Culinary Feats...Well, Eats At Least

I apologize for interrupting the renovation results, but I wanted to send a shout-out to the amazing male cooks in my life.

A friend from grade school, my husband and I have taken to experimenting with cooking something new every Tuesday (well, as many Tuesdays as we can manage). It has been a culinary adventure and has really been nice to have our own kitchen to play in again.

The first Tuesday was Asian stir fry, then the next was veggie enchiladas and we even got confident enough to try crawfish-stuffed shells with a Creole cream sauce (featured below).

Getting hungry yet?

Then we even did crawfish ravioli, which was a big hit and “fancy” burgers with onions and jalapeños mixed right in with the ground sirloin and topped with crumbled blue cheese.

Here is a panorama of our kitchen/dining area taken after one of our scrumptious meal:

Photo Cred: Jared de Jonge

Now, what will we cook next Tuesday?

Puttin' on the Ritz

When we first talked about doing a walk-in shower in our master bathroom, my first thought was all white marble like they have in fancy hotel bathrooms - like the Westin at Canal Place for my wedding night and the Ritz Carlton for my last birthday weekend.

I just ADORE the look of sleek, head-to-toe white marble. Of course I learned that there are many types of white marble and there are many costs associated with such beautiful stone.

But we got a good deal on White Carrara Gioia marble (which I liked better than just White Carrara b/c it has more white space between all the grey streaks.

Needless to say, this room needed a good bit of demo and when we ripped the floor out, we found rotten ply wood and beams. So basically a major overhaul/face-lift. Here's the creation:

Before...

During...

Close ups of the hardware...

With glass...

With a mirror and finished custom cabinetry...

And my favorite time of day to take a shower is about 3:30 p.m. when the sun is coming through the West-facing window...the most beautiful light bouncing off of my white marble...and I feel like I'm back at the Ritz.