Chapter 3, wherein we conclude the adventures of a 6 year old table that wished it was 100!

Or something . . .
I'm working on the titles.

Remember how I sanded the table? And then I did a lot of other stuff to it?

Well, after that, my dad (the boss of all wood involved projects) offered to spray the finish on my table for me. 

Who am I to turn down an offer like that?

I want to stress, though, that I certainly would have simply finished it on my own, if he hadn't offered.  While the fact that the finish was, in the end, sprayed on the table did make the process much easier and faster, but it certainly would have been doable without the help.

After assisting with loading the table into my dad's truck, riding along as he drove it to his house, and assisting in the unloading of the table, my work was pretty straightforward and simple from there on out.

Watch my dad do one final sanding with his sander that works significantly faster and better than mine.



I had intended to do this myself, but it literally took him four minutes to do one final finish sanding.  I love how the wood shows through just a bit.  Perfect!



While  he did wood-guy things in the garage I used his pretty awesome wood-guy's scraper to distress the legs and edges of the table top.  I ended up liking just the scraper and never did end up doing any distressing with the sander. 



After the legs, table edges and base were distressed







the two of us got a little creative!

Dad mixed some chartreuse-ish paint tints with paint thinner. (He says paint in the color you like and whatever the packaging says to use to thin it would work the same. The tints were just used because he already had them on hand.) Then, just dabbing the edge of a rag in the tint, and blotting it thoroughly, he ever-so-gently wiped the color on to the table top in places.  He also wiped a little of it around the white rim. 



I ended up absolutely loving this effect because it makes the green on the legs really sing. You'd have to see it in person, but I feel like the green in the distressing is so much more noticible because of the tint on the table top.

After a little more drying time, cleaning all the dust away, and putting the table up on cinder blocks in the driveway he sprayed the first of three coats of finish on the table. 

We used Minwax brand finish in "natural", applied with an automotive spray gun. Of course this could have been done with a brush. But if you know someone who has the ability to spray something for you, I highly recommend it. It was a snap to finish. Each coat took about 5 minutes to apply. Additional coats can be applied once the finish is mostly dry, unlike staining with a brush, where you have to wait until each coat is totally dry before reapplying.



We let it dry about 1-2 hours after the first coat, and 20 minutes between the other two.

And that was it. 

It was left to dry overnight, in the heated garage.  The next day he brought it back to me, looking all pretty and stuff.







And that's it . . . for now.

My confession is that I have already done a little something else to this room, because after the table was redone I felt a little too shabby chic and not enough ecclectic chic.

I'll share that project soon.

How to make your not-old table look not-new. (part 2)

Ok, so when last I wrote we were discussing how to make a dining table that looks like this:



look like this:



We talked about all the many years of sanding in the last post.  Which, after I posted, I thought "Sheesh, Emily.  You probably could have dealt with that in a couple sentences!"

But the good news is, I was thorough.

So after I had completely rid the table of it's painted top, I took some help from the family and gave it a little bit of a beating.

We made little x shaped divots in patches here and there by placing the point of a phillips head screwdriver on the table top and tapping it once or twice with a hammer.  Don't let your husband, or any adult male tap the hammer twice or you will get the largest x shaped divot ever.  Men are not subtle when it comes to hammers.  We also created lots and lots and lots of crescent moon shaped hammer head marks, everywhere.

Children like to beat furniture, they'll do it for you with no complaint at all. Husbands will get a little carried away and possibly need to be told to slow down.



The hammer marks were difficult to see before the finish process highlighted them. I'll post another photo of that below.

After the abuse, I cleaned the table top off with a dry towel (canned air would be perfect for this) and applied two coats of polyurethane with a sponge brush.



Since I knew that I wanted the wood to show through the paint, I elected to use this particular product to deepen the wood color, before I started painting.  I never would have thought to do this if it weren't for this post from The Lettered Cottage.  So Layla gets all the credit on that one. 

I did two coats of poly, allowing it to dry a couple of hours between each coat. 



The distressing was a little more visible after the poly went on.

You can also see a spot there where the veneer was totally gone, as well as a fresh hammer mark or two that we added after we did the poly. We just felt like it needed a few more. (Don't forget how husbands like to hit tables with hammers, he couldn't help himself.)

After two coats of polyurethane the table looked like this:


You can see in the above photo that I attempted to sand the edges of the table down, only to discover that the edges of the table were terrible and awful and apparently made of paper, or possibly cow patties and straw.  I don't actually know what they're made of, but while sanding the material kind of just crumbled off.  The legs were also made of this material. 

