You’ll Totally Love These Eggplant Recipes

It’s an eggplant kind of day!!  When I started out cooking this afternoon, I was trying use up some left over Bolognese Sauce.  In effort to eat “veggie most dinners,” I’ve been experimenting in the kitchen. Recently, I have enjoyed Portobello Pizzas and Lasagnes, Cauliflower Rice with Deconstructed Egg Rolls and Roasted Spicy Chic Peas with Garlic Sauce and Avocado. I’m in heaven!!  I don’t know why I haven’t thought to do this sooner?  I love vegetables; but if you don’t, adding lots of extra flavours and textures to your veggies might just get you to increase the amount of fibre on your plate.  Vegetables fill us up, they give us sustainable energy and they help to keep us regular.  I’ve ditched my starchy carbs at dinner and traded them in for some of these delightful treats.  Best news? In two weeks, I’m down 4lbs, it seems we don’t need a heavy carb load in the evening, right before we head to bed; save that for the morning when we require energy for the entire day!

Today started out as a “clean the fridge kind of day” and ended with some very exciting and delicious meals.  I had a big, beautiful eggplant on hand. An eggplant can sit on your counter for a few weeks while you decide how you’d like to use it. They’re loaded with many nutrients and and vitamins, including Vitamin C and K; they contain magnesium, copper, folic acid and lots of dietary fibre.  They absorb flavours from marinades and sauces and blend well into meat or vegetarian dishes.  The trick to cooking eggplant as far as I am concerned, is uniform sized slices.  I’m not one to brag about my knifing skills so a kitchen mandolin is a necessity for me. I can get pretty easily overwhelmed by the texture and flavour of eggplant.  As a result, I tend to use thinly sliced portions for my recipes. Today, I sliced the whole eggplant, only to discover that I did not have enough left over bolognese sauce to accommodate my number of eggplant slices. Enter new recipe...a hybrid, if you will, an old chic pea favourite that I whip up regularly; this time with eggplant instead of chic peas.  It worked out beautifully.

Eggplant with Feta and Tomatoes

Half an Eggplant

2 tbsps of Garlic Olive Oil

1 Tbsp of Red Wine Vinegar

1 Tbsp of Olive Brine

3 Black Olives, finely chopped

1 tsp of dried oregano

1/2 tsp of Incan Fire Salt (Cayenne Pepper, Salt and Cumin)

1 Roma Tomato, sliced

1/3 of a cup of Feta Cheese

Pepper to taste

Directions:

Slice half an Eggplant with a kitchen mandolin. 

Line the bottom of a casserole dish with the Eggplant Slices.

Drizzle the slices of Eggplant with Olive Oil, Red Wine Vinegar and and Olive Brine. 

Pit and finely chop 3 olives, sprinkle over the Eggplant Slices. 

Season with Pepper and Incan Fire Salt. 

Bake at 350 F for 12 minutes add Sliced Tomatoes, and Feta along with Oregano and bake for an additional 5 minutes. 

Serve with Fresh Parsley or Raw Baby Asparagus (which I found in my garden today) and drizzle with balsamic reduction. 

If you enjoy this recipe, try my favourite Chic Pea Dip, which is a constant staple in my home.  You can find the link here

http://melsbigideas.blogspot.com/search/label/chic%20pea

I did tell you I made two recipes today...here’s the other twist on my Eggplant Slices...

Eggplant Bolognese

1/2 and Eggplant, sliced with a kitchen mandolin

1-1.5 cups of Bolognese Sauce

1 tbsp of Garlic Olive Oil

1 cup of shredded cheese, I used Fontina and Parmesan

Directions:

Slice half an Eggplant with a mandolin. 

Layer the bottom of a small casserole dish with your Eggplant Slices. 

Drizzle with Olive Oil, salt and pepper.

Cover with Bolognese Sauce. 

Add a second layer of Eggplant Slices and cover with Bolognese Sauce. 

Top with your favourite Cheese Blend.  I use Fontina as it is Lactose Free and melts up just beautifully.

Salt and Pepper the top of the casserole. 

Bake at 350 F for 30-35 minutes. 

Serve with Salad and Enjoy!

Thanks for taking the time to read this article and I wish you luck if you decide on an Eggplant Adventure in your kitchen!  Please feel free to comment below with any questions, concerns or if you just liked this Big Idea!!

