the number game

Aging is something that I have eagerly looked forward to my entire life. I always longed to be more than I was. In my teen years this brought on many issues and complications for both my parents and I. Then in my early twenties I wished I was older to avoid the ever awkward "but you look too young to be a mother, or married, or so serious about life."
Today I no longer feel too young to be as mature as I am.
Today I am 26
my husband is 32
Orion is 5, and Mason is 2
I have owned my own home for 2 years now, and I still love it
21 was how old I was when I traded my zesty youthful car for a mommy wagon
19 is how I was when I met the man I intend to spend the rest of my life with
1 is how old our son was when we said "I do"
10 is about the number of times I have had people both young and old tell me that if there really are soul mates Jessie and I are it.

 Joking around at work yesterday My chef told me that I am the oldest 26 year old he has ever met. I'm still not sure if I should be highly offended by that but, I have decided that it is who I am.

Peace of Cake

Brains, It's whats for dinner

This very smart dish gets my boys so excited that they ask for it all year! it's hot, it's gooey, it's braaaaiiins!
well actually, it cauliflower,
but in the hallo-centrics kitchen it's my family's favorite Halloween themed meal. When walking through the grocery store my son will beg me for brains for dinner and I cannot help but laugh at those taken aghast around us.
I learned this recipe as a child and have put my own twist on it through the years. Instead of cream of mushroom soup and Velveeta, I use a simple cheese laced bechamel. It is cheaper and in my opinion much easier. Plus how scary is velveeta?
anywho, here is how I make it but a simple google search for "cauliflower brain" will turn up a myriad of other ways to cook up some brains.

Veggie Brains:
1 head of cauliflower
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp flour
1/2 c. milk
1 chopped garlic clove
1 tsp. dijon mustard
1/2 c.  Grated cheese of choice (hopefully not Velfreaka) I use sharp cheddar and a little parmesan
1/2 tbsp  Kosher salt
Few twist fresh ground black pepper
a few dashes of smoked paprika (optional)

Place a cleaned and trimmed Whole head of cauliflower in crock-pot or regular pot over med heat.
 Cook cauliflower until tender and your kitchen throughly smells. turn off heat and let rest.
 Place butter and flour in saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until flour is lightly browned. Add milk, mustard, and garlic and wisk until well combined. When mixture is slightly thickend add grated cheese and spices, stir and turn off heat. Pour over cauliflower and serve. Feeds approx. 4 zombies I served this with a really amazing romaine, bleu cheese, ham, pecan and pomegranate seed salad with a white balsamic dressing but you can serve yours with what ever you want. Enjoy!

See how the zombie-munchkins are drawn to the brains, I barley got to snap this picture before they attacked it!
By far the best part of this meal is how many times I get to say "hush, and eat your brains" or " How are your brains?" or the very polite, "May I please have some more brains"


Peace and cheesy brains!

The Jolly Roger Special

Skull and cross bones anyone?

 Happy countdown to Halloween! 

from now until the 31st I will be posting our daily Spooky Dinner Specials.  This has to be the easiest one I've ever done and who doesn't love breakfast for dinner? Mine isn't as perfect as the one I saw in a magazine but the Boys sure loved it.

The best way to make sunny side up eggs is to cook them on low and cover the pan with a lid so the tops cook faster. Also I only make fried eggs with very fresh Cage Free Organic eggs so the risk of Salmonella is negligible. enjoy!

Peace and Candy Corn

Give a little

Most of what is done here around Lilliedale is figured out by yours truly, but almost all of it is built and installed by my wonderful husband. Yes, he a patient and generous man who without much resistance will do as he's told asked. In the last year he has helped me do countless projects including the massive and still pending kitchen revamp. My husband Jessie enjoys creating things for much less than you could buy them. He also enjoys having things that are a little more unique than what you could find at your local home improvement store. So after all his many days of coming home from work only to pick up his drill, paintbrush, sanderor pneumatic nailer I think he definitely deserves a little time for his own hobbies.