After some thought and semi-careful planning I decided I would go ahead and paint the edge of the table white, just as I planned to do with the base.  All I did to prep the legs was a super light rough-up with the sander, just so the paint would stick.

I think I did about 3 coats of white paint, alternating with the 2 coats of poly I did on the table top, thereby reducing my down time.  As it worked out I ended up working outside on the table for pretty much the entire day.

After a couple coats of white, most of the black was covered and the edge was looking much nicer.



See the brush marks on the legs?

I wasn't particularly worried about those.  I had plans for the legs, that involved making them look much worse (which is also better, right?) than a few brush strokes made them look.

When most of the black was covered I pulled out my secret weapon.



A tiny little tester pot of Japanese Fern by Behr.  I purchased this several moths ago as a tester for my bathroom linen closet door, but since I've yet to test anything, it's just been sitting around the house waiting to be used.  I definitely hadn't planned to use this particular paint on this particular table, but when the idea hit me I was excited, so I went to town.

I painted the green in patches all over the edges and base of the table.



After I let the green patches dry I painted another good full-coverage coat of white over that. All of this was done, of course, with the intention for it to show through later when I distressed the legs and base of the table. You can't see it in the after photo I've posted, but I have detail photos I'll share later.

For my final step of the day I applied the white wash to the top of the table.  I used off the shelf white from Home Depot, that I already had on hand.  Mixing about half water and half paint in a mason jar, I made approximately 16 times more white wash than I needed. Just so you know.



Since the very wet water and paint mixture goes on super wet, I decided I would actually drizzle wet paint on the table in sections. Then I used a pretty gnarly looking, cheapo, dry paint brush to smear it around on the table top, thereby leaving streaks in the top and allowing the wood to show through.  I brushed the paint in the direction of the grain making sure to leave sections of thick paint and sections of thin paint.



The process of covering the table top went very fast and before I knew it was covered.
When I put the table up for the night, it looked like this:





Tomorrow, I'll post the conclusion of this project! And for now I'll tell you that I just totally love my new table a whole lot. I'm so thrilled to have been able to actually do this!

Making Old(ish) Things New(ish) (Part 1)

About 6 years ago I purchased a damaged black table at the Ashley Furniture tent sale for $60.  It had a huge crack in the finish that I had, at one time, intended to repair.  The crack ended up being largely ignorable, though.  No one looks that close at your table anyway, right?

I chose it because I wanted a black table.  No other reason.  It doesn't have a lot of character, it's clean and simple and well . . . plain. 

Here it is in another time and place.



I'm actually shocked to see it in this condition, in this photo, right now.  So shiny and clean and pretty looking.  It wasn't looking too pretty the other day when I finally decided to give it everything I had in the once over department (name that movie!).

The wood is soft, which means that the table had suffered some serious dings over the years. 

I wanted to take a stab at making it look like a farm house table, with the intention of bringing my home decor a little closer to the eclectic vibe I crave.

I thought it over and figured that reading about what I did to my table, without any idea of how the table came out at all, might feel a little odd. So I've decided I'll tease with one photo of the finished product . . .




Farmhousey as all get out, if you ask me.  Plus the table itself is quite modern so it all kind of works.  Inside my mind, anyway.

But back to the story!

The weather has been unseasonably warm lately.  And I'm not talking "Wow, it's warm for January."  It's actually warm.  High 60's and low 70's.  Logical deduction (and weather.com) tells me that winter won't arrive for several weeks, which means it will likely last into July, which means I'd better do any warm-weather-dependent crafts now, while the weather lasts.

So my sister helped me drag this beast out to the front walk, where we took turns sanding and sanding and sanding it.


Goodbye black paint.

We used a handheld sander purchased at Home Depot for about $30, with 60 grit sand paper.  The paper is sold pre-cut to fit the specific sander.  Make sure you get the right kind because the wrong ones don't really fit.  But don't distress! (Ha! Get it? Sand paper? Distress? I'm hilarious.)  You can make the wrong paper work, in most circumstances.  I know this from experience.

The first step is pretty straight forward.  Just a lot of sanding, for a long time.

Here's how it looked as the paint started to come off.



In the above photo you can also see the crack in the finish, as it slowly disappeared under the sander's ripping grains.  Under that crack we discovered that the veneer was totally gone.  The wood underneath was an MDF type board that has no grain to it.  Even though my original plan involved repainting and distressing it, I knew for sure, when I saw that the veneer was gone in places that simply staining it was not an option. 

And here it is after a couple hours of work and the decision to call it a night.


