fun with coffee filters

Last night, my latest craft project made its debut. 

This is probably one of my easiest projects so far, and it was pretty inexpensive!

All you need is:

a wreath form - $2 at Hobby Lobby with 50% off sale

two packs of coffee filters - $4 (a lot of tutorials only used 1 pack, but I ended up needing two)

hot glue gun (low temp)

glue sticks

There are a TON of these wreaths all over blogland.  I read a few tutorials, but the steps are pretty simple. For me, I folded the coffee filters in quarters and then glued them randomly to the wreath form. 

 I wanted it to be really full, so I just glued them as close to each other as possible.

I think the only downfall to this project is that it takes time. Over the course of 4 or 5 hours of the Man playing Assasin's Creed, I managed to glue around 400 filters.  I'm pretty happy with the finished wreath.

Not to shabby for a $6 investment.

aren't you just the cutest!

Remember this cutie from our adventure to the Cotton Pickin' Fair in Gay, GA?

Well thanks to the Man's folks and the Sister, guess who got to join our nerdy nest this Christmas?

I have to admit, if I wasn't already spoiled rotten by the Man's family-- I officially am now.  Somehow they managed to smuggle this past me during our trip, and keep it hidden for months! Granted, I am one of those people who love suprises-- so all they had to say was "don't look in the back of the car" on the way home and I was averting my eyes like a horse with blinders.  Still, I never expected something so generous, on top of everything else they do for us nerdy birds.

There are so many things I love about this little cabinet, the size is so unique, and the finish merges our somewhat modern cabinets with my retro ceramic table.  What I really love is that the glass door is made from a rescued and refurbished two pane window. It houses my birthday jars from the Dad, and a few cut glass pieces perfectly.

Love it!!

111 in 1/11: week three

This week's attempt at the 111 in 1/11 takes me to the deep dark recesses of our guest bathroom cabinet. Although we use this room all the time, the storage under the sink seems to be where I stash things long forgotten.  I only purged about 10 things, but it's better than a cabinet full of things I don't use.

pictured products of the purge:

• expired sunscreen
• method hand soap (that stained my countertops, so it got the boot!)
• a sponge holder (it kept falling in the sink)
• some gradual self tanner stuff (i've embraced my paleness.. and faux tanning is too troublesome)
• a few face scrubs/masks
• a few Bath and Body works "splashes" that I really never spritzed.  I kept my mango-mandarin and coconut-lime verbena in case the Man decides I'm too stinky
• some aromatherapy linen spray that I used maybe once

I'm not much of a girly-girl. I have my moments, but I try to be pretty low maintenence. It wasn't too heartbreaking to get rid of some of this stuff, as well as some costume jewelry and makeup from about 4 or 5 years ago.  Most of these went into the trash, but a few unopened bottles made it to the yard sale purgatory.

I predicted this would be a low key cleanout week, since I did a HUGE purge in the office.  Still,  hopefully I can find some time this weekend to tackle some of my closet clutter. I can't wait to see how everyone else has been doing over at the linky party:

Check out everyone's progress at Words on Wendhurst!

my pot pie, kitty!

As much as I love to cook, dinnertime in the nerdy nest can be a mixed bag.  I don't know about you, but many nights when I get home from work-- I really just want to take a hot shower, watch some cheesy television or read a good blog book, and tell the Man to fend for himself.

When I was a single girl, I'd cook a pot of whole-wheat penne and have a jar of sugar free tomato sauce in the fridge.  Those two things (plus some occasional Dove chocolates/place&bake cookies/pint of Rocky Road) would be my dinner for about a week.  I didn't really "do" grocery shopping, I didn't really "cook" other than holidays, and dinner was just another meal.

Then the Man came along, and I felt compelled to follow along with my natural inclinations of nesting.  I'd been feeling the pangs of domesticity, but it hit full on when I had someone else to cook for. 

Recently my desires of the domestic have become even more pronounced.  I'm determined to have a solid repertoire of "go-to" meals that are: easy, quick, and have only a handful of ingredients

 (also if they only used a dish or two, that would be awesome.. the less mess, the better.)

