Chalkboard Paint Magic

I'm not going to lie; I went a bit chalkboard paint crazy for my wedding. But there are so many possibilities and for so much more than weddings. Chalkboard paint (and now magnetic paint) have made so many new possibilities for this DIY crafting type of activity. Here are my main 2 chalkboard paint projects:

1. Chalkboard Program:

Alan did most of the work for this.

We bought a sheet of compressed word and painted it first with primer and then with the chalkboard paint.
We also bought some molding to frame it out and painted it white.
We attached them with wood glue and clamped them over night.
Then you can just buy chalkboard markers (my roommate uses the same ones at Starbucks where she works) and have someone with nice penmanship write out your information (I used my roommate.)
Simple. Although we did the bulk of our painting in the basement of our apartment complex

. This initiated a loud and heated argument with my first floor neighbor. No worries though, she was always the worst. But the warning here is, keep the project in a well ventilated area.

            

2. Table Numbers:

Funny story. I made a couple blunders during my wedding planning stage. For one, I forgot to add my husband and me to our head count for our caterers...but another one was all of the sudden it was 3 days before my wedding, and I have no way of telling one table from the other. I had made all the guest cards and the seating arrangement without ever thinking "how are they going to know which table is table 10?" So, I had some extra chalkboard paint and I made these:

I got married on October 14, 2011. So if there was anything that was extremely available at the time, it was pumpkins. So Alan and went and bought 15 of them and this time, because of the aforementioned neighbor argument, brought them to my parents house.

I placed them on top of trash bags to protect the driveway and painted them directly. It might have been better to use a primer, but it worked out fine. They needed 2 full coats but I could only do half at a time, so it took 4 rounds of spraying. 

I loved this last minute table number, and it would have been relatively stress-free had it not been 3 days before the wedding. 

"Shot of Wheat Grass" Favor

Did you know that I am a pun connoisseur? Well, I am. So our wedding favor was one these guys:

Rubber ducky and Lenox angel love the grass.

It's a "Shot of wheat grass". Wheat grass is a popular nutrition supplement. Usually it's juiced, and then taken in a shot form to enhance digestion and immune systems; so at some very earthy cafe's you can actually order a shot of wheat grass juice.

I am not this healthy (you can tell in my pictures and recipes!). I simply love grass. I love laying in grass, the look of it, the smell of it. Grass was in my centerpieces, in my decorations, even on my wedding cake, although it was made of icing.

So I wanted to have a shotglass with a tuft of grass sticking out to be our favor. I wanted it to be like a play off of centerpieces like this:

But ever the re-purposer, I wanted the grass to be useful to my guests. So I looked up functional grass, and decided between Lemon Grass (can be used in cooking) and wheat grass. I went with wheat grass mostly for aesthetics. But when I realized that it would be a literal shot of wheat grass...the pun was the clincher.

So here's the deal with wheat grass. It needs to be timed very well. And wheat grass can be a bit high maintenance. So we bought a wheat grass growing kit online. It came with the soil, the seeds, fertilizer and growing trays, which was great. We bought shot glasses (with love written in binary code) from Discountmugs.com  (Very reasonable)

We set up a table lined with shot glasses (not in a fun way) and filled each with soil and fertilizer (yes, all 175 of them). We covered the top of the soil with wheat grass seeds closely together (not all sprout, and they're meant to be tightly packed).

We sprayed each with water and then topped with a layer of paper towels. Then we sprayed the paper towels to keep them moist for the seeds. Twice a day we sprayed the towels to keep moisture on the grass and sure enough, after 5-6 days they sprout enough to push those towels off.

I've heard that mold can grow while in the paper towel phase, and I've also heard you can spray with a bit of vodka to get rid of it, but it wasn't needed for my batch. You only need 8-9 days to get to the first picture. We let our sprout a little too long, so learn from our mistake! We were also able to use our favors for other purposes!

Baby Jar Chandeliers

Full Disclosure: This was my hands-down favorite DIY Project I did for our wedding; however, it was also the most difficult and time consuming (as well as injurious!). So difficult, in fact, that I told our photographer to try and get them in the most pictures so I could justify the time I spent making them. Here is the picture of our finished result:

I'm showing you it finished first to try and incentivize you to try it. I still would have done it over again if given the option, it was just tedious and I'm particular, which didn't help.

