Matching Flower Pots: Variations on a theme!

Last year I did some container gardening, with a whole bunch of pots on my back deck.  It was pretty fun and I wanted to do it again this year, but I also wanted this year's set of plantings to help make my back porch/deck a bit classier.  Last year was for experimentation, but this year is for the cool version, or so I told myself.  I figured that the best--read that cheapest and easiest--way to do this was to color coordinate my flower pots.  Since last year I had a turquoise seat cushion and matching turquoise holders for my movable lights, this seemed like a legit choice for a color scheme. 

So, I went to the home improvement store and bought a can of ridiculously bright turquoise spray paint.  I went with a glossy Rust-oleum paint that is advertised to adhere to plastic and work well outside.  Then I rounded up the planters and pots that I wanted to use, spread them out on a plastic drop cloth in my garage (it was raining outside) and started painting.  Oh, yeah.  And I decided that it would be super-fun to have my tomato cages match my planters, so I painted them, too.  

To get a nice, even finish, I needed at least two coats of paint and a few pieces needed three.  I also painted the sides and bottoms first, then flipped them up and painted the tops and inside edges.  All this crazy painting meant that I ended up going back to get a second can of spray paint.  I forgot to write down the name of the color, but luckily the one I picked was such a wild and notable color that I didn't have to worry about getting the wrong color of turquoise on that second store trip!  

  

I painted almost all of the pots/planters, with the exception of two of my four smaller pots that were a darker turquoise already. I left these their original color to add what I'm thinking of as a "sophisticated color contrast."  And then when I think that, I laugh inside.  :)  

After the base coat was done, I decided to add some more "sophisticated color contrast" [hehehe!] to a few other pots.  These were the terra cotta and plastic pots and saucers for my hanging plant holder.  For these, I bought a sample of a contrasting color of paint.  I could have gone to a craft store, but those are far away.  For less than the price of the gas for a round trip drive to a craft store plus the cost of a small bottle of craft paint ($3.75 to be more exact), I bought a small jar of lighter turquoise Behr Satin Gloss house paint.  I used that to paint some designs on the terra cotta pots (some free-hand and some with painters tape) and saucers, and to paint one plastic pot completely.  Fun note, painting the plastic using a sponge brush made it more textured and suddenly it looked like a ceramic pot, rather than a cheap $1 plastic version.  Cool, huh?  

After the designs were done, I coated the pots and saucers with 3 coats of indoor/outdoor glossy varnish (left-over from use in my Coaster and Glitter Shoes projects, actually). Then they were ready for planting.  Here are a few pictures, but you can see even more of my new and *very* sophisticated porch decor in my up-coming post about this year's container gardening.     

Mint Julep Bars: Bourbon-pecan blondies with white chocolate-mint-bourbon frosting

The most recent Nom-Nom Food Challenge at work was mint themed, selected by Sonja, the winner of the last Golden Spatula challenge.  As soon as I announced the theme people started asking about mint drinks: both juleps and mojitos.  In fact, the topic of mint-flavored drinks was so popular that I added a column on the the entry spreadsheet entitled "Team Julep or Team Mojito?"  In reality, I just think everyone wanted to have a giant happy hour!

After the initial "Can we drink at work?!" questions (Umm...well, no.  You still can't.  Sorry about that?)  the early suggestions of entries seemed to imply that many people would be making things that were chocolate-mint.  I decided to look for something that matched one of the drink themes.  I stumbled across this recipe from Good Housekeeping for Mint Julep Blondies.  They looked pretty awesome, but I decided to up the specialness-factor by upping the bourbon content, so 1 Tbsp became nearly 2 1/2 Tbsp.  I also fiddled with a few things: notably a bit less salt, swapped the peppermint for regular mint extract in the frosting (Juleps are made with spearmint, not peppermint, after all), and put both a bit more mint and some bourbon in the frosting.  Result is pretty addictive and even initial testers who weren't huge mint fans enjoyed them, too.  (And one person who is a bourbon fan declared them to be "f@#%ing amazing!")  I was feeling pretty good about my chances of reclaiming the Golden Spatula.

Regretfully, I didn't end up winning the challenge....but the recipe is still a keeper.  The blondie part, in particular, is delicious.  I think if I make them again, I'll leave the extras out of the chocolate and will just drizzle melted white chocolate over the top.


Ingredients for Blondies 

Thanks for sharing the good stuff, Dad!

• 1 cup flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• scant 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 6 tablespoons melted butter or margarine (I used the second, because that's what I had in the fridge)
• approximately 1 3/4 cup of packed brown sugar  (I used a 1 cup measure and totally estimated, it was probably a bit more than the 1 3/4 cup.)
• 2 eggs, lightly beaten 
• a bit less than 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• a bit more than 2 Tablespoons bourbon (I used a very nice Evan Williams Single Barrel barrelled in oak for 10 years.  Yum!)
• 1 cup coarsely chopped pecans

Ingredients for Frosting

• 1 cup white chocolate chips
• 1 1/2  teaspoons vegetable oil
• 1 1/2 teaspoons mint extract (NOT peppermint, but mint, which is a combo of spearmint with a little peppermint)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons bourbon

Directions for Blondies

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Line a 9x13 inch cake pan with parchment paper.
3. In a small- or medium-sized bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt.
4. In a different bowl, whisk together melted butter, brown sugar, bourbon, vanilla, and eggs. 
5. Add flour and pecans, and stir/whisk together.  
6. Spread batter in prepared pan.
7. Bake 20 to 25 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean-ish (though not necessarily completely clean).  Mine definitely took the full 25 minutes.
8. Let cool.

