Giving Empty Space Function

When my husband and I were building our house, the initial plan was for the kitchen cabinets to run along the outside wall and have the sink looking out the window.  Well, I came in, changed husband’s mind and go the kitchen area moved to the other side where there was more room, and made the small window that was supposed to be above the sink a large double window (6 feet wide by 5 feet tall).

Over the years I have struggled to give the empty space a function.  A variety of things have been in that area (desk, bakers rack, china cabinet, etc.), but I eventually end up hating it and moving things around. 

So this past fall when we were making the decision to put a woodstove in the house, we were looking for a large space to accommodate the stove and a hearth.  I had just the place for it.  The big empty corner. 

In lieu of a tile hearth, we called up a good friend who does stamped concrete and he agreed to help us out.  We marked off the area that would meet the specifications of the woodstove (Vermont Castings Defiant).  We laid down Durarock concrete boards 3 layers thick on the floor and screwed sheets to the wall as well.  Then Jason came and worked his magic and we have this:

The concrete was stamped, then sections were stained various colors, and then sealed. 

But it still wasn’t complete.  The space in front of the windows was in dire need of something.  So I went on a road trip to IKEA (my most favorite store in the world!) there I found the most fabulous chair and pillows to complete my space.  (excuse the funky light pouring through the window!)

This has become a favorite place in the house for all of us, and we tend to fight for the chair.  The dog however, has no problem finding his favorite spot…as long as his nose doesn’t combust!

The only thing I’d like to do to finish this space is to put up a nice big mantle.  It’s on my to do list!

Linking up!

Sew Much Ado, Night Owl Crafting, My Backyard Eden, Someday Crafts

Hardware … Repurposed

While working on updating the kitchen, I REALLY wanted to get new pulls and knobs.  I’ve always heard it’s an inexpensive way to really change the look of a kitchen.  That and the brass ones I have are getting pitted after 8 1/2 years of use.  So I went shopping.  With 21 pulls and 17 knobs there was no “inexpensive” about it.  Even if I settled for $4-ish replacements, that would have been well over $150! 

 

So I went to the spray paint aisle.  And bought this:

It was around $8.00. Rust-oleum Satin black spray paint.  No primer needed, just a little scuffing with sandpaper.

I took all the knobs off, screwed them to cardboard and did 3 light coats, careful to make sure I got it on the under side too.  (I did have to touch up about 6 of them on the underside)

Befores: (I don’t have pictures of the island…let’s just say the cleaning fairy is fired)

And the afters:

Completely new look, $8.00 and a little bit of time.  Not bad if I do say so myself!

Linking up at these fabulous parties!

Night Owl Crafting, My Backyard Eden, Creations by Kara, Someday Crafts, Sister's Stuff, Blue Cricket, The Trendy Treehouse,

Honey Wheat Bread

You just can’t beat fresh bread.  A little secret?  When it comes out of the oven, I slice some off warm and eat it without even adding anything on top.  I don’t need it, and I’m too impatient to sample the bread to take the time to spread something on top.

My grandma gave me a bread maker last year that was in her closet, still in the box.  That changed my bread making ways.  No more kneading and messes of flour.  (Although I do find that somewhat therapeutic)  I don’t however bake the loaf in the bread machine, I just use the dough cycle and put it in the oven. 

But you can do whatever makes you happy.

Since the grocery stores in my area insist on not selling the healthy bread I like anymore, I have begun a quest to make all of my own bread.  No more store bought.  Cheaper, healthier, tastier.  Win, Win, Win.  I know the recipe by heart now and bake one loaf a day, sometimes I can skip a day but usually not; we like carbs. 

I found a recipe at allrecipes.com and tweaked it to my liking and wanted to share it with everyone.

Honey Wheat Bread

• 1 1/8 cup warm water
• 1/4 cup honey
• 2 Tablespoons oil (I use canola)
• 1/3 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 cup bread flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons yeast

Put the ingredients in the bread machine pan in order listed.  If you chose to bake it, set your machine and go.  If you just use the dough cycle, after it is complete, dump the dough into a greased loaf pan, spread it out a little and cover with a kitchen towel to keep it from drying out.  Let it rise for about 45 minutes to an hour until it’s domed up pretty.

Bake for 20-25 minutes at 350.  The loaf is done when it’s pretty brown on top and it sounds hollow when you tap the top.  

Enjoy however you wish.  I prefer it plain or with homemade red raspberry jam. Or a sandwich is good too. Mmmmm!