Step 1: Calling all baby food jars! I put out (on facebook) a request that all my lucky new-parent friends and family save glass baby food jars. In hind-sight, I probably would have included the word clean in my baby food jar post. :)

Step 2: Clean baby food jars. Yes, I did get some that weren't so much as rinsed out, but you'll be happy to know that you can recycle the lids and the jars can run through the dishwasher.

Step 3. De-Glue where the label was. I tried many methods and this is what worked: 1. Boil water and 1tsp vinegar with jars. 2. Rub rubbing alcohol on what residue is left. and 3 (because I'm particular) use a razor to chip of what's remaining. Please please be careful.

Step 4. You will need to buy:

• Small ball link chain (you can buy them by the spool in bulk online)& connectors
• Silver color wire
• Circular cooling rack (you can buy them from kitchen supply stores online)
• Wire-cutters (if you don't already have them)
• Small s Hooks

Step 5. Determine how long you want your candles to hang. For me, I wanted them to be at varying lengths between 1.0-2.0 feet away from the cooling rack. So I cut lengths of chain in pairs between 2-4 feet long. Then I would take 2 chains the same length and attach them to the baby jars by wrapping wire around the jar+chain about 4 times. Using the wire cutters, I would twist the ends of the wires together to keep it extra tight and tuck in the sharp ends (this is where the injuries came from, so be careful!)

Step 6. Loop the chain and use the connector to close the loop to the opposite end of the chain so it's like a jar necklace. Do the same with the other chain on that jar. Then put an S hook on your cooling rack and hang the jar on the opposite side of the "s" hook. Attach as many jars as you wish! For me it was 8-10. You're going to want to spread them out evenly or it will be hard to have the entire chandelier sit level.

Step 7. Like I said previously, I'm particular, so I had to re-situate every jar multiple times...but when I was finally done, I filled it with black rock from an aquarium store (cheaper) but you can find other options or another inexpensive items might be sand or soil so long as it's not flammable. (Now that I think about it - it would be cool to grow herbs from there...). Drop in the tealight, light-up and enjoy!

I used a plant hanger (shepard's hook) to hang them at the ceremony. Or atleast I attempted to. It rained on my wedding day, so they put them in some pots that had plants in there... it was haphazard at best, but I still loved these little trouble some chandeliers. 

Election 2012 Plug

I don't wish to spout my (many extreme) political opinions on this blog. I don't want alienate anyone with my personal views and opinions. But I will say one thing: I wish everyone in this country would vote. It's easy for me to say I'll be voting. I'm a politics junky. And I'm a nerd about it. It's a no-brainer for me. But for many people I know political discourse is just not on their radar. And that's fine. But I know tons of people who say they just don't know enough to really vote for a particular candidate.

I really believe that every person should have a say in the direction our country goes. I know it takes some research to really get to know candidates but... oh wait...it doesn't anymore! I'm super excited for this new website:  I Side With.... It's a very brief test that asks you your honest opinions on the bigger issues in politics (and I don't mean issues like what type of birth certificate you have or where your dog was when you went on vacation).

Then the site will list all of the current presidential candidates in order of who agrees with your thoughts the most and details in which areas each candidate agrees or differs from you. So many times these races become about anything but the issues. It's nice to find a site that simplifies it for people who may not watch the debates and gets sick of all the name calling in the commercials to get a raw idea of where the candidates stand.

I also appreciate that they include so called "third party" candidates that don't get their air time in the media. I really recommend trying it out. You may not care about the men and women who sit in political office, but the decisions they make alter our reality, and voting is our way of influencing those decisions.

Cottage Cheese Ranch

Let me start off with saying: I detest cottage cheese. The texture creeps me out and I do not like the taste. But I do love ranch, and we need to add more vegetables to our diet. So I saw this ranch recipe that substitutes cottage cheese for the heavy mayo and buttermilk that ranch usually requires.

