One Step at a Time

Cava de Sangria recipe

2012-08-11T21:21:00.000-04:00

Our local spanish restaurant has this amazing cava de sangria and I decided that I would attempt to make it. Fortunately they offer up a recipe online here. My version used a California "Champagne" rather than cava and some other more generic liquor choices.

1 375ml bottle of Brut Sparkling wine
1 lime
2 oz of orange juice or a 1 fresh orange

2.5 tbsp simple syrup
1 oz of cointreau
2 oz of brandy
splash of sprite

I mixed all together with some ice in a small pitcher. You can add more or less of the simple syrup to give it the level of sweetness you desire. Simple syrup is one part sugar to one part water, brought to a boil to melt the sugar and then chilled before using. Yum!

5x7 Folded Card

2011-09-26T22:42:00.001-04:00

Very Merry Moments Christmas Card

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Just wasting time

2011-03-08T17:48:00.000-05:00

I made a floor plan for our house. Now this is definitely not the best use of my time right now but in the future it could help with bathroom renos and such. Here is the floor plan for our house and here is the current plan

Splashing about...

2011-02-18T16:01:00.001-05:00

To celebrate a job done on the CPH exam I decided to install our new toilet flushing system. Now for as long as we've lived here there has been some small amount of leaking to our master bathroom toilet. I was contemplating changing parts out to see what would solve our leak but then I stumbled upon this idea the other day. It is a dual flush converter for toilets. I know it doesn't sound very exciting but I like weird stuff. Anyway, I had seen these dual flush buttons in England and Mexico on our travels and thought it was pretty neat that with one button you get just a bit of water and both or the bigger of the two buttons gets you the full (normal) tank of water. So a few days ago I ordered this particular model on Amazon and it arrived today!

box and it's contents (please don't judge the carpet. We don't like it either!)

The old toilet situation

See the water shut-off valve below the tank...

Installation was really easy. No tools required! First you turn off the water, flush the toilet and take out the existing handle. Then you have to remove the existing flapper and plop a few of the new pieces into place.

The new flusher button!

I know its silly to be excited about such things but this could potentially save lots of water and money! The advertisement says it could save up to $100 a year in water costs. Well worth the $19 I paid for it if that turns out to be the case.

You can see Jasmine is ever so willing to assist in the process :)

My dog assistant... not very helpful, but oh so cute!

Which Cleans Brass Better?

2011-02-11T09:27:00.001-05:00

I'm doing an experiment today (in between studying for my CPH exam) on what product cleans pennies better. So I mentioned in my post yesterday that I'm trying to decide what to cover the top of our coffee table with. River rocks and tiles were two top contenders but I've been inspired by something else since then. Pennies! What else is one to do with all the excess pennies lying around the house, the car, my purse? I have to admit, I'm not the first to have this idea. There is a great bar in Athens, GA that my husband and I loved to go to called Copper Creek Brewing Company. Their entire bar top is covered in pennies! It looks lovely and way more classy than a table of bottle tops. Not that bottle tops wouldn't be great for a bar top someday but just not for now.

Back to my original idea... I need a way to clean all those pennies we already have because some of them look kind of dingy. My first thought was brasso! I had many years experience cleaning my mom's brass pot rack and kitchen collection so I thought it would be perfect. The only problem is that it really stinks up the house. So if you decide to use this do it outside! Currently I have a cup of pennies soaking in the stuff.

Then my husband says to me "Soak them in Coke!" Apparently he's tried this, albeit with English pence, and it really does work. So...

Now I've got that experiment running too. Not as smelly as the brasso and hopefully the results will be better!

I've calculated how many pennies I would need to cover the whole table top and its around $13 worth. This isn't too bad considering that 15 lbs of river rocks was about $15 and I think I would have needed more!

Just imagine how lovely its going to look with all these shiny pennies! I'm excited! What are your thoughts about my project? Have you tried cleaning anything with coke before?

Ideas...

2011-02-10T22:05:00.000-05:00

I need some input here people! Firstly, I would like a new name for my blog. I like to DIY/Craft/Design stuff but it needs to be catchy, but not gimicky.

The other thing is a project I recently undertook. I refinished our coffee table because the top was rather beat up from years of abuse. I've painted it but it still needs some help because the wood filler wasn't sanded down that well and it gets used as a dinner table almost every night so water and food landing on it is inevitable. I was thinking first of tiling it but realized that may become rather expensive and very time consuming.

My next thought was that I could use an acrylic bar top coating over some river rocks. This may be relatively economical and look quite stunning. This is a picture of some grey/black river rocks that I picked up at Target to test out. 5 lbs of rocks does not seem to go very far! But I'm still debating it. My hubs isn't sure about the boarder I would need to create in order to keep the acrylic from over flowing. If I can work out a way that I could use the boarder but then take it off once the acrylic has solidified that may be even better.

