A New Year, a new craft!

I guess technically, we did this in 2011.
New Year's Eve was here, and I essentially told Debbie that while the boys (big & little) played with all of their new gidgets/gadgets/guitars, we were going to etch glass! It wasn't hard at all, and luckily, she has a bunch of stickers, stamps and other scrapbooking supplies that we could use as templates.
Of course, I didn't take pictures during the process, or any pictures of her pieces - sorry! It's pretty easy though. I have a pinboard dedicated to the process if you want more details and ideas than I give you here.

You will need:
Amour Etching Cream (this is fairly expensive, but I used a Michael's 40% coupon and got the big bottle for $17)

Various Glass items (I used my wine glass, and also went to the dollar store for vases and votive holders)

Safety gear like gloves, goggles and the like.

Glass Cleaner

Stencils, stickers, contact paper, masking tape

Crappy Paint Brushes

Exacto Knife (for cutting out designs in your contact paper/tape)

Newspaper

First, I would recommend not having kids or animals around, and a good level of sobriety. We did not have any of those things going for us.
Second, when applying the etching cream, do it under the ventilation of your stove if possible. It is fairly toxic stuff, but you'll be fine if you use your common sense.

Essentially, you decide what you want to etch, and where it's going to go. This was probably the hardest part for us. No, it definitely was the hardest part.
Using a stencil, or stickers, or a design cut out of contact paper or tape, you clean your glass, apply the design (sticker, stencil, whatever) and then apply the cream with the paint brushes. (This is when you use the safety gear)
Really put it on thick. I didn't on one side of my candle holder, and you can tell. (Don't forget to rinse your brushes)
Let it sit and dry. The bottle says five minutes, but we left it way longer.
Rinse and dry. At first it will seem like nothing happened, but then you'll see the design once it's completely dry (unless you didn't put the cream on thick enough).
Admire your creation!

Some pointers - as you can see, I went for the negative effect on my candle holder and wine glass base. I used stickers, and then applied the cream all over the glass & stickers. Once removed, the only thing not etched is where the stickers were. I didn't do a good job on the glass where the stem starts. I should have used a rubber band or something to create a crisper line there.
You could do the reverse, but you need to give yourself a buffer when applying the cream so it doesn't etch where it's not supposed to. Extra pieces of contact paper, or masking tape work well for this.

Also, you may want to work with an item that has flat sides, or isn't rounded (like the business part of a wine glass). It would be difficult (not impossible though) to get the sticker/stencil down flat so the cream doesn't go where it's not supposed to. Think smaller designs for those items.

Here's the rest of what I did:

See how the back side isn't cloudy? Cream wasn't thick enough.

I used contact paper on this one. It was a huge pain in the ass.

Now, what to put it it???

And of course, about a week after we did this, I broke my wine glass while drying it. Guess I don't know my own strength. Back to the Dollar Store I go!!!

Quick Chicken Enchiladas

mmmm, left overs!!!

You know you liked dinner when you want the leftovers for breakfast the next morning!

 Being the lazy cook that I am, I'm always looking for quicker ways to make good food. Here's my latest success.

Ingredients:
14 oz Can of Chicken Breast, drained, with the juice going to the begging pets

Can of beans (Black or Pinto Chili beans), drained

Can of Green Enchilada Sauce

Large Can of Red Enchilada Sauce

Packet of Enchilada Seasoning

2 Cups Shredded Cheddar Cheese (separated into two 1 Cup potions)

Tortilla's (the whole wheat flour ones are really good!)

Optional toppings:
Green Onions, Cilantro, Sour cream, salsa, hot sauce - you know, the normal toppings.

Preheat oven to 350, spray a 9x13 baking dish. In a large bowl, mix everything, except for the tortilla's,  one cup of cheddar and the red enchilada sauce.  Once mixed, spoon it into a tortilla, roll and place face down in your dish. Pour the Red Enchilada sauce over all of your rolled tortillas, trying not to leave any exposed areas of tortillas.

Bake for 45 minutes or so, until it's bubbling everywhere. Add the remaining cheddar, and heat again until the cheese is gooey like you like it. Let it rest for about 10 minutes before enjoying!

If you do try this, let me know what you think!

Table Tease & the Supply Wall

I've been dreaming of a new work bench for years. YEARS.
Since I started making jewelry, I have been using an old Formica table that was left here by the previous owner. It's cool & all, but too low, too deep, too unstable.
And hooray for me, a work bench is my Christmas present from Santa this year for being such a good girl!!!

