Make a Mix Monday: Brown Gravy Mix

Today I'm focusing on the Brown Gravy Mix I used to make my grandmother's Cabbage Rolls. I found the recipe for the mix over at My American Confessions.

Pros: 

• It smelled great and tasted wonderful!
• It only uses 6 ingredients
• Is super simple
• Since I didn't have a store bought gravy mix on hand
•  I feel like I saved myself money
• Saved a trip to the store (which now that I live out-of-town, is a savings of around 20 minutes)
• And saved my family from a few unknown preservatives.   

Win-win-win!

Cons: 

• It took about 5 minutes to make; so slower than store-bought.  Except, of course, that it is faster to make than to drive to the store and back. 

 

Although, for the unknown ingredients, I should look into a substitute for those Wyler's Beef granules - but one step at a time.  I feel like I'm still just a new-by at trying to keep recipes simple and from scratch. 

Anyway, check out the recipe over here. 

Furniture Friday: Staining the Easy Way

Some projects were finished so many years ago that I don't have before pictures.  But all of these pieces of furniture were the same color as this shelf:

My husband and I don't particularly like this color of wood, so we picked up some dark walnut stain and used some sanding deglosser 

 To make these in dark walnut:

After using the sanding deglosser, with a sock, I applied the dark walnut stain.  Set it out in the garage for three or four days and they were finished!

So. Easy!

No sanding.

Just wiping. Then staining.

Whatever Wednesday: Upholstery Webbing St. Patrick's Day Banner

I loved the Valentine Banner made from upholstery webbing so much that I decided to use the leftover webbing from my green chair to make a St. Patrick's Day Banner.

It took a while to figure out what to do to make it unique.  I had found the cute burlap hearts and the red ones from Micheal's. But sadly, their selection of St. Paddy's day stuff was not very impressive.  I considered just stenciling each letter of the word "Adhmorort" on a cut piece of branch, but all the branches I could find were either frozen or too wet.   By the way, Adhmorort is the word in Gaelic to convey "good luck to you".  I like it's sound better than "Erin Go Braugh" but I don't have a beautiful Irish accent, which I'm sure would make that sound fantastic!  Well, I ended up not using words at all for this banner (though I do hope to make something soon with the word "Adhmorort" on it).

Instead I was browsing for something else at JoAnn's and found their St. Patrick's day stuff 1/2 off and found a cute felt, place mat surrounded by clovers.

 When I got home, I cut out as many clovers as I could without damaging their shape. 

Then, stitched three of the clovers together for the very center of the banner.  

Cut the burlap webbing and strung them with some green jute twine. 

 And hung it up to enjoy.

 I kinda like it's simplicity.

 

I was going to save the cut portion (above) of the  place mat for another project, but my daughter wanted to embroider this word poem that she made up.

Make a Mix Monday: 3 Ingredient Vanilla Pudding Mix

Did you know that you can make your own pudding mix?

In "Make a Mix" by Karine Eliason, Nevada Harward, and Madeline Westover, they give three different kinds of easy-to-make pudding mixes. (Seriously, this is one to buy or just pick up from your library.  I don't put their recipes here for copyright reasons.)

Today I made vanilla pudding and it only has three ingredients!  Then made a strawberry cream pie with a homemade frozen pie shell and the vanilla pudding.  It may not look amazing, but it was delicious!

 Just three ingredients, 3!

 Mix it up.  Easy and quick to do.

 This picture is reminding me of the snow currently on the ground! Lovely!

 In the jar for future pudding.

My daughter helping out with the strawberry cream pie.

Furniture Friday: Two New Uses for An Antique Bedframe

 
We have a family friend who is fantastic at finding deals on garbage day!  He called one day to let me know that he'd found two bed frames and asked if I'd like them.  We had been sleeping with just the standard metal frame and no headboard, so I was excited to see these treasures he had found! 

And they were amazing!  Or at least two of them were amazing!  Two were in pretty bad shape.  Unfortunately it was the headboard from one set and the footboard from the other set.  The headboard and footboard did have similar lines so I figured with some good TLC, I could make them look pretty much the same.

The thing about finding items on the road, though, is that sometimes it just doesn't work out like you think it should.  Because they weren't from the same set or maybe because the vintage rails that I had to purchase separately, it just wasn't stationary enough.  Everytime we would get into bed, the headboard would rock back and forth and hit the wall.  You know those old cartoons where the person sits in the center of a brass bed and the headboard and footboard cave in toward each other?  It was a very, very little bit like that.  But it was enough to drive my husband crazy!

For a while we slept a little unsettled wondering if the bed would tip in on us or collapse to the ground.  And I started the search for a new bed.  Luckily I found one at a church yard sale (those are often the best!).  It was only $5!

Oooh, but I loved the lines and the look of that bed!!  I sold the headboard because I felt it was too large for my house and family needs,

 

And this is what the woman who bought it from me did.  She was getting ready to stencil it.  It is sitting in the rafters of her family's barn where they hold biannual flea markets.

For the footboard, because of wonderful Pinterest and for chalkboard paint our family now has a cute and fun message board.

 Yes, I'm ready for Easter!!  My favorite holiday!

  

Whatever Wednesday: Seaglass and Pale Pink Girl's Bedroom

Before we start with the bedroom pictures, here's a visual of basic paint decorating using the 60/30/10 rule and we'll also mention decorating with the rule of 3s.   

Found this image at Color Wheel Harmony

The 60/30/10 rule.  We actually didn't follow the 60/30/10 rule exactly, it turned out to be more 63/25/12. This is fine to do because the "rule" is really a guideline; but I think it's best to stick fairly close to it.  Using this rule, usually the wall color would be 60% of color in the room.  We have a little more than the 60% from the blue in the bedspread.  Because we are a family who LOVES decorating with shades of white, and then using the 30% and 10% to add pops of color, for my daughter's room we chose "Blue Whisper" by Valspar.  Very subtly blue - but blue enough to show. 

The Rule of Threes. This is a rule for the 30% and 10% of color.  The room will look more cohesive when you add at least three 'pops' of the given color instead of just one.  So, in this room, the pink is added three to four times in various places.  And the green is also added at least three times.  It adds dimension and livens up the space. 

 

While we didn't stick exactly to the "Rule of Threes", because of the pink tulle on the bed canopy, our 23% pink is represented in the bed, the dresser, some artwork.

In this picture you'll see that her side-table was also pink, but we changed that to the seaglass green color to add more green to the bedroom (seen below). 

The 12% green: side table, table lamp, matte and job chart cluster. 

Furniture Friday: Upholstered Love Seat

When my parents got married, someone gave them this love seat/cedar chest as a wedding gift.  It had some pretty awesome 70s fabric on it then.

I remember it most, though, covered with a royal blue velvety fabric.  It was so soft!

(Sadly, we don't have any pictures of the blue velvety fabric covered love seat...but it was wonderful!)

You know how I LOVE cedar chests, so I was delighted when a few years after we were married, my husband and I inherited the blue love seat.  But...we like more beach-y colors, so I covered it with white canvas.  (It was actually called sail-cloth!)

Now, we are getting ready to move again and I can't decide what to do with it.  I like the white, but when I was recovering it, I mistakenly put the fabric grain on the top going left to right, and on the seat deck going top to bottom.  You can't really see it, but I'm thinking a new color fabric might be fun!  I also can't decide what to do with the wood.

Keep it dark wood?  Or white wash it?  Or what about liming it?

 What do you think?