Cooking is a Craft Right? Fast & Easy Low Carb Breakfast Frittata!

It’s been a LONG time since I posted and I know, I owe my readers a lot of update posts on my craft attic, but those are going to be long and involved so I will continue to procrastinate, it’s what I do best. The urge struck me to blog tonight because I just made something that I couldn’t stop stealing bites of when it was done, it was so freaking good.  Here’s the story…

So my husband and I have been drastically reducing our carbs and breakfast was always a tough one. Who doesn’t love bagels, toast, pancakes, yum!  So we turned to eggs and veggies, and so long as I could get up super early, we always had time for a nice, healthy breakfast free of “bad carbs” in the morning.  To save time, I would sometimes scramble a LOT of eggs and fry up veggies on Sunday and we could reheat them throughout the week, but it was never really very tasty. The veggies always got mushy.  Then I scrambled the eggs and veggies together, much better.  Then I graduated to mini egg muffins.  I tried a lot of recipes I ran across on Pinterest and they were always kind of meh. Either rubbery, or fell apart when we tried to take them out of the pan, any 6 muffins only lasted a couple of days.  Then I discovered the frittata at my favorite local café and it was love at first bite <3

I started asking around and was referred to this great recipe on Food Network that looked a) easy, b) allows for substitutions/customizations, c) reheats well and is d) fast.  All requirements for me when I cook. I am not super creative and I don’t want to spend a lot of time if I don’t have to.  And I want things to be AMAZING! Typical right?  Well, this one fit the bill.  So feel free to follow the recipe as-is but here is what I did a bit differently, so it might give you some ideas as to how flexible it is…

First, I used different veggies, basically what I had on hand.  Instead of asparagus, I used:

• 1/2 a small zucchini, cubed
• 2 baby bella mushrooms, sliced thinly
• 1/4 orange pepper, cubed
• 1/4 cub chopped onion
• 1/2 cub chopped broccoli
• 1/2 cup pearl tomatoes, sliced in halves

Next, I don’t have a 9.5 inch non-stick skillet that wouldn’t combust in the oven so I used my 12 inch cast iron skillet.  Since it was a bigger pan I increased my egg count to 8 eggs, and the equivalent of 3 egg whites (liquid kind).  Wasn’t sure how this would effect things at first, but managed to have it still turn out really well. I think I got lucky. and maybe I inherited some instincts from my mom when it comes to these kinds of things.

For the record, I totally just paused mid-blog and grabbed another little hunk and ate it, it is SO GOOD!

I also didn’t have heavy cream laying around, who does?  I substituted 2 tablespoons of sour cream and a tablespoon of soy creamer. What, soy creamer you say? I know it sounds gross.  It wasn’t flavored creamer, and was more or less the density that I needed. And it ended up working great :: SHRUGS::

So here is what the skillet looked like after sautéing the veggies as per instructions (so everything but tomatoes and mushrooms for the last 2 minutes)  and pouring the egg mixture over it in the pan. It had sit for 4 minutes on med-high and was just starting to set. The recipe says 3 minutes, but again, bigger pan and more eggs:

I waited for them to be mostly “set”, so firm on the sides, bubbling in the center but still runny on top.  For me this was right around 7 minutes later on medium.  Then I sprinkled it with a 3 cheese blend (which just happened to including fontina), and popped it in the oven. Looked like this:

You’ll have to excuse the photo quality, I was sending these to my husband to show off my culinary prowess, not planning to post them to a blog, so they’re not great.  My first screw-up was using the “Hi” setting on my broiler, it’s electric and old and apparently hi = nuclear. After 2.5 minutes it was browned to the point of almost being too dark and so I removed it. Behold:

It was still beautiful and looked utterly delicious, but I poked around and noted that it looked a wee bit undercooked. Well, even undercooked enough that reheating would barely make it done. I didn’t want to put it back in yet because it’s a cast iron skillet right? That thing stays HOT. Another part of the issue is I probably went overboard with the eggs, I think 8 total would have been enough, this frittata was a bit thick, adding to the undercookedness. What? That’s a word!

