Author Archives: The Girl

Pinbusters – The Nutella Cookie

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Have you ever wondered if the stuff people post on Pinterest is true? Well I have, and I test them all so that you don’t have to, ’cause ain’t nobody got time for that.  Click here to check out all of the pins I haven taken on. You might be surprised by some of the results!

The first and most delicious Pin I am tackling – the Nutella cookie.

It looks deceptively simple to make, and makes my mouth water.  I have to confess that I was not aware that this hazelnut-chocolate-throw-in-a-marshmallow-and-swirl-it-around-and-fish-it-out-with-a-spoon-and-then-eat-it-to-die-for deliciousness existed until a few years ago, when my amazing Latina girlfriend introduced us.  It was love at first taste.

Flash forward five years, and I am pinning every Nutella recipe in sight.  The stars aligned last week, when Nutella was on sale (and I had a coupon!) and we were the proud owners of not one – but two! – jars.  Happy fat kids over here.  The recipe called for the following ingredients:  1 cup magical deliciousness (a/k/a Nutella), 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup sugar (more sugar??), and one egg.  Here are those pretty little maids all in a row:

Sounds easy, right?  Until you get all of the dry ingredients together and then realize you have no eggs and it is 9:30 on a Friday night so your Publix is closed and you have to drive to three gas stations before you strike gold on a dozen eggs that are NOT expired.  However, if you pretend that didn’t happen, and we were a normal household with eggs on stand by, very easy indeed.

Nutella does not want to part ways with any container that it is in (the container is probably holding on for dear life!), so if you have a magical trick for measuring and then dumping into the bowl without losing ounces of this precious resource, please fill me in. Luckily I have The Boy, who was very pleased by this turn of events and “cleaned” the measuring cup and spoon exceptionally well.

Mixing the ingredients takes time and a little bit of strength, but eventually begins to take on the consistency of Play Doh, seen here:

Delicious Play Doh.

From there, you simply make little dough balls and put them on a greased cookie sheet.

Here is where the recipe gets a little squirrelly, though.  It says to bake for 8 minutes at 350 degrees.  Only 8 minutes to warm, hazelnut, chewy, chocolate amazingness?!? Too good to be true, indeed.  I set the timer for eight minutes.  Cookies were not done. Another 3 minutes.  Not done.  An additional 4 minutes.  Ahem.  I did the poke it with a stick test, and the stick was most certainly not clean.

Finally, after an additional 4 minutes, The Boy could not stand it any longer, and I took the cookies out of the oven.  I have to clarify that they were NOT burnt in any way, but it might have been better to leave them gooey.  Touche, recipe maker.

THE TASTE TEST:  These cookies are good.  They really are.  I mean, there is no cream-filled Nutella center, but they are sweet and vaguely taste of Nutella.

The Boy Approves!

However, given the rarity of the existence of Nutella in our house, and how delicious it is in its raw form, The Boy said, “Eh, they are good, but I’d rather have the Nutella by itself.”

So there you have it, ladies and gents.  Decent cookies, but I recommend using your Nutella with much greater care.

 

Phoebe Buffet

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Having a “real” dining room for the first time meant finding furniture to fill it. We already had a bar height table in espresso finish from Scan Design (we are blessed to have a local outlet store!), and we could not find anything we liked, that we could afford, to match.  The easiest solution?  Finding a solid wood buffet we could refinish.  I spent countless hours on Craigslist and stopping in thrift stores, garage sales, and consignment shops before I stumbled across this beauty:

Sad Phoebe

If you can look past the old yellowed polyurethane and terrible hardware, she is a beauty. Also, she is solid wood, so I knew I could spruce her up with a much darker stain.  The Boy has grown very accustomed to random calls and texts saying, “Hey, wanna meet me at (random location) with the truck?”  He is a trooper.

