Hallway Decor

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Before the husband and I first moved in together we decided we wanted three black and white photos for our bedroom.  We narrowed our personal photos down to a picture from the cherry blossom festival, a trip to mexico and one we took while in New York on the Brooklyn bridge.  My friend helped me use PhotoShop to make modify the color pictures to black and white.  I uploaded them to Shutterfly, clicked purchased and we were in business!

These are the pictures we chose …

The husband and I went to a couple of framing stores to get quotes on getting the pictures matted and framed.  We were looking at ~$200+ per picture for custom framing … WAY too much!  The three pictures then spent the next 2 years in a photo album.  From time to time we would revisit the idea of having the pictures framed, but never made any actual progress.  Last week we found a new location for our pictures … the hallway!  I found this post on Young House Love and was inspired.  Although I am not ready to take on the whole wall I do love pictures and have some other items that would work for a wall collage.

In any event we decide these three black and white photos were a good place to start with hallway decorations.  Since Amazon Prime is like my favorite thing I decided to see if there were any nice 8×10 matted frames on Amazon before going to Michael’s or a custom framing store.  I quickly found these picture frames and $17-18 per frame was totally justifiable and the wallet was way more comfortable with it as well!!!

After preparing for Hurricane Sandy Sunday (filling the cars with gas, getting food/water, laundry, dishes, charging every electronic we have and all that good stuff) we took some time out to hang our photos in the hallway.  It took a few tries (three to be exact) but eventually we got the two lower pictures level with each other.

It’s nice to see the hallway starting to come together.  Whether or not we decide to pursue the whole collage look for the hallway is still TBD, but at least there is something on the wall for now :)

Next up is to purchase a runner for the hallway!!

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Photo of the Week – Brooklyn Bridge

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This picture was taken when the husband and I were walking across the Brooklyn Bridge in New York.  I thought the little “love me” sticker was so cute and just couldn’t help but snap the picture.

Happy Friday!

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Tasty Tuesday – Spicy Chicken Curry

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PEOPLE  it is Tasty Tuesday!  What are you making for dinner tonight?  Last week I love made some spicy chicken curry for the hubby.  This take on chicken curry is definitely A LOT healthier than what you would get from a restaurant.  If you don’t like spicy stuff I suggest not using any (or as much) jalapeno and use all regular curry powder instead of the hot madras curry powder.  This recipe can totally be tweaked to fit your pallet and is pretty forgiving!

Ingredients
1 medium onion, chopped
3-4 cloves garlic, chopped
1/3 jalapeno, chopped
1 tablespoon garam masala
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon of ground cloves
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoons hot madras curry powder
1 tablespoon curry powder
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup condensed milk (Fat Free will taste just as good as full fat)
5 chicken breasts, cut into chunks
Kosher salt
Steamed broccoli
Steamed white rice, for serving

Chop the onion, garlic cloves and jalapeno.  Get out all your spices so you have them ready to use.

In a food processor combine the onion, garlic, jalapeno, garam masala, cumin, and cloves. Process to make a chunky paste.  Heat the oil in a large Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the onion mixture, curry powder, and 1/4 cup water. Let fry 4 to 5 minutes.

Add another 1/2 a cup of water as well as the 1/2 a cup of condensed milk.

I like to precook the chicken on my grill pan, however you don’t have to.  Precooking the chicken adds a pan to clean, but also speeds up the overall cooking time.

Add chicken pieces and salt to taste. Bring to a boil. Simmer until the chicken is cooked through, about 30 minutes.  If you precooked the chicken I would say about 10 minutes instead of thirty.  Add the steamed broccoli to the mixture.  Serve over rice – makes about 5 servings.

Bon Appetit!!

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Photo of the Week – Cherry Blossoms

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This picture was taken back in April of 2010.  My sister-in-law and her husband came to town for a visit and we decided to walk down town and check out the cherry blossoms.  They were great that year and this is my favorite picture from the day!  We got this picture blown up to an 8×10 and matted/framed it.  The plan is to hang the picture in our hallway at some point soon!

Happy Friday!

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How Many Quarts Did You Buy?

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After painting the guest bath, master bedroom and the living/dining room the only thing left to paint was the master bathroom.  We had agreed to leave the builder grade paint in the guest room until we decide exactly what we plan to do with that room.  The guest room is pretty much a landing zone or storage room at the minutes, which clearly isn’t ideal.  Anyways, similar to the living/dining room choosing a color for the master bath wasn’t easy.  We ending up going with a color that’s a shade darker than our living/dining room after putting couple different samples on the wall.

Once we were pretty sure we wanted the color we put a big color swatch on the wall.  Do you see my reflection in the shower?  Hahaha I was attempting to document the process.

After painting the guest bath we knew that the correct paint to buy was semi-gloss.  We “assumed” the guest and master bath were approximately the same size we purchase 1 quart of paint.  We were well, WRONG!  The master bath is slightly bigger so we really needed two quarts of paint.  Back to the store I went to pick up the extra quart.  Then something disastrous happened.  We started painting the remaining wall and somehow the color just was NOT the same. I really don’t know what happened … the husband and I stood there looking at the wall and then at each other and we were seriously PERPLEXED.  In any event it was unanimous that we needed another quart of this paint in an effort to resolve the issue.

Back to Sherwin Williams we went to purchase our THIRD quart of this paint.  We were so excited to get home and make that final wall match all the rest that we  pulled out all the painting supplies and got to work.  Clearly this damn bathroom just didn’t want to be painted … I’m not sure how it happened by the roller started shedding and the wall started to look all textured.  At this point we were so perplexed I didn’t even think to break out the camera to document the disaster that was unfolding.  We attempted to wipe the wall down with paper towels and start over, but that was an epic fail leading to an empty paint can and a textured wall.

After letting the wall dry and sanding it back to “normal town” we were ready to being painting the dreaded wall again.  SOOOOO back to the paint store we went for a fourth and final time.  The husband goes in to buy the paint and when he got back to the car he looked a little defeated …

Me – “What’s wrong?”

Husband – “The just asked me if I was aware of how many quarts of the same colored paint we’ve purchased.”

Me – “Too many … but it wasn’t our fault there were so many issues.  Didn’t you tell him all the issues we had.”

Husband – “Nope.  Just told him I was aware we should have purchased a gallon at the start of this project.”

Me – “Oh okay then.”

My poor husband was so horrified that we had to purchase so many quarts that he wouldn’t own up to the issues we encountered when the sales man pointed out we purchased incorrectly. :)

After the fourth quart of paint we were FINALLY able to fix the remaining wall and put a little extra paint on the other walls. Unfortunately I haven’t master the process of having paint colors show up correctly in pictures when there is zero natural light.  Therefore there is no great “after shot”.   Sorry :(.   It was SO nice to call that project a wrap after four tries LOL.  Overall I love the color of the bathroom.  Now I am on the hunt for a new bathroom mat and accessories.  Somehow the to-do list never seems to dwindle!

Happy home improvements!

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