Dining room weekend make over / Before and afters / Dining room reno /

Okay so here is a little before and after action. Everyone who knows me knows I love my weekend projects! This is one that I was so excited to do. I do not get these weekends very much where I actually accomplish what intend to but I was on it this weekend. Having three kids sometimes really puts a wrench in your plans lol. This is one of those projects that looks like a lot of work went into it, but it was not bad at all. Putting the chair rail up made the wall paper job super easy because I had such a short amount of space to do, then throw some paint on and put some covers on and there ya have it.

Here is the before picture. The main things I did was add some chair rail, which is surprisingly very easy to do and leaves such a finished look. Added wall paper, and stained the bench all one color to match the table. The bench, I built last year and I thought that I would love it two toned but It just wasn’t working for me. Doing it all one color made me love it so much more! Also I got these chair covers on amazon and they are awesome. They are a universal fit and they fit so snug they look like they are just part of the chairs, And they are cheap! 4 covers for $34 or 6 for $44😱 In the link below it will take you to the exact ones that I bought you can choose 4 or 6. If you do a general search you can spend hours looking, -That is what I did ha.

Mr. Sandy really wanted to be photographed! I swear he poses for pictures! 😻 I love him! Do any of your cats love to be in pictures. I thought that it was a little weird at first but he is so cute I love that he pops his little head in for a quick shot!

The true piece to resistance is the mirror! I wanted a large round mirror for the longest time and finally my sister cracked for Christmas and got it for me!! I was so so happy I went back to my child years getting all excited like Santa came just for me!! Sometimes my kids just catch me standing at the island gazing into the dining room in la la land 😂 I wonder what they think sometimes! Actual no I do not, I would probably get my feelings hurt!

So there you have it. It took me some time to get to the point to actually start on this project but I am so happy it is done now. I would love to hear what you think! Comment and let me know! =]

Things used for this make over 

round mirror - Mine came from hobby lobby and it is 30” round I can not find a link for this exact one but I will link a similar one 😉 

wall paper- amazon company world of wallpaper  

chair covers - amazon $34 🙌

Rug- nuloom rugs  

light fixture- rivet by amazon  

bamboo roman shades

Because Jesus eats with everyone leather strap sign from salted Words  

Keto Chicken fried cauli-rice

I’m not a fan of having to read a whole story before I get to a recipe so in an effort to treat others as I would like to be treated, here’s the list of ingredients for this recipe.

Less than 30 minutes prep and cook.

1 bag of fresh or frozen riced cauliflower

1carrot pealed and diced (not Keto but it’s a small amount)

1/2 small onion chopped (also not Keto but also a small amount)

4 ribs celery chopped

1-2 tbsp chopped garlic

4 tbsp avacado oil

1 -2 tsp sesame oil (to taste)

2-3 tbsp Bragg amino acids, this is a replacement for soy sauce (to taste)

2 chicken breast sliced thin

2 eggs

S & P (to taste)

I use a 12 inch skillet and I add the avacado oil and then the carrot, celery, onion & garlic and I sauté for a few minutes till softened and then I add the thin sliced chicken breast and cook til done, then I add the bag of riced cauliflower and the amino acids and sesame oil and both of these are to taste, when the cauli is warm I pull it all back and make a whole in the center of the mix and add the two eggs and I let them start cooking a little a start scrambling them in the center, after they start to cook a little I mix them all in the the whole dish add the salt and pepper and cover and cook for about 3-5 minutes until the eggs are done. When I serve this dish I top with dried chives and I also put the amino acids on the table so that we can add more if we’d like.

I have my vegetables and chicken already chopped and sliced and ready to add.

I cook the vegetables about half way, just softened and then I add the chicken.

You can used fresh or frozen riced cauliflower, I use both and I’m happy with either. Another good thing about this recipe is that you can double it or add more cauliflower or more chicken to stretch it and it always tastes good.

This is the pet that I do exactly like this every time, I’ve tried to just crack the eggs and stir them in and it’s just not the same, and I actually don’t like it if I just mix them in.

This is the finish product and the chives really add some depth to this, I highly recommend garnishing with it.

I have also swapped out refined coconut oil in this dish and it tastes the same, I wouldn’t use olive oil though unless you’re in a bind.

Cocnut oil and avacado oil have a high heat tolerance when cooking and recommended for Keto. I usually get avacado oil at Homegoods or Tj Maxx, you can also get it at Whole Foods or online. Coconut oil can be bought at most any grocery store.

Refined coconut does not taste like coconut.

Unrefined coconut oil tastes like coconut.

Avacado oil has no flavor or very little taste.

I hope you enjoy this recipe, we make this on repeat and I always love it and look forward to the leftovers the next day.