The Joy of Sourdough English Muffins

We all know its the simple things that bring joy to our lives, but what does that really mean?  Personally, I feel that joy hides out in the most unexpected places.  Joy is simple to miss, it’ll pass you by if you’re not looking for it.  I’ve missed it, many times; I have chosen to live in the negative.  I have focused on the bad behaviours, the messy kitchen, my kid’s bad choices, my bad choices.  Joy is a choice.  It’s the dancing in the kitchen; forgetting your chores for a few moments, giggling on the phone, hugging your kids, doing something that you love.  I love baking and crafting. There is joy in creativity. 

This week I found creativity and joy in my Sourdough English Muffins.  I make these often.  I love them, my kids love them.  They make the whole family happy.  They taste so much better than the store bought version. I call them my English Muffins, which is technically unfair, as they’re a recipe I found on Jonesin’ for Taste’s Blog. You can find the complete recipe at this link:

https://jonesinfortaste.com/sourdough-english-muffins/

There is, however, significance in my ownership of this recipe. I have made it so many times that I use the blog post as a reference. I know what I need to add and when I need to add it; its simple.  It takes time and patience to complete.  I hit my “Flow” when I mix the ingredients together, as I roll the dough and sprinkle the cornmeal.  I don’t need to think, I just simply do, that’s the Flow I speak of, baking becomes a meditation of sorts. I take the joy; I eat it up! I ignore the frustrations of life, as I create something beautiful, I allow it to warm my soul.  That’s the trick to joy, you need to accept it.

The ingredients are simple, wholesome and I get to use my sourdough starter.  My starter, which I affectionately call Ramona, has received my love and care throughout the past two years.  I have personified Ramona, honestly, she has to be the most giving pet I have ever owned. If you don’t have a sourdough starter, I would totally recommend starting one of your own. I have added a link to my sourdough article here:

http://melsbigideas.blogspot.ca/search/label/bread?m=0

Sourdough English Muffins 

1/2 Cup Sourdough Starter

1 Cup of Milk

2 Cups of Organic All Purpose Flour

Mix these three ingredients together in a large bowl.  Once combined, cover with plastic wrap and allow to rest at room temperature for at least 8 hours or overnight. 

Once your dough has rested overnight, add an additional:

3/4 Cup of Organic All Purpose Flour

1 Tbsp of Sugar 

3/4 Tbsp of Ground Sea Salt

1 Tsp of Baking Soda

Once your ingredients are fully combined, drop your dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 4-5 minutes.

Roll your dough out to 3/4 of an inch and begin cutting with either a wide mouth mason jar or a large glass.

Line a cookie sheet with a piece of parchment paper.  Sprinkle the paper with cornmeal.  

As your English Muffins are cut, drop them onto the lined cookie sheets; flip to coat both sides with cornmeal. 

Make sure to space them properly on your cornmeal and parchment lined cookie sheet, as they will increase in size during your rise.

When your cookie sheet is full, cover with plastic wrap and place in a warm area to rise.

Allow your muffins to rise at least 45 minutes before cooking.

You can re-roll your scraps to cut additional English Muffins but the dough requires at least 10 minutes rise time between each cutting. 

I typically get 10-12 English Muffins out of this recipe; if you require more, the recipe doubles well and freezes beautifully.

To cook your English Muffins, lightly oil a frying pan, cook over medium heat for approximately 4 minutes per side.

Enjoy them toasted with jam, peanut butter, almond butter or as an “over-the-top” delicious egg sandwich.  

The greatest excitement I experience while making these Sourdough English Muffins is how amazing they look. The first time I made them, I pulled them off of the pan as I giggled hysterically.  They looked like English Muffins. Real English Muffins. I had made something that I could buy at a store. They looked Professional.  Who knew you could make English Muffins?  Preservative Free English Muffins.  It turns out you can make English Muffins. If you decide to make them; you too should enjoy every moment of the process. Once your soul is fed, gobble one up and feed your tummy too. 

Thanks for taking the time to read this article. Feel free to comment below with any questions, concerns or if you just liked this Big Idea!! 

Eat Your Heart Out! Valentine Deliciousness!

Yet another Valentine’s Day and more homemade valentines for my son’s class.  He’s a happy boy again this year!  Drew and I made our famous sugar cookies for his friends and packaged them up with his Valentine wishes.  A classic wish from an 11 year old boy.... “From: Drew.”  One of these days I’m hoping he becomes more verbose, but for now this will do!! We very sensibly froze the left over red icing from his Mario Muffin Cupcakes, after his birthday; yesterday, we thawed it out to sandwich between two of our heart shaped cookies. 

