WFMW: Making Sense of Leftovers

As I planned out my November meal plan, I couldn't help but notice how many things look the same once frozen. My vegetarian soup looks remarkably like chili, my bags of chicken stock look like my bags of vegetable stock, etc. Then I remembered a nifty little invention:

freezer tape!

From now on, when I store leftovers in the freezer, I am going to write what it is and how many servings the container holds. This should make future meal plans a snap. Just to prove once more that labels Works for Me!

you don't have to buy actual freezer tape, btw; I just use regular masking tape

A Cozy Breakfast

I happened to stumble upon this concoction a few weeks ago, and now it's my new favorite breakfast. It's not really oatmeal with fruit, it's not really compote, but it is yummy, warm, and filling. Perfect for cold mornings! Feel free to tweak it to suit your taste:

1 generous pinch raisins, cranberries, or other dried fruit
dash water
small handful of oatmeal
1/4 - 1/2 C applesauce (I use No Sugar Added plain applesauce)
cinnamon

Combine all ingredients in microwave-safe bowl, crumbling oatmeal slightly as you add it in. Microwave 1 minute, sweeten if desired. You can easily throw in a bit of wheat germ, ground flax seed, etc. if you want to boost the nutritional content.

2010 State of the House

Today marks the one-year anniversary of our house. To commemorate, I thought I'd post a tour of our house as it is today. To keep this from being the longest post ever, I've linked to previous posts about the rooms where possible.
Our major expense to the house to date has been installing new windows. Next year, we plan to replace the roof.

Exterior

For the exterior, we have removed many of the bushes that surround the house, restored the pond, and laid the patio (partially visible here). Next spring, we'd like to do some landscaping.
In the future sometime, we'd like to replace the siding and trim. When we do that, we will sand down and repaint the exterior doors.

Master Bedroom

So far, to this room we have replaced the ceiling fan, painted the walls, moved our furniture in, and hung pictures. Until a month ago, we had shutters over the windows in our bedroom, but when we placed the windows, the shutters had to go :(

We hope to paint the ceiling (we didn't realize until we moved in that someone had painted the ceiling yellow), and install crown molding sometime in the near future.

Master Bathroom

This room was the first room to get a major overhaul. Looking at this room makes me excited about my plans for the rest of the house.

The only thing left for this room is replacing the shower and redoing the door. I like the bifold door, but I realize that it does have it's drawbacks. When we take up the carpet, the bifold door will likely be too short for the lower floor. I'd love to install a pocket door, but that would involve moving an outlet.


Hallway

We have painted the hallway and hung pictures. We would like to replace the hall light and move the light so that it is mounted in the ceiling.

Guest Bedroom

We have painted the guest bedroom and filled it with the stuff that doesn't have a home anywhere else :)

Other than replacing the ceiling fan, there are no current renovations planned for this room.

Schoolroom (aka the Front Room)

Aside from painting and moving things in, we haven't done anything to the room.

BB's Bathroom

We have painted the walls and decorated. We plan on doing a major overhaul to this room like we did to the master bath, hopefully at the beginning of the new year.

BB's room
Again, all we've done here is paint and move stuff in. We are going to replace the fan in his room, and aside from the flooring and door changes, we have no further plans.

Living Room
We have painted this room and moved things in. I dislike the off-set fireplace, but as of yet, I don't have a plan for the fireplace.

Kitchen
We haven't done anything to the kitchen aside from moving our stuff in. After we replace the roof, the next project we're saving for is a new kitchen.

New cabinets, new flooring, new counter tops, new lights, new oven, new stove, new hood...

I can't wait.

We initially planned on painting the existing cabinets and countertops, and repairing the cabinets where needed. But after some research, we've come to the conclusion that a better use of our resources would be to replace. We don't plan on selling this house anytime soon, but whatever changes we make we want to make with the resell factor in mind. The time and money it would cost to fix the cabinets doesn't make it worth our while. Replacing the cabinets will also enable us to improve the layout of the kitchen.

Front Hallway

In the hallway, we replaced the globes on the existing light fixture and spray painted it to take it from shiny brass to antique brass.

We also removed and/or painted over the wallpaper. Parts of the wall are still bumpy, so we'll have to go back and fix that. Other than that, we have no further plans.

Laundry Room

In the laundry room, we patched and painted the walls. We plan on either removing the cabinet doors or painting them. When the kitchen gets new flooring, we will replace the flooring in here as well.

Overall Interior

Throughout the house, we plan on replacing the carpet with hardwood flooring. When we do this we will also replace the base molding. At some point, we would like to replace the hollow doors with 6-panel solid doors. Chances are, this will take place after the kitchen remodel (which is after the roof).

Happiness Is...

Trash to Treasure

I was at Goodwill today and spotted this:

I can't help but wonder where, oh where, this sign fit in. 80's coffee shop? Some type of island-themed cafe? You can't tell from the picture, but the frame was mega gross. I have honestly never seen such a flimsy plastic used for a frame - of a mirror, no less!
The cardboard back had started to curl away from the mirrored glass, enabling me to see that the tacky pastels were printed on paper:

After taking the picture apart, I flipped over the paper, spray painted it, and stuck it all in a new frame:


The original picture was $5 (hooray for Goodwill's color of the week!), and the frame (also at Goodwill) was $8. The mirror hangs almost directly across from the window in my kitchen so that it will help bounce the light around.
There's a little bit of damage to the mirrored portion of the glass, but I think it adds character. Sorry for such a crummy picture, but it's really hard to take a picture of a mirror and not be in the picture yourself!

Desperate for Advice Here!

updated 1/6/10: As Kristen is having a backwards edition of WFMW, I thought I'd send this in. More opinions can't hurt!

For the past 5 months, I've been looking at pictures of kitchens. Lots. Of. Kitchens. I can't decide what I want to do with the kitchen cabinets, and it's driving me crazy. Currently, my kitchen cabinets look like this:
This is a perfectly fine color, but it's just not me (at some point in the future, we will replace the stove hood and back splash, but not right now). And currently, our countertops in the kitchen look like this:

Wilsonart Laminate Shale Moonstone #13045-60

I'm not crazy about them, but the countertops are staying for the time being. In a few years, we have plans for some light renovation to the kitchen which will involve changing the existing countertop layout. With that in mind, we don't want to replace something only to change it in a few years. I know that countertops can be painted, and I'm not against that idea. But if possible, I'd like to avoid that.
Some of the upper kitchen cabinets are going to have their doors removed, so that I can display some of my dishes. I also plan on displaying some of my dishes on some shelves by the kitchen table. I plan on mixing in some solid white dish pieces in with my Currier and Ives dishes, which look like this:
I want to install white beadboard along the bottom of the walls near the kitchen table, and in between the upper and lower kitchen cabinets. For the walls, I either want to do a very pale blue (Valspar's Laura Ashley Navy 1), or a light tan (Sherwin Williams Softer Tan).
My color choices for the kitchen cabinets are either a soft, distressed black (I LOVE Layla's kitchen!), white (like Traci's or Jennifer's), or a deep, chocolate brown (I have NO inspiration pics for this one, but it would go nicely with the existing countertops).
If I paint the cabinets white or black, would I have to paint the countertops as well? Here are some additional pictures of my kitchen. These cabinets are directly across from the previous picture of our kitchen:

When I do remove the doors, I am either going to remove the 3 doors pictured above, or the 2 doors that are on either side of the stove.
So - what do you think? Black, white, or brown for the cabinets? Thoughts on the countertop?