Life Right Now * November 2014
Click to check out June, July, August, September, and October.
Right now in life, I am:
MAKING updates to my blog design! Hoping to unveil a new design in the New Year!
COOKING lots of family recipes (and making them gluten-free)! I made my family’s recipe gluten free for the first time, I made my favorite Sawdust Pie (recipe here), and I’ve made gluten-free Angel Biscuits too using this new All-Purpose Gluten-Free Flour. Drew got a smoker this month, so he has been , chickens, and brisket.
DRINKING hot chocolate!
READING . I actually bought this book from a cute little design shop in Portsmouth, New Hampshire when Drew and I were there on our honeymoon. It has only taken me nearly three years to start reading it!
WANTING to go Christmas caroling next month!
PLAYING Taylor Swift’s new 1989 album. And .
SEWING nothing this month, but I have a sewing project that I want to tackle in December! It involves these gold cloth napkins from West Elm.
CROCHETING a for our living room.
WISHING for a restful weekend. Last weekend was a busy, wonderful Thanksgiving weekend spent with family in Nashville (see photo below), but I’m looking forward to some downtime and relaxing this weekend. (In other words, I really want to lay on my couch and crochet and watch Christmas movies and do nothing else. But I have a lot of projects I’m working on, so I probably will be busy too.)
ENJOYING , on Black Friday. We skipped the early morning crowds and went shopping together Friday afternoon at the mall. It was a great time and I got some things I needed (on major sale!).
WAITING until Christmas! So excited to see everyone open the gifts I’ve picked out for them.
LIKING I picked up from an antique/thrift store.
WONDERING what thinks of us. She did so great on the long car ride to and from Nashville last weekend (see photo below). Although she must think we are crazy for all the chaos in her life lately!
LOVING how Drew’s childhood dresser makeover turned out!
HOPING for a wonderful Christmas season for everyone! I love this time of year!
MARVELING at THE PATTERNS I MADE this month! I’ve wanted to learn repeatable pattern design for so long! Some photos of the process: , , , , .
NEEDING to slow down and enjoy this Advent season. It is so easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle.
SMELLING Sweet Olive trees, , , and lots of delicious foods this month.
WEARING for our Christmas pictures this year. I’ll post about our cards soon.
FOLLOWING in my childhood footsteps by breaking out the .
NOTICING I found tucked inside my Moleskine notebook.
KNOWING that dreams take hard work.
THINKING about how much I love our living room gallery wall! So great to finally have it finished!
BOOKMARKING this newsletter from Braid Creative. As she says, “if you feel like your gift isn’t special or unique that’s okay – because it’s not your special gift that really matters – it’s the consistent and persistent way in which you show up, do the thing, and put it out there.”
CELEBRATING a wonderful Thanksgiving. Lots of food, , , , , and .
OPENING the door to our house and reveling in how clean and organized it is! After nearly a month of having plumbing work done in our house, we deep cleaned and organized every room. It is more put together than it has ever been.
LAUGHING at .
FEELING thankful! For Drew, for Violet, for work, for family, for our home, for creativity.
Gluten-Free All-Purpose Flour
I’ve been eating a gluten-free diet for almost two years now and this month is the first time I’d tried making my own gluten-free all-purpose flour. I’m not sure why I resisted so long! When I first went gluten-free, I resisted having to buy a million different gluten-free flours, so I stuck to recipes I could make with simply brown rice flour or a combination of just a few other flours. However, over the past few years for various recipes I’ve ended up with a pantry full of different GF flours anyway. It was about time I mixed some together and came up with a simple substitute for my old gluten flour recipes!
Gluten-Free All-Purpose Flour
makes about 9 cups
Ingredients:
-4 cups finely or stone-ground white rice flour
-2 cups stone-ground brown rice flour
-2 cups tapioca flour or tapioca starch
-1 cup potato starch (not potato flour)
Directions:
1. In an extra-large bowl or container, combine flours. Whisk together until the ingredients are thoroughly blended. Use a large spoon to bring flour up from the bottom of the bowl to the top and whisk again. Repeat a few times to make sure the flours are evenly distributed throughout the entire mixture.
2. Store the flour in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 1 month. Store in the refrigerator or freezer for longer use. (I store mine in a half-gallon mason jar in the fridge.) Allow the flour to come to room temperature before using.
