The Suede Sofa Blog

Easy Sweet and Salty Pretzel Nuggets

This recipe has been a LiFeSaVeR when I need to make a dessert but am short on time. It is the perfect blend of salty and sweet!

Ingredients:

1 16 oz. bag sourdough pretzel nuggets
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup sugar
1 Tb. cinnamon

Directions:

Mix oil, sugar, and cinnamon together and pour over pretzels in oven safe baking dish. Bake for 8-10 minutes at 300 degrees. Take out of oven and stir pretzels around to make sure all pretzels are coated with mixture. Put back in the over for 5 more minutes. Let cool and EnJoY!

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*Stay tuned for my Easy Garlic Pretzel Appetizer version of this recipe!

~Robyn (Jersey Girl)

Farm Boys {& Farm Girls}

So many aspects of SuMmEr take me back to my growing up years living on a farm – the smell of fresh-cut hay, not to mention those deliciously aromatic fresh tomatoes and cucumbers from our garden; the taste of fresh strawberries, fresh corn on the cob, and ice-cold water from a jug on a hot day; the sound of crickets as you lay in bed at night with the windows open (I grew up in SD where it cooled off a bit at night); and the sight of JoHn DeErE GrEeN (yes, my dad really did think that “nothing runs like a Deer”) as well as beautiful sunsets viewed from the cab of a tractor as I was baling hay. This just barely scratches the surface, as the experiences are too numerous to mention.

So when the You Tube video “I’m Farming and I Grow It” went viral just a few weeks ago by the Petersen brothers (they are almost up to 6 million views), Lara and I were thrilled. (Lara is a farm girl as well, lives on a farm, and her husband farms.) It was icing on the cake that one of the Petersen brothers attends KaNsAs StAtE UniVerSiTy where Lara, her husband Doug, and my husband Scott graduated.

One of the things Lara and I love about the video is that it really portrays life on a farm. That really is what farming looks like!! It took both of us back to growing up on the FaMiLy FaRm. (My family did not have cattle, but Lara’s did.) We even laughed about the way they were dressed (jeans, baseball caps, and t-shirts with the sleeves cut out) as they could have passed for boys working on our familys’ farms.

If you’ve never experienced life on a farm and have wondered what it’s like, here it is. At least the way it was on our familys’ farms. We hope you enjoy it as much as we have!

Robynn

Moving A House: Demo Work

In order to MOVE our house, we had to change the overall shape so it could travel a little easier :). First, we had to rEmoVe our mudroom/sunroom area. We were bummed because we finished it a few years ago. It felt a little weird tearing it down so soon!

To save time, Doug and I used the jigsaw to cut out a big piece of the wall we were tearing out, picked it up, and then screwed it back together for our new “temporary wall”. We made an opening for the door and viola! Easy afternoon ProJect ;)

My (awesome) Dad helped me rip up the tile and floor from our old mudroom. He was a HUGE help!

Here is a picture of the back of the house. It is prepped and ready. ChEcK!

Remember my office? We converted half of our garage into my new office a couple of years ago.

Yep…that’s right. We had to rip this out too. (tear!) BUT all we had to do is remove the bottom 4 feet of the sheet rock throughout the entire room (so they could put support beams up during the move). I secretly always wanted wainscoting half-way up my office wall anyway, so this was a bLeSsiNg and not a curse, right?!

Next, the basement! We had to remove anything that hung below the floor, so that meant removing the walls…and the stairs. This got a bit MeSsY!

And all the ventilation…luckily my Dad suggested that we mark all of the vents and the floor joists with letters, so it would be eAsiEr to hang back up. Boy was he right! Doug and I were able to get them hung on a Sunday afternoon after the house was on the new foundation! Yeah!

The last major demo project was the front porch. Had to take that off too. Once we were FiNisHed our house was a perfect rectangle, perfect for hitting the road!

Exterior demo CoMpLeTe! Check!

Now all we need are the moving trucks! Come back next Friday to see the house get lifted!

~Lara

P.S. All Mom’s know how much of a handful it is to watch kids during any type of project. A big thanks to my MOM for watching my kids so Doug, Dad and I could get most of the final demolition accomplished in a weekend!

You Can Do It!

As many of you have read I have struggled with finding the will to exercise for many years now. I’ve made excuses for excuses and had convinced myself that even walking was just too much for me to handle. While reading an article on the beach last week something FiNaLlY sank in and I thought to myself, “Stop making excuses…YoU CaN Do It!” I have a feeling it was the cute pair of pink sneakers that got me, but who cares…I am happy to report that I’ve walked 4 mornings this week and my goal was only to walk 3!

Is there an area in your life that you’ve been neglecting? Maybe it’s not exercise or weight loss, but a hobby you’ve been meaning to get into or a project you started that you’ve been pushing aside or didn’t even start because you thought it was going to be too difficult. Try to remind yourself that starting new endeavors can’t always be easy. Feeling proud about what you’ve accomplished makes it all worth it!

~Robyn (Jersey Girl)

Why MOVE a house?

Well I’m not going to lie, we thought the idea was cRaZy too. We had been trying to sell our home for over 1 ½ years and weren’t having any luck. We wanted to move about 80 miles north so we could live closer to family and live on Doug’s 5^th generation fArM.

Front_View — Front of House–Old Location

Mid-February we discovered how sobering it was to take a loss on the house (in order to get it sold) and spend mOrE money to get the same house in our new location. We liked our house. It was the first home we ever bought and we enjoyed the layout. It was nothing fancy, just a simple home with LoTs oF LoVe. I’ll never forget the conversation when Doug laughed saying, “Too bad we couldn’t just take it with us!”

