What have I done so far? The two biggest changes implemented are 1)Painting the room pinkish/coral and, 2)Reorganizing my stuff. We moved the original utility shelves to a more suitable space, bought chrome wire shelves from the Home Depot, and got rid of unneeded junk. I also got a cute (cheap) red rug from ikea, covered the previously white shelf with red wrapping paper & clear contact paper, and moved a puzzle of Tamara de Lempicka’s 1925 painting, “Self portrait in the Green Bugatti,” in from another room to cover the electrical panel.

One of my favorite new tools is this set of mini drawers that my neighbor gave us when she was reorganizing one of her spaces. I now have different drawers for beads, paints, printmaking supplies, floral supplies, embroidery thread, felt, etc. Even my buttons are sorted by color and pretty in their own drawer!

What’s left to do?

1. Replace the ugly light fixture with the chandelier from my bathroom. In the first image on this page, you can see the light I’ve renovated to be the new light over my tub. (It’s sitting on the cabinet.)
   

   Current Light (left), Future Light (right)

2. I’m working on a solution for air-drying clothes.
3. Looking for a cart to go between the dryer and the cabinet.
4. Considering a unified enclosure for the washer and dryer.
5. and, Maybe some more wall art, scavenged from other areas of the house.

After (Left) & Before (Right) 1

After (Left) & Before (Right) 2

After (Left) & Before (Right) 3

I was tired of the brass lamp kits available locally at Home Depot/Lowe’s, so I bought this Jandorf Make a Lamp Kit (60139) in a pewter finish on Amazon.

Here’s another (very dark) picture of the lamp in the hallway.

Ingredients:
• Thick-Sliced Bacon (The better your bacon is, the better these turn out. We love to use the black pepper bacon for an extra kick, and I usually buy the 24 oz. package)
• 8 oz. cans of Water Chestnuts (I have a hard time finding these whole, so I usually make the sliced water chestnuts work. Three cans should work for 24 ounces of bacon.)
• Toothpicks!

For the Sauce:
• 3/4 cup Packed Brown Sugar
• 3/4 cup Ketchup (Heinz!)
• 1 tablespoon Miracle Whip (or mayo – i can imagine some fancy mayo making this sauce even better)
• 3 teaspoons Worcestershire Sauce
• 5 teaspoons Sriracha (you can always start smaller if heat isn’t your thing)

Directions:
1. Drop a handful of toothpicks in a dish of water and preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Unwrap bacon on cutting board and cut the entire package into thirds (of equal length).
3. Open and drain water chestnuts. If you’re using whole water chestnuts, cut them in half.
4. Wrap one-third slice of bacon around a water chestnut half or stack of two slices. Secure the little bundle with a toothpick through the middle.
5. Arrange the wrapped water chestnuts on a broiling pan (that pan that comes with the oven) or on a wire grill that fits on baking pan, but keeps the food off the surface of the pan. The key here is that these delicious bacon wrapped delights will shed a lot of bacon fat as they bake; it’s nicer to keep them out of the pool of fat that will be sitting in your pan.
6. Bake wrapped water chestnuts 40 minutes, and while the water chestnuts are baking, mix up your sauce ingredients in a small bowl with a fork.
7. When the wrapped water chestnuts have baked for 40 minutes, pull them out (leave your oven on). Spoon/pour the sauce onto the tops of the wrapped water chestnuts.
8. Put the wrapped water chestnuts back in the oven for about 20 minutes; bake until the bacon is crispy.
9. Use tongs to move the appetizers to a serving plate; leave the toothpicks in the wraps, so people can easily grab them.
10. Make sure you get some when you put these appetizers out, because they disappear fast!

When it’s cold, we always make more soup, and one of our favorites is Spicy Chicken Noodle Soup. By substituting Shirataki Angel Hair Noodles for the real thing, we enjoy a more low-carb version of our favorite cold day treat.

Ingredients:
• 48 oz Reduced Sodium Chicken Broth
• 1/3 cup Reduced Sodium Soy Sauce
• 3/8 cup (6 tbsp.) Brown Sugar
• Sriracha – We use 2 tbsp., but I recommend starting at 1 and seasoning up based on how you like it.
• 1 Medium Lime – the juice & the zest
• 2 Chicken Breasts, cut into strips
• 2, 7 oz. packages of Shirataki Angel Hair Noodles, rinsed in cold water and drained (We use these from Amazon, because I subscribe to them!)
• 2 tbsp. Cornstarch
• 1 cup Sliced Mushrooms (Any kind will do, I used Portobello in the picture, because that’s what we had in the fridge. Shiitake might be the best choice for this asian-inspired dish.)
• 1/2 cup Grape Tomatoes (I usually quarter these.)
• Fresh Cilantro (2-3 tbsp.)

