Entry Extraordinaire

I love Young House Love and Bower Power.  I really do.  They're a couple of the very few blogs I follow regularly.  Other than their general awesomeness, you know what I really like?  The fact that they give everyone a kick in the rear every few months to actually do a project we've pinned from Pinterest!  What a novel idea!  So without further ado, here's...

Woot!

YHL and Katie teamed up with Emily from Sparkle Meets Pop, and Renee from Red Bird Blue for this challenge, so be sure to go see what fantastic things they've all dreamed up.

Me?  Finally got around to a project that's been waiting in the wings for months years?  It's been a long time.  I pinned this picture ages ago.  It was one of the first things I pinned when Pinterest was a new and exciting, "I finally got my invitation, did you get yours?" kind of thing.

Unfortunately, the link no longer works, so I'm not sure who to give credit to.  But isn't it kind of darling?  Well, I like it.  Convincing Anthony was a slightly different matter, but a man's mind isn't cut out to accept empty frames hanging on the wall.  I suppose the same could be said for a lot of women.  Maybe I only love it because I'm scared of art...it makes me feel incompetent.  We have strayed.

So, I collected garage sale and thrift store frames and mirrors for quite a while, then spread them out on my garage floor and gave them the ol' flat white spray paint treatment.  And then left them there for so long that I had collected more frames and had to re-do the ones I'd already done.  I'm really on top of things.  This was a project that made Anthony sigh a lot.

I believe I can pinpoint the problem, though.   Fear of hanging all these frames.  Ugh.  Only a crazy person would enjoy it.  

So here's where we started.  This is the lovely sight that would have met you when we first moved in.  It's very...yellow.

 Apparently, after this day, I never took another picture of our entry again.  I searched through three years worth of pictures this morning trying to find one.  Elusive little entry.  Here's the best one I came across.  With a bewildered Darcy in the foreground.  Basically, the only upgrade for almost three years was a new light fixture and an IKEA table (that you can't see).

There's no mind-blowing tutorial for this process.  I envisioned laying everything out and measuring and coming up with a fantastic way to space everything...instead I started slapping things up on the wall.  I started with the bigger mirrors, then filled everything else in.

Here is the one in-progress shot I took.  Anthony (though not totally excited about the whole thing) very kindly hung most everything while I stood back and said, "A little to the left, dear!"  He's a keeper.

So here's the final result!  Finally...something on my wall.  And I think Anthony has come around a bit.  He said "I love it", although I'm not sure that love quite reached his eyes...

Aaaand one more.  Can't stop the picture taking.

 I'm super happy with it.  How have YOU filled up a giant wall?  With actual art?  I'm impressed.  And intimidated.

P.S.  If you're interested in Bertrand the Giraffe, I shared his story here.

Chocolate-Covered Goodness

Prepare to hear life-changing news.

Ready?

No, really.  I need you to brace yourselves for this one.  At least hold on to your hat.

I made magic shell.  You know, like the syrup you pour on your ice cream and it hardens into a delightful chocolate coating?  Made it.

I should back up.

Sometimes when I find myself walking slowly down the dairy aisle at my Publix, it's really because I'm casting sidelong glances into the ice cream freezers to my left.  I will eat some ice cream.  If it enters this house it will be eaten.  And in a hurry.  Soooo...sometimes I like to trick myself into thinking I'm consuming ice cream while still staying a tiny bit healthy by buying those chocolate covered frozen bananas.  I'm not exactly sure what the brand is...but they're delicious.  And they're ridiculously expensive!  You get like, six banana halves for something like six bucks.  Crazytown.  So, while perusing Pinterest the other day, I saw this post about making chocolate-covered kiwi popsicles.  I thought, noooo...can't be that easy.  Then I tried it.  And my life was transformed.

And it's so easy.  So easy.

Take your bananas (preferably nice and ripe),

 and cut them in half.  Or I suppose you could do bite-sized chunks if you'd rather.

 Then stick a popsicle stick into each of them, and freeze them.  I ended up freezing them for a couple hours.

Take whatever kind of chocolate you have, and use a two to one ratio with coconut oil.  I used two cups of Ghirardelli chocolate chips (one semi-sweet and one milk) and one cup of coconut oil.  I ended up with TONS of the stuff...which is not a problem.  It keeps great!  You can just re-heat it and re-dip.

 Ghirardelli milk chocolate chips are seriously unbelievable.  I could eat have eaten an entire bag before.  I mean look at them!

 LOOK AT THEM!

