DIY and the future of Grass Harp

Grass Harp was on a long hiatus and before it went into semi-retirement, the blog was dedicated to food, either making of food or memories attached to food. While this blog will mainly be dedicated to food, I will also be adding some household projects and stories. Owning a house has been fun and a challenge. When I lived in an apartment, food, especially cake decorating, was basically the only creative outlet I had; now with a garage and a power sander, my creative nature has expanded. My office is the outcome of the sander and creativity.

In our apartment in Morganton, my office was literally a desk in a corner against a curved wall with some pictures hanging above it. I loved every tiny inch of that corner and wrote some of my best blog posts there.

Mona relaxing in my corner

 Now with the house, I had a small room to turn into an office; however, I didn't want to spend a lot of money on making it look great. I began to pour over decorating blogs and pictures of offices; after looking at the inspiration I decided on a purple and silver color scheme with splashes of blue. I also started scouring Craigslist for furniture. My first break through came from an old abandon elementary school (ironically enough the school's name was Bynum Elementary!) that had been purchased by two brothers, and they were selling all the stuff that was left over in the school. I purchased two wonderful bookcases that I will eventually stain a darker color, an old globe just like the one my father has in his office (it even has the Soviet Union on it!), and a chalk board. The chalkboard was your average wood with green board.

I am posting the side view so you can see all the little rods I had to sand and paint.

I put the sander to work and decided to spray paint the wood a dark purple, the rusted hinges silver, and the board black. The sander did the work in no time, expect for those stupid skinny rods. I had to hand sand those. To finish the look off, I placed two magnets I purchased in Vietnam over some of the screws. (And yes, I am aware that my cursive M looks like an N.)

I love the finished product. I will admit, however, that the chalkboard paint does not like to erase the best. I think I need an official chalkboard eraser.

My next major project was a new desk chair. My old desk chair was my grandfather's chair and it never fit under the desk. With such a small room, I could not have a chair that was floating in the middle of the room. I fell in love with a chair at Pier One with the lovely price tag of 120 dollars. Don't you just love it:?

Hello, my name is Dream Chair. Don't you want me in your home? 

You know the Pier One commercials were the merchandise talks to the customers and they bring the stuff home? Yeah, those commercials are not fictional. I promise this chair asked me in a very seductive voice to take it home. If a chair could have the mysterious-Fabio appeal then it would be this chair.

 

I almost fell prey to Fabio chair, but thank goodness logic took over and my mind reminded me that leather and cats are a no go. Instead, I went back to Craigslist and found a dumpy wooden chair with a huge bubble/ crack in the seat. (Sadly I don't have a before picture. It is safe to say it was ugly and covered in dog hair.) My sander and I went to battle. A couple of blue spray paint coats later and I had Fabio Jr. I still have to make a purple seat cushion for Jr. but I am in love with him. He is the same color as the original chair and as odd as this sounds, I love the way the chair creaks when I move around in it. It is a reassuring sound, reminding me to work or write.

Fabio Jr.

My next big find was an Ikea chair on Craigslist with the matching footstool. I am thinking about making a slipcover (aka, asking my aunt very sweetly to make) in purple.  I also got two old timey gold picture frames at a yard sale for 3 dollars that I spray painted silver and turned into mini cork boards.

Old

New

 The circle frame needs to be finished. My favorite part of the whole office, however, is the wall of inspiration. I have a collection of black frames of all shapes and sizes. I have room to add more as I find more inspirational pictures and things. But for now the office looks like:

This is the view when you walk through the door. To the right is the wall of inspiration and to the left are the bookshelves. The Ikea chair is on the same wall as the door.

The bookshelves and globe came from Bynum Elementary School.

The Ikea chair. (My awesome aunt is making a slip cover for it!) My Beauty and the Beast poster had been in a closet for five years or so.

Sorry! A little blurry. It has my Vietnamese currency, a picture of Dr. Bennett, my grandfather's wire ring he made, and some other fun things.

My First Cake in Over Six Months

So, as you can tell from my last post, we moved. We have unpacked, and we are homeowners. Before moving, we went on an Alaskan cruise, and I was out of town for a month long workshop and then went to Vietnam. (I need to blog about Alaska and Vietnam. They were wonderful trips.) All of that caused me to go about six months without making a cake! Me...the R2D2 decorator....hadn't decorated a cake in six months! With the house, I hadn't had time. Boxes had to be unpacked, new jobs positions, and visitors as well as leaving town caused bonding time for me and Evengeline the Tangerine the kitchen aid to be limited.

