Paint Can Thingy

 

Best $1 I have ever spent for a home improvement project. When purchasing this paint for our dining room... which by the way I do not like, it looks like the color of Band-Aids or cheap make-up.  I have to change it but the hubby is not interested.  I digress...next time you are purchasing paint and are going to paint yourself  pick up one of these handy-dandy contraption for a buck.  It snaps on to the inner lid of your paint can and you will never have the pesky drip down the side of the can and it creates an easier pour.  Afterward, rinse it off and save it for the next painting project or throw it out and buy another one.  It was only a buck!

Herb's in the freezer (not a guy in the freezer, spices in the freezer)

I am a self professed freezer maven. I freeze everything. Leftovers, Sauce, Cheese(shredded & whole), onions, soup, homemade empanadas...I think you get the point. I've pretty much mastered how to prevent things from getting freezer burn, thus given my items extra weeks and sometimes months in my freezer. BUT(there had to have been a "but" in here), every time I have leftover herbs over the winter from a dish I'm making I try to throw them in a zip-loc bag and freeze them? Within a few short weeks they turn brown and loose flavor. I've thought maybe I should douse them in lemon or get one of those super duper suction gadgets for the zip locs? THEN my friend and I took a Regional Italian Cooking Class at the Boston Center for Adult Education and learned something that may have just changed my freezing-herbs issue. The chef said when freezing herbs to coat them ever so lightly with oil and a pinch of salt then seal them in a freezer bag. Oil and Salt? Why didn't I think of that? Well, Chef we are putting it to the test. So I sprayed them down with Pam and sprinkled all with a bit of salt and in the labeled zip-locs they went. The Herbs are now nestled on top of my frozen-space saver-sauce in Zip-Locs (something I learned from Jamie Lee Curtis, this will be a separate blog someday). If this doesn't work I fear my freezing herbs days are over. I'll report back in 4 weeks to show the results...

Anyone else have any secret freezing tips?

Love, Peace and some kind of Grease

Did your family have funny sayings growing up like I did?  I would call them the wacky side of the family but all sides are just as wacky as the other(I'm sure I'll get loads of comments about that sentence).  The side of the family that said this catchy phrase was my Mother's side.  Most of them past hippies...some still are.  Anytime someone mentioned the word "Peace" they would say "Love, Peace and Hair Grease" to mock them a bit and sometimes follow it by "duuude".  They thought it was funny and I did not, since I heard it ALL the time.  As I got older I started thinking about the phrase every time someone said the "P" word.  Until it dawned on me, I can not escape being one of them so just revel it the nuttiness and move on.  So I did.  In thinking of a great funny saying to put on T-shirts and Greeting Cards I thought of that saying but changed the gross thought of "hair grease" to the sometimes delicious taste of "chicken grease".

What was your families funny saying?  Why not put it on something and give it as a gift??

This is what I did and some people are getting them as gifts this year:

http://www.zazzle.com/goldiedesigns/gifts?cg=196300167145938426

The Obsession with Cookbooks

Do you get as excited as I do when you receive a cookbook as a gift?  Or get tingles when you're at BJs, Costco, the discount section at the bookstore and come upon the Cookbook Mecca?  Or maybe it's just me.  There's nothing better to me than the non-fiction reading of a cookbook.  When I first receive or purchase a cookbook I have a ritual of sitting and going through all the pages with a sticky pad and bookmark the pages of things I would actually make.  I have even been know to stack them up on my bedside table and go through them as my bedtime read.  

"Actually Make" means you know you can find the ingredients, the length of the ingredient list and instructions are not so long that you would need to visit a shrink for some meds to keep you calm while scraping whole vanilla beans guts and it's something you can envision the taste to be pleasing to you, your family and your guests.  It's a lot of variables, but lets face it people you're not ever going to make homemade pound cake when Sara Lee's frozen pound-cake can be purchased for half the money and you are never going to make goose.  I for one are never making Sweet Breads, not even if Martha Stewart says I should.  

If a cookbook only has one or two recipes in it I hold on to that cookbook for a while until I cant fit any of my new cookbooks in the bookcase.  Before disposing a cookbook  I go through it again and if I'm still only coming up with one or two recipes  I tear out those recipe pages and donate the book.  It's not worth my 2 inches of bookcase real estate and the book may be better suited with someone else's taste-buds.

Best place to donate books in Massachusetts:  More Than Words in Waltham, MA.  http://mtwyouth.org  More Than Words is a nonprofit social enterprise that empowers youth who are in the foster care system, court involved, homeless, or out of school to take charge of their lives by taking charge of a business.