I found the one I wanted, checked stock and even had a coupon! Then the car acted up - it was starting sporadically, so I was nervous to drive it by myself, across town, and risk having to ask a stranger for a jump start. Plus, have you SEEN my work area? I had a lot of cleaning to do. Here's a picture:

Please don't judge me - I like organized chaos!

Except this picture is from almost 2 years ago, and it's worse now. (In related news, bot kids have taken turns getting sick over the Holidays. Evan on Christmas Day, Jenda on New Years Day. Thank god I didn't get shit-faced New Years Eve. Cleaning up vomit at 6:30AM was bad enough. Doing it with a hang over would have put me over the edge!)  So we had a couple of "sick days" where I was home with the kids, and I decided to "start small" with the cleaning.

The Supply Wall. I've seen some cool ideas on - you guessed it, Pinterest! - for organizing gift wrap/ribbon and other various craft ideas. So I riffed off of them! Here's the before supply wall:

This is one of the annoying things about this landing area in the basement - the wood slats on the walls. Why??? They're not even on the studs!!! So, while shelving isn't an option in this spot, it has created issues in other areas. Anyway... I thought this would be a great spot for the spools of chain and other stuff I have, and it totally IS!!! Check it out:

I used eye hooks in the ceiling to hang chain from, and re-purposed some large pieces of aluminum wire and a steel rod for the hanger parts. The ends that stick outside of the chain have a rubber band wrapped around it to keep it on the chain. It also it is easy to remove the rubber band from one of the ends to add on! I added additional rows for my leather, and also used paper clips on another to hand sterling silver chain. Turns out I've reordered things I already had. Go figure.
I used the backside of a 2009 calendar that HAD been hanging on the wall there (you're judging again, aren't you?) to make a dry erase board for open orders and things I need to remember, and used a scrap of pegboard for my larger gauge wire that doesn't fint anywhere else! And here's a closer view:

It's pretty awesome, and I'm totally impressed with myself. However, that cleared virtually nothing (visually anyway) from my mess of a table. Back to work...

During the Holiday's, Evan & Jenda spent the night over at the Watson's, so I had a free evening. I cranked up Spotify, had a few too many Vodka & Club Soda's, and went after the rest of my table.
Here's the visual evidence:

(Me being drunk & moody, all at the same time! My talent is NOT wasted!)

Here I am, with a clean table, nice supply wall, and no new bench. Because I didn't go that day, when I checked stock and the car was being an ass, they sold out, and have yet to restock. And apparently, they have no control over what their distribution warehouse sends them, which is total bullshit. I'll find out this afternoon IF they have one on the truck that comes in NEXT TUESDAY!!! If they don't, they have lost my business. 

Fall Comfort

I absolutely LOVE fall.
It means the return of football, cool weather and comfort food. Not that I've ever needed an excuse to cook comfort food, but it helps!

I made a roast the other day that was so good I didn't want to forget the recipe, so I submitted it to Allrecipes.com so I wouldn't forget it. They have NEVER published any of the recipes I've submitted. Frankly, I've stopped caring if they do or not. (I'm lying)

It's a combination of several different ones I've tried at different times, but this is what I'll be sticking with in the future. Even Jenda ate it. That says a lot.
So here it is!

PERFECT POT ROAST

3 to 4 lb Pot Roast
1 Envelope Onion Soup Mix
2 tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce
1/2 Cup Red wine
1 can Golden Mushroom Soup
water
salt & pepper
1 tablespoon corn starch

Directions

1. Place the onion soup mix, Worcestershire sauce, wine and soup in a crock pot large enough for your roast. Using your soup can, fill with water and add that to the mixture.
2. Stir to mix.
3. Liberally salt & pepper both sides of the roast and place in crock pot.
4. Flip roast over so it is coated on both sides.
5. Cook until the meat shreds easily. 8 to 9 hours on low.
6. When meat is finished, slowly stir 1 tablespoon of corn starch into 1/2 cup of water in small container. Slowly add that to the liquid in the crock pot while stirring. Replace lid for 15 minutes and serve.               

I made this with my mashed potato's and a salad, and it was beautiful.

Crazy Hair Day, Pinterest Style!

Oh the fun of elementary school!

