Rash Decision Making

Well well well, look what we did.

Here's hoping this wasn't a huge mistake!

Seed Starters

This week has been gorgeous.  Positively what we needed!  Boo and I are sitting outside right now, in fact.  He's working on making some mud, while I'm trying to get some sun on my legs so that I don't blind anyone.  It's got to be close to 70 degrees.

Which means it's time to start on the garden!  Actually, if you were doing seeds inside, you could have started weeks ago.  I need to set some kind of alarm for next February to remind me to start the seeds early.  

Anyway, here's an easy (and relatively tidy) way to start some seeds on a sunny window sill in your house.  All you need are some cardboard egg cartons, seeds, tin foil, and either starter pods or some potting soil.  This is also a great way to preserve those sometimes pricey pods, as you'll be splitting them up.

Revamping & Retiling

Remember back when I first started?  I noted that the decision to rebuild our chimney and use the fireplace is what got us started... You know.  Doing all this.  Anyway, the fireplace kept our house pretty durn toasty last winter, but we still had to use the oil heater a few times.  This winter was a bear's ass, and our heater sweetly decided to go kaput on us.  After we had filled the tank up, of course.  

Hubs found a wood burning stove deeply discounted, and it was clearly meant to be.  The back room, for all intensive purposes, is our living room.  It's where Boo watches Blues Clues, where we play Xbox with friends, and where I further my growing addiction to Doctor Who.  But it is a very long, very skinny room, and up until recently it's ended up being mostly just a catch all for stuff and mess.  It was added on to the house in the '50s (used to have God awful orange and yellow shag carpet to prove it) and is not very well insulated.  So sticking the stove back there was a no brainer.  

Poose approves of the decision.  The burner room for the heater backs directly up to the wall the tv is mounted on.  Which means that there is also a chimney in said room.  So that just worked out perfectly.  Course, you can't put a wood burning stove in an alcove made of wood with a flatscreen roof.  That has bad juju written all over it.  

Ermahgerd! Merzzahrerler!

Guys.  I made cheese.  I did.  

Hubs got me a cheese making kit for Christmas, and it took me three months to work up the nerve to try it out.  But the good news is it was incredibly easy.  The kit makes ricotta or mozzarella, but I did the mozz on my first go.

My supplies gathered.  Looks like I'm ready for some minor chemistry.  

Things you need and probably have:  measuring cups and spoons, a stockpot, a colander, 

ice, a candy thermometer, and a bowl or two.

Things you need and probably don't have:  rennet tabs, cheese salt, and citric acid.

(Which are all included in the kit, plus a thermometer)

The one thing is, you can't use store bought organic milk.  Most, if not all organic milk from the grocery store is ultra-pasteurized, and it just won't do for making cheese.  So you either need to buy normal milk (which is the route I went) or procure some fresh milk from a local farmer.  I'd like to do that sooner or later, just need to get a connect.

This is not so much a tutorial as it is a step-by-step look at what it takes to make cheese.  I was intimidated by the process before I did it, but I'd like to encourage anyone who's thinking of trying to go for it!  

It's really not hard.

That and I can't remember the precise temperatures and measurements.  The instructional booklet 

is in the other room, but today's my lazy day and Anthony Bourdain is on.  So no.

Reupholstering? Me???

When someone says "DIY" I die a little inside.  Combine my impatience for doing things the correct (and often lengthy) way with my illusions of grandeur, and then slap it across the face with the reality of what actually happens when I do try to Do It Myself, and you have a giant glue and spray paint covered mess.  

For one thing, I get so irritated with this huge wave of diy zeal that has come about thanks to the pinthing.  If you glue a bunch of plastic spoons together and spray paint them red, I have a real newsflash for you as to what you're going to end up with.  A bunch of spray painted plastic spoons.  And you'll never get me to believe, dream, see, or visualize otherwise.  (I am for real, this is a thing.)

That being said, some people can do the damned thing.  I salute you, master of the glue gun, puffy paint aficionado, and sharpie sherpa.  (Okay, so that last one didn't make sense.  But it just works too well.)  And if you can do it, you go on with your bad self.  I only hate you juuuuuuuust a little inside.

But I digress. Hubs brought home some chairs from a storage shed months ago, thinking we could use them on the porch for extra seating.  They have life, but not so much in the way of looks.  So I figured I'd go ahead and try my hand at fixing them up.

Straight out of your favorite Sunday school room.

Hide-Away Cat House

Today is Hubs' birthday!  Or at least it was when I started writing this post.  I thought in celebration I could show off a little bit of his handiwork!

As previously mentioned, we have two annoying, entitled, anthropomorphic precious kitties in our family.  Unfortunately we've always been stumped with where to place their litter box.  There is no scarcely used bathroom, closet, or unused mudroom.  Thus wherever our cats are doing their business, it's more than likely going to be out in the ongoings of our house.  We talked about making a hidden litter box for months, and one day we just made it happen.

(Byyyyy the way, anytime I say 'we' in this post, you can be pretty sure that I actually mean 'he'.  I'm more the point and suggest type.)

We got this beaut of a dresser from Craigslist for $15.  Solid wood, just time worn and slightly bedraggled.  Most of the work that was done on this bad boy was repairing and solidifying the existing dresser.  If you had a somewhat newer piece of furniture, you could make a version of this in no time.

Here's what it looked like to begin with.  Actually this is even after a little bit of tlc.  Not gonna lie, when Hubs brought this home, I originally had my doubts...

But behold, the finished product!  He stripped, finished, and varnished the dresser, got new pulls from the hardware store, and unintentionally made it match the panels in our back room to a T!