Boo! happy halloween

Happy Halloween all!

Truth be told, I am not a huge Halloween fan. Sure, I like the candy (who doesn't??) but the whole costume-gory-fake-blood-evil-spirits thing doesn't really get me going. I'm happy to be "grown up" enough to like handing out candy more than anything else about the day. Today's supposed to be pretty chilly so hopefully we'll still get a good crowd of kids through! Here's our pumpkin this year:

(simple is as simple does)

And yes, I did save and clean all the pumpkin seeds to roast them up - that's my favourite thing about carving a pumpkin! (Oh, and the smell of pumpkins with candles in them. Just me?). And I saw this a little too late - totally going on my list for next year's pumpkin (now just to remember...).

Hope you all have a safe and happy halloween!

Taste of fall {butternut squash + carrot soup; and roast chicken}

This past weekend Sunday was all about cooking (and a little pumpkin carving...you'll see that tomorrow). We like cooking, but especially in the fall and winter because it feels like spending a few hours in the kitchen working on dinner is totally legit (especially on a non-stop-rain weekend that we just had). The leftovers that come with them are pretty sweet too.

I made this "creamy" (no cream) butternut squash and carrot soup (and added ginger, black pepper and a bit of thyme for flavour). This recipe makes a tonne of soup (about 8 or 9 cups I think). I started it in my biggest pot and by the time I got all the veggies in I saw I would have to swap to my stock pot instead! Since the soup doesn't have any cream in it, I kept some in the fridge and froze the rest. Easy and impressive soup to have on hand for cool days or as a starter for a dinner party.

As a side note...I usually puree my soup using an immersion blender, but this time I actually scooped out the cooked veggies, let them cool a bit, and pureed them in this puppy (batch by batch):

This may not be my best kitchen fancy, but it still does the job! Using a blender to puree the cooked vegetables (with a bit of broth to help the blending) make the soup so smooth. It's worth the extra time to do it this way.

The Mr. made a delicious roast chicken with carrots, onions, and parsnips (it was our first time cooking parsnips - they are amazing!). The chicken came from my sister's friends' farm and it was very tasty! The bones and skin are in the freezer to be used for broth soon.

What have you made / tasted lately that gave you a taste of fall?

Living room update {curtains}

How do Mondays come up so quickly?? I had a great weekend, but spent a lot of it running around the city (depsite the rain). Oh, and last week I noticed that my rainboots have a leak! Help! Frankenstorm (Hurricane Sandy) is coming up the NE coast of the US and I have leaky rainboots...what's a girl to do? I slapped on some crazy glue to the small slit I could see on the bottom of my boot...think it will hold? Let's hope so...from what they are saying we might have to swim to work tomorrow.

Anyhoo...despite the rain I am happy to report progress on my living room! A couple of weeks ago I bought these curtains / drapes from West Elm:

Scribble Lattice - by West Elm

They are a good weight, have hidden tabs, and are ridiculously reasonably priced ($44 per panel...for $88 + tax (less the $20 gift card I had!) I couldn't have even bought fabric to make them).

Then came the curtain rod search - THIS proved to be difficult. We did the easy thing and picked up a rod at Homesense, but it was cheap and way too thin (and black...which was too stark against the curtains and our wall). Then I went to Designer Fabrics to look at their options - they have the most customizable options, but obviously that comes at a bit of a cost. Then we even considered making our own rod out of electrical conduit (bloggers never fail to amaze me with their resourcefulness!). We went as far as being in the electrical aisle of Home Depot, looking at conduit, and then me being worried that the rod would be too heavy (heavy wall hangings + plaster walls = potential disaster). So we wandered over to the home decor section and low and behold, they had a rod. A rod that I actually *liked*. It's antique-brass looking, with large glass (acrylic) ball finials. For $40. Sold. Although the Mr. was a bit upset at not being able to do this DIY, it was a pretty easy decision to pick it up (and finally get these curtains hung!). 