Every now and then Jenda's school has a theme day, and earlier this week it was Crazy Hair Day. Normally she waits until 10 minutes before it's time to leave to tell me about it, but this time she told me the day before. Perfect!
I had seen this rag rolling hair thing on Pinterest awhile back and we (Jenda being the guinea pig!) tried it with just a few chunks of hair. It works REALLY well. So well in fact that she looked goofy the next day because she had a couple of spots of really curly hair, and the rest was dead straight.

We sort of followed the directions here at A Beautiful Mess, however, Jenda's hair was damp from a shower, she also dampened the strip of cloth, and I rolled the rags all the way to her scalp since her hair isn't that long.
This is how she looked before going to bed:

And in the morning:

And after we freed the locks:

VERY Medusa'ish!
This is how she went to school!

More soapy goodness!

So, the same day I made the second batch of laundry detergent (October 8th), I decided to also try my hand at home made dishwasher soap. Why not, right?

I had been doing some comparing and research on the different types of recipes, and it seemed the biggest difference between most of them was that if you have hard water, you should add some type of citric acid product. This products varied between Lemon Kool-aid (or a generic version), citric acid from the canning area of the store, or Lemi-Shine.
The Kool-Aid will eventually stain your dishwasher soap cup, so I wasn't going that route. The Citric Acid canning additive sounded expensive (based on others comments) and I read wonderful things about Lemi-Shine, and Baker's down the street carried it. Done deal.

I didn't really follow any ones specific recipe on this one, but based on what I read at several different blogs, decided to go with the following...
Here are the needed ingredients:

I still have a LOT of the Washing Soda left, and the Borax, so the only thing I had to buy was the Lemi-Shine.

Here's the recipe:
1 Cup Borax
1 Cup Washing Soda
1/2 Cup Lemi-Shine
1/4 Cup Salt

Use 1 tablespoon pure load in your soap cup. Add white vinegar as a rinse agent.

Most recommend Kosher salt, but I didn't have any so I used plain old table salt.
This is where it gets REALLY complicated.
Measure and mix all ingredients. See. Wasn't that hard?
I stored this in an old margarine container we used for leftovers. We don't use margarine anymore, so when the kids see me putting soap in the dishwasher, they get a bit teary eyed.
They LOVED margarine.
They're slowly getting used to plain 'ol butter. Whenever they ask for margarine, or complain about butter, I tell them to go eat some plastic as that's pretty much what margarine is.

One of the biggest complaints I read about these (dry) types of dishwasher soaps is that the citric acid will turn everything into a solid rock a couple of days down the road. And sure enough, it's true.
I took the advice of a couple of different people and left the lid off, and stirred it every now and then, breaking it up. It's still hard, but perfectly usable.
It works very well and I seriously doubt I will ever spend the money on the store bought stuff again.

So, in ONE HOUR, I made both dishwasher soap AND laundry detergent, both of which will last for a very long time. I have plenty of all supplies left to make more down the road. The total cost for the Borax, bar of soap, Washing Soda and Lemi-Shine was $11 and some change.
That. is. AWESOME!

While I worked on this, Brad was doing this:

Inside view

Outside view

Looks great, doesn't it??? Then, we went to the Watson's and watched the Husker's pull off the best ever comeback to beat Ohio State - freaking excellent fall Saturday!

Liquid Laundry Detergent - Attempt #2 = SUCCESS!!!

I did it, and I LOVE it!!!
This time I started with this recipe from the blog, "Why Not Sew".  She doesn't use as much water as some others I've seen, but that's OK - it's STILL way cheaper than the store bought stuff, and it works GREAT!!!
Here's the ingredients:

Except that I took this picture after I made the soap, so what you don't see is the missing bar of Ivory soap. My bad.
Also, this makes 2 gallons of detergent. Since my previous detergent bottle isn't that size, I poured the finished recipe into a clean cat litter bucket. (I always saved them and they come in handy all. the. time!)

Here's the recipe and what I did:
1 bar of soap (IMO, the more natural, the better)
1 cup of Borax
1 cup of washing soda
a big pot
empty gallon jug
container to store your soap in

I filled the empty gallon jug full with water, and poured about half of it into a large pot and started warming the water. As it was heating up, I grated the soap bar, and slowly stirred it into the water, stirring frequently. I also measured the Borax and washing soda and set that aside. Once the soap had dissolved, I added a bit more water from the gallon jug, and then slowly added the powder products and kept stirring until it was also dissolved. Remove the pan from heat.
It will look like this:

I poured the remaining water left in the gallon jug into the 5 gallon bucket, filled the gallon bottle one more time with warm water and poured that into the 5 gallon bucket. I then added the soap mixture to the bucket and stirred until it was well mixed.
Immediately I could tell that I had what I wanted. It was a beautiful consistency!
Done!

