The MoST comforting of FOODS – –

November 9, 2015November 10, 2015 / erin / Leave a comment

PIZZA!

One of my favorite meals to make is homemade pizza with Ben. It’s SO easy, cheap, and usually the pizza is WAY better than take out.

Let me back up a few steps first. My standards for pizza were developed and grew to be the way they are as a result of being raised in close proximity to the great Chicago 😉

– – – I am not trying to be snobby about it, because truly I believe that Little Caesars is underrated, but I also do know there is good pizza, and then there is good pizza.

Anywho, I don’t like spending a lot of time on the crust, so honestly I just buy the Jiffy pizza crust mix, yeah the one that cost a bit under $2.00 and you just add water, that one. It’s rather good, I am able to create a “deep dish” or thin crust if I desired, and it is so quick to make.

The fun part about making the pizza is we just grab whatever toppings we want to put on it that time, and have at it. No two pizzas we make are ever the same, and usually the two staples are mozzarella cheese and jalapenos. Everything else is subject to change. 🙂

I baked this ‘za in a pie pan, which enabled me to make it more of a deep dish, rather reminded me of Uno’s Pizza. mmmmm Uno’s…

I will get better with my images with time, I hope. Sorry for the dark images (if they are, they seem to be to me).

Part of the reason I baked in a pie pan is because the pan I WAS going to use is a bit big for our oven… I grabbed the wrong one from storage. Whoops! But it turned out to be great, in fact, I may prefer it to a sheet or circular pan. It makes the perfect size pizza for the two of us. Sometimes we double the recipe and make two crusts and cook it on a cookie sheet, but that’s out of the question as you’ll see below.

Can you find the elephant in the room? 😉

It’s smaller in size but as you can see it has a lot of different options for cooking and a timer which is great. For comparison sake, it would be big enough for one frozen pizza perfectly!

This was also found at a great deal! I think it was less than $15 bucks and in near perfect condition at Goodwill. I found it about two years ago, but that was also something that I was in the market for, for quite a long time as well before I finally found it.

The key is PATIENCE! If you allow yourself time to browse, sometimes having to go back a few times, eventually what you are looking for will filter thru and that persons junk becomes your treasure! I usually go to the thrift stores about once a week and just walk thru casually with my list in the back of my mind.

For instance… yesterday I found an amazing stool / seat for meditating!

I do NOT have patience for walking around a mall, but thrift stores… I can give the time of day.

Okay so back on track … this is pretty standard for our pizza topping options.

Salt and pepper (if needed, but usually always pepper)

TEXAS PETE hot sauce (personal favorite)

And of course classic parmesan and crushed red pepper.

Comfort foods. All of them.

I am also pleasently suprised over how great cooking is in the trailer. Sure its not AS easy as it could be, but it still is not that tedious, cramped, inconvient, (instert complaint here) as you may think it could be. I just CANNOT wait until we get our cupboards and counter design in place and put in!

Okay. Go forth now, and PIZZA!

New? Furniture Ü

November 9, 2015 / erin / Leave a comment

I have FINALLY found something to house my food/pantry! #yay!

I have been slowly browsing thrift stores around me looking for just the right piece to function for whatever I need it for. I’ve been looking for something to hold our food that would normally go in a cupboard or pantry, and something to go right next to our door/bed to double as a night stand and hold all of the “extras”.

Mission completed.

The Kirkland beer you see in the picture is leftover from the wedding… We’re working on it! It’s a slow process when you don’t drink beer on the regular

If you can see, the doors slide both ways, it’s very light in weight and I LOVE the pale yellow color! (Yellow is one of my favorite colors, so happy) AND it matches my rug PERFECTLY, so that makes a double win 🙂

The rug its partially sitting on is yellow as a base color, then has many other colors woven in as well. It was made by the Amish of Wisconsin, close to my parents place, and I got it on a visit there years ago. It’s one of those pieces that will probably stick around for a long time.

