Homegrown Herbs for the Winter

We recently harvested lots of fresh herbs from our garden and washed, cut and dried them for use this winter.  

This is rosemary washed and waiting to be cut:

I picked up these 5 bladed herb scissors at a local art fair a couple weekends ago.  They work really, really nicely!

I also bought some of these bottles from Specialty Bottle Company (Along with several bug spray bottles for the homemade bug spray that we made and used this summer....perhaps I'll write about it next summer:)!)  I chose this bottle size because it most closely matched the herb bottles that we purchased earlier this year.  I also used some labels from Staples that I had picked up with a coupon earlier this summer.

I think these could make a wonderful Christmas present or teacher's gift on the cheap!!

Our Kitchen Stools Have Been Stained!

Back in June, I wrote this post about my indecision regarding our counter stool situation.  It didn't take long for me to decide to return the Pier 1 chairs that I wrote about in that post, because I was really worried about how they would hold up over time.  I liked the World Market stools, but the color was too light/white/yellow for my liking:

See how much they stand out from the caramel colored granite?

Returning the stools would have been tricky and expensive because we didn't have any local World Market locations at the time (We do now!!  Yippee!!), so I decided to attempt to stain them.  I should be up front and state that I would not normally spend $500 on brand new stools and then alter them.  I would have kept searching/saving for a better alternative.  In this case, I went for it because of the return expense and because the only thing I didn't like about the stools was the color.  I could potentially fix the color of the stools.  I also could potentially ruin them, and I knew that going in, but there was a review on the World Market website indicating a woman had stained her stools with great success.  This review gave me a good deal of confidence and hope:).  

It still took me two months to decide on a color using a spare banana leaf basket as a stain tester.  I also needed to wait until we had weather that was consistently below 90 degrees.  And then I needed a smidge more time to build a little more confidence to take the staining plunge.  Here are some progress images:

Before

 Test Basket

 Stain Winner:

Minwax Special Walnut, although it was pretty concentrated at the bottom of the container:).  I used a cheapo brush to apply it.  It took 2 good coats per stool.

The change was pretty dramatic: 

After staining the stools, I let them sit for a few days while I pondered how to seal them best.  I ended up using this:

Minwax Polyacrylic Spray in a satin finish.  

I applied 3 thin and even coats to the banana leaf surfaces of the stools.

And here is how our kitchen is looking now:

The caramel colored stools blend so much better with our granite.  I am giddy over them!!  I still plan to tackle the whole play-doh on woven stools issue by sewing some slipcovers with laminated fabric.  That may happen in a colder month when we're stuck inside on a more regular basis, and thus playing with play doh on a more regular basis.  (I'm saving my sewing projects for the winter and tackling the paint/stain projects outside now while we still can:)!!)  

What do you think about the stools?  Would you stain brand new stools:)?

 

Linking up to Thrifty Decor Chick

Wine Rack Dilemma Solved!

Way back in November, I mentioned in this post that I needed to figure out what to do with our built in wine rack area that had been sitting empty and unused since we moved into this house a year and a half earlier.

Since early December, we've been filling our wine rack with our extra paper towel rolls.  We had been storing our extra paper towels in our mudroom, so this in the kitchen location makes much more sense for us.

We love Viva paper towels with the select-a-size option.  We usually use the smallest piece, so it makes the roll last longer.  They are a bit more expensive than some other brands, but I'm almost always able to buy them on sale at Target, using coupons on top of the sale price.  They are so soft!!

My little helper often helps me fill up our 'paper towel rack' when we run low!

The one thing I wasn't loving about this set up was that it looked like we were storing toilet paper in our kitchen:).  So I picked up an small, inexpensive tension rod from Menards and used some fabric I had on hand to make....

 ...a custom curtain!

 

So much better!  It was super easy to take a few measurements and sew the cover(s).  Now, we have a practical use for our wine rack, that looks nice too!  Problem solved!

Thanksgiving Preparations: Cleaning Up the Bar Area

When I posted about our kitchen a few months ago, I indicated there were a couple areas I needed to work on cleaning up a bit.  One of those areas were the glass door cupboards above our beverage fridge/bar area.  I worked on tweaking that area a bit using mostly things I had on hand already.

Here is the before picture:

And here is how the same space is looking now:

Lights Off.

Lights On.

The before and after differences may be subtle, but we really had a random collection of cut crystal and ceramic bowls in the spaces before.  It makes more sense now and has a cohesive color scheme going as well.

Starting from the left:

There are alternating blue and green dishes with brown napkins on top.  The green dishes were picked up last year before Thanksgiving on super clearance at Target.  They are our turkey day plates!  

I found the blue plates this spring for $2.48/4 pack at Target thinking they might be nice in our basement once we get some shelving in the bar area down there.  For now, I like the way they look in our upstairs cupboards.

