Sugar and Spice and a Bunch of Other Stuff

One of the best Christmas presents I got last year was from my sister-in-law, Andrea.  She got us the box of spices called Spicy Wedding from a place called Penzeys.  I'd never heard of it before.  I have to say, I LOVE the stuff!!  My favorites are the Chinese Cassia Cinnamon and the Pasta Sprinkle.  I use the cinnamon in everything, and I put the Pasta Sprinkle in hamburger when I'm cooking Italian food. 



I'd looked at the online store before, and there was all sorts of things I'd have liked to try.  On her most recent trip to Ohio, Andrea got me some vanilla extract and some poppy seeds.  Both of those were equally wonderful.  Imagine my surprise to learn there's a Penzey store in Indanapolis.  This weekend, I went to Indianapolis for my niece's 4th birthday party.  My mother-in-law went with me, and we left early enough to do some shopping, Penzey store included.

This place is AMAZING.  There are things in that store I'd never even heard of!  And I went a little crazy getting things to try.  But I do try to incorporate a lot of different kinds of spices into my cooking.  I always see the people of Food Network using spices and think that I could do that too.

The store itself is pretty cool.  They have jars full of all their spices so you can sniff them and see what you think.  The extracts all smell wonderful.  Next time you're in the Castleton area, make the trip down 82nd Street to Penzeys.  I already have a whole list of things I'd like to try, extracts included.  One of them is also the Sunny Paris.  I don't know what is in it, but it smelled like nothing I'd never smelled.  It was also like $9 for a small jar...I focused on cheaper spices this time.

PB Knockoff -- Chalk Board Rocks

I love Pottery Barn!  But I don't love hearing my total when I shop there...and I REALLY don't love having to tell my husband my total when I get home.  But I do get a lot of ideas from Pottery Barn.  I was looking on their website for some fall decorating inspiration when I came across these...Chalkboard Rocks.



They're different, but I thought they'd look amazing in my new bathroom.  My mom and sister offered some ideas of what to write on them, none of which should be shared or even seriously considered.  Unfortunatly, Pottery Barn's Chalkboard Rocks are $16 for a set of 4...a little pricey, especially considering I had rocks that look similar in my garage.

My mother in law put a bunch of large, smooth rocks in the bottom of  a bowl as filler for a centerpeice she made for our wedding rehearsal, and they've been sitting in the garage since the flowers quit blooming.  I plan to replant the bulbs this fall.  After I washed the rocks, I gave them a coat of white primer.



After the primer, I used Krylon Chalkboard spray paint to give the rocks a coat.  It takes two, and giving them the second coat was a process that took about a week.  I had the first coat done and the second on one side, and the wind kicked up and knocked the plywood down so I had no idea what side of the rocks had 2 coats.  Finally yesterday I got both sides painted.



You're supposed to let the paint dry 24 hours, but I only did it overnight, and it's worked fine so far.  Once it's dry, you cover the surface with chaulk and wipe it off with a cotton cloth.  I just used a dish towel.



Once I had the rocks cleaned off (I only did 5 of them) I wrote my words on them. 



I found my container on clearance at Bed, Bath & Beyond while I was killing time last week.  Plus I had a 20% off coupon which made it even better.  It turned out to be the perfect size for the number of rocks I had.



Finally, I put the rocks in the vase and it went to it's new home in the bathroom.  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, and it was a lot cheaper than ordering the real thing!



I think Abby likes them too!



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Simple Fall Napkin Rings

My mother-in-law is an AMAZING quilter, and since I started dating Nick, she's been making me all sorts of quilted things.  For my first Christmas with his family, she made me beautiful fall placemats and napkins to match.  At the time, I was still living with my parents, and last fall when Nick and I bought our house I was too busy with wedding plans and getting our house in order to worry about decorating for seasons.  Well this year, that is not a problem, so I dug out the placemats from the bottom of my blanket chest.

The first thing I did was replace the limes in my centerpeice vase with pinecones and pumpkins...

I put out the placemats and dug out my napkin rings...but they were too big!!  Luckily I bought some fall things at Walmart last night to try to make a wreath (I'll let you know if that turns out).  I dug out some of the pinecones from the other places I had the scattered, and got my trusty floral wire and hot glue gun out of my craft box and cut 4 peices about 3 inches long.

Next, I hot glued the wire to the bottom of a pine cone and let it cool completely so the napkin wouldn't stick to the pinecone.

Then I wrapped the wire around the napkin and trimmed off most of the extra wire.  Here's the final product...

And here's a shot of the entire table.  My mother-in-law only made 4 placemats, so I may have to see if I can con her into 2 more.  My parents gave Nick and I bigger table when we bought the house.

I also put some pinecones and pumpkins in a wooden bowl my Dad made me.  I usually have fake key limes in that too, but I like the pinecones for fall.  The mat underneath is another of my mother-in-law's creations that I love!

Happy Fall Everybody!!!

Bathroom Redesign Pt 2

I love 3 day weekends.  It's like a present...an extra day to get things done.  Saturday I went shopping with my husband (who was in desperate need of new clothes) and that left Sunday afternoon to paint the bathroom I've been dying to get finished.  Once again, the before...

The walls were boring beige and the decor was tiki.  The hardware was bright, shiny silver...

I finished painting Sunday afternoon and I finished spray painting the hardware, so when it was dry I enlisted my husband's help in putting it back together.  I also had a couple of great $10 picture frames laying around that I'd picked up over the summer at Ikea. 

