Raw Kale Salad

Now before you go all, "eewwww raw kale" on me, I promise you that kale, raw or cooked, is delicious.  If you haven't tried it, you should (yes, mom, I am looking at you).  And if you have tried kale, try it this way.  You'll love it.

This recipe comes from Happy Health Life- Thanks Kathy!

Start with a nice big bunch of wash and shredded kale, make sure you remove the tough stem in the process...

Kale, Yum!

Now mix up some dressing...

This dressing is:
2 1/2 tbs tahini
3 tbs rice vinegar
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tbs olive oil
2 tsp maple syrup

Next toss your dressing and kale together and add toppings....

Based on the recipe I added:
3 tbs sunflower seeds
1 granny smith apple
1 avocado
1 tomato
1 can of juice packed mandarin oranges
1/2 red onion

Arranged all pretty like...

And a close up of all the prettiness....

In the slightly annoying words of Rachel Ray, YUM-O

The Closet Saga Continued

When last we touched on my obsession with shoes and a too small closet, I had coerced Seth into helping me install a second shelf for shoes.  Catch up on that fun here.  Clearly that was a step in the right direction, but far from finished. 

A couple Saturday's ago, Seth had planned a day with at the cigar store and I seized my opportunity to finish updates to my closet.

I started by pulling everything (except some shoes) out of my closet...

 YIKES!  This is why I waited until I know Seth would occupied all day long....

 No hangy stuff to get in the way...

The plan was to bust out those back shelves and add 2 new hangy racks, thus freeing up a ton of space.  So that I did...

Goodbye nasty shelves!

From there, I popped in a way back hangy bar.  To get the right distance from the back wall, I took a hanger and placed it on the wall, providing me with the amount of distance from the wall I would need to have enough space to hang things.  Did that sentence even make sense?

Installing hangy bars is super simple.  You can buy the little cuppy things that the bar sets in from Lowes for super cheap.  They just screw in and you can set your bar in.

In no time, I had my new hangy bars in.  Now, I know what you're thinking, how is this gonna work?  Two bars?!  How will I get to the back bar?  Strategery, my friends, that's how.

I packed the back with items I rarely use, like my wedding dress and the prom dresses my mom sent to live with me.  If I do ever need these items, I can push the items on the first bar out of the way.  Not terribly easy to do, but it'll work.

As I lost valuable shoe space by knocking out the shelves, the second hangy bar got a hanging shoe rack and it also currently housing all hoodies.  Once winter rolls around, I'll probably switch out the hoodies for sun dresses.  So easy and organized.  I swear, I impress myself sometimes.

And finally in the front, I added a hanging sweater thang, as they were previously living on a shelf.  The bonus is that my sweaters are much easier to access now and as sweaters are a year round thing for me, this is good. 

Just as an additional reference point, the old shelvy area/new hangy area, would be to the left of the closet.  Not a great design, as it it totally inaccessible.

This project was actually completed a few weeks ago, and I am shocked, but pleased, to report that this area still looks like this.  Good design is usable and allows for things to easily stay organized.  WIN!

Presto Chango

The end of this month marks 2 years since Seth and I have been in our little house.  And with few (no?) exceptions, the furniture is pretty much in the exact space it landed on move in day.  For the most part, this is a good thing.  When we move, we take our time arranging furniture to make sure we like everything.  But our living room, man, the room was just not working for us.

When we originally arranged the furniture, we placed the couch in the middle of the room, so that the fireplace would be the focal point of the room. This was a great idea (not really) and it meant that things were nice and cozy the 3 days a year we actually have a fire going.  The rest of the year, the room just felt cramped.

 

This is what the room looked like when you walked in it.  As you can see, there is no room to move about.

This is the view if you turn left.  See, no room?

Turn left again, and you can see that the couch is scooted as far back as possible, while still keeping an area for walking too and from the door.

And out last wall is taken up by a huge beautiful window and a kitty condo (so not proud of that).  And you can see how Matilda lies on the couch cushions, effectively squishing them so far out of shape, they are virtually useless.  Thanks, dog.

So with this in mind, Seth and I decided that we had to rehash this space.  It just wasn't right.  The room isn't huge, but it shouldn't be that tight.  And believe it or not, the couch is actually the right size for the room, but the placement is allowing for total couch domination.

We started by pulling all the furniture out....

And Seth got to vacuum the whole room...

Now that we had a nice, clean work space, we moved furniture around... a lot.  Sadly, no pictures of this process because I was helping.  Believe it.

We figured pretty quickly that everything hinged on where the couch went...  And as much as I am anti-counch-against-the-wall, Seth was right and it worked out...

So the couch went on the big wall, across from the window, making the window the new and lovely focal point...

The leather chair moved to where the kitty condo had been (the kitty condo went to live in the guest bedroom- sorry guests!).

 

The bookcase stayed where it was.  If you had asked me before we started this process, I would have put money on the bookcase moving...

The orignial TV stand went to the garage for Seth to use and the dresser we ganked from the side of the road took its place.  The dresser holds part of our extremely too large DVD collection.

And the room was done.  This room is totally functional now.  I am so happy with the amount of space we have.  Seth and I can happily watch a movie and not feel like we have to be on top of each other.  The dogs have room to play and we have room to move. Of course, this move around has made me notice how much this room looks like a bunch of college kids decorated it... Lets just say, I'm working on it and plan to show you an easy project later.

Anybody else have fun adventures in furniture moving?