garlic oil experiment

Have you ever made Pioneer Woman's croutons? Or any kind of homemade crouton? I have only made them a couple of times, and always in a frying pan. I know you can make them in the oven, but she recommends a frying pan. They are fabulous. Totally fabulous. I don't think I ever want to eat store bought croutons after tasting the homemade version.

Anyway, the recipe calls for garlic oil. In PW's recipe, she uses a food processor to mash the garlic together with the oil and then strains the garlic pieces out with a strainer. I've done this several times, but I only have a small food processor and it is a pain to clean it each time. So I had an idea today. My olive oil bottle was low, and I was going to get a new bottle, so I thought "what if I put some garlic cloves in the bottle and add more oil?" Then I could let it steep and voila: garlic oil!

Here you can see how much oil I chose to make and the brand of oil I had on hand.

I slightly smashed the garlic cloves after peeling them, and I don't know how many garlic cloves I used. Six or seven, maybe.

The bottle, luckily, had a plastic pour spout that could pop out and made it easy to slide the garlic cloves inside.

Now, this is totally an experiment and it may fail horribly, but I think/hope it will be awesome and make my crouton making days so much easier.

Anybody out there ever make a flavored oil? Just curious.

bad wife story

Someone's birthday is coming up on Friday. Can you guess who?

I messed up on his present. He very specifically told me what he wanted, but I didn't have the money to get it right then, and then it sold out. Bad wife.

But, I will NOT try to make his cake, like these cupcake disasters my mom and I attempted at Easter. Plus, he only wants the Red Velvet cake that his mom makes and I am not competing with that. Not at all!

Anyway, I had a moment the other day where I realized he was going to be 36 and that's really close to 40 and when did we get anywhere near 40 and we don't have kids yet and oh my we're going to be old parents and I don't really feel old but the time keeps passing and oh my.

Yes, I had that break down. For a few moments.

But, Happy Birthday on Friday to my sweet, sweet Charlie. Now I am going to go to the grocery store and getting ingredients to make Pioneer Woman's Mystery Mocha cake with whipped cream and eat that later! And a birthday card to buy. And some kind of present to conjure up out of thin air. I can do it, right?

yet another project

In May when my mom, aunt and I went to Replacements here in town, I came across this bin of $2 serving tools. I sat down on the floor and sifted through the boxes and picked out some of the more special ones. I didn't know what I was going to do with them, but I knew I would do something!

I cleaned them up as best as I could and tried to figure out a way to mount them somehow. I found an old cabinet door from the original kitchen that I had saved. I had tried to crackle paint it for another project then shoved it in a closet for two years.

I also had some scrap cloth over from when I embellished my curtains and thought it would be a great way to connect my dining room with my living room by using the same fabric. So I hot glued the fabric to the board and then the serving spoons to the fabric, then ran the ribbon over and under the pieces.

I have been trying to work on this wall for a while, and this large star is pulled from my master bedroom. It used to be a weird khaki green color but I painted it white, too. Me and my spray paint can again! The other two stars were just ones I collected over the years, on being a Christmas ornament. I have two more stars that are on another wall, but I'm going to have to be moving them soon, I think, so maybe there will be more on this wall.

So here they all are together. This wall is the one to the right of my photo wall, and I think it is nice that this is a smaller grouping and the photos are a large grouping. I sometimes struggle with unique items to hang on the wall, since I am NOT a fan of cheesy art prints. I am very picky about the artwork I hang, which is why I like to hang interesting things, hence the spoons.

The bathroom is coming along and we now have our toilet installed. Today I started trimming around the windows and doors and such with the paint, but didn't feel like sitting on the ground and doing the baseboards.

I kind of tense and stressed, I have to admit. The whole job roller coaster isn't fun right now. There is an amazing job out there, and it is within my grasp, but I haven't heard anything back. It's been a week now. Also, I talked with someone else today about a job, but am not that excited about it. Charlie and I keep praying that God will make the perfect place for me, but the waiting, just like waiting to adopt, is oh so stressful. Sooo stressful. I don't sleep well when under this stress. When I feel myself getting worked up, I just pray. I pray: Lord, go before me and make a way. Lead me where you want me to be. Calm my nerves and help me trust in you.

Pray with me, please. I'll keep renovating to keep myself busy in the meantime.

bath tub refinishing, with pictures

So this is the kit we bought to refinish the bath tub. There were two at Home Depot, this one and one called ReNew. This one was $20 more than the other one, but was much less complicated and included some of the supplies needed, like the gloves and the TSP cleaner. The other one had two spray paint cans that you had to heat one up and cool one down and then transfer the paint from one can to another. Um, I did not want a chemistry experiment.

Here is the stained bath tub BEFORE. This is the bath tub original to our nice 60s house. The enamel is worn off and it was UGLY, and very hard to clean. The soap scum would get deep into the bottom and was not fun to scrub out. And it never, ever returned to white.

