Good morning, friend. Welcome to my kitchen. We're sitting at my dining room table. This is my work space right now. What I'm doing this morning first thing is I'm finalizing all my candy recipes that we're going to be making for a big Korean candy making extravaganza this week. I need to get this done because Josh needs to run into town today. And since he's going to be running into town, I want to get all of my recipes figured out and my grocery list so that he can take this grocery list of store and get that last little things that I need for this big candy making day. Once I get this done, we're going to get dinner started in a slow cooker. And then the big project we're going to do is we're going to move all of the laundry room, linens, and things like that from upstairs in what used to be our laundry room, downstairs. We need to do it some cleaning down there and we're going to actually set up the laundry room downstairs and we've got some updates when it comes to the laundry room and what we're going to be doing and all that stuff. So I've got my five fudges, we're going to do five Christmas fudges. And now I need to figure out the candies that I want to be making that are not fudges. I'm going to be kind of doing two separate types of candies and every year this is a tradition where I do a big Christmas candy box. And then I go around town and I drop them off at my friends and family's houses. It's one of my favorite traditions. And I'm normally able to do candy and cookies, but this year we're going to be doing fudges and different candies. So it's going to be fun. It's going to be a little bit different than what I did on the past. Trying to keep things like interesting and new. And yeah, so let me figure this out and then we will get going on making dinner in the sloker. I think I have my last recipe printed here. Okay, let's see how many fudges is that total? We are at two, four, no I need one more. So I'm going to do five fudges and five candies. And all of these recipes are supposed to be extremely these recipes that actually had picked out for a year. I think last year was the first year I did not do Christmas candy cookie boxes because I had pneumonia. So I didn't get through it. So some of these recipes like this one, the rich crackers, then mince. Basically you just take a rich cracker, you melt chocolate, you add peppermint oil to the chocolate, you dip your rich crackers in it, you let it set and you have a kind of easy version of a cinnamon, like a Girl Scout cinnamon. So all the recipes that I chose are supposed to be super super easy, like easy microwave peanut brittle. So I've never made that before, but that should be fun. So I'm just going through and getting all my recipes figured out. Then what I probably should have done is actually get dinner started in this little cooker first because back to be cooking while I'm doing this, but I'm not sure when Josh is going to go to the store. He's got to help me with some of the things today downstairs. And so I just wanted to get the recipe figured out and my grocery list so that at any time this is done and ready for him. I got to find one more recipe. So what I like to do is I always save recipes that I see on Instagram on my phone and I have different categories and I have one for Christmas and I think I can probably find oh yeah this was one I wanted to make cookie butter chocolate bark with potato chips. Salty sweet, crunchy, delicious. So I am going to find this recipe. I am going to be doing all this cooking on Wednesday. Today's Monday. Cookie butter. I always see if I can find the recipe online on the person's blog because it's so much easier just to print it from their website. I found her blog and then when I go to cook it I can link the person's website in the description box of the video and it's so much easier that way then linking a real cookie butter chocolate bark and then I like to save all the recipes in a note so that I can keep track of them. And I like to print my recipes because it's just so much easier when I'm in the kitchen if I have a printed recipe. So here are my five-fod recipes and here's my one, two, three, four, five. I have a bonus one that I kind of want to make. So we're going to have six here and so now what I need to do I've got all my recipe saved on my computer. I can close this and I can take an old, oh no, that recipe was printed on both sides. A lot of times what I'll do is I'll take recipes that I've printed on the past and the past. Oh, this one was a good recipe too. This recipe I'm this piece of paper is just kind of like a recycle piece of paper so I'm going to fold this in half and then I'm going to go through each one of my recipes and I'm going to write the grocery list for Josh so that he runs into town he can get everything I need. Now one thing I know that I need to do is write the quantities so he knows how much of each thing to get. Some of these recipes have some of the same ingredients so I'm going to put Tallymarks next to them so that Josh knows like sweet and condensed milk so far I need two of them so I'm going to put two dashes but as I go through these recipes if I need yet another one I'll just put another dash next to it. That overall to get the recipes and to make the grocery list probably to me, I don't know maybe 45 minutes. Some of this work I had already done last year. Some of the work I did yesterday. I'm going to separate these recipes based on if they are flood recipes 1, 2, 3, 4. I missed in one of my flood recipes. Easy, I've not put in it. Okay, I'm not printed. If I didn't print it. But