Returning to Life

Please excuse my absence. I've been away all week visiting my family at my sister and brother-in-law's new home in Connecticut. It's been a blast, albeit exhausting experience. To top it off, my camera is still D-E-D, so I'll have to see if I can capture some photos from her camera. (Like how I did that there? ;) ) So, I'll be back to the grind soon...

Plans for a Thanksgiving Table-scape Even Martha Would Love

My sister, who's hosting our family's Thanksgiving "dinner" at her new house this year in Connecticut, asked me to help her decorate the table. (Dinner is in quotes because we usually eat around 2, which to me screams LUNCH.) I feel like Martha Stewart on a shoestring budget. Even she couldn't handle this much planning.

Since I'm flying in from San Diego this Friday, I thought I'd start thinking about a few things that we could whip up really quickly to make a beautiful, but easy table. And since I have a few things in my decoration repertoire already, I thought I'd gather some stuff while I"m packing tonight (if I can remember).

Here are the things I already have and will be bringing with me from SD:

• twine
• bouquet of fake fall leaves
• bag of ribbons
• tissue paper
• plane paper bag
• khaki table runner

Things I will not be bringing due to size and fragility or just ridiculousness of the prospect of traveling that far with it:

• glass hurricane and jars
• silk leaf place mats
• candles
• pumpkins haha
• paint and/or glitter
• hot glue gun

My plan was if she's really serious about this table-scape, then when I get there, we can always get some fresh fall fruit like grapes or pears to brighten up the look. Or maybe good ol' Connecticut will have some pine cones or acorns on the ground ready for the taking! Plus, I'm sure she has a few bowls or vases that will work. The women isn't incompetent; she's just taking care of twins and doesn't have the time to plan the dinner AND decorate. Plus, I think she's being nice to me since she knows I like this kind of stuff ;)

Lace Epaulette DIY

My inspiration for today's DIY comes from dELiAs. I used to have a slightly unhealthy obsession with anything and everything dELiAs. I was also 15, so there's that ;) This number is called the Kassandra Crochet Cardigan, and it is the cutest thing ever.

However, I don't really have the budget right now to just run out and get every cardigan my heart desires (I am known in my group of friends as the one who wears cardigans, so that would be a lot for me). Instead, I figured I'd try to recreate the look with a black cardigan I recently received as a hand-me-down from my friend Suzie. It's the only black cardi I have, though, so the goal was to recreate the look when I choose...as opposed to permanently. I think it will make more sense when you see how I accomplished the look.

I started with some left-over lace and black felt from two previous DIY projects (an earring holder and the batty napkin rings).

Side note: I LOVE the military look. I've always loved it (and yes, I loved Alanis Morrissette before she became popular too...look where that got me) :) I have an army green jacket from 2003 that I still wear, I have an army green cargo skirt that was handed down from my sister in high school, which I just recently had to part with due to the fact that I no longer fit in it. Obvi. Anyway, back to the point: I decided this would be a great way to incorporate more military chic into a work outfit. So, lace epaulettes it is!

To start, I cut out a rectangle of felt 2x4". I wanted to use the felt as the base for the epaulettes. It would give some structure and a place to hide whatever material I was going to use to attach them to my black cardigan. Also, I have a fear of burning myself with the hot glue and was imagining ten blister-covered fingers if I tried to just hot glue the edges of the lace without something in between those two layers. That's just scurry.

Once I got the rectangle cut out, I folded the felt in half and chopped off the edges of just the top side. This gave me the perfect epaulette shape. Perrrrfect (sorry, I'm a bigger dork tonight than normal). Now that I had one felt shape ready to go, I merely just used it as a pattern to trace on another scrap of felt. Now, I'm set with one epaulette for each shoulder.

The best way I figured to make this work was to just place each piece of felt onto the lace and eye about a quarter-inch boarder around the edge. One thing that I found out was that even though the bottom of my felt was lined up with the bottom of the lace, this didn't necessarily mean that the pattern on the lace was straight. So, take my advise to make sure that if your lace has a pattern, you match THAT and not the edges. (This will save you the headache of trying to match up the pattern with very little excess to work with. Also, I might recommend more excess lace around the edge. I was on the verge of too little lace, which made it that much scarier to work with the hot glue.)Once you have the felt lined up with the pattern on the lace, put a thin bead of glue around the edge of one side of the felt. Fold over the lace and secure into the glue. I used a Pepsi bottle cap as a makeshift thimble to push the lace to further ensure that I wouldn't burn my fingertip. Paranoid, I know. I chose not to work around the epaulette, but instead glued one side and then it's opposite side. This helped to keep the lace from moving around and to make sure there was no excess lace bubbled once all edges had been glued in place.

