Project in the Works

The good stuff is always worth the work it takes.

New project! Within 1-3 years, I am hoping to open a new business on my town's Main Ave. The business would consist of a bakery (bread, pastries, coffee), kitchen supply store (think Williams-Sonoma with local foods) and a commercial kitchen (available for rent). It will be a ton of work to get it going, but I am in it for the long run and very committed. I'll update the neglected blog occasionally with developments. In the meantime, feel free to check out my personal Pinterest page, event food Pinterest page, or event design Pinterest page for some inspiration.

Also, enjoy this cute photo of Jax.

Succulent Terrarium

 

This succulent terrarium is easy to make and even easier to take care of. The hardest part was finding succulents in the middle of the winter (thank you Lowe's!). I also purchased sand from Lowe's. The small-medium river rocks, dirt, moss, and vase were reused from a previous project. Goodwill is a great source for cute little details, like my bicycle. It came in a container of other doll-house toys for only a dollar.

The terrarium is pretty easy to make and only takes about 15 minutes. Find a tall vase, jar, or glass container with a wide opening. First, place a layer of sand about 1 inch deep. This cushions the rocks and hides any "nasties" that seep through. Note that all layering amounts depend on how tall your vase is. Then, place a 2-3 inch layer of small to medium sized river rock followed by a 5 inch layer of good soil.

Succulents are next. The succulents should be spaced enough that there is room to grow. They don't need too much room though (see above). The succulents also don't have a very deep root system, so they are pretty easy to plant. Once planted, place moss and additional river rock around the base to hide the dirt and add more color. The bicycle is a cute accent and can be easily switched out- maybe a doll-house Christmas tree, sled, ghost, flag, gnome, etc based on the season.

I only water the terrarium once every few weeks, and you could go even longer if the terrarium has a lid. If you are lucky, try to find a container with an air tight lid, water it well when planting, and you may not need to water it more than once every few years. Enclosed terrariums make their own mini ecosystem and self regulate the water. I store ours on a side table that gets indirect sunlight everyday.

Cute, cheap, living, and easy to take care of. Almost like a Jax! Speaking of, check out how cute he is:

Butternut Squash Macaroni and Cheese

 Hello Autumn!! I have missed you soo much!

Fall is my favorite season. I love the sights, smells, and tastes, and this macaroni and cheese was a great way to combine the three.  This Martha Stewart recipe was used as the base, but modified to meet my needs. There are two main parts to the recipe, and it takes about 2 hours to make, so I started at 10 a.m. I took this picture when just starting, which perfectly describes our morning- French press coffee and squash.

Butternut Squash Macaroni and Cheese

Part 1:
1 lb butternut squash (half a medium sized squash)
2 Tablespoons olive oil
Sprinkles of salt, pepper, nutmeg, and cayenne (I think I did maybe about 1/4-1/2 teaspoon each)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Peel the butternut squash, scoop seeds, and cut squash into one inch cubes. This is a great tutorial. Place the squash in a metal sheet pan and drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle with seasonings. Bake for 20 minutes, stir, and bake for another 10 minutes. Then, reduce oven temp to 375 degrees.

Part 2:
1 lb elbow macaroni or shell pasta
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup chicken stock
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
Cooking spray
Cheddar and mozzarella cheese for sprinkling
3 tablespoons bread crumbs
Parmesan cheese for sprinkling

Cook pasta according to package. Meanwhile, put previously baked squash, heavy cream, chicken stock, and cheeses into a bowl and mix. The squash will get squishy and not stay cubed. Stir in cooked pasta. Pour all into a sprayed 9x9 baking dish. Sprinkle with remaining cheddar and mozzarella cheese and then breadcrumbs. Loosely cover the pan with tin foil. Bake for 20 minutes. Then, remove pan from oven, take off foil, and return to oven uncovered for another 40 minutes. Let cool slightly before serving with parmesan cheese sprinkled on top.