The beauty of a classic Sugar Cookie recipe is it’s entirely versatile. Not only did I need to make treats for Drew’s class; I wanted to drop some goodies off to friends and prepare some treats for my thirteen year old daughter’s “Single Ladies Sleepover” on Valentine’s Day. Single Ladies Sleepover!?! Sometimes you just roll with your child’s requests.  This mama is rolling...and secretly very happy that she’s not sneaking out to see boys on Valentine’s Day. Girl time sounds perfect to me!!!

Mel and Drew’s Famous Sugar Cookies

1 Cup of Salted Butter

1 and a 1/2 Cups of Granulated Sugar

1/2 Cup of Brown Sugar

2 Eggs

2 Tsp of Baking Powder

3 and a 1/2 Cups of Flour

2 tbsp of Milk

1 tsp of Vanilla

1/2 tsp Salt

Cream wet ingredients.

Blend dry ingredients.  Slowly add dry ingredients to wet.  

Refrigerate for at least two hours.

When ready to start baking, preheat the oven to 350 F. 

Roll out dough to 1/8”, on a well floured surface.  

Use a cookie cutter to cut shapes and bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes, until golden brown on edges.  

Allow cookies to cool on the cookie sheet for 2 minutes and then remove to a cooling rack.

If adding icing sugar to cookies, add after cookies have cooled on the pan for 2 minutes and then transfer to a cooling rack.

Makes approximately 48 cookies. 

After your cookies have cooled, ice the bottom of one of them, generously.

Press together and Voila!!  Cookie sandwich!!  You can also use jam between your cookies, I used my homemade cherry jelly on some of my goodies.  Please excuse my craft nails...I’ve painting green...lots of green...

Treat Toppers

If you’re making Treat Toppers, you can follow the following instructions. First of all, choose a reasealable bag that fits your treat.  Measure the width of your bag and map out your plan on a white piece of card stock.  I typically make toppers 3” tall, with a seam at 1.5”.  The bags I’m working with are 4” wide.

Next design your topper, if you’re writing on both sides, one side will be upside down as you’re creating a folding seam in the centre.

Once your toppers are complete, you may now photocopy onto any colour of card stock you choose.  

I photocopied onto grey card stock.  Next, I trimmed the excess off of the edges and then I used a scoring blade to mark the toppers at 1.5”.  I used my pre-drawn lines to cut them to 4” wide.

I adore inking, I love the dimension it adds to any project.  In order to ink, you simply drag the edges of your project across an ink pad.

Feel free to add colour!!  You can do this before or after photocopying.  I used a red glaze pen to roughly colour the hearts, after photocopying as I enjoy the added texture and interest it provides. A glaze pen looks similar to a gel pen, until you use it!!!  A glaze pen’s ink dries raised and shiny. Finally, fold toppers over the bags and staple.

I enjoy the staples from the Tim Holtz Tiny Attacher.  They’re tea bag sized and so super cute!!

Thanks for reading.  Feel free to comment below if you have any questions, concerns or just like this big idea!!  Happy Valentine’s Day Everyone!

I Just Made Lactose-Free Yogurt!

Mmmmmmm....yogurt. I love it. I never eat it because my body hates Dairy. Which is sad, really, because I love to dealve into a hunk of cheese or drink a creamy latte.  I’m lactose intolerant, like many others, Nature

did not intend for me to slurping back milk after I was

done nursing. Many bodies are unprepared for the onslaught of creamy milk products. My digestive tract certainly isn’t lined up for it!! 

Fortunately, there are many good lactose-free products on the market. I often substitute my milk with a dairy alternative, my favourite being, coconut. I drink my coffee with coconut milk and honey. I buy lactose-free yogurts at the grocery store, or I avoid Dairy all together. It’s not all that difficult to avoid and I feel healthier when it’s out of my life, but I miss it. Not anymore!! I’m done paying a premium for lactose-free!!  I just made yogurt. Lactose free yogurt!! All you require is an organic high fat yogurt and some whole milk. 

As I write this blog, I’m munching on blueberries drizzled with honey, sunflower seeds, craisins and granola all wrapped up in one of my favourite substances, plain yogurt. It’s tart, it’s creamy and delicious. It’s also incredibly versatile.  It blends well into soups, Indian dishes, is a perfect sour cream substitute and makes a yummy high protein breakfast bowl!!

