Tuesday, February 22, 2011

The other was served from a chafing dish...

Cheers to you if you know what song the title is from... Extra special Cheers to you if you know it and are not a Morgenstern! ;)  Anyways- A month or so ago, we were given some stuff from a friend's storage barn.  Among our new-to-us stuff were five chafing dish holding racks.  Our idea for them was to make a fabric basket liner for them, and use them for harvest baskets and around the house.  I finally figured out my new-to-me serger this weekend, and yesterday I made the first liner!  It's secured with ties so it can be removed for washing, and was really quick and easy to make once I figured out how to attach it to the bare bones wire frame of the chafing rack.


And in more fun with repurposing/reusing stuff, Red made me some new shelves in my laundry closet, out of timbers from Lost Mine Timber Co., his timber reclamation company.  Yay!!! (These timbers were reclaimed from the King Coal Mine)  Bet I'm the only housewife with historic reclaimed wood shelving in her laundry room ;)  I love the extra space, and the neatness of it, and I'm excited to find some nice containers for laundry detergent and lint and whatnot at garage sales this spring! (Need something nicer than an old Folgers can!)


Wow, it looks really nice in this picture!  Sure it's clean now; let's hope I keep it that way!  You can't see it, but there's a shelf on top of the cabinets with about three feet of vertical space above it, and there's quite a lot of stuff stored up there, pleasantly out of sight!  And now we each have a basket (on the top shelf in the pic) for our hats and gloves and whatnot! YAY for storage! Even though I can close the doors to it all, I don't want to because it looks so nice now!  

And just for fun, here's Wyatt helping Daddy make bread the other night!  (Who wants to make Red a bumper sticker that says "Real Men Bake"?)  

Monday, February 14, 2011

Happy Valentines Day!!!

Happy Valentines Day to you all!  I hope everyone's day has been wonderful!  Mine has been wonderfully mellow, thanks to my parents taking Wyatt to the rec center to swim and splash and have fun!  I took advantage of the me time and made myself a Valentines gift!  (But Red can take the credit) ;)  I used to love beading when I was a kid but haven't done any beadwork since I was probably 12 or 13 or so, and just last week I dug up my collection of beads that I had stashed in my shed.  I also found a cool bracelet kit out there, and decided why not make it!  And so I did!
 It was a lot of fun, and totally reignited my love of jewelery making!  So later last week, I decided to splurge a bit, and I bought some white freshwater pearls to make a necklace for myself! (But hardly a splurge, they were $7 at Walmart!)  So today, during my downtime I made myself this necklace!


I'm really excited to make more jewelery! I have a number of cool beads and stones and pendants from old necklaces that fell to disrepair or just could use some new life, and I'm excited to give them that new life!  I'm really thinking of making jewelery to sell on etsy or something similar, as it's relatively quick work and I have so many beads already (and therefore don't need to purchase much of anything to get going).  It's fun and satisfying work, and I'm so glad to be getting back into it! 

Sunday, February 13, 2011

A Chandler for the weekend!

No, not the character from Friends, a candlemaker!  I received a box full of candlemaking supplies, and decided this weekend to make candles!  I've done it before but not for years, and not with as nice supplies!  In the box (among many other things) was about 10 pounds of gorgeous beeswax, so we started out with that.  I absolutely love the smell of beeswax, and it burns so nicely!  We made some in molds, others in mason jars.  And it was a group project, as Trent, Sherry and John came over to hang out and help out!

Today, after taking the candles out of the molds, I decided why not keep at it, since we had all the equipment out anyways!  So instead of using fresh wax, we melted down all the random chunks and old pieces of candles we've saved over the years, sorted by color so we could try some layering!  Many of the bits and pieces were from scented candles, and combining them all made for some interesting and very nice new scents!


Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Orville Redenwhateverhisnameis ain't got nothin on me!