We ate this with Blue Moon Harvest Pumpkin Ale for a super yummy Fall meal. Enjoy!

**Edit on 12/9/13: We have made this meal three more times since the original posting. A roasted sugar pumpkin works in place of the butternut squash (two seed scooped skin-on halves at 325* for 1 hour, then scraped out instead of cubed). This recipe get 10x more delicious when goat cheese is added into the mix. SO GOOD!

**Edit on  9/1/14: Still SO GOOD! I mess around with the flavors each time and it has never not been good. We're growing squash in the garden now too, which my husband lovingly calls the "squash-a-roni plant". He is just as excited as I am. :)

Mini Chocolate Almond Cake

So I took a break from blogging- but now I am back! I can't promise it will be frequent, but I can promise it will be fun.

Over the break, I made a very decadent, very yummy mini chocolate cake with whipped cream and chocolate ganache filling. Oh boy was this thing good. The recipe was followed almost exactly from here. I had been looking for a way to use mini quiche pans and a cute bird mini cake stand, and this was perfect. The recipe ended up making 6 mini cake pieces, which worked out perfectly since the cake stand was only tall enough for a two-stack portion anyway. So, one four-stack cake and one two-stack cake were created. Who can complain about that?

Spring Fireplace Mantle

My fireplace mantle is not new to the blog. I have posted about it's decor possibilities for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Now that spring has figuratively sprung (despite all the snow on the ground), we needed a cheery display. A television is now mounted to the wall, which creates a new challenge for a pretty display. Here is what I came up with, sticking to a fresh white, blue, green, and gold color scheme.

The right side has the ever present birdcage to hide the DVD player, with a white porcelain bird, fresh green plant in a bright white pot, and 2 brass candlesticks.

A long twig-y candle holder sits under the TV with green and blue fake floral accents.

  

On the left side is a large blue vase with very real looking fake hydrangeas (thanks Hobby Lobby!), a large intricate brass candlestick, and a small brass candlestick and two white birds to match the right side.  To add height, I have some twisty branches and old windows behind the display. The blue vase got a huge jagged hole in the back when filling it with rocks. Super sad, but I put a piece of clear packing tape over it to keep everything in.

Yay Spring!

I have a few fun projects coming up: a homemade shower curtain, bedroom wall painting, art collage wall, and chalkboard cupboard. Pictures will be posted soon!

Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies

My dear friend Kristina sent me this recipe for chocolate chip cookies made with bananas from Taste of Home. I was skeptical at first but they turned out really well! The texture was like half cookie, half cake. I could see them going over well at a party where they are eaten quickly, or frozen as an ice cream sandwich (maybe with peanut butter swirl ice cream), as they only stayed fresh for a day or so in a container on the counter. The cookies got oddly sticky and moist by the next day, which was pretty weird.

The recipe is below, but I made a few changes from what is listed on the Taste of Home website. I ended with close to two dozen cookies, instead of the three listed by Taste of Home, so I adjusted the calorie count to reflect.

• 1/3 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 medium mashed ripe banana
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips 

In a small bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg, banana and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda; gradually add to creamed mixture and mix well. Stir in chocolate chips. 

Drop by tablespoonfuls 2 in. apart onto baking sheets coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350° for 9-11 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Remove to wire racks to cool. Yield: 2 dozen.

Calories: 125 per cookie 

We ate these for snacks and breakfast. They have a banana in it so they are okay for breakfast, right? :)

Painting the Eat-in Counter

As I mentioned before, we moved into our first house in late September. It is a fairly new house (2009) so there aren't really any necessary or large home improvement projects, only work that makes our house our home, not just a place we live in. The house is full of our stuff, but sometimes I still feel like it isn't really our house because there are signs of the previous owners. One of these areas is the kitchen eat-in counter.

The color isn't my favorite and it has dings and scratches from where their baby's highchair sat.