I haven't saved. We are going to make a maple pecan fudge and because I had saved it in a note it was easy for me to find. And I don't know why I just have to have a printed recipe. It's just so much easier for me. Oh and I'm also going to need Josh to pick up a ton of 9 by 9 or 8 by 8. I didn't put that recipe. For oil panes because I don't have enough and a lot of these recipes like each one of the flood recipes calls for a 9 by 9. For oil pan and I will just line them with parchment paper so that I can reuse them. I'm going to say get 10 9 by 9 inch foil pans. And if I line them with parchment paper, I'll be able to make the fudge get the mold and then I can take the parchment paper out and then I'll just have the 9 by 9's. And next time I do some freezer meals or something like that. Or if I make a bunch of desserts, I need to drop them off at people's houses. I can put them in those foil pans. But these are going to be gifts. All these candies are going to be gifts for my loved ones and some ideas for you that you may have never done for the holiday season. They're all... I think they're all new recipes to me. Or they are a recipe that I've already made but with a fun twist to it. And so I have pretty boxes to put these candies in. But when I do like a big cooking day where I might make a bunch of desserts just to make desserts with you all for inspirations for the holidays or whatever it might be. Obviously, I can't go through it. So I like to package those desserts up or dinners up or whatever it might be. And foil pans work really well because I can just then drop them off at my loved ones' houses and I don't have to worry about them giving them back to me. So this computer work is done for the day, which is awesome. We will be making these in a couple days. Girl's Sheila's just here. I've got my stat here and I will just close this and let this be. Now let's get going on tonight's dinner. So I'm heading downstairs to kind of give you a little glimpse of what we're going to be working on today. Josh brought down a big industrial mop. Let me turn some lights on because we did do a deep clean in here with Josh and I. But what what I did not do is a final vacuum and mop on these floors. So we need to do that. You can see our washer and dryer are now down here. But I need to make this space more comfortable and I would like it to feel more kind of cozy down here for it to be a laundry room. So I think Josh can actually bring up our Christmas tree this week. I have done my first load of laundry. One of our cushions covers needed to be washed last night. So I'm just going to put that out to dry. So my goal is to do a very thorough vacuum here down here today. Mop it and then we're going to bring down my laundry room table, the rug and all that stuff and today we're going to start setting up a nice little laundry room down here. Now you may see this is empty. I am completely out of homemade marinara sauce. We did a marinara taste test and I have this from that. So we are going to grab this for tonight's dinner and I also am going to be bringing down a bunch of linnins from upstairs and we're going to turn one of these shelves into kind of a linen closet but not totally a linen closet because we actually yesterday just realized we're going to make a linen closet upstairs which I'm going to share with you and we're going to put a laundry suit in. So many of you guys recommended a laundry suit and we are taking you up on that recommendation. But I'm in here because I need to get out well here there's probably 200 pounds of tomatoes in here. I need to do that but I think I'm going to wait and do that probably until January I'm looking for peppers and onions. All these paper bags are all tomatoes. Oh I thought I had peanuts in my freezer for the peanut brittle. We're going to make this week. I don't have to buy peanuts. Let's see here are my peppers. Here's my peppers from the garden from our share and I really attempted to pull these diced onions from the freezer but I have fresh ones so I need to go through my fresh ones before I start using those frozen ones. So let's grab some onions as well. I'm just going to bring up these peanuts so that I can cross them off my grocery list. I'm going to be making my creamy, I think it's sausage pepper, it's onion, slow cooker dinner and I'm actually going to use my new instant pot. Josh just bought this for me randomly and I love it and I've heard my last instant pot. I'm keeping my old one. I've had it for eight or nine years. My brother got me that one for Christmas. Josh was using it and he saw this one and thought I could use the newer version. And my old instant pot I'm going to keep mostly just as a rice cooker and then this will be my more like instant pot slow cooker. I've heard that this slow this instant pot does better slow cooking than the last one. I never used my old instant pot for slow cooking but I heard the trick for slow cooking in this instant pot is actually heating the ingredients up before you actually hit slow cook function. So I will link this recipe down below for you. It's so easy. It's one of our favorites. All you have to do is basically a dump and go recipe. It would be truly dump and go if I was using my diced onions in the freezer but oh the sauce smells so good. So I officially have no marinara sauce homemade or otherwise I have just crushed tomatoes downstairs now. I need to do that. Turn all those tomatoes into marinara sauce but I'm not doing that today. So I just threw that sauce in there. I did unload my dishwasher this morning so I can put that right in