Just been one of those days...

I've been trying to write a post about the whole chicken I cooked in the dutch oven for Valentine's day, but I can't seem to finish it. I'm trying to make it as clear as possible because I didn't use a recipe. As hard as I tried to take measurements, and most importantly, keep time, time kind of slipped by me. I'll try and have it finished to the best of my ability soon. It'll just be one of those things I'll have to update/ re-write when I make it again. When it comes to baking I use recipes; you have to use recipes. When cooking, I do everything my look, smell, taste, and...my gut. That last part is hard to get down on paper. Ha!

In other, non-kitchen related news:
We finally finished painting the living room. It's a gorgeous grey called "polished silver" by Valspar; color matched to Olympics non-VOC paint.

We ended up going for a satin instead of an eggshell or flat, because I like a little bit of a sheen to it to give it some depth, and it helped balance out the gloss of all our trim, window borders and wainscoting. However, I wish I had done a tad more research and realized it's really hard to paint with anything but flat paint, because if you're not super careful you'll be able to see the brush marks in certain light and angles. It's not so bad lighting wise in the room; the natural light doesn't really pick it up, nor do our floor lamps. Hopefully no one else will notice??
Here is a picture in-process of painting where you can still see some wet paint, taken with an iPhone, with a large florescent light, lighting up the room. So I promise it looks 100% better then this now:

I have pictures taken with the DSLR, which I'll post with  my next weekend project.

We also picked up some of this:

Yup. Wood. It's for our newest project, a bookcase!
Along that wall I showed you above, we did have an Ikea original in a medium brown. The plan was to maybe pick up a couple more and line the wall, but honestly I hated that book shelf. It's now sitting in my office/ catch-all room.

Instead that long wall will be host to a built in pipe bookshelf! We'll be staining the wood instead of painting it, to bring in some character into the home, and I think the piping will add a nice effect as well as keep things a little lighter feeling then an enclosed book case. Check back for progress and for the final thing! I'll try to document it all!

This post ran long, and wordy. Forgive me, and kudos to you if you're actually still reading. Have a wonderful weekend! I'll be back with recipes on Monday.