Tag Archives: DIY

Homemade Christmas

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I promise this does not need a spoiler alert.  I am not giving away what Brad and I are sending people for Christmas.  Although you may already know part of it.  Because I am awful at surprises.

This is no secret.  I am really, really terrible at surprises.  I like giving people gifts ALL days of the year and for no real reason.  When I get something fabulous for someone, I don’t want to wait for a specific day to give it to them.  I just want them to have it and be as excited as I am about it.

This makes life around Christmas-time (and birthdays and anniversaries and weddings and any other gift-giving occasion…) super difficult.  Especially when you are writing a blog where you like to share your recipes and crafts and fun homemade things.

Brad is bad at surprises, too.  This is great for both of us because no one is really disappointed when Christmas Day comes and there is no big gift we just can’t wait to open under the tree.  And no one is super disappointed on their birthday when they know exactly what they’re getting.

We even got engaged a week or so before “planned” because Brad simply couldn’t wait until Christmas like he’d originally planned.  We had just come back from Ashley & Mike’s rehearsal dinner, we were talking about life and love, we were at my family’s house… And Brad just couldn’t wait for Christmas morning.  It was the perfect moment.  He proposed at 3AM on December 18, 2009.

It was absolutely perfect.  And I was incredibly surprised.  So I guess it worked either way.

So my terrible knack for revealing gifts too early is why I think I have found it so difficult to write a blog post this week.  I have a lot of things in the works, but they are mostly Christmas presents that I will be mailing all over the USA to people on our list.  And although I have hinted that the gifts this year are homemade (we are broke…) and delicious (we are really good cooks), I haven’t given away the ENTIRE surprise.

But here I go – in pictures.

I have to send them out tomorrow so I can have them out of my camera’s reach…

Drinking and Recycling, Folks

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Do you remember Anthropologie’s Earth day window displays? They used over 2.5 million wine corks and created some incredible art in all of their stores throughout the United States. They made designs, planters, streamers, animals… You name it. And it was fantastic. Especially for a wino like myself.  I can’t get enough.

Seriously, check out this video…

I’ve been thinking about those displays ever since April, and when we moved into our new place and were deciding on how to decorate I decided to give it a try. We needed a cork board.  And I love this idea.

Lucky for me, I work at a bar in a restaurant where we sell a lot of wine. And I saved a ton of corks last April for decorations at our wedding. But I felt very Green when I decided to put all that drinking to use. Because I believe in drinking and recycling, folks. California has obviously made me very environmentally conscious. I recycle the wine bottle and save the cork. And I always bring my reusable bags to the grocery store. Anything I can do to help, Mother Nature. Anything I can do to help…

Here’s how I created my own little version of the Anthro display. Part cork board and part art!

Brad and I headed over to the hardware store and picked up a few things. Three round wooden table tops, chalkboard spray paint (originally I want these to be multi-purpose chalkboard/cork boards, but things changed a bit), hanging fixtures, and wood glue.

First things first, I spray painted the table tops black. Primer then another coat.

Then, once the paint dried, I got to messing around with a design. I tried to separate the corks stained purple by red wines and use the colors in the designs. Here’s what I came up with.  No Anthropologie amazingness, but pretty freaking cool.

Using the wood glue, I glued on the corks, section by section, going back and putting pressure on the corks to make sure they were on tight.

I even added a few more corks in after dinner (and a few glasses of wine.. More corks, mnore cork crafts!). I feel like drunk craft inspiration is dangerous, but always adds character.

Then I started on the smaller boards. I went for a little different design here…

End result? We have homemade awesome wino art and our Shy Cherry has a nice little centerpiece. I probably won’t want to hang anything on them – at least for now – because they’re just so awesome to look at. But the corks are sturdy and can absolutely hold a few thumbtacks.

Now off to start saving corks again… Cheers!

Make Your Own Grapefruit Bitters

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The same night that I dragged Brad out to the paint store and we painted our dining room Shy Cherry, I was feeling ambitious.  In addition to wearing a ridiculous painting outfit, I felt like throwing together another infusion for my Mixology Monday collection. I had a few grapefruit lying around, so I decided to get back to what really got me started me on this infusion kick. Cocktail Bitters.

Cocktail Bitters are what bartenders call the salt and pepper of the cocktail world. You can make a Manhattan or an Old Fashioned without it, but it would be like eating a steak that hadn’t been seasoned at all. You can maybe tell it’s a good piece of steak, but there could be so much more flavor if the chef hadn’t skipped that one step. Bartenders, learn how to use your bitters!!

They were most popular in cocktails before Prohibition, when many different varieties were widely available. It was a main ingredient in the popular cocktail of the time, which was simply liquor, bitters, sugar and a very little amount of water.  Sounds pretty good, right?  But in the second half of the 20th century, fruitier and sweeter drinks became more popular and that white Angostura bottle behind most bars was rarely used.

Enter Sex and the City and the Cosmopolitan. See you later, Pink Gin.

Bitters were once considered medicinal, but are now well known as digestifs and a mixologists’ secret weapon. In the 1800s, they were often given to sailors to cure seasickness. Some of my other favorite uses for bitters?

Hiccups
Take a lemon wedge and cover it in sugar. Top with a few drops of bitters. Suck on that for a minute and your hiccups should disappear. Trust me, it works.

Hangovers
Bitters have long been known for easing nausea. Next time you’ve had a few too many the night before and your stomach isn’t feeling too hot the next morning, add a few drops of bitters to soda water. Works like a dream.

My infusion curiosity was sparked by an article in Food & Wine magazine a few months ago about how Bitters were making a comeback and how you could make them at home. The recipes they gave were incredible mixes of cherry root and herbs and spices I’d never heard of and have no idea where to find, but my interest was piqued.

