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Hunkering Down

October 30, 2012

If you’ve watched any of the Hurricane Sandy coverage you know that the number one thing you should have been doing to prepare for the storm was hunker down. And, indeed, that is what I did.

Sandy resulted in two days off of work for me. While I spent a majority of my time watching storm coverage, watching the lights flicker, checking the basement for leaks, and just, overall, being on edge, I found lots of time to catch up on stuff around the house. Aside from the hurricane going on outside, it was actually quite pleasant.

In addition to washing all of our dirty laundry, I worked through some art projects that I’ve accumulated. Eventually I’ll share the finished result of each. But both are for other people, so I want to make sure each reaches their respective person first. 🙂

I also came to the realization mid-day yesterday that my hobbies are so… shall we say, “traditional”… that I could actually do them without electricity. And without other people. I’m not sure what this says about me.

We never did lose power. I’ll have to pull the plug on my bathtub full of water. But I’m okay with that!

Doors for Charity

October 12, 2012

I was asked to paint some doors for a local charity gala. I wish I could say that my contribution for this event would directly be raising money. But it’s not. This is more of an aesthetic donation… a sitting-in-the-background-and-being-pretty donation. Decorations are important too 🙂

The doors I was working with were these old closet doors. Their purpose is to hide some unsightly items.

I was asked to paint them in a Japanese theme. Things that come to mind are: bamboo, cherry trees, and other nature-like things. Like this:

Source

Source

Selfishly, I didn’t want to spend more than a few hours on this project, so I went with a simple cherry tree theme. Here’s the little sketch I drafted up. Yes, there are all sorts of copyrighted images. I get it. But this is for charity. It’s cool.

First step was to paint the doors black. Luckily we had plenty of black paint left over from the garage project. And it was glossy. It was pretty much made for this project.

Before starting I debated with myself if it would be easier to start with a black canvas, or sketch out my image and then paint around it in black. The black canvas won. However, I knew I was going to be in for a couple layers of the white paint. Luckily they make paint for that purpose. It’s called primer. And we have lots of that too!

And so i started painting away. It’s actually quite fun to paint on such a large canvas. I need to do this more often. After one coat, my painting was looking as expected: streaky.

But a few coats later: success.

Step two was to add a bit of color. I rummaged through my paint box and found some paints to do the job.

Oh, wait. Backup. I did go back and prime out some flowers. This helped the red color pop more than it was doing directly on the black. And here we have it. All done.

PicMonkey: Halloween Edition

October 3, 2012

Two back-to-back posts. How unlike me!

I often use the free photo editing capabilities of PicMonkey. I especially like them to create simple photo collages, which is something that’s more tedious to do in Photoshop. Anyhow, they have some Halloween filters available to get you in the holiday spirit.

Introducing…. Meatsie the Vampire. No need to turn myself into a vampire when I have a dog readily available.

Seriously, hours of fun.

Garage Glitter

October 3, 2012

We’ve been in the new house for about a month and a half now. Of all the projects we decided to tackle first, it was the garage. Who doesn’t want a nice looking garage?

This project started with a gifted box of leftover RustOleum Garage paint and lofty dreams of transforming the garage from the dirty, bug graveyard that it was, into something… clean. We would paint the floor, paint the walls, and then put up some nice shelving and organize. And then we realized that all of this would be easier to do before moving in all of our tools and usual garage items. Like they say… there’s no time like the present.

This is what we had starting off:

Obviously, the serious issue was the bugs.

So we pulled out the Shop Vac and did some heavy cleaning. The transformation had begun.

Here are a couple more before pictures as we started to paint.

Multiple weeks later we were done. Yes, multiple weeks, all for a garage. We spent a weekend prepping the walls. A weekend painting the walls. Weekends started to blend together. Then the floor had to be cleaned with a warning label-ridden concrete cleaner.

Finally, we got to the point where it was time to paint the floor. Mike painted while I sprinkled the glitter (or as Mike calls them, more plainly: flakes). This was the highlight of the project. Picture me tossing these flakes in the air like I was showering someone with rice at their wedding. It was a great time!

After some drying time and what seemed like entirely too long to be spending on a garage….. we finished. Hooray! We haven’t parked the cars in here yet, but we’ll get there.

Another one of my favorite features is the black trim. I’ve always wanted to try out black trim but have never been brave enough to do it inside the house. So we did it outside. Eventually we’ll add some trim around the windows too. Details matter!

One last picture of the glitter:

Of course since finishing, the stinkbugs have emerged in full force. We are trying our best to keep the infestations to a minimum. But it’s difficult. They are some tricky little fellas…

My Favorite Thing This Weekend

September 12, 2012

It’s already Tuesday? Man, these weeks fly by.

So my new favorite thing might be hitting up the flea markets. We went to one on a whim this past weekend and ended up going home with this guy! Or gal, actually. Her name is Alice.

Alice is currently sitting in our hallway/entryway. I have an overwhelming desire to get the hallway painted immediately so that Alice has a nice place to sit. I haven’t been this excited about a purchase in awhile.

Here’s the website of the talented fellow who made Alice. I’m already eying up the dining table.

At the airport

September 7, 2012

I’m trying something new here. It’s 4 something in the morning and I’ve been awake since 2:30am. I don’t think it’s even healthy to get up that early. But I do what I can to get home to see my husband and puppy!

So I got up at 2:30 for a 5:30am flight. Yes, no matter how early it is I give myself plenty of time at the airport. That’s what happens when you’re used to flying out of DC airports. You just never know. Apparently not all airports require such early arrival though. Anyways… The point of this story is to say that my flight was delayed as soon as I got to the airport. Which is funny because the airport wasn’t even open yet. They just got off to a bad start i guess.

