Adorable Wall Art Revisited

This wall art, made with some canvas, some stickers, and some paint, is by far the most popular thing I've ever posted, here or on pinterest (in terms of blog posts, it even managed to supplant the spinach, sweet potato, adzuki bean soup which was the top visited post for YEARS). Of course I brought it to my new place with me, and decided to give it a new location while I was at it.

You can also see my new rug, which I was initially slightly terrified of due to the huge bright pattern, but now I love it. It came from Home Depot, surprisingly.

The Bird Art collage came too!

Something Old Someplace New- The Dresser's New Home

As I mentioned in my last post, I moved, and brought a lot of old friends with me.

Here we have my massively revamped dresser, all settled in, in it's new place!

This dates back to my dresser makeover post a few years ago so I thought I'd repost. It was an IKEA Malm dresser in birch that got an overhauling using O'verlays, some paint, and some knobs. I had initially been concerned about how bright it was, but now I love it!

New Wall Art: Put a Bird (or three) on it!

This was a spontaneous weekend project. It happened after a similarly spontaneous living room rearrangement (I am convinced that rearranging the furniture periodically is good for your brain) that left a new piece of open wall.

I found this pinterest board, which was chock fill of ideas, and one of them was this bird art silhouette from over at Tater Tots and Jello, which was actually a guest post from the blogger at Crap I've Made. If I'm going to be perfectly honest, I am incredibly jealous of that blog name, since making crap and blogging about it is a favorite activity of mine.

I was really intrigued because it reminded me a bit of my previous venture into canvas wall art, in that it uses blocking off negative space as a substitute for an actual ability to paint anything that looks like anything (this my previous attempt, which has more than 1600 repins, making it possibly the most popular thing I've ever made in my life).

This one is a little different because the base layer isn't just white paint, this time it is a collage. So, first, you've got to cut up some stuff and make one. This takes a while. I would recommend paper scraps that don't include much white- you want it to contrast with the color of the paint you're using. All I had to cut up were my hoard of back issues of the New Yorker which I perpetually intend to get through. I was a little concerned about this plan since it is so text heavy, but actually there is really cool art in there, so it worked out pretty well. In related news, when you spend your evening cutting up back issues of the New Yorker to make a project you found on Pinterest after spending the afternoon potting herb plants in organic potting soil, you start to wonder what kind of a cliche you have become.

These are my supplies:

This is my collage (do you have any idea how many back episodes of True Blood it took to make this thing? Quite a few). You might see that down at the bottom the pieces are bigger. That is because at that point, I thought the only place that the underneath would show through was in the top third. I did want paper everywhere so the paint would look uniform.

Then you have to figure out what to put on this thing. The original post used pictures from sillohouttes.com, but they wouldn't print out big enough for what I wanted (I had spent enough time on the collage that I wanted to be able to see it!). So I drew and cut out some really basic birds and leaves. I actually had to cut them out a number of times to keep making them bigger (see the stray one at the bottom?)

Once you settle on a design, you have to outline it. What I did, was to hold it down, and lightly brush the paint outwards all the way around it, to make a slight outline of the birds.

Using that, I could then trace the outline with my brush (see, no real painting ability needed!).

I went through the whole area around the birds, and realized I was kind of sad because there were some parts of the collage I had gotten kind of attached to (although I had tried to capture some of them under the birds).

I decided to make it sort of purposely undone at the bottom, to allow some color to balance out the higher up birds, and I like how it looks. Unfortunately, since I had done a bad job on purpose at the bottom, I ended up having to redo it using my many leftover scraps.

Then just cover it over. As with the grey hallway art, this takes a ton of cheap acrylic paint. I made it so brush strokes sort of pulled down to almost over the bottom part, leaving about 1/5th of it still colored. In case you are wondering, this whole enterprise made an enormous mess:

Then it was time to hang it! I'm planning to spray it with an acrylic fixer, but want to give it a full day to be sure it is all dry underneath, since there a a few different layers of paint and modpodge going on.

I like how it turned out it's colorful, and also way different than anything else I've got going on.

You could pretty much make any pattern here, Just be sure the resolution of the cut up pieces for the collage are small enough so that whatever cut out you put on top allows you to see different swatches of color. Have fun with it!

