Alternate Names for This Blog

Yes, I'm Single.

Things Living in Alabama Drove Me To Do

Ways to Ruin Your Manicure

I Have No Social Life to Speak Of, and Other Adventures

Everyone at the Local Home Depot Knows my Name

"Stripping" Isn't What You Think it is, You Sicko

I Need Attention from Strangers Google-ing "DIY Projects"

This Blog Will Never Turn into a Coffee Table Book Sold at Urban Outfitters

A Weird Neighbor Called Me a "Lady Carpenter" One Time, and Other Gender Stereotype Based Insults

I Own a Staple Gun. It Simultaneously Delights and Terrifies Me (Much Like I Imagine Owning a Bengal Tiger Would)

Pictures Featuring Furniture in Foreground, Dog in Background

God Have Mercy on Our Souls When I Actually Purchase a Home

Love: Blue Rooms

 Ugh. You guys. Sorry it's been so long.
I've been doing a lot of home stuff. Like paintings and stripping tables (it's not what it sounds like. you are a sick person.) and buying vintage desks to paint and re-re-upholsering (that's two different fabric changes) chairs and experimenting with gold leafing. We'll get to all of that once I can upload pictures and follow through. I promise to do better.

Until then, I'd like to talk about something I love. The color blue. For rooms. As a renter, I can't do this. And it's killing me.


Do you guys remember that song Blue by Leann Rimes? This was popular back when times were simpler. Remember? Children drank soda pop and malts from striped straws, people strolled in verdant parks unconcerned with becoming inspiration for the next Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, and dear sweet Leann Rimes was years away from being the silicone-filled, husband-stealing, home-wrecking skank she is today.

Ah, the halcyon days.

Anyway, blue is a much better color for rooms than for a song.

Let's take a look.

This darker blue is just HEAVEN isn't it. And the white molding? And everything else in this room? One day, friends. One day.

Could this be any crisper? (no)

A wallpaper option.

Blue cabinetry.

Less dramatic, but still nice. Like for a teenager? Like if you were a stepmom/dad and wanted to be "cool"/ wanted them to like you.

A bit more understated 

Love the floor, rug, and wall color. Hate the china on the walls. It looks like a lot of plates fell off during an earthquake or something. What is that about. 

I mean, it's the White House. How great is this? 

A much better use of patterned china.

Wasn't that nice? Looking through these rooms that none of us have? But could? One day? 

If you are inspired right now, Martha Stewart has a "Decorating by Color" section of her website that can be found here for suggestions about incorporating blue in various ways. Most are good. Some, like those awful gingham fabric stools, are questionable.

Easy DIY: Polka Dot Painted Lampshade

The base I've had since my apartment in Boston, and the lampshade is a plain white one from Target.

I basically just bought a few different silver paints on sale at Michaels and tested them on white card stock to see how they would look. I also got a couple of different objects I thought could make cool circles.

A lot, like the mini corks I bought, were too small for this project. I settled on this round sponge brush:

I started out smushing a lot of paint on the sponge brush, and pressing it down evenly. I have things to do with my life so I wasn't going to measure out and mark exactly where the polka dots should go. I like the randomly spaced and placed dots look. If you want to measure and mark, go right ahead and send me a picture.

After the all 4 sides were done, I was all "meh..." I wanted the paint to look thicker? And, somehow, more interesting?

So I loaded on the paint and pressed it down over each dot.
It got this really cool antler or tree branch-y type look to it?

It dried and BAM. Done.

Easy DIY: Ugly Candlestick Painting

 

 

Here is a super quick and easy do it yourself-er. It came to me as I wandered the aisles of a local thrift store.

You'll need:
- metal candlesticks. I like varying heights. I like odd numbers. 5 is too many. Unless you want a matching pair or something. Whatever. I'm not your boss.
- Spray primer
- Spray paint
- Outside place

What happened is that I was in the thrift store, considering the pros and cons of buying charming mismatched china tea cups, saucers, and salad plates. Whimsical? Dumb? I wasn't sure.

But then, but THEN, I wandered into the tchotchkes aisle.

Serving trays, Precious Moments knock-off figurines (as if the originals weren't terrible enough), things made of glass and plastic, and candlesticks.

I thought "Huh. I like this, but I don't have the kind of home where I can just go around putting brass candlesticks everywhere." Then, "I will paint them."

I picked up a bunch, then narrowed the selection down to 3 by arranging them together and seeing what looked best, like SO:

I washed them, and took them outside.

I primed them using spray primer. Paint primer would have left a lot of brush marks that really aren't going to work with this project. I guess you COULD, but you'd have to wait for the primer to dry, then sand the crap out of it. Then do it again. Not for me.

I made sure every angle was covered and that the stream of primer was even.

There must be a better way to do this, but I don't know what that is. So this is what happened to my hands.

Look! They're blue! (and on the newly stained side table! See that project here.) 

Final arrangement, avec candles.

DIY Project: The Time I Stained the Vintage Side Table

So, once upon a time I lived on a Navajo Reservation. I got almost all of my furniture at Goodwill, with the exception of the leather couch my dad bought me at basically an abandoned warehouse in Gallup, NM called Big Bears Furniture Depot or Big John's Things and Other Stuff or something.