We taped off the tub and started spraying. Again, this was a chemical that required lots of ventilation and a mask and gloves. It tells you to apply two coats, the first one being very thin.

Here is the AFTER! Isn't it lovely? Now, it has to cure for three days before you can use it again. It also advises that you shouldn't use bleach on it or use suction cups.

In the bottom left corner of this picture you can see the paint color I chose for the bathroom. It is from Home Depot and is the Behr color Gobi Desert. I went ahead and painted this corner of the room because with the toilet out it was so much easier. It was a very neutral color and I wanted something that wouldn't be hard on the eyes in the morning. When I had a purple/lavender bathroom in our old house, I noticed it made my makeup look really pink when I was applying it. If your bathroom does not have windows and it is the place you apply makeup, think carefully about the color you choose. I also say this about closets. Closets should be white, otherwise the paint will reflect off your clothes and make the colors look different. Okay, enough about paint.

Isn't this bathtub gorgeous? As we speak, Charlie is installing our new toilet and so hopefully that will be functional by the time we go to bed tonight! Cross those fingers.

photo wall makeover

So I started off with this composition of photographs. I liked it, but my goal was always to add to it as the years went by. I want to fill the whole wall with photos.

While digging through a trunk of my mom's, I found a pile of family photographs, mostly from my dad's side. Some of them I'd never seen before, and was excited to find them. The one below is my grandparents when my grandpa was home on furlough from the navy, kissing her. When I knew my grandparents, my grandma was an alcoholic and they weren't affectionate with each other at all. It was nice to see them young. Notice the dark brown frame. I found a whole bunch of frames in the closet but they were random colors and finishes, so I sprayed them all white.

The one in the frame standing up is of my dad's cousin's parents, I think. Ed & Mae Brower. I know who they are, but how they are related is a little fuzzy. Anyway, look how large her bouquet is. Double click on the picture and see it larger...you will be amazed at the details. Also, again, lots of different types of frames, that I spray painted white.


My secret trick to making a tabletop frame one that you can hang on the wall. My momma taught me this one! Hot glue and a soda tab.

This is my dad with a new car. It's neat to see my dad as a bachelor. One of the things we also found in the trunk was a love letter from some woman named Sofee that my dad must have dated when he was stationed in Germany before he married my mom. Totally funny to find! She called him Johnnie, which no one ever did when I was growing up.

So here's what it turned out like in the end. I removed the center plate and rearranged some of the current photos. Since some of the older photos weren't exact sizes, I used some scrapbook paper in the background of those photos. It also throws a little color on the walls.

I like the mix of old and new photographs. This is mostly my family, so I need to see if we can locate some older ones from Charlie's family, too. I also need to add photos from all the nieces and nephews as well. I was doing all this while Charlie was working on the bathroom and I would pop in and out to help him and take pictures of the progress.

Just to offer something from the bathroom, here you go. Toilet has been removed and we have cleaned the tub in preparation for this new epoxy porcelain paint we have bought to renew the horrible bottom of our tub. The enamel has really worn off and it is so ugly. We can't afford a new tub, but this is a $5o kit to hopefully refinish it. We'll see!

bye bye sink!

So the sink base cabinet came out today and the plumbing was worked on. It turns out that there are no shut off valves for the water for just that part of the house, so the entire house had to be turned off. That meant no water for almost four hours.

See how there is no floor underneath the cabinet? I don't know what the builders did, or what happened there, but it is strange that there is cement and rough cement at that, underneath. Odd. I think we'll have to put some plywood down, but that really isn't my expertise.

Tomorrow the toilet will come out and a shiny, new, high toilet will go in. I'm very excited to have taller toilets in our bathrooms. And they are oval toilets, too, so that is cool.

Just wanted to let you all see what was happening. The Misfit hath demanded a plethora of pics and she shall not be denied!

bathroom fixtures, still in the box

So here is the new cabinet that we are installing in the master bathroom. We found it at Lowe's last year when they had some things on sale. I love the cottage look of it, and though I wish we had much more room for a bigger cabinet, this will do. The sink in it is smaller than the one we have now, so I should have a little more room on the counter. Right now our sink takes up so much space that there is only a little edge around the side to place things, like our toothbrush holder or Q-tip holder.

Here is the new faucet we picked out. All the fixtures in the bathroom have white porcelain touches to them, so this was a great find. On clearance.

Hopefully the work on the bathroom will commence this weekend, with the toilet replacement and cabinet replacement. I don't know how long it all will take, since Charlie is slow and careful when making home repairs. And, often, there are trips to Home Depot involved. Many trips.

Here's hoping that I have lots of pictures to show on Monday of a new bathroom. It might not be painted and decorated the way I like, but hopefully we will have new fixtures.

Keep those fingers crossed.