There they are! I still have to hem them and adjust them a bit on the rod. You can't see the finials in this photo, but they are there. Warning to others considering acrylic finials - they do tend to fade into the background in dark conditions. (Speaking of...all the rain this weekend made photos in my house with my point and shoot next to impossible. Time to start thinking of a fancy camera!).

As a reminder - the pillows and coffee table (and very eventually the flooring) will be changing in this room.

Taste of fall {Carrot muffins}

It is definitely fall out there! At least Toronto isn't getting snow like Calgary is (I could NOT deal with that...).

A couple of weeks ago I wanted to make different muffins so I found a carrot muffin recipe to try out. Note - if you try this recipe and you aren't used to carrot muffins don't be discouraged if the "batter" is pretty dry when you mix the dry ingredients with the wet ones! I thought it was too dry so I added a bit of milk, but in the end they probably didn't need it. I also added some raisins and you could add walnuts for a nice crunch.

The cinnamon, ginger, and moist carrot make these muffins a great morning snack.

Kitchen light fixture

I am embarassed to say that we still have some ug-ly light fixtures in our house. We've had more important things to focus on, but they're getting dealt with one at a time!

We had a gross boob light in our kitchen...so gross that I didn't even honour its memory with a photo.  Ideally we would have potlights in there, but when we re-did the electrical in our house we decided to wait until we did a kitchen reno, built out an island, and knew where we wanted our task lighting. Well, then our kitchen reno turned into a gorgeous kitchen facelift with everything staying in the same spot so we didn't do potlights in the kitchen at all.

We finally dealt with the ugly light we had in there by going the retro modern route and replacing the old boob light with a school house fixture:

It was a pendant light, but the Mr. took out the rods and hung it as a flush mount since we don't have a lot of room underneath it (the cabinet has to open up). It is one of those small changes that just makes me happy that it's done, and that I don't cringe whenever I look up at the ceiling!

Similar light available at Home Depot - but you should check in-store, we found another brand that had the pendant light on sale for $39!

We found a chair!

And I do mean found...craigslist style...woot!

First things first...how was your weekend? Ours flew by AS USUAL. Seriously, what is up with that?

Friday night we went to Lahore Tikka House for dinner...this place is..."rustic" but the food is GOOD! If you're in Toronto and not super picky about restaurant decor, go there.

Saturday we ran all over town - first to pick up the chair in the east end, then to the west end for an appointment and a trip to Designer Fabrics, then to Costco (yes, we survived). Saturday night we had a wonderful dinner with a friend, and then Sunday we did a bit more running around (Rogers finally cooperated so I could get my new iPhone5...wooooooooooo! It is such a novelty to have a phone that does what I ask it to...on the first try...without a hissy fit. Amazing, my friends), had a great workout and made a delicious dinner. Oh yah...and hung a curtain rod in the living room only to discover I didn't like it up. Right..sometimes you don't know until you see it drilled into the wall! Busy but lots and lots of fun.

Ok...onto the chair.

If you remember my post about re-doing my living room, a chair was on my wish list. Last weekend we went to no less than 10 furniture stores and we didn't find anything we liked. If we did see something that we liked aesthetically, it felt wobbly and cheap when we sat in it. So, the hunt was on for a used chair to re-upholster. I had been looking on and off but hadn't seen anything that I liked. Then I saw this...for cheapsies ($25) so we picked it up less than 24 hours after it was posted.

(Sorry for the bad light)

I like the classic shape of the char, curvey arms, and not-too-deep wing back. I think it's a classic that we will keep for a long time.

I am crossing my fingers that my friend Lindsey from Recreated will work her re-upholstery magic on this piece :)

I'm thinking a classic fabric, and then I'll liven up the whole space with fun pillows that I can change at will. Here's a nice herringbone I found:

Bertrand from DesignerFabrics

I love the gray on gray herringbone as opposed to white and black, but am thinking I need it in a bigger scale. Anyone have any good fabric sources for upholstery projects?

Hope you all had a great weekend, and a good start to the week...tomorrow's Wednesday, let's hope the rest of the week speeds by!