So I let it sit for 2 minutes, and tried running a spatula under it to free it from the pan. NOT HAPPENNING. Well, it finally started to give a little, but being undercooked didn’t help it.  I eventually got it loosened up, and had to do some fancy finagling to get it out of the pan. Things don’t easily slide out of cast iron with those deep sides. It broke apart a little getting onto the flat cookie sheet, so I rectified this by sprinkling some mozzarella on top. I then popped it back into the oven with the broiler on “lo” for 2 minutes.  That seemed to do the trick.  The cheese melted beautifully and the eggs firmed up.

You can see the little edge missing at about 2 o’clock there.  By now it more likely resembles PacMan, I can’t stop stealing bites!  With veggie chopping, cooking, finagling, more cooking, it was probably 25 minutes tops.  If not for the extra baking on the cookie sheet, it would have dirtied exactly 6 things: cutting board, knife, mixing bowl, whisk, spatula and skillet.

It is delicious, cheap to make, relatively quick & easy, and it will definitely last us the rest of the week!

Part 2: The Plan

So, in case you skipped part 1, here is all you need to know about where your heroine left off in her quest for a great craft space to share with her friends – the previously semi-finished attic has been obliterated with the help of my wonderful husband and my good friend Dinah:

I haven’t worked out every detail of how it will be finished but we have a good starting point. We tore down the originally planned knee walls and remaining walls and ceilings from the “nanny suite” at the top of the stairs. To give credit where it is due, my husband recruited a few of his buddies to finish off that part of the dirty job.  Originally we were planning to keep that little room, mostly because it has gorgeous old hardwood floors and a great old door. We quickly realized how cool the room would look if we completely opened it up, and knew it had to go. Well, we kept the floors, and all the wood trim, but lost the walls and ceiling. I love how huge and bright the attic space looks when we opened up the other part of the attic! An old slanted chimney (don’t worry, that’s the design) that I plan to white wash divides the floor into 2 sections, one of which will be a home office and storage closet, the other side will be the awesome-cool-huge-bright craft space ::cue angelic music and heavenly light:: Also, it’s going to be roughly 20 x 24 so almost500 square feet, WOWZA. This is a VERY crude sketch, but might give a good overall idea of how it might be laid out:

I wish I could take credit for the plan, but my husband is awesome and brilliant and suggested a decent amount of it. Originally I figured on having lots of shelves and workspace down the sides of the attic, so really not too far from the original layout except a bit wider and eventually we would replace all the free-standing shelves with lots of custom built-ins. It occurred to me that a) I’d prefer to have my craft things closer at hand and I tend to work near the window in the center of the room. b) it might make sense to design the room to have multiple purposes and NOT restrict use of all the walls to storage. So, after some brainstorming and daydreaming on Pinterest and ThisOldHouse.com, I had it!

Imagine, if you will, floor to ceiling built-ins along the window wall. There will be a window bench in the center where someone could sit and read and take in some sunshine and fresh air. The bench would have drawers underneath custom sized for wrapping paper rolls, and all of my gift-wrap accoutrements. Around the nook and up to the peak there will be shelves, LOTS of shelves, ALL OF THE SHELVES. They would be large and open so that I could see all of my various craft supplies at a glance. Since there will be a super cool triangular shaped area over the nook that no one can reach, I’ll also have a library ladder that spans the shelves – THAT was David’s idea, I so love my husband. These 2 pictures are a decent approximation of the arrangement of shelves and how the bench seat will look (in place of the window in the first picture).

