Beans and decorating

(This is a picture of our basement and the coffee table I mention later in the post)






(This is just a small sample of our "decorating")
I've had two interesting inquiries that I would like to dedicate this post to--thank you for your interest! I hope I will do them justice.

First, beans. Just what do I do with them? I'm sure that I am not the "expert" in this area, but I will tell you how I use them.

• Beans and rice. This is a standard dish in our house since the children were quite little--say about 20 years or so! I used to just open a few cans of kidney beans, warm them up, and put them, with a dollup of butter, on top of some rice (brown rice is best). It is just that simple, and it is just that delicious! Of course, if you start with dry beans it becomes a cheaper dish.
  
• Bean soup. The recipe for this I got online, but you can add or subtract any way you like. You basically add beans, green beans, Kielbasa sausage cut in chunks, some onion (or onion powder, if you have little kids who don't like onion), garlic, salt, some chicken boullion powder or cubes (these usually contain MSG, if you have someone that is sensitive) and a little bit of canned tomato product (either diced, puree, etc.). You let it all simmer until all of the flavors blend, and serve it with some sort of bread, etc.
• Tacos and burritos. I add beans to my meat to stretch it in tacos. I also cook up a batch of beans for burritos. I like to add a little rice when I roll up the burritos. Sometimes it's fun to make up plates of burrito fixings for the little kids and allow them to make their own.
  
• Black-eyed pea dish. This is a flavorful dish that only needs a bit of bread, such as cornbread. You simply cook the black-eyed-peas together with corn, green pepper, and diced tomatoes, with a little basil, etc.
  
• Chili (of course). I just put a "mess o' beans" in my electric roaster, cook them up, then add cooked hamburger, tomato puree, and spices. I then serve this on a bed of corn chips topped with shredded Colby cheese. I freeze the rest to use on top of baked potatoes!
• Beans and cornbread. So simple, yet so satisfying! You don't even have to add pork--they just taste good with salt and pepper. I like to crumble my cornbread right in.
• Beans in your other dishes. Salads are great for incorporating beans. you can even add beans into macaroni salad. Just try adding them into things you already make to help stretch your dollar.
  

For Mexican seasoning, I learned long ago not to buy those expensive little packets. Instead, I buy the big sizes of chili powder, cumin, onion powder and garlic. Then I mix them into a dish at the appropriate time.

As for decorating, that has never been a great issue for us, because we were always so poor. Our money went into the basics of life, and any decorating we did was with what we had on hand. We were renters for the first 15 years of our marriage, while we were having our first 9 children, so I can't say that I ever really spent very much time on it, although I often wished I could, and made some efforts along the way.

When we bought our first house, we took a little money to fix things up and decorate, but by then we had lots of help! By the time we moved into our current house, we had an army of painters, etc., so we were able to repaint the whole house in different colors pretty easily. We also had a little bit more money, but I can tell you that I still didn't take a whole lot of time in decorating. Every once-in-a-while we will change something, but we have learned to be quite thrifty, both in effort and money, when it comes to decorating. We purposely choose things that will reflect our personality, while not showing wear or being "trendy" so that they will need to be changed later. In this way the investment of our time and money lasts for a lot longer, so that we can get on with the job of parenting.

When we buy furniture, for instance, it must be functional, meaning practically indestructible, while still looking good. For these reasons, our couches are either leather or dark tapestry (patterns don't show dirt and wear as well as plain or plaid fabrics do), and our coffee tables are rounded and heavy. Our carpets are dark, and we use area rugs. Our walls are all semi-gloss, so that they can be wiped down. I wouldn't call us minimalists; we do have a few pots of silk flowers and some nick-nacks, but not a lot. I don't especially like a lot of little things to dust, etc. I like a good balance of something pretty and a lot of white-space, if you know what I mean.

We are constantly being blessed with good deals in these areas. Our curtains, for instance, were all found at Lowe's when they were reducing their inventory for $3 a panel! Our chandelier over our table we found at a garage sale for $20, and had it put in by a friend for $50 (this same light fixture was on sale in the store for over $200!) I have two polished aluminum pitchers, one large, one small, one that I inherited and one that I bought at a garage sale. I Have put these in our dining room all by themselves, because I like their lines and what they stand for, and recently I put a bouquet of baby's breath in the larger one (it seems to dry well and lasts for a long time). These little flowers lend an understated beauty to the room.

When our kitchen cupboards were looking shabby, a friend of ours suggested we use "Restore-a-finish", which worked wonders! It restored their finish and gave our kitchen a whole new look. Yes, I took about 4 hours one day to take on the chore of the cleaning and restoring of the cabinets, but that has been over a year ago, and I haven't thought too much about it since.

Believe it or not, my dear husband has been a great help in this area over the years. Once he was visiting the bank and found it was moving. He noticed they had some nice pictures on the wall, so he asked that, if they were considering hanging new pictures in their new building, would they consider giving the old ones to him? Sure enough, they called and we ended up hanging some very large and very expensive pictures in our house--for free! He finds little things like this for me all of the time. Our "style" was eclectic long before it was in vogue! (My grandmother used to joke and tell me that we were "late Salvation Army").

Another thing we have always done was to include our children in our little "projects". We still own a coffee table that someone gave to us 19 years ago. We will never forget how the children helped us to sand and refinish it, and how it has held up through all of their standing on it and using it for tents, etc. It is no longer in our "parlor", since it is a little worn, but it functions nicely in our basement living area and is still loved by the little kids. More recently my dear 16yo son helped me to fix shelving in the basement closet and the other children helped me to basically re-do the rest of the basement. It was a family project, with everyone becoming involved except for the smallest.

Our philosophy is to create an atmosphere of timeless warmth and beauty that our children would be comfortable both living in daily and inviting their friends into. Despite watching hours of HGTV, we do not try and decorate anything near what they advise. We follow what God has put in our hearts and our hands.

I hope this begins to answer some questions.

Sherry