// diy subway tile //

We have been debating whether or not to do DIY home improvements on our owned condo for the last year. We know we want to sell and relocate sooner than later and it's hard to continue making it a home when we know we will not be staying here forever. We compromised and did some smaller, less expensive DIYs in the meantime! We had been drooling over white subway tile backsplashes and didn't realize how cost effective it actually is! 

Kitchen backsplashes have a million options on installation, but this is the one we went with. I warn you, the hard parts can definitely be done in a weekend, and although not necessarily difficult, some parts are a bit tedious- or at least were for us! I still strongly recommend doing it yourself! I wanted to share how we did ours in case anyone is interested! And for those wondering how inexpensive this can be- our initial expense was $131 for our space! We ended up exchanging some materials and purchasing others and I estimate we ended up spending no more than $150- I stopped keeping track after one too many trips to Home Depot or Lowe's! 

1. Buy a sample of your desired tile. Go home and measure how much of it you would need to cover your space. If your backsplash includes behind your stove, make sure to account for the space behind it. 

2. Purchase your supplies:

- Tiles (we originally wanted the larger 3x6 individual tiles but they were too big for part of our space so we opted for the smaller, which only came in a mosaic. We ended up buying enough for 24 square feet) 

- Tile Adhesive (we bought the premixed kind and recommend it) 

- Trowel 

- Grout Float

- Grout Sponge

- Grout (we went with an non-sanded tinted grout- there are different color options and depending on the tile gap, you would get sanded or non-sanded. We were right at 1/8" and decided we'd prefer non-sanded; anything above 1/8", sanded is usually recommended)

- Tile spacers (we got one bag and ran out at the end and had to reuse the earlier used ones- if you're doing individual tiles or your space is bigger than ours, you'll definitely need more than one bag)

- Caulk (we originally went with a bright white and it looked way too bright compared to our grout. We ended up buying the same brand in the same color as the grout, and realized that this brand is so watery, it was such a pain to do it. I love caulking- it fixes everything- but this brand was way watery and I had to wait a few hours for it to dry, then add another layer so it looked thicker. If you want it to match as your caulk, then I recommend the headache, but if you want white, I'd recommend a regular silicone based caulk; by the way, we already had some regular caulk on hand and ended up needing it to fill in spaces, too). 

- Grout sealer- this is the very last step and you apply it a day or two after everything is done- you can add an epoxy sealer to your grout and never have to seal but this was more cost effective for us. 

- a piece of wood to act as a scaffold behind your stove (if this is applicable to your kitchen)

Step 1:

Turn off the electricity to your kitchen outlets via the breaker. Remove outlet covers, tape up your outlets, and cover your countertops- it gets messy! 

Add that piece of wood behind your stove. Feel free to clean under it, too. I couldn't believe how dusty it was under there- isn't that a fire hazard?! Embarrassingly enough, I also found an avocado pit and a brand new cookie sheet. :/

2. Find the center of your kitchen. This will be your starting point. For us, this would be our sink. Lay out all of your tiles on the counters so you know approximations on where cuts will have to be made, what corners will look like, and where cabinets will meet. We did NOT do this and have some major headaches when we reached the top of our cabinets and realized that they were all installed crooked!!! Thanks, builders who did ours! 

Apply your adhesive with your trowel. Follow the instructions on the label- super easy! 

Step 3:

Tile away! If you are doing a mosaic, make sure the tiles are evenly spaced, you'll need spacers at the bottom to make room for your caulk line. If you are doing individual tiles, you'll need spacers throughout each tile. How you insert them is up to you- Geoff and I had two different methods and both worked! 

Step 4: Cutting tiles

As soon as you hit your first outlet (can you believe our little space has EIGHT of them!?), you'll need to cut. We originally purchased a tile cutter attachment to the dremel- didn't work! Geoff tried a drill attachment- took way too long! Finally, he ended up just using his grinder and it worked perfectly! I don't have a picture of him doing this, but don't worry about cuts being perfect! They'll be hidden behind the outlet. Do make sure your outlet can still screw in properly, though!

Step 5: Admire your adhered tile and let it dry for 24 hours! 

This is when we realized a couple of things: our cabinets were installed completely crooked, leaving very awkward gaps in our tile edges. We had to return our original tile ends and go to a different hardware store to find some that matched better. Geoff was a genius and literally grinded/sanded down each piece to fit the narrow, crooked space. Here is when we also found out that you can take marked tiles and get them cut for FREE and hassle free! What?! No one had ever told us this! I would definitely go this route next time! Lay out all of your tile, mark your cuts, go get them cut, and THEN start. As long as you measure correctly, it would make everything so much faster and easier!