Well, lucky for me, I have very talented family members, and my aunt is a whiz at sewing. Her housewarming/ Christmas/ birthday presents to us was to come for a few days and make curtains. My mother was to be her sewing servant for those few days. I came home over the next few days to a flurry of string and fabric scraps as gorgeous curtains emerged from sewing machines. Before they came and before the kitchen table became sewing central, I made a cake for my aunt, because her visit coincided with her birthday.

I had elaborate plans of making a cake with white chocolate sea shells and light blue icing, but time got the best of me. Instead I used the left over fondant I had colored for a Christmas cake. (A cake that did not have a picture taken of it, so it does not get a blog post....it is sufficient enough to say it was a cute and tasty Christmas cake.) I used circle cookie cutters to make two different sized circles. Then I used a toothpick to punch holes in the circles. The small circles got two holes and the big circles got four. On the bigger circles I pressed a shot glass down on them to give them a little lip that made them look more "button-ish." See...

I cheated and used a small tube of gel icing to "stitch" the words happy birthday onto the cake. The last step was to make a needle out of gray fondant; the gray had originally been used for ornament tops. It was fun to see colors that I associated with Christmas (red= ornament, green= tree, yellow= start) transform into a bright, completely non-Christmas birthday cake. I will brag on myself and say I really like how I used some of the smaller buttons as parts of the lettering for Happy Birthday.

 

I think by stitching the buttons onto the top of the cake really sold the circles as buttons and not circles with random holes. 

 

  

My aunt loved it and thought it tasted really good as well. (I used just a basic yellow cake recipe and added some almond extract.) I won't lie; the cake barely lasted through the three day visit!  And the curtains came out wonderfully; I like to think that the sugar rush from the cake helped increase productivity.

Did I tell you we moved?

I just looked at the blog: Oops. I haven't posted since September. Let me take a few moments to get some overviews:

September: I lived in a hotel with my husband. We looked at a lot of houses and my wonderful mother packed up our apartment.

October: We moved into our house; after our closing, I will never move again. Promise. We ended up buying a foreclosure in a very nice neighborhood; we literally ended up skipping the starter home and went straight to big house. Since it was a foreclosure, it was owned by Fannie May, and Fannie May was a pain. I took the day off so Trae and I could sign the paper work and then I would go to the house to start scrubbing; turns out the Fannie's lawyer forgot (aka was too lazy too) process some paperwork. Our realtor wasn't sure when we would get the keys. Mold was growing on the kitchen cabinets at this point and the moving van (Trae calls it the moving semi-truck) was due to arrive in 24 hours. My mother was already on her way with the three cats. Mold, cats and van, but no keys. We ended up signing the paperwork around 5pm hoping it would help speed the process along. The cats and mother rolled into town about an hour later and checked into a pet friendly hotel.

I went to work the next morning with the realization that one of two things was going to happen: either I was moving into a house or my stuff was going into a storage unit. I would know the answer by 11am. I taught and the during class, the phone rang at 10:32. The realtor's voice  boomed through the phone:

I HAVE KEYS! I am speeding RIGHT NOW to the house!

The van was already there, as well as my mother and very cranky cats. At 11:00, my mother entered our house and started overseeing the moving process. Three days later the kitchen cabinets were mold free and the house was clean. We could finally unpack. And unpacked we are! Everyone has told us that we have made record time in unpacking. (My theory is that since we didn't pack our apartment, we had no clue what was in any of the boxes and to find what we needed we just had to unpack them all!)

During all of this crazy trying to moving, closing from Hell, I found out that my mentor from college had surgery for cancer. The cancer, however, had spread and she did not have much longer to live. (Literally, I found this out two days after moving.)

November: I was lucky/ blessed  to be able to say good bye to Dr. Bennett. I visited her in the hospital, and we had a frank talk and shed a few tears. She died a few day later. With Dr. Bennett's illness and Thanksgiving, Trae and I were not home much to enjoy our new house.

