Glittery Animal Ornaments

Somewhere online I found glittery animal ornaments and knew I had to make them.   I carefully chose my animals from all over the place. Sea creatures, bugs, and more sea creatures.  The African animals, farm animals and large dinosaurs came from the Dollar Tree.  Those that were 3 - 4 inches tall worked best.  Aaron helped me put hooks in them by finding the balancing point and drilling a hole if the animal was made of hard plastic.  I will say this turned out to be much more costly and time consuming that I anticipated, but isn't that the way with craft projects that look simple?

Then I sorted the animals based on what color I wanted them to be.

Priming them worked best (as opposed to just painting), although the metal primer shown here did not work for this, it never fully dried.

Generally I would paint the undersides first.

This was definitely a toxic project and doing it in our basement was probably not the best idea.  Especially ten feet from our furnace, but there were no flash fires luckily.

I used Krylon Glitter Blast which can be found at Fred Meyer (in select colors), Walmart and I also saw it at Craft Warehouse in red and green, but it was super expensive there.  This paint did give me the effect that I wanted, but at a price.  I had read online that this paint did not work well and I had a similar experience.  The nozzle would clog with the glitter, one time immediately.  Meaning that I went to spray paint with a brand new can and once it was on, it was on and wouldn't turn off.  So I always had all my animals laid out ready to go for that color in case the can exploded glitter uncontrollably.  I also kept a plastic shopping bag in my hand to stuff the can in.  Sometimes working the nozzle in and out would solve the problem, sometimes this just caused a geyser of paint to erupt out of the top of the can.  Other times it would work fine the first time, but continue to leak all of the propellant out so nothing would come out the next time I went to use it, even though it was half full.  At $6 a can (although I did find some colors on sale for $3.84 at Fred Meyer, and up to $11 a can at Craft Warehouse - what?!) this got spendy.

After getting as even a coat of glitter as I could, I added a Glitter Blast Clear Coat.

Christmas Caramels

The last two years we have gifted these caramels to our friends and families.  They do take some time to make, but are not overly difficult, and one batch makes more than enough for all of our people (around 200 caramels depending on what size you cut them).  

So yummy, and they travel and keep well for gift giving.  I didn't do too great on capturing every step, but in the middle they get poured into a greased half sheet baking pan, allowed to cool and then cut.

Christmasy

It's definitely getting Christmasy around here.  Dec. 1 I got serious about shopping, and did most of it that weekend.  I have a few more gifts to find, but for the most part everything is purchased and wrapped.  Now comes the hard part - not opening them.  Does anyone else have this problem?  We are always so excited about what we've gotten each other it's hard for us to wait until Christmas!  Home improvement has taken somewhat of a back burner, but painting that fireplace is high on the list...

I found this vintage light up Christmas tree at an estate sale a few months ago.  

Last night we had my parents over for full Thanksgiving dinner.  They were out of the country for Thanksgiving, so we celebrated late.  I can't believe I didn't take a single picture of the food!  The turkey was perfectly golden brown and everything else turned out great as well.  We were able to try out our new remote thermometer for the turkey and it was so nice to be able to monitor the temp the whole time.

Some home improving has still been going on.  Aaron used a wire brush to take the paint and rust off these original register covers.  The plan was to paint them white, but when he got the old paint off , we really liked the industrial look of the brushed silver.  So he cleaned them with acetone and clear coated them.  They may rust, but hopefully they won't.  If they do we will just go with the first plan and paint them white.

 I wish I could share what I've been crafting...but not until after Christmas!

Birthday Dinner

I have a couple of catch up posts from the months when we were frantically getting as much done in the new house before we had to move.

We had my birthday dinner at my favorite place to eat ever - Gathering Together Farms in Philomath.  We have had the most delicious, high quality, reasonably priced meals here.  I can't remember the names of all of these things, but the photos speak for themselves.

Salmon with pearl couscous and pesto

Flat iron steak (so tender you can cut with a fork) with smashed potatoes, zucchini and I think that is aioli on top.

So good!  I can't wait to have another birthday...luckily we took my mom her for birthday and she loved it, so at least two meals here a year :)

Turkey Broth

Every time we cook a turkey we use the frame to make broth.  This Thanksgiving we were given the best leftovers of all - the turkey bones!  We stuck it all in the freezer until we had time to make it.  This morning I put 3 carrots, 3 stalks of celery, 3 onions and 5 cloves of garlic into a large stock pot.  

Next the turkey frame goes in.

We made a big batch and added 24 cups of water.