Well the husband loves cottage cheese, so I figured I'd give this a shot. The recipe called for only 3 ingredients, but one of those ingredients is a Hidden Valley Ranch dressing seasoning packet. I knew there were ways to make those seasonings with what I had in the cupboard, so here is what I ended up doing:

I mixed together in a Ziploc bag:

• 2TBS Parsley Flakes
• 1tsp Basil
• 1tsp Onion Powder
• 1tsp Garlic Powder

I shook the bag to get the spices mixed thoroughly and put to the side. I used a mason jar, but this is simple enough to really just start in whatever container you'll be storing your ranch in. It'll save you a dish to wash.

In the mason jar I added:

• 1 Cup Cottage Cheese
• 1/4 Cup Skim Milk
• 1 TBS Ranch Spice Mixture

The recipe calls for this to be blended in a blender for 3 minutes. In an ideal world, I would own one of those. But since I don't, I just whisked away for about 10 minutes. I didn't really get rid of that curd texture I hate so much, but the taste is pretty good. I'm sure it would be amazing if we did have access to a blender. Hopefully this will encourage more veggie consumption for us. Atleast for this week.

French Toast Casserole

Need to feed a large group of people? This may be the ticket. A group of us from the office volunteered to cook and serve brunch at a local food bank in Chester. Chester, PA has been hit pretty hard during the recession. Two of the areas biggest employers (both oil refineries) have closed down in the last couple of years so many people have recently lost their jobs. The Bernadine Center has been providing services to this community for years. The sisters there have become so connected to those they serve that it felt like a brunch with family or friends.

So we made a couple different casseroles. A co-worker and mine were charged with this French Toast Bake Recipe. I made a few variations to get it closer to the amazing french toast my husband makes on special Sundays. (Keep in mind that I doubled this recipe for our purposes, so the pictures are double the quantity)

First for this casserole, cut one loaf of french bread in one inch cubes and throw them in a 9 x 13 casserole dish:

After that, cube one 8-once package of cream cheese and add to casserole dish. In hind-sight, I'd recommend cubing it smaller than I did, and mixing the bread and cream cheese cubes together.

Next is the only real work that this recipe requires: cracking a dozen eggs! Crack a dozen eggs into a bowl and add 3/4 cup of syrup, 1 + 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon and 1 hefty teaspoon of vanilla extract and mix together (when I say hefty teaspoon of vanilla, I just mean, if some spills over the spoon while pouring, it wouldn't be a terrible thing).

Remember! I had to double the recipe. It's intimidating isn't it!?

Finally pour your egg and syrup mixture over your cubed bread and cream cheese and let chill in the fridge over night.

Thanks Alan!!

When  you wake up in the morning, just pop it in the oven at 375 degrees for about 45 minute. The egg-syrup mixture should be about soaked in and no longer liquid and the top should look lightly browned.

Classy pan, eh? 

A couple things about this recipe: It's really super easy. I mean the prep is done the night before and even that prep is pretty simple. Also, it's extremely filling and can feed a large group. Serve with fruit, whipped topping, or the standard: maple syrup.

Drunken Watermelon - Mojito Style

This 4th of July my sister and I planned a picnic at a local park. We brought food and some adult beverages. I started seeing a trend on Pinterest that combined watermelon & adult beverages and knew it was a must try. Unfortunately, the only thing I could find was this tequila soaked watermelon recipe. I feel like everyone I know has a tequila story, and they never end with "and they lived happily ever after." Nope. Tequila stories usually end with "and then ...it's kind of a blur" and terrible pictures like this:

For the record, this was years ago. But still, I'm trying to do the running man in a sports bar: not my best side.

So being that most of my family has sworn off the stuff (myself included), I had to think up an alternative. I had some general alcohol's already, including the 20-something-female staple : Malibu Coconut Rum. I decided to pair that with the Watermelon since I've had pretty fantastic Watermelon Mojito's in the past. (If you're in my area, try it at Cubra Libre in Atlantic City.)

The original recipe calls for a making of simple syrup and then adding a the components of a margarita. For this, I made a simple syrup by boiling 3/4 cup of water and adding 1 cup of sugar, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Setting the mixture aside to cool, I started on the watermelon.

