Cooking Up A Project

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Danielle

My grandmother was a recipe collector. I don’t have memories of her spending hours in the kitchen, but she was always collecting recipes. Don’t get me wrong, she had some stellar “go-to” dishes that I can’t imagine life without. Most of them were made during the holidays… Tom & Jerry’s, Divinity, Depression Fruitcake… but some of them were just every day things like Open Face Salad. The truth is she worked outside the home and when I spent my summers at my grandparents, she was always quick to play Yahtzee or cards with me instead of being in the kitchen when she got home from work. I liked that about my summers with her.

However, when she passed away several years ago, my mom came across all of her recipes. Many of them were torn from newspapers and magazines, but my favorites were those that she took time to write out in her beautiful handwriting. I made sure to get copies of those for my own little collection.

Speaking of my own collection… frankly, it’s a hot mess.

I keep my cookbooks to a minimum, but I continually find myself collecting recipes that girlfriends have emailed me or items from Food Magazine that look SO amazing. But these clippings don’t really fit in a traditional recipe box. They are starting to take on a life of their own and it’s time to wrangle them in.

Last week, I made a trip to IKEA to pick up a set of their KNUFF boxes. I searched several craft stores and container supply and there’s nothing truly like the KNUFF containers. They come in sets of two for $9.99. They are sturdy and (my favorite) customizable.

Before I could prime the box, I taped off the interior. I like the natural wood finish for the inside, but I have something unique planned for the exterior.

In my prep, I was sure to cover the holes too.

Once everything was taped up, it was time to prime.

Then came a few light coats of black spray paint.

For the next part of this project, I color copied one of my grandmother’s recipes. My plan is to create a decorative border from the antiqued cards that are in my grandmother’s handwriting. Of course, I didn’t want to destroy any of her original recipe cards and they copied beautifully onto a heavy card stock. I also picked up Washi Tape and these decorative frames.

Before applying my copied recipe cards, I marked a 1.25 inch guideline around the bottom of the KNUFF box.

I then applied the copied recipe cards with Mod Podge and sealed the whole box off with a top coat.

Using leftover chalkboard labels and my chalk marker, I was able to make a title card for the inside of the wood frame.

I love having a larger box to put all me random recipes in… one that can stand up easily next to my cookbooks. Tyson loves that life is a little more organized in our home.

Do you have a special memory of your grandparents that makes you smile? What about a family recipe that has been passed down through the years? How do you contain recipe clutter?

This project was made with love and is being included in Victoria Elizabeth Barnes‘ link-up party. To check out all the other well loved projects or to share your own, you can visit Victoria’s site here.

Let’s Hear It for the Moms

Posted on May 10, 2013 by Danielle

With Mother’s Day just around the corner, I’ve asked my family not to make a big hoopla this year. I don’t mean that in a “don’t do anything, but I’m secretly hoping for a parade” kinda way. I mean it in a “pleeeease don’t do anything” kinda way. Next month I’ll be traveling to see my mom, so Mother’s Day already feels sufficiently covered. I’d rather just keep things simple instead.

But trust me… I normally want the parade.

However, that’s not to say that I don’t have some picks that would brighten someone’s day. I think these are some sweet little ways to pamper mom and they’d also be nice for a friend, neighbor or even teacher appreciation.

Dove Sea Salt Caramel Dark Chocolate.

Honestly, I picked these up because they matched my table decor perfectly, but they did not disappoint. You’ve got sea salt, caramel, AND dark chocolate… what’s not to love?! Fair warning: my family who typically turns down the sea salt and dark chocolate combo devoured these.

Archer Farms Shortbread Cookies.

These little treats are courtesy of Target and they are A-MAH-ZING. They are buttery, sugar goodness looking like an innocent cookie. A little strawberries and cream and they would be the most divine mini-strawberry shortcakes EVER.

Daisies.

Flowers are always a safe bet for Mother’s Day, but I love daisies for their simple elegance.

Cute Napkins

Decorative napkins are always a fun and practical way to dress up a meal together.

Homemade Breakfast

Nothing says “I love you” like cooking for me. Tess has been making this Easy French Toast since she got The Gourmet Cookbook for Christmas. It’s so delicious! Also, this recipe can be made ahead of time… even the night before. Then while it’s cooking, you can really impress by making homemade syrup (from the same cookbook). It will blow your mama’s mind!

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mom’s in my life!

To my own mom,

To my sister-in-law, mother-in-law, step mother-in-law, cousin-in-law and aunt,

To my California moms,

To my Oregon moms,

To my blogger moms,

And to all the sweet gals (moms or not) who pour into my kids and make-up for my own shortcomings as a mom. I’m not going to say “it takes a village”… only that I am forever thankful for your presence in their lives.

Have a great day, ladies!

**The Gourmet Cookbook is an Amazon Affiliate link and has been provided for your additional information.

Spring Pinterest Challenge: Chalkboard Subway Art

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Danielle

One of the very first projects that I shared on this blog was how I turned a cabinet door into a chalkboard for our laundry room. It was a project I loved and it seemed like a cute way to kick things off here. On it, I simply wrote “Welcome”.

Welcome to my home, to my life and to this blog.

It was the very beginning of EVERYTHING and I wasn’t sure if I could even write a blog let alone get this one word looking right. I was pleased that it looked fairly neat and I had another post written.