December: This month was biter sweet. Dr. Bennett's memorial took place in Clemson, and it was lovely to see so many friends, but bitter-sweet. Dr. Elisa Sparks was so kind and gave me a picture from Dr. Bennett's office. The picture is one of a young, beautiful, confident  woman and she kept this picture of herself in her home office. It is now in my office.

January:  Um, no idea where that month went. A lot of people visited, including Trae's parents. They really like the house and fell in love with the Keurig coffee maker. (Trae's dad just bought himself one today.) I know I fit in a lot of DIY projects. My office was the last room to get completed in the house. In the apartment my office was literally as corner; now I have a room! I craigslisted and diy-ed myself into a lovely space.

 February: Hello! You are up to date! And now a few house pictures. Next blog will be DIY project filled.

Our Christmas card picture

Love those cabinets; I scrubbed them for three days.

Clem wants everyone to know she is the queen of the house. Her favorite thing to do now is meow while sitting on the stairs. When someone comes to look and see what is wrong, Clem gleefully looks at the person like "Yes! You are my minion!"

Hello! Where have you been?

February is a long time to not post anything. A quick update is:

•  March and April were dull months
• Trae and I went with my parents and Aunt Mary Ann to Alaska in May
• I went to the Kellogg Institute for Developmental Education over the month of July
• I went to Vietnam with a friend for a week in August
• Before I went to Vietnam, Trae and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary
• Trae and my jet-lagged self moved to another city and both have new jobs
• We are living in a hotel
• We went to the beach for a weekend with my mom's side of the family 
• We just started a contract on a house!!! 

We just accepted the bank's last offer on a foreclosure, and we are very excited. If everything goes right with the inspections, the Murray's will be full-fledged adults: jobs and a house! I can't believe we might actually have a house. I will miss our apartment, especially since I really haven't seen it in two months, but I am ready to stop living in this limbo and have a settled place. So far I like our new city; one of my cousins, his wife, and super cute kid live here and being around family is nice. However, being this far away from my parents is hard. (We are about six-ish hours away from them!) Also, missing Clemson footballs is tough!! My daddy has been picking on me about how he gets to go to the first game. Would you like to see our house?



Like it?? We do. Plenty of room for guests and a screened in porch for our kitties. (I really miss our kitties, and they are going to LOVE the porch.) I also can't wait to have a full sized kitchen again. Right now we live in:



Don't let the picture deceive you; it is small. The living room space is exaggerated: promise. (Especially the kitchen counter space. The coffee pot takes up the whole space!) Anyways, despite the space issues, Trae and I are very happy to be together, because we thought at first I would have to stay to finish my contract at our old community college. I am glad the school was willing to let us go together. Now we are carving out a home in a hotel and I have to say with Trae there, it is home. Now we will have a real home of our own! To celebrate in our new home, we tackled cooking in our "kitchen." I got a wonderful chicken parmesan from Fresh Market as well as orzo salad with cherry tomatoes and a Boston Cream Pie cupcake. We paired the chicken and orzo with green beans and sat Asian style around the coffee table while watching Honey Boo Boo...romantic, I know. It was nice to set in our temp home and share a meal we cooked together. As we cooked the phone kept ringing with his family members excitedly asking questions about our house. It made the hotel room buzzing with excitement. I even burnt the edges of our brie crostini! Oops! But I got so excited answering questions that I forgot to watch the pan. Luckily they still tasted super yummy.

Sitting on our dingy brown carpet eating at our coffee table with Honey Boo-Boo telling us about her pig Glitzy gave us a sense of peace and home. Sure we didn't have our nice table or plates and we weren't able to cook one of our elaborate meals, but right now at this very moment, we have full bellies from a good meal and most importantly we have each other. And we will now have a house to create more memories in. But tonight taught me that we don't need a big house to make memories or to be home...you just someone who you love and who loves you back. That love will automatically make any moment a moment to savor and turn into a memory....even if it is sitting on dingy carpet in a hotel room.