DIY Build in bunk beds for the boys room / home decor / boys room / room decor ideas

So, I will admit sometimes I do not know my limits. I had this thought that I did not want to try to fit two twin size beds in my boys little room. Their room measures at about 11x11 so there is really no room to spare. For weeks my husband and I talked about just buying bunk beds, or a day bed with a trundle and just none of those options seemed right to me. So, I knew that I couldn’t buy what I had in my mind so we just went for it. I pretty much had to rope in all of my loved ones in on this project lol. Right below is an inspiration board with every thing I knew that I wanted to be a part of this project. And also I just really like making inspiration boards. They are so pretty to me! I will also link every thing on here as well.

Above is a picture of what their room looked like when it was just a nursery. Not to proud of that situation, I totally forgot the rule about every thing being white lol!!

Here is my wonderful mother that loves me so much and loves all of my antics….. Most of the time.

FYI I am in no way shape or form a professional or contractor just a girl who knows kind of what she is looking for and trying to figure out how to achieve that. This is literally how we decided on the fact of how much room we needed in between each bunk… After the fact we had the bright idea of looking it up and we were pretty close to the size contractors recommend. So it was golden to me!

Here is the frame up and ready for some trim. Now a big part of this project was framing. I knew every thing had to be level so these measurement had to be percise. We took it apart a couple of times because we came to the conclusion the floor was not perfect. But we finally got it! I will also put every thing I used at the end of all of the pictures and measurements. One thing that I did learn in this project is that you can not count on all of your wall being square and perfect. So with any project to this scale a level is completely life saving.

All of the trim that I used is all white primered MDF board. They sell it in many different widths so that was a game changer for me so that I didn’t have to rip down a hundred boards. And they are surpisingly not expensive. And it made my job a lot easier.

Whitney was obsessed with helping me, I actually found out that the girl is really good with a drill lol. These are small pieces of 2x4 left over from the frame that I screwed of for support for the front piece of trim. Also another thing that was key in this project was 2 drills, one to drill pilot holes and one to drive screws. That was a game changer. We didn’t figure this out until half way through the project 😂

Now this part was a little bit tricky for me. I had to put firing strips on the top so I could glue and nail the piece of birch I put up there. Measuring this part was really important to you knew where to nail to make sure the piece of birch was secure. This is my least favorite part of this job. But i almost just didn’t do it and left it like it was with no piece of birch but I can not tell you how happy I was after the fact. I love going in there and looking at it! It does make it seem just that little bit more professional.

The lights were next. I did the same thing on the sides as I did on the ceiling. I put framing on the back so I could attached the piece of birch to it and let the cords of the lights fall behind that piece of wood. These lights are also amazing! I love them. They were very inexpensive from amazing, They are plug in wall lamps and I had a plug on this wall and just ran an extention cord from the top light down to the plug in and just ran the cord all the way down.

Oh I forgot to mention the window! Every one wonders about the window. Honestly I tried every other configuration to try to avoid putting them in front of the window but it just was not going to happen. I was worried about it but they have been done for a while and I have two boys that live in them and they never even mess with the window. And since I have gotten them finished I put a wood blind over the window so they dont even mess with it at all any more. Where I put the frame for the bed I just notched out the pieces of trim surrounding the window and it worked like a dream.. This is all trim on and I thought I would even get a little bit fancy and put a little bit of Crown molding up at the top. Let me tell you those two pieces of crown took me as long to that then it did to make the whole bed! lol. Not really but man for some reason I just could not get it right. I would try to explain to you the way that I actually finally figured it out but I would be kind of embaraced lol!! Also the bottoms of each bed are just 1/4 osb so the beds would not slide around. Also in this picture you can see that I used 1x2 white primed trim board all around the tops of the inside of the bunks because there were some gaps from where the birch met up. Could have been my measuring so maybe you wouldn’t need to??

Wha-laaaa…. All finished and ready to go! The bars on the top bunk are black conduit with conduit brackets holding them up. The boys think that it is a jungle gym but when they are not home I go in there and make their beds and just reminese in how awesome they turned out.

Okay now for a parts list here it goes

FOR THE FRAMING

4 2x4’s depending on how tall your ceilings are mine were “108 pieces for the post holding the bed frames

4 2x4 80” pieces (twin beds are 75” long so I did “80 to be safe to be able to put bedding on

8 2x4 38” pieces for in between to make the width for the beds

I used pretty much 3” screws for all of the framing and then 4” screws to attach the frame to the wall

BIRCH & OSB PIECES ON SIDES AND TOPS & BOTTOMS

2 80x38” pieces of 1/4 birch for the top of both of the top and bottom bunk

2 80x38” pieces of 1x4 osb for the bottom’s of both bunks

3 38x36” of birch of the wall side birch filler in pieces I also filled in the bottom bunk left and right that is why i did 3 you do not have to fill in the other side if you do not want to.