So, I took some green paint I found in the garage, leftover from the wall behind the fireplace when the house was built, and got to work. The project took about three hours to tape and paint (two coats). The only cost was a new paint roller pad, about $3.00. 

So what do you think of the change? I don't think it matches the counters very well, and I know we need to get bar height stools, but it is now MY counter, not one belonging to the family who lived here before us.

Stuffed French Toast with Caramel Rum Sauce

A good breakfast is the best way to start a weekend! This Saturday it was decadent french toast stuffed with a cream cheese, banana, chocolate mixture, then topped with a smooth caramel rum sauce.

Start with the sauce so it has a chance to thicken while making the french toast. Stirring frequently over medium heat, mix 1/2 stick of butter (4 tablespoons) and 1/2 cup of brown sugar. Continue stirring until the mixture boils. Then stir nearly constantly until the mixture has thickened. Once the mixture can easily coat the back of the spoon without completely dripping off, add 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream, 2 tablespoons milk, 1 tablespoon vanilla and 2 tablespoons rum. Stir until smooth and put back on low heat to keep warm while making the french toast, stirring occasionally.

For the french toast, take four pieces of thick bread and place on a cookie sheet. Place in the oven on 300 degrees for a minute or so, then flip over to toast the other side. Remove from the oven (but keep oven on) and let cool slightly. Put a frying pan on the stove top with a tablespoon of butter and heat on medium, allowing the butter to melt. Meanwhile, mix 2 eggs, 1/4 cup milk, 1 teaspoon vanilla, and a sprinkle of cinnamon and nutmeg in a flat dish. Dip both side of the bread into the mix and cook in the frying pan until yummy looking. ***Only dip two slices at a time so the bread doesn't get soggy before cooking.*** Repeat with the other two slices and set aside.

To make the filling, mix 4 oz (half block or 1/2 cup) of cream cheese (I used neufchatel cheese), 1/2 banana cut into small chunks, small handful of chocolate chips, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1 tablespoon orange juice (I used orange V8), and 1/8 cup sugar. Don't mash the bananas, just mix the ingredients all up. I found it easiest to soften the cheese in the microwave first. (You can also do cream cheese with jam and sugar instead of the banana mixture.)

Then, scoop the mixture evenly between two slices of french toast. Set the other slices on top (like a sandwich) and place on the cookie sheet from earlier. Put back in the oven and cook for about 8 minutes. Remove from oven and drizzle with the warm sauce. This goes great with eggs and bacon expertly made by your husband! :)

Rolling Pin with Silverware Hooks

 

This one is pretty neat! I intended on making curtain hold backs out of silverware to use in our kitchen, but since we don't have a window there that requires curtains, I had a bag of old silverware sitting around, just waiting for a project. I had seen some photos of bent silverware hangers attached to boards floating around Etsy and decided to attempt my own. After creating, my dear husband nailed them to an antique rolling pin, which we mounted to the wall as an apron hanger. Yay!

Each type of silverware required a different process to bend into the right shape. The spoon was the easiest, simply banging flat with a hammer, hooking into a table mounted vise, hooking the handle into a hand-held vise grip and pulling up on the handle to create a hook.

The knife was also pretty easy, but the blade was pretty thick towards the handle, making it hard to control what angle the blade bent at to form the hook. It was also squeezed into the table vise when bending with the hand-held vise grip, but bending the blade, not handle as was done with the spoon.

The fork was definitely the most work. I started by trying to simply bend the tines with a pliers while the fork was hooked into the table vise grip, which was ridiculous. So, Mike taught we how to use a blowtorch- yes, I used blow torch! Each fork tine was heated until red hot and then bent into a curve using pliers. It probably took 6 or so heating sessions to get everything in place. Then, we hit the fork with a hammer until the tines were flat and even with the others, instead of some sticking out and looking silly. The handle was bent into a hook using the same process as the other utensils. 

