Case Work

As painful as it sounds, splitting the cases also went well. A few taps around the base gasket separated them, then pulling by hand and more tapping got them apart. Inside I found the stripped 2nd gear. I also found that the right case is milled for a kickstart. Damn Honda for cutting corners and leaving off my kickstart! After doing some research on the web, I found another enthusiast who has already figured out how to add it. This forum post was made about adding the kickstarter. Hopefully I'll be able to get it in for $250 or less!

Now for the worst part: scraping the old gaskets off!

Bookcase Lighting

A couple months ago I mentioned here that we moved our office book cases down to our bare living room. John is an electrician and thankfully wanted to install some much needed lighting to those bookcases. I'm not sure if he is going to write a tutorial for it - electrical stuff can be dangerous if you are not licensed, but if not here are some pictures of the improved bookcases

It really helps to lighten up the dark stain of the bookcases. It is a major upgrade considering it looked like this just a couple months ago

Before

After

Butternut Squash & Pear Casserole

I love fall and this recipe is perfect this time of year.

Recipe

1 butternut squash (peeled and chopped)
2 pears (peeled and chopped)
2 onions
3 slices bacon
3 tbsp of bread crumbs
3 tbsp butter
1/2 Romano or Parmesan cheese (shredded)
1/2 cup walnuts

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Begin slicing the onions into rings. Melt 1 tbsp of the butter in a pan and place onions in there until they are caramelized -about 10 minutes

Then grab your butternut squash and start peeling it

Once you have it peeled, slice it in half length-wise. This can be tricky so use a big knife, but be careful. Then scoop out the seeds like below.

Once all of the seeds have been scooped out begin chopping the squash into 1 inch square pieces.

When the onions are done set aside and begin frying the 3 pieces of bacon in that pan. When done frying let cool and chop into small pieces.

Then peel the pears, and cut into thin slices. Get a 9x13 pan and put half of the squash in the bottom, top with half of the pears and half of the onions. Then repeat with the remaining ingredients. It should look like this:

Bake in the oven for 45 minutes or until squash is tender.

While the casserole is cooking you can make the topping. Melt the remaining butter in a medium sized bowl. Then add the breadcrumbs, walnuts, chopped bacon pieces, and cheese and mix together. Once the squash is done top with this and you are finished.

Unfortunately I didn't get a finished picture of the casserole because we were in a hurry to take it somewhere, but it was a big hit! Also, next time I would probably double the topping but I love toppings, so you may want to do that depending on your taste.

Painting the Master Bedroom

Ok so John and I have been working a lot on the master bedroom these past couple of months. First we DIY-ed our headboard mentioned here. Next, we decided to paint. The bedroom was originally a peach color shown below.

Although this color made the room nice and bright, it just wasn't for us. After much thought, I painted it Flowerwood by Behr. This was the color of our old master bedroom and I loved it so much I decided to use it again, plus it matched our bed spread and everything already. Flowerwood is a great taupe-y, purple-y, browish color and looks great in different lights. Since our new bedroom has a lot of trim in the room I figured it could withstand a darker color. So here are the after pictures in the new flowerwood color:

I love how it came out. The color is so relaxing and makes me happy!

Border Patrol!

Ok so John and I have been staring at this crazy border in our informal living room for over a year now.

We have no idea what the guy before us was thinking, but it had to go. It looks especially bad up against our NYC print, shown below

I was dreading scraping down the wallpaper border, but since we just ordered this new couch in the sea foam color, I figured it was time to start working on that room!


For some crazy reason I did not get any pictures of me actually scrapping the wallpaper border off, but I'll try to run down what I did to take it down.

Supplies:
I bought wallpaper remover that was already in a spray bottle, got a putty knife, a step ladder and some wet paper towels.

Instructions:
First I sprayed a small section of the wallpaper border with the wallpaper remover and let it sit 3 minutes (according to the instructions on the remover bottle). Then I used my putty knife to get under the top layer of the wallpaper and scrape only the edge up. Once the edge was up I was able to pull it off in large pieces. It was seriously super easy. I was so excited that this project might not take all day! Then once I removed the top layer of the wallpaper around the whole room using the same process, I sprayed the bottom layer of the wallpaper and waited 3 minutes. I was able to use my putty knife and pull that up easily too! The whole thing came down in 5 large strips! However, I would recommend opening  a window when doing this because the fumes we pretty bad. Then I used several wet paper towels to wipe down anywhere that the wallpaper remover touched. Then I let everything dry.


