Call me, Betty

The house we purchased had a garden already in it with many butternut squash, yellow squash, and tomatoes.  All things Derek and I do not care for.  The first time we picked from the garden I ended up sending it all home with my mom and dad as a thank you for all their hard work on the house.  My mom ended up sharing a few of her recipes; but, recommended that I try making spaghetti sauce from scratch.  Derek and I proceeded to pick everything that was ready from our garden for the second time and ended up with more than we knew what to do with and then some.  Since I now have a bigger kitchen which makes it easier to cook in and currently had two dozen tomatoes on my hands I figured why not try out my moms spaghetti sauce recipe.

An apron acquired years after my grandmother passed.  I love so many things about it especially the pocket detail.

Things you will need:
Tomatoes (who would have thought, right?!)
Sharp knife (I used a paring and chefs)
Cutting board
Blender
Sifter
Spatula or spoon
Stock pot
Seasonings of choice
Tomato paste (optional)

Once you have clean tomatoes, core them and cut into quarters or chunks.

I did end up cutting all of the stripes (technical term of course) off.

Throw the tomato quarters into a blender and blend smooth.  The mixture will be pinkish and frothy looking.

Before blending

After blending

Pour the smoothed blended tomatoes into the sifter over your stock pot.

At this point I used a spatula to kind of help get everything moving through the sifter and leaving the skin and seeds in the sifter.  Toss out the seeds and skin.  Continue all steps until you have gone through all of your tomatoes.

Now comes the extremely difficult part, cover the stock pot and let the sauce simmer on the stove until you have nearly half of what was originally in the pot.

 As time goes on the sauce will reduce and begin to look more saucelike than frothy.

The sauce will actually look a bit watery before looking like sauce

 If the sauce is too watery, add a can of tomato paste to thicken it.  In my case I added three cans of paste partly because it was getting to be 9pm and husband and I were hungry.  Add whatever spiced you prefer to the sauce and enjoy when done!

Meatless sauce

Meat and mushroom sauce

 When making spaghetti I always split the sauce in two so we can use the meatless for pizza or freeze for future meat sauce.

I don't care for sauce; but, after tasting this sauce I have to say it was so flavorful.  Both husband and I agree that it was so much better than the normal homemade sauce I normally make as I refuse to buy pre-made sauce.

*NOTE: This recipe is not for the impatient!  The sauce will take roughly 4 hours (YEP, 4 long hours) to be complete.... so incredibly worth it.

Ceilings should be white

First things first.  I apologize for the boatloads of photos!  Since Derek had to work and live in Illinois for the first two weeks of us owning and painting a house I did my best to keep photo records to send to him so he knew what was going on to his house while he was away.

The house we ended up buying was built in '91 and was definitely out of date with the painting and decor.  The first time we looked at the house neither of us noticed the ceilings because neither of us looked UP.  When we came up for the home inspection I ended up noticing the previous owners had painted each and every rooms ceiling to match the wall colors.  I'm talking the kitchen, dining, hall, and entryway ceilings were seafoam green.  

Living room ceiling was baby blue.  

Hard to tell that the ceilings are actually baby blue.  Trust me they were baby blue.

Two bedrooms had some weird beige color to match the bathroom ceilings.  Those who truly know me know that I absolutely despise beige!



And the master bedroom had this dark purplish grey ceiling. 

And the absolute best thing the previous owners did with their ceilings was use a piece of trim between the living room and entry to separate the seafoam green and the baby blue.

This was a "are you kidding me?!?!?!" moment.

In four words: ceilings should be WHITE!

It took some convincing Derek that ceilings not only should be white; but, ceilings should have a different texture than the walls.  This way it makes the ceiling obviously different than the walls and it also gives the rooms a clean and finished look.  My dad had experience and the tools to texturize the ceilings with the orange peel look which we absolutely hated on the apartment walls (who does that to their walls?  No judging, it just isn't my thing.); but, I love it for ceilings.  Mom and dad brought all the supplies to do the orange peel and we really didn't decide until Derek was getting ready to head back to Illinois to actually do the textured ceilings.

The process is really a pain and super time consuming to get an orange peel ceiling.  We are talking: mixing the mud, spraying the mud, waiting an hour before knocking it down, scraping when dry, priming, then painting white!  Oh and you have to remove all light and ceiling fixtures along with taping and using plastic over EVERYTHING you don't want to get sprayed or covered because the process is super messy.  It is SO worth the time and work though! 

Goodbye ugly light fixture!  Benefit of having a tall husband and tall dad is not needing ladders ;)

YAY!  Texture!!!

Cleaning it off of the walls.

More than one person IS required!

Spotlights are required when you are spraying ceilings at night once the sun has set.

No turning back once you have started!

After priming, the white ceilings appear after being painted on pink!

Again, seriously nice not to use a ladder to paint the ceiling!

Ahh no more weird two colored ceiling being separated by a piece of trim that has no business being on a ceiling in the first place.  *Note: only half the ceiling is painted here; but, I assure you the whole thing is WHITE!

Derek really wanted to learn how to do it so Dad ended up showing him how on our laundry room ceiling and he did great!

Dad explaining to Derek how to work the sprayer.

After everything was said and done, my husband even admitted that doing the orange peel to the ceiling and having the ceilings white was an excellent idea.  It raises the height of the room and just makes everything cleaner looking.

Stay tuned for more on the house as it might take a year to get through the whole thing and everything we do to it!