And the next cabinet over contains:

A wire turkey that I picked up at Walmart for $3.25 on clearance.  I think we'll throw a cloth napkin in it and serve our rolls for Thanksgiving dinner in this guy!

3 nearly identical gravy boats in various colors.  Want to know why I have three gravy boats?  Because for the first two years that we hosted Thanksgiving, we didn't have a gravy boat, and it was sort of an annoying thing to be missing.  Shortly after Thanksgiving 2 years ago I picked up the white one at Kohl's on super sale and then forgot about it (it matches our every day white dishes).  Then right before Thanksgiving last year, I found the green one at Walmart.  We used the green one last year at Thanksgiving.  Then I found the blue one below at Target early last year:

It was on clearance for $1.98, and for some reason I bought it.  I don't know why.  I just found it in a cupboard two days ago when I was trying to find things around the house to put in my glass door cupboards. Maybe it had been completely ingrained in my head that we didn't have a gravy boat for so long that I felt the need to buy three of them?  I have no idea. ' Hi.  I'm Beth and I own 3 gravy boats.'  Conveniently the colors go with my green and blue dining room/kitchen/house, so I'm okay with it.  I have no idea which one we'll use this year.  It may be a game turkey time decision.

Heirloom crystal bowl with Michael's newspaper mache fruit.  

 Moving On...

.

The rest of the cupboard area is full of glassware and my wonderful West Elm mugs that I posted about here.    Also, conveniently, our entire family has names that are 4 letters in length, so for special occasions (ie: Birthdays), I envision us spelling out a name in our cupboard like 'BETH' or 'BILL' or LUCKY'S/CHARM'S REAL NAME:)!

I still have to work on the wine holder rack shown in the picture above.  I really don't see it being used to store wine for a LONG time for a couple reasons.  The first being the shatter factor of wine bottles around young children, and the second being that we aren't big wine drinkers.  I forgot to remove the washable table cloths that we used as food catchers under Charm's booster seat for the longest time.  (They have been cleaned before storing them in the wine holder!)  Does anyone have any ideas about what we could put in that space?  The only things I could think of are 2L soda bottles, but that could be a disaster as well and rolled up blankets, but that would be seriously weird in a kitchen.  

I did take a little time and clean up the cook book area of our island, although I would like to throw in a woven basket or two on the shelf: 

This shelf is opposite to my rainbow book shelf on the other side of the island:

So there you have it...a mostly organized bar area in need of one great wine rack idea and a couple woven baskets!

If anyone is interested, I'll be back this afternoon with a parenting tip that has been working really well in our house lately.  Otherwise, have a wonderful weekend!

Thanksgiving Preparations: Decor

We are hosting a big Thanksgiving meal this year, and we could not be more excited!  We have hosted Thanksgiving for the last 3 years, and we so enjoy celebrating family and togetherness in our home.  We are lucky enough to have both sides of our family present for the big meal, so Lucky and Charm get to have all of their grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins over at the same time  (Except for Texan Uncle D.B. Sad Face Here.)  It is AWESOME!  

After two years of preparing a traditional Thanksgiving meal with turkey and all the fixings in our home, we decided to try out a catered 'home cooked' meal last year, and we're not going back to all the planning, stress and mess of preparing the meal ourselves.  At least we're not going back anytime soon.  So in terms of meal preparation, there isn't much.  We always make extra potatoes from Opa's crop, and we also have Oma's famous Pumpkin Torte every year as well.  Bill's family brings the appetizers.  I spoon the hot out of the oven food into ceramic dishes.  It is so easy.  (And not that expensive all things considered.)

Instead of major cooking, I get to focus my attention on other things...like stocking our pantry and fridge for the weekend company and...decorating, of course.

Here are a few things I've done for our Thanksgiving celebration this year:

Front Door Wreath

We still have lots of pumpkins and gourds by our front door from Halloween, and we have the tiny, but cute dried corn stalks that we grew in our garden this year, as well, but I wanted a wreath.  I didn't want to spend much on a wreath though, so I worked with a wreath I owned already:

I picked up this wreath last year on super clearance from Michael's.  It was 90% off and then I had a 20% off entire purchase coupon, so I think I paid $3 for it.  I liked the wreath, but it looked horrible on my front door...something about the yellow with our house color or something.  Instead of picking up a new grapevine wreath, I just stripped this one of the yellow flowers and added some 80% off fall clearance flowers from Michael's:

It's hard to see, but there are 4 stems here and the total was about $3.

I've never made an arrangement like this before, so be nice to me:).  I cut the pieces I wanted to work with using a wire nipper (or clipper?  I don't know the terminology, but it reminds me of the time I was working in the pharmacy and an older gentleman asked me where the 'super duper nail nippers' were.  I'll never forget that.  I had no idea what he was talking about.)

