DIY Wood Feature Wall

We love watching home improvement shows. Chris and I always end up discussing different ideas we like or it give us ideas we would maybe someday (but never will actually happen) to our house.

One wall in particular in our home has bugged me since the day we moved in.  It's been my nemesis and I've constantly changed it up in hopes that I'd find just the right thing for it.  A lot of homes in my neighborhood with the same floor plan have cabinets with like a little desk area, so I've contemplated putting a desk or something there,but didn't want to make the space feel claustrophobic.

Seriously, I've lost sleep thinking about this dang wall.

See ^^^ confusion. I seriously could not figure it out.

One night we were watching property brothers, or maybe it was fixer upper, and we talked about some design element and we both mentioned our ideas of if we ever put wood on the walls it would look a certain way.  

I mentioned that I'd prefer a natural wood finish. None of this paint over good looking wood fad. Apparently, those were the magic words cause the next weekend Chris was at home depot getting something else and came home with 50 of the most beautiful wood boards(which smell amazing too) and was ready to make my dream a reality! 

WHAT WE USED:

1in x 6in x 6ft Better Blue Stain Ponderosa Pine tongue & grooved boards.(< link if for 8ft lenght, they have 6ft boards in store)
Deckmate screws

We measured, cut and then drilled the boards directly into the studs in the wall.
Basic carpentry skills are all you need to do this. It's that easy.
I recommend getting a tongue & grooved boards if your are thinking about doing something like this
1.) it hides gaps between the boards
2.) since the connect you can place your board and not worry about it falling off the wall or needing extra hands to hold it up.

total time around 6 hours
total cost around $210

we all drew funny pictures, wrote words and different things on the walls before we boarded them up. It was a lot of fun and got the kids involved in the project too. 

Now that one thing is done, we're in like ultra planning mode for other things.  Hopefully will happen sooner rather than later, but one thing at a time.

I'm working on the cabinets next. So stay tuned for that.

Soft and Chewy Oatmeal Cookies

If you're anything like me then you have about a year supply of quick cooking oats in your pantry that needs to be used and rotated.

So a perfect way to do that it to make cookies. Chris loves oatmeal cookies, but they have to be a very specific kind and I needed to make an equivalent to or better oatmeal cookie.

I think I nailed it with this recipe. It was another Pinterest win.


Recipe adapted from: The Comfort of Cooking
INGREDIENTS:

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg 
• 1 1/2 cups quick cooking oats

I left out the nutmeg, on the fact that I didn't have any nutmeg. If you don't like nutmeg don't worry the cookies taste fantastic without it. 


DIRECTIONS:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper; set aside.

In a large bowl with an electric mixer, beat butter and both sugars until fluffy. Mix in egg and vanilla until well blended. Combine flour, cinnamon, baking soda, salt, baking powder and nutmeg (omitted) in a bowl. Stir into butter mixture. Gently stir in oats until well blended.

Shape dough into rounded golfball-sized balls (about 2 Tbsp. each). (I used my trusty cookie scoop)  Place on prepared baking sheet (I fit 9 per sheet). Flatten with the bottom of a measuring cup dipped in sugar. (Totally missed reading this part. I did NOT flatten my cookies before baking.)


Bake for 8-10 minutes.(since I missed flattening the cookie before baking, I had to bake mine longer between 10-14 minutes) Let cool on baking sheet 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

I think  I got at least 24 cookies.  I didn't count cause we started eating them immediately out of the oven. oops. :)

Cookies times to see how they turned out. 

Seriously so so good! We ate way too many! They were just as good the next day too. Just put them in a zip lock and you should probably hide them cause they will be hard to resist.

This would be a perfect base if you want to add chocolate chips, or raisins (yuck), or reeses pieces candies (yum).

Let me know how they turn out for you and how many you ate too. :)

I tried to outsmart a pinterest recipe

Chris came home from work Monday night all excited saying that he was going to be making a dessert that he found online.  I told him i would let him make it himself.  About 5 minutes in i basically took over.  I can't help it, but that's pretty much how everything went horribly wrong.

You've seen pinterest fails before, I'm sure of it. Well i thought i would be smarter than the pinterest recipe and change things up a bit and not follow the recipe exactly and well it didn't go so well.


Here is the original recipe: Homemade Little Debbie star crunch-no bake

It seems like a super simple recipe with super simple instructions. I'll go with what we did wrong.

• We only have salted butter.  Eh, I'm sure that will be fine, through it in!  
• I know what i'm doing honey, this doesn't need to be microwaved this long. 
• It would go faster if we didn't make them into disks and we just flattened them into bars
• We'll just put them in the fridge for a few minutes and let them cool and then put the chocolate on

It was basically an avalanche of i know better then this recipe.  

They ended up being bricks!  Giant, tooth chipping, yet extremely tasty, bricks! 

I mean once we sawed out a piece, then successfully taken a bite, then were able to chew on the piece for a bit, it got chewy and it actually tasted really good! 

It was an unfortunate series of mishaps that lead to our brick homemade star crunch krispies.  

I vow now to try again and follow the recipe EXACTLY.  Its gonna bother me until i figure out if this yummy recipe can actually be replicated successfully. 

Wish us luck!