DIY Cover-that-lamp-up Chandelier

Now, I mentioned a while ago that something was afoot and I'm not going to lie, since then I've been pretty busy what with conferences and such, so I only just now got it together.

Basically, ALL of the light fixtures in my apartment look like this:

And I hate them.

However, since I'm renting I'm a little limited in what I can do to about it. Once I had pimped my hallway with the new paintings  (which have gotten almost 900 pins on Pinterest!), I thought it could also use a new light. The side benefit of this is that if it looked really awful, it would be in the hall not the living room. I looked at a lot of options, and was particularly taken with these faux capiz shell chandeliers that you make with wax paper (http://freshly-picked.com/how-to-make-a-chandelier/). My only concern was, you know, burning down my apartment by essentially attaching a giant wick to one of my light fixtures. So, I continued to look for something less flammable.

I ended up deciding to go with a cluster of glass balls- sort of industrial but also sort of fun. Here are my supplies (except, twice as many ornaments).

Here is what I used (I'm pretty proud of hacking this together)

-- a metal plant hanger, from Home Depot (sometimes these have removable moss in them).

-- clear ornaments from Michaels. Now, I used plastic ones, which were on 30% off, and which were cheaper than the glass ones. I have one of those super eco friendly spiral lightbulbs so I don't believe heat will be an issue, plus the plant hanger prevents them from being too close to the bulb

-- monofilmament line, which I found in the beading area (again at Michaels) 

-- a glue gun

-- small white metal screw hooks

First, take off the chain the plant hanger hangs from, make a necklace, hang something else, do whatever- you won't use it here. Then, what you're going to do is tie the monofilament in double or triple knots (that stuff is slippery!) around parts of the plant hanger wire. Glue each knot onto the wire with a little blob of glue- this prevents all the balls from sliding to the middle, and lets you have ones that are hanging from the center of some of the wires. In order to attach the ball to the monofilament line, first pop off the little metal hanger on the bulb (it will look less clean with those on- you want all glass). Then, squirt a small blob of glue on the inside of the curve of the little neck sticking out of the ball. You'll have to take the end of the line you're dealing with (trimmed to the length you want), and stick it in the glue blob. This part takes patience, you will have to hold it still there, until the glue is hard. Sometimes you might have to add another little bit of glue if the line pops out.

Use variable length lines, then repeat, and repeat, and repeat.

Here are the first few:

And here is a much later stage:

You're going to want to periodically turn it over and hold it up so you can see where the balls fall, and where the gaps are. Be sure also that they don't only hang low, but that they go all the way up to the top edge or else you'll be able to see the lightbulb through the top. I fell into this trap and then had to hang the whole thing up while I took a break because I was sick of gluing. (I feel like with all this balls hanging low talk I'm just setting myself up for joke after joke, but I'm really trying to just breeze right on past it - could you tell?)

For the light fixture itself, you'll need to unscrew the brass knob and then take that and the glass off. To hang it, I came up with something I'm pretty convinced was a very clever solution. Basically, I held the plant hanger up, centered it, and marked with a pencil 4 spots on the perimeter. Then I screwed little hooks in at each spot:

You might have to twist them a bit in order to get the thing hung up, but once you do that, it's very stable and you really don't notice the hooks at all.

Now, the tough part is that this is REALLY HARD to take pictures of. In real life the hall is very bright, but the light is nicely refracted (more like the picture below, but in the picture below it's hard to see the light). You can definitely see where the lightbulb is, and some of the black wires, but I kind of like the sort of industrial-ish vibe that it creates. I wish you couldn't see the brass edge of the lamp, but since it is so close to the rim of the plant hanger, it might look like it belonged, if I didn't know that it had been there already.

Here you can see it in context:

So, I think if you have something you want to cover up, this is a good way to go- it definitely changed the whole look of the hall to have something more exciting up but when I move out I can just unscrew it and replace the old light like nothing happened. Magic!

Favorite Recipes Newly Updated!

Ok! I have finally gone through and updates my "Favorite Recipes" tab, which was woefully outdated. This isn't comprehensive, but at least it's also not 3 years old. To save you the clicking, here it is in all its glory.



