Cheap art!

It's no secret that I'm not a big spender in pretty much any area of my life, so when it comes to art, thrifty is the theme of the day. I like to think I've gotten pretty good lucky at scoring frameables on the cheap. My best find was a charcoal sketch on Kraft paper that I picked up for $1.99 at a thrift store.

$1.99? Are you outta your mind?

Unfortunately, I've hit a bit of a dry patch when it comes to uncovering masterful pieces in the junk pile. In fact, I'm starting to realize that sketch might be a once-in-a-lifetime find. And let's be honest, I can craft, but I'm no fine artist, so I've had to get a little creative when it comes to the rest of the things I frame. I've pulled pages out of books, magazines and photo albums and put them behind glass. But this time, I wanted something different. I knew I wanted patterns. I knew I wanted lots of white. I also knew I wanted texture. Three reasonable-sounding things, right? Good luck getting them all in one piece for a decent price. If you're shopping, good taste is expensive!

I knew I'd have to work within my means, so that meant rooting around the basement for a while until I found some old frames and spray paint. I grabbed three--two were 5x7s, the third was an 8x10. I don't know about you, but I never use my larger frames, so reworking these was a big priority for me.

I set up shop outside on my balcony and got to sprayin'. Some old plastic bags and a cardboard box later and I was in business.

I used Rust-oleum Lacquer, which went on nice and smoothly, but didn't quite have the high gloss look of lacquer. Nonetheless, it still looks pretty baller in my opinion. I applied looooots of thin coats, and I let them dry between each application. It took about two hours with drying time to get all of the frames painted evenly.

Then it was time to figure out what to put in them. I popped in to Michael's to check out their paper supply, and was mightily impressed. It was tough narrowing things down. (They have an ENTIRE wall of card stock--and not just those crappy packs of patterns.) But these are three I came up with:

While I could never pick a favorite--what kind of monster do you think I am?--I have to say I admire the graphic pops of the dandelion-looking paper. So funky!

And I think they're even better in the frames. They each seem to have a bit of personality that screams: "We're high class, and we cost so much more than $3!" But they're such liars, don't listen to them. Each piece of paper was less than a buck.

Not bad for about the cost of cup of coffee, huh?

There are other thrifty projects here.

Printable recipe cards for you

Unfortunately, my home sometimes looks like an extension of the madness in my mind, which means lots of chaos and paper hidden just out of view. I've been trying to at least curb the physical disorder by organizing my recipe box. I had stacks and stacks of food magazines, and enough tear cards to fill a (small) room--maybe something closet-sized.

Don't believe me? Check it out:

How's that for a food library?

Not surprisingly, I ran out of recipe cards pretty quickly. But not one to be stopped in my tracks, I cooked up some of my own.

The world's best lasagna

I've had quite the culinary week. Something came over me, and I felt the need to do my worst in the kitchen. The results? Pretty darn good, if I do say so myself. I tested out three new recipes, two of which were resounding hits. The third? Meh--it's OK, but a little too mature for the palates 'round here. Regardless, I'll share my recipes with you over the next few days.

Here's my best success: a mushroom and kale lasagna. It was so creamy that I could have easily doubled the amount of mushrooms and kale and there wouldn't have been any complaints in my house. You hear that, moms? Hidden vegetables! The original recipe is from Smitten Kitchen, but I've added kale and made a couple of tweaks.

Ingredients:
Salt, to taste
Olive oil
1 box of dried lasagna noodles (I used the ready-to-bake kind)
1 clove garlic
4  cups skim milk
3/4 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup flour
1 t black pepper
1 t nutmeg
1 pound cremini muhrooms
1 cup chopped kale, veins discarded
1 cup Parmesan

Lemon herb chicken from the slow cooker, for friends

I have some of the best friends a girl could ask for. Proof: We actually get together to cook.  I know, we're geeks. But sometimes you just need someone to get dirty in the kitchen with you. (Not like that!)

We got together for dinner a week ago, and we each were in charge of a course. It was at my house, so I took the main dish. And in the effort of keeping the kitchen fairly clear once people got here, I chose to do a slow cooker recipe. That way anyone who needed the stove or oven had free reign.

It was my first attempt with the Crock Pot, and I'm pretty impressed with how it turned out. I went with a lemon herbed chicken, and it was moist and had a good amount of flavor. Next time I might throw more garlic in, cuz that's just the kind of girl I am, but otherwise, it was pretty tasty. And for sure, I'll definitely make more. We only had one piece left at the end of the night, which I was pretty surprised about.