there. So two or marinara sauce. I'm going to add my one package of... oops. Sorry starting to bubble. Diced peppers. Oh I'm going to turn that off already actually. Oh so I don't want that to bubble on me while I'm doing this. My recipe calls for Italian sausage. I have brought worse and that will be delicious as well. I'm going to get those in here. I'm going to move this over to my counter over here. Light cream and parmesan cheese but I'm not going to add that yet. I'm going to put this on slow cook. Let's see. I've never used slow cook on here. Let's do custom. Let's do high and let's do... I'm going to put six hours. I don't think it's going to take six hours but we're going to put it on that. And I'll check on this as I come upstairs. So dinner is basically almost done. The way I'm going to serve this tonight for my family is I will cook up some noodles and I will actually cut up these sausages once they're cooked. They're just easier to cut up once they're cooked. I'll probably take some scissors to them, cut them up. And then we'll have a creamy parmesany peppery onion-y sausage-y sauce for them. And then I will cook up broccoli on the side and I will just have the brought worse and the broccoli because I am trying to keep my blood sugar low. This recipe only calls for one pound of sausage which would I think be like four of these links. I probably doubled the sausage because I'm not going to be having pasta. I want it there to be a little extra sausage in here so that I can eat it. If you knew, I am 20... No, 20. I am 30 weeks pregnant. So because I'm pregnant we're joining another family member here shortly, we need to turn what used to be our laundry room into a bedroom. This room is technically one of the bedrooms in the house and it was also a dual purpose laundry room. And when we only had one kid, we did not need this as a bedroom but now we do. So our washer and dryer were right here. Long term, we do plan to build another washer laundry room upstairs, but we just could not make that happen with permits drawing up plans in the time before we needed this space to be a functioning bedroom. So what we are doing is moving the washer and dryer downstairs. Josh and I both grew up in homes. I grew up in a house for 23 years where the washer and dryer were on the floor below the bedrooms. Josh and I used first two houses. The washer and dryer were down below our bedroom. And so we're used to that. Long term, we would like it back up here, but we did weigh all the pros and cons, whether putting it downstairs or in the grow room and with just all the pros and cons it made more sense to bring it downstairs. But I listened to you and you all had some great suggestions. We are going to be putting a laundry shoot on the other side of this wall. So we're going to close this space off. We're going to build a wall here. So that we have just a square room, but we're going to reclaim that space. And right here we're going to put in a big linen closet that I'll be able to access from the other side of that wall. And we're going to put in a laundry shoot right here that will be able to access from the other side of this wall. So the laundry can be shot right downstairs. So we won't have to carry laundry downstairs. We will have to obviously carry it upstairs. And we're going to put the laundry shoot I think about this high. So it's going to be plenty high that it will be way up off the ground. And the contractors are coming sometime this week to start building the linen closet and the laundry shoot. So what that means is I need to empty these cabinets. We really need a linen closet because there's no linen closet up here. This closet right here in this bedroom worked as our linen closet. And these cabinets here, this is like our medicine cabinet. This is craft stuff. So this needs to be moved because we're going to take this down. And this is things like my loops from when I was a dental hygienist. I've got a heating pad or humidifier. That stuff all needs to be moved. And so by building a closet here, I'll be able to have a medicine cabinet up here. We just decided on putting this linen closet here this morning. It's funny how construction jobs, you know, you think they're the small little thing. And then as you get into it, you think, oh this would make sense. And most of the laundry shoot in linen closet idea was because of you also I really appreciate you taking time to kind of commenting and giving us suggestions. So this space feels a little bit overwhelming. I'm going to be moving all of my table decor stuff. These are all my colored napkins. I do have some baby girl clothes in here that I just want to move like like for our linen closet, we'll be able to put our swim towels. We go swimming a lot. And I'm just glad that we're going to be able to have a space upstairs for them, not in the basement. But I can easily put like my extra place mats and chargers and things like that downstairs in table class and all that good stuff that I don't need to access that much. We can put downstairs. So Josh is also going to help me move this table downstairs and he's going to help me move this rug downstairs today so that we can try to completely empty this space. So it feels good. I got my computer work done. Dinner is basically taking care of. And now we're going to tackle this project. If you're with Josh and I, when we cleaned up down here, we swept, we shot VACs but we did not do a fine vacuum. I just vacuumed the stairs as I came down. I want to vacuum with my regular vacuum, not a shop VAC. Get everything to good vacuum and then we're