Back to the wreath.  I laid out the floral pieces in a pattern I liked and then got to work with a glue gun.  Here's a progress shot:

Done:

 Hung:

It's very neutral, but I like it.  And for $3, it doesn't have to be perfect, right?

Dining Room Decor

Moving on to the dining room table.  We're having 12 adults and 5 kiddos, so we'll be sitting at our dining room table, the breakfast bar and we'll have a kiddo table for the toddlers, which means we'll be having the food presented buffet style and which also means that I'll be able to have a table centerpiece this year.  I like table centerpieces, especially practical ones that allow you to actually see people you're sitting across the table from:), so with that in mind, here is what I came up with:

The twiggy pumpkins were from the dollar section at Target, but were actually $2.50 each full price.  I purchased them at 50% off for $1.25 each.  I purchased the green leaf place ments at Walmart last year, although I did pick up a few more this year for $1 each on clearance this past weekend.  The corks we had on hand already, as well as the green and blue candles.  The only things I needed were two candle holders.  

Inspired by the displays at West Elm, I went to the back yard and took a saw to a log to come up with this:

It's not totally level, so I used some felt furniture protectors under the 'candle holder' to even things out a bit.

Here is how my candle holders started out:

My only word of caution when doing this is to check out your log thoroughly.  The logs I used had been sitting by our fire pit for awhile, and the first one had tons of gross, icky white stuff hanging out under the bark.  Yuckers.  The second one was pretty wood, waiting to be turned into candle holders.

 Here is the another view with bad lighting...daylight savings changes are throwing me for a loop:

Next up, were changes to my bushel baskets from this image:

I decided I wanted to add Granny Smith apples to the baskets to add a punch of green to my green and blue Thanksgiving Room, and this is what I realized:

$10 worth of Granny Smith apples barely fills one basket, even with substantial newspaper filling.  I thought for sure I had purchased enough to fill both baskets, but nope.  We love apples around here and all, but I'm not spending $20 on perishable fruit for a holiday display.  Not this year anyway:).  We'll eat those apples up, but I had to come up with a Plan B.  Ironically, I ended up spending more than the additional $10 I would have had I gone the apple route, but I'll be able to use my alternative for Halloween and Thanksgiving for years to come.  

I found several of these pumpkins on 75% off clearance at Target two weeks ago:

The big one was $3.74 and the smaller ones were $2.48 each.  I spent $11.25 on 4 pumpkins and $4 on 4 Walmart green leaf place ments (which I needed after discovering that the pumpkins were the exact color of the buffet:)).  Total: $15.25

And in case you're curious, here's what we had for dinner this week:).  I just love my menu chalkboard!

Mantle

So, I've got a wreath on the front door and the dining room decorated...next up, our mantle.  Well, sort of our mantle.  It's a work in progress still, but here's a wreath I picked up at...you guessed it, Target.  75% off.  $9.98.  It's made of anise and smells like licorice.  I just love the texture, the color and the smell.  (In case you're wondering why it's not on our front door, the reasons are three-fold.  1. Hanging it with the attached ribbon would have been trickier than you'd think.  2.  It's a somewhat fragile wreath.  3.  I love it too much to leave it outside.)

We just duct taped it to the paint chip art piece I made.  (Oh, and staple gun happy Bill added one staple in the ribbon too.)  I wish the chip art was in a bigger frame, but we're working with what we have!  I think the candles are going to go, but this is what our mantle looks like now.  Actually, that's not true.  I changed it already, but let's focus on the wreath.  Can you believe it was less than $10 buckaroos?

Kitchen Counter Decor

Our kitchen counter will largely be full of food and drinks on Thanksgiving, but I did sneak in one corner arrangement using my favorite apothecary-esque glass jars that I've had for a couple years:

The front jar has a container of ginger snaps in it from IKEA.  Yummers.

This jar has slips of green paper in it.  Every night after dinner we're having the kids (and us) write one thing that we are thankful for.  After Thanksgiving, we'll open the slips of paper as a family and read them to each other.  I can't wait to read them!

This last jar is completely random.  It started out with only stickballs in it, but they looked too brown with the brown ginger snaps.  Since my house is all about blue and green these days and the paper slips are green, I decided I wanted to add some blue to the jar, so I tossed in some eggs we made in April.  I told the kids they are turkey eggs, so that's why they are out for Thanksgiving.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

We've been busy around here, and tomorrow, I'll have a short post with an update to our bar area.  One week until Turkey Day!  Woo-Hoo!

Turkey Day Decor Costs:

$3 Wreath

$3.75 Table Centerpiece

$15.25 Buffet Pumpkins and Place Mats

$10 Mantle Wreath

Total: $32

Linking up to Finding Fabulous.