June 17th, 2010 by Erin

My mom busted out her sewing machine and made this clever new bib for my niece, Allison.  She bought a tea towel with a fun stripe on it, cut a hole towards one end of it, and edged the hole with ribbing to slip over the baby’s head.

Voila, it’s a bib that provides way more coverage than a typical bib for messy feedings.

Allison looks super-cute in it too.  Of course, she’s always cute.

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November 18th, 2009 by Erin

My latest project is painting the dining room.  I’m probably about 2/3 done at this point.  Here is what it looked like before.

And I’ve also added a little fall flair.

Assuming I don’t get side tracked, the afters should be coming in the next couple of days.  And I have learned my lesson about putting the old curtains back up, so don’t expect to see those again.

© 2009 The Beehive All Rights Reserved

November 13th, 2009 by Erin

DISCLAIMER: I am not pregnant.

I browse craigslist from time to time to see if there may be some diamond in the rough piece of furniture we might want or need for our house.  Last week, I found a great buffet/sideboard in a dark wood that matches our dining room table and chairs for a song.  The woman selling it was also trying to unload a changing table.  Solid wood, only $40!  Needed a bit of wood glue to repair the drawer front, but I decided to take it.

Did I mention I am not pregnant?

We do have a five-month-old niece, though.  And I hope she comes to visit more often.  And now that we have a changing table just for her, there really is no excuse for her not to be visiting. 

In addition to needing the small drawer repair, I also wanted to put a new cover on the pad, because who knows what the prior owner did on that thing.  Most likely things involving human waste.  We don’t want those things touching Allison.  So I went to the fabric store to pick out some super-cute kiddie fabric.  Here’s how it turned out. 

I loved this bright cotton fabric with little bugs all over it.  I choose a coordinating green flannel for the other side so the baby’s butt could rest against something a little cozier in cold weather.  I sewed some hot pink bias tape into the seam as a sort of faux piping, and closed the cover with hot pink buttons. 

I think it turned out so cute, I now have the urge to design an entire kids room around it. 

And by the way, I am not pregnant.

© 2009 The Beehive All Rights Reserved

November 3rd, 2009 by Erin

After three days of painting, I finally finished the master bedroom.  I carried the colors from the master bathroom into the bedroom, with Behr’s Silver Tradition on the walls and Soft Denim on the ceiling.  When it came to the bathroom, I differentiated the the small water closet from the bathroom as a whole by adding some horizontal stripes (check them out in this post).  I wanted to similarly differentiate the bedroom.  So here’s a peek from the bathroom.

I added an accent wall.  It’s Behr’s Provence.  Digression: I bought a quart of the stuff in an eggshell finish, which the guy at HD assured me would be enough for the one wall.  I wasn’t.  So I had to go back for a second can.  The two cans were totally different textures.  The first was watery.  It seemed strange to me because other Behr paint I have used has been pretty thick.  I assumed it was because the color was so much darker than what I have generally used, and the dark pigment affects the consistency of the paint.  The second can, however, was the thickness I was used to.  What’s the deal?  Luckily, I couldn’t tell the difference when they were applied.  So here is the rest of the room.

I’m not quite sold on the accent wall at this point.  Don’t get me wrong, I like the whole bedroom/bathroom combination much more than before.  And it’s not just getting rid of the lime green — the white walls in the bedroom had a lot of poorly-camouflaged Spackle-filled holes, and it was pretty clear the room hadn’t been painted since the house was built (a fact further evidenced by the way the walls sucked up the new paint).  But I love love love the bathroom and I really don’t feel that strongly about the bedroom.  Maybe it’s because the dark color against the light color makes it much easier to see that my edges are not perfectly straight.  Or maybe we just need to update the curtains (the new paint only serves to highlight that the ones that came with the house are Awful with a capital A) and furniture and get some art on the walls.  In any event, we’ll be living with it for a while and we’ll see how it grows on us. 

© 2009 The Beehive All Rights Reserved

October 30th, 2009 by Erin

When we moved in, our master bathroom was a grotesque shade of fluorescent green. One of our friends said we just needed a black light in the room.

The awesome green paint ranked high on our list of things to change as soon as possible, starting with the WC. I painted it in stripes of Behr’s Silver Tradition and Soft Denim.