 So now he is brewing his own beer...

And I love it!

He has been making his own wine for many years but after receiving some hand-me-down brew equipment he decided to tackle beer crafting. So I am patiently pretending that I do not notice the 6 gallon glass carboys on my small kitchen counters. Or the entire corner of the garage that is now home to Co2 dispensers and his homemade keg-erator, R2DBrew.

 He loves me for how ambitious and creative I am and would never dream of stifling my flash in the pan projects. So tonight I will be cooking up some sausages, potatoes and kraut and declaring the first ever Cahill family Oktoberfest!


 Der Frieden mein freund!

Family time

Every once in a while a family just needs to get away from their everyday life and have a little fun

so we did

And we remembered just how beautiful our life is, and how sweet these little boys are

and we got to remember how much fun we really are

And remember why we are so grateful for the healthy and beautiful boys we are raising. Although we long to move back to Siskiyou county and be near our family, we remembered that what we have is not a placeholder until we can live where we want to but, it is a truly happy and beautiful life.

Peace is coming home to your pets after a fun roadtrip

Fall Sweeps

No, I'm not talking about new episodes of our favorite shows. This week I have been editing our lives. I have personally removed 2 trash bags of perfectly good clothing I never wear from my closet. I have been begging Jessie to build me a closet system and we both agree that we need to pair down all of our extraneous belongings before we can plan out what we really need for our custom closet. Most of the clothing I had in my closet did not even fit me, What is the point of keeping jeans that are 3-4 sizes too big? Am I hoping to get heavier again?! Along with our clothing I have been trying to rid our house of all the other junk we have accumulated throughout the year. With as little storage as we have in our house it really makes no sense to keep things we never use. So today I will be donating our used things so someone may love them and then I'll be sketching up my new closet.
Does anyone else feel the urge to purge every autumn or are you still holding onto 3/4 of your wardrobe form high school?

I like it chalky!

here are a few progress shots of the guest room/office/woman cave and it's fabulous chalkboard wall. Thank you everybody for your opinion it really helped. As soon as I showed Jess a few photos he was super excited to do our own and he already loves it!

Mixing up the chalkboard paint. Ideally you would use flat paint but I had half a can of semi-gloss black so that's what I used. I also added some of the green wall color to the black so we would have a grayish finish to emulate slate.

mmmmm...soup!

the test patches

first coat, loving it!

I decided to keep several of the elements from the mural it was pretty easy to just paint around these mushrooms.

all finished! After painting you have to wait 24 hrs for it to cure, then you coat it completely in chalk and wipe it away to prime the surface for future creative fun

I love how the dark slate color looks with the green walls

these are my newest crafty project book page wreaths. I made this while the first coat was drying. I'll post the great tutorial I used in a few days. For now I'm off to get ready for work to the sound of Jess hanging the final cabinet in the kitchen, YAY!

whatta you think?

Well guess what I've done again. Yep, I painted.After moving the boys to their new room I realized how dingy and beat up the mural in their old room was. The Mural was painted for the twin boys of our friends who we bought the house from. When we first bought the house my friend begged me not to paint over the mural that she had commissioned someone to paint for her. Initially I agreed that it would be a shame to paint over someone else's hard work having done quite a bit of this kind of painting myself. but after nearly 6 years of being "loved" it was disgusting worn out. I guess I still feel a little guilty about all of it and that is why I am rationalizing it all to you here, bless your kind souls.
So anyhow I decided to paint it a beautiful grayish-bluish-green. I love it and now I need you opinion. I want to paint an entire wall of the room in my beloved chalkboard paint. This room will serve as a guest room/ woman cave and i think I'd like to have a wall of chalky possibilities behind my art desk. well lets just say that my husband adamantly disagrees with me, which kinda pisses me off. HE was okay with painting our kitchen cabinets green, using paper bags for our kitchen floor,  or putting copper counter tops in, he was okay with the white and tan strips in the hallway, he loved the black doors but apparently a chalkboard wall is too far. I don't get it. He says that it will make our house less appealing when we try to sell it, if we ever get to move back to Siskiyou county. What about the large horizontal stripes in the hall, and the black doors, and the very unconventional kitchen choices, and the black doors? If you are going to get wet you might as well go swimming and you might as well paint a chalkboard wall, right? I guess I would be okay with not painting it chalkboard black but I just think it would be so fun! here are a few photos that I'm inspired by

