The Little House

The Weekend Toss

~ Teresa ~ Leave a comment

Happy Weekend.  Thought I’d toss a few things your way: 1. Recipe  2.  Randomness  3.  Reading Ideas

1.  What’s for dinner?  Baked Potato with Chili Beans and Cheddar Cheese and my new favorite salad – thought you might like to try the salad:

Teresa’s fresh greens, fruit, and nutty goodness salad with homemade dressing:       (I know – need a better name)

Salad Ingredients:  Green Leaf Lettuce, Boston Bibb Lettuce, Spinach, Strawberries, crushed pineapple, green pepper, cucumber and walnuts.

Dressing Ingredients: olive oil, white balsamic vinegar, maple syrup (the real stuff), pepper.

Directions for Salad: Chop, dice etc all the salad ingredients into whatever sizes you prefer.  Load your favorite salad bowl with the lettuce blend (you can use whatever lettuce you have if you don’t have the one’s I listed, although I would use something or a combo of something more green than iceberg).  Next, add remaining ingredients in amounts that look balanced to you.  I was making a salad for two more or less, so I tossed in a small to medium handful of the other items more or less and enough lettuce for two to three side salads.  Adjust according to the crowd you are feeding.

Directions for Dressing:  Again, I just eyeballed the amounts.  If you need to measure, I would do three to four parts vinegar to two parts olive oil and one part maple syrup (use the real if you have it, if not you could use honey.  Or, if you don’t need the sweet just leave it out – the pineapple adds a little sweet anyway) Pepper to taste.  Adjust levels until you get the flavor that seems right to you. Pour on dressing and toss. Note: The dressing will blend with the other ingredients once applied to the salad, and that will add to the flavor. Also, you could substitute apple cider vinegar if you don’t have balsamic.

I was out of some of my usual salad toppings and had eaten the strawberry, walnut and feta cheese with spinach salad before, so I just used what I had on hand, and did my own version.  I probably would have added some shredded cheddar if I hadn’t used it all on the baked potatoes. I think cheddar cheese pairs well with fruit.  Feta would also be enjoyable.

This is a fairly healthy salad and also addresses your sweet tooth, so you don’t crave dessert after the meal.  In fact the little bit that was left over  became my snack later instead of the chocolate candy bar calling my name from the pantry shelf.  Although I’ve heard chocolate can be good for you too!  Antioxidants and all.

I don’t have a picture to take of how beautiful it looked in the bowl because it was devoured gone before I thought to take one.  It met with Mr. Piano’s approval too, although I’m sure he enjoyed the loaded potato more, because as he says salad is a necessary evil need for us nutritionally.

2.  I do have a Random picture from the Little House taken before we officially moved in and crowded it all up with furniture from two residences (which is a story for another time). This room looks different now; I loved it when it was just a simple table and chair.  You will notice my drop cloth drapes to the right side of the picture.

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3.  And finally, the reading.  Today I was reading in Philippians chapter two in preparation for tomorrows Sunday School class.  We will be discussing humility and how Christ is our example of a humble servant. humility-is-not-thinking-less-of-yourself-its-thinking-of-13

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Friday and hopefully Sunday, I am reading Mere Christianity by CS Lewis. I started this book some time ago and was interrupted. I picked it back up this week to finish.  It is good, thought provoking reading.

I also recently enjoyed the January issue of Better Homes and Gardens.  It has a lovely spread of Edie Wadsworth’s new (rebuilt) lake home from over at life{in}grace.  Her story is truly remarkable; I believe, in addition to the BH&G article, you would love browsing around her blog.  Her about me page has links to several of her posts that will help you get to know her a little better. I found her a couple years ago via Nesting Place.  I may or may not have spent a lot of few hours stalking catching up on her blog posts recently.  She also lives in my beloved Tennessee which makes me a little jealous, until I remember that I am blessed, beyond measure, to live in My beloved Kentucky Home during this part of our journey.

