I'm nearly back but need a couple more weeks to actually be fully back in business

First of all a special thanks.  Thank you 2012 for ending what was otherwise a stellar year on a sour note by killing my car battery which I in no way tempted the fates with by not changing for months after I should have so I had to drag my poor husband out of bed hours before his normal wake-up time to drive me to my parents house so I could borrow a car and make it to work.  BIG THANK YOU!

My poor little blog has been so neglected as of late.  Most of the last months were spent outside finishing up the landscaping tasks that I had planned on documenting but were such a cluster-F of learning-as-we-go (i.e. shit isn't working so let's start over game plan) and endless trips to Lowes that it just wasn't going to happen.  Or at least happen in a way that anyone not there could follow.  Definitely a had to be there kind of project.  However, one sprinkler system, freshly lain sod, plus a new fence later, and our backyard is looking pretty sweet.

Throw in the added distraction of this newly adopted friend and I cannot be blamed for my absence in blogging.

This is Norman and he's the first dog that I have ever owned in my entire life and holy shit I could not have anticipated how much work he is.  Also, am I the only person who didn't know that dogs go through a teething period? That's been a lot of fun.   

But c'mon, look at that face.  Totally worth it.

Oh, the reason he looks so sad in this picture is twofold.  One, that's just his face.  Two, although difficult to see in the picture, this was taken shortly after Normicron Persei 8 got into some sparkly Christmas decorations and he had to deal with looking like a low-rent, sillver glitter covered stripper.  Norm, we raised you better than that.

WINTER IS COMING!

It's already here but seeing as how I'll be stuck inside a lot more, the home is going to get some much needed attention.  I have been going crazy on Pinterest finding inspiration for every room of the house and even have a total makeover already planned out for the craft room which has been retitled the Craft/Nap room.  Think new room color, new desk, the addition of a daybed, crate bookcase/media stand, and lots of fun accessories to create.  It's going to be a cozy yet productive room that can double as a guest room when needed. 

Although, can it really be called a makeover when everything is the room is only there because it wouldn't fit anywhere else?  Aside from the giant Craigslist Desk, nothing else in that room was intentionly placed in the space.  It just ended up there so it still has that dorm-room-hand-me-down-mish-mash-furniture feel to it.  So maybe it'll be less of a makeover and more just making it a room with presence. 

Either way, I am super excited to get started.   

It's not bad spelling, it's a love for Gary Larson

For the last couple months, I've been on a major cleaning kick.  Each and every closet, nook, and cranny have been cleaned out, sorted into keep/sell piles, and reorganized.  During this process, several items turned up that I initially planned on discarding but instead decided to give them a new purpose.

For example, how many of these Christmas popcorn tins have you been given, devoured, and thrown away?  At least one a year since you've been alive?  Yea, pretty much.  Found this empty one in the bowels of our garage and realized with a little tweaking, it would make an ideal container for cat food.

Now, as much as I love Christmas, the current mother and baby deer chilling in the snow (ha, see what I did there) print isn't really jiving with the overall look of our kitchen so it needed to be spray painted.  First things first, the whole tin was cleaned up, dried, and the stickers on the lid were removed.  A few coats of white spray paint later and we have this.

We're not done yet faithful readers!  Using some form of wizardry (Photoshop) and his ridiculous collection of fonts, the husband whipped up two stencils for this adventure.

Kitties!

On to the stencil making!  My current method for creating stencils is using sign vinyl.  The hubs picked up a roll for his own project of dying disc golf discs (shameless promotion for MTP Designs) and I've used it for loads of other stenciling projects.

For this approach, a light box is required however you can also MacGyver something together like I did and use a desk lamp with an end table that has a glass top.  Recently, I saw another DIY version where a bare bulb is placed in a large, clear, plastic container which seemed crazy easy/cheap to throw together.

Anyways, to get started, tape the picture to the bottom of the sign vinyl to keep it held in place while it's being cut.  When everything is sitting on the light box, the picture will be clearly visible as pictured below.  Next, cut out the stencil using enough pressure to cut the vinyl  but not so much that the paper backing is cut.  It's easier than it sounds, I promise.



Once the cutting is done, remove the pieces to end up with something like below.  Now, here is my favorite reason for using this vinyl.  No stencil islands.  See how the eyes on Yigs and the facial details on Hobbes are not connected to an outside edge?  Stencil sections like this are called islands and are normally a no-no beacuse it is a pain/near impossible to transfer them onto whatever is being stencilled. 

