Discoveries

It's amazing what having no ingredients will do for your creativity.  Last night after we finally went grocery shopping, we both just stood there, admiring our beautifully full fridge.  But before that point, we were running out of things.  And one of those things was milk.

Milk is one of those ingredients that lactose-avoiding people like myself seldom appreciate until it's gone.  I don't drink milk, and I don't put it on cereal, so I don't really think about its existence until I cook with it.  I do, however, eat mashed potatoes, so when my roommate showed up with a box of instant mashed potatoes for our shepherd's pie, I was torn between wild excitement, confusion, and disappointment.  The wild excitement was because I absolutely love mashed potatoes.  The confusion was due to the fact that my previous mashed potato experiences usually involved both potatoes and mashing.  My roommate's promise that this strange box of powdery flakes would transform into a mass of creamy goodness left me skeptical.  To top things off, the catalyst these flakes demanded was milk, which we were completely out of (hence the disappointment).

That's when I got to thinking.  Milk makes me sick, but so do many other things.  Perhaps we could substitute one sickening product for another (witness my logic at work).  We didn't have milk, but we did have a giant carton of heavy whipping cream I'd bought to make mousse with.  My roommate and I chuckled evilly as we poured a thick, calorie-laden cup of cream into the unsuspecting potato powder.  At this point, something miraculous occurred.  The cream not only did its job, it went above and beyond.  It transformed those potato flakes into the most amazing mashed potatoes I'd had in a long time.  I think this supports the theory that the more calories you pour into something, the better it's going to taste.

Just thought I'd torture you with a picture of the finished shepherd's pie.

My roommate has introduced me to other cool ideas besides instant potatoes.  One of these is drying flowers to save.  I'd done the whole freeze-your-prom-corsage thing back in high school, and it worked out alright, but my rose ended up really dried out and blackened.  She showed me how to clamp the end of the flower stem with a binder clip and hang it upside down for several days.  As she explained, this lets all the moisture go down to the petals, keeping them beautiful right up until the end.  I dried this rose a few weeks ago, and look how colorful it stayed!

My dried rose.

Shoebox Canvas Twist

In our quest to decorate all the walls, one of the many Pinterest ideas we decided to try was the idea of covering shoebox lids with fabric to make mock canvases.  Since my fabric scrap collection was running a little thin at that point, my only real choice was some more of the old quilting fabric I'd used on my desk drawer lining project.  A lot of the versions of this shoebox project we saw on Pinterest used glue, but we thought, hey, we're using shoeboxes anyway, let's be as lazy about this project as we can.  Therefore, we basically wrapped our shoebox lids like Christmas presents, duct taped them in the back (yes, duct tape), and hung them on nails on the wall.

Here's where the twist comes in.  My quilting fabric didn't really go with the rest of our bright decor.  Especially in our dim hallway, it was just dull.  That's when we had the idea of adding felt shapes.  Right now we have hearts, but we can always change them out!  The felt sticks to the fabric, but if you want, you can pull it right off.  We're thinking about cutting out snowflakes for winter, flowers for spring, clovers for St. Patrick's Day, etc.

The whole movable part is actually something several of our friends have discovered.  They've started a trend of moving one heart each time they come over.  Sometimes we find a heart on its side, sometimes we find one upside down, and depending on how many friends we've had over, sometimes they're all mixed up.  If we had been boring and glued our hearts down, think of all the fun we would have missed....

Homemade Gift Journal

One of the most frustrating things about living on a budget is feeling like you can't buy your friends the gifts they deserve.  This is where homemade gifts come in.  They show your friend/family member that you cared enough to spend a lot of time and creativity, even if you couldn't spend a lot of money.

Unfortunately, whenever I look up gift ideas online, so many of them require special skills (such as the ability to knit more than scarves and socks, or the ability to crochet without accidentally knitting) that it can be really discouraging.  That's why I'm here to offer an option that doesn't require any talent or artistic ability whatsoever.  All you have to do is a bunch of cutting and gluing...and finding cool pictures online.