Custom Made Glass Tile Backsplash

So it’s been a while since I last blogged.  But great things take great amounts of time.  I’ve been obsessing over tiling the backsplash in the kitchen for about a month now.  This is what I had:

And while the vinyl quote was quite fitting for my kitchen, it was time for a change.
I was greatly discouraged when I couldn’t find red glass tile that a.) I liked and b.) didn’t cost a fortune ($20+ per square foot!).  So I came home and started searching the internet for ideas.  Why can’t I just make my own glass tile? 
Well, it seems that not much will stick to glass.  You can’t simply paint the back of the glass because it will pull off and make a mess.  You could buy special paint, but it’s over $200 for a gallon and I don’t need that much for this project. Hmmm, what to do.  Then I stumbled on alcohol inks.  They are made by Ranger and are called Adirondack Inks.  Youtube had a few videos of people inking glass vases and the like, but no tile. 

So I took my coupon to Michaels, and bought two packages of inks that had different shades of red in them.  Apparently you can buy individual bottles online, but I couldn’t find any like that locally, so I just bought the 3 packs.  I used “currant” and “cranberry.” 
I went to a local glass cutting place who was generous enough to give me 3 tiles to practice on.  I colored a couple of them and glued them to a scrap piece of wallboard and I loved it!  Next I drew up a blueprint on graph paper for how I would mix the glass tiles with some tumbled marble tiles.  I got boxes of tumbled marble tiles at Lowe’s for $50.  I ordered 34 more glass tiles for just over $50.
The tiles are all 3 x 6 subway style tiles, but the tumbled marble are about 3/8 inch thick and the glass are 1/4 inch thick. 
I set about inking all of the glass tiles.  This task goes pretty quickly because the ink dries in about a minute.  I used the ink applicator that is sold separately and just dabbed all over using 5 drops of Currant and 2 drops of Cranberry for each coat per tile.
 
After about 5 coats, the color was deep enough for me.  *Note, there will be some lint that comes off the felt applicator.  It is okay, you don’t have to rush to remove all the ink and start over.  Seriously, learn from my rash mistake!  You can lighten and blend using the alcohol solution they sell, but I didn’t like it as much, but did use it to correct any errors.  Oh and wear rubber gloves, because it stains your hands. 

The tiles are somewhat transparent still, but will be put against white tile adhesive.

When it’s time to tile, find the center and start placing tiles.  I used 1/8 inch spacers, and with the help of my husband got done a lot faster than if I had to do it alone!
The adhesive behind tile is usually spread with a notched trowel.  We did that behind the stone tiles, but behind the glass tiles we used smoothed it out so there wasn’t air pockets behind the glass that could be seen. It is very important to lay the glass with the colored side against the adhesive.  This way it won’t get worn off over time.  I did find the adhesive did pull the ink off if you rubbed it around, so just place and push.  Don’t butter the back of the tiles with the adhesive either, big pink smears is all I’m going to say.

After all the tiles are hung according to plan:

And the smaller section between the corner and the refrigerator:

Today was grouting day.  The stone is porous and has small holes that we wanted to fill with grout so they don’t get filled with kitchen mess.  So we first wiped the fronts with a wet cloth to prevent the faces of the tiles from soaking in too much of the grout and then my hubby went to work pressing grout into the spaces and holes.  Instead of the normal rubber float though, he found with such small spaces, good old messy hands worked better.  I followed behind and wiped them off and down, smoothing the lines as I went.

And the almost finished project (still need to wipe off the haze, seal the tile tomorrow and put the outlet covers back on)
I’m totally in love.  I love the imperfect look to it, and that is surprising with my type A perfectionist tendencies.  I also love that it is completely a creation of my own and it executed into reality exactly how I imagined.



Hope you love it as much as I do, if you do follow my page or fan me on Facebook!

I'm joining a few link up parties throughout the week to try to increase my traffic, and because I think these tiles are gorgeous and should be shared throughout the world.  These are some of my favorite places, check them out for more crafty inspiration!

Mad in Crafts, A Little Lovely, I Heart Naptime, Under the Table and Dreaming,
Simpsonized Crafts, Making the World Cuter, Between Naps on the Porch, Craftomaniac, Skip to my Lou, Sumos Sweet Stuff, Dittle Dattle, Little Eme, Funky Polkadot Giraffe, All Thingz Related, Todays Creative Blog, Hope Studios, Sugar Bee - Craft Edition, Boogie Board Cottage, My Backyard Eden, Someday Crafts, Creations by Kara, The Trendy Treehouse, Blue Cricket Design, Lil Luna, Sisters Stuff

Weekly Menu Board

I’ve been a meal planner for years.  I have changed my methods as the situation suits.  Before kids when I worked full time, I would plan for about 3 weeks at a time.  Now that we have kids, are more health conscious, and are buying more fresh foods, I shop about once a week so I plan for about 7 or 8 meals at a time. 