Here is the other piece I found, with my blue “catch-all” basket sitting on top of it. ( I also have a hook that our coats call home right above the blue basket)

This drawer cracks me up tho! IT IS CARDBOARD! I have NEVER seen the like before, but it’s so awesome! So much so, that I had to make mention of it to the lady behind me in line at the Goodwill, she didn’t seem as pumped as I did, but she at least gave me what I can only call pity excitement.

I don’t care, it’s so awesome! It’s so great because I didn’t want to spend the money on something that I may not have for a long time, well I can recycle cardboard easily in SO many ways! The possibilities!

The other piece isn’t going anywhere tho. I am planning on keeping that one around, I just think it’s pretty unique and I will probably not find one like it again.

I forgot the BEST part! … and I am just going to mention one of my greatest pleasures in life is being able to find a really good deal …

There was a 50% off sale on Saturday (when I went to buy the items) …. The first one was a total of $1.50 and the cardboard drawer was $2.00.

Seriously.

Soups (was) ON!

November 8, 2015November 8, 2015 / erin / Leave a comment

I’ve been trying a few new recipes lately, like I said I would.

First up. Broccoli Cheddar Soup in a bread bowl. I got the recipe from Tip Hero on Facebook. It was a very easy recipe and I tweaked it a bit. I definitely let the broccoli cook longer then they suggested, and over all I would FOR sure make it again.

I LOVE broccoli but for some reason when it’s cooked it just smells like bad farts. IM SORRY someone had to say it! But it is OH so good, and well, growing up so close to the land of cheese I really can’t get enough of that.

Perfect combo!

The bread that I got for the bread bowls wasn’t sourdough (which I LOVE) but it was on sale and it was huge enough for Ben and I to split just one loaf, so that basically turned out perfectly, and I ripped out the interior bread for dipping pieces. I would rate it… 8/10. Needed more pepper.

The more I am using my stove the more I am not sure about it. So it is an induction only stove top, so it only works with pots and pans that are magnetic.

HERE is an explanation from the kitchn website of how they work. — taken from there “The key to induction cooktops is that the pots and pans you use must be made from a magnetic material to work with this system. The induction cooktop will induce the electrons in a magnetic material to move, creating an electric current in that magnetic material. That current generates heat in the pot.”

Great news… our pots and pans ARE magnetic and induction ready (bought from Costco) but there is a VERY high-pitched squealing when using said pots on said stove top. It doesn’t happen when I use the teapot, just these pots and pans.

After some research on the internets, it’s not really determined what it’s from but others are experiencing the same thing. So the jury is still out and is also why I use the crock pot more, until I can figure out if its safe or not.

There is about 5 or 6 different heat levels on the stove top, and the higher the setting the higher pitched the sound. It sends shooting tings all over my body that can’t be right. I was able to cook the soup at about the 2nd / 3rd level comfortably, but not much higher than that.

Well – all this talk of food AGAIN — I am going to find some for myself!

p.s.

The mountains look lovely again.

* SnoW *

November 5, 2015November 5, 2015 / erin / Leave a comment

IT SNOWED! Heavens to Betsy its WAY too early for snow, but I LOVE the first snow! LOOVE!

Last night the rain started, and the sounds on the roof were nature’s music. I slept like a baby! I woke up around 5 AM to get some water and I looked out the door, and it was snowing! I couldn’t help it but I woke Ben up with me! Whoops! 😉 But he even got up to take a look – but honestly, I think I squealed so it was my sheer volume that did the trick.

If I didn’t look outside I would’ve had NO idea it was snowing or how cold it was because our new heater is perfect!

Someone gifted us a Lakewood Radiator Oil Heater that runs off of a thermostat as well, its electrical and it maintains such a comfortable temperature I think we may stick with it!

That heater/ fan we were using I don’t think would take the cold like this does at all. It too was run on a thermostat and would shut on and off when it hit its temps, but I almost would feel an electric current/spark when it would turn off / on and I did NOT like it. I am keeping it on hand because it was really good for the fall temps, but with these colder nights coming it wouldn’t have regulated the temp like this radiator.

