Author Archives: The Girl

Pumpkin + Nutella = Party in Your Mouth!

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This is a recipe post. My first, and possibly my last. Compose yourself and hydrate, because you are not hallucinating.

I had a culinary epiphany while tipsy. Although I do not condone cooking while drunk for safety reasons, I encourage great ideas while under the influence. Write them down, and if they seem remotely reasonable the next day, give it a go.

I read a pin that said you could substitute all of the “wet” ingredients that go into a regular box of cake mix with one can of pumpkin. It sounded easy, but I didn’t have any cake mix. I was not qualified to drive to the store, and The Boy was not home, so I was stuck. Then I remembered that I had a box of Krusteaz pumpkin spice quick bread I had been meaning to make, and I decided to do that instead. Then I discovered I had no eggs, so I couldn’t make that. Well, dang. Then: EPIPHANY. I could replace all of the “wet” ingredients in the pumpkin bread with a can of pumpkin. I felt like a mad scientist, and even let out an evil laugh. Then I was glad I was home alone. The Dog doesn’t judge.

But here is where things got crazy. I have been trying to figure out how make cookies with a Nutella-filled creamy center since the Nutella cookies I made. I have a bake off coming up with the Tampa Bay Lady Bloggers (they call it a “cookie exchange,” but I know a bake off when I see one!) that I wanted to make them for. So I practiced.

Ingredients:

One box of Krusteaz pumpkin spice quick bread mix (seasonal item, so buy it now!)

One can of pumpkin (15 oz.)

Nutella

Melon baller

First I spooned a few tablespoons of Nutella into a small plastic container, and put it in the freezer to harden. I mixed the Krusteaz mix with the can of pumpkin, and spooned those into a greased muffin pan (I actually used my silicone reusable muffin holder things, which are awesome). Then I retrieved the Nutella from the freezer, and scooped out balls using my melon baller.

You want it to be hard enough to scoop out clean, but if it has been in the freezer too long, you can just let it sit for a few minutes to soften up. I found that about 30 minutes in the freezer was a good amount of time. There is a window of opportunity for scoop-ability. You may have to play with it a bit. Accidents can be eaten.

I then shoved the Nutella balls into the raw muffin mix as it sat in its little muffin cups (is there a term for these things? I can’t think of it). I used my finger to cover the Nutella ball so it was just not showing from the top. Then I baked my muffins for about 17 minutes. You can do the poke it with a stick test to determine if they are done, being careful to avoid the creamy Nutella center.

Then hold on to your socks and your bodily fluids when you dive into the first one.  Holy crap they are amazing – so moist and flavorful and NUTELLA.  And so easy. If I can do it, honestly anyone can. Even a drunk house plant.

Sad plant

I’m not as think as you drunk I am.

Meet Madonna

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No, not THE Madonna, but her namesake, and the latest member of our furniture family!

We have been working very hard on a furniture project for way too long now, and I am SO EXCITED that it is finally done! The Boy is equally excited, but I suspect for all the wrong reasons. We have an enormous coffee table (seriously big, like 3.5 feet x 3.5 feet), and it slides open to reveal storage.

Hi. My name is Jim.

Would you like me to hold your things?

How awesome is that?? The problem is that we got it on clearance at the Scan Design outlet, it is a beautiful solid teak (haven’t gotten to the actual problem yet …) and everything we like that matches is also solid teak and is painfully expensive. I bought a very long stand from Ikea (in the “scratch and dent” section) as a temporary fix, because it was cheap and similar in color.

And by the way, in case you were wondering, when you purchase something from the Ikea scratch and dent section, and it is already assembled, and you cannot fit it into your car, no one is going to help you disassemble that bad boy. The Swedes do a decent job at telling you how to assemble Bjorn or Skevarkin (or whatever its name is), but there are no disassembly instructions. And why? Because disassembly is impossible, unless you are a rocket scientist or a Nobel Prize winner or a Rhodes scholar or a Steve Jobs (rest his soul). When you ask for help, some jokester will point you over to the “tool” section, which is a station built out of plywood that has a few tools attached to it with ridiculously short leashes. Try getting a 1.5 foot long tool leash to reach the end of a 6 foot long entertainment center. IMPOSSIBLE. It was a frustrating evening, and those employees are lucky that I do not know how to curse in Swedish.

However, searching Craigslist and thrift stores has yielded no fruit (or teak entertainment centers in my price range), and the temporary fix has lasted about 3 years. What is The Girl to do?  BUILD IT, obviously.

I had a lot of inspiration from a variety of sources, which I pinned with the caption “DIY this!” about 8 times. Here are a few of the items I was pining after (not pinning after – the world post-Pinterest is getting very confusing; also, click on pictures for their sources):

I fell head over heels for the first one, which was actually pretty affordable, but much too small to be an entertainment center. The metal frame with rustic wood shelves was exactly what I was hoping to achieve, and once I realized that I had a crap load of unfortunate-looking oak flooring taking up space in the garage, I knew I could DIY this! Oak flooring rejected by the factory + same oak flooring rejected by us for use as flooring = really “distressed” wood (a/k/a firewood). Some pieces were split, other looked like victims of a drive-by shooting, and yet more looked as though the planer had chewed them up and spit them out (which may actually have been the case).

I started furiously scouring casually browsing on Craigslist, and within a few days, the perfect shelving unit arrived. It was meant to be.