This helps a ton with the shopping.  Execution…not so much.

It seems that I always forget to thaw something or don’t get the stuff in the crock pot early enough on days that I’m planning a slow cooker meal. 

I usually write down a tentative menu and put it on my fridge, but it’s so small, I rarely look at it on a regular business and just try to commit it to memory. 

Big fail this week.  I thawed a whole roaster chicken, a chuck roast, and a sirloin roast all this week and have failed miserably at getting them cooked.  (come on!  The sirloin roast is supposed to take 8-10 hours!  That’s a lot of forethought!)

So I’ve seen different “dry-erase” menu boards across the blogosphere like this one at Under the Table.  So I put my own spin it tonight and it took me all of an hour to make. 

I found this art frame at Wal-Mart for $14.00.  It’s 12 x 16 inches.  Nice and big

It swings open so you can store more kids art behind the frame, but instead I’m going to take advantage of the space and store the recipe cards for any recipes that I need that week.  Then they aren’t being moved all over the kitchen throughout the week after I pick them out. 

I bought a couple different fabrics at Jo-Ann’s.  The red one is like the material of reusable grocery bags that are being sold EVERYWHERE.  I was kind of surprised that they sold this kind of fabric and will have to file that away in my head for future use. 

The white one is some kind of towel fabric.  It’s cotton, has just a little bit of texture, and I was able to fray the edges after I cut the selvage off.  I found them both by the utility/burlap fabric.  That’s all I needed to know.

I bought a half yard of each for $4.00 total.  I could have used my coupon, but I forgot…oh well.  (There was a lot of extra red because it’s 60 inch wide fabric)

I cut the fabrics down to size, the red to fit snug (12 x 16) and the white an inch smaller all the way around (10 x 14).   I frayed the white edges some and glued them both to the paper sample picture that came in the frame.

Then using my Silhouette and Core’dinations cardstock, I cut out letters for the title and the first letter for each day of the week.  I lightly sanded the black Core’dinations to show the dark red through on the edges. 

Space them out where I wanted them (about every two inches down the side) and pop it back in the frame!  Easy Breezy!

I hung it on the blank end of my kitchen cabinets in a highly visible place using a couple of command hooks.  Then just use a dry erase marker on the glass to write down the meal for each day and it is an instant erasable surface!

Now if this doesn’t help me be more organized, then I’m a lost cause!

Kitchen Canister Set

I have a set of old Tupperware kitchen canisters.  They aren’t really pretty.  But they worked, and I hid them in the kitchen utility garage. 
I also have a glass corner cabinet above that garage.  It has gone widely unused.  There is a ton of space up there, so I mainly stash large bake ware that doesn’t have a home.  And the knives to keep them away from little fingers. 
I never really knew how to make it look right.  I thought about etching the glass on the cabinet, but was a little afraid I would mess it up and then have to call the custom cabinet place and say “whoops!” 
Instead, I found a solution that is functional and pretty at the same time.  This is the first of a several projects I have in mind to upgrade my kitchen décor over the next couple months. 
I started with these large jars found in the craft section at Hobby Lobby (another home away from home for me).  I got two of each size last week when they were on sale 50% off.  They also have a giant sized one that makes an awesome cookie jar that I once made for a gift.  The lids have a rubber gasket on them to keep them airtight.

Next I pulled out my Silhouette and my brand new red vinyl that I bought when everything was 40% off at the silhouette store on Black Friday weekend. 
I made a simple design in Silhouette Studio using the font “Café Rojo” and some simple brackets that I had in my Silhouette library.
I was blown away by the Studio program when I discovered how to use the “align” tools and line up and center my designs.  “Wow that was easy!” was all I could say.
Next I pulled away the negative portion

Put the design on transfer paper

Eyeballed it onto one of the larger canisters

Pull away the transfer tape and viola!

Repeat for each jar and fill them with the appropriate baking supplies


Put them in the cabinet like so

I just need to clean the glass (haha) and organize the other stuff in there so it’s farther back in the cabinet and not showing.  It’s really mainly stuff I rarely use anyhow.