I made the decision to leave the leaf in the table throughout the refinish process, in an effort to make the new finish match well, across the whole table.  I don't keep the leaf in the table on a day-to-day basis anymore, as you've seen above.

Here's a closer image. 

The upper part of this photo shows what the finish looked like after one quick go-round with the sander.

The lower part shows what it looked like after several go-rounds.

I did another couple or so to remove all the finish, before I moved on to refinishing it.



This table had a rather thick finish on it.  After the fact I thought that I might have been smarter to use a chemical stripper first, but maybe not.  Sanding it wasn't particularly difficult, but it did take some time.

The next morning I set to work and after a couple more hours working with the sander, it looked like this:




I'm gonna call it a night! Tomorrow I'll post more! I'm sure you're very excited.

Happiest of New Years!

The other day we were eating in a restaurant and my daughter saw a belgian waffle on the menu.  She burst out laughing.  "Mom, look! BELGIAN WAFFLE! Bwahahahaha!"

I laughed along.

I still haven't figured out why that was so funny. 

File this under: I AM NOT A SHORT ORDER COOK

It was a wise woman who once said, "Oh no, little child! YOU WILL EAT WHAT I MAKE OR YOU WILL NOT EAT AT ALL!"

This wise woman held her ground.  She taught her children to eat everything on their plates, and they never complained, and they never cried, and they never, ever, ever had even a little twinkle of complaint about anything.  It was said, throughout the land, that the wise woman's children were THE BEST children of all.  OF. ALL.

Or wait . . .

Maybe it wasn't quite like that.

This is the story of how I found myself cooking two separate dinners.

Let's go back to July of this year.  My darling 9 year old girl, who loves animals and wants to be a veterinarian, was reading her favorite book.  (HIGHLY RECOMMEND!) When, almost as if she'd had a sudden epiphany, said to me, "Mom, I was just thinking.  If I want to be a veterinarian, I probably shouldn't eat animals.  Vets don't hurt animals, they help them."

Well . . . um . . . but, you see . . .

I had to think for a second.  I reminded her that I buy almost all of our meat organic and talked to her about how organic animals are raised in a more humane way.  I told her that God tells us in the bible that animals were given to us for food.  I told her that I am always careful to choose foods that are farmed in a way that causes the least amount of environmental burden, as well as a better life for the animals.  And then I blabbed some more . . .

Then she stopped me, "Mom, it's not that I think eating meat is wrong, it's that I think that I just don't want to do it."

Faced with a sudden dilemma of choosing between explaining myself unnecessarily further (with the overtly obvious intention to push my child toward my way of thinking) and embracing my daughter's uniqueness I just said, "That's fine if you don't want to eat meat, but you still have to eat healthy."

So over the next couple of days, as she dabbled in vegetarianism, we talked about protein and what foods contain it and how much of it she needs.  And I set down a few ground rules.

1. If you're going to be a vegetarian, you cannot also be a picky eater.  This means you must eat beans, brown rice, Greek yogurt, quinoa and lots of veggies.  You won't subsist on a diet of nothing but cheese pizza and veggie burgers. (as fun as that sounds!)

2. If you're going to be a vegetarian you cannot pout and complain when you go out and there's nothing vegetarian for you to eat.  You have to be flexible.  You might attend a party that provides very few vegetarian options.  When this happens, you can not stomp around and behave as if you are entitled to special food.  Carrot sticks are your friend.  If you're not sure what will be available, you can always pack a sandwich.  (If you have to resort to your packed sandwich, eat it discreetly. Don't stand in front of everyone and bark about how you don't eat meat.)

3. If I am going to be buying specialty foods for you, you're going to eat them.  Greek yogurts cost nearly $1 a piece.  I don't want to be throwing these things away because you took two bites and decided you didn't like it. 

4. The specialty foods I buy are not for your exclusive use.  They are for our family.  You don't decide who eats them or when they are eaten.  I remember a church camp out once with a young boy who was diabetic and would have an incredibly awful tantrum any time any person drank a diet soda.  It's not cute when someone acts like a diva, no matter the reason.

After a few days of dabbling, she made the call.  She wanted to be a vegetarian for sure. 

And here I am 5 months later, still cooking a vegetarian dinner - or a dinner and it's vegetarian cousin - every single night.  All in all, it has been a surprisingly simple adventure.  It's saved us some money (meat is pricy!) and it's probably pushed us toward a few healthier choices.  The lovely lady is very confirmed in her decision.  She hasn't wavered, in the slightest.  She didn't even cheat for salami and cream cheese, or bacon, or bbq'd steaks.