Pixar Passion

Trae and I are children at heart. We love Disney, especially Pixar. (Proof of our love: Our first dance as husband and wife was to Married Life from Pixar's UP.) Well, as mentioned in my previous post, we have not been on a lot of dates lately and have not had a lot of "us" time. We have spent the last couple of months meeting up with others or driving to South Carolina or Tennessee. So for Valentine's Day, I figured we should incorporate our love of Pixar with our desperate need to relax. The idea was inspired by a winery review on the Disney Food Blog, because Trae and I also enjoy a good bottle of wine about as much as a great Pixar movie.

from Pixar Corner

The review introduced me to the fact that John Lasseter, the guru of Pixar, has a winery. Even better, the winery had Valentine's Day specials. I called to order the wine and talked to the nicest lady on the phone. She seemed genuinely interested in why I was ordering the wine, especially when I told her my husband does digital animation and admired Mr. Lasseter. The order was for the Rosa bottle and two wine glasses that arrived in a very snazzy black box and even slightly chilled. I'm a sucker for someone who is nice on the phone, especially in the day of automated voices; she was so nice that I would tell anyone to call up and order from this winery. (Side note: The wine was good, very subtle but tasty. We normally prefer more pronounced flavors, but this wine was prefect for the occasion. The glasses are super nice too!) 

After getting the package, my brain went crazy with thinking of the perfect Valentine's Day dinner to go with this gift. Steak? Lamb? Fancy pasta? I then realized I was calling on the spirit of Julia Child to guide me when instead I needed John Lasseter to lead the way. So I came up with a menu inspired by all the Pixar movies:

 

MENU

Pizza Planet Pizza (Toy Story, but really all the movies)

Ha! Ha! Humorous Hummus (Monster's Ink)

Mine! Goldfish (Finding Nemo)

No Capes Cheesesticks (Incredibles)

Remy’s Parisian Popcorn

Sep-tua-centennial Cupcake in a Cup (Wall-E)

Kevin Catchers (Chocolate, UP)

Slim Sticks (Pretzel Rods, Bug's Life)

DRINKS

Flo’s Fuel ( Cars, Coffee to stay awake during the movie-thon)

I then went in search of Pixar related items to help set the scene. Lucky for me we already own some Pixar stuff, like a stuffed Remy, Jessie talking doll, a decent sized Wall-E, and a small Flick from Bug's Life.(Told ya we are kids are heart; we own and still buy toys!) Yet, I wanted to add to that collection to help make the setting even better while not spending a ton of money. With creative thinking, Internet searches, and clearance racks, I managed to set up a pretty cute Pixar slumber party for pretty cheaply.

I started off by thinking about Pixar icons, such as the boot that held the plant in Wall-E or the BnL logo..

I painted cups with the BnL logo for our cupcake in a cup and I had my own version of the boot.

The boot is Trae's. I'm lucky he didn't notice it was missing!

I love Ratatouille, especially the scene where Remy is caught fixing the soup. 

from Born for Geekdom

By using a small cooper pot and a stuffed Remy from our Disney trip, I was able to recreate the scene:

The Buzz Lightyear in the background is actually a favor box!

I also looked on the Disney Family website and found a cute pattern for Nemo invitations, which I made out of felt and attached to ocean blue ribbon to hang from the table.Since I imagine I am a crafty person, I have craft supplies at the apartment and already had the right felt colors and ribbon.

The wine bucket that held the Lasseter wine was a cheap sand bucket painted to look like Mike Wazowski

 from Monsters Inc.

from Pixar Corner

The finished bucket:

The frame was an awesome Ebay score

Overall, by adding fun touches, like balloons for UP and Cars party plates with various Pixar themed items found at Party City, I think the set up was pretty whimsical.

A dollar plastic bowl decorated with Sharpie markers

The party was a slumber party, so I fixed blankets on the floor to give it a full slumber party feel instead of laying out the futon. We even wore Pixar themed pjs!

Trae's shirt was a Target clearance find. I made mine out an old tank top
and Cars fabric with the no-stitch ironing strips.

The blanket fit the theme and I've had it since I was a freshman in college.

Both Wall-E items we already had.

Sam Libby had to join the fun!

We ate "Pizza Planet" pizza and enjoy the snacks while watching Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Monsters Inc. We finished the night with homemade cupcakes being turned into milkshakes in painted BnL cups. 

The cups were painted by cutting out a BnL logo and laying it on the cup.

