Twofer Tuesday 2: The problem with Pinterest

Given that I probably lost any and all readers with the title alone, I feel like I need to put a disclaimer here and say that I love Pinterest. I am as addicted as any self-respecting crafter. This post is simply an example of a problem with using it…just…you’ll see.

While scouring on Pinterest a week or so ago, I stumbled across a great idea for upcycling wine bottles: take an empty bottle, paint it a fun color, paint a portion with chalkboard paint, and wrap some twine/string around the neck of the bottle. It looked really cool, and it looked easy. So I repinned it for something to do later.

I had a few bottles stacking up, so I decided to work on it this week. Since I had Monday off, it seemed like a great project to do while I watched some horror films. Easy! I grabbed a bottle, nabbed some of my favorite paint colors, and settled down at the coffee table to see what I could do.

Even after peeling for 15 minutes, all the little sticky pieces were on the bottle

Clean and ready for a coat of paint…or so I thought

As it turns out, acrylic paint doesn’t coat glass very well – at least not the first coat. Apparently this is common knowledge, but I had no idea because, for most of my life, I have been craft-challenged. I’ve looked it up by now, so I know that you have to prime the glass – one person suggested Mod Podge matte finish, which of course I have upstairs!

The paint just moves around on the glass…

My point here is that, since I found the craft idea on Pinterest, there was not a handy how-to guide for this project. Today I tried to find the origin, but after following the path back through about 5 users, and I still couldn’t find the original source. A little bit more digging suggests that the original source was Etsy, which means that there was no guide in the first place because someone is selling them.

I also get a lot of ideas from Etsy, but I always know to look up how to do something before I start when someone is selling the product because chances are I don’t know how to do it. I don’t mind using Pinterest the same way, but I guess I got it in my head that most of the ideas on Pinterest came with a how-to guide, too. Obviously not.

Of course, a lot of this confusion would be solved if people cited their sources.

English degree strikes again!

Did I mention a chunk of the green paint came off? So I went a little crazy…

So…what next? Good thing I’ve got that pile. I’ll start another one later this week…or next, so I can finish Joey’s bday presents in time.

Twofer Tuesday 1: Guest Post!

And I’m back, with a vengeance! Not quite that bad. I was gone for the weekend, visiting friends up in Traverse City. Had a great time, but did not get to writing or crafting so much. No worries, though! My mom, who is an actual, professional writer, was telling me about the cobbler she’s been making, and I thought “oh man! That would make a great blog post!” So here it is. Thanks to her for writing something entertaining and informative – enjoy!

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My daughter Sam (your favorite Polymath and mine) share many things, including a love of cooking and crafting. This may have started when, in an effort to keep my little girl’s active curiosity alive and stave off summer boredom, we would make projects and cook stuff. Thanks to the wonders of technology, the fact that she lives in Michigan and I live in Georgia doesn’t keep us from sharing projects.
Here is one we shared. In Georgia, the blackberry crop is in, the black bears are out and foraging and it is the best local fruit option at the local farmers market at the moment. That is always a priority for me cookingwise… finding local sources and supporting local growers so menu planning is often determined by seasonal finds. So with berries on the brain, I started searching for recipes for a big gathering we were planning.  My husband (and official recipe tester) begged me to make this new recipe that I discovered recently… berry cobbler.
I wish I were in Georgia….
The picture is Jerry’s hand, showing off the pre-party cobblers. And yes, I did make one just for him to stow away.
I love this cobbler recipe so much I asked Sam to let me share it on her page. First, it is easy to remember the amounts and ingredients. For someone as innumerate as I am, this is very important. Second, the ingredients are simple. Everyone who cooks has the ingredients without a last minute trip to the store. Third, you can change it around a little and it won’t mess it up.
I declare this the summer of cobbler!
Here is the link to the site. Love this blogger too. http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2007/08/the_great_cobbl/
Have fun.

Super birthday ideas

My brother turns 11 this year, and while I still need to come to terms with that, I can easily move onto thinking about totally sweet birthday ideas for him in August.

After talking to my mom for a while today, I got a great start. She is redoing his room to be a superhero theme, which I think is about the coolest idea ever. Maybe the only thing cooler would be a Doctor Who theme. But I digress. With that in mind, I’m thinking it’s time to get crafty!

There are so many home decor items for sale with a superhero theme, but I don’t want to just buy something and send it. I would much rather make something specifically for him, but then, isn’t that one of the reasons that we craft? Still, it’s a lot easier to steal an idea than to come up with one, so here is what I’ve found:

Spiderman room from Pottery barn

All kinds of decor at Amazon

Marvel sells stuff, too

Check out all of these products

And etc.