Lemon Herb Chicken in the Slow Cooker

Seasoning rub:

3 cloves garlic, chopped

1 T olive oil

1 t sea salt

1 t thyme

(S)Wheat sounds

Pull out the cardigans, ladies. Fall is here. Here in Philly, the high today is going to be a perfect 75 degrees, and it'll dip down into the 40s later. It's making me want pumpkin pie and apple cider. Mmm, apple cider...

I'm going to pull out a few of the fall decorations later today. I know--it's still September. Everything is still green. But decorating is like dressing--you've got to put on what you're feeling. And for me, that's oranges, reds and browns.

This year I'm also thinking about branching out into wheat. I've never used it, but man, that tall grass is gorgeous. Here are some pictures that are haunting my design consciousness.

 

Curtains, step by step

Lately in my house, the slowest moving train has been progress. I've got a lot of different projects in the works, but none are moving forward spectacularly well. But sometimes that's life.

I picked up the fabric for the curtains I want to sew for the second bedroom. I had something light and ethereal in my mind. But it had to have texture, too. My search pulled me over to Fabric Row in Queen Village, where I had a swing and a miss in the first store. I found the perfect fabric. It was a gossamer linen with the faintest plaid fabric that let light shine in differently through its varying textures. I wasn't thinking ahead enough, and I didn't bring my camera, but this is sort of what it looked like.

Gor-geous.

Unfortunately, they only had a yard. I probably should have bought it and done something else with the fabric, but I was a woman on a mission.

I went a few stores over, where I had much better luck. They had an entire section of sheers, but I wasn't finding exactly what I needed. There were bright white sheers, nude laces, and almost everything in between. But I couldn't find the one that had to come home with me. That is, until I was on my way out of the store. I passed a sheer linen that had its wrinkles pressed in. There was texture. There was light. And there was lots of movement--even on the bolt.

So I had the store wrap up four yards, plus four yards of a white liner. I'm not entirely sure I'll use it on this project or not, but I have it in case I need it. If not, I'm sure it'll wind up in something else soon enough.

Of course, I haven't gotten the motivation up to start the sewing yet, but I'll let you know how it goes once I get to it.

Screw Domino's

That's right. I said it. My pizza is way better than any chain's--even with fancy shmancy new crusts and whatnot. And it's so, so easy (and cheap!). Plus, it doesn't take much longer than delivery.

This was my first attempt at pizza making at home. Once upon a time, I had a stint on a pizza line, but I was never super fast or even kind of good at making the pies. When I stretched the dough, it usually turned into someone telling me to move my toosh over to the cheese and sauce department, where I couldn't screw things up too badly. Despite my incompetency on the line, I always had a soft spot for the place I used to work and their insanely delish pizzas. And yesterday being the anniversary of what it was, I was feeling a little nostalgic. So I decided to revisit my youth and see what I could do.

I have this fancy dancy new bread machine, which I use on the regular. But I wanted to branch out past ryes and wheats and see if I could use it to make pizza dough. As it happens, you absolutely can.

Pizza dough:
2/3 cup water
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
2 cups bread flour
1 1/4 teaspoons yeast

If you're using a bread maker, throw the ingredients IN THAT ORDER into the machine. Otherwise, warm the water and activate the yeast first. Then mix everything together and get to kneading. Be sure to let the dough rise, too. I gave it about 45 minutes, which seemed to work well. This made one pound of dough, or enough to feed two adults.

I also decided to use my pizza stone, so once the dough was ready to be stretched, I heated up the (convection) oven to 375 F. If you use a traditional oven, bump it up to 400 F. Once it was hot enough, I stuck in the pizza stone for 15 minutes.

Chicken noodle soup!!!

Oh, it is so that time of year. You know what I mean--you've got both baseball and football on TV, a few rainy nights and temperatures slowly dipping from the highs of summer. In my house, that means you've got to pull out the old stock pot, because it's soup time. And just to make sure you understand how excited I am, please envision me dancing every time you read "soup time." That's two little wiggles for this paragraph.

I decided to kick off this most excellent season with a chicken soup. I'll share my recipe with you, but keep in mind that I like to use the week's leftover cooked veggies to cut down on waste, so my soup will be different than yours.

OK, here it goes:

4 quarts water

1 large, cut-up chicken, bone in

1/2 peeled onion

3 stalks of celery, cut into coins

3 garlic cloves, peeled

1 cup carrot coins (I had baby carrots, so I used them. Use what you have.)

1 tablespoon sea salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

2 fresh bay leaves

3 tablespoons dried parsley

3 tablespoons dried dill

bowl of leftover veggies (Mine included potatoes, onion, green beans and carrots.)

Bring the water to a boil. Add everything except for the already cooked vegetables. Cover and let cook for an hour and a half. 