Weeknight Dinners:
Balsamic Lentils
Peanut Noodles
Squash Soup
Chana Masala
Butternut Squash Pasta
French Lentil Salad
Eggs in Purgatory (cheater version)
Trader Joes Korean Fusion Tacos

Vegetarian Dishes:
Rosemary Chickpea Couscous Salad: this is probably the dish I have gotten the most good feedback about, from a variety of sources, so it goes first!
Roasted Cauliflower, Bulgar, and Pumpkin Sauce: so good on a cold night. very hearty.
Potato Crusted Quiche: the main revelation here is the potato crust, which can be adapted to a lot of different recipes. You can then throw whatever is in the fridge in the body of the quiche
Balsamic Gorgonzola Wheatberries: This is the recipe that got me addicted to wheatberries
Spinach Sweet Potato Adzuki Bean Soup: This is delicious, and probably responsible for the most hits to my blog (other than an old post about the children of the corn, which is mysteriously popular).
Save Yourself From Yourself Kale Salad: this is my go-to recipe when I've been on vacation, going to too many happy hours, or otherwise eating things I wish I hadn't.
Cauliflower Fried Rice: this make it into the vegetarian category because the add-ins are so flexible. A perfect way to use up leftovers!
Avocado Summer Rolls: the most perfect thing for hot weather ever.
Eggs in Purgatory (real version)
Roasted cauliflower and smoked Gouda soup

Meaty Dishes:
French Lentil Salad: this is really delicious either as a warm dinner, or the next day as a cold salad.
Balsamic Lentils: Similar in core ingredients to the French Lentil Salad, the flavors are completely different and very delicious.
Korean Fusion Tacos: This has become a complete staple at all summer events around here.
Slow cooked chicken chili: This is an easy meal to toss in the slow cooker.
Rosemary Lemon chicken: good, and also a good way to marinate chicken in general.

Dessert:
Beyond Decadent Coconut Cupcakes: O.M.G.
Margarita Cupcakes: need I say more?
Coconut Sorbet: light and delicious.
Peppermint Krispies: a classic.
The amazing dairy free, soy free, shockingly delicious chocolate cake.
Kransekake- not for the faint of heart
Not Your Grandma's Brittle- fancy peanut brittle for presents

Most Fun:
pita bread: This may be my absolute most favorite thing I have ever made, ever.
Homemade magic shell: yes.
Mozarella!
Pretzels: so much work, but definitely fun!

Most commonly occurring in the Yellowfish Kitchen Daily Rotation:
Squash soup- an old favorite.
Roasted Brussel Sprouts- this made me into a person who likes brussel sprouts.
Huevos Rancheros- sometimes, I eat this every night for a week.
Beer Bread- fasted way to get to fresh baked bread with little chance of failure.
Granola- cheap and easy addition to breakfast.
Stealthy Joes- vegan sloppy joes made with lentils
Peanut noodles- this can go together pretty quickly and is very satisfying.

Favorite Disasters: don't try these at home. or, anywhere, really.
Turkish Delight- man alive, I still have nightmares about cleaning that pan.
Braised cucumbers- WTF. seriously.
Dulce de Leche- fortunately for me, they now just sell this already cooked in cans.
Puffed brown rice- I may have moved just so that I didn't have to locate the rest of the rice.
Scones- one good way not to celebrate the Royal Wedding.

Easy Homemade Hanging Jewelry Rack (repost)

As another decorating re-post, here is a jewelry rack, made out of cooling racks! this has now moved coasts and apartments and is still going strong. This probably goes down as the single most useful thing I have ever made. Somewhat ironically, my actual cooling racks for food were lost in the move, so the only ones I own are nailed to the bathroom wall- I guess you win some, you lose some.



___________________________________

This idea came to me in a craft store, here is what you need for a little do it yourself action:
--a gridded baking cooling rack (preferably black)
--a package of black bobby pins
--needle nose pliers, or round nose jewelry pliers
--decoration, if you want (here, some discount Christmas berries. I also considered ribbon woven around the edge).

Take the rack, and put whatever decorations you plan to use on it first- this works better for things like the berries so that you can place your hooks around them. 

To create the hooks, take a bobby pin, and, from behind the rack, clip it onto one of the horizontal bars, so that its hanging straight down on the front. Then, take your pliers, and grip halfway up the bobby pin. Bend the bobby pin upwards so it forms a V pointing up, making a hook. You can space the hooks out as you want- I found that leaving an empty square between them helped a lot when hanging things.