There are just as many craft websites with how-to’s and examples of completely remodeled rooms. Of course, since I’m not there, and I can’t just go in like a whirlwind, I need to keep things kind of low key. I’m thinking maybe some wall decor, a door sign, self-made decals, etc. Mom requested a curtain, which I am happy to do.

So here are some fabric ideas:

Marvel Retro Comics Packed Superheroes Multi Fabulously retro, courtesy of fabric.com

Marvel Comics Superhero Names on Beige - Fat Quarter Quilt Fabric Some of Marvel’s big guns, or at least their titles

DC Comics Batman Joker's Back - Fat Quarter Quilt Fabric For a little more variety, try some DC comics

These would make a good curtain – maybe even sheets or pillow cases.

As for other projects, I’m thinking his name in wooden letters, decoupaged with comics. O paper letters on a string?

Decoupaged letters here.

My concern with the wooden letters is that they are kind of becoming cliché, and no offense, but my brother is totally original, so he deserves totally original stuff, too. Which is why I’m leaning toward paper letters on a string, a la wedding banners.

Regardless, I’m going to try to draw him some stuff, too. Maybe frame it, maybe use it for the decoupage, but I think that would be fun.

I am out of town again this weekend, so no posts from me. Be on the lookout for a guest post, though!

 

Beware Thursday the 12th

I should have known when I woke up to Eric’s alarm at 6:30 this morning, an hour and a half after I was supposed to be at work, that it was Thursday the 12th. Most people are more familiar with this dreaded day’s lesser cousin, Friday the 13th, but I can tell you, sitting here with a splitting headache, that Thursday the 12th is the one you have to look out for.

My day started bad yesterday, when I got home from dinner with my mother-in-law and her boyfriend and went straight to bed. I was exhausted. I was so exhausted making sure I had my alarm set slipped my mind. Thus my waking with Eric’s alarm 2 and a half hours after mine usually goes off. I called the store, and they were nice about it, but I had already let myself down. I practically flew out of the house, forgetting my coffee, and laying the foundation for this current headache.

We share a parking lot with a church, IE we have to pull into their lot to get to our driveway. As I’m running out to the garage, I notice that the church has blocked off the entrances/exits to the parking lot. This made me livid; they complained to our leasing agency once because the yard was a little crazy after four days of rain – on the first sunny day, when we could have mowed in the first place! And then they make it a struggle to get out of our own house?!

Once at work, things were fairly straightforward, and for the most part, it was fine. My managers had a sense of humor about my being late, and I offered to stay for my full shift hours, so that I could help ensure the truck was unloaded. I spent the first two hours with a load of boxes that I unpacked and stocked. Then I moved onto restocking some of the wedding stuff, only to find that the planograms that my associate set yesterday were backwards. That means we get to redo them next week.

It wasn’t just me. People around me were having bad luck, too. Items missing, employees being late, and customers wanting to make bogus returns were just a few. (Hint: I was the employee that was late)

At noon, I clocked out, made a few more self-deprecating jokes, and went on my not-so-merry way. I had had no caffeine, so my head had already started to pulse; I didn’t pack much to eat, so I was pretty hungry. I got home and found no coffee in the pot. Since we’re going up North (again) this weekend, we don’t have much in the house food-wise except what we have for dinner tonight. I decided that I deserved to have food delivered to me, so I looked up the number for Jet’s Pizza and called.

But it was apparently the wrong one because they said they didn’t deliver here. They were nice enough to give me the number for the other Jet’s that does deliver, but at the time, the only thing in my mind was “are you kidding? I can’t even order a pizza right today”. I wallowed in self-pity for about two minutes before calling the one closer and ordering.

The pizza was good. I had some soda, too, but it was too little too late.

These are the horrors of Thursday the 12th – the little things that stack up to make your day a grinding pain. The worst thing is that I failed myself. Sure my managers understood my being late, and they weren’t terribly angry, but I failed to maintain my own expectations.

In answer to this dreaded day, I couldn’t bring myself to do anything really awesome. So instead I drew a picture of Deadpool. Here it is, in stages:

Face, arm, and part of hand nearing completion
Almost all done! Only details left.
Koo-koo-ka-choo Thursday the 12th!

Twofer Tuesday 2: If we can’t save this craft, you can be damn sure we’ll avenge it

I’ll be the first to admit that the title is too long, but I really could not help myself.

I’ve seen The Avengers 3 times – not as many as some, but more than I am accustomed to visiting the big screen, so any chance I have to quote the movie is a win in my book. This was one of those chances; I took it.