Personal Chicken Pot Pies

(modified from the recipe found at Mine for the Making):

I used:

• 1 package crescent rolls
• 2 baked chicken breasts
• 2 cups mixed veggies (frozen)
• 1 can cream chicken soup
• 1/2 can milk

For the chicken, I put 2 breasts (sliced into strips to speed up cook time) into my glass loaf pan with some Italian dressing, 1/4 can crm chicken soup, and my "special seasonings."

Note: the "special seasonings" are just a wide variety of whatever I grab from the spice cabinet that smells good.

I baked the chicken for about 45 minutes on 375 or until I could easily pull it apart with a fork.

While the chicken was baking I finished the rest of the prep work:

•  Steamed the veggies (Thanks, Microwave!)
• Covered the inside of the 2 cup Pyrex bowls with crescent rolls
• Mixed the veggies in with the rest of the cream of chicken soup and milk
• Baked the crescent-filled bowls for about 5 minutes

Once the chicken was finished, I shredded it and mixed it with the veggie/soup mixture. 

The next step was to ladle the chicken/veggie/soup mixture into the bowls.

Cover the bowl with the rest of the crescent rolls.

Completely optional: Take any leftover crescent rolls and make a futile attempt at a small pouch which you will then use to try and contain some of the excess chicken/soup/veggie mixture.  Haphazardly seal the mixture within it's crescenty-flaky prison and casually toss on the cooking sheet next to pot pies. Hope that this pouch of chicken will not explode and cover the entirety of your oven with chickeny-veggie-soupy goodness.  Luckily my chicken-pot-pie pouches turned out okay (sans explosion.)

Bake all until the crescents begin to brown.  Mine was still a little doughy, but the man likes doughy and was hungry, so after 15-30 minutes we called it done.

It wasn't fantastic, but it was warm and hearty.  I'd say it's worth a repeat performance

(and maybe a little refining.)

P.S. If you caught the pop culture reference in the title, I think we can be friends.  If not, for shame.

111 in 1/11: week two

How's your 111 going?

My second week of the purge started off pretty slow.  I did quite a bit of work last weekend in the office, but about halfway through I hit a barrier.  I was tired, frustrated, and growing overwhelmed.  It just seemed like the mess was growing and the room was getting smaller around me.

I love organizing, and I think an organized home can really help make a small space more livable-- but my small space was making me feel a little claustrophobic.  So I took a break.

I realized that what was so overwhelming was that I wanted an end result that just isn't possible right now.  I wanted my office to have a clear and defined identity-- but I couldn't quite figure out what that should be.   I'll talk more about that later.  In the meantime, I had to settle on a "good enough for now" space and try to make it a little less cluttered.  Back to the purge...

I decided that will all this declutterization and inspiration from other bloggers, I would host a yard sale sometime when the weather is better.  So far, I've got 112 items in my yard sale pile.  That's not counting the 2 garbage bags of research, two broken vases, and a host of other things I dumped that weren't quite yard-sale worthy.

In the office I am eliminating:

• a few books
•  tons of empty binders
• a wobbly plant stand
•  some iron scrollwork from my apartment
• a cool barnwood framed bird print from a yardsale
• some empty plastic bins without lids, a few lids without bins
• a basket (gasp!)
• a memo board from my old kitchen
• a chalk line
• a few glass jars
•  and the slipcover bag that I swore I would use for something. 

Spillover into the living room (from the hall closet, 3rd bedroom, and my purgatory include:

• About 15 candles of various sizes
• two sets of curtains
• a blue toile shower curtain
• a full bedskirt
• two giant vases
• picture frames
• curtain rods
• lightbulbs and cleaning supplies
• another box of books!

I still have a long way to go-- I'd like to tackle a few of my purge-atory drawers in the bedroom (hello clothes that haven't been worn since highschool!), my excessive handsoaps in the bathroom, and maybe a few undisovered areas of hoarding over the next few weeks.  

For now, I am going to try to celebrate the progress so far.  I'm not at my ideal, but I'm getting there.

The linen closet before:

The top half was full of cleaning supplies I rarely used.