Step 6: After 24 hours, it's time to apply your grout. Follow the instructions on the label, the application is pretty easy! When cleaning off the grout, you'll be rinsing your huge sponge a lot! Rinse it, fold in it half like a hamburger, and then wring it out! 

see the crookedness below:

Step 7: Add your caulking! This took me a few steps and an extra day and even though we went with the harder to apply caulk, I'm really happy with the results. I also used regular white silicone caulk to hide all of the crooked areas and it worked seamlessly.

I hope this encourages you if you have been thinking of tackling this project! Let me know if you do! 

P.S. A trip to the hardware store is never the same without this guy befriending everyone he meets and getting into mischievous trouble!

// homegirl recipe: whole-wheat spinach tortillas //

Back in 2010, Geoff and I decided to make a switch from Top Ramen, Doritos, cokes, and junk food, to truly wholesome, nutrient-dense foods. We were a bit extreme and we knew it; but hey, when the world deals you a Cancer diagnosis, such measures are necessary for your physical and mental health. I cannot tell you how difficult it was, though, especially in social settings. As humans, we are defiantly protective of our emotionally-ridden foods. Even if we did not mind not eating what everything else was, others did; even if they did not verbally state it, the implications were loud and clear to us. It was especially difficult to go out to eat and not have healthy foods on the menu (or knowing that what was advertised as 'healthy' wasn't at all). We were vegetarians for two years, vegan for two weeks (we love our cheese too much), and since then, eat primarily healthy with treats sprinkled in throughout for our wholesome souls. My specialty has truly become making our favorite treats into healthier alternatives. When I first starting blogging about recipes, specifically, I asked girlfriends who were also looking for healthier alternatives to guest blog. I thought it would be such a fun way to support, share and encourage each other!

Cue, Stephanie! Stephanie has been a friend of mine since elementary school! Despite all of my moving around, we ended up at the same schools throughout our childhood and teenage years. Today, you can find this gorgeous girl, DIYing, crafting, hosting, cooking, running, working out, all while motivating others, including her husband, to take steps towards a healthier lifestyle! She recently posted these tortillas and I immediately texted her asking her to guest blog for us!
(Follow her on Instagram @stephanievdominguez)

Warm, soft, healthier tortillas? Yes, please! I can't wait to try these! Without further ado, here is this beauty:


Servings:

2 dozen / 6” tortillas

The Goods:

½ tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

½ cup water

½ cup extra virgin olive oil

2 cups all-purpose gluten free or wheat flour

6 cups spinach

The Process:

1.     In a large pot, add water and spinach and cook
     down over medium heat until tender.

2.     Remove excess water from spinach, but keep the nutrient rich spinach water to add back into dough.

3.     In a blender or food processor, add spinach and blend until smooth.

4.     Add baking powder, salt, oil, and flour to spinach. Blend until mix crumbles.

5.     Slowly add spinach water as needed until dough is smooth.
                                               

6.     Remove dough and divide into equal parts.

7.     With a rolling pin, roll each part into thin circles. Or use a tortilla press (much quicker)! 
     Sprinkle flour as needed to avoid dough sticking to rolling pin or tortilla press.

                   

8.     In Teflon coated pan over medium heat (no need to add butter or cooking spray), toast each side until golden spots appear.

                                                   

9.     Enjoy!

Share your favorite healthier alternative recipe! Have a challenge for me to healthify (yes, that's a word!) your favorite indulgences? Let's do it!

Healthy Pancakes- oh my!

There's something so very comforting about pancakes. On Sundays, my dad would make his special batch of pancakes- fluffy, buttery, round clouds of deliciousness. When Oliver was born, my mom and two sisters surprised me at the hospital. My dad was unable to make it because he was working (it was a Wednesday). But that Saturday morning, he arrived on my doorstep to meet his newest grandson. On Sunday morning, right before he had to leave, he made a huge batch of pancakes for us. It was the sweetest thing.

Unfortunately, pancakes are not the healthiest breakfasts out there. I have experiemented endlessly with recipes ( a lot can be found here- just search pancakes), and finally have a base that seems to not fail me time after time. Mainly because it's so very easy and foulproof! I struggle with my recipe creations because I tend to not measure and go by taste and texture. A little of this, a little of that, and a lot of oh- that would be good in it! Haha!

Check out this weekend's pancakes! I made extra batches for today since it is St. Patrick's Day and green is a must!

Delicious and healthy!

Fluffy, delicious, yummy, versatile, pancakes!