Along with my cooking adventure today, I finally nailed down an idea for a use for two glass bowls(?) that I got for dirt cheap at the local Goodwill. I had originally intended to do a basic decoupage on them, make them a little more than just glass. Nothing was coming to me, and nothing was shouting at me for an answer. I scoured Google, Pinterest, all of those crafty-people web hangouts, and I couldn’t nail anything down.

Until today! Thank you, Well Dressed Home.

If you follow that link, you will see a series of 6 “profile magnets”, which are pretty much what they sound like. I didn’t have magnets, though, I had bowls(?), so I thought it would probably be even easier. Then I sat around for about a half hour, trying to decide what kind of profile I should design and cut out.

With Dark Knight Rises looming over the horizon, my first thought was the Bat Signal! How epic would that be? But then I realized that I didn’t really have anything to “pop” behind the black signal. I thought about taping some paper down and painting around it, so that the shape would be glass, and the rest would just be painted. But I wanted the bottoms to be completely covered if I could help it.

Then I remembered that I bought some temporary tattoos a while back for testing purposes – i.e. will temporary tattoos stick to wood or glass? They are Avengers tattoos, and the cardboard backing in the package had a big picture of the heroes! Perfect! Avengers is pretty much just as good at Batman, so I would just use that. And I did.

A bowl, some temporary tattoos, and a marker = good times.

But, this being me, there were a few snags.

1. My first thought was to cut out the Avengers’ A from the cardboard, so I would have a colorful A surrounded by a sea of black, or maybe blue. This wouldn’t work because I would have had to cut the A so small that you would not see the characters at all.

Circle of heroes!

Math! Had to make my A the right way…

What’s it pointing to?

2. It did not occur to me that the bottom of the dish is concave where I would be pasting things, so when I slathered the whole shebang in Mod Podge, it didn’t stick because there was nothing to stick to but the sides.

3. Having not foreseen number 2, I had glued the black paper A to the cardboard before making sure it would fit, so I had to peel the A off of the cardboard and stick it on separately, which resulted in some interesting positioning requirements later.

Don’t glue unless you’re absolutely sure…

4. After sticking the A to the concave center, the cardboard still would not stick to the sides well with Mod Podge alone, so I ended up just super gluing it to the sides.

This will work for now…good thing I had super glue.

My next step, I think, is to buy some cheap comics that I wouldn’t mind cutting up and decoupaging over the main attraction in the bottom of the dish. That would add an extra layer to secure the bottom, and it might make it pop a little bit more.

But wait, you cry! Weren’t theirtwo bowls(?)?

Yes there were. There still are. I didn’t break the other. I went a little bit more, ah, chic for the second one. We have these great coasters monogrammed with “S”. They are black and cream, so they go with anything, and I like to think they are rather classy.

So I traced the S onto a page from a book of Milton poems (not Paradise Lost…one of his lesser known ones) and cut it out. The S was not perfect. It came out a little bit…”wibbly wobbly” to use the Doctor’s term. But that’s okay. I ModPodged that sucker down, and then I painted the glass around it black. I still need to do a sealing varnish coat, but I want to wait about 24 hours before doing that.

The Wibbly Wobbly S bowl(?)

So despite my rather late start, I think I accomplished quite a bit today. Tomorrow is a work day, and I my mother-in-law is coming for a visit in the evening, so I will not promise a post. Until next time, then, keep it crafty!

P.S. Post number 42! Woohoo!

Twofer Tuesday 1: Dinner for two

I had the day off today, and with so much time on my hands, I have to admit I was not as productive as I would have liked. Sure, I could blame Netflix and X-Men or Janet Evanovich (guilty, fast food reading pleasure, anyone?), but the truth is, I was just feeling lazy.

Until about 2pm. Maybe the key for me to take away here is that, since most days I get home around 11, go through a normal morning routine, and start doing stuff (technical term) in the afternoon, my new start time is just after noon. I can make peace with that. I can work with it. And I did. In the past 3 and a half hours, I have been a busy polymath.

First, I spent some time in my craft room, which will be the highlight of my second post today, after everything is done. Between drying layers, I still managed to get some reading in, too.

And then I got it in my head that I should just go ahead and make homemade macaroni and cheese. Now, usually this entails just mixing some cheese in with the cooked pasta and baking it. That alone is more exhilarating, not to mention fancy, than the usual mac&cheese from a box. Relax, we buy Annie’s, so it’s not that bad. It’s not like I keep a box of Kraft macaroni around…all you foodie types eying me like that. 😉

So, onto my actual point here. I got it in my head to make a cheese sauce, yes, a roux, followed by a saucy béchamel, if you can believe it. Because I can’t. It actually worked, even. First try and everything.

