Tunic Trouble

I found this little gem at Goodwill with my mater.  I just thought it was an ill-fitting dress with some pretty details and trim.  

Pretty color!  Ugly shape!

 Nope!  Unless I was planning on showing some serious leg (and hip...eek!), this was not a dress.  I decided to make it a top, so I took in the sides and hacked off the length.  I didn't want to lose the pretty detail at the bottom though, so I cut it off and attached it.

Hello green shorts...why can we see you?

Here it is!  A well-fitted and slightly adorned top!

My first refashion!

I've been reading refashionista.net and wanting to try my hand at upcycling clothing.  Here is my first attempt!

Ack! Shoulder pads!

I got this dress at Goodwill for $6 with hopes to turn it into two different pieces.  A quick wash of an apparently hand wash or dry clean only garment, and I had enough intact to make one.  Live and learn!  I took the skirt part and fitted it my dress form, took in the sides a bit, added some straps, transplanted a detail and here is what I got.

Not bad for a first try I think!  I will definitely try another one.  It is kind of exhilarating! I paired it with a $2 thrifted belt.  I am going to hunt for cheaper pieces to start with in the future.  

We Interrupt Our Scheduled Program for a Relatively Unimportant Announcement

I have made the best Curried Cauliflower Soup of my life.  I'm posting this so I don't forget how to make it (it was totally spur of the moment, no recipe or anything) and so anyone who loves this kind of soup like I do can make it, too.

Ingredients:
2 onions, chopped
3 carrots, peeled and chopped
3-4 ribs of celery, chopped
4 garlic cloves, chopped
one head of cauliflower, chopped in bite-size pieces
Spices: [amounts of each are approximate since I just eyeball and never measure, I'd say add them to taste]
1 tsp. coriander (adds floral warmth)
1 tbs. mustard (adds bit of bite -very subtle)
1.5 tbs. garam masala (adds warmth with mix of nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, etc.)
2-3 tbs. turmeric (adds subtle earthy flavor and all the color)
1.5 tbs. cumin (adds smokiness)
1 can of coconut milk
1 can of chicken broth
1 can of fire-roasted tomatoes
1 can of chickpeas
scant spoonful of sugar

1. Sautee the onions in some olive oil over high heat (I just did this in my big cast iron soup pot, one pot meal-woot!) with some salt for about 4-5 minutes until they begin to soften.  Add the chopped garlic and sautee another minute or two.
2. Add the carrots and celery and sautee for about 2-3 minutes.
3. Add all the spices and cook with the vegetation for a bit to develop their flavors.
4. Add the tomatoes and cook down for a couple of minutes.
5. Add the coconut milk, chicken broth, sugar, and chickpeas.  Bring to a low simmer.
6. Add the cauliflower and simmer until it is tender.

Toppings:
Sriracha chili sauce (for my husband's since he likes heat)
Greek yogurt (all the tang of sour cream, but no fat and protein to boot!)
toasted pepitas (pumpkin seeds toasted in dry pan with some salt)

You could always use vegetable broth or vegan chicken bouillon cubes to make this vegetarian, and do the same minus greek yogurt topper to make it vegan!

Don't Feed the Plants!

I didn't mean it; you should totally feed your plants!  They bring joy and blessed oxygen to the world.  But don't feed the ravenous, alien, blood-eating variety (Audrey II!  No!). Random musical theatre references aside,  I have discovered a couple of indoor plants that I can't kill!  I tend to forget to water them or accidentally keep them in a dark corner where they plot their revenge for my maltreatment until they die.  Here is my short list for the indoor plant-challenged.

1) Christmas Cactus (genus Schlumbergera)

They are cactus, so keep in a bright place and water on occasion.  I have ignored this for many, many weeks at a time before, and it has survived for about 4 years so far.  It even blooms in time for Christmas!

2. Orchids  

I am absolutely not an orchid expert, and I have killed many.  This time though, my mother-in-law gave me two orchids for Easter last year, and I was determined to give it the old college try.  I keep them in my sunroom, which gets lots of indirect light.  I also keep the moss they are in somewhat moist; I walk by and touch the moss on occasion, and if it's dry, I water them.  No schedule.  Mostly ignoring.  I don't know how it works, but they both bloomed this year.  The white one has 11 blooms on it so far!  My mom did wash the leaves once since dust on them can apparently hinder the happiness of the plant.

3. Philodendron 

Phil for short.  He's kind of in a dark spot, I check him for dryness and water him maybe once a month.  He seems happy and gives us oxygen.  Easiest relationship I have ever had.

4. Air plants

I might have an abnormal obsession with these, but I think they are too cute!  It's like having little aliens around the house.  I literally just spray them with some water whenever I think of it.