 I had a couple of pictures that I took at our local state park printed, and put them in the frames from Ikea since they matched amazingly.  Normally I'd print my own but my husband's photo printer's out of ink (I don't know WHO printed all those wedding photos for her scrapbook).  I used painters tape to help hold the photo in place to center it.

Then I hung up my half-off Pottery Barn shower curtain that I'm totally in love with.  The bathroom isn't COMPLETELY finished.  I still need to finish a little project, and get rugs for the floor and a soap dispenser and a new waste basket.  And I REALLY think I need a new black faucet to match everything else but when I mentioned that to Nick I got a non-commital grunt.  Although if one follows me home from Lowes, what can we do...?  Anyway, here's the almost-finished product....

Nick and I both agree that the next room we're going to tackle is our master bath.  It seems completely boring in comparison....

Bathroom Renovation Begins

This is our guest bathroom...

The decor was left over from college and when we moved in, we recycled it for lack of anything else.  And there were a lot of other things that needed some attention so we let it be...few people use it anyway.  However, Nick and I will be hosting Thanksgiving for our family on my Dad's side, and the thought of people using our tiki-inspired bathroom makes me cringe a little.  I found a fantastic (grown up) shower curtain on clearance at Pottery Barn, but the shower hooks that are currently in the bathroom which are pictured above simply will not do.

Luckily shower hooks was one of the few gifts for our wedding that we got double of from the things we registered for to decorate the master bath.  I love the design but they are chocolate brown which doesn't work with my design plans.  But that's nothing a little flat black spray paint won't fix.  I set up shop outside the garage, so the neighbors probably think I'm nuts spray  painting and photographing the process.  First I gave them all a couple coats of white primer...

Then I thought, why stop there?  So I recruited my husband to remove the existing hardware from the bathroom and did the same thing with the door pulls.  They were shiny silver before.  Next, everything got a coat of flat black paint.

The finished product looks pretty good if I do say so myself.  I'm not a great spray painter so the final paint job is a little bit rough but I love it.  They look like they're cast iron.

And the best part is all it's cost so far to redo this stuff is about $10 worth of spray paint.  Now to finish the towel bar and toilet paper holder tomorrow....

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Fried Chicken

This blog is entirely at my husband's request.  He insisted that I share my method for making fried chicken since he claimed "it's the best he ever had".  It should also be noted that I hear that at least once every dinnertime (not that I mind).  I offered to let him be a guest author on the Being Elgin blog but he turned that down, which is probably good since he has zero idea how I fixed the chicken to begin with.

I wasn't prepared for this blog so the pictures are limited to well, one.  I also don't measure things a lot, so any measurements are rough estimates.  Fried chicken is one of the recipes that's been evolving over the past 9 months of our marriage.

To start with, I soaked the chicken breasts in salt water for about 15-20 minutes, although next time I'll probably do it longer.  Not having chicken thawed before limited my soaking time.  I dried them with paper towel and gave them a quick turn in an egg wash (2 eggs and a splash of water mixed up).  The breading is a mixture of about 3/4 cup of flour, 1/2 cup of Corn Flake crumbs, a little salt and pepper, and about 1 teaspoon of cayenne pepper.  You can't taste it really, it's just a little flavor.  Coat the chicken in it, and move it to the skillet.  I fry my chicken in a mixture of butter and Crisco.  I used about 3-4 tablespoons of butter and a couple big spoonfuls of Crisco.  (I never said this is a healthy dinner -- in fact it's one of least figure friendly dinners I make).  Fry until it's done...I don't really know how long, I didn't pay attention.  The chicken should be very resistant when you poke it with the tongs...if it's squishy feeling, keep cooking.

I also made mashed sweet potatoes which is Nick's new favorite side dish.  He also requested fried apples.  I usually do make something green to go with, but we were out of peas and I wasn't in a broccoli mood so I didn't worry about it too much.

So without further ado...the fried chicken Nick insist that I share.

Tissue Paper Pom-Poms

Another project I did for my sister's baby shower was tissue paper pom-poms.  I made them in pink, chocolate brown, and white, although the white ones fell down so we just left them down.  These were super easy to make and looked really cute hanging around.  I've seen them made two different ways.  You can use the styrofoam and hot glue method.  I used the Martha Stewart method, basically just because I had the stuff for that method. 

To start with, you need 8-10 sheets of tissue paper, stacked on top of each other.  Then starting at the end, you need to do an accordion fold all the way down the paper. 

Next, I fold the paper in half so I keep the sides even.  At the crease, I tied fishing line with long tails to make it easy to hang.  Martha's instructions said to use floral wire, but I found fishing line MUCH easier to deal with.  If you don't tie the knot tight enough, you just pull on the tails and it tightens up.

It's tough to see, but there's fishing line there.  After you tie the fishing line, I cut the ends of the paper to make it look more decorative.  You can round the ends, so do a point.  I cut the ends into a point because it's easier.

Next, fan out the ends as much as possible.  I found it's easier to seperate the layers that way.

The next step is seperating layers.  Take one layer of the tissue and pull it toward the center. 

Make sure you pull the layer loose all the way to the center where the fishing line is. If you don't pull it to the center, it won't look right when you're finished.

Pull apart the layers of tissue paper on both sides of the center until about half of the sheets are seperated.

Next, flip the pom-pom over and follow the same steps with the other half.

Once you and finished, you should have a full pom-pom.  You may have to adjust the layers a little once you hang it.

And here's a photo of one hanging at the baby shower.  They made a nice backdrop.  I might even make some little ones to hang in my classroom.