I don't know about you guys, but lately, we've been broke, so what doesn't get spent on bills goes to grocery essentials like milk and eggs, with no room for splurges on snack foods.  This is just fine with me, cause processed food only tastes good until you look at the ingredients label... (And if it still tastes good after that, well...)  So part of our new routine is coming up with yummy snacks from scratch.  We do variations on bread, and that's great, and I've tried making crackers and things, but nothing quite satisfies cravings for something salty and/or sweet and/or crunchy like kettle corn! (in fact it satisfies all three all at once!)  I don't really like buttered or plain popcorn, but kettle corn I could go nuts for (and do), but didn't know how to make it myself.  Sure, a package of microwave popcorn is super easy and quick, but it is not cheap considering what popcorn actually is... Plus who knows what weird stuff is in the microwaved kind (I don't know, since I don't have any on hand, but use your imagination)  After doing some research online and a few trial runs, I have successfully made the most awesome, delicious, addictive, and cheap snack food ever.  If you've never popped corn on the stove (and I don't mean in one of those UFO foil thingies), there is nothing to be scared of if you pay attention to what you're doing, and the end result is even better than the microwaved kind and takes the same amount of time.  And now, without further ado, but without a photo cause I ate it all before I could take a picture cause it was too damn good, my recipe for homemade kettle corn!

What you need-
A large sauce pot with a good fitting lid, preferably see through (the lid)
oven mits or potholders if the pot and lid have metal handles
about 1/4 cup vegetable oil (enough to completely coat the bottom of the pan, but not be deep)
1/4 cup popping corn
2-3 tablespoons white sugar
salt to taste

What to do-
Put the oil in the saucepan, and place three corn kernels in the pan, and turn on the heat (medium-high is good).  Wait until all three kernels pop, and pour in the rest of the kernels.  Holding the lid on tight, every 10 seconds or so lift the pot and shake it around to keep the kernels or any popped kernels from burning.  Once about half the kernels are popped, carefully pour in the sugar (but beware as kernels might fly out of the pot if you take the lid too far off.  It's best to have the sugar in one container that you can dump in all at once rather than dumping the sugar in a spoonful at a time).  Adding the sugar will slow if not stop the popping, but keep shaking the pot every few seconds to help distribute the sugar and keep the kernels and sugar from burning.  The rest of the kernels should pop within a minute or so.  When the popping slows to one pop every couple seconds (just like when you microwave popcorn), quickly dump all the popcorn into a bowl.  (It's not enough to take the pot off the heat, if you leave the popcorn in there the sugar will burn and so will the popcorn)  Sprinkle on some salt and stir the popcorn around with a spoon *IT WILL BE EXTREMELY HOT!!!* Don't burn yourself on molten sugar!  Let the popcorn cool a bit before you enjoy!  It will be so worth the wait!

That all may sound involved, but it really isn't!  The whole process takes maybe 4 minutes, and the end result is SO much better than anything out of the microwave!  You can fiddle with the amount of sugar and salt, and most recipes I found say to add the sugar at the same time as the kernels, but I found that adding it halfway through the popping practically eliminates any risk of burnt sugar, while still giving an even coating.  This recipe will yield a big bowl of popcorn, certainly enough for me and Wyatt to share, but if you're serving a crowd or just really really love popcorn, feel free to double it (but keep in mind you'll need a pretty big sauce pot).  I'm not sure how much one bag of microwave popcorn costs, but I have a feeling it's much much more than what this recipe costs, which I estimate to be around $0.10 total.  (The $2.50 bag of popping corn I bought yesterday yields 28 servings at 1/4 cup per serving (and I'm sure you can find popping corn for cheaper than that, but I happened to be in a specialty grocery store), which is $.08 per serving, plus a trivial amount of oil and sugar and salt, which I am generously valuing at $.02)  I can't think of ANYTHING that you can get a big bowl of for only ten cents... Not potato chips, not even flour or milk or bottled water or rice or anything!

And if you're a crazy person and don't like kettle corn (but I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't, especially not the homemade kind), you can always stick to plain ol' salt on your popcorn, or melt a little butter, or a personal fave of mine- nutritional yeast and Parmesan cheese!  (Seriously, if you've never had nutritional yeast on popcorn, do yourself a favor and go buy some! It is SO yummy (and not just on popcorn) and really good for you, lots of B vitamins!)

Now if they could only invent a popping corn that doesn't have the annoying shell of the kernel part that always gets stuck in your teeth... ;)