And so I’m killing time. And I’m trying out this Blogger app which I’ve kept away from until now. It’s just not super user friendly, you know? Like I’m trying to attach pictures to this post and I have no idea where they are being inserted.

I was trying to share this piece of art that is part of some art display here at the airport. I get so excited when I see science-inspired art! Am I the only one?

There is actually typically a lot of art at airports. It’s just hard to notice when you’re sprinting by.

Keys, Keys, and More Keys

August 24, 2012

It’s a fun day when you get to go to Lowe’s and buy a new door lock. Then ask the key guy to make you eight new keys. He then makes a comment about how you must have a big family.

After a solid five minutes of key making you feel bad and scale back your order. You also realize your new lock already comes with two keys! It’s like you won the lottery.

Did I mention we moved?

Naturally new houses call for new door locks. Among the chaos of packing, keeping the house super tidy, etc. I forced a crafty project on myself. Why buy those generic key covers when you can spray paint? Enter Oil Rubbed Bronze spray paint.

At the time the color choice seemed like a good idea. Afterall, they would match the metal of the new door hardware.

Of course hindsight is always 20/20 and I probably could have gone with a bolder color. These are sleek though. Classy and sleek.

As for our old keys, I decided to make a keepsake out of one of them… because I’m attached and emotional like that. I had seen this idea awhile back on Pinterest. (Here is the link to the actual blog.)

Sure, a map could have been cute too.

And here is my little creation.

Untitled

That purple image/sketch-looking thing in the background is our house. I played around with a photo in Photoshop then applied my favorite filter: Poster Edges. It was meant to blend in to the background a bit. But also be… well… relevant.

I should also clarify that this is clearly the husband’s key as I am not a die-hard Ravens fan. Shame, I know.

My Everything Room

August 14, 2012

My humble little everything room. When we first moved in we called this the fun house room because most of the walls were not straight. They were bowed. Or slanted. But definitely not straight. But that issue was remedied by Mr. Colorful Engineer. He’s so handy.

Now there are a lot of possibilities in this little basement space. If nothing else it keeps all my arts and crafts junk from being scattered around the house!

I’ve got a good corner set up for painting.

I’ve got my computer corner for those digital projects. Also good for killing time on Facebook. There’s a sewing nook for those random sewing projects. (Meatball’s vampire costume reins as my greatest sewing success to date.) And then there’s room for everything in between.

Temporarily my Everything Room has been packed up. I know. It’s really a sad state of affairs. Every time I feel like whipping out a paint brush my plans are quickly derailed.

It’s okay though. My room is only being relocated. And soon I will be back in business!

My paintbrushes await me.

Guinness Truffles

July 19, 2012

My post about Guinness cake pops is, by far, the most popular post on my blog. This is really kind of funny to me because I rarely bake. Nor is this a cooking blog. In fact, I dislike baking and typically only do it on special occasions.

But, the people have spoken. They love their baking. And their beer. And their Guinness.

So, to appease the masses, I’m following up today with another Guinness related post. Guinness Truffles! This recipe is straight from the Guinness folks. Guinness really won me over during our trip to Ireland. Not only is their beer much more delicious over there, but they also gave away free Guinness recipe cards.

I love free things.

The Guinness Truffle recipe is the only one I’ve tried so far. Not bad, Guinness. Not bad at all. My only complaint is that for being a Guinness-inspired recipe, there is really very little Guinness involved. I’m talking not even a whole bottle. If you want people to buy your beer you should call for mass quantities of beer in your recipes.

So here is the European version:

I, of course, had to translate into more sensible units. See here:

2.2 pounds dark chocolate in small chunks
13.5 fl. ounces cream
3.5 fl. ounces Guinness
Zest of 1 orange
cocoa or coconut powder (I used coconut powder)

I really just followed the recipe on the card which was remarkably simple.

Based on previous chocolate melting experiences I made a tweak- I shut the heat off once the cream-Guinness mixture was done boiling so as to not overheat the chocolate.

The other adjustment I made was the addition of sweetener. My chocolate was nice and melted once I decided to taste it. Not sure if it was the cold I had, but I felt like some sweetener was necessary. I was afraid it was too late in the game for real sugar so I used some liquid Stevia instead. 20 drops to be exact. Frankly I don’t use Stevia very often. So I have no idea if really added any sweetness. (My nose was stuffy.)

Ah, yes. There was also a third adjustment. Where the recipe tells you to let the mixture cool a bit until you can roll it into balls in your hands…. yea that did not happen for me. I’m not sure if it was my reduced cooking heat that did it, or what. But I had to refrigerate the mixture for quite awhile until the mixture had solidified enough where I could form shapes that resembled balls.

Yup, easy peasy.

All of those “adjustments” I made are the reason why I dislike baking. Baking is not forgiving. In the end the truffles tasted fine. They did not taste like Guinness but they tasted pretty good!

Ireland

July 4, 2012

So we’re back from Ireland. We slipped out last Saturday, were there for a week plus one day, and largely avoided social media while we were there. You know, so that robbers wouldn’t stalk us on Facebook, know we were away, and try to rob our house. It makes complete sense.

I have 389 pictures to weed through, but here are a few of my favorites:

Cliffs of Moher

Random countryside

Dingle

Gap of Dunloe

Dublin

One of the many, many sheep we saw

All in all, an awesome trip but I’m glad to be home. I ate too many Irish breakfasts. Drank too much. And couldn’t quite manage to get used to the whole driving on the left side of the road. (Particularly when said road is narrow and winding.)

Random thing I loved: the long days. The sun was up from before 6am till past 10pm. It was awesome. It made it so much easier to have full and productive days!

Thank you Ireland for the amazing vacation.

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