Fast forward a year plus several months later and that sign still says “Welcome”. And I’ve been wondering if there’s something more that I can do with it. So when Young House Love and Bower Power announced that it was time for their Spring Pinterest Challenge, I knew it was time to update my chalkboard.

The Pinterest Challenge this season is hosted again by Sherry Petersik and Katie Bower and this time they are partnering with Emily from Sparkle Meets Pop and Renee of Red Bird Blue. The goal is to get everyone to put their own unique twist on something that they’ve pinned.

My Inspiration

Dana Tanamachi is hands down one of my favorite artists. You may have seen her artwork at West Elm or on the cover of Oprah Magazine. She is a hugely talented hand letter artist and does stunning things with chalk.

Following Dana’s lead, I am combining two popular trends and hoping to create subway art with chalk.

My Pinspiration

There are loads of tutorials on Pinterest of how-to create subway art and chalk lettering. A few that I referenced were here, here and here. However, I found My Sweet Savannah’s post to be the most helpful.

I began brainstorming laundry room words: soap, bubbles, clean, iron… you get the idea.

Then I used Adobe Illustrator to help me create a subway art design with those terms. There are a lot of programs online that you can download to use, but since we already own Adobe Illustrator, I went with that. Sometimes being married to a graphic designer and illustrator has it’s perks.

AI works like several of the online design programs. It’s a matter of typing in your words, playing with fonts and sizing and moving the words around until you have a layout that you like. Seriously, I may be married to a graphic designer and illustrator, but I am not one. I was able to easily figure this out by just playing around to see what happens.

That was the easy step.

This next part would, as my son says, separate the pretenders from the contenders. That is, I had no idea if I could actually get the chalk lettering down the way I had designed it.

I was hoping to use an image projector to help in this process. However, once I started pricing them out and realized we were looking at a few hundred dollar investment, I decided I would need to consider other options.

My chalkboard space is 17.5 inches square. I printed the design off on to two 11 x 17 sheets of paper that I could overlap and leave myself with a half inch border.

You can also take your image file to a local print shop and have it printed on one sheet, but I wanted to see if I could do this challenge completely free and the legal size paper worked.

Once I taped the two sheets together, I rubbed chalk over the entire back of the paper. I then flipped the design over so that the chalk side was against the chalkboard and taped it down to keep it from shifting.

I was able to carefully trace the outline of the letters to get a copy of my subway art transposed onto the chalkboard.

I then began the process of going over the letters and filling them in… one letter at a time.

At first, I thought all the hand lettering would take forever, but it was oddly therapeutic and went quickly. I had the added benefit of being able to take the cabinet door off the wall and work on the floor, moving the board all around.

I also used Q-tips and a touch of water to “erase” and clean up any areas that needed a little extra help.

Unfortunately, there is no natural light in our laundry room, so this photo is not ideal. But I am beyond thrilled with the final artwork.

I still can’t believe it worked the way I had hoped. Tyson keeps asking if I need to seal it so the image doesn’t get smudged or lost, but I would gladly come up with something new, if the need or inspiration strikes.

Speaking of inspiration… it’s party time. Time to check out all the great links that are being shared at the Spring Pinterest Challenge. There is sure to be tons of inspiration and more things to pin. I’ll be linking up at:

Have you ever done chalk art or hand lettering? Are you participating in the Spring Pinterest Challenge? Ever take on a project and wonder if you would find yourself a pretender or a contender? That kid cracks me up!

For even more inspiration, check out these blogs that I’ll also be sharing this post at:

Spring Pinterest Challenge Preview

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Danielle

Recently, Sherry Petersik (from YHL) and Katie Bower (of Bower Power) announced their Spring Pinterest Challenge would be this week and my little creative heart grew three sizes that day. Of all the link parties in blogland, this one is by far my favorite. It really brings out some amazingly talented people and it pushes me to try my hand at something new that I’ve been eyeing on Pinterest.

And this challenge came at the perfect time; I knew exactly what I ~~wanted~~ needed to do.

You know those projects that you do and you think “YEAH… that’s so AWESOME!”, but then over time you start thinking “yeah… not so much.”? The project I decided to tackle was a lot like that. Something I liked on initial application, but it hasn’t really stood the test of time. And something that every time I walked by, was really starting to bum me out. It was time to change ALL that.

Want a little preview of tomorrow’s post?

I thought you might… so I updated another “blast from the past post” in preparation for what’s ahead.

You can click on the link here to see how I took an old cabinet door and turned it into a chalkboard for our laundry room.

This is the fourth post I ever wrote and I’m so glad I went back and updated it. Not only does the post page load so much faster, the original photos were really blurry. The lighting still isn’t great in them, but the image quality has vastly improved.

Need another hint?

Well… let’s just say this little board got a great big design improvement.

How’s that for a tease for tomorrow’s post? Are you participating in the Spring Pinterest Challenge? Is there something hanging around your place that you once loved, but have grown weary of? Let me hear all about it in the comments.

Need more Pinterest Challenge fun? Check out some of my other projects here, here, here and here.

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Stories About Life & Home

Tag Archives: home accents

Cooking Up A Project

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Let’s Hear It for the Moms

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Spring Pinterest Challenge: Chalkboard Subway Art

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Spring Pinterest Challenge Preview

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