Here's a meal that became a favorite of our family over the past few months.

If you want to make it you'll need:

A package of chicken drumsticks (organic)
Salt, Pepper, Garlic, Cumin, Chili Powder, Paprika, White Pepper and Chipotle Chili Powder
Naan (I got mine at Trader Joes)
Falafel (ours came frozen, also from Trader Joes, you can make it from a box mix or from scratch, if you're ambitious)
Your favorite lettuce
Shelled sunflower seeds
balsamic vinegar
olive oil

and a BBQ grill

I started with a package of chicken drumsticks. About two per meat-eater is perfect for our family.


I sprinkle one side of the meat with salt, pepper, garlic and each of these spices. You can adjust the proportions of spicy spices, to not-spicy spices to make it how you like it.

I like to do one side only, so that it doesn't get too spicy.

Now, throw the chicken on a hot grill. I do spice side up, first. My theory was that the spices would soak into the meat while the other side cooks.


Turn it over when a little bit of blood starts to run out. They will take longer than you think they should, if you're not used to cooking chicken on the bone, on the grill. These probably took about a half hour, total. (allrecipes.com says 10-15 minutes per side, too) (prep the other food while it cooks!)



When the chicken was nearly done, I moved it off the grill



and put the naan on the hot grill.  Naan is from heaven.



You'll know it is finished when it has amazingly delicious grill marks:

Keep it warm by placing it in the oven while you finish everything else up.  If you time it correctly, it should come off right when you are ready to sit and eat.
The brown rice I am serving here is from Trader Joe's and is the easiest thing ever. It comes frozen, and just needs to be microwaved for 3 minutes. Of course, you can make your own.

The falafel is similar. Trader Joes, Microwave. You know the drill. 

The salad is the best trick of all. No one will believe how simple it was!

Wash, dry and tear your lettuce into bite sized pieces.  Put the lettuce in a large salad bowl.  Drizzle with olive oil and toss.  Drizzle with balsamic vinegar and toss again.  Now sprinkle some granulated garlic, a little pepper and a healthy handful of the sunflower seeds.  And toss again.

It's good.  The sunflower seed crunch is magic.

This salad is extra good with cucumber, tomato and avocado, too.

So there it is.



Two different, but the same plates.

Pie Redux + Random things I totally love

You may recall that wonderful looking Caramel Apple Pear Bourbon Pie I made the other night. I say wonderful looking, because it had yet to be tasted, when last I posted. 

Now it is all gone - and I wish that it wasn't.  It was wonderful and delicious.  And that's what you need to know. 

I had some concerns that the pie would be too wet and that maybe the crust would be soggy, but it wasn't.  The excess liquid thickened perfectly.  I highly recommend trying something like this.  Take my idea and play with it or make up your own pie recipe.  Take a restaurant dessert you love and turn it into something you can make at home.  It will most likely be delicious!  Worst case?  You'll learn a little something about cooking!

If you're in to wonderful food
Another amazing dessert we experienced this Christmas came courtesy of my sister who *heart*s Pinterest as much as the rest of us.  She made incredibly wonderful, totally delicious, and mind bogglingly simple Dulce de Leche sauce, ALL BY HERSELF, in the crock pot.  It was exciting to be present when she opened it up and we all saw that a couple cans of sweetened condensed milk, and a crock pot can come together to make magic.  Delicious, wonderful magic.  You can find the recipe HERE, if you're inclined to try it.

Break Time
Now that Christmas is over, the kids and I have a goal.  For our Christmas break we're going to be reading The Invention of Hugo Cabret together. When my kids discovered this book in our very most favorite independent book store EVER, Sundance Books, they brought it to me immediately.  I had seen Martin Scorsese on The Daily Show a couple days before that and he'd commented about how wonderful the book was, and how his kids' love for it led him to direct the movie Hugo.  So I was excited to read the book, right off the bat.

Then I opened it.

And then I cried.

I wish I was exaggerating, but I'm not.  My eyes totally welled up at the extreme level of loveliness that oozes from this book.  You NEED it.  You need it right now.

As soon as we're all done reading it, we'll be going to see Hugo in the theaters!  Hopefully this whole plan will come together nicely by the end of this week.  Can not wait!

Speaking of movie trailers
I have a thing for documentaries.  I watch a lot of them and I can't stop watching them and I can't stop talking about them.  The other day I caught up on new doc trailers.  I am now officially excited to see this movie (kind of seems to be akin to Winebago Man) and the feel-warm-and-squishy-all-over trailer makes me excited to see this one, too.  Both have already been released, but since I don't live in a big city, I have to wait until Netflix has them for me to see.