For necklaces, be sure to leave enough space between rows for the pieces to hang. I made one square for necklaces and the other for earrings. On the earrings rack, I put a series of hooks at the top for hoops, and the other earrings I just hung through the squares by their hooks.

Once all your hooks and decorations are installed, nail it up!

Here is the finished product... so far, it is working fantastically! Its not only cute, it was veeery budget friendly. give it a try!

And- a year later, here it is (way loaded up) in its new home!

Drowning in a Sea of Cords!

So, I've been having a problem. I've been obsessively looking at everyone else's apartments, trying to figure out how they deal with it and honestly, I can't figure out WHAT they do, so I finally had to break down and figure it out myself.

What's the problem?

CORDS! So. many. CORDS. 

This problem occurs at what I think you could think of as the nexus of all technology- the TV, the DVR, the DVD player, the modem, the router- it's a hot mess. My main technique has been trying to shove them all under the shelf, but it really didn't work, and having to unplug something made me want to cry.

What do you do about this kind of problem? 

HIDE IT! Yes. Hide it, like a 5 year old cleaning your room.

In my googling, I saw some products on line meant for this, but they didn't seem up to the job of dealing with my massive cord snarl. I went to IKEA, where I'd seen some of these advertised, and they were just really small. But what they DID have were these cardboard boxes. I was already using the polkadot ones to hold DVDs (and elsewhere, photos) so it seemed like a natural choice. 

Basically, what you see here is a double-wide powerstrip with all kinds of stuff plugged into it. The tricky part is that what I did was to feed the cords in through the back hole of the box (meant to be a handle). I did want my laptop cord to be available, so I fed that one out the front of the box. Put the lid on, and seriously, it was like magic. I spent a lot of time obsessively checking the bottom of the box to see if it was hot, or anything like that, but nothing like that happened, and it's been about a month at this point so I'm confident in the system, provided all your cords are in good shape and not sparky or anything crazy like that.

Here it is again... magic!

Mason Jar Pendant Lights (repost)

So, my Hallway Wall Art, is turning out to be the most popular thing I've ever posted (second is definitely this adzuki bean soup which is somehow always at the top of the views. More mysteriously, this old random post mentioning the Children of the Corn is also always high on the list- you wouldn't believe how many people get here by googling that). Anyhow, I figured I might post a few other decorating related posts from the archives... first up are these mason jar lights, which frankly, were adorable. Enjoy!


__________________________

Ok, so people all over the interwebs are making these mason jar lights, and they're so cute I finally couldn't stand it any more (who are these people, you ask? some of them are here, and here and here...)

I wanted a weekend project, but I'm kind of swamped these days, so basically was going for pretty much instant gratification- I wouldn't call the results here instant, but it was close. I followed the instructions over at secretpocketblog, and I suggest you do the same. If you can find vintage, or colored, jars, that would be really cute, but I just used regular mouth quart canning jars by Kerr, which I got at Smart and Final. I then went and got cord components from Ikea ("Hemma". unfortunately, they force you to buy a lightbulb you don't need with it, but oh well). The lightbulbs I used here were display bulbs (found easily at the drugstore)- 40W clear Showcase/tubular bulbs.

The basic idea is simple- you trace the outline of the circle where the lightbulb screws in onto the flat part of the jar lid. Then, you use a hammer and a flathead screwdriver (on top of a board, or something you don't mind the screwdriver punching into) to punch out the circle. Stick the fixture through, screw on the bulb, screw on the jar, and you're set!

I felt like the light was a little industrial for my living room (although it would be great over a desk or workspace), so I used some fabric I had sitting around and wrapped it around the jars and glued it with a glue gun.

The light these put out is so nice and warm (without actually seeming like colored lights, which might be a little much) and the curves of the glass make light patterns on the ceiling. I love them! (note- it is REALLY hard to take a good picture of a lit lamp, turns out, but these at least get the general idea across).

Freezer Sangria

As we've discussed, it was very very hot for a while, lately it has been perfect and not too hot, but this freezer sangria is still an awesome discovery anyways. I found a version of this over at NoRecipes, and went from there.

I don't think I need to explain why sangria is the best summer drink ever- it's cold, you can take advantage of delicious seasonal fruit, it's super flexible so you can make it however you like it, and it is really easy to pretend like you're in some kind of exotic location instead of in the middle of a hot city. The genius behind the freezer idea is that it makes it possible to have sangria on hand whenever you want it- this could actually get kind of dangerous.