My two cents on that.

Back to magic —

The first snow always feels so magical to me – but honestly, tell me it’s not magic. Halloween is over and boom, white stuff everywhere – now you have people being nicer to each other for a couple of months and smiling more because they just cannot help but feel the magic too! (Fairies)

Don’t misunderstand me though, I don’t think people are intentionally crabby with everyone but I think fall/winter is a season people take a break from all of that (mostly). I try to stay optimistic about it all anyhow. The world can always use more smiles so I am glad to give!

Someone say fOOD?!

November 4, 2015November 4, 2015 / erin / Leave a comment

I have been trying to be better about cooking at home rather than eating out. Something I feel like a lot of us can relate to, it’s easier to sometimes make excuses and not cook. I am beyond guilty! I am not a bad cook, (I know that makes me sound great at the start of my rant LOL bear with me… ) but I feel like I lack originality when it comes to meal planning and meal making. That and I love a good cheeseburger any day and every day.

Morning tea in my favorite mug, the only one I kept out of the packed boxes for me actually… and that’s saying something because I LOVE mugs 🙂

I am the same ol’ same ol’ type of person — Honestly Ben is a really good cook, and very original, almost to the point I’m worried I may need to have a plan B simply because it looks like a science experiment because it just forms as it goes. I have yet to have had plan B put into action so that’s really good! Some of the dishes were VERY good but we never wrote down what was put in and don’t remember what was done. Lost in food heaven.

Anywhoo, (Every time I hear/say/type that word it makes me think of that lady cop from the movie/show Fargo… or basically anyone from Minnesota. Makes me smile and miss living there) –

From our wedding I kept one of the lace tablecloths and donated the rest (I originally bought them all second-hand). I found it to be the perfect privacy curtain when I have the back patio open!

♥

Another thing, or two, eating out rather than cooking at home does for you is thin out your wallet and more often than not the food you’re making at home is healthier that what’s ‘out there’. We all know this, BUT I still struggle with following thru with the knowledge. With all that being said, I obviously want to cook more at home and make it a regular practice again.

… I am going to digress for a moment … Something also I want to talk about. So I have this love/hate relationship with CHANGE. It is constant and we cannot avoid it. With moving around often change is constant, and I can feel uncomfortable and not really “at home” yet, and I forget my healthy routines and I tend to spend more, or be wasteful more, eat out more, not exercise etc. It’s happens like a rollercoaster / cycle and once I become more settled in the area and familiar with everything my energy settles down and I am able to re-center and remember my good routines.

So this is also something I saw coming, but living in a box (as I like to call it) throws a special wrench into the situation.

I am constantly saving recipes on Pinterest or Facebook on my phone and I do have a few cookbooks but I am rarely cooking them, so I want to be more conscious about that and try my hand at making them. BUT I am kind of limited to what I can do for my meals because I don’t have an oven. I do have a stove top burner, toaster/convection oven, griddle and my…. CROCK POT! Scowering thru Pinterest I realized I (of course) have a TON of crock pot recipes pinned and have yet to make one of them (typical).

Well not anymore! I am realizing my fortune in that thing and am about to start utilizing it a hell of a lot more, and see what else I can make in this small space with my limited resources, and see if it really makes much of a difference at all. Stay tuned! I will be posting what I make and letting you know where I got the recipe from, how they turn out and flops that just don’t cut it.

SPEAKING of flop… I tried to make a “breakfast quesadilla” — It started out promising, but it. was. not. Ah well, it was a good effort on my part simply because I have a really bad habit of not eating breakfast. I did get half of it down tho 😉

My dad made this handy caddy out of old barn wood, and it is awesome! It perfectly holds together what my kitchen counter / table otherwise would 🙂

**Oh I am also making a lot of updates to the site, tweaking and seeing what I like, so things may be changing a lot over the next few days. If you have an opinion and liked one layout and I changed it, feel free to drop a comment and let me know!