Gift Journal - Front View

Back View

First, you start with a hardcover journal.  I usually find the big ones for around $10 at Walmart.

The next step is to find a bunch of pictures the intended recipient would like.  Since the journal above was a gift for my best friend, I printed off pictures of our favorite movies, books, characters, singer (Josh Groban), quotes, inside jokes, and pictures of fun times we had together.  On other friends' journals, I've used pictures of their hobbies, school spirit, quotes about funny memories, references to tv shows...the sky's the limit.

After you print off all the text and images, you can cut them out, either cutting exactly around the shape, tearing around the shape, or using decorative scissors.  I have some detail scissors that help, but they aren't a necessity.

For the next step, you can either cover the journal with a bigger sheet (I used sheet music in the one above) or, if you like the pattern that's already there, leave the background as is.  I like to use a glue stick at this point to stick everything down to the journal.  It makes the next step a whole lot easier.

Finally, open the decorated journal and lay it cover down on a piece of clear contact paper.  Cut the contact paper a few inches larger than the book on each side, then peel off the backing.  At this point, you'll want to be very careful as you lay the book back down on the sticky surface.  My contact paper always wants to curl up and stick to itself or wrinkle as you press it out.  Try to get it as smooth as you can.  Remember that you can pop any bubbles that occur with a pin.  When you get to the extra inches, curl them back over the edges of the cover to hold everything together.  You'll need to trim around the spine, since you can't really curl that part back over.

And finally, voila, finished gift.  Easy on your budget and fun to make.

Fabric Lined Drawers

Some of you may remember my post a couple months back about the painted turquoise desk.  Once I had finished the exterior, I began to focus on what I'd put in the drawers.  I looked at some of the different contact papers they carry at Walmart, but I was very unimpressed.  I even went so far as to look up specialty contact papers online and was shocked at how expensive everything was.  It seemed that my drawers would just have to stay unlined.

Then, the fabric happened.  I'd been playing around with some old quilting fabric scraps to cover cardboard shoe-boxes and happened to leave the fabric sitting out on my desk.  It matched PERFECTLY!  I knew I had to use it.

First, I lay the fabric in the bottom of each drawer and used a box cutter along the corners to cut it down to size.  (Some of the tutorials I looked up online suggested an Exacto blade, but my Exacto blade was pretty wimpy and I found the box cutter to be a lot sturdier.)  Once I had the fabric the right shape, I used a foam brush to coat the bottoms of the drawers with Mod Podge and pressed the fabric in place.  To make sure everything stayed, I went back with a couple more layers of Mod Podge after the first coat had dried.  Finally, the next day, I coated everything with a couple of layers of clear varnish.

The result is a really pretty vintage look that goes great with my desk.  One thing that I didn't expect is how the glue dulled and yellowed the colors of the fabric.  Fortunately, my fabric started out pretty bright, so it still looks good.  It might be a good thing to keep in mind though, when choosing your drawer lining fabric.  Another thing that surprised me was how rough it all ended up.  Even with the coats of varnish, it's still very rough to the touch.  This hasn't caused me any problems though, and it may even keep my things from sliding around my drawers so much.

Cheap Colorful Lamps

One of the first things we noticed as we moved into our apartment was the notable lack of light sources.  Neither the bedrooms nor living room have any overhead lights.  We knew right away that we were going to have to overcome this deficit with a large quantity of lamps.  Some of our lamps are unique, such as my roommate's twinkle lights (basically Christmas lights) from the wedding section at Walmart, or my string of Japanese paper lanterns I got on clearance ($6!) at World Market.  And some of our lamps were personalized by yours truly.

Since I was running out of money at that point in my preparations, I started where all good moneyless college students should start: the thrift store.  We're lucky enough to have several of these in my town, but one in particular has an amazingly cheap selection, so I went there.  The lamp aisle boasted a whole assortment of boring, wood or metal lamp bases.  I chose a couple in the $2 range, snagged a plain shade for 99 cents, and made out of there like a bandit.  I found a flowery shade to fit the other one at Walmart for $3 on clearance.  (Moral: clearance is a beautiful thing.)