My pancake base:
-equal parts (I generally do 1/2 cup of each per person) of the following:

• old-fashioned oats
• cottage cheese*
• egg whites
• 1 tsp of baking powder
• 1 tsp of vanilla extract
• as much spinach as you can fit in your blender after adding the previous ingredient

Directions:

• Add old-fashioned oats to your blender and blend them (this is how I make my own oat flour. I buy an extra container of oats and it literally takes me less than 5 minutes to make a huge batch of oat flour that generally costs quadruple the price)!
• Add cottage cheese (The only cottage cheese I have found that is not filled with a shitton of weird ingredients is the Daisy brand).
• Add your egg whites (or whole eggs if you prefer); add spices, vanilla, baking powder and blend. 
• Finally, add as much spinach as your blender will still hold and blend away! The spinach is optional depending on the type of pancakes you are trying to make but seriously, why not?

Look at that fluffy perfection- & my fancy plasticware!

-Additional Add-in's/toppings

• your favorite spices (my defaults are cinnamon and pumpkin spice
• chia seeds
• ground flax
• peanut flour
• pumpkin puree
• almond milk
• chocolate chips
• nuts
• extracts (think mint, butter, etc)!
• fruit (banana, any berries)
• Greek yogurt/cottage cheese- have you ever had it together? It's the only way I eat my greek yogurt now!
• This particular picture has greek yogurt with 1 tbsp. of white chocolate no-sugar added jello pudding mix, a little bit of almond milk, dash of vanilla stevia, topped with fresh strawberries and sugar-free syrup! Yum!

Experiment & enjoy! Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Peanut butter banana pancakes!

Elvis pancakes- peanut butter, chocolate chip, banana, turkey bacon pancakes for dinner! Hotdamn!

Buttermilk pancakes for Valentines day topped with greek yogurt and fresh berries and a berry jam (frozen berries, heated through and a tiny bit of stevia or honey added, then mashed)!

Blueberry and Banana Pancakes with Kale + Spinach! Baby approved!

Anxious little baby hands eating the rainbow!

Shamrock and pancake stacks with cottage cheese/greek yogurt/white chocolate pudding mix and gold sprinkles. With a fruit rainbow on the side! ;)

Concrete Acid Stain: The Ultimate DIY

Often times when I think about the way Jefe and I work together, I think about the expression "Go big or go home!" We are both huge DIY'ers that our equally stubborn personalities have lead us to awesome high-five-moments and extremely frustrating and disappointing failures. I am not a big spender so everything I see I self-soothe by telling myself I can make it. This goes one of four ways: I don't ever get around to it; I attempt it and fail; I attempt and customize it to meet my needs; or I luckily find it on sale/clearance later! haha! I grew up knowing that you had to be creative to make your clothes look new/different/etc. Geoff grew up loving to work on anything and everything. The majority of G's friends are the exact same way. All so crafty in manly ways that leave the girls in awe and frustration, all in one. His brother and father are the exact same way. They all have vehicles they have built themselves and continue to work on.  We have done a million DIY projects throughout the almost decade we have been in a relationship with each other. The major ones have always included his vehicles or our home, but since we bought our home brand new, the major DIY stuff has been projects, rather than actual renovations, if that makes sense. Probably my most favorite project was our wedding. Absolutely [almost] everything was made instead of purchased. & I loved every.single.second of it! :]

That brings me to our biggest home project to date: acid staining our living room concrete. Geoff had been talking about wanting to do it since we bought our home. One of his friends had bare concrete and he always loved the look. But when we purchased our home, I told him I wanted a less "bachelor pad" look, which is what I always had felt our apartments had looked like. Our home came with really nice, plush, stain-resistant carpet, so I didn't see the need in disposing of it. Until, Honey Munster decided to mark her territory. Often times...over and over again. Last December 2010, we ended up changing a 4x6 part of our carpet; it matched perfectly and you couldn't tell the difference but we still weren't happy with it. So we started talking about placing tile. Well, all of our bathrooms and kitchen have the same tile. Porcelain ceramic...which equals cha-ching. We shopped around for a really long time and were quoted at $3,000 for the same tile, and of course the cost would come down for labor if we did it ourselves, which we knew we would but we couldn't imagine spending so much on one room's floor to our starter home. We looked into other tile options but we didn't like that it wouldn't match. So a few months ago, Geoff started talking about acid staining our concrete. I started doing research and found that:

The cons [-]

1. You have absolutely no idea how your concrete will react until the whole project is DONE.

2. You have absolutely no idea what shape your concrete is in until you pull up your concrete.

3. It is so so so so so much work!

The pros [+]

1. Extremely cost effective when comparing it to tile, laminate, carpet. We spent approximately $300 [$200 on the actual products- which we had to buy in SD, by the way; and $100 on supplies- luckily we were able to borrow a buffer and great shop vac, which saved us some ca$h-money].