Not so with sign vinyl.  Apply masking tape to the top of the stencil so when the backing is peeled away, the masking tap holds the islands in place for easy transferring.

Along with the kitties and Cat Fud stencil, I also added a few strips of vinyl for added detail.  It's a bit hard to see in the picture but there are two small strips at the top and a larger one at the bottom.

After the stencils have been applied, spray paint the tin again with the second color of paint. 

Next comes the moment of truth when the stencils are removed to reveal how awesome or possibly how terrible everything turned out.

Success!!

Never ending staring contest.

Here is how the cat feeding corner looked before....

And how it looks now.

Kitten added for extra authenticity.

For safety reasons, whether real or created in my crazy head, I also sprayed the tin with a few coats of clear sealant and let it sit in the sun for a couple days so everything could fully cure and air out.  Once all that nonesense was out of the way, I dumped in the cat food, threw in an old measuring cup to use as a scoop, and we were ready to get this kitten feeding party started.

And the comic that started it all.  Gary Larson, thanks for being so awesome.

No crafts but how about some kitties?

Around a month or so ago, I made a personal goal for this blog where I would post something at least once a week (preferably on Monday or Tuesday) with the intention of building up a backlog of projects so I wasn’t scrambling each week to share something.  Said backlog is still non-existent, obviously, or I’d have something to share. 

Despite my lack of a crafty adventure to share, a goal is a goal so here are some pictures of my cats plus more information about them than you probably ever wanted to know.  Kitties fix all problems, right?

First came Yigs.  Can anyone name that literary reference?  We picked her out from our local humane society.  Well, actually, my husband (boyfriend at the time) picked her out.  I mostly stood in front of the cages staring at all the cats wanting desperately to bring them all home and finally fulfill my destiny as an insane cat lady. 

If I fall asleep on the couch, this is the face I wake up to.



Here she is practicing her impression of Frankenstein's monster.  She sits with her arms straight out constantly.  When she's on the top tier of the cat tower with her arms out, I like to run by and give her high fives.

Here she is hiding during a thunderstorm.  I also wanted to show how runty she is despite being full grown. 



Barely bigger than the husband's shoe.

Then we brought Hobbes home from the Pet Overpopulation Prevention group where I actually managed to pick and choose this new furry friend.  It was a pretty easy decision once I spotted the stump tail.    


Stump tails are magical

 Luckily, the two cats acclimated to each other pretty quickly and are now best friends forever. 


Behind that look of murderous rage is pure love

The only bump in this friendship is when we found out Hobbes was a carrier of ringworm without having any actual symptoms.  Yigs was not so lucky since she started going bald on one ear and had to be given daily baths until it cleared up.

Like most pet owners, our cats have a million nicknames because half the fun of having a pet is calling it stupid shit.  I imagine it's similar to having a child.  The one nickname I will share is Hobbes's most appropriate.  Blobert.  The below pictures are why.



I also called this look The Dead Bug Feet



Blobbing it up Blobert style.

A dryer that's running is also a favorite spot for some blobbing about.  Cat version of a heated massage chair?

Finally, I leave you with a picture that sums my two favorite fuzz balls perfectly.



Yigs creepily staring from her perch while Hobbes blobs it up.

Those are the kitties.  Hobbes has already made several appearances throughout this blog but I don't think Yigs is in any pictures.  She's usually perched behind me somewhere staring with those giant unblinking eyes whereas Hobbes is always up into everything.

Come back next week for something crafty related or more pictures of my cats depending on how busy I am this weekend. 



With nasty, big, pointy teeth...

Shortly after moving into our new home, the husband and I quickly accepted that we were the weirdos of our suburban, model home filled neighborhood.  A self-appointed title we hold with pride.  We were obviously the youngest couple, the only house without at least two kids running around (FYI: we're currently at two cats and very happy), and oh yea, we have undead gnomes wandering through our backyard.

They're protecting our tiny maple tree

The little guy on the right was a housewarming present from friends whereas the taller gentleman started off as a regular stone gnome that my friend Amanda then transformed into this ridiculously amazing zombie with an affinity for eyeballs.  Given the style of our yard so far, when my mother-in-law dropped off a stone bun bun decoration (yep, bunnies = bun bun), I knew he’d require a personal spin before he could start pal’ in around with the undead.