going to mop. So before I start bringing anything down, I want to give this area one good clean. So that's my goal. So I'm just going to start in this corner. Since I already did the stairs and I hope this vacuum will hold a charge. It says it has 36 minutes left. So that should be plenty of time. And I'm just going to do a good vacuum down here. I want to tell you how much I love this vacuum. I love it for two reasons. One, it's cordless, which is so incredibly nice. And two, my favorite feature about this vacuum, we could probably find another vacuum out there that has the same feature. But if you are looking for a new vacuum, one feature I highly recommend is a light. I can't tell you how nice that is, especially with having dogs. You see every spec of dust. And when I start vacuuming, I have to finish it because you just see on the ground what needs to be vacuumed. I'm still vacuuming, but I need a vacuum over here. And these are the black beans and pinched open that I grew in my garden last year. I am not ready to process these or can them or do anything with them. So I want to get them somewhere safe. So I've got this bucket. I'm just going to go ahead and put them in here in the paper bags. And then when I want to cook them, I can get them from in here. And they'll be safe in this tote. I want to get this onions and garlic somewhere. I'm going to move these paper towels and get this onion and garlic up off the floor. Okay, that feels better. I've got everything off the floor so I can continue to vacuum. I'm calling Josh right now because I could use his help with a couple things down here. Hey, I think I'm ready for your help down here. Okay, so he's going to come down and help. So I have now vacuumed the floors twice, which feels good. I do actually want to vacuum one more time before we go ahead and mop, but I need to charge that vacuum and only had four minutes left. So I think what I'm doing the meantime is I'm going to move well. So we have this one extra shelf when we put these shelves up. We have this one shelf. That's one thing I need Josh's help with. It's actually put this shelf together. And I can't really decide where I want it. I think for this space right, because I was thinking right here, but I need to buy a really cart that has a hanger thing so that when close come out of the dryer, I have an area of hang stuff. I just haven't ordered that yet. So I was thinking I would put the shelf there, but then I don't think that's a good idea because I think I should have that area for hanging up clothes and then we can move this chicken feed. This is some boxes of furniture that need to be put together. So those are just going to go upstairs. I think long term we're actually going to store our Christmas tree upstairs. We have a closet up there that would fit in. And just with everything else down here, I don't think I want to look at my Christmas tree all year long. And the laundry shoot has to be right here. So for right here, what I'm going to do is get a very big laundry hamper that's on wheels. So when things go through the laundry shoot, they can end up in a big old basket here. And then I can just wheel, lid over here. I was thinking I would put some linens over here. I don't have as many cans stuff on my shelves as I used to. One, I don't can as many different things. I'm really only canning things that I know we're going to go through. Like these are all beans and broth. I have no broth except for two jars on my picture shelf. That's why it's very empty. And I am very, very, very low on tomato products. I have no marinara sauce. So I know these shelves need to fill up a little bit because I need to put broth and tomato products on it. But I don't think I need three shelf citymore of canned goods, just because I don't can as much as I used to. I'm really, really only focusing on canning stuff that we go through super quickly. And I don't have to worry about trying to go through it. So I was thinking I could maybe put my beans down here as opposed to over here. I have lots of canned beans right now. That's why I did not can any of the beans that I grew in my garden last year because I don't need any canned. I have been going through beans a lot more because those are one of the carbohydrates that I can eat that don't spike my blood sugar too much. Here's some beef broth. I only have four kinds of beef broth and two kinds of turkey broth. And that's all the broth I have in my house. Crazy, I know. No chicken broth right now. Pinto beans. And what I was thinking with this shelf is this could be my table to core shelf. Let's see. Pinto beans, pinto beans. Maybe Josh is down here helping me mop and we kind of not mop. He's vacuuming one more time that the vacuum had time to charge. Definitely needed to be cleaned. And while the vacuum is charging we kind of went over a game plan and he helped me move some things and I think we've got a game plan. I'm going to start vacuuming or mop. You will Josh back in. Josh, did you want to show me how to use this kind of mop? He's done a third vacuum in this corner so I'm going to start over here. It's breathing back to the subway days. I'm really really busy back to the subway days. You're stuck out there. So you go like this. Not like this or whatever. Back and forth. Okay. Awesome. When it starts to seem kind of dry I guess if they're sticky spots then you scrub. Thank you. Awesome. This mop is the mop that Josh uses when he cleans out our garage and I had never used it before and I'm really glad we have it because this mop worked great for down here. The mop that I use