For now we are skipping the grandiose plans for a dormer and skylights, that will come in time. I think taking the walls out will help to scatter light and brighten it up without the extra windows. I’m also choosing light bamboo flooring and paint colors to open up the room.  And since we are trying to be as environmentally friendly as the design (and budget) allows, we figured re-using a lot of the old wood and choosing a sustainable alternative to traditional hardwood were good ways to do that.  We went with the lightest bamboo flooring we could find at Home Depot, and at $1.99 a square foot it wouldn’t break the bank either. It’s also something we can lay down ourselves, since it’s the self sticking “boards” with built-in subfloor.  It’s thin, almost like a linoleum flooring, which means it’s light enough that even us gals can schlep boxes of it up to the attic AND it can be trimmed with a simple utility knife too!  From what I could find it is also durable and easy to clean, BONUS!

For colors, I’ve been in love with this Martha Stewart color for over a year now, it’s called Haystack and I think is the perfect creamy yellow to inspire me to be creative  

I noticed just the other day that they even have a suggested accent color on the back of the swatch. It is a nice creamy not-quite-white color as trim and shelving colors as well. With the bamboo flooring, I think the room will be significantly brighter than it was before.

Haven’t fully decided on furniture, but I don’t intend to buy a bunch of new fancy, stuff.  After all we are cutting, painting, glittering, etc. on it.  Then, as we were moving things around in the attic to make room for new flooring, I had a great idea! Well, one my husband had mentioned and I hadn’t seriously considered yet.  The gorgeous old door from the nanny suite area to the old craft room would make a GREAT work-station.  And it would be a darn shame to toss it in the basement and forget about it.  Since we no longer need it, I figure my husband can make a clear, craft-friendly top for it and mount it on legs as my new craft table.    Then the old folding tables can be added to the pool of open craft table space for any friends who want to drop by and work up there with me Check out the door, it’s beautiful!

I also love how it will allow me to retain some of the attic’s original charm, without the horrible purple walls and cheap trim. Eventually I’m hoping my husband can also build me custom bases for my work table that have built in shelves for day-to-day craft supplies.  In the meantime, I think the Ikea saw-horse style legs will work great.

So that’s it for now.  There is certainly more to the plan than this, but I’ll share as we learn more. 

Attic Rehab Part 1: The Gut

It didn’t start as a total gut rehab, but when does it? At some point in late September before this all started, the phrase “about 2 weeks” was bandied about. 2 weeks of mess and chaos is too many for me, but I figured I’d survive. I’m sure my husband doesn’t remember saying 2 weeks, perhaps I really did imagine it was supposed to be that quick, but for now it’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Anyway, even if it was 3 weeks, or 2 months, that was September and it’s oh, about 4 months later, and counting. Well, let’s back up a bit before I move on.

At some point in early September we had an energy audit company come out and look at the house. We had gotten tired of $400+ gas bills when our house was never over 70 degrees even in the dead of winter. Turns out, we had no insulation, anywhere, none, ZERO. Something like 82% of the heat in our house was escaping through the roof and walls. E-I-G-H-T-Y-T-W-O. It’s supposed to be something like 30% or less. Much of it went right through the roof, and up there was my favorite room in the house, my craft attic. So at that point I looked at my gorgeous (cough, cough) lavender walls, adhesive glow in the dark stars on the purple ceiling, cheap trim that hid bad drywall seams and awful, painted linoleum flooring and decided it was time for a change. If we had to tear out the walls to properly add insulation anyway, we might as well gut it and upgrade my craft space.  Here it is in all its glory in case you forgot, not too shabby!

It was a fairly large craft room at 14 x 24, but hey, figured I could tweak the floor plan and break 500 sq. ft. in my new and improved craft room! I don’t need anything too extravagant, but fresh paint and some new lights would be really nice. He he, what a fool I was for almost settling for that.

You’ve probably seen this post, the one where I showed off the before and after pictures of the initial gut job. Figured paying a friend to do it would be cheaper and less worrisome than paying strangers and it was. It was quite a mess, but we figured once the insulation was done, we could clear out the debris, put up new drywall and I’d be up and scrap-booking again in no time. We could slowly finish the craft room around me, and deal with new flooring, painting, etc. at a later date as we found time and money to do so. I just wanted back in there by Christmas so I could attempt to make some presents.