While I was brainstorming Pumpkin Spice Rum and Peppercorn Vodka, I was also on a quest to find a great bitters recipe. Bitters were something that maybe even Brad could enjoy a splash of in his soda water, so it would be an experiment I could actually share with him…

Using a recipe found on Chow, Brad and I got cooking.

Grapefruit Bitters:

You will need
1 medium grapefruit
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1 cup vodka
1 cup Campari
3/4 cup Sweet Vermouth

And an awesome Shy Cherry wall to take pictures against.  So. Much. Red.

Halve the grapefruit. Juice one half, keep the juice and throw away the rind. Coarsely chop the remaining half and save.

Combine sugar and water in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Stir until sugar dissolves, and let syrup simmer until it thickens slightly, about 2 minutes.


Add chopped grapefruit and cook until the grapefruit releases all its juice, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature.

Combine cooled grapefruit syrup (including chopped fruit), saved grapefruit juice, Campari, vodka, and sweet vermouth in a large container with a tightfitting lid. Stir well, cover, and refrigerate at least 1 hour before using.

And always let the dog feel like she’s helping….

Now Brad most definitely can’t drink this because it’s about 99.9% alcohol, but I’ve been sampling it on my own.  Best part about bitters?  You don’t have to wait a month to try them.

I am impatient when it comes to my booze.

All weekend I have been making myself Sparkling Grapefruit Cocktails and I’m looking forward to trying out a few news recipes tonight over at Mixology Monday at R+D. I feel like bitters are this simple little hidden gem that so many bartenders don’t take advantage of.  I’ll give you the scoop on what worked and what flopped tomorrow along with a couple of delicious recipes!

The Pumpkin Pie Martini

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Wondering how Mixology Monday went?

 

Well, it was delicious.  And I still have some Pumpkin Spice Rum left.  So come on by if you want one of these…

Pumpkin Pie Martini:

2 oz Pumpkin Spice Rum

1 1/2 oz Bailey’s Irish Cream

1/2 oz Domaine Canton Ginger Liqueur

Shake all ingredients over ice to chill.  Strain into martini glass.  Garnish with freshly grated nutmeg.  Yum.

 

I am also offering a Pumpkin Spice coffee if you’re chilly out here by the beach.  It will warm you up and put you in the holiday spirit!  If you’re making this at home, I would halve all of the above measurements and then fill with hot coffee.

A tip for coffee drinks.  Heat up the mug first with hot water for at least 30 seconds before pouring it out and mixing your drink.  It just helps keep the drink hot when adding the room temperature liquors.  Every degree counts on a wintery cold evening!

 

 

Deciding between Coffee Vodka and Peppercorn Vodka for next Monday…  Stay tuned!

I See a Red Room and I Want It Painted Shy Cherry

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I think you know you love your apartment when you start painting.  That is when you know you’re gonna be sticking around for a bit.  Especially when you paint a room red.  That’s commitment.  Because, let’s face it, that’s never gonna get painted with enough coats to get it back to the boring white the rest of the apartment is.  When you move out you have some serious work ahead of you.

I guess I also know plenty of people who have painted their apartments because they DIDN’T love it.  You know, to try to make it a bit more livable.  Take my sister’s creepy senior year college house.  A little bright green paint and some sweet curtains made that room awesome.  And not creepy at all.  Nice work, Nicki.

But I have never painted a room.  Probably because, as mentioned before, Brad and I don’t tend to stay put very long.  Seven apartments in four years?  Four broken leases. (We found suitable replacements EVERY time.  We are still good tenants!)

We were apartment commitment-phobes.

But this apartment is different.  I really, really love it.  So yesterday I convinced Brad to go to the paint store with me and spend our night off together painting our dining room.

We showed up at the paint store knowing we wanted red.  And I insisted that we get a color with a food name.  That’s a reasonable request for a chef and a foodie painting their dining room, right?

The red genre turned out to be full of foods.  No problem here.

Chili peppers, crabs, tomatoes, lobsters, beets, raspberries, apples… A lot of foods are red.  We almost went “Rhubarb” until we found “Shy Cherry”.  Who can resist Shy Cherry?

For some reason we Googled “Shy Cherry” and found this cute little shy guy.  Shy Cherry was it.

So we found our perfect food paint color and then let the guy mix it up.  This is when I got a little silly.  Don’t give me ten minutes to do nothing in a paint store.  I’ve already gone through all the ridiculous paint names.  Now I’m gonna move on to the hardware part of the store.  Brushes, sponges, hats, sanders, and… painting suits.

I found a very affordable painting outfit to ensure that I would be paint free at the end of our adventure as well as look incredible glamorous the entire time.  And although Brad thought I was crazy, I knew looked great.

It was a bit hard to smile with those googles on.  Makes me feel for happy scientists.  It can’t be easy to be them.

Then, just for good measure, I tried out some dance moves.

Most absolutely dance worthy.  Best $8 I’ve ever spent.

Oh, we did a little bit of painting, too.  I even got fancy and paired my red paint with red wine.

Appropriate!

By the end of the night we had a dining room that is not shy at all.  With only a few little mistakes that need covering up.  And one trash bag full of red stained paper towels and floor coverings that only mildly made it look like we had just murdered someone in our apartment.

Oh, and because I love food and a girl’s gotta eat, Brad then made me the most amazing Shrimp and Grits EVER.  With a chorizo sauce and cilantro.  I make a mean Shrimp and Grits, and I will never make it again because now I know Brad’s is 658689680 times better than mine.  Truth.

My contribution was whisking the Cheddar Cheese into the Grits, drinking more red wine, and wearing my paint outfit most of the rest of the night.  I think I did a great job.  And our dining room looks incredible.  Thanks, Shy Cherry.

Happy Brad and Kelly day off!!