While meandering through Pinterest, I found a yogurt recipe for my Instant Pot. I don’t know if you have an Instant Pot but I got one on sale, right before Christmas. I love to cook delicious meals for my family. I actually refuse to slip onto that slope of convenience. Though convenience food might lower my stress level around dinner time, as I’m frantically trying to fill bellies before evening activities, I’d lose sleep. I’d rather provide my family with minimal ingredient dishes, healthy fats and nourishing meals than a store bought alternative.  The Instant Pot makes this easier. One pot meals, full of whole ingredients, in a fraction of the time. I’ve made a whole chicken in 35 minutes, rice in 10 minutes, bone broth or bolognese sauce in a couple of hours...these meals used to take me all day.  

If you’re not convinced by now, that you should probably throw out your slow cooker and buy an Instant Pot (the Instant Pot also has a slow cooker option), then let’s talk about homemade yogurt. I was intimidated to make yogurt. I tried a few years back and it was a complete and utter failure. My issue was lactose. I went out and bought lactose free milk and followed the instructions to make my yogurt from a yogurt stater. If you know anything about yogurt making, this makes no sense.  The cultures in yogurt eat lactose. The trick to lactose free yogurt is a longer incubation period. Let the bacteria eat all of that lactose for you!  If you’re not lactose intolerant then you can make yogurt with your Instant Pot in about 8 hours, if you are lactose intolerant, you let it incubate for 24 hours. 

Here’s the link to the yogurt recipe I followed, it worked out perfectly!!

http://wholenaturallife.com/instant-pot-yogurt/

Thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts! Feel free to comment below with any questions, concerns or if you just liked this Big Idea!! 

Back to School. Back to Routine.

How do you get ready for back to school? This is a question I asked myself repeatedly, in August. How do you ready yourself? Ready your kids? Welcome routine back into your life? I welcomed school somewhat reluctantly this year. I had an amazing Summer Holiday.  We travelled, we played on the beach, we visited wineries, we stayed up late, we slept in, we basically did everything that we never get to do on a regular basis. I enjoyed time with friends, family and lots of quiet evenings with my husband. It was a dream. 

How do you start back to school after a Summer like that? You throw yourself into it! Routine is good for the soul. A little bit of order never hurt anyone. Book the appointments you've been avoiding, get your kids cool "first day of school outfits" and if you're like me, you start cooking! 

I'm not sure why I feel like preparedness is directly related to how many delicious meals I have prepped in my freezer, but I do. My mom always made wonderfully, delicious food for myself and my siblings while I was growing up. I like to do the same for my kids. 

If you think this blog is going to be about school lunches, you're absolutely right! I hate making lunches!!! I secretly think all moms do.

I tend to batch cook and force my kids to pack their own lunches.  I'm not a fan of sandwich meat but my kids love sandwiches. My solution...cooked chicken breasts. I season with salt, pepper, oregano and roast them in the oven for about 20 minutes at 350 F. 

After they cool, I slice them and pack into small sandwich bags. I store the prepared chicken in the freezer and thaw for sandwiches, as needed. 

As my kids pack their own lunches, I find providing them with lots of healthy options and allowing them the ability to choose makes for fewer fights. It also teaches them about healthy living and good choices. On that note, my kids love treats in their lunches because they are human.  They love to snack on muffins, which I encourage as opposed to over the counter "lunchbox treats." Their favourite muffins are banana, I've added a link to my recipe below. 

http://melsbigideas.blogspot.ca/search/label/Muffins?m=0

A close second favourite would be blueberry muffins. I had hoped to find time to throw together blueberry muffins before school started. Especially, after I found organic blueberries on sale...I didn't find the time, so I washed them, dried them...

and packed them into 1 cup servings, which I placed in the freezer. 

I'll bake muffins at another point. It's totally worth it to purchase fruits and veggies at the height of their season and freeze. These fruits and veggies are going to be as nutritionally rich as possible and typically more affordable, than in the winter. Freezing them allows you to access the wonderful benefits of this fruit, at a later date. 

Finally, my kids love tiny casseroles in their lunches and they couldn't be easier to produce!  I always double or triple batch my pasta sauce. Leftover bolognese never goes astray in my household. One of the absolute favourite lunch casseroles in my house is lazy lasagne!!