upstairs in our kitchen will Josh and I have different cleaning supplies. Josh has a vacuum slash mop thing that he likes to use when he does the floor. I have it's like super fancy and he really really enjoys it and if that is what he enjoys to mop. Awesome. I just have this really simple. It's kind of a swiffer style mop but it's not a swiffer. It doesn't have the disposable pads. It has like a Velcro. I have two pads that I can throw in the and then I am able to refill the dispenser. I think it was like 18 bucks and I love that little mop thing that I use and I don't think that would have worked very well down here. I think we needed this more heavy duty mop. I had only ever moped down here. I think one other time. Maybe two other times since we moved in and it needed this like industrial grade mop because you all see the potatoes and onions and all the produce that comes in down here that brings in dirt and it needed a good scrub. I actually thought it was dirtier than it was initially because there are different colorations in this floor but after mopping this floor I realized that some of the brown on the floor is actually just the concrete color and so the water definitely showed how much dirt I picked up when I was done mopping but it wasn't as bad as I actually thought it was going to be so that was good and we have been living with this washer and dryer down here now for about a week and a half and it's actually going fairly well. I mean again in an ideal world I loved having my washer and dryer upstairs next to the bedrooms but it has not been as big of an inconvenient as I thought it would be and it's you know a sacrifice that I'm super happy about because it means that we're making space for our new little baby girl that will be here in the winter. So even though it's not ideal it's worth the sacrifice and again one day we do plan to put the washer and dryer again upstairs but in the amount of time we had and the space we have in our current house right now it just wasn't realistic with all the considerations that Josh and I put into it to find a space for it upstairs at this point but long term we do have plans to bring it back upstairs. So I'm just giving everything a good scrub. I probably will not be curing my potatoes and my veggies down here next year if our washer and dryer are still down here. I will probably do that in the grow room and put some black out lights or black out curtains in the grow room and we did consider you know me starting all my vegetables down here and we put in the washer and dryer in the grow room that was definitely a consideration but with all the different pros and cons Josh and I like weighed this made more sense and so this is what we live with and I'm happy to report that it's been working really well so far it's actually been kind of nice because when the washer and dryer are upstairs I would see the dirty laundry or the clean laundry that needed to be folded all the time. Versus now it's kind of out of sight out of mind it's downstairs I don't have to look at it I mean obviously I know there's laundry that needs to be done at all times but I don't have to see it all the time which has actually been kind of nice. All right so everything has been mopped and it has now dried out it's about it's been about an hour since we were working down here together we just took about an hour lunch break as a family I wanted this area to completely dry I'm going to bring this bag upstairs come to use a tip bring stuff down here. I'm thinking so over here we have our chicken feet I think I'm going to get two of those stainless steel garbage cans and I'm going to put the chicken feet in those garbage cans not so they're not just in paper bags never had a problem with road and certain things but I think that would be one it would look nice nicer just to have them in something and it would be a protection against pests. I do like to keep a couple extra bags of feet on hand so that I'm not buying it every few weeks or so I usually have to go through one of those bags every six to eight weeks when we only had a few chickens but now that we have more we go through a bag about every three to four weeks and now since everything is organized and kind of cleaned down here it feels so much better. I've got this whole shelf here that we can put stuff on. Josh and I decided I don't think I need another shelf because we are going to be building that linen closet upstairs which is a great relief. I did put the Christmas tree for now over here and this corner Josh is going to carry that up probably in a week or so and we're going to set it up but then long-term it won't be down here that's my Christmas or at and birthday and wrapping tight present stuff there. So I think what we're going to do now is go into the actual laundry room now and then start bringing stuff down and I'm going to actually have Josh come help me bring down the table and the rug and I think he's going to do all the carry enough stuff down these stairs. I was thinking that it would be good to get some temporary or not temporary but to put some of those rug things on the stairs because they're just wooden stairs but I'm going to have to look online and see what I can find. I just had that idea today so I've got this is my laundry detergent and I'm going to go ahead and just fill that up so I'm too empty back here. I can just throw away my garbage can has now been wrapped downstairs. Oh no. I just put that in my oxy cleaned. Well I guess when it makes these together back and forth a couple times. And now I have a mixture of oxy cleaning and