Happy Halloween!

October 31, 2015October 31, 2015 / erin / Leave a comment

I cannot feel my body.

Strike that. I CAN in fact feel my body. Every single muscle. They’re all yelling at me for not getting off my butt and keeping active on a regular! Three days ago I woke up and decided it’s been awhile since I’ve jogged, so I went. I totaled 2 miles, and this elevation was a big adjustment! Then two days ago I went to work with Ben 🙂

Another free day came up on Thursday, so we decided to use this beautiful weather and put it to use!

Originally, when we foamed the trailer, we only put about 3/4 inch of foam on the roof, and it seemed to do the trick… that is until the cold front started creeping in. It really needed more, so we added another 2 inches or so, coated with silicone and threw some gray granules on top. Again, foam is Ben’s profession, it’s what he wakes up to go do every day, so I was his “helper”. I basically tailed the hose and carried it behind (it’s a rather large hose… you’ll see below), cleaned up the job-site, taped up wind blockers and back spray, blew off the roof etc etc. Like an assistant.

The rather large snake on the ground is the foam hose and on the end of it obviously is the spray gun. It’s nice to have someone tail the hose and keep it out of the way, especially on a small surface. *Below* Boots are wrapped and taped so I don’t have to buy new ones 😉 and my dusk mask is on to breathe the clean air while sanding the walls inside down.

We really did end up getting a lot done on Thursday. It was a full working day, from about 10 AM or so, until 6:30 PM. We finished the roof which was the most important on the list. We will need to foam the bottom just a little more but that can be saved for another day.

Almost only counts with horseshoes and hand grenades, but we ALMOST finished the drywall. I am getting MUCH better at drywalling 🙂 We still had the front of the trailer, the ‘V’, to mud and tape still, and we had to frame the door and put in the bull nose and trim it up a bit. We were SO close… but we ran out of drywall mud. I HATE having to stop a project due to lack of supplies! But alas, such is life and all things are never ideal. Good news is I have the mud now, and after I finish the drywall up, I already have the painting supplies ready to go next!

At FIRST, I was very nervous on the roof. I didn’t go up last time but this time I wanted to get even more involved. I wouldn’t say have I have a fear of heights, cause I don’t, but I DO have a healthy respect for high surfaces that doesn’t have a railing on it.

The paper you see taped around the perimeter of the trailer in the first of these above three pictures is to help block the foam from spraying over the side etc. Last time I taped the paper around the top perimeter with both feet on the ground. (I’m kinda tall). THIS time I did it with both knees on the roof! Yipee! And THEN — by the end right before we coated the roof with the silicone, I went back up top and I was able to blow it off and walk around with confidence.. The extra foam did help as it made it more of a sturdy surface too 🙂 In between I had to also work around and trim the sides with a knife after the foam set in. No wonder my back hurt.

But seriously. . . I am really REALLY enjoying this process. It’s also nice not being on a timeline and worrying about a budget and a deadline. This way, we are able to work as we can afford it, and still live comfortably in it in the meantime. The work itself is very enjoyable, like I said, I am getting better at drywall! This third time I do it I may be just perfect. HA! It’s not easy, and this really does have a learning curve, but we are winging it and so far its working! I can’t wait to start our next project and we’re not even close to finishing this one!

It’s been a little over a month and I would recommend it over and over again if someone had asked my two cents. After moving twice (one across country) in less than 4/5 months, it’s taking a bit of time to bounce back up on our feet– as you can imagine– but bouncing we are and it’s great! 🙂

On that note, I’m going to get ready to go out and enjoy my Halloween! I love Halloween and all of the scares 🙂

. . . . .

October 26, 2015November 5, 2015 / erin / Leave a comment

My nose is very very sensitive to smells. Not in a bad way, I can just smell you, or that thing, or “insert scent here”, from a mile away. If it’s a dank enough smell it might send my gag reflexes going.. Courtesy of my mom’s side of the family 🙂

My favorite smell is the wind. I loved gym class growing up in the fall and spring time when we were able to go outside, because when we would come back in… You can smell the air, earth, and wind on your skin and hair. It’s a different smell than lined dried clothes, but that one is still ranked up there.