My original plan was to paint this rabbit to look like Bunnicula whose books I loved reading as a kid.  However, the husband said that not everyone would, “Get it” since, in truth, it would really just be a black and white bunny with red eyes and suggested we go with some a little more recognizable.  After this conversation, I realized I was at the age where the generation below me probably doesn’t even know who Bunnicula is which made me sad and feel old and I may have taken my sorrow out on some zucchini bread which I convinced myself was perfectly healthy because the vegetable cancels out any sugar or other terrible things in it.  Did I mention it has walnuts?  That makes it crazy healthy.  True story.        

Anyways, after my stomach stopped hurting which probably had nothing to do with the large amounts of consumed zuchinni bread, I went to work on transforming this little guy into something a little more our style.

 

Look at his face, he can sense the changes coming

Take one regular stone bunny decoration and spray paint him white.  If done on a ridiculously bright 100+ degree day, avoid looking directly at the white bunny while he's sitting in the sun.  Getting snowblindness during the summer is disconcerting.

Add a little life to his eyes by adding some black acrylic paint. 

Next step is to cute him up a bit with some pink paint added to the ears and nose.

Finally, smear/dab various shades of blood red paint to his face so that all the knights who try to pillage my yard will have his great big, pointy teeth (not pictured) to contend with.  Also, to make sure the blood of his fallen enemies stays fresh looking, I finished the killer bun bun's make-over by spraying him with a few layers of clear sealant. 

Here he is hanging out with our growing zombie hoard.

Isn't he the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on?  This won't be his permanent spot in our backyard as we still have a ton of work to do back there obviously so he'll leap about a bit.  Eventually, I might rustle up some kind of cave for him to lurk in where he can pounce on unsuspecting victims.  Afterall, he’s just a harmless little bunny. If you don't understand where the origins of this killer bun bun stem from, then I'm not sure we can be friends.  Or you could do yourself a favor and watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail and then maybe we'll have a chance.    

I don't know if our neighborhood has one of those fancy "Best Yard Ever" awards but, if so, I think we're a shoe-in.    

Freezer Fun Time

I, like many bloggers, have a day job to pay the bills and keep my cats alive.  My work day starts at 6:30AM and ends at 4:00.  This means my day gets going way before I am anywhere near ready to eat breakfast which is why I wind up eating at my desk halfway through my morning.  Now, that the boring part of this story is out of the way, let me just say I love breakfast burritos.  That’s what this whole post comes down to.  The lobby of my building has a food cart that sells breakfast burritos that I want to devour every single day.  However, at $3.50 a pop, the cheap side of me just couldn’t shell out the cash.  

So I decided to make my own.  And it was amazing. Made the burritos at home, froze them, and pulled one out of freezer the night before I planned on eating it.  Two minutes in the microwave and I was in breakfast heaven at my work desk.  Doing this got me on a freezer food kick and I started prepping other foods to be frozen so that I would have a steady supply of grub that was ready to go after a little reheating.  One or two days a month now, I’ll spend a few hours cooking and restocking my freezer. 

This month I made a new batch of breakfast burritos, black bean quesadillas, turkey meatballs, and a huge batch of spaghetti sauce.  

My staple go-to food for Freezer Fun Day is spaghetti sauce.  It is my go-to Sunday dinner when I’m feeling lazy because it’s Sunday and that’s what Sundays are for.  Pull a bag of sauce out of the freezer and throw it into a pot on low.  Let it reheat as I cook up some whole wheat pasta and broccoli.  Dinner’s ready to go in 20 minutes.        

 

The recipe for this spaghetti sauce came from my Grandpa and is very simple but flavorful.  It consists of tomato sauce, an onion, some wine, a little ketchup, and then brown sugar and spices.  No meat, no other veggies, just a great minimal sauce.  This is one of those dishes that my Grandpa never needed a recipe for and didn't even know the actual proportions of the ingredients.  He just eyeballed everything and it turned out great every time.  My mom managed to preserve his delicious concoction by watching him make it a couple times and figuring out everything he did.   

Saute the onions in a little butter until translucent.  Add remaining ingredients to pot and simmer on low for 2-3 hours.  Done and done.  When I'm doing a freezer cooking day, I always start the spaghetti sauce first.  By the time I'm done fixing all my other food, the sauce is done and ready to be bagged up. 