First major hurdle: Turns out 100 year old prairie houses require far more complicated insulation than we could do ourselves. The husband did some research and found a local company to handle some bids. The company we chose to do the insulation had been recommended, were less expensive than a few others we considered, and we had a budget to consider so we took a chance. This was before Thanksgiving. 6 weeks later they were still tap-dancing around getting us scheduled and now we were looking at early January, I was concerned. It was only a 2 day job, so there was that, but the week of January 9^th was the soonest they could fit us in. ARRRGGGHH! I decided after Christmas to stop being upset about it since it wouldn't make it be finished any sooner.  I then postponed my craft-room-reconstruction-sabbatical for a bit so that it would coincide with it actually being ready for me to work on. I’ve tried to take the new approach of “it’s about the journey and not the destination” about a lot of things, and it has certainly been helping my outlook.

We bought the house knowing its age would complicate everything and OH BOY has it. Second hurdle: We needed a special, very expensive type of insulation, which needed deeper eaves so we had to bring in carpenters for that. Thankfully the management company we hired to watch over the insulation company was able to find used foam insulation boards that were still very much usable and much less expensive. Yay for something positive! It more than covered the additional cost of having the management company to begin with. Then the pour-in insulation density required was an issue. Third hurdle: Their trial-run blew out several sections of the plaster wall in one of the closets, and they had to stop and change to a lower density insulation.

No more blow-outs, but at this point I think we were at day 3 or 4 (of the 2 days project). Not to mention they didn’t bid wall repairs, so now we have to add some major plaster replacement to our repair list. GAH! At least it was fixed bid, so we got a seriously good price and every extra hour they had to work because of their miscalculations came out of THEIR pocket. The management company re-inspected things constantly to make sure it was done right, which made me feel better, but also meant some rework and extra time on the back-end. In total it was 8 working days spread over 4 weeks, and on Feb 1^st it was finally done. Yeah, almost 4 months later.  We are much warmer, and hopefully my gas bill will be nice and low next month, but I still as yet had no craft room…  Instead I had this:

Now, once I embraced the idea of just going with the flow, I started making big plans to assuage my anxiety, BIG plans! I certainly had enough time while the room was getting done <insert mad cackling here>. It might not be completely finished until Summer (when you see my plans you will understand why), but it should be at least usable again by the end of February. No pics of the grand plans to share yet, as most of it is in a scrapbook with ideas torn out of magazines, but we decided to go with a VERY open floor plan. I’ll actually post again soon with more details on how we hope the attic will look when we are finished…

I started a 2 week, unpaid sabbatical Monday, the idea being that a LOT of the bigger jobs can get started and possibly finished when I have long, uninterrupted days to work on them.  When I go back to work on the 19th, I can knock out some of the small finishing stuff in small bites while during the day someone else works on it for me. You’ll soon learn why I love my friend Dinah so much.  My husband has been amazing throughout the process, doing all of the electrical himself as well as helping me along the way with advice, ideas, and a steady supply of tools. I have also hired a very good friend (Dinah) to help me, since a) I can’t do a lot of it without a second pair of hands, and b) she has more experience with stuff like mudding walls, painting, light construction, etc. I figure between the two of us, we can probably knock out clearing the attic, putting down the snap-together bamboo flooring, and patching the 70 holes left in every room of the house from the insulation job before I go back to work. Holes might not be doing the situation justice, here you go, feast your eyes on this and imagine them in EVERY ROOM OF YOUR HOUSE and keep in mind loose cotton fiber insulation is constantly seeping out of them and landing on every surface:

Serenity now!! 