My second favorite smell is pine, actually, probably tied for first. But that smell, the pine and the needles covering the ground and the way it silences your footsteps. It reminds me of going to the Upper Peninsula Michigan when I was a kid to visit my grandparents camp on Lake Superior, and my other grandparents home. It’s been quite a long time since I’ve gone to the UP but it is absolutely BEAUTIFUL country up there, gorgeous! They call it Gods Country up there for a reason. Anyways, I digress, I love the smell of pine.

SO!

All of this talk about smells is leading somewhere. I went to the car wash the other day and they gave me a free air freshener, looks homemade somehow, and I picked the pine scent, but it looked like they also had an “air” smell. Next time. But my car smells so good I could live in it.

That was all.

NEXT order of business!

–SO. I HATE waste, and I really have been trying to minimize my carbon footprint, but in our current situation we don’t have a fresh water tank / running water set up in the trailer. (It will be coming just not yet). In the mean time we have been buying water either by the gallon or just recently in cases of water… and I KNOW I KNOW that is really bad for the environment, so this is why I’ve been looking up ways that I can recycle and re-use the bottles we will end up going thru!

My favorite ideas from one of the lists I found were…

Little greenhouses / Planters for plants
A vertical plant stand which you can use your grey water for it to grow plants like lettuce etc. Something that will be good for the kitchen etc.
Curtain/ Door sheer by painting the bottom of the bottles that are cut off
Making designs from the different colored bottle caps

http://www.boredpanda.com/plastic-bottle-recycling-ideas/

http://www.onegoodthingbyjillee.com/2015/06/31-creative-ways-to-reuse-plastic-bottles.html

45 Ideas of How To Recycle Plastic Bottles

(All of these links found in a simple google search)

Maybe I’ll think up a few new ideas to use the bottles for, but I don’t want to recycle that many away, it’s more of a challenge to be creative and see what I can come up with.

Altho sometimes I tend to get obsessive and that’s all my time will end up consisting of… hope that doesn’t happen this time 🙂

Colorado the Beautiful *

October 25, 2015October 25, 2015 / erin / Leave a comment

I crave fall like some people crave chocolate. Cold crispy days that leave the tip of your nose red, running and just a little numb; when your cheeks are rosy and pink, a winter jacket is just too much but one layer isn’t quite enough.

I crave these days. The past few days here in CO has been what I’ve been dreaming of since last fall closed down for the winter to move in. I don’t even mind the rain… I am half convinced I could live in a place like Seattle with constant rain and I wouldn’t get depressed, but I don’t have any plans to move there anytime soon so we can’t know for sure yet. But anyways, the last two days have been steady with a light fall of rain, not to windy, not to heavy, fading in and out just enough so Ben couldn’t work and we could get out and explore CO some!

Our mission Tuesday was to head blindly into the Rockies for the day and just figure it out, as we often do when we do some “Sunday driving”. We spent a few hours on back roads winding and twisting and since it was bad weather we couldn’t see beyond the base of the hills and mountains to about half way up… still didn’t take away any of the magic. We came across some signs for a trail head about an hour and a half into the drive so we pulled off and went for a 3.4 mile hike. It was gorgeous and I was BEYOND ecstatic to be back in the mountains again. I promise my soul belongs in the mountains, it just does. So anywho, it was an awesome chilly day with a great hike, the rain didn’t bother us at all and the hike followed a river the whole time so that was pretty cool.

This was a pretty cool church we came across in the mountains not much else around but it…

On Wednesday we decided to head down to explore other parts of CO, so we headed southwest to the Red Rocks Amphitheater. That hike ended up being about 2 miles and was very cool! I didn’t realize (I don’t know where I’ve been) that CO has cacti and had some desert to it, the Red Rocks Amphitheater was full of red rocks obviously :p but it was really big smooth rock formations, and the amphitheater is almost built into the rocks. As you’re hiking along the trails you wouldn’t necessarily notice that there is an amphitheater there if it wasn’t for the signs, random parking lots and enormously big ramp to walk to get to the top.