Once I got these hideous objects home, I went to work.  Having picked up a can of bright yellow spray paint at Walmart ($3.50), I taped off the power cords and gave the lamp bases several coats.  It was a little frustrating because the paint kept wanting to slide down off the wood.  I wiped them down when I got them, but if you want your lamps really smooth, I recommend cleaning them even better to make sure all oils are off.

For my plain lamp shade, I took a Sharpie and wrote the cursive lyrics to a favorite song (Hidden Away by Josh Groban) around it in a spiral.  Something I didn't realize before I started was just how much room you have on a lamp shade; I ended up writing out the entire song three times just to fill it up.

Thus, we come to the finished products:

Finished products

The entire cost for both together was very low: $3.50 spray paint + $4 lamp bases + $4 lamp shades =  around $11.50 for two personalized lamps or $5.75 a piece.  Not bad.

I'm Still Alive!

Sometimes life just comes in and steamrolls you.  I fought my way through a particularly tough couple of exam weeks, spent a weekend at home kidnapping my brother for his birthday, and returned, only to get pummeled by the longest lasting stomach virus in the history of the world.  Oh, and I spent the whole weekend making a clay model of the larynx.

But, I have returned.  Ready to trade back the saltine crackers and EmergenC for my dear, long-abandoned, little blog.

I have a list of projects I'd like to put up in the coming days, so for today I'll just leave it brief.  Since I last updated, my roommate has discovered the secret to amazing apple cider caramels, I've diced raw chicken *and* fried it on the same day, I discovered that chicken soup left on the burner will eventually turn into a blackened mess, and nothing, not even bacon fires, can harm a $17 Orgreenix pan.  (Unfortunately, they didn't pay me to say that.)

I also learned that when kidnapping someone, driving up really fast beside them is good.  Making sure you have all the doors unlocked before everyone tries to jump out?  Even better.

TARDIS Door

There comes a point where fangirling gets out of hand.  And somewhere rather past that point exists that breed of fans who plan their decor around their favorite fictional hero.

Those fangirls.

My roommate and I were overjoyed when we discovered that we were both Doctor Who fans.  She enthusiastically allowed me to hang my David Tennant poster in the living room, as well as my 11th-Doctor-themed prints.  It was however, too much for my fangirl heart to believe when we simultaneously agreed upon a TARDIS-themed front door.  I'd seen them all over Pinterest, pinned them in my board for future house/apartment dreams, but never really hoped to have one so soon.

Since we aren't allowed to paint anything in our apartment, our first idea was to cover the door with butcher paper and color it blue.  However, something better presented itself when I realized my mom had given me some old white contact paper to line our drawers.  Original purpose forgotten, we covered the door with two long strips.  Since it was already sticky, we were glad not to have to mess with glue.

For the next step, we bought some blue acrylic paint from Walmart.  We ended up using about two containers, applying multiple coats with foam brushes.  The contact paper was slippery, so it took awhile to get the paint to actually look solid.  (When a little bit of paint spilled on our carpet, it came up nicely with nail polish remover - just something to keep in mind.)

Once the paint was dry, my roommate took a navy marker and outlined the rectangular indentions in the door to make it look less flat.  We found the "Police Telephone Free for Use of Public" sign here on DeviantArt, printed it out, and stuck it on with hot glue.  For the windows, we used 12"/12" squares of white cardstock and drew panes on them with a navy marker and ruler.  For the top black Police Box sign, we spray painted a strip of cardboard black, then printed off these letters to the scale we needed them, cutting out around each word and spacing them out.

Feel free to save and print.

Hot glue served us pretty well for most of this, but as it's fallen down, we've also had to resort to some super glue, especially with the heavier cardboard.  The top part was also a piece of cardboard that my roommate free-handed and we painted blue.

Now we're off for an adventure with The Doctor....