Arts & Crafts

I got into an artsy mood today.  First, I played with colored pencils.  But then I had some real fun playing with my new encaustic set! 

In each little tin is colored wax.  The two light colored ones on the right are a cleaning wax and a clear wax.  I used a pancake griddle to melt the wax.  Then you can use the cake griddle as your palette!  Fun, right?!

OK, so my tree looks a little arts & craftsy and/or middle school art homework project, but whatevs!  It was fun, and I went ahead and framed that sucker.  I'll probably find a place in my bedroom for it.

The cool thing about painting with wax is that it is very textural. I included this picture so you could see more how textured it is.

Future visitors -- if you want to play with my encaustics when you visit me, I thoroughly support that!

Baked Beans

I went to a potluck type dinner thing this week, and I was assigned baked beans. Melissa has some yummy baked beans, but I didn't plan enough in advance to get her recipe. I looked something up online, but I don't remember where I got it from, and I changed it anyway.

Here goes:

Ingredients
2 cans baked beans (yes, you're baking baked beans. get over it.)
1 sweet onion
2 cups brown sugar
bacon (I used pork jowl bacon - yum)
tabasco sauce (the recipe I saw online called for chili sauce, but tabasco is what I had)
mustard


Directions
Cook the bacon & crumble it.  Mix together all ingredients to taste.  Cook for 45 minutes to 1 hour at 350 degrees.

I forgot to take a picture.  Here was what was left!  I actually thought when it came out of the oven that it tasted kind of funny, but people love love loved it.  And I think by the time I got to my location the flavors had time to "marry," or whatever it is flavors do.

Home Project - The Thing

I have this thing in my kitchen -- I never know what to call it. It's a shelf, pantry-type thing. I generally refer to it as, "that thing in my kitchen." Thing is, the thing is pretty ugly.

See? Ugly.   But functional! So I decided I should paint it.

Of course, in addition to being ugly, it's also cheap (read: particle board). Luckily, there is a primer you can use on particle board. It's this Zinsser stuff.

Then I painted it a greenish color similar to my welcome sign.  The paint is called "Quaking Grass."

The finished product. You might still think it's kind of ugly.  But you'd be wrong and nobody asked you anyway.

The end.

Easter Eggs

I had a small person guest this weekend.  Weekends, it turns out, are really long when you have to entertain a small person guest.  We filled up some of the time making Easter eggs.  I didn't feel like boiling them, so I used hollow eggs.  Of course, to get hollow eggs, one has to make hollow eggs.

First, get a decent sized needle. (I made more eggs after an initial dyeing, which is why my fingers are stained.)

Use something to hammer the needle into the egg.  I used the handle of a knife.  Of course, be gentle.

You end up with a tiny hole.  You can do this on both sides, but it makes blowing out the egg quite difficult, so I chose an easier, slightly less aesthetic route.  The other hole will be bigger, so I put the little hole on the top (smaller portion) of the egg.

You can just use the same needle and make a larger hole on the bottom and blow out the contents.  I happen to have a meat injector, which I chose to use as an egg remover.  The needle of a flavor injector is significantly larger, so it's easy to make big cracks.

Again, use something to gently hammer it into the egg.

Very carefully pull up on the injector to remove a large portion of the egg.  You can put the injector back in, but that risks more cracking.  I decided to blow the remaining egg out.  It is probably horribly unsanitary to put your lips on egg shell, but I rinsed them off.

As you can see, the hole is much bigger, but it's not too bad.

Here's the thing about kids and dyeing eggs.  They have zero interest in keeping colors separate or keeping their fingers clean.  Fingers getting dyed is particularly a problem with hollow eggs, as they float.

Most of the eggs end up some sort of greenish brown shade, because the egg is indiscriminately dipped into all colors and everything gets mixed up.  The ones in the first row were completed before there was too much contamination.

Kitchen Chalk Board

I sprung forth from the kind of people who just love to pick trash up on the side of the road and call it a "treasure" -- in general, I have accepted this particular fate. I found this shelf door a long time ago. Or, maybe my mom found it and I stole it from her basement? Who knows. Anyway, I had some vague vision about what it could become. My vision was considerably more awesome than what I actually ended up doing, but that's OK too.

First I sanded the whole thing down. I didn't sand it perfectly, because I wanted the texture to show through. Also, I'm pretty lazy.

Then I painted it with magnetic paint.  As usual, I painted first, then read the directions.  The directions pretty clearly state that the surface needs to be extra special smooth for magnets to work.  Due to my creative (lazy) plan to leave a rough finish, the magnetic quality is pretty weak.   Next I painted it with this stuff, which is paint that turns any surface into a blackboard.

I painted the border a similar green to the original, but you can't really see it in the picture. Now it hangs in my kitchen, welcoming all to my humble home! =)

Rambutan & Dragon Fruit

When my mother was here, we made our customary visit to Jungle Jim's. Mostly we bought items that you might have heard of before, but we did buy a rambutan and a dragon fruit. If you've ever had longan or lychee, rambutan is kind of like that. It's a lovely fruit and really tasty.

Unpeeled Rambutan

Use a knife to slice a cap off and then peel the rest

You end up with this!  It's tastier than it looks.

Be careful not to eat the seed!

Optional clown nose

The dragon fruit is also a lovely fruit, but not nearly as tasty as it looks. It doesn't taste bad...it just doesn't taste like much of anything at all. It's like a very bland kiwi.

Unpeeled Dragon Fruit

Cut it in half and then slice the fruit into cubes, keeping the skins as a bowl

Isn't it lovely? Totally tasteless.  It could add some visual interest to a fruit salad though

Lighting "Upgrade"

I had some really hideous, old-person lighting in my house that I upgraded to slightly less hideous (but free!) lighting.  Also, you'll see from the pictures that "I" didn't really do that much at all...

Hideous, cheap lighting fixture

Mom getting rid of hideous lighting fixture

Fairly hideous lighting fixture.  What is it with that fake brass/gold crap?

Fear not!  Rustoleum is here to save the day!

After a quick coat of spray paint

All installed!