Not local to Massachusetts?: Find a Goodwill or Used Book store.  Some used bookstores will give you credit towards the purchase of other books.

Corks

If you find your self opening bottles of wine or champagne frequently keep the corks!  They are great display items.  The boring people usually say things like "wow you drank all those bottles?"  Implying that we must have a problem.  Fun people usually say "I need to start doing that!"  Sometimes when friends throw theirs out at parties I takes theirs too if its a really good name brand cork.  Sometimes I forget but most corks get labeled with a permanent marker.  Until the bowl starts to overflow then this is what I am currently displaying in my home.  My idea is to someday hot-glue them as a frame to a mirror.  The two favorite corks are the one's above.  One afternoon my friend Melissa & I went to the local store and purchase a great bottle of champagne to drink in the middle of the afternoon on a Saturday.  I mean why not?  The other one was our first year in our house and threw our first of many annual Birthday parties for my hubby.

Reupholstering Chairs I bought for $20 or how to stay calm when you have bitten off more than you can chew

A few times a week while walking my dog I pass by and to peep in the window at the Goodwill store.  They are always getting in new things and normally don't last a day there.  One weekend morning I passed by to see two chairs each marked $20 that were in my favorite style, mid-century modern.  I also like to call it Brady Bunch Style.  I quickly went home to talk to the hubby about the chairs and that we needed to hurry and get them before they are gone.  I explained to him that they needed to be reupholstered but that we can probably just get them done by an upholsterer.  So we drove the two blocks in my Subaru Outback to go pick up the chairs.  The hubby agreed when he saw them that he liked the style too.  So we proceeded to purchase them.  When the woman rang us up the price came out to $20.  In effort to not steal from the Goodwill and be struck down by lightening for doing so I said to her, "you know there are two chairs we are taking?" She replied, "all furniture is always %50 off the price."  I paused for a second and just reveled in the feeling of glee.  We loaded the chairs in to my Subaru (god I love that car) and headed home.  Hubby's one condition was that the chairs be brought straight to the upholstery person and left in my car until then.  "Sure, sure" I said, but was really thinking "I'll say anything for you to help me get these in my car, we'll talk about next steps later dude." Come on ladies you know you do this too.

So I know you know what happened next...the chairs stayed in my car for two weeks.  After researching the cost of material and then labor I estimated that if I brought the chairs to someone they would 1. WAY overestimate the amount of fabric needed and 2. Ruin my story of how I got both chairs for $20 and got them covered really cheap too.  I looked up how to re-upholster chairs on youtube and came across a fantastic site that maid it look so simple in my brain.  So my lunacy took over and I decided to do them myself.  I told people my plan which they had thousands of questions of how I planned on doing this.  It was simple, relax and only do one step and call it quits for the

day and resist the urge to complete the project in a day.  Well, thats what I said.  The truth is I paced in one place for about 15 minutes straight before I started to conquer each task and then I'd get to it.

I shopped fabric stores and websites for a few weeks until I came across a site that was also owned by the same company that had the How To video on YouTube (www.diyupholsterysupply.com).  They offered free samples...what a great offer!  I picked out about 4 fabric and received them about 5 days later.  The one I fell in love with was $25 per yard teal velvet and the fabric that came in second place was only $8 per yard retro print fabric.  So $8 dollar per yard fabric it was!  I measured all the sides of one chair and the removable cushion giving an extra foot for each dimension.  Added it all up and multiplied it by two chairs and that is how I figured how many yards I needed.  I received the large roll of fabric one week later(the shipping was pretty cheap by the way).

 

I purchased a heavy duty box cutter, an electric stapler from Lowes, already had pliers, flat head screw driver and a hammer in the house.  I began to slowly take apart the chair paying attention to each detail as to how it was upholstered in the beginning.  I would say thats how I really learned how this project would need to be done.  After the chairs original fabric was mostly off with all stray old staples removed I began measuring to do the arms, cutting double the amount for the next chair.  I re-batted/added batting to where it need it and then wrapped the chair like I was wrapping a gift but with a electric staple gun.  The electric staple gun was the hero in all of this.  I replaced the removable cushions with new foam and continued to measure, cut and wrap the rest of the chair until it was done.  In total it took 2 months, because of summer vacations and shenanigans in between it was hard to find a hour to put aside to work on the chairs.  If I had to total up the hours it probably took me 6 hours for one chair and for material & supplies cost for both about $120.  Now, I'm feeling the pressure because I need to get the next one done before the Hubby's Birthday party in November, OY VEY.  Who wants to come over to disassemble the other chair for me??