Monday, July 21, 2014

Weekend Work

I have to say I had a very productive weekend. It followed a very unproductive week due to recovering from my bachelorette weekend.

Two ingredient chocolate buttercream frosting





I had to try this buttercream because it sounded so easy. You melt a bag of chocolate chips with a pound of butter. Just roll with the amount of butter and save the dieting for later. Refrigerate until hard, then return to room temperature. Beat in a mixer for 2 minutes on medium speed and it magically turns from firm buttery chocolate to whipped light and fluffy chocolate icing. It worked. It was miraculous and amazing. And.... salty. Unfortunately I didn't have any unsalted butter on hand so I used the two sticks of salted I had in the freezer (I only made half a batch). While it was super light and fluffy, it is also inedibly salty. Combine that with the failed "healthy" cake I frosted and it was a gross dessert. Into the trash it went. BUT! The fluffy frosting did indeed fluffy and frost quite nicely, so I would try it again with unsalted butter.

Blind Hem




Bought my first maxi dress and it was too long by a couple of inches. But it is the only maxi dress I've ever tried on and actually liked, so I bought it with the intention to hem it myself.  Mom suggested I do a blind hem, something I hadn't ever done before. After looking it up on YouTube and in my two sewing books, I pulled out the machine to test it. SCCCCREEEAAAAACH. Something desperately needed oiling. It probably took me two hours to get the thing open, cleaned out, oiled, and back in somewhat working order. So much for taking the dress with me to Leavenworth last weekend! On Friday I had the time to sit down and actually sew the dress hem. Took some finagling to get the folds right, but success! I wore it Saturday to a baby shower and it was perfect.





Deviled Dinosaur Eggs



Speaking of the baby shower, it had a dinosaur theme, so I made deviled dinosaur eggs. So easy and fun. After they are cooked, you just crack the shell and drop the eggs in food coloring. Dye seeps in through the cracks and colors just the cracks of the eggs. Cute!

Lettuce Harvest


My lettuce was bolting so I harvested as much as I could. I left a few head of romaine that were still doing ok, and a few heads that were flowering so I could save some seeds. Aside from that, this is the results of 5 squares of lettuce. I didn't pull up the plants in hopes that they might sprout again in the cool damp weather we've having this week. I cleaned it all and there was mass genocide of spiders. If you judge a yard by insect diversity my yard is VERY healthy.

Bookshelves!





Several weeks later and we finally put the first coat of paint on the new bookshelves. They look SO GOOD. I'm so excited to actually start using them. They need at least one more coat of paint, then I've heard the shelves should "cure" for 14-30 days before putting anything on them, otherwise they can be a bit "tacky". I can't wait to get my basement back to working order.

And, I finished a knitting project, but it is still blocking and I didn't take a picture. So productive!