Then hopefully by the time the flooring gets laid, my husband and I can get drywall up soon after that. This has already been an epic post, so I’ll leave the details of what we plan to do next to another one… but here is a preview of the progress we’ve made in the past 2 days alone:

Just When I Thought It Was Safe to Craft Again… We Nuked the Craft Room

I was so proud of myself for having cleaned up and organized the craft attic into something where I could be productive and creative again, just in time for Halloween and Thanksgiving crafting.  Behold! Lovely space that’s all ready to work in:

Alas, it was not meant to be. We had energy audit folks come in last week and we are losing 90%, NINETY PERCENT of our heat through the un-insulated roof and walls. We get the biggest bang for our buck by a) blowing insulation into the walls, some of which can be done through the attic due to how the house was built. Seriously, in MANY places I could drop a penny in an open area in the wall in the attic and it would land in the basement walls, 3 stories down. b) there is no insulation in the attic, ZILCH.  Behind those gloriously purple walls is bare wood with roofing over it (and old, rusty nails jutting out perilously.  There are a few places where you can see daylight, which explains the bird poop. Lovely eh?

So, as timing would have it, a good friend of ours is available for a week starting NOW.  He happens to be the awesome craftsman and union construction/carpenter guy (not sure what it’s officially called) who helped us tear down and rebuild our back deck this summer. But it had to be THIS WEEK or who knows when and “Winter is Coming”. Yesterday he agreed to start working this Monday (tomorrow), so today we moved everything either out of the room, or into the center of the floor to be tarped over for the partial-gut and rehab.  :: sniffles:: 

Old walls are coming down, new walls are going up over some nice new insulation. We’re also going pretty much to the edges this time, so imagine that room is now a giant triangle instead of a pentagon.  So space like this, currently behind the wall where the Cricut/Sizzix table is, is getting reclaimed:

We’re going to have to figure out how to use the new low slanted edges of the room for storage long-term – any ideas is appreciated here – we already have some fantastic dreams of cool built-ins and hanging sconces or track lighting. For now I just want a safe, warm place to craft again next week.  We’ll work the rest in slowly.  So this is what I have now…

With most of my crafting stuff under the table, and soon a tarp.  I kept some of my crafting stuff kinda available in the little room just outside the craft space. I did say kinda:

Stay tuned! I’ll keep you posted with updates on the construction and rehab.  Hoping no more surprises come along to make my craft space unavailable for more than a week.  I have Christmas gifts to start!

My Craft Room... OK, So it’s More of a Crazy Craft Attic

Now I won’t pretend that I have ALL the answers when it comes to thriftiness, but I am pretty good at finding deals.  On the one hand, a part of me wants my craft room to be organized to a fault, always looking like the magazines with fancy, expensive Martha Stewart Craft furniture (it’s a thing, I have seen it). But that ain’t real life is it?  The minute I start a new project it looks like a tornado went through the place and all that matters is a) being able to find what I need and b) not worrying about spilling glue/paint/glitter/etc. all over the furniture I have up there.  I also would rather spend my money on craft supplies and not fancy furniture that is likely to get burned by my cheap hot gloue gun and bedazzled with cheap acrylic paint spills.

So, let’s get down to business.  When we bought this house, I saw the awful purple nightmare of an attic and thought “GIRL CAVE!!”  a.k.a. “Craft room!” a.k.a. “OMG Craft Attic”. It’s about 15 feet wide, and 30 feet long.  Here is a pic (cameo by Mr. Crafty Diva Wannabe):

 

Eventually it’s gonna get painted, but life gets in the way and even nasty purple walls and glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling can’t stop this woman from her crafts! Moving right along, it looks like this now:

Much better right? And you know what? Cost FAR less than you think to get that way (not counting the craft supplies themselves.)  Some of it is new, some of it was just creative re-use.

The huge table in the middle is a workshop table we salvaged from the basement ($0) on top of 2 Ikea adjustable saw horses ($40). The White table/chairs on the right is a Pottery Barn bistro set we brought from the previous place that we had got on Craigslist 4 years ago for $100. We were going to get rid of it, but it’s a cute place to craft so I decided to keep it (I’m calling that $0).  Every bit of cabinetry and shelving in the room was left in various rooms of the house when we bought it so we just brought it all upstairs($0). I nabbed a couple of nice wooden folding chairs at a thrift store ($12). I then picked up 4 more folding tables and a 2 more chairs at Home Depot ($90).  The blue rug was there, the flowered rug came from CraigsList 7 years ago and moved from our previous place too ($0).  So for under $150 in NEW furniture, I have room to hold 8-9 crafty women.  5 if people need to spread out a bit and do something big like scrapbooking.  