Mike then drilled a hole into each utensil (careful not to overheat your bit!) and nailed the pieces onto the rolling pin. The silver wall mounted hooks were purchased at Lowe's, for the pin to sit on. We screwed in the Lowe's hooks, set the pin on top and voila!- a vintage, kitchen themed hanger for my aprons!

Some tips if you try this at home- make sure your silverware is all silver, not just silver plated. This will make it easier to bend and have a prettier finish. We scraped off some silver coating when bending the fork, leaving an ugly black finish behind. I colored over it with a silver sharpie to try to hide it! :) Also, we bent the utensils over the curve of the table vise "grabber" area so the hooks had the same size and shape. Make sure to bend the handles backwards, to show off the pretty pattern on the front. (When completed, you see the back of the eating area and the front of the hooks.) Once hung, the rolling pin kept spinning so the hooks were touching the wall due to the weight. This was fixed with a dab of hot glue on both wall hooks to secure the handles and a dab on the inner handle area to secure the large middle rolling part.

What do you think? Worth an hour and $15?

Coffee Station Beginnings

I wanted a dedicated station for coffee in our dining room, but was having trouble finding the type of table I liked (vintage-y or dark wood, counter height, and ample storage space, kind of like this) for a good price. On my way into town during a blizzard, and obviously not driving as cautiously as I should, I saw a potential table in the window of a used furniture shop and decided to stop in the next day to take a look. It was only table height and didn't have much storage... but it was only $50 so I bought it! Eventually it will get moved to the living room as a sofa table after we find the perfect coffee station table, but it will work great in the dining room for now.

We have that same honey oak wood on our floors and cabinets, which is already way too much orange, so it was decided to re-stain the tabletop to a dark wood. I unscrewed the top, stripped the old stain off, cleaned and sanded the wood, beat it up with an assortment of hard objects for a worn look, stained, sanded, stained, sanded, sealed, sanded, re-screwed, and changed the knob. And here is the finished result:

The knob is from the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore. I bought 10 or so for about $.25 each. The others are currently being used as a face on a snowman. :) 

Here is where you can see some of the different marks made by beating the table up, using a hammer, screwdriver, wire brush, bag of nails, etc. The stain settles in the indents, leaving a darker color.

I want to put overhead storage shelves in, but as this won't be our "forever" table, I will wait for now. And yes, we do have a coffee station before a kitchen table. C'est la vie!

What do you think?

Christmas Dog

Until I get a few project complete, here is a few cute (and naughty) pictures of our one year old dog, Jax:

Oh what a nice dog in front of the Christmas tree!:

Wait, what is that?:

Less then 12 hours after putting the tree up, Jax destroyed three ornaments and multiple branches of holly. Within one week, eight ornaments were chewed up, including a glass one. At least he is sorry about it.:

I would be mad at him, but he is so darn cute!:

And really like the snow!:

What a cutie!:

*In case you were nervous, Jax was fine after chewing up the glass ornament. The Christmas tree now gets sprayed with smelly dog deterrent everyday to keep him away from the festive snack. :)

Fabric Christmas Trees

Look how cute these are! I was wanting a few tall Christmas trees to set on the fireplace mantle and couldn't find any that I liked in the stores. They were all too short or too shiny. So, I made my own.

Supplies needed:

• 2 small tomato cages (like this)
• At least 3 poster board sheets (thick paper sheets in the largest size you can get, like this)
• Masking tape
• Hot glue
• Fabric of your choice (I used 2 feet of green fleece, about 1 foot of cream flannel, and 1 foot of textured cream upholstery fabric.)

First, flip the cages upside down so the largest ring is on the bottom. Decide how tall you want the trees. I cut off the bottom ring of one cage to make it shorter that the other. Tape where the wires are connected to the ring; this is to keep the sharp wire edges from scratching wherever you set the trees. Then, tape the three ends together to make a big cone, like this:

Lay the tomato cages down on the poster paper, long side down. Tape down the long wires as you roll the cage across the paper. The paper wrapped better by putting it at an angle, which left some corners hanging off the bottom. Just cut those off and save the trimmings.

