Everydaystranger

Once the depression eased off, it left a massive wake behind it. Angus and I have suddenly had bottles of Red Bull strapped to our backs as we go into Super-Hyper DIY mode. Finally, our university-style living room disappeared (a shame, as we’ve had guests who had to witness the utter styling horror or, as has been named by Statia, the “early fuck” phase) and in it’s place is a completely different room.
It took a lot of work to get it to this phase, so if it looks easy, then…well…it wasn’t.
Here’s the living room now (and it occurs to me I don’t have any “before” pictures of the living room to show, mostly because the living room was not a place we were proud of). It has new couches, the TV on a new wall, and purpose built shelves holding up our DVDs. The dog toys in the center of the room are standard, of course.

This is the view from the back of the room, where we’ve kept the old couch as a “reading space” couch, and also? It has a pull out bed and Angus’ extended family are staying with us over Christmas, so that baby will get pressed into use.

And if it seems weird to view a TV side-ways on, here’s what it’s like from a user perspective-not difficult at all, especially when Elf is playing for the tenth time.

And here is what it’s like in the evenings-it’s been very cold here recently, so the fireplace has been broken in. The dog (and his toys, which no matter how often we tidy up they just get dragged back out again) and Mumin love the fire.

So our living room is grown up now. We did it all ourselves. I love the space, I love the feel of it. I relax right away.
The kitchen also got tackled. If you’ve been following in Flickr, you might have seen that the green? She’s gone. And before the green? The red went, too. Now the kitchen is painted a cool shade of blue, and Angus has hung a number of lights in the kitchen-there’s only one window in the kitchen and it’s a very long room, so it tends to be very dark in there. So we hung up the lights we bought from the Orient Express day, the ones from the 1930’s.

(The cables over the sink have fallen-Angus is going to fix that this week. Pretend you don’t seem them hanging there.)
This is the back of the kitchen, where the other plasma hangs and where Gorby’s kennel still remains. He doesn’t need the kennel but he honestly likes it and finds comfort in it sometimes, so we leave it up with the door open and if he’s feeling insecure, he heads in there.

There’s the house, then. A lot will change when the extension is built on, and the entire kitchen will be gutted and stripped out (the cabinet top is tile. TILE. It has to go. We hate the kitchen.)
And last night I cooked, again in the extended version if you’re interested.
-H.

Butternut squash risotto with crispy sage!
Ingredients
1 large butternut squash
2 garlic cloves, peeled
2 tbsp olive oil, plus extra for drizzling
about 15 sage leaves, chopped
flaked sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
3 large knobs of butter
1 large onion, chopped
400g/14oz arborio or other Italian risotto rice
2 glasses white wine
1 litre/1