Major life problems

The house I'm in the process of buying is more than 100 years old.

It's 115 years old, to be exact.

I love some things about it, and other things I want to change immediately.

The thing, though, is that I can't make all of the changes right away. Sure, I can tear off wallpaper and rip up cat carpet, but the rest of the changes are likely going to happen gradually over time.

In case you do not know me very well, I have a pretty severe case of No Patience. I don't want to wait to make changes, I want them to happen now.

Now.

NOW!

(Please note, I don't even own the thing yet, and I'm already thinking this.)

Speaking of owning the thing, I went to the bank today. This is the second time I've filled out house paperwork, and as with a lot of other things in life, it's a lot less scary the second time around.

I signed papers for about 30 minutes today and had to promise the bank that I'm not a terrorist (true story).

Now that the process is moving forward, I can start thinking about my major life problem, which is the point of this here blog post.

The house is old and beautiful. It has beautiful wood trim and other woodwork in the house. My major life problem comes in here: All the cool kid designs nowadays call for white trim.

I'm not going to paint beautiful old trim white.

You don't paint wood, people! You just don't.

My challenge is making the house cute, like a young(ish) person lives there, and not like grandma lives there (no offense to grandmas).

How do you make the woodwork pop, in a good way, without it looking old?

Hmm.

I like blue and green paint for some of the smaller rooms. But for the main living areas?

Who knows.

When I watch the home renovation shows on television, I turn my nose up at all of the rooms and houses with white trim.

I've taken to Pinterest to solve my major life problem. I created a board specifically for paint colors that go with wood trim, and another board for photos of pretty rooms in old houses.

Pinterest is amazing, people.

Here are some pins I like so far.

I LOVE THIS COLOR!

Borderline

Part of my New Year's resolution next year is to live as frugally as possible.

Well, maybe.

To be honest, I hate New Year resolutions and I hate people who make them. Last year at the gym it took an act of God to find a machine from January to about mid-March. After the new year, it was as if everyone in town suddenly realized that exercising is good for you and maybe you should do it often and better your life.

I mean, the audacity those people have!

Kidding aside, I'm just not a resolutions kind of a person. But I've been thinking of ways I could better my life and growing my savings account seems like a pretty good thing to do.

So my latest thing is being frugal.

(It's probably a phase that won't last long.)

Over the weekend I went through my closet and realized I don't use a lot of what's in it. Those old t-shirts from college have holes in them and are useless.

Or are they?

I took a pair of scissors to one t-shirt on Sunday. I came up with seven dust rags FOR FREE! I was pretty proud of myself. I don't have to buy rags now!

But I guess I do have to clean.

Ah, bummer.

I have a pin on Pinterest for making a rug out of old t-shirts. Unfortunately my favorite colors are red and purple, so that would be one funky looking rug.

Maybe I'll just stick to my rag-making ways and forget about the rug for now.

I also saw a pin for re-using old k-cups. Most of the ideas were stupid. And then I realized there's a fine line between being frugal and being crazy.

I'm borderline, I think.

Food and Wine

It started out as a Pinterest idea for a recipe called hot naked spaghetti.

It called for spaghetti, Parmesan cheese, red pepper flakes and olive oil. I used some of my spaghetti earlier in the week, so I had to improvise.

I used penne instead, which worked out just fine.

I also found some leftover pasta sauce in the fridge. People, it looks like we're going to make a Monica original here!

I grabbed a couple of zucchini, sliced them up and then threw that into a pan with olive oil. I had a little bit of red wine left that I'm not really fond of drinking, so I threw the rest of that into the pan with a little bit of balsamic vinegar.

I have no idea what I'm doing, but I taste tested it along the way and it was pretty good.

I threw the veggies, pasta and sauce into a pan.

But wait, we need protein!

I cooked some chicken and added the rest of the wine into the pan. Hey, why not? After that was done, it got thrown into the pan with some Parmesan cheese on top.

Throw that into an oven at 350 degrees for 30ish minutes...and I can't begin to describe how awesome this smells. It smells like wine and happiness.

Delicious!

I'm not a huge fan of zucchini, but it's pretty good if you cook it in wine.

Trust me.

Pinteresty stuff

I love Pinterest.

Here are some of my favorite pins of the week and month.

On expanding my horizons

I'm going to follow a post about working out with a post about food.

Ha, ha.

I had the itch to experiment with recipes today. After work, I looked at Pinterest, and decided to try three new(ish) things. I cooked two of them tonight, and I'll probably make the last one tomorrow night.

First of all, before I started cooking I downed a bowl of fruit first. If I could eat fruit every day for the rest of my life, I would.

But there's more to life than fruit, and I need to expand my horizons. Hmm. I saw a recipe on Pinterest that involved quesadillas made with feta cheese and spinach. Sounds yummy!

I'm kind of a carnivore, so I added chicken that I cooked with a liberal amount of pepper, a little salt, and some random spices from the cabinet. I also added some mozzarella cheese to the feta, chopped up a handful of spinach, then threw all of that stuff between two taco shells.

Pair that with lime and cilantro salsa, and ladies and gents? We have a total winner right here.

A plus is that they're so big, I have leftovers for lunch tomorrow. Hooray.

The second thing I tried was mozzarella sticks. This involves two ingredients, string cheese and egg roll wrappers.

I've made these before, and I was craving them again. After cooking them on the stove, they get nice and brown with a good crunch on the outside and gooey cheese on the inside.

The only downside to these is that they're very, very dry. I bought a new type of marinara sauce and was hugely disappointed at how watery it was.

Side note: What is marinara sauce, exactly? Is it different than pizza sauce? How about spaghetti sauce? And what was that vodka sauce on the store shelf? I mean, it's vodka, and that has to be good, right?

This cooking stuff is confusing.

Regardless, it makes me wonder if I can make my own sauce instead of buying something that sucks in the store.

That recipe was ho-hum.

I'm still impressed by my quesadillas, though. At least I got that right.

Tomorrow night, or whenever I get to it, I'm going to try pepperoni roll ups. Expect a report about that later.