I try my best to trash up every single recipe I can find and this oatmeal is no exception.

My mom acquired a cockatiel a few months back and I had a mini photo shoot with him the other day.

In the midst of renovating our house we've accumulated quite the junk pile. I can't even remember where all of the stuff came from but I know it came out of our house somewhere! My husband keeps saying that he wants to burn the pile, but after one too many Pinterest browsing sessions, I'm begging him to hold off.

"I CAN USE THIS STUFF!" I exclaim, which probably leaves him beyond annoyed. You see, when I go on Pinterest too long, I start to think that I can make anything out of anything. The problem is finding the time to construct the stuff. For now, I'm just hoarding all.the.boards outside in the junk pile.

I actually did made one thing out of them, though, which is the salvaged wood coat rack that I'm sharing today.

Because of the great memory card loss of 2016, I don't have any before pictures of this beauty. It started off with a piece of random salvaged wood and turned into this awesome coat hanger. My husband surprised me one day by cutting, sanding and using a router on the piece of salvaged wood I picked out. He cut it the precise length of our coat nook so it's almost a perfect fit. Then I painted it in Annie Sloan Chalk Paint® Antibes Green.

Side note: I bought a 32oz can of Antibes Green paint and I'm slowing working myself through the house painting everything green. I painted a cute little drawer set this color and I'm planning on putting it in the back of the closet for clothing. I figured since I bought a so much of it, I might at well use it all up!

After I painted the coat rack, my husband helped me space out the hooks and drill them into place. I'm terrible at spacing stuff out and measuring. My husband lives for that stuff. We have way too may tape measurers and levels laying around! Being accurate is kind of his jam.

Then, we placed it on the wall and I waxed it later. Now, the wax. At first I was very intimidated by it but once I did my huge project (that I'll fully reveal soon), I kind of got over whatever reservations I had with the wax and just went for it. I actually just waxed it in place.

And that's my 392 word story on a coat rack!

Also, I'd just like to quickly talk about the wall behind the coat rack. It was this weird stuff we picked up at our local Habitat For Humanity ReStore. I have no idea what it was originally used for, but it came in a pretty big piece and rolled up like carpet. It was exactly what we wanted for the wall so we just cut it and nailed it up there!

One of my biggest pet peeves in the kitchen are cabinets without hardware. I don't know why but it makes me crazy! I totally understand not putting hardware on cabinets, though! It can get expensive and drilling the holes in the doors can be tedious. Our hardware is just the cheap stuff and ended up being over $60! Personally, I think it makes the cabinets look a lot better. Our cabinets already had the drill holes for the hardware so we didn't really have a choice to put them in or what style to get. I really like the cabinet knobs, but it was drilled out for the pulls. 



Here's a link to the cabinet pulls if you're interested.

This is kind of embarrassing to admit, but I felt totally unprepared when I picked out our new appliances.

But first, let's talk about our current appliances. I'm not even going to share pictures because they are much too embarrassing.

Stove
We got our current stove from my aunt almost 9 years ago. She completely remodeled her kitchen and got new stainless steel appliances. The stove sat in her garage for a while before it came to us. As far as ovens go, it's pretty awesome considering it's at the very least 10 years old. It's an electric stove and has the fancy glass top for cooking. To be honest, I never really baked a ton of things in it to really test it out for accuracy. Like, I wouldn't know if anything bakes evenly in it. If it can make some pizza rolls on a cookie sheet without tasting too bad, it's considered a decent oven for me! I'm planning on doing a lot more cooking in the new house, though!

Refrigerator
This was a freebie from the previous owner when we got the place so I have no idea how old it actually is. It's probably 10 years old at the very least. Again, it's been a decent refrigerator. Sometimes it makes really loud noises, but it hasn't quit yet!

Washing Machine
I love our washing machine. We got it from the pastor who married us right before our wedding. It was in his rental home. It's also approximately 342,232,655, years old. Seriously. It has been the most reliable appliance we've owned. Sure, it doesn't really clean our clothes to the capacity we think it should, but it still works. Every time it turns on is a plus in my book!

Dryer
We got our original dryer when we got our washing machine, so that thing was probably just as old. Then, one day it just stopped actually drying the clothes and would run forever. Seriously, one day we left for a few hours and turned the dryer on before we left. When we came back home, the dryer was still running and the clothes weren't dry. We bought a new dryer probably 7 years ago. We needed a dryer and that was the cheapest new one we could find in a hurry. So far, it has been okay.

Now you can see why I had NO IDEA how to pick out new appliances! Besides the dryer, I've never had new appliances. I wasn't about to haul our old appliances to the new house, though! Even though they've been decent appliances, I wanted something new and hopefully more energy efficient. Something that I won't have to worry about breaking down.

Here's what I ended up picking out:

(Sorry for the blurry pics. I was standing in the store taking pictures of appliances like a weirdo!)

Refrigerator



This was my only real splurge. Guys, this thing has an ice maker in it. My current refrigerator has an ice cube tray in it that I filled up with sink water. I don't know who I am anymore. I'm still in awe. I'm like 'The ice makes itself and dumps into this tray in the freezer?!'. The funny thing was that we weren't even going to hook up the icemaker! We thought icemakers were a waste of time but then we realized the ice makes itself and dumps into a tray in the freezer and thought it was totally cool. I also wanted a refrigerator with a freezer at the bottom and absolutely loathe side by side refrigerators. I just don't understand them. It's like they say they have all of this cubic feet and I can't even get my hand in there so how am I supposed to get my food in there? This had everything I was looking for and even though the price was ridiculous, it wasn't the most expensive fridge ever.

Oven


Because I'm not a chef, I obviously wanted a convection oven. My mom has one that she loves and she makes some pretty awesome food, so that's really why I got one. My pizza rolls never tasted so good! This was actually the cheapest convection oven so that's why I chose it. It also has a warming center, which I thought was pretty cool.

Washer & Dryer



These were the next step up from the cheapest ones. I wanted something that wasn't too expensive and could clean our clothes. I'm just excited at the thought of actually having clean clothes!

Wow, that was a lot of information! Too much?