A couple hints for buying watermelon (which I learned the hard way from this experience):

• Go seedless! Especially for this recipe.
• You want there to be a yellow patch on the watermelon where it sat on the ground. My logic said "this one is completely green, that must mean it's good" No. The opposite is apparently true. Green all around = stringy bland grossness. 
• Get a smaller size watermelon. Once cut up, watermelon somehow self multiplies and all the sudden you're completely surround by an excess amount of the stuff.

So once I got the right melon (3 trips to the grocer!!) I cut it up to wedges, or as my nephew calls it, "those triangles with the rind still on it." and then it's time for the booze. Mix 2 cups of rum for 1 cup of the syrup. I put the watermelon in large ziploc bags (made for easier cooler transit) and poured syrup mixture as evenly as possible. Let it chill in the fridge for atleast an hour.

Of course it wouldn't be a mojito without mint. Unfortunately Mojito's must have been popular for the fourth because the grocery store was all out of fresh mint. I had to buy the dry mint flakes (it did the job, but isn't recommended).  That was 1:1 ratio of dry mint flakes : Sugar (1 tbs mint flakes + 1 tbs sugar = mint sugar!). 

With fresh mint, grind mint down with a mortar and pestle (or if you'r like me, and are not that fancy, use the back of a spoon). That ratio should be 1:2 (1 tbs fresh mint + 2 tbs sugar=mint sugar). You could put the mint sugar on before serving, but the sugar dissolves into the watermelon, and you loose that cool sugar texture. I say this from experience, as that's what I did. In hind sight, I wish I had served it as something on the side to dip in right before eating.

But you know what they say about hindsight...Anyway, hope you enjoy! ....(safely!)

Invent Your Own Scattergories

Have you ever played that game Scattergories? It's a party game. If you haven't played it - You should. I grew up on these kind of games. I'm not much for Monopoly or Risk. I always end up giving stuff away out of guilt. I can never win those games. I am in social services, not economics! I love these kind of games where everyone works together or has to use their brains, be imaginative or creative. I also love when we have to think of something like "a city that starts with A" and someone answers Arkansas.

That's how Scattergories is played. The game gives you categories like "type of drink" or "things on a beach" and you roll a letter of the alphabet and come up with something in that category that starts with that letter. So if you got the letter "T", you might say "Tea" for type of drink or "Towels" for things on a beach. Apparently it turns your head into this:

'Brain may not be full of confetti.'

Well with only 2 people, especially 2 people who live together or know each other very well, that game isn't much fun. When you get "School supplies that start with P" you know you both are coming back with pencil. So here's what we did. We created our own categories. We each came up 5 categories that meant something to us.

Here's some of Alan's:

• Songs we've heard
• Streets in our County
• A family Memory
• Something in our home

Here's some of mine:

• Something from the wedding
• Past Date locations or memories
• Something the other person owns
• Partner's annoying habit

I say only some because some (most) of our categories are not suitable for all audiences...but this was couples night in! One of our more PG-13 categories included "things that can interrupt bedroom time"-just to give you an idea. But use your imagination! This was a really fun way to spend a night in without spending a nickel! We were entertained for hours.

Sorry this activity doesn't lend itself to nice aesthetic imagery... but I promise you it's fun.

DIY Direction Sign

Another inexpensive project we took on (and by we, I mean Alan, cause I have to give credit where credit's due, and Alan did all of this project) is a sign to let our guests know where to turn to get to the wedding site. We literally just got the most cheap piece of spare wood from our local hardware/lumber store. Alan went to town on it with a hammer to bang up the edges a bit. We painted it a barn door red type of color and then Alan chipped away with a screwdriver and hammer. 

The great thing about projects like this is that it's not meant to look perfect. It's supposed to look rustic. I bet the finished result would have looked even better if we had done that technique where you paint over dried Elmer's glue to get that weathered paint look. Alan also drilled holes and hung the sign with some twine we had around the apartment. Here's the finished result from our big day!