Next, remove chicken and skim broth. Don't leave any of those cloves of garlic or large pieces of onion in there! I like the carrots and celery to be soft, I so leave them in. But if you want them to be more firm, remove them now, and replace with freshly cut pieces. 

When chicken is cool enough to be handled, shred the meat, and return it to the broth. Add leftover veggies and simmer for 15 minutes. Serve immediately, because it's soup time! (Insert dance.)

Engagement pictures are here!

Exciting news in the home front: The pre-hubs and I got our engagement photos back! We had them taken at the art museum, and they're very cute, if I do say so myself. Since we're such cheapskates, we bought a Groupon for a local photographer, which included five sheets of pictures and three digital images--which really is not a lot of pictures. But in the end, it worked out, because we only really liked a few of the photos anyway. These are the favorites:

I spent last night trying to find frames for the pics. One of the coolest frames we have is one we got as an engagement gift from a couple of very sweet friends. They saw it and thought it was our style (it is!), so they bought it. It feels so personalized and sentimental--a great gift!

It wasn't easy arranging the composition, though. You'd be surprised how frustrating it is to not be able to run out and have more photos printed in whatever size you want. I think I've gotten used to the immediacy of online photo editing and publishing. Oh well! 

Here's what I was able to work out:

We still need more photos; we have hardly any of our parents, and almost no vertical shots. Something to work on in the future, I guess. But first, I'll have to find a home for the frame...

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On a completely unrelated note, it's amazing how different my paint color looks. The top photo was taken at night, and the bottom one was taken during the day. At night, the wall looks so yellow! (In most lighting it's really a khaki color.) Iiiinteresting!

Lighting up the window

My latest project has me smiling. Want a peek? Ok, here ya go:

Still not sure what I'm talking about? That's OK, I'll tell you all about it. I picked up some capiz shell strands over the weekend, which were hugely on sale. As in originally-priced-at-$20-but-marked-down-to-$3 sale. (If you're in Philly, there's still a basket of them at the West Elm on Chestnut.) I figured they'd add a little textural interest to the room, while bouncing around some light.

What I didn't count on was how difficult they'd be to hang. My first attempt had me trying to screw cup hooks into the window moulding, but I wasn't strong enough to make it happen, and I didn't have  a drill bit small enough to act as my muscle. Next, I tried nails with wide heads. My instinct was to tie a slip knot around the head and pray that all would stay. In the end, that lasted about five minutes before one fell. 

My ultimate solution was to clip a picture bracket to do the job. The original fixture (top) had too much metal going on, so I chopped it down to just what I needed (bottom) and got to hammering.

As it turns out, that was the hardest part of the job. Because of the design of the bracket, I had to hammer at an angle, which is extremely hard to do when you're also holding a string of delicate shells. But by the time I got to the fourth strand, I had a system. (A system that relied heavily on me balancing precariously on the desk. This is not recommended.)

When I stepped back, I was pretty pleased. The strands were staying, and they reached all the way to the sill. In fact, they extended past what I needed, which was a relief--our windows are long, and I was worried I'd need to tie the strings together.

I was able to cut them down and salvage the leftover shells. I'll have to find a project to use them. Maybe covering a picture frame?

I'm really happy with the way they turned out, and I think that as soon as we get curtains, this look will be fantastic. It really makes the light bounce around the room, and it adds some much-needed natural texture. 

I can't wait to get some fabric panels around those windows to wrap this project up!

Inspiration by the sea

I spent Labor Day weekend at the Jersey Shore, and took a day trip to Cape May. If you've never been, it's an adorable place with some much Victorian architecture you half expect people to end their sentences with "Gov-nah," or ask you to tea.

And clearly, the town is bursting with inspiration for any housing geeks, like me. I took a few pics of my favorite houses:

 This house was stunning. It doesn't translate as well in the photo, but the covered entryway has a teal ceiling, which gives you such a visual pop. Plus, you can't beat the covered patio, and just beyond that, a greenhouse.

And, just because I have a sweet spot for trolleys, here's one for ya:

Somehow, despite spending my entire life in the mid-Atlantic region, this was my first trip to Cape May. I can promise I'll absolutely be back sometime soon.

Window watching

Our windows are about as dressed as a brand new baby,  and it's not that way by design. Trust me when I say that we need some drapery love in this house. We've been able to get away with it this long because the apartment across the alley from us was empty for a really long time. But now we have new neighbors, and we can't keep living so... exposed.

See? I really wasn't kidding. That's a view of the neighbor's grill and fire escape from our desk. It really doesn't inspire me to do any work.