From the top of the amphitheater, awesome views!

We could’ve used those two days “off” to work some more on the trailer, but we’ve been here for a couple weeks now and I’ve been just itching to get out and go! BUT, I have made some improvements on the trailer since then! I was able to find some individual stack-able drawers for our clothes! YAY! When I went to buy them, I went right back to the clearance spot where they were, and there was only 1 left! I was so sad, buuuut then I turned around and they just re-arranged the place J SO I got all 5 and an extra collapsible box so we have some more organization in our lives!

The white stack-able drawers are what I found to be useful to hold our clothes 🙂

My summer wardrobe (the little of it that exists) is slowly being cycled out and my fall and winter clothes are being brought into the trailer. Like I said… I crave this season so I am STOKED! We’ve had some cold nights so we’ve moved the electrical heater into the trailer. It looks like fan and it adjusts on and off with the temperature in the trailer which is very nice for those times we leave it on all night. As you can imagine it doesn’t take much to heat a small space like that, so that is an excellent feature… it does heat up like a sauna rather quickly. Of course that’s wouldn’t always be a bad thing as saunas are basically amazing, but not for sleeping. But EVEN BETTER the heater fan we use is a Vornado VH2 and we got it at a garage sale for $5. Ben insisted that it would be useful, and it has proved to be so far! WIN!

I feel like we are gaining some more order and footing in our lives. It’s a hard thing, change. I’ve said it once and I will say it a thousand times! BUT, it feels oH! So good when things start to chill out and the new routines start to feel “normal” again. (I hate that word, normal. It’s not a real thing.) But for lack of a better… “normal” is nice sometimes.

I picked the right Starbucks to sit at this beautiful afternoon. I’ve been writing this post for a few days, but the weather has been too awesome to stop and finish it. Now that I do, the sky is very clear, and I have a nice widow seat facing the snow peaked mountains in all of their glory, and my mint tea which is bomb.

The mountains are beautiful today, I may have to go explore some more 🙂

**fyi. I started this post on a Thursday and finished it on a Sunday. So if it was confusing that is why 😉

Back in Business.

October 15, 2015October 15, 2015 / erin / Leave a comment

So I’ve been gone for a while.

My family had to say goodbye to my Grandmother so I drove “home” for a little over a week. With all the change going on, I felt the need to have some familiarity back in my life, so it was a very nice trip spent with family and my nieces and nephews I don’t get to see on a regular basis. Prior to heading to Illinois I was with Ben on a job out-of-town for about a week… He was able to fly to Chicago for the service and drive back to Colorado with me. The drive wasn’t all that bad, especially since we have some friends who live exactly halfway so it’s always a good excuse to stop in and stay awhile 🙂 (The drive there all by myself was all that bad. It really was.)

Needless to say not a whole lot of work went into the trailer while we were gone.

HOWEVER.

The best part is that it actually felt like coming home when we got back. That familiar feeling of coziness, and I am so happy. When change is constant it seems easy for me to get down because there is nothing really familiar for me, but having even a tiny space, and my items filling that space, is familiar enough for me. 🙂

Until we get the walls done, we are limited to what we can really do for storage. We have several options we’re looking into that I am very excited about. BUT in the meantime we NEED something that has a little more organization. It KILLS me that we may get something only to not use it after a short time because the permanent structures will be put in and our temporary set ups will no longer be needed. But what we have now (a tall shelf and an end table that holds storage in the inside) was already around us for a few years (and bought second-hand) and anything else we may get will be useful for our storage locker so it’s not all a waste. I don’t like being wasteful so everything we have or will get I try to use and re-use if possible.