Of course, I don’t even want to think about how much I’ve spend on craft supplies, or all the stuff to organize those supplies, but I did some cool, cheap things there too.  But that’s another post. Hope you enjoyed this one! And if you live nearby and wanna craft sometime, I have plenty of space, LOL.

I Sure Love Pottery Barn Halloween Displays, but Not the Prices!

My first attempt at a Halloween table display was this:

PA-THET-IC! I mean really, a sunflower? And that’s the runner and straw placemat thing I used for my summer display. And a hand stuck in a vase?  Ooh, how creative, spooky, and original ::rolls eyes::  Yes, I absolutely roll my eyes at MYSELF.  At least I stuck a skull and a plastic rat in there.  I guess it was a “fall harvest medley” meets “Dawn of the Dead” thing, but still, I could do better.

So a couple of weeks ago, I was wandering Oak Brook Mall and being mid-September, Halloween displays were already  out. I was in love, especially with these displays at Pottery Barn:

GOR-geous! All of it! Then, I started lifting things off the table to see the prices and about had a coronary, and backed away slowly. Don’t get me wrong, my bed is from Pottery Barn as is my dining room table, but in both cases I waited for a good sale. I even used my rewards from the dining room table to buy the bed frame. I do believe in paying for quality, but I don’t need my Halloween display to be family heirlooms. Do you? Well, maybe TNM does.

With the P.B. Halloween display, well let’s just call out a few things:

• Small box of fake spider webs (yeah, I know): $9
• Small bag of Spanish Moss (3 or 4 were used): $9.50
• Iron owl lanterns: $59 for large, $29 for small
• Mercury glass votive holders: $3.50 <—actually reasonable!
• Glass apothecary jars: $39 – $69
• Mix leaf vase filler: $14.50
• News Text candles: $16.50 – $29.50
• Various pillar candle holders: $19 – $49 each

I couldn’t resist the owl, I wanted both but just couldn’t spend almost $100 on them.  I did use my $25 PB cardholder coupon to bring the large owl down to $37 out the door. Steep, but it was a seriously heavy piece of metal and will last a while. And once in a while I don’t mind splurging a bit. I also grabbed 2 mercury glass candle holders because really, I don’t think I can make them for much less than $3.50 each anyway. For the rest, I was off to Hobby Lobby, Dollar Tree, and the local thrift store.  Now, I wasn’t looking to completely recreate the PB scene above, but it inspired me to do some cool things. Here’s a quick peek, I love that owl!

I stopped at Michael’s and picked up some foam pumpkins, I have a problem with squirrels attacking mine. I’m done chasing them away from my beautiful hand-carved jack-o-lanterns that are barely recognizable as anything except pulp, seeds and a withered shell.  I then spray painted them to get the colors in line with my overall theme. I picked up some black, silver and deep purple floral pieces, twigs, and large feathers at Hobby Lobby for between $0.49 and $1.99 each. Also nabbed a HUGE bag of spider webbing for $0.99 and a grocery sack size bag of Spanish moss for $2.49, FULL PRICE. You hear that Pottery Barn?!? $2.49 for about 10x the amount you wanted $9.50 for. Geez.  Found a few cute pumpkins and gourds in various shaped and sizes for around $3 each.

My stop at Dollar Tree netted me a ton of creepy cloth, severed limbs, eye balls, and a few other novelties for about $7 total. I lastly stopped at our local thrift store and picked up some brass and pewter candle sticks, a couple of glass jars, and some really nifty old plastic prescription jars. I have ideas for those later!