TRIM PIECES

7- 1X8X10 mdf primed trim borad for the fronts and the side

6- 1x2x10 mdf primed trim board I trimed all of the inside of the tops of the bunks in this

2 pieces of crown if you decide to go that route =] There is lots of styles to choose from too =]

2 10” pieces of conduit and 4 conduit wall brackets  

Lights were from amazon ONLY $16

Big metal letters were from hobby lobby

Light fixture is from Ikea, I can not find this one exactly but I found one that is close

Rug from RugsUSA 6x9

Target twin sheets

Target twin bedding

Keto Lemon cup dessert / Keto food / Keto dessert recipe / Good eating / Clean eating

Even though we are Keto we still love a scrumptious sweet dessert every once in a while and these are probably my favorite concoction to date. 💛 

This has fresh squeezed lemon juice and lemon zest as well. You can use a hand held grater or one that stands on it own, whatever you have will work. 

I should warn you, these are delicious and you may want more than one but you should use your will power and only have just one, the first time I made these I had two and a half and I would have had more but I reclaimed my sanity real quick and held back. 

I created the crust to be not just tasty but healthy as well and it is! You can eat this by the spoonful but don’t 😂 use restraint. 

Also add a dash or two of hymalayan pink sea salt and also 1/4 c of unsweetened coconut flakes to this crust mixture, it’s not listed above🤷🏼‍♀️ Sorry. It’s important to add it and I’ll tell you why at the end.

I measured out two and a half tbsp to each cup and it came out nearly perfect

so I’m going to confess a little secret, this pudding mix has sweeteners that are not techically Keto, well the Keto style that we follow, but we eat them in moderation (about every 10 days) but one of the amazing things about Keto is that you gain a lot of will power so it’s totally doable to only have sweets like this every once in a while. 

I have become a fan of stabilized whip cream, it keeps its shape so these can be made really pretty and they’ll stay that way and it’s important for me to make my food pretty as well as taste good. And then I top them with lemon zest and it adds an additional bit of brightness in looks and taste. 

Here’s the whole recipe so that you can use it as your shopping list ready and it makes 10 cups, I used the clear solo brand cups or you could stretch it out further and get smaller cups or little bowls, however you want to make it is up to you. 

If you’re going to check the macros it’s important to know how many this recipe will make so that you can get an accurate carb/calorie/nutrition count  per serving. 

Something that I’ve noticed about Keto sweets recipes is that the sugar substitutes that we use have a bit of an off taste, maybe an after taste of sorts or an overly sweet flavor, but if there something bitter in the recipe to counter that then it tastes much better and in this recipe I used the coconut and pecans in the crust to balance the sweetness of the swerve. 

This is our first ever Keto recipe, we hope you love it as much as we do💛 

Fireplace Reno / Home Decor / Before and after / house made home

Hey guys! I am finally getting around to getting my Fireplace Reno up on the blog! I am going to share lots of pics of before and afters! I love the way that it looked before but I live in a trilevel and I can always use more storage. I have seen some of the most amazing fireplace renovations and just knew I could utlize my space better. Here is a before picture of my fire place . Just a standard 1970’s brick fireplace. 

I painted the whole thing white, and I actually really liked it but I wanted a space that I could store wood. So my mind automatically went to a built in style. Then I made the mistake of Pinteresting fire place Reno’s and man, there is a lot of talent out there #amirightladies

Loved those bats

So this is the Pinterest inspiration that I found and fell in love with. I loved the clean lines and simple look and of corse the white. 

I also loved the idea of it taken up this whole entire wall. It makes such a statement now. 

there was a lot of framing involved, I mean a lot, and a lot of kids twirling on their heads 😂

Getting close!! The built in part on the left is for wood storage!!! I was so excited to actually have a place to store wood. So at any time we could just leisurely make a fire. 

All finished! I started this project exactly a week before it had to be done because I wanted to take our Christmas pictures in front of it. Let me tell you, I did that intentionally so I would actually get it done and finish it. And work on it even if I wanted to quit. That is some commitment, I was actually very aggravated I did that to myself at the time 😂 But I am so happy it is done, I love it!

First photo shoot in front of it finished.

Still waiting on that wood. My hubs told me if you build it, I will go cut some wood for it. And it is Feb...... and I am Still waiting 😂 I’m going with he is waiting for the weather to break!!  

That is it. It was a pretty fun project, especially going back and looking at the befores. 

Womens Group October 2018

Proverbs Womens group study

Hi Friends! Come join us Live on instagram @saltedwords at 6:30 tonight (6.5.2018) I would love to see you there! Here is a study guide that you can follow along with! Much Love!

God's provision and grace May 2018

Womens Group- The color blue

We meet for women's group the first Tuesday of every month and we put together a study guide so that every one can follow along. It is a free printable if you would like to join us! We also have been trying to go live through our Instagram @saltedwords .