Todd's a hater too

A couple weeks ago we pulled the stupid Fabulous 400 out so Todd could see if he could figure out why the big oven went kaput.

In moving it, we figured out where the 400 comes from – it easily weighs 4,000 pounds.

Replacing this thing is such a kitchen conundrum.  See the cabinets that are under the Fab...?

Those will have to come out with a different stove.  And I’ve already mentioned the fact that the 400 is 40-inches wide means either a) we spend about a million dollars on a new 40-inch stove (that size is considered professional or commercial grade), or b) we get a 30 or 36-inch stove (normal sizes) and have a corresponding 10 or 4-inch gap to fill between the stove and the other cabinets.

We’ve brainstormed that the gap could make a good cookie sheet cabinet, but then there’s the countertop that would be short… ARGH!!!

Do you see where my deep-seated hatred for the Fabulous 400 stems from??

After tinkering with it to no avail then hoisting it back…Todd’s a hater now too.

Range rover

I can look past most of the things around the new house that need addressed: Carpet removal, the need to paint, a fully-concreted backyard...

But the thing that makes me absolutely crazy is:

The Fabulous 400.

It is a beast. And I find it to be anything but fabulous.  


I can see how back in its day it was probably a very progressive appliance.  It has a rotisserie.  That could be neat.  It folds up like a Transformer (It's a cutting board... No!  It's a trivet... No! It's a full oven and stove top in one!), which is creative.

But at the end of the day, it is simply the bane of my culinary existence.

When we first looked at the stove we had no idea how it worked.  Where in the world do you boil a pot of water, for example?  

After some tinkering we found you have to uncover the coils hidden neatly under the cutting board/trivet pull-out.  Oh, of course! (smacking head sarcastically)   

But that feature only gets in the way!  It's awkward to lean over.  And I hate having to go the extra step of pulling it out when I just want to quickly, say, heat a kettle of water for tea.  So, I leave it like this...

But the most pressing issue is it doesn't work.

Our first night in the house we made a frozen pizza in the large oven on the left.  And it worked - fabulously. 

The next night, wanting a home-cooked meal, I put a meat loaf in the same oven.  Everything was cooking nicely when out of nowhere the 400 started buzzing.  At first I thought it was a timer going off.  I fiddled with that for a bit, then realized the oven was no longer on and the meat loaf was cooking on the slowly fading heat I had initially set it to.  

It hasn't worked since.  

Fortunately, there is a second, smaller oven on the right.  But cookie sheets and other pans are too big to fit in there, so I've either had to not make something or find a creative pan to put it in.


We're going to replace the ol' Fab with a normal gas - not electric, which I hate - stove.  

But to add insult to injury, the ol' Fab is 40 inches wide!  Today, that size is reserved for commercial or professional grade stoves, which, as much as I would love that, I do not love the cost: $5,000, $10,000, $15,000!!

What we don't understand is, the kitchen is remodeled with new, nice cabinets that were built around the Fabulous 400.  Why, oh why, wouldn't you replace the stove with a normal one and build the new cabinets around that?  

It's mind boggling. 

Fabulous my foot...

Kitchen renovations continued

When you last saw our kitchen the floors had been redone.  We didn't have the Fabulous 400 stove anymore, and our fridge was in the living room.

All of that is still the case - and so much more!  

Here is Todd working on our breakfast nook.  We decided to take the wood floors out of here because they were damaged in places, and because there was a weird section of board that ran across the floor boards creating a cut out line that couldn't have been fixed.  So, we are instead going to lay brick veneer in this part of the kitchen.  We think it will look really cool...!

This is where I've been cooking.  We've cooked a lot on the grill and also this Coleman camp stove of Todd's! Thank heavens we have it...

We had to take all of our cabinets down so they could be rearranged to accommodate the new sizes of appliances we bought last Saturday.  The Fabulous 400 was a 40 inch stove and we did not want to drop the money on replacing it at that size.  So, we got a smaller stove.  But we also got a larger fridge. Todd will still have to build in a bit more cabinet space, but it will be an easier job than replacing several cabinet faces like we were afraid was going to happen...