I let the kids choose their favourite noodle, grate some mozzarella and parmesan and mix with leftover sauce. These casseroles are baked in mammoth muffin tins, and smothered in melty cheese. They are baked at 350F for 15-20 minutes. 

Once they are removed from the oven, you allow them to completely cool and then freeze in the muffin tins. Once frozen they are easily removed from the pan. 

I store them in a ziplock bag, in the freezer until we're ready to pack lunches. 

It couldn't be easier to defrost in the fridge overnight and quickly re-heat in the morning, before school. My kids pack these yummy lunches into a thermos in the morning and gobble them up at lunch! Imagine, all of that was accomplished on a Sunday afternoon. Then school started and it took almost until October to post!!!  Ahhh...back to school! Hope you're all surviving! 

Thanks for reading! If you have any questions or concerns, or you just liked this Big Idea, feel free to comment below! 

Pizza Biscuits. A Happy Accident.

Have you ever completely messed up a recipe? Something that you make all of the time? Something that takes too much to just toss it in it in the garbage bin? That's exactly what I did here. Instead of throwing out my yummy biscuits which I had completely burned...I made pizza biscuits. They turned out great...let's call them a Happy Accident. 

Every time I set out to make my homemade biscuits, this is my mission...

Delicious, warm, buttery biscuits, served with homemade jam.  This is how they turned out...

What the heck!?! In the midst of packing chaos, play dates and busy children, I forgot about my biscuits. They still took time and effort to make. I simply couldn't toss them. I couldn't eat them either...not without slicing the tops off and feeling disappointed with my latest kitchen creation. That's when inspiration struck!

Pizza biscuits! Good bye overly browned biscuit tops. 

I quickly smeared my favourite pizza sauce on to my topless biscuits and then sprinkled with a healthy dose of oregano. 

Mmmmmm...I topped each biscuit with a slice of mozzarella and felt pleased with myself. I was turning a failure into a success. 

I popped those suckers in the oven at 375 F and trusted my nose when they smelled just right. About 8-10 minutes. I served these with a side salad for lunch...the reviews were fantastic. Loved by all, kids adults, even the dog! Best part...I didn't have to throw my hard work in the garbage. 

We're so quick to toss out our mistakes; old items we find around our house, things that seem ugly, useless or just plain burnt.  Don't miss out on that positive moment when you can find goodness in an old item; or take something broken, and make it new again. I love to breathe new life into mistakes, eyesores or accidents. This recipe worked out well...if you want to make your own biscuits, please follow this link:

http://melsbigideas.blogspot.ca/search/label/biscuits?m=0

You can pay attention to your biscuits and enjoy them warm at breakfast with melty butter and jam, or burnt and modified into pizza buns at lunch. Regardless, enjoy them!

Thanks for reading! If you have any questions, comments, or you just liked this Big Idea, feel free to comment below. 

Simple Summer Chicken Pasta

Maybe it's just me but Summertime makes me crave simple ingredients and lots of veggies! Grocery stores and markets are absolutely stocked with delicious, fresh fruits and vegetables at this time of the year. Summer also makes me feel like spending less time in the kitchen, so my recipes must be quick! 

 

This is a quick pasta that I often make and serve with a salad. You can use virtually any vegetables you find in your fridge, carrots are always a nice addition; not featured in this recipe, as I didn't have them in hand.  My staple ingredients for this pasta are mushrooms, zucchini, shallots, garlic, parsley or any other fresh herb, along with parmesan cheese and tomatoes. Sun dried tomatoes are featured in this particular version but honestly, whatever you have in your fridge will do!  If you'd like to whip up your own sun dried tomatoes, follow this link:

http://melsbigideas.blogspot.ca/2017/07/oven-sun-dried-tomatoes.html?m=0

I always start "kid friendly pastas" with a mix of shallots and garlic, in butter and olive oil. Shallots have a more subtle taste than onions, my kids are particularly accepting of them. I then I add mushrooms and meat, in this case, chicken thighs. 

Once my flavours blend and my chicken cooks, I begin to add additional ingredients. In a separate pot, I boil noodles in salted water. The starchy, salted water will help to stretch our  sauce, two ladles should be fine, if you're worried about not having enough to dress your pasta, set some aside. If you'd rather skip the starch, chicken broth works extremely well in place of the salted water. Though doesn't stick quite the same way to your noodles! 