As I started to set things out, I realized my summer table runner would NOT do, but I didn’t have anything Halloween-ish. Even the cheesy spider web ones are like $10 and they fall apart if you wash them. Then it dawned on me, I have a TON of creepy cloth, only mine is from the Dollar Tree.  That’s right, $1 for a spooky Halloween runner.  Looks pretty good on my expensive Pottery Barn table huh?  I added some tattered leaf vase filler, only mine wasn’t the Pottery Barn kind, it was from Pier 1 and I paid about $4 for a large box of it.  Looks the same, only $10 cheaper.

 

Next, I tossed a pillar I grabbed on clearance after Christmas last year into the owl. It was $3, smells like vanilla, and is the right size and color.  I filled a free vase that I sprayed glittery black with Hobby Lobby black roses, a black feather, and silver berry branches costing about $6 total.  Added some bulk bagged tea lights to the mercury glass holders, stuck a skull on top of a $4 pewter taper candlestick from Goodwill, garnished with a black and cream patterned gourd I grabbed at Hobby Lobby for $3.50, added a dash of farmer’s market mini pumpkin  ($0.75) and topped it off with my hammered pewter spray painted pumpkin from this previous post.  Oh, I also grabbed the plastic rat from the sad, original display. Since my table wasn’t as huge as the PB one, it’s definitely not as ostentatious. But it’s adorable!

Here is a brighter photo so you can really see everything I used:

A more realistic image of what it will look like at night and during the Halloween party. Spooooky:

I have a lot more in the hopper, but I am pacing myself.  Stay tuned, I just picked up some cheap but architectural looking wooden candlesticks and old pie tins (remember Pop n Fresh?) at the Brown Elephant for a song. Going to be painting and gluing them together to create some cool tiered stands for Halloween AND my craft room!  Thanks to brilliant folks on Pinterest for giving me the idea

Spray Paint is my Friend

When I was little, I remember my mom having a LOT of spray paint. Any time she wanted to refresh a room, make something old new and shiny, she’d whip out her spray paint and *poof!  We didn’t have a lot of money to be buying new furniture every few years, but it was amazing what she could do with a fresh coat of paint and some new rugs.  I remember doing that with an old bedside stand. I must have spray painted it 7 or 8 times.  I had forgotten about that. I was reminded recently while reading this great DIY mercury glass pumpkin tutorial by someone I met briefly at BlogHer 2011 this summer.  It made me remember how much I loved making something old, new again with a $4 can of paint. 

It occurred to me that I have LOTS of stuff in the garage and basement that is cute, but was from my “everything white and sunflowers days” and doesn’t fit the darker new house, or it’s prairie style.  Then I went “DUH!” and smacked myself in the forehead, I can fix that with SPRAY PAINT! It can be any color I want.

Maybe using spray paint on old stuff rather than paying out the nose for fancy new stuff is pedestrian, but it’s me.  Yes, I have a job, I work for Microsoft, and I get paid very well for what I do.  But it’s the principal of it.  Why throw things away, why WASTE all the money I make?  It’s also fun to turn something meh into something awesome! If it’s something you think is lame, or cheap, or too pedestrian then my blog isn’t for you so I’m warning you right now… 

Anyway, I’m not ready to share any of my big projects yet, nothing feels quite polished enough to post yet. But here is a quick DIY makeover you might find surprisingly fun.  Now I’m new to this who DIY blogging thing so bear with me… I didn’t always remember to take before pictures, boo. It’ll get better as I learn. So here is some “before” images of OK things that definitely needed a Halloween makeover.

Cute wire basket I got at a fabulous little 2nd hand store (if you live near me please visit them, the place is awesome!) for about $7. Cream colored, good shape, not really a good color for me but it had *potential*.

Cream colored pumpkin from Michael’s Arts & Crafts.  Normally these go for about $13, but with a 50% off sale, and a 20% off friends & family coupon, I scored it for about $5.50.  I grabbed a few in black, and some smaller ones ($4 after coupon) too while I had the great discount going on.  As is, they look fake and kinda cheesy.  If it’s gonna look fake let’s have it look COOL and fake!

