. I'm so glad we went that route! The girls have a huge bedroom, more than enough space to share and I have a place to spread out and sew, hooray!

I opened my machine and realized it was broken :-/ But, don't worry! It was only the thread holder bracket that broke and I promptly found one online and ordered it, paying a little extra for faster shipping, because this is Hawaii and mail can be super slow.

But, I couldn't wait. I needed some sewing therapy and I had some beautiful knits my friend Jenn had iPhone shopped with me for before we moved. I rigged my machine with some elastic headbands to hold the thread holder on. I cut this dress out and sewed it up in short spurts over the next few days. It felt so good to make something!!!!

It's New Look 6210 and I will definitely be using it again.

 Just for grins, here's a photo of my rigged machine. So glad the damage wasn't worse, despite the movers using no packing materials inside it's case!!! Grrrrr. And this is why it got a front seat spot in our last move ;) Oh, it's also funny enough to tell you that all the sewing boxes in this move were labeled, "kniting materials". Not knitting. Kniting. Ha!

I'm baaaaack

Ah, sweet normalcy. We moved into our house on Wednesday and things are slowly returning to real life. We have a lot of stuff, though, goodness! Nothing shows you how much of your stuff you'd never miss like going without it all for a couple months. We have purged SO much over the last two moves and I really felt like we'd kept so little, so I find myself surprised at how much we are still putting into the Goodwill pile!

We bought a new couch! It's super pretty. My family might start calling me the Couch Nazi soon because I might be a little over protective of it. It's so new! And I've never had a grownup couch before!

Anyway, I'll blog more about house stuff as the days and weeks go by. I have some good ideas to share about renting/living in military housing! Ideas to make it your own :)

For now, I have a recipe to share! My kids were very excited when I suggested pancakes for dinner last night. When we went Paleo/gluten free about a year ago, I tried soooo many Paleo pancake recipes and most of them flopped. They just weren't tasty, unless you think sawdust is tasty, hahahaha! But, then I stumbled on this one and it is goooood. It uses coconut flour, which is cheaper than almond flour and is filling and healthy. Avoid that blood sugar crash you get from the other stuff ;) Casey is always sruprised when I tell him these are not "regular" pancakes, even though I've made them tons of times by now. It's too good not to share. FYI, I triple the recipe to feed our family of five and have leftovers for breakfast the next day. It takes a lot of eggs, but they do not have that eggy texture that some other recipes do.

Here ya go, in case you missed it, Coconut Flour Pancakes, from Divalicious Recipes in the City.

Here in Hawaii, fruit and pancakes go together like white on rice, so we had our pancakes with fruit toppings last night. Next time, I'll have a can of coconut milk in the fridge to make cream!

 We are thoroughly enjoying our return to home cooked meals, let me tell ya. This is a site for sore eyes!

 I'm looking forward to trying this Paleo Macademia Nut Waffle recipe soon! You can't go wrong with one of Danielle's recipes, seriously. I don't have a waffle iron so mine will be in pancake form, hopefully that works. It includes a fruit syrup recipe too, so that will be amazing!

Speaking of amazing, while staying in Waikiki, we walked to dinner every night and one of our favorite places to get breakfast for dinner was Eggs 'N Things. When you have a gluten free kid, breakfast menus are full of options! Natalie tried some really yummy omelet combos. It was nice to have at least one place where she felt she had lots of choices, even if she couldn't have pancakes, ya know? Anyway, Eggs 'N Things has some specialty syrups--guava and coconut and ooooohhhhhh my, the coconut syrup is amaaaaaaazing. Not healthy, at all, ha! But, seriously, amazing. I begged Casey to choose that one for his pancakes every time so I could steal a bite or two ;) You can order that online through that link, btw.

In other news, when we moved in, my Mother's Day flowers got upgraded from their plastic water bottle to a real vase :) Still so pretty!

Cheers!