laundry detergent. I do have these later too. That's okay. So I think I need to call Josh and let him know that I'm ready for his help at this point. I don't think I'm going to get to all of these cupboards today but I want at least get most of this and this and all the laundry stuff downstairs so that we can actually have a functioning laundry space. I think the best thing to do would be to actually empty this table so that he can actually just start taking it down. This laundry room has been amazing but I'm kind of excited that it's going to turn into a bedroom. That's a good thing. That's progress. I'm going to use these bags to put stuff in to carry down things like this is our first aid kit. I'm so excited to now have a linen closet upstairs because I can put this in that. I was going to have to put it downstairs and now I don't have to. So thank you for the idea. I really appreciate everyone who takes time to give suggestions. It's very very helpful because we read them and a lot of times we take them into consideration. I'm just trying to get this clear so I've seen these Josh kids in here. He can take this apart. We'll have him carry these down for me. I'm going to vacuum this. So I was thinking if you could carry down these for me and that laundry hamper and then the table and the rug all meets you down there when you carry the table and rug down so we know where to put it. These can just go on the washer and feels really good down there with everything mopped. I'm going to start emptying this as I go through this closet. There are a few things I know that can be donated. So I'm going to have one of my bags that I'm filling for donation. But all of the bath stuff I'm going to go ahead and keep up here since we're going to be building the linen closet up here. I'm not going to bring that stuff downstairs like I was earlier. I think I just wanted to use actually. My original plan was to have to bring all of this stuff downstairs. But now I'm not going to. I'm just bringing the tablecloth stuff. So each towel's extra blanket, extra sheets, extra pillows, my prepregnancy jeans, those will all go in the linen closet up here. Once that's built, which will probably be a week or two before that's built. So that is a hugely because I would really like to keep these types of things upstairs because I obviously grab these way more than I'm going to need to grab red or green or black cloth napkins for a party downstairs. These can go in there. And these in this. So he's going to bring the whole table down and then we'll figure out exactly where we're going to put it. And while he's working on that, I'm going to start putting this stuff over here. I have inner party stuff into other locations, which I do plan to bring down here. I don't know what order I don't think I'm going to get to bringing all that stuff down here today, though. Like all my candle stuff, I want to bring down here. So it's all in one spot. And I can see it. And I'll be much easier to plan a table scape when I can see everything that I have. I am loving having all my table to core stuff down here in one place. This has been so nice. Not that I've used it actually. And I probably am not going to use it until February. When I do a gallantine stay and a well, I don't know. I'm assuming either gallantine stay or the grandparents valentine stay dinner that I do is going to be the next dinner party I have at my house. But I used to have my dinner party stuff in three different spots and just having it in one spot. It's just been so nice. So I'm actually really glad that I had the time today to bring all of this stuff into one spot. Okay, I got this amount that I brought down done, which is everything from that linen closet. I'll show you what I've done. I have my table runners, table cloths here, napkins. These are my bread towels. So if I make bread and I want to put a towel in a bread basket, I keep these down here so I don't get them messy from kitchen use, chargers. I have one more big set of chargers upstairs that I'm going to put right here, place mats. And I think this is a napkin holder. I don't know where this is going to go, but I'm going to put a bunch of my candlesticks right here. I might be able to stack some things a little differently, but so far, I'm really excited about how this is looking and how this is going to function for me. By having everything in one place, I will be able to come down here, shop this for a dinner party. I have a ton of dishes that I've started to collect, and I'm thinking we have one more shelf that Josh is going to set up for a linen closet over there. I might have him put that right here and then I could have my dishes right here, so that I could not just shop linens and place mats and things like that, but I could also shop my dishes. We'll see, I just thought of that right now, so I'm not exactly sure. I just know that I can't condense this anymore because when I can't attend tomatoes, that'll go here and then I'll probably end up putting a bunch of broth up here. So I need to make sure I leave that shelf space for canned goods when I actually get to that project. It's actually taking Josh quite a bit longer than anticipated to take apart that table, so I'm going to go ahead and just start filling up more of the table to core stuff and he can carry it down for me, and then if I have time, I can organize it. So this is what this area looks like. I've just collected too much stuff, but it's so hard to keep things organized in here, and you can see I even have like a pile of napkins in here. So I'm going to, since I'm just waiting