Once the sauce has cooled down, I measure out 2 Cups and transfer it into labeled freezer bags.  

One of these bags will be enough sauce for dinner and leftovers for lunch for both my husband and I.  Those with more than two people (not including our cats, they don't like Italian food....I think they may be racist) in their family will probably need to adjust their portions so you may not end up with five freezer bags but either way, this is a great time/money saver.

Also, little trick I found, when freezing sauces or soups, lay them flat in the freezer until they're frozen.

Once the bags solidify, they can be stacked upright in the freezer for easy viewing access and it saves space.

I am unashamedly proud of how organized my freezer is.

After my sauce was simmering, I started in on my next freezer food, Chinese Style Turkey Meatballs.  This was a new recipe found on Pinterest (seriously, where else?) and I was super excited to try it out because meatballs freeze extremely well and turkey is one of my favorite meats to cook with.  I find it absorbs flavors much better than ground beef which is usually why I end up substituting ground turkey for beef in most recipes.  The original recipe called for cilantro which I opted to leave out.  Mainly because I didn't have any and didn't want to go back to the store.

Mix all the ingredients together and portion out into meatballs.  To keep the size of the meatballs uniform, I use a tbsp cookie scoop to portion out the balls (hehe...balls) and then roll them into adorable little meat spheres. 

After 20 minutes in the oven at 400 degrees, we have these.  Yum!

Once the turkey meatballs had cooled, I divided the whole batch in half and put away in bags.  One bag is enough for dinner and lunch the next day.  Cook up some brown rice and a vegetable (steamed peas?), mix together the sauce for these, and dinner is ready to go in an hour but that's only because rice takes forever to cook. 

While the turkey meatballs were cooking in the oven, I assembled some black bean quesadillas that I could easily take into work for lunch.  This is another Pinterest found recipe but I was surprised I hadn't thought of making these before.  I make quesadillas at least once a week.  Most leftover meat (like steak) ends up in a quesadilla.  In conclusion, quesadillas are awesome. 

Drain and rinse the black beans, chop up the onion and garlic, shred some cheese, mix everything together, and divvy out the mixture between tortilla shells.

Once all my tortillas were stuffed, I wrapped them in parchment paper and filled up some more freezer bags.  These could easily be made with your favorite kind of meat as well, just cook it up and toss it in with the rest of the ingredients.   

Now, for the feature player in our freezer food party, the breakfast burrito.  With six simple ingredients (tortillas not pictured, they're camera shy), an awesome ready-to-go breakfast is only a few moments away.  Well, more like 30 minutes but that's still not very much time.    

Cook up the sausage until all the pink is gone, drain meat to remove excess grease.

Wow, half cooked pork looks pretty gross close up....don't eat your sausage if it looks like this....

Next, dice up the red potatoes and onion and cook in a skillet, covered, for about 10 minutes until the spuds are easily pierced with a fork. 

While the potatoes and onions are cooking, I whisk together a dozen eggs with a splash of milk plus some salt & pepper. 

Once the potatoes are done, I dump the already prepared egg mixture directly over them and cook.

Once the eggs have cooked, I turn off the heat and mix the sausage and around 3/4 cup of cheese into the potato and eggs combo.



Before burritoizing the breakfast mixture, it helps to wrap the tortillas in a damp paper towel and microwave them for 20 seconds or so.  Helps loosen everything up so the shells are less likely to tear as they're being folded up.

This one batch produced 12 burritos that cost under a dollar to make.  Compared to the $3.50 burritos at my work, that sounds like a good deal to me.  Plus, my burritos are better.  Fact. 

Prior to freezing, let the burritos cool, and then wrap them individually in paper towels.  When you feel like having some breakfast burrito goodness in the morning, pop one of these out of the freezer the night before and let it defrost in the fridge.  Without removing the paper towel, microwave for two minutes, flipping the burrito over after one minute, and then enjoy!

So there we have it.  For around $40 in groceries and a couple of hours time, I ended up with five bags of spaghetti sauce, two big servings of turkey meatballs, 10 black bean quesadillas, and 12 breakfast burritos.  Spending $40 to get the bones of over 20 quick & easy meals is pretty satisfying.  Eating breakfast and lunch at work just got way better. 

Aside from you know, eating two meals a day at my desk which is kind of lame.  Plus side, it does allow me to catch up on Batman comics so it could almost be called a win.