After my first year, this kid Josh moved from the Reservation to a real place like California and he gave a lot of his crappy stuff away.
He piled up everything on his porch and was like "Hey guys, I'm leaving stuff I don't want on my porch."
I acquired a really beat up vintage side table and a crooked wooden stool. When I left the Rez, I gave a lot of my stuff away, included the crooked wooden stool, but brought the table with me to Alabama.

The table was a...meh... color, beat up, and bothered me with its 70s-ness. I hated the table, but it's still a table, you know? And who am I that I think I'm too good to need this table. I can put things on it. And you can lift off the top and there's this little tray inside, which is nice. Also, it's real wood and not particle-board or something, so, a win there.

Here is the top of the table before. It had tons of scratches and marks and sadness.

The bottom of the table before. 

It still had some varnish and clear coating on it, especially on the lower part and the tray.

So I sanded it. A lot. 

A LOT OF SANDING HAPPENED. 

It would have probably been a lot easier to strip the table instead of cleaning and sanding it. 

But stripping furniture is frightening. Also, it was a zillion degrees outside that day so 

sanding inside > using chemicals outside

 

 (Ever noticed that my dog finds his way into a lot of the photos on this blog? I don't know how, but I think he senses the camera. Also, he's very clingy.)

I bought Minwax "Jacobean" stain. It's the darkest stain that isn't black. 

Here's how staining works:

1. clean and sand wood

2. brush on even layers of stain in the direction of the wood

3. wait for a few minutes...like 5...or 15 if you want to give it more time

4.  wipe off the stain with a cloth that doesn't have a lot of lint....

5. Repeat, or don't. It's up to you. 

I don't know what I thought staining would be like, but it wasn't really what I expected. I guess I thought you brush on the stain and it dries and you're done. I had no idea you have to let it kind of soak into the wood then take it off?

I did not, repeat, did NOT sand this enough. The parts that weren't bare enough and took about 2 days to dry and I felt very foolish because I wanted instantaneous results. 

Anyway, here's what that looked like after the first stain:

After the second stain:

After it fully dried, which took way longer than it should have if I had just followed directions, I put on the first clear coat of polycrylic.

After I brush on the first coat, it dried, I sanded out the brush strokes, and put on another layer.

 After it was fully dry.

BAM! done.

The Time I Made Mint Ice Cream

So here is what happened.

I came across an ice cream maker for 50% off. So I bought it, because, obviously.

Also, I'm a stress baker. Some people drink or gamble or scrub bathtubs (I'm looking at you, college roommate). Normally, I bake things. Today it was really hot, and I had this new ice cream maker so I made what I really wanted: Mint Chocolate Chip.


 So I googled. And I found an egg-less recipe. This was important because I am both impatient and lazy. Egg-less means you don't have to heat anything up. It also means there are no eggs, so it's less of a custard base? You just throw ingredients in a bowl and stir them.

Let's go on this journey together, shall we?

Supplies

Sugar, Cream, Milk, Salt, Peppermint Extract, Vanilla Extract, Semi-sweet Chocolate Chips

1 cup of Heavy Cream. 1 cup of milk.

1/2 cup of sugar

Add Vanilla to taste. You're supposed to measure it, but, you know. I added drop by drop and taste-tested it until it was good.

Add peppermint extract to taste (same as the vanilla, drop by drop.) This stuff is strong so take it easy. Also, in my extensive 5 minutes of research, I learned one should not use peppermint oil. Extract is where it's at. Now we know.

Stir it until the sugar dissolves.

Into the ice cream maker we gooooo...

So, you wait about 10 minutes until it's firming up a bit and then add the chips.

I thought the regular sized chocolate chips I had on hand might be hard to eat once frozen so I put some of the chips in a ziploc sandwich bag and beat the crap out of them with a meat tenderizer. I added them, handful by handful, into the ice cream maker.

I waited 20 more minutes.

If you were smart, you'd use this time to clean up.I did not. 

Instead, during this time, I got a spoon and tried to sample the ice cream while the machine was stirring. I knew this was a bad idea as I was doing it. However, I thought if I timed it juuuuuuuuuuust so I could get enough on the spoon to taste. What actually happened is that I almost broke the machine by sticking a spoon in it. So...don't do that.



I lifted off the top of the ice cream maker, and it looked like this:

I used a spatula to spoon the ice cream into 2 small tupperwear containers, and put them in the freezer.

After two hours, I took one of the containers out and made a bowl of ice cream.

Here's the Final Product!

What I learned:

- You have to freeze the bottom of the ice cream maker (I'm sure it has a name but don't know what it is) before you can make the ice cream. Probably overnight to be safe. What this means is you should always have it in the freezer JUST IN CASE the spirit moves you and you need homemade ice cream right. now.
- The peppermint tastes much stronger in the mixture before it gets frozen. Next time, I'm going to add the peppermint to taste and then add a bit more than that.
-  The recipe called for green food coloring, but I'm not a child. I knew I wouldn't be confused by something that isn't green tasting like mint. But. You do what you want to do there.
- Peppermint extract, not oil
- Don't put spoons in the mixer.