Here are some before pictures of the informal living room

Here are the afters

It's a huge improvement! I am so happy and now I am not afraid to tackle the other border in our house located in the guest bedroom.

Cool Home Store

So this past weekend, my friends and I were out shopping and came across this cute home store, Yves Delorme. The store had beautiful built in shelves to showcase their products. A picture is below:

I loved that the interior shelves were dark wood and the trim was all white, now I am dreaming of recreating this in my closet. Maybe one day. My closet is in serious need of help.

This store was so amazing, I seriously wanted almost everything in it, but settled on just getting this pillow

I am coming back for this matching throw, eventually and maybe for some more pillows.

Sorry about the rough pictures, I really need to work on my picture taking skills and not be so distracted by the pretty things in the store around me lol.

Fall Garden Update

As I mentioned in this post I started a fall garden this past August. This is my first fall garden so I'm mostly experimenting. It has been 58 days since I planted the garden and this is what it looks like!

This is the area I planted my carrots, parnsips, and spinach. They are hard to see, but they seem to be growing pretty good!  Carrots take about 12 weeks to grow so, I have another month to go. The parsnips take over 150 days so it will be a while before I can pick those. I think the spinach should be bigger than it is but I'm not sure.

These are my butternut squash and pumpkin plants, which I planted late and decided to try to grow anyway. They seem to be doing fairly well.

In fact I have mini butternut squash already!!!! 

These are my tomato plants from my summer garden. We had a really hot summer here in Arkansas and they stopped producing tomatoes in July, however once the nights in September began cooling off, my tomato plants have gone into full gear. They have been producing like crazy, which is great for me.

XR Rebuild

Recently I acquired a 1994 Honda XR650L. It is in pretty sad shape. Second gear is out, countershaft is stripped where the final drive sprocket attaches, missing bits here and there. So I am blogging the rebuild to hopefully entertain and educate. I was once asked if motorcycle repair was a chore or a zen-like experience, and I replied that with most repairs, it is zen-like, getting in the "zone". But sometimes (usually making things from scratch to fit) it is a pain. I have been surprised at how well this bike came apart.

Fun Baby Shower Ideas

My friend is having twin boys so my friends and I decided to throw her a baby shower. We decided to do a fall colored boy theme and it came out beautifully.


First we went to hobby lobby and party city to find fun paper and tissue paper in in our color scheme.
Then we made tissue paper pom poms.

I wish I have taken pictures of us assembling these, but I was pretty focused on trying to make them. These are way easier to make than I expected. First you take 8 sheets of the same color tissue paper and stack them on top of each other. Then folder them width wise accordian style, about 1 or 2 inch folds. Then once you have folded it up, cut the ends into a half circle. Then secure the middle of the paper with a twist tie or piece of wire. Then start separating the layers of tissue paper and fluff them out to make a full circle.

After that we used our craft paper to make fans.

These were slightly harder to make but looked amazing.  First you take 1 sheet of paper and fold it in 1 inch accordion folds. Then take another sheet of paper the same color and repeat. Then fold the accordion folded sheet in half and glue, tape or staple (we used staples) to secure the two ends together. Repeat this for the other sheet of accordion folded paper. They should make half circles when stretched a little. Then secure the bottom of one of the half circles to the top of the other half circles. Again I should have taken pictures.

We also used craft paper to make a banner. We cut the paper into two triangles and glued them to each other and a piece of string.

For one of our games we decorated onesies with fabric scraps and fabric markers. I printed off different boy themed animals, shapes, etc. and listed some cute phrases to give the guests some ideas. Then I set out the fabric scraps, fabric glue, scissors, and fabric markers and let the guests do what they wanted.

They came out soo cute and we let the mom pick the best one. Here are some of the ones we came up with

This game was so much fun and it gave our friend lots of onesies.