Trae was super surprised by it all. I had him shut his office door while I set up. After getting everything laid out and pretty, I cracked the door open to hand him his new shirt with an invitation (a colored page from a Pixar coloring book) attached. He changed in his office then stepped out to his surprise. Trae's face was the classic astonished face, which told me my efforts had not been in vain. Trae's face let me know that this date night was the perfect "us" time and just what we needed: a reason to curl up with no worries or places to be.

The night was fun and made us feel like kids again. Trae had a blast watching Pixar movies he hadn't seen in awhile. I never knew how much he liked Finding Nemo; he can quote that movie as well as I can quote Beauty and the Beast! Having to stop and veg out in front of the TV while pigging out really let us relax and recharge our solar power. (Sorry, bad Wall-E reference!)

Preview of What's To Come!

I am giddy with excitement about planning Valentine's Day for my husband. Now I normally despise the over commercialized holiday. The cards, the hearts, the chemical tasting chocolate crammed into red shimmery boxes. I can't stand any of it. I don't want a man to buy a five dollar Hallmark card to tell me he loves me or roses that have been raised over double their normal price.

From: Operation t-shirt

Yet, this year,  I am over the moon excited with planning. Trae and I haven't had time for the two of us in awhile, so we have decided to take time off from the world and celebrate the holiday of love. We use to have a monthly date night. McGee's Irish Pub in Anderson, SC had theme nights for 30 bucks a person. The dinners included three to four courses, drinks and entertainment. The food was always wonderful. Most of the time an improv group put on some very funny murder mysteries, but we have also seen a Celtic band and had Titanic themed music with trivia. A lot of the dinners encouraged diners to dress the part, which appealed to me very much!! After each night was over, we would put down our deposit for the next month's dinner. Then we moved, and our mandatory dates stopped.

Our last Irish McGee's dinner...a Roaring 20s Murder!
Side note: We went on this date the night before we moved!

The dates acted as monthly services to the marriage, sort of like how a car has tune ups. We would go out and let go for one night. Now, we don't have marriage problems, but without maintenance things don't last. Sadly, since we have moved, we have really gotten out of the habit of going on dates. We have had pressures of job interviews, GRE test taking, family illness, unpacking, etc.

Also, we got lazy. McGee's was the perfect answer. Pay, eat, enjoy, leave. Each date was planned for us, and we didn't have to go in search of fun. Now we have moved, and nowhere around here does themed dinners like McGee's. We enjoy looking and finding new places, but motivating ourselves on the weekend can be hard. We became passholders at the Biltmore Estate to encourage us to get out more, and we do have a lot of great fun things to do around the area. We just haven't. I think this date I am planning with restart our desire to do our once a month dates.

I truly think what I have planned for him is just what we need! Note, I am not excited about what Trae is doing for me, but instead, what I can do for him. I know this might seem odd to point out, but having time to plan a date and decorate for it is a present for myself. I don't like how during this holiday the stereotype is that all women want shiny things in jewelry boxes and men just have to listen to the ch-ching of the register. I receive a lot of happiness planning and doing things for others, especially when it is a surprise!! 

But Carrie, you are blogging about it?!?!?! How will it be a surprise? Hakuna Matata. He knows I am planning a surprise at home date. If I didn't tell him, the night might be taken away with "life-stuff" getting in the way. Therefore, he has been told "Saturday night is our night. No questions allowed."

A lot of my inspiration has come from the creative ladies at Dating Divas. This website has a lot of fun and cheesy ideas for dates, and I took the foundation of some of their ideas and have come up with a great stay at home date for the two of us. One of my favorite idea of theirs is the activity jar for two. I've been collecting flyers for places near us, so I think I will use those to create my activity jar. The bulk of my inspiration has come from their movie-themed dates. (I am longing to order wishing lanterns like the ones from Tangled. Thanks to Dating Divas, I now know they exist and aren't expensive!!) My exact date assure cannot be found on this website, but inspiration sure can be on Dating Divas for anyone who is looking for fun and unique at a non-expensive price!

So, to give you hints on a post I cannot wait to write, I will give you a few things that we make an appearance on Saturday for this date:
-a sand bucket
-two large plastic cups
-straws
-a unique picture frame
-homemade pizza
-cheesy theme
-food to go along with cheesy theme

If Trae reads this, then I can say no more. I can just leave Trae and you with the anticipation of what is to come!

Could this photo be a hint?? Hmmm...who knows!