 If you have a double boiler, throw the chocolate chips and coconut oil (again 2:1) in there, and set it over a pan of simmering water.  If you don't have a double boiler, use a glass bowl, or (and don't quote me on this) I think you might be able to just nuke it in small increments.

Whatever your method, melt the chips and oil until everything is nice and smooth.

 Now, for bananas, I thought it might be easier to pour the chocolate into a tall thin cup for dipping.  I was right.  But lets not get ahead of ourselves, this stuff has to cool to room temperature.  And it takes quite a while.  I did all the steps right in a row, and it actually turned out nicely...by the time my bananas were good and frozen, the chocolate was perfect.  Don't worry about it hardening, the oil will keep it liquid for quite a while.

 Finally, time for the good part.  This next shot is actually a result of a little trial and error.  This was when the banana had only frozen for about an hour and the chocolate was a little warm still.

 Kinda lacking.  And you'll notice by the chocolate smear that the chocolate didn't freeze immediately upon dipping.  Back into the freezer with you!


 Okay.  Another long hour passed, and I tried again.  This time?  Perfect.  Upon dipping, the chocolate freezes like pure magic.  It really is incredible.

 Eat these immediately, or throw them back in the freezer to enjoy later.  You'll be glad you did!

I'm sure you could think of any number of delicacies that should immediately be frozen and coated in a decadent, crunchy, chocolatey shell.  Let me know what you come up with!

Jumping on the Ombre Bandwagon

I bet if there really were some sort of wagon painted in a lovely ombre that people could jump on, they would.  That's how crazy the general public is about ombre.  People will ombre their cats in various shades of pink.  It's a sickness.

Regardless of these facts, I decided to join the party.  And while I was at it, I thought I'd take part in the ever-so-awesome Pinterest Challenge (put together by Young House Love and Katie Bower).  Let's make it official, shall we?

Consider it official.

I started out seeeveral months ago, with this.

The woman who sold it to me at a garage sale had the gall to haggle with me, telling me it was her Grandfather's desk, and practically a priceless antique.  Sigh.  If it's that near and dear to your heart, lady, don't paint it eight colors, spill wax all over it, slap no less than twelve drawer pulls on it, then drag it onto your front lawn to be sold to the highest bidder!  Take my money, woman!

Here's a nice sampling of a few of the colors this beauty has been over the years.

Poor Grandpa.  If he could only see his beloved desk now.  I'm sure wherever he is, he was happy that I took it that fine Saturday.

Then it sat in my garage for quite the while.  One fine day I finally heave-hoed it out into my driveway and started in on it.

If I was patient and long suffering and a true lover of furniture, I'm sure I would have stripped all the paint off and lovingly refinished it.  That is not what happened.

I did, however, sand down and unearth the piece of hardware on the front rather than painting over it yet again.

 Looky there.  A bit bedraggled, but paint free!

I also took the liberty of removing all of the drawer hardware.  They looked like peanutbutter balls in my estimation.  Maybe I should have left them...  Now I'm hungry.

I filled the massive amounts of holes in the drawers with a little spackle...just squished it in there good with my finger and scraped off the excess with a putty knife.

Once it was dry, I sanded it a tiny bit to smooth it out, then started painting!  Pretty simple, really.  I just used a 3" roller and bright white paint.  Just slapped it right on over the other thirteen coats.  Wasn't perfect, but it did the job.

Then I didn't like it.  Part of it was the over abundance of white, and the other part was it was kinda gloppy in places.  Like where the fold-down desk meets the desk frame.

Also, the hinges were ridiculous.  They could barely move.  Soooo, I scraped and scraped until I finally reached the screws to remove the hinges.  That was a good time.

 

Then, I got myself down to Home Depot and snagged three test pots of paint and had them colored three shades of blue.  I couldn't tell you the names if I had to.  Just picked three off a gradient paint chip.

I put two quick coats on the fronts of the drawers and let them dry over night.  I just sanded down and touched up a couple spots on the front of the desk, and lightly spray painted the hinges.  Then Anthony put it all back together since I'm lazy like that.

Oh, and to spruce up the inside of the desk, I took a piece of cardboard, some cork contact "paper" I happened to have on hand, and a piece of fabric...

I cut the cork to the same size as the cardboard and just stuck it right on.

Then I whipped out my trusty glue gun and wrapped it all up in the fabric.

 

 

There you have it!  Instant spruce!

And here's the final product.  Finally.

Hope we made Grandpa proud.