Domestications (that actually used to be the name of a company that is now called The Company Store and is a little better quality)

We had the best weather this weekend! Saturday was 57 and today was 61 - so warm! Since it was so nice, we decided to tackle one of our t0-be-done projects, painting furniture.

A few months ago, we started shopping for bedroom furniture since we are planning to get a new bed and both of our furniture sets are at least 300 years old. (Ok, almost 300 years old.) The more we thought about it and really looked at where we wanted to spend money, we realized that this wasn't one of our priorities. BUT - I still wanted a new look, so - let's paint! It's been sooo cold lately we just haven't felt like doing it, so this weekend's weather was perfect.

(I don't know why the pictures are so small, blogger's upload must be having a bad day.) It took us ALL day to get this done and we might have rushed it... there is a chance we'll be stripping and re-painting in a few weeks, but I LOVE the way it turned out.

It is going to look sooo nice with the grayish color I've picked for our bedroom. We'll also be painting another piece similar to this one that will be the same color with the same hardware (that I found for $1.47 a piece at Home Depot - score! We used different drawer pulls on the top drawer because those were smaller).

I also went out on a limb this weekend and tried three new recipies. They all turned out great! On Friday, we had this souffle - oh man, it was SO good! I added mushrooms and a tiny bit of green pepper. I probably wouldn't add the pepper next time but will always use mushroom! The pepper didn't make it bad, you just couldn't really tell they were in there. I also used regular monterrey jack cheese as I generally don't prefer too much flavor. I didn't have enough small baking dishes (might be updating our registry!) so we only made three, but they were delish! We saved the other one and ate it Saturday for brunch and it was great for a breakfast too and still tasted just as good as it did when I made them Friday. The fluff was gone but everything else was the same. I will be making this a LOT!

On Saturday, we had cinnamon bun pancakes - SO YUMMY and potato soup for dinner. I got the recipe for pancakes from Tastey Kitchen, Ree's cooking blog/community. Did you know that Pioneer Woman had that?! I didn't! I made the pancakes just as the recipe called but then added a lot more milk later because the pancakes were too thick and I was having trouble cooking them. The potato soup was REALLY good! I didn't use ham though as I don't eat meat and I added an extra chicken bouillon packet and some left over green onions from the souffle. I also added a little more butter and salt/pepper and milk. It was easy enough that you can pretty much modify it as needed and it was super easy. I'm learning that I really enjoy cooking and I actually eat a LOT less when I do cook because I'm so tired of being in the kitchen smelling the same things. Ha! Who knew that you could lose weight by cooking more?!

I have to share this, the ENTIRE time I was making the potato soup, I laughed because of THIS video my friend Liz showed me at work around Christmastime. I've never really used bouillon much and this is probably the first time in years that I've had to buy it and I just couldn't stop laughing about the "booyons" while I was cooking. You have to watch the video! It is hilarious!

Since I've become a weekend chef, if anyone has great recipes, send them my way! I'm thinking I might try this breakfast casserole this weekend. Looks yummy (with some modification of course)!