Zucchini doesn't need to cook for very long, so quickly mix it into the pot and begin to add the rest of your ingredients.  This should be completed after the shallots, garlic, mushrooms and chicken are completely cooked. If you're adding carrots, be sure to add them at the first addition. Hard veggies and vegetables you'd like to cook down, like onions, add first. Anything that cooks quickly must be added toward the end of your cooking time. This way, your pasta will be filled textured vegetables, which adds interest and palatability to your dish. Lastly, add your cheese, fresh herbs and tomatoes, sun dried or otherwise. 

I always toss my unrinsed noodles directly in with my veggies, sauce and additional olive oil on the stove top. After a crack of fresh pepper, I love to serve this meal "family style" at the table from a large serving bowl or straight from the pot!

Simple, quick, delicious; that's my kind of fast food!!! Thanks for reading! Please feel free to comment below if you have any questions, concerns or if you just liked this Big Idea!!

Oven Sun Dried Tomatoes

I just returned from a holiday in British Columbia. Though it's early in the season, the produce is fresh and ample. Every time I leave BC, I stop at the fruit stands along the roadside and load up on fresh goodies. These grape tomatoes simply had to come home with me. 

Along with the delicious produce came some unwelcome holiday bloat. Salt bloat. I so rarely eat out, I struggle anytime I holiday. Even when I'm surrounded by delightful produce, I puff up like a balloon if I'm eating at restaurants. On my way back to Calgary, I did some research on diminishing salt retention and bloating. It seems that potassium is key. Potassium helps your body to process additional sodium and passes it along with your urine.  (Did I seriously just use the word urine in a blog post? Yup. Yup I did). Needless to say, my next move was to research foods that were high in potassium. Dried fruits, specifically apricots, were at the top of the list, along with bananas, skin on baked potatoes and tomatoes...even more so, sun dried tomatoes. That last one got me thinking. I can make sun dried tomatoes!  

What a cool way to preserve the flavour of my days away. Who am I kidding? The flavour of my holiday was definitely wine!! Regardless, I tried something new and it worked!

Oven Sun Dried Tomatoes 

1/2 lb of grape or cherry tomatoes, tops removed and sliced in half

1 tsp of olive oil 

1 tsp-tbsp of oregano 

1 tsp of olive oil

Sea salt and pepper to taste

Preheat your oven to 200F

Mix your sliced tomatoes with your olive oil and seasoning. 

Spread on a baking sheet and bake for 2.5 to 3 hrs. 

The tomatoes are complete when they are mostly dried out with only a small amount of moisture left. 

Cool and store in the refrigerator in an airtight container. I ate mine in 24 hours, I'm sure they'd love happily in your fridge for 7-10 days. 

I loved my delicious tomatoes, they found their way into salads, pastas and straight out of the refrigerator!!  Sprinkle these things everywhere!!!!  

Thanks for reading!!  If you have any questions, comments or you just liked this Big Idea, feel free to comment below. 

Long Weekend Project. Installing a Ceiling.

I love a weekend project!!!  I love a long weekend project even more!!!  May Long Weekend, we guarded our schedule. No plans, except to stay home, work hard and make a big change in our home. My hubby and I have travelled to New Orleans twice. On both trips, I was so inspired by "NOLA style."  I have always loved shabby chic decor, New Orleans takes shabby chic to a whole other level. It's broken, it's old, it's water damaged and possesses a level of splendour...fit for royalty. Old School "French Decadence." I love it! 

After our first trip to New Orleans, I painted all of our kitchen cabinets white and ordered crystal knobs on Etsy. $1 each and they were real glass...Nice work right? When I walk into my kitchen in the morning, I admire the prisms on the kitchen floor. Beautiful. These door knobs bring me joy. 

After our most recent trip, to NOLA, I added wallpaper the ceiling to the list. Wallpaper the ceiling? Nuts right? Totally worth the effort. I'm beyond thrilled with the result.

My kitchen ceiling had problems. Big Problems. Popcorn texture with fluorescent lighting. The kind of lighting you'd find in an office. I have avoided working on the ceiling since we bought the house, fourteen years ago. I was terrified of what we would find underneath the two office banks of fluorescent lighting, featured on my ceiling. There would probably be holes, maybe different ceiling textures, different ceiling colours? I had imagined a list of potential problems as long as my arm. A word of advice...don't do this. Just look. Unscrew the light fixture. See what's there. You can always just put it back up. I could have saved myself some work had I done that, though I would not nearly be as thrilled with the result as I am currently. Underneath my ugly fluorescent lights were two standard light fixture boxes. One for each light bank. I could have installed any type of lighting into the lighting box and the popcorn ceiling would have been undisturbed. We did have to move one, but that would have meant a minor repair to the popcorn ceiling, cutting a new hole for a secondary box and pulling some wires. Simple. 