I've got them every which way...hanging in a window...

sitting on a shelf...

 on a window sill...

in a votive holder...

in a glass container with aquarium gravel...

and even in a cage!

Okay, looking at them all together, I might have a problem.

There you have it, my four mostly kill-proof indoor plants!  They add a bit of life to our decor, and I love them.

My Personal Stages of Happiness

Step One: Dissatisfaction

How can you achieve happiness without first knowing pain and suffering?  Okay, those emotions may be a little strong for how I felt about our "office" set up in the weird nook next to the fireplace.

I had painted the wall to the nook green, and it had previously been home to just bookcases and at one awkward time, our television (awkward since there is a sliding glass door directly to the right of this picture and someone would have to walk directly in front of the T.V. viewer to get out that way).  The television also had to be way too far from the couch to accommodate the door.  Anywho, this was barely functional (it always felt really cramped) and didn't really provide much in way of desk space.  These are just two Target bookcases squunched together (technical term) with an old computer desk's pull out keyboard tray screwed to the underside of a shelf.  We lived with this for about a year, but it was starting to grate at my aesthetic nerves.

Second Step: Inspiration
First step was to remove everything and repaint the wall white. It somehow made the tiny nook look quite a bit bigger, which was actually surprising.  Next step was to thrift store shop for a suitable desk.  I considered Ikea stuff, but it was all too...generic and sterile for this area.  I love Ikea, but sometimes thrifted things have more personality.  I found an old (1990- not actually old) Bombay company desk at a thrift store and a headboard. Cut off the bottom section of the headboard and I got this lovely image.

Third Step: Drudgery

Somehow it fit the space perfectly.  I painted everything white (trying out Benjamin Moore's Advance paint-like it so far) and attached some leftover bead board to the back of the headboard (the old back had seen better days).  

Step Four: Shopping

I found some really handsome knobs at Hobby Lobby (on sale for 50% off, don't ya know).

A thrifted mirror later...

Step Five: Art-Making

I needed quite a bit of art to fill the space above the desk.  I laid it all out on the ground first to find the best arrangement.  Something asymmetrical but not too wonkified.  I had this Ikea frame that had white corners and natural wood everywhere else.  I said I didn't like the look of the light wood color and my lovely husband suggested I paint it a color.  I found this cute print at Ikea and color inspiration struck.  Taped off the white corners and sprayed away! (Sorry for the terrible photo, the corner can actually be quite dark...haven't gotten my perfect lamp yet)

Next was a Valentine's Day card my husband got me from Anthropologie.  Best one I've ever gotten. I just used a spray-painted thrifted frame and some craft paper as a mat.

Next, a cool page from last year's calendar in another spray-painted frame.

Finally, I saw this crafty technique last time I was in France, in a town called Dinan.  This artist had rolled paper and then placed them into different arrangements.  The image really stuck with me and I couldn't wait to give it a try.  I used Modge Podge and a lollipop stem to roll each piece of craft paper.  Then I used more Modge Podge to stick them into a chevron pattern.  It was time-consuming, but I think well worth it!

Step Six: Sublime Happiness

Put it all together with a few fun containers, an awesome Dali-esque clock, and you get a totally different office area!

More gratuitous pictures.

So there you have it, for about $250 or so, a totally revamped office space, a.k.a. happiness personified.  

Time to play nook-y!

Okay, upon further reflection, that title might be a little risque.  Does anyone use the word hooky anymore? Anyway, I have found that blogging during the school year is nigh impossible.  Between planning, grading, coaching, and being in charge of drama, I can barely squeeze in time with my husband, let alone diying and crafting.  I lose the itch.  But it resurfaces every spring without fail; HGTV will be on many more hours than my husband can stand, and various tools and implements will appear all over the house (also to his dismay).  I do, however, have a few projects that leaked over from the summer or are quick things I could do in a weekend.  Consider these next few posts the purge of projects (yay! alliteration!), and then they will be spotty at best until spring/summer.  So here we go...

Delighted with a bright, new-to-me door seen here, I decided that my inside entryway needed some help also. I have this weird little nook right inside the door which previously included a piece of furniture with a drawer that barely fit into the space and held nothing particularly useful, a key bowl that we would never put our keys into because it lived directly next to a window (duh, very smart), and a pile of umbrellas and reusable shopping bags.  Lovely.  Who wants to open their door to clutter?  Not me, sirrah!