Lastly I had a simple, clear vase that came with some lovely flowers from a good friend.  Probably wouldn’t use it again as-is, but hmm, maybe in a Halloween display in another color? No picture, but you’ll recognize it as familiar when you see it.

I removed tags, didn’t bother cleaning anything too well because “HELLO, HALLOWEEN”, and grabbed some spray paints that I nabbed on sale at Home Depot for about $4.25 each.  I picked up black and orange, but also found the hammered pewter and shiny metallic black pretty interesting.  They both looked even better than I had hoped. The hammered pewter has a liquid quality to it that’s very cool!

Aaaaaand :: drum roll:: Voila!  A few more items to incorporate into my Halloween displays in far more appealing colors. 

Stay tuned to see how I was inspired by a Pottery Barn store display to create a fabulous little dining room table scene for a fraction of the cost, using the items above.

It Began With a Whisper…

Yeah, so while I’d love to be the next Martha, it ain’t happening.  Now, you might be thinking, well NOONE could be Martha Stewart, she has a full staff and gobs of money!! But that’s not who I am talking about.  I’m talking about THIS “Martha”. Yeah, she’s pretty awesome. I wish I’d realized it 8 or so years ago when I first met her, cause there was some quality snark time I missed out on there. Anyway, moving on.

TNM has a thing about Halloween.  No, wait, I don’t think you understand… she has a THING about Halloween.  It’s humbling, impressive, amusing, a bit intimidating, and I am accepting that I won’t ever have enough free time or mental stamina (or skill with a compound miter saw) to do all that. And it’s OK.  But she does inspire me to be creative, do what I can, and enjoy the process.  She’s probably reading this right now going “Whaaaaat? I didn’t do that! Did I do that? WOW!”

I never really had big Halloween parties before I met her, through her husband.  He invited me to their house for Halloween one year, many moons ago. I remember being in AWE, and giggling like a little kid as we tip-toed through their front yard cemetery. After a few years of watching their display grow, and having a blast at their parties, I knew I wanted to start having annual Halloween parties of my own. Those parties started about the time they slowed down on their own party circuit, cause c’mon, I wasn’t going to miss their party for any lame-ass thing I had going on.  And so it begins…

I’ve been having parties for about 5 years now in the various places I have lived, thanks in part to a husband who humors my 13-year-old-on-pixie-stix enthusiasm for Halloween.  We had parties in both of his apartments, as well as a few in my little condo.  They were always fun but my options were limited in terms of ghastly décor given my limited space.  But this year…muwahahaha.  Now we have a big, 101 year old, prairie-style home in Oak Park. This year, I am hoping to outdo myself!  The house is just perfect for making creepy, and it has cobwebs and creaks all it’s own, 365 days a year.

I’ll be adding another post soon, and show off some of the great tricks I came up with using spray paint and Dollar Tree and thrift store finds to mimic those $1,500 Pottery Barn displays.  Cause really, if any of you pays Pottery Barn $9 for a box of cheap spider webs, or $15 for a small bag of Spanish moss, we can’t be friends anymore.

Here are some pictures from last year’s Halloween, our first in the house and not my best. The previous month I’d lost my father to cancer, so understandably my heart just wasn’t in it.  Hoping to really step it up a notch this year, but I’m no TNM.

This room looked awesome, but needed more creep. I have ideas…

 

The mantle was mostly just cute, but I have some cool ideas here too. Definitely doing the glow stick flames in the fireplace again!

Front of house was more cute… But we redid the landscaping and I plan to leverage the empty rocking chair on the front porch. “Oh Mother….”

My cob web application skills suck, and we did this the afternoon of the party in a rush, so just kinda flung stuff everywhere.  Plan to do WAY better this year.

What Halloween party would be complete without the Mad Hatter spinning tunes! And yes, of COURSE we had lots of fog machines going, and a laser show, duh!