Honestly, now I’m a little concerned. I have this blister on my toe that is unnervingly large and a little painful, and then this comes out well. Am I trading culinary success for a strange foot disease? If I am, I’ll take a tough, discolored and unworkable roux over the disease any day.

But that’s not appetizing at all, and I apologize.

So here are some pictures of the sauce, the baking, and the final product with a few pinches of a paprika on top. Mmm mmm mmm! It’s the cheesiest…

Trial, error, and sloppy work

Work today was nice and fast, and I spent about a half hour afterward shopping. I bought some materials for Eric to make some new wash for our miniatures, and I also picked up a few possible TARDIS supplies.

I had thought about buying a flat, square jewelry box, along with some pine planks to extend the height of the box. I even made peace with the fact that, if I went the jewelry box idea, I might not get a very convincing replica. Still, I didn’t want to buy all of these supplies, bring them home, build the thing, and find that something didn’t work. My main fear was that the paint would not look authentic, or at least not enough for me. So today I just bought a pine plank and the blue paint.

When I got home, I set myself up to paint two fake doors on the plank, this way I would have one door for the jewelry box that would look like the two-panel front of the TARDIS. The base coat looked promising. I like the blue that I picked out because it’s reminiscent of the classic police box look, so that was definitely a success.

Alas, as I was looking at the plank, I realized that painting two panels on it would not work; the panels would be too tall and narrow. And the plank itself is not tall enough, not to mention that if I used two planks per side, I would have a hilariously large jewelry box. I need to rethink this plan now – either I need to build a TARDIS, or I need to build a jewelry box. One must come before the other.

I am calling this a partial success. I like the blue (yay!) and I didn’t pay $20ish just to find that my idea wouldn’t work out to my absurdly high standards. Obviously, since I am not sharing a heart-warming story of TARDIS building and clever pictures of a blue police/jewelry box, it was not a complete success. I’ll take it, though.

So back to the drawing board. I found a great picture of a TARDIS in the process of being built, which showed the frame. That is super helpful. What I’m thinking is I’ll just make the police box, not worry about jewelry, and then maybe make a jewelry box another time.

With a blue plank of wood, I just fiddled around with it. One side was an attempt at one of the panels of the TARDIS, but when it turned sour, I did some very shoddy Galifreyan symbol on it. On the other side, I just wrote “Allons-y” with a Sharpie, also fairly shoddy, all things considered.

Regardless, this blog is not just about showing off my successes. I also have to show the work that I’m not proud of, so here you are.

Sunday Dinner (from scratch)

The original plan today was to go down to the beach, but schedules didn’t quite sync, and by the time we would have been ready, there would have been a line of cars waiting to get in. Besides, we had some errands to run (namely, return a shower head and buy the supplies to make a dress form).

With a whole day ahead of us and myself being woefully short the supplies to build a TARDIS, I decided to focus on dinner. I love to eat; I love to cook, and I love pushing myself to rely as little as possible on store-bought items. Part of that stems from a desire to avoid the long list of additives, and the other, larger part, is all about the bragging rights. I mean, obviously, I blog about this stuff all the time, right?

Sundays always make me think of early pasta dinners. And donuts. But I didn’t have donuts.

What I did have were 2 lbs of Roma tomatoes, garlic, spices, broccoli, some chicken sausages, flour, eggs, and salt. In other words, I had everything I needed for a scrumptious Sunday dinner…made from scratch. For bragging rights.

The sauce is easy; I’ve done it before. The first time, I used my cousin Vinny’s recipe and technique, which yielded delicious results, as expected. Eric liked it, too. Today, however, I had a whole lot of tomatoes, and I wanted to make something a little bit thicker that I could freeze and use like canned sauce later. So I kept the seeds, blended everything, and I added a little bit of cornstarch to thicken it up. It came out great. There is nothing quite like fresh sauce.

The sauce: Cut slits in the tomatoes (the shape of an X) and stew in near-boiling water for about 4 or 5 minutes. Check one to make sure the skin comes off easily. If it does, place them in cold water, so you don’t burn yourself! Peel the tomatoes, chop them up, and throw them in the blender. Add a teaspoon of garlic, some onion powder, some Italian spices, a couple of squirts of balsamic vinegar, and if you want, a pinch of cornstarch. Blend it. Done!