So, there you have it, some ideas for your weekend in case you’re tired of that social media site where you normally hang out!  I do realize that your weekend is half over before I post, but it is daylight somewhere, maybe.

Weekending in Grace,

Sadie

Home

~ Teresa ~ 1 Comment

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This little house sits next door to the house that has been our family home since the summer I was 16.  My parents still live there.  Over the years there were many neighbors in the little house.  For a few years a wonderful couple lived there after they retired from the military. When they passed away, the house went on the market and eventually a young teacher ended up with the house.  She painted it Puppy Paws, which I believe is an Olympic paint from Lowe’s.  It has a rather pinkish cast.  Anyway, she lived here for a year or so and then got married and they lived here another year, then they accepted teaching jobs elsewhere and put the house on the market.  We almost bought it then, in 2007.  But we didn’t.

Three years and three renters later, my Dad was tired of not knowing who his neighbors would be, he was tired of his steep driveway and wanted back access to his property and I was hankering for a little house to call my own even if it was only on weekends.  So, we made a deal.  He’d buy the property, We (meaning my brother, his assistant and my dad) would fix up the house and then when Mr. Piano graduates we’d purchase the house from him.  In the meantime we’d have a little weekend get away and a little cottage to come home to on school breaks etc.  I’d always thought it would be fun to have a second home like those people you read about who can actually afford a vacation home.

The only hitch in having my second home?  I didn’t really have my first home since I was living in a campus apartment and had sold my dream home in Tennessee when we moved to Louisville for my husband to attend school.  See picture below:

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I’ve always done things backwards and there is a rather satisfying sense of irony in having my second home before I have my first home.  So to speak.  And just so we are clear, I do not have the means to own two homes in any real sense of the phrase ‘two homes’.  It’s not all that.  We got a really good deal on the little house because….brace yourself….this is a sampling of the condition it was in when we found it:

100_0554The kitchen looks totally different now, thanks to my brother.  We were fortunate that the fall of 2010 his business slowed down enough for him to spend the fall and winter doing updates and he was reasonably priced.  And he is talented.  And we did the bare minimum to make it work as a little get away house.  Nothing fancy, just clean and simple.  I will do some before and after posts soon.

To be fair to previous owners, the young teacher had the house very clean and did some painting and updates, but unfortunately the renters after she moved out weren’t so kind to the house.  We gathered several, like at least 13, large, yard, garbage bags full of junk that the last renter had left behind.  It looked like she had left in a hurry as there was something in a pan on the stove that looked like chili and my Dad found out the hard way that we shouldn’t open the refrigerator door.  It had to be thrown away which is a shame as it looked fairly new.  We let our appliance guy recycle the stove when we purchased a new one as I wasn’t too thrilled with keeping it either after seeing the “leftovers” in the pan (we’re talking several weeks).  I have a picture of the garbage we threw out, when I find it I’ll scan it and let you see that I’m not making this up!

So, here we are two and a half years later and our “second” home has become our only home.  For awhile at least.  Mr. Piano, is getting ready to defend his dissertation on January 15th.  After that he will do some final editing and then it will be off to be bound and printed, then we wait for graduation in May.  He was supposed to graduate in December, but, well, that is a long story, and a stressful one, and really couldn’t be helped. He is essentially done and after next week, he will be done, but since graduation only happens twice a year, it won’t be official until May.  Then, God willing, he will have a teaching job in the fall.  He has been applying like crazy to colleges.  Frankly, we don’t know where we’ll end up, or when we’ll be there.

In the meantime we remain here in the Little House, in a small Kentucky ‘burg, living in our second home, waiting on a job that will presumably take us to our first home, unless, something would pop up close by and then our second home could be our first home.  We are open to God’s plans.  We wait on him because we know he is faithful.  We are learning to rest, trust, and listen.  In Him we Remain, because he is our true home.

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Remaining in Grace,

Sadie