for Josh, to start carrying a bunch of this stuff downstairs, or I'll get it in baskets, and then Josh can carry it downstairs. This needs to go in my wrapping paper stuff. I think I'll keep my candles up here because I like to burn candles in my kitchen all the time, and I'd rather not have to go down there to get the candles, so I will keep stuff in here, but not everything. Josh is called me and said he's ready for my help. Down there, I got this emptied. Basically, I need to vacuum this up. I'm going to keep my half-use or started use candles up here because these are the ones that I'm going to burn just when I'm in the kitchen. When I have dinner parties, I like to set fresh candles out, so I'll keep these up here for easy access. I'm going to keep, I can't side them, keep these up here, but I have this for Josh to carry down. That for Josh to carry down, that's way too heavy for me right now, and this for Josh to carry down. Where do you think like right here? I think it's not hold up. It's a very inexpensive rug. Yeah. So it's nice down here, though. Huh? Yeah, I was thinking that same thing. Do we want it this way? I think we want it this way. Do you want the table facing this way? I think so. Can you push it a little bit more toward you? Like, yeah. Oh yeah, that's not heavy at all. There we go. I am so happy with how this looks. Now that I kind of have this like laundry room section over here, I think I am going to move that chicken feed just somewhere else. Just so this whole section over here is laundry and not chicken stuff. And I am going to get a bar so I can put any stuff over here. There's a plug over here so I can have my iron plugged in over here. And I'm super happy with how it looks. We do like I mentioned earlier have plans to eventually move the washer and dryer back upstairs. But for now, I'm so grateful to have this space and to be able to clean it and have it nice and stood good functioning space for me. So I'm going to get my first official load of there that washing one of our couch cushion covers. I'm going to get this going. Actually, might wait to turn that on. Just going to bring down all that stuff for me. That can actually just go right over here. This is my miscellaneous gloves, aprons and socks. Now, what I'm going to actually ask my mom to do is these because they're going to be sitting on the washer and dryer. Now, I'm going to make just with some fabric like a cushion to go on top of this and these will sit on top of there. And I might, I don't know exactly what I'm going to do because those were up on a shelf and this, I'm not sure where I'm going to put this right now. Maybe it'll just live on this table for now. Then I have a little bit more organizing. I'm going to do down here. I'm going to wait to turn that on until I'm done organizing down here. Josh is going to take care of this mop bucket for me after he brings down the rest of my stuff. Just right here is fine. I'm going to keep playing them. Thank you. I normally have a dinner party at my house about once a month, but December has been full of holidays and I don't even think I had one in November. I'm not sure. We are having a baby girl sometime in January, probably, or maybe February. You never know how those things go. I was just thinking earlier when I was talking to you that galen times day, our grandparents valentine stay would be the next dinner party. But now I'm not sure about that because I will be newly post-partum. So we'll see. I'm not sure with the next dinner party will be. I love having dinner parties. It's one of my favorite things. I used to do it when Josh and I first got married and then we started remodeling our house and that took a good three years and our house was always under construction because Josh and I did 90% of the work ourselves. So I kind of got out of the habit and then I was just getting back to the habit when 2020 happened. You will know what happened in 2020. This whole last about two and a half years, I've really been diving into dinner parties and decorating and setting up and it's been so fun. It's definitely my hobby and collecting different tableware has been super fun whether I find some new things or I thrift them. I just really enjoying that hobby and I'm grateful that you've been kind of coming along with me on this journey. This is just some wax that came off the candle holders. And so I'm really excited to get back into it but it's probably going to be February before we have the next dinner party. All right well that was not on the list to get all this stuff down here but this is what I was envisioning. Brass candle sticks, black candlesticks, gold, votives, brown votives, wicker votives, flowers, my colored candles and my white candles and my black candles. These wax candles napkin rings, chargers, napkins, placemats, tablecloths. Absolutely fantastic. Is that room upstairs completely done? Did I get the white cabinets emptied? No, am I going to get to them today? No but I will probably get to them tomorrow. Tomorrow's a family day. We're going to the pool and so I'll probably try to get at least the medicine cabinet cleaned out tomorrow and it feels really good to have down here functioning. I'm going to go ahead and get this turned on and I'm going to get some pasta cooked and we're going to finish dinner. It might be an early night for dinner or an early dinner but we've kind of been working on it all day so I think we will appreciate an early dinner. Josh I was going to get dinner going right. Now are you hungry for dinner? I am. Okay it's four o'clock. We're going to get dinner