The bottom had more cleaning supplies, a few unpacked boxes, and other things just stashed in the free spaces.

 During (the disaster zone and a helper):

 After:

Empty bins for growth! And cleaning supplies I'll actually use.

The bottom shelves hold my favorite frames, empty gift boxes, a few tall candle holders, and my gifting bins: cards, ribbons, bags and gifts.

The office closet before:

And for now (with room to grow):

The office before: 

 Soo much stuff!!!

The office (for now).  If nothing else, it's not as cluttered!

And now, for hanging in there through a terribly picture heavy post, I give you:

"fat cat in a little basket"

You're welcome.

Dear Mother's 111

I inherited my clutterbugness.  As the Man says, I get it honest.  The Dad is a collector in the truest sense (every issue of National Geographic published between the 70's-90's sits proudly on his bookcase, right below his glass power line covers--or whatever they're called).  He loves anything unique or antique or really anything that has potential to end in a -que.  I believe that he could find a rarely made, mint condition car part just by looking in the general direction of a junkyard.  The Dad loves his bargains and I attribute my affinity for thrift stores and yardsales to him. We both get so excited talking about an awesome B1G1 at the grocery store and he's always got an eagle eye open to find me a good coupon.  There's just something so thrilling about "the hunt."

Sweet grandmother

My Sweet grandmother (not to compare to my Sassy Grandmother on my Mom's side) was so thrifty.  She would use every last bit of something, washing alumnium foil and reusing cling wrap until it couldn't cling anymore.  It's from her that I got my stockpiling nature.

Sassy Grandmother

From my Sassy Grandmother, I got my love of shopping.  She's also a thrifty one-- but nothing lures her in like a SALE!  I think she could spend all afternoon in a thrift store and the Dollar Tree if given the chance (and she felt up to it.) 

Aside from the shopping, sales and stockpiling-- one of my main issues is stacking and sorting.  I attribute my stacks of things and baskets of stuff and labeled bins for EVERYTHING to Dear Mother. 

She's a listmaker, like me and we both find solace in our lists, post-its and calendars, no matter how scattered they may be.  However, piles and baskets and bins-- if not tended to properly can quickly manifest into something much worse.  Organized chaos.

Part of the 111 in 1/11 challenge is to make room for organization.  What good is a basket or bin if you don't have room for it?  How helpful are those post-its and labels if you can't see them under that stack of papers?

During Dear Mother's surgery and recovery this past May, I kept myself busy with cleaning out her hall closet.  We made a ton of progress, but things have been at a bit of a stalemate since then.  Dear Mother is always so much happier with a clean house (just like me) and this is why I am so proud of her for accepting the challenge of purging 111 things this month. 

Check out her progress so far:

The starting point for the tupperware cabinet-- the hardest one for me to keep tidy too!

In her own words: "I got aggravated with the plastic containers tonight while putting away groceries and decided that tonight was the night to throw away lids that did not have containers and containers that didn’t have lids and some lidded containers that just needed to be thrown away."

This looks so good!  She's already hit 28 of her 111, but she had one more thing to tackle for this week. 

What is it about Southern women and keeping grocery bags?  If you ever come over to our house, I can't help to offer you a bag to carry your leftovers home in.  I swear, it's genetic!  I used to make fun of both Grandmothers doing it, and now I do it too!

Dear Mother is known for stockpiling grocery bags and simply stashing them in an awkward cabinet in the kitchen.  They're difficult to get to, and the last time I cleaned it out there were over 100 bags back there.  Thankfully she's counting this stash as just 1 item, so I don't have too much catching up to do.

I can't wait to see the rest of her after pics!  It's amazing how refreshing it can be to just tackle one small area in your home. 

Speaking of which, I should get back to work!

a quick before and after

On a (not so) recent thrift store visit, I picked up this odd plant stand/ashtray stand/candleholder for about $3.

It was a terrible aged brass and had some pretty icky stains.  But I really liked the shape and scale of it.

A quick coat of primer and two coats of gloss black later and ta da!

So far I've used it as a drink-holder, candleholder, and candy bowl stand.  I love it!