Directions:
1. Combine chicken broth, soy sauce, brown sugar, Sriracha, lime juice, lime zest, and bring to a boil.
2. Toss chicken strips in corn starch
3. When broth mixture boils, add chicken, mushrooms, and Shirataki noodles.
4. Let the soup simmer for 15 minutes.
5. Remove the pan from heat. Stir in the tomatoes and cilantro.
6. Let the soup cool 2-3 minutes before serving

Enjoy!

I can’t say that I thought of this idea all alone; my inspiration was a DIY Clock from Junk Mail that I saw on Apartment Therapy. To make the wreath, my only materials were items from the dollar store, old holiday cards, and a few Christmas catalogs to fill in the spaces. (I only had cards for about half of the spokes.) I made a 3″ wide base for the wreath by cutting it out of foamcore with my x-acto. The interior circle was large enough to feature the star ornament; the outer circle was just 3″ larger than the interior. I used my handy compasses from grad school drafting to get the circles right, but a piece of string could also be used to measure the radii. After I had the wreath shape, I stacked foam to about 1.5″ and hot-glued that to the back of the wreath shape in 4 places to give the wreath some depth. Then I covered the whole frame with ribbon. You can see the back here:

The next step was to roll up the holiday cards. I used the entire card for each spoke and started rolling from the plain side, so the end product would have the most color. And I used a dowel to get the initial shape and help keep the rolling even. In my wreath there are 58 spokes; 29 of these spokes are from Christmas cards. The remaining spokes are pages from the West Elm and Blissliving holiday catalogs cut down to a similar size. I wasn’t worried about the spokes being the same length, but it could be easily controlled if precision spokes are your thing.

The last steps were to hot glue the spokes to the base in a radial pattern, add gold ribbon for hanging, add a gold bow, hang the gold dollar store ornament in the middle, and finally I added some bells to up the holiday-ness of the wreath. I thought it was important to keep the wreath accents in the same color (gold), because the rest of the wreath could be pretty busy.

Now we have a wreath that is inexpensive AND is made from the love and kindness of our friends and family. It’s perfect. As we get more holiday cards over the years. I will probably just replace the catalog pages with real cards.

Ingredients:
• 1/2 gallon Apple Cider Vinegar
• 3 oz. Black Pepper
• 2 oz. Crushed Red Pepper
• 2 oz. Cayenne Pepper
• 1 cup Salt
• 1/2 cup Brown Sugar

Directions: Mix ingredients in pot on stove, and bring to a slow boil for a few minutes over a medium-low temperature. Store and enjoy.

We normally use the empty half gallon bottle of vinegar to store our sauce, but you can get fancy with it! If you want to use the label we made up for my brother-in-law (who we tease about his communist leanings), here’s our “Comrade Like Spicy” label as a PDF download. I cut the label out in vinyl on my Silhouette SD, but you can just print it and stick it on the bottle. I save all the specialty glass bottles we use for purposes just like this! The label uses the awesome font, “Kremlin” by Vic Fieger.

I have finished two squares – Naturalist’s Journal Quilt (January) and the Wonky Rainbow Quilt (March). The Naturalist’s Journal square went well enough. It was my first experience sewing; it was thrilling to actually make something with my machine.

The wonky rainbow quilt was another story entirely. Inspired by a gorgeous Anne Brauer quilt called Rainbows of Summer, this quilt used a modified version of an overlapping squares tutorial. We made only the center block in the tutorial, but upsized it to a 12.5″ square. At first, I thought my square was going well; everything was assembled without mishap. It wasn’t until I was preparing to mail the square off when I realized my 12.5″ square wasn’t 12.5″ on all sides. It got down to 12.25″ on one of the sides. (I think the problem was that I didn’t cut my initial strips long enough. I was aiming for 15″, but the directions said to cut free form, and I must have been way too relaxed about that step.)

This 1st square is not big enough!

I didn’t have enough fabric left to do a completely new 12.5″ square, but I sewed the fabric I had left into the strip panel called for in the first stage. Then I cut out the middle section of my bad square, used it to make the central panel of the new square, and added the two side panels from my new strip panel set. Voila! It is not exactly what the tutorial called for, but I think the look is the same.

The finished Wonky Rainbow Quilt Square

And now I’ve got some cool remains to use in my metaquilt!

Remains of the Wonky Rainbow for the Metaquilt!