It was out of my fear, that a plot to remove the fluorescent lighting was born. Our kitchen ceiling is not attached to any other part of the house's ceiling. We knew that we could install a "feature" and not have to carry it through the rest of the house. After many discussions, my husband and I decided to put a textured wallpaper onto our ceiling. The texture on the paintable wallpaper that we found, mimicked a tin tile. As you may or may not know, hatching an idea is only the first part of a plan. Actually installing it and deciding upon how to install it is the more difficult aspect of the planning process. 

Our ceiling is sloped, it is almost 12' high on one side of the room and about 8.5 or 9' on the other. That's high, really high! We opted to put drywall directly on top of the popcorn ceiling. I'm 5' tall. This was going to be challenging!

Enter Drywall Lift. Wow! This saved our backs and a lot of time. We rented it for four hours at Home Depot for approximately $40. Best money spent throughout the process of this reno! It was simple to use and saved our old backs! To use the drywall lift, you place your sheet of drywall onto the lift. You then turn a wheel which lifts the sheet of drywall and levels it with the ceiling. Turn the wheel until the sheet perfectly meets up with the ceiling and then screw it into the existing ceiling. So simple. If you've already marked the studs on the ceiling, you line your drywall screws up with your markings. Even more simple. 

In order to save money, we made sure all prep work was completed before picking up our Drywall Lift. 

Ok. That joke never gets old. Stud Finder!!!!  I'm sure my hubby is tired of it! I have always claimed to be a "stud finder," that's how I picked him! Regardless as to where my talents lay, he always insists on using the little yellow thing that beeps and lights up to find studs. He marked them right onto the ceiling with a marker to use as a reference when screwing the new drywall onto the ceiling. He also picked up a nifty little lighting cutter to cut out light fixtures. The lighting cutter looked like a compass and cut perfect holes into the drywall which fit over the lighting boxes. All of this work was complete before the Drywall Lift was picked up. 

I also started priming walls as a new ceiling deserves a new wall colour. Currently, my favourite colour is Vintage White. If that even counts as a colour!  I'm slowly painting the whole house to white and grey. I'll add additional colours with beautiful accents. Like my teal coffee maker, my red Kitchen Aid or funky throw pillows.

Once the drywall boards were installed, we used drywall tape to cover seams, after the tape was dry, we installed the wallpaper. Maybe you know this about me, maybe you don't? Instructions aren't fully my thing. Sometimes there's just a better way. Anytime my husband and I install wallpaper, we use wall adhesive, pictured below, there's no wetting preglued sheets of paper for me!!!!  Way too messy!!! I love this product and use it all of the time, even with preglued paper. You simply paint the surface and the back of the wallpaper and then position accordingly. It dries quickly but you still have some time to push out air bubbles or reposition your paper. Similar to water installation but less drippy, sticky and wet. 

When painting on your glue, you're going to need a long clean space. The hallway was just perfect! We glued our sheets horizontally across the ceiling, right over the lighting boxes. Holes to accommodate lighting were marked and cut, after the fact. 

This was certainly tiring work. The long weekend I budgeted to complete the job was nuts. Glue needs time to dry, especially if you're painting your ceiling grey. We had to allow 24 hours for the glue to cure before painting, which gave us time to stop, enjoy our kids and attend a family dinner. A girl's gotta have some fun!

We chose a grey paint for the ceiling. When painting a ceiling, you need a relatively thick paint, otherwise it drips. Also, when you're working with texture, you require a high pile roller. However, even with a high pile roller, it was challenging to achieve full coverage. Get ready for some hard work, many coats of paint and perhaps even stippling with a paint brush while standing on the top rung of the ladder. 

Work hard, be patient (I totally wasn't), enjoy time with someone you love and this job will make you feel accomplished by the time you're done. I'm so happy with my NOLA Kitchen. 

Please feel free to comment below if you have any concerns, questions or you just enjoyed this Big Idea. Thanks for reading!!