What do you need?
- a good sized tupperware (mine was the same one I use to take brownies places, if that helps)
- a bottle of white wine (I used sauvignon blanc)
- some variety of hard alcohol- all I ever have is gin, so I used that, but vodka, triple sec or something else clear would also have worked and maybe been better
- lots of fruit- I used a quarter cantelope, a sweet red grapefruit, and a peach or two. chop it all up.
- a little bit of juice to add sweetness, all I could find was mango so I used that! you could also put in a little sugar if it is too bitter
- soda water and ice for serving

Basically, dump it all into the tupperware, taste it and add the alcohol/juice until you like it and stick it in the freezer, how's THAT for simple.

The good thing about the freezer system is: 1, it's super cold and the fruit acts a little like ice; 2, the ice crystals in the fruit break it down and release more juice; 3, if you don't want to drink it all at once, days later you can hack off a chunk and make a drink!

To serve it, put an ice cube or two in a glass with some soda water, and dump chunks of frozen sangria in- stir it around, it'll be almost like a slushy, a delicious refreshing, alcoholic slushy. Enjoy!

Big Wall, Big Problem

I have what you might call a "problem wall" in my apartment. The first thing you should know, is that my ceilings are pretty high. I love having high ceilings because it means there is a lot of light and also that I can wedge more into my hall closets than you could ever imagine. The down side is that I am too short to change lightbulbs even with a step ladder, and also that the walls can look a little bare.

The issue with the "problem wall", which was over my kitchen table, was partly that it was tall, and partly that it has the buzzer for the door, the electrical panel, a light switch and a mysterious pipe. So, nothing normal would cover all that up. After a little thinking, this is my problem wall, now:

This is the wall before (the only before pic was from when I was apartment searching,  so there are paint supplies and things, but you can see all the obstacles).

The main issue is that the light switch is not flat, so hanging a picture was out of the question (also, I don't really use that light switch anyways because the overhead light is ugly). I initially thought I'd get a canvas and paint it, and I did get a canvas that seemed huge at the store (2x3). But once I was at home I realized that a. 2x3 was not as big as I thought, and b. that I am not a painter and no matter what I did it looked like something an 8 year old made. So, on to plan B! I decided to make a frame and stretch fabric over it.

First stop: fabric.com where I also bought all the fabric for my quilt. You can see some of the things I was considering on my pinterest, which is the best thing for documenting shopping options I've ever found. The main hurdle was that this is really part of the living room, and the living room has tons of color, and a number of framed things as you can see (although the bright light from the windows makes it a little difficult to see what they are). I wanted something light and clean looking, so I tried to pick something that would coordinate with the light colors of the pillows and in the rug (not more red!).

This is what I picked- in real life it is more blue/grey then purple.

Then it was off to Home Depot where I bought 4 pieces of wood, each 48 inches long. To do this, I got  1x2's (as a side note if you are a wood buying newbie- the size it says it is won't be right. that is because you can get raw cut wood that is full of splinters and is actually 1 inches by 2 inches (or 2x4 or whatever) but when they smooth it down, obviously it gets a bit smaller). All I cared about was that the wood stuck out far enough from the wall to cover the light switch. The 1x2's were 8 feet long so I got a nice man at Home Depot to cut them for me, which he did for free. I also bought some nails that didn't look thick enough to split the wood, but did look long enough to go all the way through and into the other piece.

Then I nailed them together.

Then, I got excited so I put it up there to see how it would look. The red you can see is some tissue paper I taped together which I put up to check out spacing- as you can tell, it was a good idea because one of the main things I learned was that my initial idea about how big it needed to be was wrong. The tape is because I thought the fabric might sag, but it turned out to be a waste of both time and tape.

The first key step here was to IRON THE FABRIC and WASH THE FLOOR, otherwise it would be dirty and wrinkly, which is not what you're going for, here. Then I tried my best to line up the pattern with the edge, and went around and glue gunned the fabric. For some reason I cannot fathom, the wood did not seem exactly straight, but I soldiered on. If I had picked a less geometric pattern, I'd never have noticed, but, lesson learned. One of the benefits of this is if I get sick of the pattern, I can easily glue a new one on!

And... here it is!