Birdsong Cottage: Kitchen decor...

Hi there! Today I thought I'd share some more photos of the kitchen updates in our humble little single wide mobile home getaway. We still haven't done a lot of decorating, but at least the heavy labor stuff is done in here.

All painting is finished, except the trim work. Hubby finished all the wiring for the last of the new lighting after figuring out where previous owners botched it all up...

I plan on refinishing the little old table...

One of these days I might even get a chance to cook a real meal in this graphite-colored crockpot that we just bought to match the kitchen...

And speaking of graphite, I bought some Annie Sloan paint in this color, along with one of her books...

More to come later on where I got the paint up here.

Have a great day!

Sue

Food for thought: Perfect Flat Iron Steak...

Good morning!

Before we left home to come up here to Birdsong, I was looking through my freezer for something that I could  make that would be quick. I came across a flat iron steak, and did a Google search for recipes, as I had never made one of these before.

I came across the following recipe, tried it, and we liked it very much. This particular cut of meat came out really tender after marinating. I am not a fan of the London Broil cut of meat, and whenever I make London Broil, I use flank steak, which to me is a lot more tender. This flat iron was actually even better than flank steak.

Here is the recipe if you would like to try it...

Have a great day!

Going for a ride...

Happy Sunday!

We are up at Birdsong and I wanted to share these photos with you. The other day we were driving down the street that takes you to our community, and stopped at a red light. There came up along my side of the car this most amazing sight. They crossed this busy street while we were waiting for the light to turn green. All I had with me was my iPhone, and I shot some photos through the window just as it was starting to rain. Following is an edited portion of the photo. I thought that this gal looked just darling...

And here is the complete photo (minus the dashboard and windshield wiper of our car!)...

I hope that you're as tickled with this little group as I was! They must have been going to a function judging by all the gear they were hauling.

Treasure every day as you never know what each one might bring!

Sue

Food for thought: A great recipe for Lasagna...

Hi there!

Awhile ago there was a great magazine called "Cottage Living". It was a sister publication of Better Homes and Gardens, and eventually it ceased publication. Why, I don't know, because I thought it was pretty good. Over the years, I had clipped some recipes from it, and one of them was "Judy's Lasagna". I had been making my own recipe for years, but decided to try this one just last year, and ended up liking it better than my own. It was from the September, 2007 issue. You can see that I sometimes hang onto recipes for awhile before I actually get around to trying them! Ha!

The sauce is great and requires little cooking time. As a matter of fact, next time I make it I will double the recipe for the sauce portion and keep half of it to use as meat sauce. Instead of that portion baking in the lasagna, I will cook it a little extra, adding browned Italian sausages to it, and serve it over Rotini. Also, you can used dried herbs if you don't have fresh ones. Just remember to halve the amount when using dried basil. Dried oregano can be used at the full amount.

I like this recipe because the sauce is thick enough to where if it thins a little when layered with the wet lasagna noodles, it's still pretty thick. Some recipes require you to dry the noodles after boiling them, which this one doesn't. And the layering part is simple, and comes out tasting just as good.

Here you go...

We served it to our friend and his gal Saturday night when he came over to fix our computer issues, and they loved it (enough to take some home...the best form of flattery!).

Enjoy.

I hope your day tastes good!

A beautiful tintype...

Hi there!

As promised in my last post, I wanted to share this recently acquired beautiful old tintype with you. The scan is not particularly straight, as it is so old that it is pretty bent up.

Who were these gals? Was it a mom and her children, taking grandmother on a trip to the beach? It looks like they were sitting on a boardwalk somewhere. What were they thinking, and exactly where were they? Don't you think their bonnets are just beautiful? I think that they were having a wonderful day and wanted to save the memory by having their photo taken.

 Thanks for visiting!