Step one: clear out the space.  Not recorded for posterity.  Sorry 'bout that.  Step two: figure out something to give the space some personality.  Enter stage left: a stencil!  I love stencils; especially all the fancy and modern ones that are coming out lately.  To me, stenciling is the new and improved wallpaper (even though wallpaper is also having its updated moment as of late).  The application is less messy albeit can be more time-consuming, the prep work is negligible (the same as painting a wall), and it is very affordable.  I went to my fave stencil site, Cutting Edge stencils for some inspiration and/or to buy a stencil.  I have bought from them before and they have a lovely product.  Perusing their site, I knew I was looking for something fairly simple and graphic since it was such a small area.  I saw the Harlequin Trellis stencil and fell in love.

From cuttingedgestencils.com

Simple and graphic, and I also really liked the pearlescent quality of the blue paint.  Forty dollars is also pretty reasonable overall for a stencil that you can use forever.  But...the design was so simple, I wanted to try to make it myself.  Using vinyl and my Silhouette cutter, that's what I did.  

First I used the Silhouette program to make about a quarter-inch wide lines that I would use as a kind of reverse stencil.  I also cut out a diamond shape that closely matched the measurements of the one used for the stencil to use as a guide when placing the lines.

In essence, it worked.  But man, was it tedious.  It took about five sheets of just lines to fill the entire area, and as you can see in the picture above, some of the diamonds got a little...wonkified.  To say the least.  I made sure the ones at eye level were dead on and decided that I was not a perfectionist and in the scheme of things, it didn't really matter.  Which I believe...wholeheartedly...yeah.  For forty dollars I could have gotten perfect lines every time.  I used Martha Stewart pearl paint in Jetstream; took a lot of coats.  A lot.  

It looks very light, but when contrasted against the white lines, it is not as subtle.  It certainly doesn't hit you over the head, either.  Who wants to be hit over the head when they walk in the door?   Unless you have a bug on your head, of course...but I digress.  I wanted a mirror to check lipstick and hair (and facial hair for my husband?  I really have no idea what men would need to check) on the way out. I decided I needed a little white shelf, and I love how designers on HGTV use corbels all the time to fancify something.  One trip to Home Depot later, and I was the proud owner of a pre-cut piece of pine, some corbels, and a little bit of trim.

Painted those suckers white and used Liquid Nails to adhere them all together.  Laziness, thy name is Allison.  A cool mirror from Target and little tealight chandelier from West Elm and here we are.

The picture below is actually the closest to the color, mostly blue with a hint of greeniness to it.  

It's a good place to keep all of our umbrellas, and it is a more calming space to enter after a crazy day with students and whatever else.  It's still a bit bare, so I'm working on a little something to be revealed later.  Oh, the suspense!  What do you think?  Why not make a pretty little area out of a weird nook?  Go get your nook on!  

A little indoor gardening

I've been obsessed with watching Jamie Oliver's show "Meals in Minutes" on BBC America this summer.  It's like Rachael Ray with a cool, laid-back Brit that is a professional chef and home gardener.  With Wimbledon on for two weeks and thoughts of the Olympics in my head, I have become a bit of an Anglophile.

from Foodista.com

Anyway, Jamie Oliver always uses fresh herbs in his cooking and he just meanders over to a container and rips some off.  He's even got some in antique coffee cans; too cute.  So I wanted to find a place in my house to pot some herbs.  Unfortunately, I don't have a cute kitchen window that would be an ideal place.  My kitchen is an island of sadness in the back of the house.  Sigh.

Refusing to be put off, I resolved to find some window somewhere that the cats (3 of them!) couldn't access.  Yeah, that doesn't exist.  We have ninja cats that can get anywhere and will chew anything green.  Grrr...

Don't be fooled by the innocent looking feline.  It's a ruse.

What is that apparatus hanging in the window, you ask?

Why, it's a hanging herb garden!  I used a large unfinished CD crate from JoAnn's that I had lying around and painted it white.  I took a few hooks and screwed them into each corner of the crate, used about 3 jump rings on each corner to connect the hooks to the length of chain I had cut from Home Depot that is threaded through the eye closures screwed into the window opening frame.  

I've got basil and thyme growing in these and some rosemary and parsley outside.  Those are the herbs I use the most in my cooking.  The pots and containers do have holes in them for drainage so I have a plastic bag lining the bottom of them so water doesn't drip onto the windowsill.  

I've also taken to keeping some cut green onions in some water.  I've used a batch at least two additional times before the bottom starts to look a little...hinky.   It's an easy way to keep a small amount of green onion around for garnish or a quick topping.

Those are my indoor gardening adventures!  I'd like to get a bay tree for the glass room, but we'll see how that goes.  They are surprisingly difficult to find around here.  A Meyer lemon tree would be fun, too.  Any gardening adventures of your own?