from  here http://isabellaandmaxrooms.blogspot.com

from here http://jonesdesigncompany.com

here are a few photos of the wall in question with a small sample of the black chalkboard paint next to the new wall color. what do you think? should I overrule the boss' orders?

see the tiny black square, that's the chalkboard paint

the wall with the butterfly is the proposed "black" wall

the room is definitely bright enough to support a black wall

pardon the junk! 

so what do you think, should I get to mixing up my chalkboard paint?

Peace give me your opinion...

Shepard's Eyes Pie

During the month of October I try to give my dinner selections a decidedly spooky twist. Last year was infamous for the roast ghosts and mummy's meatloaves. This year I am keeping all the old favorites and trying to add a few new ones. Most of the time all it takes to make a ghoulishly great dinner is to rename a regular entrée. For instance Oven roasted bat brains are really just brussels sprouts tossed in olive oil, salt and chopped garlic then roasted in the oven for about 25 minutes. Tonight I made Shepard's Eyes pie. It is similar to shepards pie but i prefer to use lean ground turkey instead of beef and whipped acorn squash in lieu of mashed potatos.

Ingredients

1 acorn squash

1 package lean ground turkey

12 mushrooms

1 yellow onion

1 large carrot

2-3 stalks of celery

1 clove garlic

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tbsp olive oil

1/3 package low fat cream cheese (optional)

1/2 c. shredded parmesan (cheddar works too)

Halve the squash and scoop out seeds. wrap each half tightly in plastic wrap and microwave for 6-10 min of until soft enough to mash. set aside to cool. after squash is finished cooling mash with softened cream cheese, salt and pepper.

chop onion, celery  and carrot and cook in pan over medium heat until Onions are translucent. Remove from pan and add to baking dish. Halved mushrooms and olive oil and cook until mushrooms are browned. remove mushrooms from pan and add to the already cooked veggies. add ground turkey and chopped garlic and cumin to pan and brown. add to veggie mix when finished browning. toss mixture together. spread mashed squash over the top and sprinkle on cheese. Cover with foil and bake at 400 degrees until top is browned and bubbly.

all dished up

You can also add garam masala or curry to give the recipe an indian twist.

the halved mushrooms are in the recipe to look like eyeballs but for everyday meals you would want to slice the mushrooms before cooking. I do not like peas in my shepards pie but if you want them feel free to add them.

Maybe even try it with a little apple crisp for dessert

the boys enjoy their dessert after gobbling up all their dinner

I'll have a second peace please!

It's all for the chocolate

Anybody who knows me will attest to the fact that I LOVE HALLOWEEN! I always have, it's like Christmas with out all the guilt, just fun and junk food. A few weeks ago my husband taught me how to use a jigsaw and I have been a sign painting fool ever since. here are a few peeks at what is going on around here with our Halloween decorations.

I saw a sign with a similar saying on Etsy and just had to have one for myself, but with my own twist of course!

This is my version of a sign that was featured in Better Homes and Gardens Halloween edition. Strangely enough I'm not sure that a few of my neighbors understand that it is a Halloween decoration.

one of my Dollar Store crows, I love them

I'm planning on moving the picture frames I made to a different place in the house but here they sit, photo-less, for now

Jessie"s creepy POW memorial photo

My personal favorite, my thrift store chicken dressed up as batman

And I am planning on making some nice spooky pillow cases but for now I am really enjoying these ones I got on clearance at Target

There is so much more to come but I am currently having a very bad flare up with my guts and I'm lucky to get the boys fed and dressed before I wilt for the day.

Reese's Peace, mmmmm....reese's peanut butter cups.......