Down came the old cracked plaster walls!  They were in poor condition so Todd and his friend Mike worked to take down the plaster and replace it with drywall.  The guys also ran a water line for the fridge (since our old one didn't have an ice maker), and a gas line for the stove (our old one was electric)...

We also decided to take down the soffit above the cabinets to let us move them up a bit, and to also give us more storage space above...

Todd and Mike removing the crappy dishwasher that didn't wash to make way for our new awesome one...

Mike is a master electrician and he's done a lot of work fixing the ridiculous electrical we have...

Todd chipping away at the old chimney to expose the brick.  I worked at it too (a little) - it's a bugger!

Ta da!  The fully exposed chimney!  In this picture it still needs smoothed down and a wet rag taken to it...

Drywall up!  And Mike taping and mudding.  Todd is taking a wire brush to the chimney to get all the last bits of plaster off...

Looking the other direction toward the breakfast nook...

I had washed several dishes which never got moved from the room before the guys started sanding the drywall.  Grrrrr...

Yesterday, a blessed, blessed day - our new appliances arrived!  Lulu is overseeing the job...

Our new fridge is the stainless one on the right and our stove is on the left in front of that black fridge...

Our appliances are inside...but they are all in our living room.

I think tomorrow is our magic day to get them all hooked up!

Kicked to the curb

Last night something very, very exciting happened...

The Fabulous 400  left our kitchen for good!

Todd started renovations on our kitchen to prepare for the flooring guys tomorrow.  The nasty carpet - yes carpet - sub floor, and nails all have to be out before the refinishers arrive.  This meant the Fabulous 400 had to move.

I was so sad.

You should be able to actually hear the sarcasm in that sentence.

Going... (By the way, check out the corner of the dining room.  Todd took out a weird closet that was there.)

Going...

Gone...!!!!!!

That empty hole is a deep, deep source of happiness.

Todd pulling up the carpet...

The stairs to the basement covered completely, including the baseboards, in the same carpet as the kitchen.  Until you get to the landing.  The next flight is covered in orange carpet...

The point we're at now!  

Tomorrow we'll start the next step...sanding.

Hit the floor

Bit by bit our house renovations are coming along and let me tell you - it's lookin' good.

We had our wood dining and kitchen floors redone last week and they are beautiful!!

The first step was to remove this closet from the corner of the dining room...

It kind of sucks to not have ANY coat closet upstairs now, but it had to go.  It was ugly, not done well, and it really closed the dining room off.  See what I mean?  Look at how open it is now...

Next, down came the atrocious "window treatments".  I do not like that term.  Just say curtains for Pete's sake...

Then the flooring guys arrived...

One of our dining room walls bows out a bit away from the floor which is understandable for a house built in 1920!  However, this created a bigger gap between that wall and the floor boards in that place than in the rest of the room.  Since we can't just glue little ends of wood to each of the boards to make them long enough to reach the wall, and we can't take the wall down itself and rebuild it, we came up with another idea:  Put a border around the room to fill the space...

The only hang up with this idea was the dining room doorway.  Our living room is on the other side of that torn up entryway (that will eventually be tiled with granite) and basically mirrors the dining room.  To separate the living room from the entryway we had the guys add a turn board in Brazilian cherry.  It was only one board thick, which means the dining room entrance needed to be the same.  However, we were running two boards around the rest of the dining room.  Dilemma!  

We eventually decided to "stair step" the cherry boards to sort of angle them down to one turn board.  The result was perfect!  It looks kind of artistic, like a real craftsman did the work.  Here is the before in the middle of the sanding job...

Here's the whole dining room sanded down...

This is what we had them do in the corners.  I LOVE this herringbone work...!

This is the same corner all stained and finished.  Doesn't that cherry look gorgeous next to the oak...??

Here is another corner that I think came out pretty...

Remember the dining room entryway in its unfinished state?  Here it is finished!  We are SO pleased with how it turned out...!

The finished dining room...

Ok.  On to the kitchen!  A reminder of what it used to look like...

Cabinets, appliances (like the Fabulous 400), subfloor and CARPET removed!  Todd was ecstatic to discover we have birdseye maple floors in the kitchen.  Apparently, you never see this as flooring because birdseye maple is expensive.  And we just had it lying there all blanketed and cozy under some nasty grey carpet...!