DIY Luminaries

This little blog being a new endeavor, I just wanted to show some of the money saving projects my husband and I did for our wedding this past October. I'll start with what I believe was Alan's favorite: These Tealight Luminaries (originally from candletech.com). All you basically need is any candles (we got "Emergency Candles" at the dollar tree) and some balloons. Also, a double boiler would of helped, but being as we do not have one of those, we grabbed a coffee tin, put it on top of some cookies cutters to elevate it in the pot of boiling water below. I would not recommend it, but it did work.

Pull the wicks out of the candles if possible, and place in double boiler to melt. Once melted, fill balloons with enough water to make it more of a sphere than an oval. Or whatever you want it to look like, that's just what we did. Once filled, dip it into the wax, pull it out, wait 10-30 seconds and then dip it again. Repeat this until you get the desired thickness. For us it was about 5 times a luminary. I don't think you have to worry about hitting the sides. We were always nervous but the balloons never popped. 

Feel free to ridicule our wallpaper! I hate it too. But we're renters, so we'll take what we can get. After a while you'll get a bunch of wax covered balloons like this:

Once they've fully cooled, poke a hole in the top of the balloon, and let the water slowly drain out (or pop vigorously and deal with the mess that ensues, like we did.) Once empty, we did re-melt the edges to make a straight line by running it along a hot surface (a frying pan covered in foil worked for us). And this is our finished product!

Please make sure you use the the battery operated tealights! Real ones will melt the luminary, it is made of wax!  More extraordinarily late wedding posts to follow!

Playing Chopped

Since the husband and I have found cause to trim our budget down to the minimum, we've had to find ways to keep ourselves busy. Last night, we played scrabble with the catch that we could only use words we could use in a factual sentence about ourselves. (It got goofy quickly)

Tonight's game: Chopped. Alan (husband) LOVES the food network show Chopped . I'll admit, it is entertaining, even if I'm not as into the foodie shows as he is. To bring those of us up to speed, basically each chef opens up a basket that contains 4 mystery ingredients to make a delicious dish. His challenge is dinner. Here are the ingredients I chose for him:

His "basket" (it's actually my sewing kit, but for effect, it's there!) includes:

• What I've been calling "Beef Strings". Basically strips of inexpensive steak. 
• Greek yogurt (plain flavored)
• Naan flat bread
• Green cauliflower

So I've basically given him meat meant for stir fry, and bread designed for Indian food, Greek yogurt, and a mutated hybrid veggie. To meet his challenge, Alan fried the "beef strings" in some Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, garlic, and onion powder. He made a tzaiki type sauce with the greek yogurt, Worcestershire sauce, honey, salt and pepper, and butter. Steamed green cauliflower and toasted the naan with olive oil. He ended up with this:

Well played, Alan. Then it was my turn. Dessert! My ingredients were the following: 

Yes, Alan went far easier on me.

• Nilla wafer coookies
• Marshmallow Creme (fluff)
• Sweetened Condensed Milk
• Dark Brown Sugar

So, I could easily make some kind of sauce with sweetened condensed milk, but with brown sugar, I almost certainly had to bake... so this is what happened: 

1. I crushed about 1.5 cups of Nilla wafers. Which did give me an opportunity to use my meat tenderizer, which is always fun:

2. I used that as the basis of a cookie recipe. Added to it 1/4 cup of all-purpose flour,1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/4 cup butter, 1 egg, 1 teaspoon vanilla and beat until it seemed like cookie dough consistency. Baked at 325 for about 15-20 minutes. Turned out like this:

So 2 ingredients aside, I made a sort of fudge topping by heating up the sweetened condensed milk in a small saucepan. I immediately added 1/2 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips and when they melted completely I added a "healthy dollop" of fluff. Then I poured it into a lightly sprayed (Pam) muffin tin and popped in the freezer to cool and set. I also made a marshmallow frosting (going for a s'mores type of flavor) but I will not post those instructions because the frosting was far too sweet and, in my opinion, ruined the whole dessert.

Once I scrapped the overpowering frosting off, the chocolate topped nilla-remake cookie was phenomenal. I do think Alan won this edition of Chopped even if he won't admit it. Also, I highly recommend playing Chopped with a partner or two. We'd be making dinner anyway, so it was just a fun way to spice that up.