After I had glued all of the edges down, I trimmed triangles of lace where excess stuck up at the corners. It's a bit like mitering the corners. Dab a bit more glue in the corners to secure the loose edges of lace, and you're done!The result:I secured them on the shoulders of my cardi with one pin under each epaulette. I played around a bit with the placement, deciding to put them a bit further on the front instead of the seams of my shoulders. This helped them stay flat, which also sort of held them in place a bit since the bumpy, dried glue grabbed the pelt of my semi-fuzzy sweater. Next time I might use two pins to keep them in place better. I also might try them on the edges of a jacket pocket (maybe aforementioned army-green jacket?). Anyway, what do you think? It's a bit fashion forward for my usual style, but I think it's just subtle enough to not look like a costume. Justin called me a captain on the way into work, and he was the only one who commented on it...not sure what that says or doesn't say, but hey, who cares, right? It was the journey not the destination! PS. You caught me in my office bathroom taking photos of my "new" cardi. Hope you don't mind ;)

Photos courtesy of dELiAs and me.

Pumpkin Carving DDIY (Don't Do It Yourself!)

This is sort of an anti DIY because (as Justin says) this project was an epic fail. I was inspired last night by Design*Sponge's Illustrated Pumpkin Carvings. They made these gorgeous pumpkins that I thought would work well for my post-Halloween but still want to play with pumpkins look. This is what they had:

Classy. Elegant. Dreamy. Well, unfortunately, my guy didn't turn out so well. He started out with the perfect shape. Sort of leaning back with a large surface area on the front to play around with. He had a great true pumpkin color (not that light orange some of the new ones have). But because the flesh was super thick, it was difficult to get the look I was going for. Not only was it hard to carve through him (the little saws I bought were too short and the knife I had was too thick), when I tried to scrape out some of the flesh to make my leaf, it just looked ridiculous. The amount of flesh that I'd have to remove to have any light shine through made it look like the opposite of a potato stamp, which just looks silly. Frankly, I'm embarrassed and don't want to show it. I'm semi-pouting over here ;)

So, the pumpkin was a big bust, although I put some hard work into it so I'll display it INSIDE (I don't want to tempt any teenagers in my neighborhood to put my pumpkin out of it's misery) somewhere until he starts to mold. Ugh. So sad. What was I thinking?!

On a brighter note, I had great success with my pumpkin seeds. They came out quite easily, AND I figured out how to clean them off pretty quickly. I think I saw a sieve in a picture on Young House Love during their pumpkin carving post. I wasn't quite sure why, but I thought I'd give it a go. Low and behold: Genius!

The hardest part about getting the seeds ready to eat is how to get those slimy orange strings off them. By pouring water over them in the strainer, I was able to clean off the gunk with little effort. The strings stuck to the mesh and did most of the work for me. I will definitely be using this method again next year.

As for cooking them, I just shimmied them out onto a foil-covered cookie sheet, sprinkled them with some EVOO, salt, and half with Old Bay. I threw them under the broiler for about 10 minutes, and WHA-la! I love that nutty smell! MMM. Can't wait to go home and munch on these guys.And here, friends, is the single easiest thing that I did all fall, which also turned out to be one of my faves:
I bought the twig and berries at Michael's for under $2 in mid-October. I think it was a getting-close-t0-Halloween sale, but I saw the potential to show this off for much longer than that! This baby will be sitting on my entry pony wall through Thanksgiving. She just screams effortless decor to me. What do you think?

Photos courtesy of design*Sponge and me.

Holiday DIY Inspiration

I'm still trying to figure out how to flow from pre-Thanksgiving into Christmas decor without being too obvious or boring. Since Justin and I are flying to my sister and husband's place in Connecticut for the first time this year, we won't be having Thanksgiving in San Diego. So I asked myself: What's the point in decorating for a holiday where I won't even be here to enjoy the DIYs?

The solution: Start planning NOW for Christmas decor. My parents will be in town and I'd love to have the house full of yule and cheer (or whatever it is they say) ;) In that vein, here are a few things that I'm LUERVING right now that I think might make the cut for the dual-holiday decor.

Gilded Log Centerpiece by Eddie Ross in Women's Day:

Thanks Glass by Young House Love: Fuzzy Christmas Stockings at Pier 1 (I need to find a DIY for these babies!):

Coffee Can Lanterns by Design*Sponge (If only I bought coffee in a can!):

I hope to make one or a few of these projects in the upcoming days. I want to get on that Thanks Glass ASAP so I can convince my boyfriend to play along ;) However, I think that we might discuss ours throughout the month as table discussion during dinner rather than waiting until the end of the month. We'll see! I do look forward to using this with my kids off in the distant future. (No plans for kids now!)