I carried those colors into the main bathroom, but not the striping action. The ceiling became Soft Denim and the green walls were covered with Silver Tradition.

The whiter-than-white master bedroom is still in progress, but it’s getting a makeover too. To be continued . . .

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October 23rd, 2009 by Erin

I went to the craft store last week to get balsa wood to make some faux Roman shades for our guest room.  More on that later.  I expected to do a little browsing because this particular store was new to me, but I was unprepared for the 60% off Halloween and general fall decorations that assaulted me as I walked in the door, so of course I had to walk away with a few items, including a haunted gingerbread house kit. 

I’ve been known to create a gingerbread house or two in the past:

I thought the kit would be a quick little diversion without the headache of making my own gingerbread and icing, deciding what kind of candy I wanted to decorate with, etc.  This particular kit came with pre-cut cookie pieces, packets of orange and black icing mix, two piping bags with decorator tips, various candies for decorating, and directions for decorating in three alternative styles, which I promptly threw out the window when I got to the part about letting the base of the house set for an hour before proceeding. 

I was amazed that these two pale powders mixed up to bright orange and deep black with just a couple tablespoons of water.  I was a bit disappointed in the consistency, though.  The orange was extremely runny after  following the mixing instructions and I had no powdered sugar to add to stiffen it up.  Another reason I threw the directions out: I couldn’t do the suggested piping with such loose icing.  The instructions also suggested cutting the jellybeans in half with a sharp knife.  Have you ever tried cutting stale jellybeans in half?  I just about cut my fingers off three or four times, and I don’t recommend it. 

Despite the few minor hiccups, this is how it turned out.  Not my best work, but not bad for an hour or two with a $10 kit.

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October 4th, 2009 by Erin

Last weekend, I started a batch of limoncello.  I spent some time looking at recipes on the internet, and decided a combination of techniques that I thought would work for me.  I took the peel — no pith — from about ten lemons and dumped it in a pitcher with a bottle of Everclear (151 proof) and let it sit for a week. 

Digression:  Have you ever read the label on a bottle of Everclear?  I think there are less warnings on common household cleaning chemicals.  WARNING!! Overconsumption may endanger your health.  CAUTION!! Extremely Flammable Handle with Care.  There is a whole paragraph of warnings:

Caution: Do not apply to open flame.  Keep away from fire, heat, and open flame.  Contents may ignite or explode.  Do not consume in excessive quantities.  Not intended for consumption unless mixed with non-alcoholic beverage.   

(Emphasis added.)  So I guess it makes sense that this stuff is illegal in some states, as it is explosive and not suitable for human consumption.  But back to the real story.

Today, satisfied that the alcohol had stripped the lemon peels of all their lemony goodness, I finished the limoncello.  First, I strained out the lemon peels, leaving me with some strong lemon-infused grain alcohol.  Then I made a pseudo- simple syrup.  I decided to make limoncello crema, so I made the syrup with milk and half and half instead of water.  This involved a little bit of experimentation on my part.  I found a number of variations of the recipe, some calling from milk and some calling for half and half.  So I split the alcohol mixture in half and made half with whole milk and half with half and half (say that three times fast).  For anyone that wants to attempt, that was one pint of either whole milk or half and half simmered with 1.5 cups sugar until the sugar is completely dissolved for HALF of the alcohol.  Let the sugar mixture cool and add to the alcohol.  Bottle and refrigerate/freeze.  I haven’t tasted either version chilled yet, so the jury’s still out as to whether milk or half and half is the better choice.

When I was finished, I was left with a sieve full of brittle lemon peels.  One of the internet recipes I read suggested putting them through the garbage disposal to “freshen” it up, which seemed to make sense to me since I’ve heard before you can put some citrus wedges down it to make it smell fresher.  So — and here’s the REAL point of the post — I put the lemon peels down the garbage disposal and fired it up.  Seemed to work just fine, until the next time I used the disposal. 

I washed the dishes later in the day, and when I drained the sink, I switched on the disposal to clear out any stray bits of food.  Suddenly, the water stopped draining and murky black stuff started to come up through the drain.  Insert random expletive here.  I was pretty sure this was not something I could fix myself.  I’m handy, but just not that handy.  And now is really not a good time to be staying home from work to wait for a plumber.  Steve stepped in about here, but he knows about as much about fixing a disposal as I do.  We cut the power to the disposal and I reached my hand in to see if there was something jammed in it.  He pressed the reset button.  Still spewing black stuff.  We were resigned to calling a plumber.

