Happy New Years!!
Happy New Years to 2023! I hope everyone had a good 2022.
For me, this past year has been terribly nervewracking. So much has happened since the last time I posted.
For starters, we experienced two miscarriages in a row last year, the last one resulted in me having to get surgery to remove it, and while I was under I lost 20% of my blood volume – no explanation as to why. It was terrifying and disheartening to say the least. And it took a lot longer to heal than it should have. So we just decided to lay low after that, and focus on other things for the time being.
Looking for a home
Fast forward to 2022, and my husband and I started our search for a home that we could buy. We started in February, and by end of March I had already seen 35+ homes in 3 different states, and finally discovered one that I felt really good vibes about. We had bid on 3 houses, on two of them we bid high above asking price and were still 4 out of 20 offers, or 18 out of 43. On the last house (my favorite), we were just behind a cash buyer. Multiple times the house seemed to have slipped out of our hands, until finally something ‘went wrong’ with the cash buyer, and we were next in line. The story is actually WAYYY longer than that…because what we bought turned out to have a lot of unfortunate surprises that the sellers purpously lied about.
Little did we know we had our work cut out for us…
But long story short, we’ve had to do a L O T of renovations to this house. The first week we moved in, we had leaks in both of the bathrooms upstairs and downstairs – so much so that when I felt a drop come from the ceiling downstairs, I proceeded to remove a panel of drop ceiling, and a PUDDLE of dirty pooled up bath water water dropped on to my head. I was furious. We had to pay over two thousand to get the plumbing issues fixed (which in the end turned out to be mostly “fixed” with more caked on silicone). There is water damage on the subfloor under the tub from years of this leak being an issue, so one day I the ultimate fix will be to gut the entire bathroom and redo everything, plumbing and all (this was one of the things the inspector missed because the state law says inspectors are not allowed to ‘move’ drop ceiling…).
And then came the kitchen – the first day we moved in, I was showing my friend the state of the kitchen cabinets – which looked ‘so nice’ because they were recently painted. Welp, I went to open the drawer, and the entire cabinet FELL before me…like in a movie. It was unreal. So needless to say, we NEEDED to update and gut the kitchen.
Time to put in work!
I ended up coming up with designs in CGI of the space, worked with my best friend (whose dad owns a cabinetry business), and made multiple orders for new cabinets. My family helped us gut the kitchen and remove the old granite countertops, we removed the drywall and backsplash and replace some of the 60+ year old insulation (and add insulation to areas where there were none!!) We had our family follow our architects drawings and tear down a structural wall to put in an LVL drop beam instead (all done with a permit and approved by the town), then we had our contractor update the half broken window and replace the completely clogged up (and might I say disgusting) 60+ year old kitchen drain pipe. We hired a contractor to remove the tiles on the floor and replace another section of water damage in the spot where the dishwasher use to be (again – years of damage, hidden and never fixed). My parents and my husband and I replaced the walls with new mold-resistant drywall, we beefed up the under-rated subfloor with more plywood, and finally assembled and installed the cabinets with my Mom. We found some guys to install our butcher block countertops and make the cut for the sink and corners (Mom thinks we could have done a better job though). Then I had recessed lights replaced and pendants lights over the island added in the ceiling, along with a solar powered skylight. Lastly my parents single handedly installed the luxury vinyl foor (since our floors are under-sized, and there is too much deflection to safely put down more tile without it cracking again), and our contractor finished off the wall with a beautiful marble backsplash.
We also did a huge transformation in the bedroom. I’ll be showing that behind the scenes video soon on YouTube so someone else can take what I did and apply it to their own room. But to start the bedroom felt small, confined and DARK with only 2 small windows. For now I can show you some photos of that here:
Our Bedroom Transformation
The fruit of our labor
Needless to say – this has been a L O N G journey. A few months long. We’ve been here 6 months now, and we still have to finish the crown molding above the cabinets – but finally have a functional kitchen with the most MASSIVE island (we call it Austrailia LOL), and a beautiful large stainless steel farmhouse sink with a touch featured faucet (thanks to my Sister as a house warming gift). I could not have done ANY of this without the HUGE help of my Mom, she’s been the backbone to this entire project. She is better than me in every way when it comes to construction – who would have known!! Everything she tries her hand in, she is very good at. Some people just have that level of talent I guess.
I am feeling very relieved at the progress that has been made. We are 99% done with the kitchen now, but now we have to try to save up to tackle the bathroom mess next, as well as see what we can do to prevent further flooding from happening on our property (because we’ve already seen that starting with heavy rains). In the backyard, we single handedly built a chicken run out of leftover pressure treated 2×4’s and built raised beds to prepare for a garden. If you want to see that video, check out our behind the scenes below!
BOY do I miss my put-together appartment right now!!! You really don’t appreciate what you have until your place is covered in plastic, dust, and you’re breathing in insulation and waste line smells and are basically confined to your office room and no where else is done yet to enjoy or relax in.
Anyways, photos of everything I’m talking about below. Cannot wait to show you more as we finish. This month has been filled with a lot of painting, but am I currently sick of painting lol!!
Let’s talk tofu!
OK now is the part of the blog post where I brag about how utterly delicious this dish is!!! I think the photos speak for themselves, because the flavors of the sauce come jumping right out of the image. This Szechuan tofu dish is soo full of taste, it’s got some nice spice to it, and it’s deffinately not something you’d taste with any other traditional ‘tofu’ recipe. This one is unique, and it’s now one of my favorite ‘go-to’ dishes for my husband and I. It was highly inspired by Foodie Takes Flight!
I love eating authentic foods whenever possible. But as we all know, getting that restaurant level-grade taste costs money. And with the prices of Everything right now just going up and up, I am so happy I found this recipe just in the knick of time!! It satisfies my craving for something different, and tastes like something I would likely experience in another country even. Thats a big win in my book, anything apart from the traditional ‘american’ diet excites me 🙂
The best part of all – its vegan and gluten free. And that can be equally hard to find when you are eating out. But now you don’t have to compromise. You’ll be sourcing the tofu yourself, so you know you’ll get organic and non-gmo on your plate, instead of Monsantos creation of God knows what from the restaurants.
I will note – I think the Chinese Vinegar is very important for this dish!! It gives it a different flavor than any other vinegar would. I bought mine on Amazon here.
So without further ado, I hope you guys dig in and give this one a try!! It is a tad spicy, you can alter that, but it will kill a bit of that flavor in my oppinion. See what you can do to increase your spice tolerance slowly, I use to not be able to handle anything and now look at me hehe 😀
Ingredients
Instructions