2. If done correctly, the results are breathtaking and can actually add value to your home. A lot of higher end homes now come with acid-stain in lieu of tile/carpet.

3. You can add stenciling, etching, designs, etc. As much as I reeeeeeally wanted to, we decided not to since our living room is small and we didn't want to be constrained to a particular furniture arrangement. Plus, we wanted to keep it as neutral as possible for future renters/homeowners.

4. If your project fails, you can easily cover it up!

It took us a total of two weeks, with us being gone one weekend and working only on the evenings. It definitely would have taken us a lot less time if we could have worked on it full time. The hardest part is cleaning your concrete. Over and over and over and over and over and over again. Yes, and more literally, more times than that! The actual staining, sealing and waxing part is done so quickly. If you have a clean slab, or microtop your current concrete, you can be done in three days! Staining, sealing and waxing (with each being done twice) each took about 20-30 minutes. Yup, that fast and it's suuuper easy!

We hated cleaning the concrete. I ended up with a giant knot under my shoulder blade that left my in horrid pain this last weekend. So much that I actually almost went to the hospital [but didn't because according to the ER, Geoff's cancer was a UTI...go figure!]. Anyway, thanks to our friend who is a massage therapist and some muscle relaxers, I'm doing better! ;]

The fun part: PICTURES!

Week One

[L to R:  initial tear-up of carpet (done in total J-fashion at 10pm on a weekend night); tons of adhesive, paint, cracks, holes, tack strips, nails: sad; buffer, mop, and shop-vac ready to do work after a week of just pure elbow grease; G looking exasperated after a few days of work- yes, look at the top pictures and the difference in the bottom two. There were major improvements and yet it still had such a looong way to go! Geoff's parents saw that we had posted on FB that we were looking for help and being the sweethearts that they are, they came to help the first full day!]

When we pulled up our carpet, we were shocked by the amount of dust we swept up underneath! We couldn't believe it! I wish we would have snapped a picture. I don't think I'll ever purposely have carpet in a living room again. I enjoy it in our bedroom but definitely not with all that dust downstairs. Arizona is very dusty and it's very windy at times; our big windows and nearby fields don't lend themselves to keeping dust out, but I never realized how much the carpet absorbed. Geoff and I have always shampooed our carpets every few months on a very consistent basis [thanks to his parents having a machine] so we were very surprised by this! Eek!

Week Two

[L to R: after the shop-vac, mop, and buffer have helped us out a bit; finally seeing clean and fresh concrete; after staining twice; after sealing].

As you can see, it was A LOT of work. Do we recommend it, YES. But be prepared to work and hope your concrete was in better shape than ours. However, if you can find microtopping concrete, it'll save you a lot of time. Yes, it'll cost more, but we were willing to do that! Just couldn't find any anywhere near us. :/ But now we're happy we didn't shortcut anything because this is what we were left with:

[after waxing; all done!]

Can't wait to furnish our living room now! & we KNOW Honey Munster is going to be SO happy to be able to not be quarantined to upstairs after two weeks! Poor, baby!

Honey Munster sulking. 

When I was researching DIY acid staining, I didn't find make tutorials or resources. So if anyone is serious about doing this and needs help, do not hesitate to ask. We learned SO much in these last few weeks and a lot of was trial and error that we wish we would have known ahead of time. But we didn't know anyone who had done this, nor did we find much help at every business we attempted to receive assistance. Ultimately, we are extremely happy with our end results and anticipate seeing how it'll look once our living room is set up and of course, see how it keeps up!

Anyone motivated to do theirs? ;]

P.S. As I'm typing this, there's a home design show on TV...I just looked up and all the floors are acid stained. Woot!

Secret Santa Crafting

I started working on this week's secret santa gifts! I loooove participating in these; so fun! My co-worker is a teacher so I really wanted to make her a crayon initial craft I, of course, saw on Pinterest!

She also loves popcorn, like I do, so I made her "popcorn in a jar," using popcorn kernels, popcorn toppings (apple cinnamon and chocolate marsmallow), and two vintage popcorn bags (I have tons leftover from our wedding)! It came out so cute! I hope she loves 'em!

all the supplies

all packaged up!

I already know what I want to do for two more of her gifts but I'm a bit stuck on one more! We'll see! :]