Final Halloween Showdown: DIY Decor

OK, now I know that it's already the first weekend in November, which means that Halloween 2010 has come and gone (seven times over by now). But, I had a few more things that I wanted to share about my Halloween decor before I take it down because I'm just that excited about it! This year, my Halloween pride and joy was my entryway decor: I got the idea from Young House Love's Halloween video. It's a little blurry, since I'm still working off my cell phone camera, but I thought I'd share it with you all before I take it down. (I just brought up the Halloween bin, so I figured it's now or never.)

I'll start from the top:
1. We had this ghoul on a stick thing for our front yard from a few years ago. Unfortunately, the stick broke (oh college kids), so all we had left was this broken man...I hung him up on our coat hook and love the way his hand sort of falls over the front of the mirror.

2. I changed my white candles for orange ones in my lanterns (purchased two years ago from Kohl's).

3. The top left square has a wooden skeleton that Justin and I found in our new garage two years ago. Pretty scary to just come across in your new house, but it's working quite well as a strong Halloween piece. In front of him is a glass box I received last year for Christmas from my boss's boss. It had chocolates in it, but we've long finished those. I hung onto the box and put in it a few bones from another old Halloween piece. It was a foam grave stone with little bones, but I didn't feel like decorating the front yard this year. It turned out to be a good idea, since Justin and I went to Big Bear, Calif. this Halloween weekend. We pretty much missed the whole holiday, which was sort of nice ;)
OK, back to the decor.

4. The top right square is a stack of black and red books that I already had. They have nice spooky titles to boot.

5. The middle square has a framed photo that I moved from the bookshelf. It's from a trip I took to Costa Rica in grad school: an angel leaning over a grave with her finger shhhhing passersby. I love it! There's also a black leaf from the afore-mentioned gravestone decor from years past. It's leaning up against the frame for a little extra spooky umph.

6. In the bottom left square is a single yellow flower in a clear bud vase.

7. Finally, in the bottom right square are my clear jars that I found at a local antique store. They're filled with wine corks. It's not exactly spooky, but I thought it fit with the whole old and used theme.

Hooray! I've shared my last Halloween thoughts with you for 2010! What I learned so far is that I need to start thinking about the next holiday a lot earlier than I did for Halloween. I don't think that I should get my Christmas decor up before Thanksgiving. Oh, heck no. I want to enjoy the moment while I'm in it, but also get some planning going so that I can hit the ground running, as they say.

By the time I really got into the swing of Halloween decor this year, I had only like two days left before the holiday! No bueno. So what that means is: 1. Finish my fall decor now (i.e. carve my pumpkin. I know, I know, but I think it will work with my fall plans), and 2. Start planning NOW for Christmas decor. My parents are coming into town for Christmas, so this year is going to be AMAZE-Balls (as Justin says).

Happy Belated Halloween and be safe when you "fall back!"

Pepper Project Banner

I'm new to this banner thing. Frankly, I'm SHOCKED that I have even figured it out as much as I have so far. That being said, if you have suggestions or constructive criticism on my banners, please feel free to add them here. At this point, I'm just playing around with photos to see what seems to work and what doesn't. I miss the mark on some parts, but hit it on others.

S'more Smorbrod, Please!

Not all projects at Pepper involve arts and crafts. In fact, last night I was aware of a very important project that needed to be solved ASAP...DINNER! Justin is usually the cook in our house, but because he'd already had a "snack" of left-over cardboard pizza (his words) he wasn't hungry. And since I'd left work around 6 o'clock, slaving over a hot stove just for me was the last thing that I wanted to be doing. Solution: Smorbrod.
In Denmark, they make smorbrod (pronounced s'more brawd)--little toasts covered in all sorts of different goodies--for dinner. I believe it's the Scandinavian version of the Spanish tapas. It's also the Pepper version of fast food ;) So with a grumbling tummy and tired feet, I went at it with some leftover bread from the book club, three Roma tomatoes, 1 clove of garlic, a few leaves fresh basil, EVOO, leftover feta cheese block also from the book club, Devil's food in a can, and Miracle Whip. While the bread toasted under the broiler, I mixed up some bruschetta and Devil's food--canned minced meat. I topped these suckers once the bread was golden brown and sat down to a quickie meal. ;) I would have been 100% happy with this project if I'd had one more topping option. I would have loved to try a chili cheese dog smorbrod with leftover chili, cheese, onions, and mini weenies (from book club Halloweenies). But the chili was bad, so I had to use the Devil's food on two out of the three toasts. I also thought tuna would have been nice, but I didn't want to open a brand new jar just for me. Maybe next time, I'll be more creative with what I find in the fridge, but for now, I'm happy with this quick dinner trick. Leftovers + bread = dinnertime in no time!

PS. In the book club post, I mentioned this bottle of Twisted Cabernet Sauvingnon. Here it is at the cabin we were visiting over the weekend. It matched perfectly with the Halloween decor...just like it did at the book club. This baby is just BEGGING to be opened and enjoyed!