bell & basket

cooking. baking. home.

The Pantry! Before and After

We’ve finished the LEAST crucial space in our house FIRST. Forget the bathroom, or the kitchen. No one lounges in the pantry, or eats in it, but I don’t care. I’ve always dreamed of a space to show off my jam jars, pickles and cookbooks. The pantry was a major selling point when we bought this house, despite the scary before pictures.

The former pantry was dated and far from beautiful. It had shelves that were way too deep and items hard to access. When we demo’d the shelves we discovered that this was a place where critters were hanging out, so in hindsight, I’m really glad we started from scratch in this room.

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Five Ingredient Cranberry Sauce

I will keep this short and sweet, just like this five ingredient cranberry sauce recipe. If I were you, I’d appreciate it, because there are likely 300 things you still need to buy, make and do before four o’clock on Thursday.

The best part about this recipe is that it can be made up to a week ahead of the big day and no one will know (or care). But forget to make the cranberry sauce and someone will definitely notice (and complain). I know in my house, if there isn’t cranberry sauce on the table then it’s basically Christmas dinner. And that’s just boring.

So here it is, the most simple, beautiful cranberry sauce in all the land. Flavor it how you like – add ginger if you must, or pecans if you’re strange, but do me a favor – don’t leave it off the table.

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Before: A House Tour

It’s been a little over three months since we bought our Hudson Valley farmhouse and to say that reno-ing a house is the hardest work I’ve ever done is a complete understatement. When we bought the house my expectation was that we’d get tons done during the summer but by the time we got acclimated, cleaned the floors, washed some windows (we still have all the upstairs windows) and bought a bed, we were already a month in.

I will give ourselves some credit – we have completed a few small projects. We’ve painted most of the downstairs (dining, living, bathroom, stairs and entryway) Swiss Coffee by Valspar and laid a cement shower base after our plumber removed the shower insert and installed new plumbing.

We also cleared out the backyard – we tore down a chicken coup, asked our neighbor to cut down a tree and re-built an antique bench (see last photo)!

AND next week our floors are getting refinished to make the house feel bright and clean. Before any of the big work starts (tiling bathrooms, painting the kitchen cabinets, building an island, installing new windows, painting the upstairs bedroom floors), I thought I’d put together a brief “before” house tour.

These pictures are a combination of photos we’ve taken over the last six months (including photos we took before we closed on the house), so you’ll see discrepancies in a few of the photos (painted vs. non painted wall, base board heaters intact vs. not intact). If anyone reading has brilliant reno or design ideas – please comment away!

FIRST FLOOR

Front staircase (and dining room)

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