This is the actual photo from the ad. Dog was not included – yes, I asked. Owner was not amused.

I snagged this dirty and only slightly rusty unit for a mere $40. He wanted $50 but I showed up with all twenties and he didn’t have change (hint: works EVERY TIME). Just to give you guys an idea on the timeframe, I bought this in September. And just finished it last night. We may be slow, but we are [insert appropriate adjective here – determined? hard-working? stupid?].

I spray painted the shelving unit a hammered brown, to match the ceiling fan and curtain rod in the living room, and because I am just not a huge fan of shiny chrome, and also because I needed to cover some rust spots. After 6 1/2 cans of spray paint and many concerned looks from the Home Depot employees when I went back for “just one more can!” with my hands covered in spray paint and looking cracked out, the entire thing was covered in paint. I am pretty sure my boss thinks I am huffing paint. Please, Mr. Bossman, I would not resort to such cheap recreational drugs. I have standards.

The other step in this process involved making shelves out of wood flooring. This process is slow, because it requires gluing several together, clamping them to dry for several hours, and then continuing on, until I had four very large and rustic shelves.

   

Then I cut them down to size using the circular saw, and cut out squares on the corners (to fit inside the square legs) using the jig saw.

   

The Boy and I sanded them all, stained them all, and polyurethaned them all. I tried many different stains, including a homemade one, but finally settled on Weathered Oak by Minwax, and it turned out perfectly! (I am pretty sure we have EVERY color of Minwax stain and oil in our garage right now! See why here.)

At no point was The Boy enthusiastic about this project, but bless his little heart, he played along, and that is why I keep him around (because he is really good at sanding).

So here she is, in her new home, and I am thrilled with the results.

I need a better camera and some photography lessons stat, because these photos do not do Madonna justice. I asked The Boy what he thinks of her, and his response: “It is … very large?” He doesn’t get it, and I don’t care! Madonna and I will live happily ever after!

Oh! Madonna? Well, I had to come up with a name for something that was old, weathered, a little beat up, but still strangely attractive, with very hard and skinny appendages, who never ceases to be entertaining in some way.

Madonna.

Up Yer Wind-ers

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When I was in middle school, I would sometimes ride the bus home with my friend Nicky Oliverio. I am not sure where she is today, or what she is up to, but she was pretty awesome, so I hope one day she Googles herself and finds this. Anyways, the bus driver on her route was a countrified (a/k/a redneck, bless her heart), large older lady, and Nicky’s stop was the last one on the route. When we approached the stop, the bus driver would holler out to us, “Up yer winders!” and we had to go around closing all of the windows on the bus (which, if you will recall, would only open by sliding down, so to close them we had to slide them up, and if we didn’t do it the bus driver would have to do it herself before returning the school bus to wherever it is they sleep). We would grudgingly do so, muttering about how lazy she was. One day, she hollered, “Up yer winders!” but the driver’s window was also down, so Nicky shouted back, “Up yours!” I am not sure if she meant it as an insult, or if it was completely unintentional, but it was so funny to middle school me that I almost wet myself. So this post is about windows. Totally relevant, right?

Step one in Operation Master-ish Bathroom Renovation called for replacing the terrible, old, creaky, drafty, crank window. Just when you thought jalousie windows couldn’t get worse, someone went and made a terrible fake version of them. I do not like that person. I bought the new window last weekend, but The Boy put the kibosh on installing it then, so it waited until this weekend. Along with about 35 other ongoing projects that we made some serious progress on. Oh, and we might be turning this hall bath into a true master bathroom with a walk-in closet coming from the bedroom. Maybe. Because we have lost our minds. I need to convince The Boy before he has time to think about it. If the wall separating the two rooms mysteriously falls down while he is playing flag football, we will have no choice, right? Right. But more on that later.

Removing the old window (by the way, I keep typing “winder” and then changing it, which is making me chuckle every time) was easier this time. That makes it sound like we have tons of window (yep, did it again) replacing experience, which is not accurate. We did it once, in the kitchen, and it was kind of a nightmare. First, when removing a window, be sure to remove all screws that are holding the window into the frame. We removed one or two screws holding the kitchen window in place, could NOT figure out why the window wasn’t just FALLING out at that point, and took the reciprocating saw to it until it came out in pieces. Then we discovered some “hidden” screws holding it in place (not so hidden – we “looked” for them the way you “look” for a small child playing hide and seek, but they never made a noise so we never “found” them). This time we removed all of the screws, and hammered the frame until The Boy could pull it out from the outside. And then, there was a hole in our house. Again.

Screws – hiding in plain sight.

Does anyone feel a draft?

From here we shoved the new window into place (literally, there was a lot of whacking and smacking to get it into the right place). The window was the right size for the rough opening, and the flange is a little larger but is somewhat flexible, so sometimes you have to manhandle a window a little bit, show it who is boss, to get it to sit right.

No big deal.

The Boy looks polite here, but he punched that window a lot.

Once we had it in the right location, level, etc., it was a matter of pre-drilling a few holes, one trip to Home Depot, and several screws to hold it in place.

If you don’t get the self-tapping concrete anchors, the screws will not go in far enough for the window sliders to go past them. Another lesson learned in the Great Window Debacle of 2011. The Boy caulked around the window on the outside, and we called it a night. Obviously we still need to put trim around the window, a window sill, etc., but there is no longer a gaping hole in the house.

We totally upped our winder. So up yours.