Once completely wrapped and taped on the inside, seal the seam by taping along the edge. Use the paper trimmings to patch any gaps left by the paper not being big enough. This is what the inside and outside should look like.

Cut a long strip of fabric (long enough to wrap around the bottom of the tree) and glue the strip to the outside bottom of the tree to hide the paper bottom. Then, start a movie and cut out hundreds of fabric petals. :) I made them about 1 inch wide and 2 inches long. It will go faster if you fold the fabric before cutting, so you can get multiple petals in one swipe.

Once cut out, start hot gluing petals in rows all the way around the tree. I made one tree mostly green with a few cream petals and one mostly cream with a few green petals. The picture below shows the bottom fabric strip, and beginning of gluing. You can also see where I used magazine sheets to fill in tree holes when I ran out of poster board. (I only used two sheets instead of three.)

Keep gluing petals on until the whole tree is filled. Overlap a little bit to hide the straight tops of the petals and hide the paper. Once you get to the top, fold a petal around the tip and glue to make a nice cone top.

This is what you end up with. (The cute trees, not the cute dog.)

This project cost less than $15 total to make two trees, especially since I used discounted fabric from the remnants bin at Walmart and cheap tomato cages, because no one buys tomato cages in November.

Here are the trees on the mantle, next to TJ Maxx reindeer. So cute!

 This, my friends, is a My Neighbor's House original. Yes, I came up with this idea all on my own... and it actually worked! Haha!

Thanksgiving Fireplace Mantle

When touring houses as prospective buyers, one of the first details that caught our eye was the fireplace in our now home. The whole house is covered in icky honey oak trim, which is not my style, but the living room was redeemed with a really nice dark mantle. We will put a TV on the wall some day, but until they go on sale (Black Friday), I had free rein of the entire space.

The ceiling is pretty high, with a long slope, so tall items were needed to balance. I have been trying to find a way to use a few old windows for a while, and this was the perfect opportunity. A Ben Sollee poster and plant also add height. The poster also hides the outlet and cable hook-up you can see in the upper right corner of the photo below.

There are a few fall touches: two pumpkins and a cornucopia. I plan to change the mantle out with each major holiday/season. A long metal candle holder from our wedding and three rectangular peach candle holders from our honeymoon sit in back.

This is my favorite part! Cute little birds sit in an antique bird cage. When I first put the display up, the bird on the perch kept falling over so it looked like a hanging bat or a sad dead bird, which is not cute. A twist-tie solved the issue!

Lastly, a metal G from Anthropologie and one of our engagement pictures in a bike chain frame sit in front of the poster. I originally wanted to put the "G" above our bed, but it is heavy and I am afraid it will fall off in the middle of the night and knock one of us out... The frame was a going away gift to Mike when he had an internship in Indiana for a month last summer. He put it on his bedside table at the hotel. :)

I'm happy with the way the mantle turned out but already excited to decorate it for Christmas!

Hobo Day Soup Buffet

The University I work for has a yearly homecoming celebration called Hobo Days. Yes, slightly insensitive to the plight of the real hobos, but tons of fun! One of the festivities is called "Bum-a-Meal" which consists of a group of students visiting a community member's house for a free meal. Mike and I signed up to provide dinner, so a hobo-chic buffet was set for us and five guests.

The buffet was complete with galvanized steel, cans, newspaper, twine and old lace. We served chili, chicken tortilla soup (did you know real homemade tortilla soup has corn tortillas in it?), condiments, bread sticks (thanks HyVee!), from-scratch vanilla cupcakes (not a fan of this recipe- too dense), and juice. We haven't bought a dining table yet, so the table and chairs were borrowed from Mike's work. Not hobo-y, but better than the floor. 

 

Happy Hobo Day!