New Old Project

Mr. B and I bought ourselves a New (Old) car!

We decided we needed a new project, since our house is pretty much where we want it for now. Of course we will probably be working on changing a few things around our home, but this little beauty is our number one priority for now!



First things first, we needed to clear out some space in our 2 car garage that we have been using as a one car for too long.


Well in the heat we have been having Mr. B and I decided to get up early Saturday Morning and start while it was a cool 75...
A few hours of lifting and organizing really paid off.


Yay!! They fit :) We knew they would, and now our little Cheri has a safe parking spot.




I had planned on doing a photo shoot of her, and us all dressed up in 1950's attire, but we hit a few road bumps Friday afternoon. First off its bloody hot, like 104 and I just didn't feel like dressing up in much of anything. Then...we were driving it and the back wheel almost fell off. Yeah, that happened, so we took her home and inspected the under carriage a little closer, she has a bit of rust people!! I think we may tear her apart sooner than later.




I hope to be able to photograph and blog about our project as she progresses. Mr. B has big plans for her, and I just can't wait!

Blow off & blow glass

First off, I am sorry about the blog "blow off", I know its been way too long since I have updated my blog and that really bums me out. I have been very preoccupied and also lacking in interesting blog materials. So I hope you can forgive me? Hello, anyone still out there?

Now to the fun stuff! Both Mr. B and I turned 30 the last couple months. I can hardly believe it!!
So we decided to check off some the things on our list that we have always wanted to do.
Blowing glass was one that we have been talking about for almost 10 years, so it was about time.
We headed up north to a little town called Harmony population 18. It was on my birthday weekend, so we made a few pit stops to some yarn shops on the way. Where I bought about 1200 yards of some great yarn for a cardigan I am making myself.
(anyway back to the badass stuff, forget about the knitting Mrs. B!)
Here is Mr. B doing what he does best, learning and paying attention to a cool skill he is hoping to master in a few minutes.


We quickly discovered that blowing glass was something that takes people years to even get the basics down, let alone master.
Of course Mr. B took to it like a jet ski to water.




Here is a video I made of his lesson. I hope you are able to see it, this uploader made it so small. haha, I fixed it! I am so much smarter than you blogger.com!


Here are our 4 glasses that we made in class.
We each made one clear glass, well more like watched our teacher make it, and then we were more hands on while making the colored glass.


Mr. B picked a ocean blue color for his colored piece.


I went with more of a teal blue color, but they came out almost like a set.





We had a FANTASTIC time on our trip too, here we are in the Harmony wedding chapel.


The door is epic.


Also in Harmony (there are only like 3 buildings there) is this amazing pottery studio. The glazes on some of the pieces there blew me away. I couldn't take my eyes off of this black and blue combo. Drool!



Here is a foggy shot of the famous Morro rock from Cayucos. We stayed the night in the really cute town of Cambria, and we brought back some great souvenirs from a local craft fair that we will always remember from our trip, not to mention the yarn from before :)






I hope to blog more, and more often!

Mom's Sunny Kitchen

My Mother's beautiful kitchen, needed a bit of a face lift this spring. So at her request while she was out of town, I removed the pink floral wallpaper that was installed before they bought their home and then painted it a totally different color.

Here it is before.


This angle is really hard to capture due to all the light coming in from the high windows. You can see the wallpaper continued up to the ceiling WAY up there.



Luckily Mr. B has a good friend that owns a wallpaper business, and he came by and removed all the paper for us, and did it in no time! Plus no mess. It was SO worth it.
Mr. B patched any holes and sanded. I primed and then we tested swatches. My mom really wanted a sunny yellow, which is some what of a risk, especially with all that golden rich oak.

Picking the right yellow was the hardest part! First we painted some of my moms choices on cardboard pieces.


Then we tweaked the colors and put those up on the wall.

We ended up going with the second swatch from the bottom, it's a custom color in flat using Benjamin Moore paint.


Here it is! Complete with ceramic speckled chickens, our favorite kind of chicken.



I mean how cute is this chicken?



I had to adjust this image to be able to view the color. I have no idea how to take a picture with my phone against such bright windows.





I also painted a quick kitchen still life for my moms corner, mainly to cover up a phone jack that was unattractive to look at. The painting still needs a frame, but it works for now.
You can really get a good view of the wall color in this shot.



I think the improvement is clear. She is really happy with our choice of yellow, and that's all that matters. I just wanted to give her a great (early) Mothers day gift that she loves! '

Before & ..................................................After!

Dulce de Leche

I first tried Dulce de Leche years ago after my parents brought back jars of it from their trip to South America.
This delicious and hard to find sweet, it a real treat. It has a caramel like taste with a creamy texture. It's made by cooking down milk and sugar, very very slowly until this spreadable texture and caramel brown color are achieved. You can find it in some specialty stores here in the US and all over South America.
Unfortunately we don't have any stores in my area that sell it. The way people have made this dessert at home for years is by cooking an unopened can of Sweetened Condensed milk in a crock pot (slow cooker) for 8 hours. It works well, but I have a few problems with that process.
1.) I don't like the idea of cooking anything in a can. BPA can leach into the food that is in it, especially when heated to a high temperature! Yuck!
2.) I don't own a crock pot, or slow cooker.

So I came up with a very fast and safe solution to making my own Dulce de Leche at home.
In a glass jar, and in my pressure cooker.


Pour the contents of one can of sweetened condensed milk (I used Organic) into a pint Ball jar and tightly secure the lid.


Put the jar in your pressure cooker and fill half way up with water.






I closed up the pressure cooker and turned it up to high for 18 mins. After it was done cooking, I turned off the pressure cooker and let it release all the pressure slowly on its own. I opened the lid removed the very hot jar carefully and placed it on the counter to cool.
It's a much prettier color now!


This is the really cool part. The Dulce de leche continues to cook on the counter, actually it starts to boil after about the first minute out of the cooker and continues to boil for about 15 mins.
I took some video of it so you can watch in amazement as I did!





Here it is all cooled and done. Yum, yum.
Now you could certainly cook it longer to the desired color, getting darker and thicker the more you cook it, dulce de leche is good at all stages really.
I prefer it a little lighter, and more spreadable.
I just love how fast this is, its like instant gratification!