Wedding Things

I’ve been enjoying working on a few small wedding projects this winter.  I really enjoy assembly-line type projects that I can work on while listening to the radio or watching a movie.  A few things I’ve been working on lately:

gold snail shells for flowers

salt and pepper shakers

 

welcome bag

Make Your Own Valentines

We’re keeping a low profile this Valentine’s Day– no overpriced prix fixe meals or crappy chocolates for us.  But I still can’t pass up the chance to send out some good old fashioned snail mail valentines, so I carved a stamp and made postcards that’ll allow me express to friends and families some of the things I love about them.

Strawberry Cordial Cups

When I came across a recipe for strawberry cups via Sweet Tooth this week, they seemed like the perfect little sweet treat to perk up what’s been a drizzly, dreary week.  In Erica’s recipe, she froze her strawberry cups after coring them and dipping them in chocolate, but I left mine fresh, poured a little chilled Chambord liqueur into each cup.  Shawn sipped his first, then ate the strawberry.  I just shoved the whole thing into my face.  Either way works.

For more recipes like this one, check out the Domesticity Page.

 

Make a Pencil Holder from a Piece of Wood

Shawn got a drill press for Christmas this year and has been busy using it to make all kinds of delightful things.  My favorite so far is a pencil holder cut from a piece of a tree limb that he sanded down.  All he did was drill several pencil-sized holes into the top of it.  It’s my favorite kind of project– easy, cheap, useful and good-looking.

Make Green Curry Chicken (and An Ode to Recipes)

I’m a big fan of the “Let’s see what we can make with what we have in the kitchen” game.  It’s a great way to use things that have been hanging around your cupboard forever and it definitely saves money.  But yesterday I was reminded of the joys of actually reading and following a recipe.  I had a bunch of vegetables, some green curry paste, coconut milk and chicken breasts on hand and was planning on doing some sauteing and simmering and just seeing what happened.  But then on a whim I decided to look up a recipe for green curry chicken online and decided to follow the first one that popped up from All Recipes.  Admittedly, I added a bunch of vegetables not in the recipe, but I found the best way to prepare chicken in a stir fry or curry– coat it in soy sauce and then coat it lightly in flour before adding it to a hot pan.  It makes for a nice crispy coating that’s not too thick or overbearing.  Below is the recipe I used with the modifications I made.

Thai Green Curry Chicken

• 1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast halves – cut into 1 inch cubes
• 1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
• 2 tablespoons cooking oil
• 2 tablespoons green curry paste
• 1/4 c chopped onion
• 3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
• 1 teaspoon fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped
• 2 cups coconut milk
• 1 tablespoon fish sauce
• 1 tablespoon dark soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons white sugar
• 1/4 cup red pepper
• 1/4 cup chopped carrots
• 1/4 cup sliced red potatoes
• 14 cup sliced celery
• 1/4 cup chopped zucchini

1. Toss chicken first in 1 tablespoon dark soy sauce, then in the flour, coating pieces evenly. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Place chicken in the skillet, cook and stir chicken until browned, about 5 minutes. Remove chicken.
2. Reduce heat to medium and stir in curry paste. Cook for 1 minute until fragrant, then stir in green onions, garlic, and ginger; cook an additional 2 minutes. Return chicken to the skillet, stirring to coat with the curry mixture.  Add all chopped vegetables. Stir the coconut milk, fish sauce, 1 tablespoon soy sauce, and sugar into the chicken-curry mixture. Allow to simmer over medium heat for 20 minutes until the chicken is tender.

For more recipes like this one, check out the Domesticity page.

Cocktail of the Week: Fig Lowball

Last weekend I happened upon some fig juice at the store and thought it might be fun to try and make a cocktail with it. I paired it with bourbon since figs are dark and rich, but added some lemon to brighten it up a little. This is a solid, not-too-sweet winter cocktail.

Fig Lowball

• 1 oz bourbon
• 2 oz fig juice
• juice of 1/4 lemon
• crushed ice

Add bourbon, fig juice and lemon juice to a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass over crushed ice (I finally got around to using my little ice crusher I picked up a few months ago).

For more recipes like this one, check out the Drink section of the Domesticity page.

Bar Makeover

The days have been oddly sunny and warm lately and though the unseasonal weather is slightly alarming, it has perked me up from my usual winter sluggishness.  This recent upshoot of energy has me tackling house projects that have been on my to do list for months.  After Shawn made us new clothes racks for the bedroom, we moved the credenza we’d kept in the bedroom out into the hall and created a little hallway bar.