Now I'm serious about privacy and some good looking curtains. I haven't made any final decisions, and I definitely want to make the panels myself, but here are some commercially made inspiration pieces:

I think these multi-layer tulle panels are cute, but possibly a little heavy for the room. 

And these curtains from Anthropologie are incredible, but their pleats might be too difficult for my skill set.

But it might be these ikat sheers that speak to me most. I don't think you can improve much on the pattern or the pops of color. They're great because they let in quite a lot of light, but the layered fabric obscures any sneak peeks wandering eyes might seek out.

I also picked up these capiz shell strands, which I'm going to hang within the window casing. I'm hoping they'll reflect lots of light and make the space seem more lively.

I'll let you know how the process goes!

Sunday fun day

The pre-hubs and I are out on the best spontaneous thrifting trip of the summer. We're down the shore right now and decided to daytrip it to Cape May. Along the way, we've stopped at some fantastic street-side antique shops.

Here are a couple sneak peeks:

It's multiplying

I don't know about you, but in my house, as a project goes on, the stuff seems to pile up. You know what I'm talking about: that kitchen gadget you never use; the side table that isn't quite right; the stemware from Aunt Gertrude.

It's time to get rid of the junk!

Most of the time, I try to give it to a family or friend who could put it to good use. I just gave three nonstick pans to my sister, who is still developing her kitchen.

But before that, I took a bag of odds and ends to my neighborhood thrift store, which benefits AIDS research. And before that, I collected an absurd amount of clothing and donated it to a local hospital. In this house very little makes it to the trash can. Almost everything can be put to good use in a new home. If you need ideas, here are some organizations that take your trash and turn it into--for lack of a better phrase--treasures.

• Goodwill It keeps people employed! Gotta love that!
• Salvation Army They provide for tough times
• ReStore They take preloved home items and sell them to benefit Habitat for Humanity
• Philly AIDS Thrift My personal favorite, but local to Philly
• Soles 4 Souls Great way to give shoes a second life

What's become of the guest room

On today's episode of As The Guest Room Turns, we have new faces, added drama, and so much more to look forward to. There's intrigue, excitement and murder!

Ok, maybe not murder. But most of the other stuff is true. Sorta.

As for new faces, we have a new comforter, which was sorely needed. And to sweeten the deal even more, I picked it up on a supreme sale. And a good sale always counts as drama, right? It's a white down comforter, with damask stripes, trimmed with satin. (Excitement!) I know neither one is visible in the photo, but it's true--it really is striped, and there really is satin. I promise! At this point, the bed is just beginning for a guest to break it in.

I also hung a giant oil painting I picked up a year ago at Rice's Flea Market in Buck's County. It's a beaut, but it wasn't taken good care of before coming home with me, and it shows in some places. Hopefully no one will notice. If they do, I'll write it off as patina.

Today was also the day that a mirror from our wedding registry got hung. It's a hand-made piece of art by an artist in Haiti, and the proceeds benefit those rebuilding from the earthquake there in 2010. Unfortunately it didn't come with a mechanism for hanging.

See? No way to hang it from the back. I guess it was meant to lean against a wall or be placed on a shelf, but that's not how we roll here. So I had to get creative with a picture bracket. There was lots of bending and needle nose pliers involved.

And last but definitely not least was the curtain rod. It fell a few weeks ago, and it was never hung properly again. So I got out the dry wall anchors, power drill and got to work. Now we at least have a rod and curtain clips where they should be. But they're crying out for some drapes, which will have to wait at least until next week.

But what might be the best part is that all of these changes were made today, for almost no cost. The painting, curtain rod, curtain hangers, mirror and tools were all things we had around the house. And the comforter was a steal at 40 percent off. Really--I spent less than $20.

How does my garden grow?

We've had some wild weather this summer, from the hottest July on record, to an earthquake, to a hurricane. Somehow, my garden is still growing. Things were looking d-e-a-d around the beginning of August, but I did a little pruning, and I'm amazed with how much things have grown back. 

My salvia had to be pruned all the way back to the leaves. Fortunately, it worked, and now I have some purple buds making an appearance.

And my orange daisies? Well they're back in full force.

And this purple groundcover (I don't know the specific plant name; I tossed the tag) is unstoppable. I tell you, a month ago, I thought I was going to learn to appreciate it for its greenery alone. This little guy surprised the heck out of me.

Not everything is a success story. Some plants will probably never be the same--I'm looking at you, basil. The plants are basically growing ombre leafs: green on top, white on bottom. Thankfully the new growth is still fragrant and delicious. And the rest of my herbs--oregano, rosemary and bay leaf--are thriving, so my kitchen shouldn't suffer much.

All in all, not too bad for a September garden.