The recipe I used calls for 1/2 cup of detergent per load. I knew that I didn't want to be slopping detergent everywhere, so I used the recently emptied store bought detergent bottle, and checked to see how much it's little blue cup would hold. Guess what - it is exactly 1/2 a cup!
I did remove the plastic spout thing on the bottle because I found the homemade deteregent does thinken a bit as it sits. When I go to do laundry, I give the bottle of detergent a good shake to even out the consistency.
I'm thrilled with the results. Next time I MAY add some lavander or citrus essential oil, and I may add a bit more water. We'll see.
Happy Laundry!!!

Liquid Laundry Detergent - Attempt #1, Two Fails

Well, I did it. Or tried to.
I've waited for what seems like months for the detergent we had to run out so I could make some of my own. I'm trying to replace as many commercially made products with homemade, greener products. We've already gone "poo free" here, and I have the supplies to make some body soap (I have both "Melt & Pour" and rebatched soap base for hand milled), but haven't gotten around to it yet. More on those later.

So, as I'm addicted to Pinterest, I was able to find many different types of laundry soap recipes.
Most boil down to a several key ingredients:
Borax
Arm & Hammer Washing Soda
A bar of soap

Optional Ingredients: Salt (for hard water)
Essential Oil (or fragrance oil)

I decided to start with this recipe from The Simple Dollar as I love their blog. Here's what their final product looked like:
First fail.
Now, we have hard water. On several other blogs, I read that you can dissolve 1/2C Epsom salt into a cup of warm water and add that to the final product and it will soften your water AND act as a fabric softener.
Silly me, I thought I'd skip a step and after the grated bar of soap had melted into the water, I just poured the Epsom slat into the soapy water.
I wasn't trying to do a science experiment, but that's what I did. Here's how it turned out:

It was like cottage cheese in water, and no longer smooth, sudsy water. I was determined to carry on though, and continued with the recipe.
Here comes my second fail.
I had purchased an essential oil blend called "Karma", which is a blend of the following: Patchouli Oil, Orange Oil, Lavendin Oil, Pine Oil, Lemongrass Oil, Elemi Oil, and Gardenia Extract. It's great for lotions and soaps or as a body scent - if you like to smell like an earthy dirty hippy! My husband loves patchouli. I think it smells like dirt, but I kind of like it (just a teeny tiny little bit).
Instead of adding a recommended essential oil (Lavender, Orange, Lemon - you know, something CLEAN smelling!) I thought it would be a good idea to add some of the Karma oil. Bad idea.
What I ended up with was a liquidy cottage cheese water that smelled heavily of dirt. It never set correctly even though I tried (and burned out the motor) using a stick blender to break up the cottage cheese soap pieces.

My second attempt will soon follow...

I remembered

my password! Yes, it HAS been that long since my last post! I'm getting ready to take on some DIY projects at home and am going to blog the efforts. First up, the big bathroom! Pics coming soon!!!

Every now and then

I remember that I actually HAVE a blog. Usually it's because I post on someone else's blog. Which is why I'm posting this - if you haven't been to this place, you're missing out.
The Bloggess
It IS a must read. Preferably with a drink of your choice in a spill proof cup.
CHEERS!!!

GET TO WORK!

OK, most recent show is done, and due to it's tagging requirements, I actually had to do an inventory (GASP, the HORROR!!!).
How did they know that paperwork was an artist's favorite thing to do???
Now, I need to get over to my website and update that and add lots of new stuff!

jeez...

Has it really been since 2008 since I last "blogged"? I've heard blogs are becoming a thing of the past because of Facebook & Twitter. I guess that means it must be time for me to start bloggin more!
And oh yeah - wanna be my fan on Facebook?

There's a badge on the right side.
THANKS for the heads up Lyn!

New Drink Markers

I made this set for a friend who was getting married. Didn't want to do the same old drink markers, and this is what I came up with! I like'em!

I can't resist

OK, I was really excited to see Chimney Rock on our way to Wyoming this summer, but this was as close as we could get to it. So I sat on it. Mind you, I hadn't been to sleep for 28 hours...

Here's the kids, topping off Chimney Rock...

Zinnia

Purty! Nice to see something other than weeds growing.
Brad & the kids planted these this spring.