going here. I did wash my hands after all that work. Josh is going to carry up and down a couple more things for me because I think I'm done going up and downstairs right now and I cannot get this is a pot of water for our water. See this is where I like to light candles here. I just enjoy having candles. Especially this time of year. I don't really do this much in the summer but this time of year. So I don't mind using half burnt candles in here but when I set a pretty table for a dinner party I like to use brand new candles and then I don't want to waste those candles so I'll save those keep those up here to replenish my kitchen candles. That's probably good. We haven't had pasta in a while so I'm sure Josh is going to be glad to have pasta. I don't want to turn this on yet because my cords right here but I want to show you I couldn't get the slow cooker function to steam like it was actually functioning so I put it on pressure for 10 minutes and it's just been on keep warm for over an hour. I'm going to move this cord over here. I'm going to open this and see what this looks like. Okay that looks really good. So now we're going to make this creamy and cheesy. So I'm going to add some heavy cream and then we'll just put cheese on our own. That's not so good. Oh good. What is it? It is the creamy? What is this called? Creamy sausage and peppers with pasta. This is like a bit of a door. You could smell it? Right. It's just a problem. I did. Yes. I do think I like cooking in that just a regular slow cooker I wanted to try using this low cook function on this instant pot but who's with the tray? Yeah. Josh I have a thing of Marscapone cheese in the refrigerator from some cooking projects. I think that would go well in here. You want to hand that to me and I'll just add that to this. That's a good way to use it up. So normally I put Parmesan cheese in this. Oh I forgot to turn this on. We'll just put Parmesan cheese on the top and for the cheese it's in the just drawer at the bottom. I'm just going to use the last little bit of this in here. It's about half. Half full. I just added a little cornstarch to this to thicken it up a little bit. Now I'm going to take some clean kitchen scissors and I'm just going to go through and slice up these brought worse. Oh my I'm pushing by my belly. And I just put the saute function on so that we can activate the cornstarch by heating this up a little bit quicker. This is what this area is looking like. So I still need to vacuum that out because it has a bunch of pieces of candle bits in there. And then I think I'm going to leave those in here. I don't know. Maybe I'll bring them down. But I'm going to keep these candles up here. So those are the ones I'm going to pull from all the time. Got some garbage. I need to take care of. So in here the last few things I have to do before I call it a night is I'm going to put that cleaning stuff up high. That white garbage can. I think I'm going to bring downstairs and put next to the dryer so that I can have two garbage cans down there. A big one for bigger things at garbage. That little one just for dryer vent. What is that called? Lint. Dryer vent. These need to be taken care of but that's not going to happen today which is fine. This is all contractor stuff. They're going to deal with that and they put in the laundry shoe and the linen. Clause it. We're going to keep the water lines here in the electrical here because eventually on the other side of this wall, we will make that into a laundry room. Year or two. We will do that. But not today or tomorrow. So we're going to keep the water lines. The plumbers already closed all those off so that, you know, they're safe. But eventually we will use those water lines again. This is a bunch of maternity clothes and some other clothes from when we went to New Orleans that I've yet to take care of. So I still need to take care of that and then more cleaner I need to put up. We're going to have to find a new place for Josh's electric mop and his mop shop that ours mop vacuum and his vacuum and I probably will have to move this stuff when they work on that closet. We are going to get some new doors for this closet because these closet doors are very hard to open and close. These accordion doors so they are going to put in some French doors just because they're going to be so much easier to open and close. But I'm so excited about the progress we made today. Feel so good. I am so grateful for your guys' input on the laundry shoot and the linen closet using that space because those two things are going to make having the laundry downstairs easy or ideally it would be up here but I would rather fill my bedroom with my babies than with laundry. So yeah so I'm happy with having my wash room down stairs I'm grateful for that space that I'm able to have it down there and again, Josh and I did go back and forth so many times, pros and cons, either putting it in our garage, putting it in the grove room or putting it downstairs, cost and so many other factors. It just seemed like the best choice to put it downstairs. So that's what we did. So thank you for being here. Thank you for being here. Let me pop some videos here and you can go enjoy between now and my next upload. I hope you're having a fantastic day and I can't wait to see you next time. Bye friend.
Deciding to move your laundry room is definitely a big step! I suggest you take a moment to plan out the new layout before you dive in. It might save you from some of those 'this is way harder than I thought it would be' moments. A little forethought can go a long way!