This is our current storage situation. This shelf was bought from a thrift store for $5 when we first moved to Washington 2 years ago. I’ve tried to get rid of it because it’s not the cutest, but it’s proved to be very practical and has paid for itself over and over again so I don’t even fight it anymore. I then bought the cloth storage boxes from Target on clearance so things have a place, and it doesn’t look put together so haphazardly. (If it doesn’t already)

The two black buckets (if you can see them on the shelf) are my “sinks” for washing dishes. So far it’s proving to be a decent system. Of course it’s more of a chore and not as quick as it normally can be, but we do the best we can with our current set up. I’ve gotten so used to the convenience of having everything right at hand, it has become a challenge to see what other ways I can get things done. 🙂

Where washing dishes are concerned, I just boil some water so its hot, wash in one bucket, and rinse in the other!

This is what we are thinking for a permanent structure for shelving. Something that is customize-able and is forgiving with change. I like the idea of everything having an open shelving concept which is great for when we’re parked, but when it comes to hauling the trailer around I don’t know how but something will have to be tweaked.

The next order of business for better living is something for our clothes. I am officially tired of living out of a suitcase. I’ll keep doing it IF I have to, but this weekend I am headed out to buy some simple stack-able drawers I found at Target on clearance. I’ve searched some thrift stores, but those are always hit or miss, and I’ve been missing lately.

When I got back from my trip I spent the whole next day getting everything in (better) order, and bringing out some of our things that have been packed away. This monkey I got for Ben when he was in the hospital. We don’t have any babies so he gets to come along with us and just hangs around. 🙂

I also love to have paintings or signs up around the house, so I was able to hang this very fitting sign (it was a wedding gift) up in the trailer by some bungee chords, and my dream catcher that I got from a farmers market in central Washington. (Notice my breakfast cooking on my “counter”)

I am looking forward to being back in Colorado and picking up where we left off!

The adventure continues!

Tid bits —

September 28, 2015September 28, 2015 / erin / Leave a comment

SO: Here are some tid bits of how we are operating. EVERYTHING you see is open for interpretation and can be subject to change 🙂 it already has changed a few times… I’m thinking we are very quickly going to realize what we like above the rest, and what we deem a priority, and what we just plain can’t live without.

We purchased our first stove! #yay! LOL I’ve only used it once and that was to boil some water to make coffee in our french press we got from our wedding! BUT it worked like a charm AND it heated the water up faster than any conventional stove I’ve used. I found it at Target on clearance (another win)! The nice thing is, it is small and flat, compact enough to not be in the way.

For an oven we have a convection toaster oven / broiler, and it’s the kind that has the vent on the side. I found that beauty at a Goodwill a few years ago and those things are hard to find at a good deal, (the specific kind that we wanted). Okay the “we” on that one really means Ben — he was the one who had very very specific wants for a convection oven. BUT I found one hardly used at Goodwill for $14.00 and we’ve been winning ever since. That one is too valuable to let go and we now know why 🙂 And really it’s not all that big.

We also have a Black and Decker griddle that is used and abused, also slim enough to store away without being an issue. Once the kitchen is in design and production I’m imagining their own permanent homes, but for now they fit where they must!

My first time with the french press. I did have to YouTube how to make it, and I will get better with time (I hope!)

This shot was taken before we foamed the interior but look how cozy it is! That particular night it was rather windy but the sun was really hot, so we opened the ramp (my future patio deck) and clamped the bed sheet to the wires. I have OH so many ideas for the deck. But it all kind of depends on how we set up the sleeping area to know which direction we will take for the patio.

The bed is a queen and fits in there with about 4 inches on each side. We definitely will be needing to get a better sized bed as ours is not good with conserving space. But that is something we will have to work towards, eventually the bed will most likely be put up on a platform or an adjustable cable system (gotta love them DIYers and their ideas), or we could go with a more modern futon/fold out couch style set up. Multi-purpose… but for now our set up works just fine!

I mean honestly… This is like full time camping with some more style / conveniences … but just not all of the conveniences.

For now. 🙂

dynomadic life

Dynamic Design. Nomadic Nature.