As extreme as the idea was, we researched to confirm that it was in fact CrAzY. Much to our surprise we wasn’t so WiLd after all! From day one we were impressed with Unruh House Movers and it became more and more apparent that this was the door God opened for us. After meeting their crew, getting the final bid, and not having any hang-ups in the planning process, we were confident this was the direction we were suppose to go.

I don’t know about you, but all the things in my life that didn’t seem “forced” have been the things that bring me the most JoY (and the least amount of stress)! We can all relate to situations that we tried to control, and they never seem to work out like we’d hoped. I cannot TELL you how many hang-ups we had while trying to sell our house yet, once we checked into a HOUSE MOVE, the process came with little difficulty.

We committed with Unruh’s House Movers on April 16th and found a crew that dug our new basement one week later. (see what I mean about it being a God thing?)!

Move 2 — OUR NEW LOCATION! Didn’t hit any rock and got the basement dug in 1 day!

At home, the first thing we did was start pulling up ALL of our patio pavers. If we were going to move, we wanted to take as much with us as we could!

Move 1 — Nothing like picking up over 200 pavers that we laid a few years ago! Eekk!

Come back next Friday for some more pictures of the demo work needed to prep our house for the move!

~Lara

America Is…

Happy InDePeNdEnCe DaY from The Suede Sofa! As we celebrate our FrEeDoM we thought we would share our thoughts on what America means to us.

Robyn: Living in New Jersey, America to me is having the opportunity to take my kids to Ellis Island and show them where my great grandparents became United States citizens, seeing the Statue of Liberty, and catching a Broadway play all in one day! Then hopping in the car and in an hour or so putting our feet in the sand and soaking up the sun on the same beach that my grandparents took my mom to 60 years ago!

Nicholas’ first trip to see The Statue of Liberty

Abby Beach — Abby at Chadwick Beach New Jersey!

Lara: America to me is continuing my husband’s 5^th generation farm legacy of helping feed America and the world.

Leanne Garrett Corn — Garrett and Leanne 2012

Doug and Kids Corn — Counting Pollination!

Robynn:

We thought Rodney Atkin’s song, It’s America was perfect to kick off our 4th of July…we hope you enjoy it too!

We love to hear from our readers. Leave your comments and let us know what America is to you!

Happy 4th of July!!

One of A Kind {4th of July}!!

The 4th of JuLy is one of my favorite holidays. I love everything about it! My family and I have our yearly traditions – early morning walk/run; waffles with strawberries, blueberries and whipped cream; a swim after lunch; and then a big dinner with friends and family topped off with our own FiReWorKs show. It really is a fun day that our family loves and looks forward to.

However, this year is ExTrA SpEciaL. We have also invited some friends over who will be celebrating their first 4th of July as citizens of the United States. Just recently they completed the process of citizenship. I can only imagine the excitement and pride they must be feeling to be a citizen of AmEriCa.

Let freedom ring!!

Wherever you are and whatever you are doing I hope you have a wonderful 4th of JuLy!

Robynn~

Moving Day!

To most people, MoViNg DaY consists of packing up boxes and hauling furniture into a U-Haul or Budget truck. When our moving truck pulled into the yard last week, this is what it read:

That’s right! We MOVED our house! Let me tell ya, God works in such amazing ways. There is no way we would have made this decision if God didn’t make it so easy on us. He guided us every step of the way and the outcome was better than we could have ever planned on our own.

In the upcoming months I will be sharing pictures of the process, the work required to make it happen, our definition of “moving”, and all the other crazy things I did (like giving our kitchen a major facelift only a couple weeks before the move!).

It has been an unforgettable time of our life, but like I said in a previous post, we’ve done well at soaking it all in and making the best of the chaos.

I look forward to sharing this with you! Be sure to check in next Friday for more!

~Lara

Follow Your Heart and Use Your Head

For the past two summers I have enrolled my son in a swim school that offers phenomenal programs to teach children how to swim. He has a summer birthday so it is always hard for me to decide what age group I want him to be with. Last summer I put him with the 3 year olds even though he was turning 4 because it was his first experience swimming, but this summer I decided to put him with the 5 year olds since he did so well last year. What I didn’t factor in was that by moving him to the 5 year olds I was taking him out of the smaller pool where he can reach the bottom and putting him in the bigger pool where he has to rely on his swimming ability. After 3 days of swim school I was already regretting my decision. Nicholas was giving me a hard time about going in the morning and kept saying he wanted to go back to the little pool.

That night I told my husband I was going to talk to the director and get Nicholas switched into the younger group with the 4 year olds so that he could go back into the smaller pool. I tossed and turned all night thinking I had made a terrible decision and that I just wanted to make everything better. I guess the PrOtEcTiVe MoMmY in me had gone into overdrive because I couldn’t wait to get to swim school and fix everything for my little boy. When we got to swim school the following morning I decided that rather than just go to the director and switch Nicholas I should talk to his instructors first and get their opinion. As a teacher I always encouraged parents to come to me with questions or concerns so I thought following my own advice might be a good idea. Nicholas’ instructors assured me that he was swimming with a group of children who are at a level that is perfect for him. They also reminded me that it was Nicholas who expressed interest in swimming in his very first race that same week and he even came in first place. Dropping him to the younger group would allow him to touch the bottom of the pool and make him more comfortable, but it also would never have given him the opportunity to rise to the ChAlLeNgE and SuCcEeD!