Brought it to a boil, then turned the heat down to low and let it simmer 1 1/2 - 2 hours.  I let it cool then pulled the bones out and strained the vegetables out.  We ended up with 22 cups of stock.  I put into quart bags to freeze, 2 cups per bag, which works well with most recipes.  

It's amazing how good soup will turn out when you use this, it definitely takes it to the next level flavor wise.  I substitute it in for any recipe that uses chicken broth.  I especially love it in corn chowder.

Pear Juice

A few weeks ago I did a Salem Harvest with pears.  I came home with a lot.  Like I picked a whole large tree by myself and took half.  They took quite a long time to ripen, but we were soon faced with a ton of ripe pears.  They are pretty soft, so I didn't think canning them would be worth the effort.  They do have excellent flavor though, so we decided to juice them.  

I cut them into quarters - we'll do eighths for the next batch to speed up the process.

We put them in the steamer juicer lined with a double layer of extra fine cheese cloth to catch particulates.  Then let them steam.

The first juice to come out was really watery.  This is the first (left) compared to the last (right).  We poured it back in the juicer to mix, then filled the jars again.  This worked well.  I added a teaspoon of lemon juice to each quart for good measure.

This is what the pears cook down too.  Still lots of goodness here.

So we ran it through the food mill to make baby food for Bennet.

The good stuff coming out.

The waste after it's "pooped" out.

Our finished juice.  The color difference is more pronounced here than in real life.  It's delicious!  We got 4 quarts out of one juicer load, which means we should get about 16 quarts.  Not bad for free pears.  We'll have lots of puree for pear leather too!

Long Weekend

What a nice long weekend!  I've been off since Thursday, Aaron had to work early Friday morning, but was off by 2.  We both had today off and got a lot done around here.

Thanksgiving was good, we took a pumpkin and apple pie and this braised cabbage - yum!  

I braved downtown on Friday morning by myself, but honestly didn't see much that I wanted.  I hit up Greenbaum's when they opened to get a random discount, I drew the largest, 25% off.  So I stocked up on solids and this whale flannel I've been eyeing for weeks.

Saturday morning we headed out to Minto Brown to ride our bikes.  Many of the paths were flooded.  We had made it across a few shallow areas when we came to this bridge.  We couldn't tell how deep it was, so Aaron went for it.  As you can see he didn't make too far.  Once he stopped moving it was problematic and let's just say this did not end well for his left foot.

We found ourselves in Independence for one reason or another and had lunch at the Pink House Cafe.  My food was good, but Aaron wasn't too impressed with his.  The service was wonderful and it has great reviews, but I don't know that we were wowed enough to go back.  

Sunday we drove to Corvallis to pick up Aaron's BeerAdvent Calendar.  We picked up some dough balls from American Dream, we do this every time we are in town and make up 8 small pizzas and freeze them.  After that we went to Winco, Home Depot and Market of Choice.  So much easier to run errands there, as everything is so much closer.  On the way home we stopped at our favorite old growth trail for a wonderful hike.

Today we got the automatic chicken door going - ran an extension cord through the garage wall and into the coop for power.  They are enjoying running around here.

All throughout the weekend (and over the last few weeks, and yes, months) we worked on the guest bedroom.  We are finally (almost) done!  With painting at least.  This photo shows the color the best, which is Pittsburgh Paints in "Pistachio" - made up with Sherwin Williams SuperPaint.  Trim is Sherwin Williams "Extra White".  I used their ProClassic interior waterbased acrylic-alkyd, semi gloss and really like the self leveling results.

Aaron cleaned and polished ALL the hardware from all the doors.  What a difference that makes.

This room took me so many hours to paint!  It took about 3.5 hours to paint one coat on all the trim, not even the doors and everything got 4 coats - 1 of primer (Sherwin Williams Adhesion Primer), 3 of the trim paint.  This room has a lot going on, 2 windows, 2 doors and 2 smaller doors.  We cut and painted all the quarter round and got that in tonight, then Aaron caulked everything to finish it off.

It's hard to see, but we really liked this light that came with the house.  Aaron removed the base and painted it to clean it up a bit.

Just a few things left to do here, we need to replace a lot of the electrical, so face plates are needed and the register needs to be painted white.

But overall, I'm checking this room off the list!

P.S. Here are some before pictures.  I really don't have many - total fail on my part!
Here is the room with their things in it.  You can't see the carpet.

Here is the room - I think the only picture I have of the carpet, oops - with carpet and the first god awful color we picked out.  It's Sherwin Williams "Gleeful" at 50%.  We tore out the carpet before we had the floors refinished.

Much better I think!