In a last ditch effort to to DIO (do it ourselves), I called my dad for advice.  I explained to him that the motor appeared to be working when we turned the disposal on, but nothing was going down the drain.  This led him to believe it was a clog, not a problem with the disposal itself, and he suggested a plunger.  Five minutes later, water was flowing freely down the drain and there was no black stuff to be seen.  Woohoo!

Dad can pretty much always save the day, can’t he?

© 2009 The Beehive All Rights Reserved

August 11th, 2009 by Erin

This is our downstairs bathroom. When we moved in, it was a strange brownish orange (which might be called “baby crap” depending on what your baby’s been eating) and had a dolphin-covered disposable shower curtain.

I had never seen a disposable shower curtain before. Turns out they are actually quite useful.

We had leftover paint from the family room and kitchen, and this bathroom is right off of those two rooms, so it made sense to continue on with that color.

But wait! There’s more! In an effort to make it look like this was not the same old thing over and over again, I painted some stripes on the walls. This involved some (sort of) careful measuring, blue painters tape, and a handy laser level. One thing I learned is that a textured wall makes it difficult to get a nice crisp line. In order to prevent the paint from seeping under the tape into the lower levels of the texture, you need to make sure you firmly press the tape down into the divots so there is no seepage. Here is the finished product.

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August 5th, 2009 by Erin

The color, that is. Actually, now that I think about it, we’ve never had the fish in the kitchen either, and given Steve’s distaste for it, we probably never will. So interpret how you please.

Back to the point of this post, when we moved in, the walls in the family room and kitchen looked like they were dripping with Pepto Bismol. We took care of the family room first, and the kitchen was next on our to-do list. Here’s what it looked like before:

It doesn’t look like it should be too difficult a paint job, because there is not a whole lot of area to cover. As usual, it didn’t quite turn out that way. The tight spaces and numerous corners made it very time consuming. But it turned out fabulous.

Doesn’t it look like a different room? I think the green paint looks so much nicer with the blonde wood cabinets. The ceiling still needs a coat of paint, and I look forward to getting rid of the rug under the kitchen table, but already it is so much more pleasant to be in the kitchen and family room now.

© 2009 The Beehive All Rights Reserved

July 28th, 2009 by Erin

When we moved in, there were no blinds installed in the dining room or living room.  There were decorative draperies, but nothing that you could really shut to keep the sun out or prevent the neighbors from looking in and seeing you running around naked.  The seller did, however, leave several sets of blinds behind in a closet, which she said were for the living room, dining room, and garage.  She urged us not to install them, though, so that all that beautiful sunlight could shine in.  That sun isn’t so beautiful when it’s 103 degrees outside and the sun is beating in.

I think in response to several extremely hot days, Steve decided he was going to hang the blinds.  Obstacle #1: There are two large windows in the dining room, two large windows and two small windows in the living room, and two large windows in the garage.  There are only four sets of blinds.  Easily overcome.  We  don’t really need the blinds in the garage right now, so we’ll just use them on the large windows in the dining room and living room (as they are clearly too large for the small windows).

Obstacle #2:  The blinds were not all the same size, as were the windows in the living room and dining room where the blinds were to be installed.  Although all the blinds were the same width, two of them were about a foot too short for the windows.  Steve scavenged the house to see if maybe some other rooms with a same width windows had blinds that were way too long.  He did find one.  That’s right, just one.  So after he switched the too long blinds for the shorter ones in the closet, we were left with three sets of right sized blinds and one too short, with no window anywhere in the house that would accommodate it.

So we installed blinds in three of the four windows and put the last set back in the closet, for the moment.  The installation was incredibly easy.  Steve measured and marked for bracket placement.  Each bracket had four screws, for which Steve pre-drilled the holes.  He used a dremel to fit better into those tight spaces than a big power drill.  Once the brackets are installed, all you have to do is slide in the blinds and clip the bracket shut. 

We’ve been very happy with the blinds so far.  They help a great deal to control the temperature inside the house on hot days.  We’ll be shopping for that last large set and too small sets of blinds soon.

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