Todd removing the plaster off the old chimney.  We're going to leave the brick exposed...

And the big unveil!  It really was an unveiling to us too.  Todd and I left for Missouri right before the guys stained the kitchen.  We had picked up some sample stain packets to figure out what we liked, but it turns out we didn't like any by themselves.  We decided we liked the lighter color we had chosen, but wanted a hint of red in it to warm it up a little.  Those were the last things we said to the flooring guy before we left.  He said he'd mix the stains and...we'd see it when we got home!

WE. LOVE. IT.

The entrance to the kitchen from the dining room.  We matched the wood pattern here to the other dining room entryway...

The full kitchen.  The floor in the breakfast nook in the back will be removed and most likely will have brick layed...

Check out the grain on this floor!  Todd about peed himself over the board that is four from the right...

How silky does this look?  It's like standing in little pools of melted gold...

So, we may have floors, but we don't have a kitchen yet.  We've been grilling out each night until we can get a stove - which will be very soon!

Stay tuned for what will eventually replace the Fab 400!

Fall fun - with two recipes

For the first time, as I understand anyway, Casper had a corn maze outside of town!

It's a great story...this farming family is involved in FFA (Future Farmers of America for those who may not know) and they decided to create a corn maze, not just for the community's enjoyment, but to raise funds for the local FFA Alumni chapter as well as the Natrona County ARC.

I have been dying to go!  Look how cool it is - designed with Wyoming's bucking horse and rider!

The Snyder family and I went last weekend (Todd went hunting) and we had a great time!  It wasn't fancy, just good ol' fashioned fall fun with a pumpkin patch, corn pit, farm animal petting barn and hayride.  Oh, and caramel apples which were quite tasty!

On our way in...

An idea of what we were getting ourselves into...

 The Snyder fam...

Samuel, their oldest boy, leading us through...

Hmmm...a fork in the road...

My twin in the corn maze...

The maze was not at all as scary as you would think from the picture above where it was green and HUGE looking.  It took us 36 minutes to make it through.

On our way to the petting barn...

I think some of these were baby turkeys.  Saved from Thanksgiving tables this year!

These chickens crack me up with their Tina Turner "hair"...

Hog heaven...

This little piggy was too cute.  Look at those ears! And that pink snout...

And we're pretty sure this rabbit thought it was a cat.  He was huge!  And so soft.  And he just let all the kids pet on him.  If he could purr I'm sure he would...

Green Acres corn maze is a lot of fun.  I think they've got one last weekend open - so get out there!

Ok, want a couple fall recipes?

I made these pumpkin cranberry muffins yesterday and are they good!  The candied pecans you could technically have any time of the year, but they seem especially fall-ish for salads.  Yum!

Cranberry Pumpkin Muffins
(Recipe says it makes 12, but I got about 20 out of it.)

These are awesome right out of the oven with a teeny bit of butter smeared on them.

2 c. flour
3/4 c. sugar
3 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
3/4 tsp. allspice
1/3 c. vegetable or canola oil
1 large egg
3/4 c. canned unflavored pumpkin
2 c. chopped cranberries (fresh or frozen) I used fresh and gave them a whirl in my

Preheat the oven to 400 F.

Sift the dry ingredients together and set aside.

Beat oil, egg and pumpkin together until well blended.

Add the flour mixture to the pumpkin mixture all at once.  Stir until moistened.

Fold in chopped cranberries.

Spoon batter into paper-lined muffin cups.  Bake 15-30 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

Candied Pecans
These are SO easy to make and SO super tasty!

1 c. pecans (I prefer pecan halves, but you could use chopped)
1 Tbsp. honey
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 Tbsp. water
1/2 tsp. cinnamon

Preheat oven to 325 F.

Bring all ingredients to a low boil in a small saucepan.

Add nuts and simmer 2 minutes.  Stirring until well coated.

Line a cookie sheet with a bit of foil and spritz with cooking spray.

Pour nuts onto sheet, drizzling with any remaining sauce from saucepan.

Bake about 10 minutes or until toasted.

Remove from oven and let cool.  The glaze will harden around the nuts.

Toss in a salad with sliced pear or apple and some blue cheese or goat cheese!

DELISH!