Some day I'll open an art house cinema and you can all come to my place to watch documentaries every Friday night.  I'll make tamales and we'll have Perrier and pretend to be fancy. 

If you want to watch a documentary
I recently watched Senna, which was wonderful.  It is a nearly narration-free, super real, look into the life of Formula One driver Ayrton Senna.  It is available on Netflix live streaming.

The kids and I also watched the 1996 film Microcosmos.  The entire film is shot in extreme close-up, with tiny cameras and tons of time-lapse footage of bugs of all kinds, going about their daily business.  It has very little narration and the kids and I loved it.  (Fair warning, you will see a pair of slugs and a pair of ladybugs getting a little personal at some point in this film.)

Also
The kids put their Grandma money together to purchase a Kinect (we already had the xbox) and we spent our Christmas Eve dancing up a storm.  Just Dance is quite possibly, the most fun game ever.

I hope you all had an amazing Christmas!

I have made pie

First, I found some cough drops which offered me some much needed relief. 

Then I made quick and easy bean burritos for dinner.


Then, I set out to make an incredible pie.

Oh, it definitely went down.


4 apples and 4 pears. I had them on hand. The fruit decided what kind of pie I should make.

I let fruit make lots of decisions for me.



I peeled them one at a time, and let them rest in a bowl of water, with a quarter of a lemon squeezed into the water.

One by one, I peeled them.



Then, I cored them and sliced them, thinly. Just as typical pie recipes instructed me to do.





and back in the water they go.



After they were all sliced I put them in a colander over the sink and let them sit and drip until I was ready to use them again.

Then things got a little crazy.



Well, not too crazy, don't get excited or anything.

I unwrapped about 18 caramels and melted them in a sauce pan with about a tablespoon of milk. This step is undocumented because I was distracted by the molten piece of caramel that jumped out of the pan and landed on my right index finger. That didn't feel nice. But I had to get my weekly burn out of the way, so, there's that.

Once the caramel was melted, I removed it from the heat and stirred in about a tablespoon of the whiskey.

I put the now somewhat dry apples into a large mixing bowl and added about 2-3 tablespoons of flour, 2 teaspoons of cinnamon, 1/2 cup-ish of sugar, a 1/2 teaspoon of salt and the caramel mixture. I tossed it all together using two large spoons, and let it sit for a second while I prepared the pie crust.

Now, I'll be honest with you. I did cheat here. I used store bought crust. Which is in no way shape or form anywhere close to home made, but I'm sick. Cut me some slack.

The bottom crust goes into the pie tin, first (captain obvious, to the rescue!)



and the top crust I cut into 1" wide strips



Using a fork, poke some holes in the bottom of the bottom crust, then add your caramel-y, apple-y, delicious-y mixture. Mine was a bit wet, I left about a tablespoon or so of liquid behind in the bowl, but the majority of it went into the pie.

Now, take the 1" wide strips and select about four of them to go across the pie in one direction, like this

Pinch them against the bottom crust to make them stay in place.

Then, pinch the rest of the strips against the other side of the crust, like this


Then, using your skills in the folding and unfolding of dough, you're going to make a lattice design.

Start on one edge and work your way across the pie.  Fold the strip farthest to the edge back and lay a perpendicular strip across, underneath.  Then lay the folded back strip flat again, and lay a perpendicular strip over it.  And on and on until the whole pie is latticed.  It's easy to mess up, but also not hard to do.  I actually kind of messed mine up when I was photographing it.  But it's easily unfolded and refolded until you get it right.




Pinch the dough strip on the far side when you're all done folding and unfolding that strip.

When it's all done, trim the excess dough off the edges and press it all together with the tines of a fork.



TA DA!

You can bake the little pastry scraps, for a tasty snack, too! I tossed mine in a little cinnamon and sugar and put them on a cookie sheet right in the oven with the pie.  They take about 10 minutes or so to bake and they're yummy.  Call the kids quickly, before you eat all of them yourself.



Now, bake at 400 degrees for about 45-ish minutes. When the crust was reasonably golden brown I gently inserted a fork between the lattice and tested the fruit for done-ness. It was done.  And out it came!



It sure does LOOK tasty, but I won't know for sure until tomorrow when the family joins us for Christmas Eve dinner.  Mine is happily resting in the fridge now, I'll reheat it before dessert time, tomorrow!  Serve with ice cream!