The new part, though, was finally using the pasta maker that Eric got me for my birthday this year. It’s just been sitting in its box in the kitchen, looking at me forlornly every time I walked by. Not today! I pulled that sucker out today and made my first-ever batch of fresh pasta, too.

Flour, eggs, a pinch of salt, and some olive oil – that was it. The pasta maker was great; it’s not electric. It’s a Marcato Atlas 150, crank powered, but still easier than rolling out the dough and cutting it by hand.

The pasta: 1 cup all-purpose flour, 1 cup whole wheat flour and salt go in a bowl – mix these together. Lightly beat three eggs and pour them into the middle of the flour. Mix this as much as you can; if it doesn’t mix well, add some water or olive oil. I still had some wheat flour that was stubborn and didn’t mix. That’s okay. There was still plenty. Follow the directions on your pasta maker, dry pasta for about an hour, then cook desired amount for 2 minutes. Voila.

Then I sauteed some broccoli and those sausages, let the sauce simmer, and after about an hour of drying, I cooked up half of the pasta I made today. It was amazingly fresh. The pasta absorbed the sauce better than anything I’ve cooked from the store; it was salty and chewy, and the sauce was very fresh. All in all, I think it was one of the better Sunday dinners I’ve made.

It was a great way to end the weekend and get ready for the week. Especially one where I have to start my days at 4am.

Now…what for dessert? Oh, I know…some cookies!

PICTURES!

Mmmm! Cookies! (And TARDIS update)

Nothing says warm weather like baking! Well, okay, maybe that’s not entirely true, but I decided to try a new cookie recipe today. You can find it here.

If you’re not a recipe-reading type, then I will give you the basics: whole wheat flour, oats, granulated and brown sugar, vanilla, egg, baking powder, salt, butter, and canola oil. Oh – and chocolate chips. I substituted apple sauce for the oil because that’s what I had on hand, and I like that it is naturally sweet. Also, the recipe calls for you to blend the oats, but I opted to keep them…oatish. I prefer them that way.

Everything you need to be delicious cookies…

One thing I liked about this recipe is that it calls for you to whip the butter first, and I think that made a difference.

Point of interest: for some reason, I keep forgetting that I bought a cheap hand mixer at the dollar store one day when I was in Arkansas. I remember today, thanks to the recipe calling for one, and I used it. Boy was it easier. I didn’t use it for the dry ingredient mixing because, well, I don’t want my kitchen covered in flour.

All my dry ingredients say “WHAT?!”

Just whipping up some cookies…get it? Ha ha…
Cookies: the re-mix

The other thing I did different this time was that, as I added each ingredient, I put it away. Usually I do the mixing and then put everything away when I’m done. But I found I kept better track of what I’d used, and the clean up during bake time was easier. I always clean my dishes while my goodies are baking. Let’s call it “earning the calories I’m amount to consume”.

It’s gettin’ hot in here…I’d say about 350.

A clean kitchen is a happy kitchen

Final verdict: delicious. These are just what I needed. I kept fighting the urge to bake cookies because I thought the craving would pass. But then I ended up eating half of the semi-sweet morsels that I had leftover from the brownies I made last. When I went food shopping today, I had to buy more, so I just caved and baked. I’m so glad I did.

All two dozen of those goodies.

As for a TARDIS update: I have the plans pretty much done, though I will have to modify them a bit. Just a point of clarification that I am modifying the plans ahead of time, in a sober and clear-headed fashion. This is not like the path to failure…yet. I did not buy any of the supplies today, but I did spend about an hour browsing.

I am finding it hard to get the exact sizes that I wanted – I mean, unless I order them specifically from a supply store or something. So I am having to be flexible.

Today I found a square jewelry box that I can dismantle, add some new, taller wooden sides, and then glue the top back onto the then extended box. The problem is the door(s). The TARDIS has one small door, which, to be accurate, would require two separate panels on the front. But, for the life of me, I cannot find the correct size panels. My way around this, then, is to simply buy 4 large wood pieces, and add some strips to make it look like two panels.

This makes no sense, does it? Sorry!

Oh, and for those of you unfamiliar with the TARDIS, here is what it is supposed to look like:

Time and Relative Dimension in Space…also, my future jewelry box

Completely Unexpected Bonus Post!

http://tardisbuilders.com/

Where has this website been all my life?

Have I been living under a rock? Perhaps a tree? In all of my wildest, geekiest, craftiest moments, how did I never think to search for a website like this?

How have I never made a TARDIS?!

This must be corrected immediately.

Starting tomorrow, a new project takes center stage. Ladies and gentlemen, I am going to build a TARDIS. Maybe a small one at first, say, a jewelry box, but this is so on!