Finally, I think the house needs more greenery. I have shyed away from it in the past because of all the animals in our house but I'm hoping that it may help filter the air a bit more to give a fresh smell. Maybe I'm completely crazy but I think it will help. This is my first plant idea.

The current state of the living room.

With our new ficus!

Just a little photoshop magic to help me decide.

January Project

2011-02-04T17:16:00.000-05:00

Now it doesn't take me a whole month to make my projects but it does take that long to post them.

This is what I used to organize some of my crafting supplies. There are many other places in the house but I like this because it is mobile and stores things nicely. What I don't like is that its kind of ugly and you can see everything in it, especially when its out and around the house. So I had some left over fabric from a table cloth I bought at Target and made this...

Pretty cool slip cover if I may say so. To make this I placed the fabric on the drawers upside down. Then I pinned it all together at the seams, which are around the top three corners and one long seam down the back in the middle. I then simply sewed it together. It was a bit trial and error at first. My sewing skills are coming along slowly.

I had enough fabric left over to make the pillow in this picture below.

I'm going to try to post more projects as I go along, but since I'm working on finishing up my masters degree things might take a while.

Until then,

~J

Up to Something...

2011-02-04T15:47:00.000-05:00

Well I'm at it again. What is that you say? Oh just trouble.

I decided the other day that it was finally time to repaint our coffee table. It has been with us for quite some time and due to three cats and a dog and one bad house plant pot it is in need of an overhaul.

You can see what it looked like previously in these pictures.

My inspiration table. I love the bright color of it next to the muted color of the walls and furniture.

My color, which is available at the Home Depot.

So far I've sanded and primed the table and am waiting an hour or so until I attempt to paint it. I may need some wood filler for the little scratch marks from the cats and dog. Other helpful information about refinishing furniture can be found here.

Hopefully the husband likes it. If he does then I'll go about adding accessories of that same color as well. Here's hoping!

~J

UPDATE:

Here is the latest picture of our living room and the table. I still need to accessorize a bit and maybe touch up the paint but this project has definitely saved us some money for now.

In the beginning....

2010-07-29T19:18:00.000-04:00

Monday - July 26th, 2010

Today was supposed to be the day that we were going to fly to England to see Lindsey's family but it ended up being quite the experience.

We got to the airport around 6:30pm for our 9pm flight only to find out we were an hour delayed. Nothing big we thought so we went to the Sweetwater airport bar on concourse B and had a few drinks. By the time we got to the E terminal we found out that our flight would be delayed a bit longer. The arriving flight from London was supposed to get in around 4pm but was delayed about 4 hours to 8pm and was struck by lightning on arrival. British Airways was not very forthcoming with the details about what exactly was going on but we found out that they were going to take the plane to the hanger and check it out to see if it was safe. Well, 12am Tuesday came around and we were still waiting for details. They told us it would be longer because many of the other planes were having the same issues and needed to be checked out. So our plane was actually going to be checked out then, not 2 hours earlier, like they had said.

Eventually, around 1:30am or so, the pilot told us he was grounding the flight because one of the engines was dodgy and needed work. We were all rescheduled for 6pm the following day and would be put up at the nearest hotel. So around 2:30am off we went to the nearest Comfort Inn and Suites, fearing for our lives, as the shuttle bus driver took corners like an indy car driver.

Check in went fairly well, as we were only a few people waiting for a room at 3 am. The hotel, while nondescript, was fine enough for about five hours of sleep.

On Tuesday we tried again for our flight to England, only after buying a few toiletries and new clothes at the nearest Target store.

Cozy

2010-07-19T18:03:00.000-04:00

A picture of our living room after the addition of the loveseat and new wall accessories. It looks really cozy in their now with all the seating rearranged. I think the room will seem different also after we have our tress trimmed in the front yard. Hopefully there will be more light coming in. I'll take some before and after photos of that tomorrow because it should be quite the outdoor transformation.

Retouched

2010-07-15T12:16:00.000-04:00

So I've been getting busy with some scanning of old photos lately. Its fun to dig up all these relics from the past to see what life was like back then (since I was too young to remember parts of it). I'm looking for ways to retouch photographs with minimal effort and I feel like the Picasa software does a great job. Now if only I could do something simple with the videos I have been converting but I feel like that would take much more effort and time. Maybe once the semester is over. :)

New Things...

2010-07-06T16:30:00.000-04:00

With this being my first time blogging I thought it would be interesting to post some pictures of a dress that I recently "renovated" as my Nana said. I've been on a kick to clean out my closets lately and came across this dress. It was a bridesmaid's dress from 2004 and I haven't really had the chance to wear it elsewhere since. Since I have three weddings to attend this summer I thought why not change it up and take my dress out on the town. So after some trial and error with the sewing machine I have a brand new-to-me dress that I will proudly wear to one of my three events. (The picture of me holding the flowers is the old version) I love making old stuff new again!