Easter Sunday with the Family

With the recent remodel of our kitchen, I have been rediscovering the joy of hosting.  Recently, we hosted a dessert date with my two lovely cousin-sisters, Kat and Irina and their SOs. While preparing for the date, I realized that I had just as much fun making the dessert and deciding how to set the table, as during the time spent together.  There is this joy that comes from making food that you know people will enjoy and considering its presentation.  Then the payoff of the time spent together, absolute bliss.

Christmas 2013 with my sweet family

So I am thrilled to be hosting our family Easter lunch this year.  My mom is having surgery on Friday, so I thought I would lighten the load for her and offer to have the gathering at my place. She is hardcore and said she will be bringing blinchiki, goluptsi and her famous broccoli salad. So much for my plan, right? Amongst everyone else (there will be 13 of us total), and their contributions, I really don't have to make much.

So I am going to take the opportunity to try something I've never done before, and go for a lamb roast.

On my Easter Menu:

Rosemary and Garlic Roast Leg of Lamb 

Buttermilk and Scallion Mashed Potatoes from America's Test Kitchen's Slow Cooker Revolution

Roasted Beets

And possibly a dozen Mini Pies.

Hopefully the weather will be nice so we can whip out some of them lawn games that have been collecting dust in the garage. Looking forward to Sunday, family time is the best! 

Our Master Bedroom Remodel

We moved into the house before we had a chance to make any improvements. I remember the first few nights, all of our boxes and possessions crammed into the den, with our mattress laying in the middle of the room. There was no walking room, you had to climb over boxes and bags. We lived this way for a good few weeks as we figured what projects we would tackle first.

There was so much work to be done - we were basically remodeling it completely, so there were so many questions to answer:

• What vibe did we want to set? 

• What materials were we going to use? 

• How would we bring our vision to reality? How much time, energy and effort would it take? 

• And would it turn out as we imagined? 

Being novices with relatively no experience in home repair, we decided our priority was to prepare a room that we could call our sanctuary, our master bedroom.  It would be a contained goal that would serve as a point of sanity amidst the chaos of remodeling that would surely take a good while to complete.

And so the work began...

The master bedroom had a major animal urine stench. We knew we had to get rid of it first, so we ripped out the carpet and began our attack, deploying almost every scent removing strategy found on the internet.  Finally, we painted the floor with KILZ and it seemed to do the trick.

After succeeding the war on the terrible smell, we began searching for the perfect color scheme. We wanted something calming, inviting, and romantic. The good news was that we both wanted a similar vibe for the room. We settled on Hazel from Sherwin Williams.  I am glad we went with that choice; to this day, whenever I enter the room I feel a sense of peace.

Of course as silly as it sounds, painting the room was very stressful for me. It was my first time painting a room and knowing that it was going to be OUR room, I wanted it to be perfect. Thankfully the Cashmere paint was very easy to work with.

After the walls and ceiling was painted, we had to decide on the type of flooring we were going to install.  We didn't want to do carpet, and hardwood was out of our price range so decided on laminate. We sought advice from my cousin Alex who works in flooring, and he introduced us to NW Flooring Outlet in Beaverton. We scored a great deal on 11mm laminate that has a dark wood look with french bleeding.

After painting, installing flooring, and putting in our furniture, we were very happy with the outcome.