Make a Clothes Rack from Plumbing Pipes

My sweetheart, Shawn, in addition to being a top-notch photographer, has many hidden skills.  I discovered a new one this week when he made us both clothes racks to accommodate our over overflowing closet out of plumbing pipes and connectors from Lowe’s.  Following a tutorial from youhavebrokentheinternet, he put together a clothes rack for each of us.

Revamp a Chair

This weekend my friend Steph and I made this chair together.  Well, to be completely accurate, we took an old chair and turned it into this vision in white and gold.  Inspired by a chair I’d seen at Anthropolgie, we took a free swivel chair I’d been given by my sweetheart’s parents and transformed into a modern glam masterpiece in about 4 hours for exactly $4.71.

Chair via Anthropologie

I’d seen the above chair in the Anthropologie catalog and thought it was pretty effing sharp.  Now, I can barely justify buying clearance dresses from Anthropolgie, let alone giant pieces of furniture, but I kept the image in the back of my mind, thinking it would be easy enough to make something sort of like it.  So when this little chair came into my life I knew exactly what to do with it.  Luckily, my infinitely helpful friend Steph decided to come over and help with the makeover.  We had all but one of the materials on hand, but even if you had to buy everything, I’d estimate this would cost you less than $20 to complete.  And it’s totally doable in a day.

The chair before

Chair Makeover

Materials:

• old chair with removable seat
• sandpaper
• 2 cans gold spray paint
• sealer (we used polyurithane)
• white latex or acyrlic paint
• paintbrush
• masking tape

Step 1: Remove base of chair and prime seat cushion

First we took the seat of the chair off the frame.  In our case this was easy; we just had to unscrew four screws from the bottom and it was free.  The difficulty of this will vary with the type of chair you’re revamping.

Since it was clear someone had already taken a stab at revamping the chair by reupholstering the seat, we removed the fabric they had tacked onto it to reveal the seriously dirty original seat cushion.

Removing previous revamp attemps

Gross

Next we coated the cushion with a sealer to make sure it wasn’t too absorbent when we painted it.  If you’re dealing with a cushion that’s upholstered with cotton or some other super absorbent fabric, you’ll probably have to recover it with something sturdier, like canvas. While we waited for the sealer to dry, we moved to step 2.

Step 2: Sand down frame and spray paint it gold.

The chair was made of metal, but it had sort of a slick, glossy finish and we weren’t sure than spray paint would take to it, so we took sheets of sandpaper and sanded the entire frame to scuff it up a little.  Make sure to wipe it down when you’re done, since it will be dusty (in our case, it was a gross black metallic dust), and wait for it to dry before starting to spray paint.

Sandpapering Steph

Next we spray painted the frame of the chair, making sure to spray evenly and to catch all the nooks and crannies.  We sprayed it thoroughly with one coat, ran out of spray paint, went to the store for more, came back and added a second coat.  Depending on the shape of your chair, you may need to turn it upside down after it had dried and make sure you’ve gotten every spot.

By this time, the sealer had dried on our cushion, so we spray painted that gold as well, waited for it to dry and sprayed another coat.  Once the frame and cushion was dry, we moved to step three.

gold!

Step 3: Paint the seat

Once the seat was dry, we taped off zig-zaggy lines where we wanted the gold to show throw and painted it with white wall paint we had in the attic.

Chevron masking tape

Immediately after painting, we removed the tape strips.  We didn’t wait for it to dry because we worried if we did, the paint would dry to the masking tape and could pull off some of the gold paint with it.  Once the wall paint dried, we sprayed it with a matte finish spray paint and sealer to prevent cracking and moved on the the final step.

Finished seat

Step 4: Reassemble the Chair

Finally, we screwed the base back on the the frame and reveled in the fanciness of our newly madeover chair.

Fin

Fin

For more projects like this one, check out the home section of the Domesticity Page.

Tags: anthropologie, chair, gold, makover, redux, revamp, white

Grow Lavender in the Winter

I love having plants and flowers in the house, especially ones I can pick from my own garden.  This gets a little hard in the winter, but this weekend I noticed the Provincial Lavender plants I have growing in our front yard are still lush and green.  I decided to harvest a few stalks for a little indoor greenery during these cold dark days before spring.  As a bonus, I made some lavender simple syrup to add to hot tea, which I’ve been drinking by the kettle-ful lately.

Lavender Simple Syrup
1 cup water
1 cup sugar
2 stalks lavender

Combine all ingredients in small pot and warm over medium heat until sugar dissolves.  Simmer for 15 minutes, remove lavender and store in an airtight jar in the refrigerator.  Add a teaspoon or so to hot tea.