3. Lightly stir the flour before measuring. Spoon the flour into measuring cup and level off with a straight edge (the back of a butter knife works perfectly).
Note: Depending on the recipe, you might have to add a little bit of xanthan gum to your regular recipe to get the best gluten-free result (it acts as a binder similar to gluten).
I’ve already used this GF flour mix several times in the last week or two to make family recipes I hadn’t had in years! It has worked wonderfully for me so far. I actually had to mix up a second batch of it yesterday to make some biscuits. More gluten-free recipes using this flour mix will be coming soon!
Sawdust Pie
This yummy dessert was my favorite pie growing up, and was one that was often served at Thanksgiving. I hadn’t had it in a few years (since going gluten-free), so I decided to finally make a gluten-free version. It is delicious warm, served with whipped cream and banana slices.
Sawdust Pie
Serves 8
Ingredients:
-9 inch unbaked pie shell/crust (I use my homemade gluten-free version, here)
-1 1/2 cups sugar
-1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs (I use from my local grocery store)
-1 1/2 cups chopped pecans
-1 1/2 cups coconut
-7 egg whites, unbeaten
Directions:
1. Prepare pie crust.
2. Mix all dry ingredients together.
3. Stir egg whites into dry ingredients.
4. Pour mixture into unbaked pie shell.
5. Bake in preheated 325 degree oven until glossy and set (about 25-30 minutes). Center should be gooey. Do not overbake.
6. Serve warm with whipped cream and sliced bananas.
Enjoy!
Drew’s Dresser Makeover
In the last couple weeks I’ve finished yet another project that has been on my to-do list for years: re-finishing Drew’s childhood dresser.
Here you can see what it looked like before. When Drew was younger a faux metal paint finish had been done to the front of the drawers. I painted over it as a temporary solution years ago until I had the chance to sand the entire thing down and completely refinish it. The top had some water damage (from a fish tank that had leaked) and the sides were just generally beat up from years of use.
I paint stripped the front of the drawers, sanded the entire thing down, gave it a good cleaning, applied a coat of wood conditioner, three coats of dark walnut stain, and three coats of satin polyurethane (same process I used here). The results are pretty gorgeous.
I think it turned out beautifully. I love the new crystal and brass knobs I found at Hobby Lobby (they were on sale, so I got all 8 for $20) and I think they accent the dresser perfectly.
So happy with the results and to have this project off my to-do list!
P.S. You can see that we also re-painted our bedroom walls this weekend too…
Living Room Gallery Wall, Round 2
If you’ve been reading my monthly life re-cap posts, then you know that I’ve been talking about hanging a new gallery wall in the living room for months (seriously, I talked about it here, here, here and here.) The old gallery wall we had in there didn’t really have a lot of personality, I didn’t really like the frames, and it was a little too small for the size of the wall. I’ve wanted to change it out for a few years now, but I didn’t take the old frames down until this summer when we painted the living room. That wall has just been sitting empty for the last few months, until now:
Sorry for all the glares on the frames. There is a wall of windows opposite these, so getting shots without a glare is impossible! I’m really happy with how this turned out though. I think it is so much more interesting and meaningful now.
“I love you” print hand-lettered by me, my favorite vintage photo of my grandparents, one of my first surface pattern designs (!!!), a test sheet out of my watercolor sketchbook (that one will probably change eventually, I just put that in for now), that reminds me of my Mamaw (she collected little elephant figurines and that print reminds me of a shirt she used to wear), “Yours Sincerely,” painting I did a few years ago, my favorite picture of my sisters/nieces/nephew that I took when we were in Puerto Rico (with a stray cat), “It Doesn’t Have to be Perfect to be Beautiful” print from The Nester, a gold skeleton key that opened my childhood bedroom door (and was the official key for our secret club), a I took of my childhood front yard when I was home for my Papaw’s funeral last Spring, and my final drawing for the first art class I ever took at Tulane.
I also love the more neutral color palette of this gallery wall. I love the gold/wood/white frames and the black and white photos and prints. Now let’s just all imagine that couch is really a deep grey, clean lined, velvet sectional…
Meanwhile, Violet is all like, “Ma, we all know who the real attraction in this room is…”