After haggling over the price, I got the owner to knock the price down to $175.00, and it was a done deal.  I spent an entire weekend and several weeknights sanding Phoebe. That was by far the most time-consuming part.  I also searched the internet high and low for new hardware.  I knew I wanted brushed nickel with an antique look, and these were love at first sight:

However, at $7.98 per drawer pull times 6, plus two door pulls at $4.98 each, it was a bit pricey, so I procrastinated.  When I simply could not find anything I liked nearly as much, I pulled the trigger, and never looked back.  Unfortunately, the drawer pulls were not exactly the same size as the old ones, and I had to drill new holes in the drawers and putty the old holes.  I have tried several different types of putty over the  years, all of which claim to be “stainable,” but none seem to take stain as well as I would like.  The result of this is that the puttied area is very obvious, especially with a really dark stain.  Fortunately, though, thanks to the larger base of the new pulls, the old puttied holes were covered. Whew.  After sanding, staining, putting a second coat of stain on, a third coat of stain, and new hardware, she was dressed to impress:

Happy Phoebe

Phoebe Buffet is The Boy’s favorite furniture transformation to date.  I am still partial to Desk, but it is a close call.  Here is Phoebe Buffet hanging out in her new dining room (ignore the cement floors – that is a work in progress):

Welcome Home, Phoebe Buffet

 

Kitchen Renovation – Budget Breakdown

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If you are disappointed that the title of the post is so straight-forward, to the point, and not at all witty, you are not alone.  I could not think of a good pun, and I wanted it to be obvious what this post was about, since many are curious about costs, especially in this economy.

As DIY television connoisseurs, The Boy and I are always astounded by how much money people spend on their renovations!  A $30,000 kitchen?  $18,000 for a master bath?!?  While it would be fabulous to buy everything on our dream list, and break the bank, we simply could not afford to do so.  Considering that our combined student loan debt is … whoa, I just got nauseous.  I can’t even type the number.  Let’s just say it is much larger than our mortgage.  Anyways, my point is, this is not a “Mr. and Miss Fancypants have unlimited funds” type of remodeling blog.  Nor is it a “We have disposable income” type of remodeling blog.  We scrimp and save and search high and low to find the best deals around so that we can afford to renovate.  Therefore, with no further ado, here is our budget breakdown for the kitchen remodel, as well as where we purchased the items from:

Cabinets:        $2,523.00  (a local, very small retailer, and the cabinets came flat-shipped, so we had to assemble AND install)

Appliances:    $2,500.00 (Sears Scratch and Dent store for most, Craigslist for matching microwave)

Flooring:         $550.00  (on close-out at Floor & Decor outlets, but we had to buy the entire remaining inventory, so we used the extra to tile the entryway, and we still have some tiles hanging out in the garage)

Lighting:          $170.00 (hanging light on clearance at Home Depot, recessed lights regular price at Home Depot)

Sink/Faucet:    $250.00 (sink on clearance at Home Depot, faucet from two fabulous men on Craigslist)

Granite:             $372.00 (on “special buy” at Floor & Decor)

Granite Install: $950.00 (a guy recommended by Floor & Decor)

Backsplash:      $171.23 (Floor & Decor)

Window:            $132.00 (Home Depot)

Plumber:            $500.00 (When we removed existing cabinets, we discovered a drain pipe running THROUGH the lower cabinets, so we paid plumber to come re-route and recess into wall – which, in hindsight, we could have done ourselves!)

GRAND TOTAL:  $8,118.23  (check my math – I’m a lawyer, not an accountant!)

The only cost possibly omitted is the drywall patching, and the only reason it isn’t included is that I could not break it down.  We had a contractor do a roof repair, and his guys did the drywall work, so it was all one price, and included drywall in both the living room and kitchen.

So there you have it!  You really can renovate your entire kitchen on a pretty tight budget.  If we had decent cabinets we could have painted, or existing appliances, or anything to work from, it would have been even less.  I will not pretend that it was easy, or that the deals just fell into my lap.  I spent a LOT of time researching and calling places, so be prepared to hunker down.  Any questions?  Bueller?