Directions for Frosting

1. Melt white chocolate with oil, mint, and bourbon in the microwave. (Slowly, at a low power, stirring until smooth.)
2. Spread on cooled blondies.

Note: The liquids cause the white chocolate to seize up.  It makes the melted chips more of a frosting consistency in the finished product, but it also makes it incredibly hard to spread.  As I said above, if the mint addition isn't super important, I'll probably just drizzle melted white chocolate on these in the future.

I know they look a bit homely, but they are so tasty!

Blog Anniversary!

Exactly one year ago I started this blog to keep track of my personal projects, baking experiments, etc.  It isn't private (which, if you are anyone but me and reading this, should be obvious) but it being public isn't the point at all.  In fact, at the time I just felt like I needed to record things so that I could prove to myself that I can--and do--do things, sometimes really well.  Putting these things out in the world rather than in a journal of some kind was just a way to share with a few people.

One year later, the original impulse is working! It's incredibly good for me to see some of the non-job things I've done all in one place--even if they were small and/or silly things.  And especially in a year that has been incredibly challenging in all sorts of ways.  

Moral of the story: the greatest pleasures in life are the little things we do.  So, do things that make you happy and give you a sense of accomplishment... And then remember those things and how they make you feel! 

Front Garden: 2015 Edition

My townhouse has a small front garden area.  When I moved in, it had a bush and 4 hostas in front, and a clematis climbing up a little trellis in a rocked in the back area with my air conditioning unit.  Since I moved in, I've had potted plants out front on my steps, trimmed the bush (well, my dad trimmed it for me, actually), and added a little bit of rock on the side closest to the steps.

Rock and mulch look good for a while, but they just seem to sink into the ground over time.  Which means it has to be replaced periodically.  This spring, it was obvious that I needed a bunch of rock and to add some mulch.  And since I was at it, I figured I would add some annual plants, too.  Luckily for me, Menards was having a big sale that included annuals, the white rock I wanted, and a bunch of other things.  

I cleaned out leaves from the back corner, then weeded, and then added some mulch in the front and white garden marble in the back.  Originally I bought 3 bags of rock and 1 of mulch, but I had to go back and get another 2 of rock. They are awfully heavy, but don't seem to cover very much ground.  Since the rock was only on sale through yesterday, though, I had to do it the same day. Nothing like a sale to motivate a purchase and some action on a needed project!

I also added 2 rubber paver stones, one on each side, and put a small urn-shaped pot on top of each one.  (I bought the urns on clearance last year at the end of the season.)  I planted "spikes," yellow rose moss, and purple petunias in them.  Hopefully they will fill in nicely and add color to the front of the house throughout the summer.

The final touches were:

• a hanging pot of purple and yellow pansies on a shepherd's crook hanger (both purchased at a significant savings from the Menard's sale)
• my weird little, plastic hedgehog outdoor figurine
• a solar-powered decorative light globe
• the larger rocks previously located by the air conditioner 

Everything looks so much better: neater, cleaner, and more home-y.  This is my first spring/summer house project, and I think it turned out nicely.  Here are some before and after images:

Glitter Shoes... Let me repeat: GLITTER SHOES!

I had a pair of high heels that I always really liked--comfortable, cute shape, nice height--but were a little torn up.  Specifically, the insides were fine, but the heel parts had been damaged by my clumsiness.  They were badly gauged and scratched, and since they were made of a synthetic material there was not really any good way of repairing them.  They looked terrible, but I still loved them.  

I looked online for ideas and found a lot of neat images and instructions for adding glitter to shoes.  Glitter makes everything awesome, so I decided to try this myself.  Best case, I'd be able to wear my cute shoes again.  Worst case, my unusable shoes would still be unusable.     

I first took the top layer of the heels off the shoes, so that the surface would be even.  Then I very, very carefully taped up the shoes so that the heel guards and actual shoes wouldn't get any glitter on them.  

Since my chosen method involved modpodge (because I already had some, from when I made the tile coasters), I mixed up some fine glitter in some modpodge.  Basically, I added glitter, stirred it up, then added some more glitter and stirred it up.  Then I painted a thin layer onto the heels of the shoes.  Just like always happens with modpodge, it went on white, but the modpodge dried clear...leaving the glitter shiny and the surface pretty smooth.  

I added 3 full layers of the glitter mixture, letting the layer beneath dry before painting over it.  This was enough to completely cover the black of the shoe underneath.  

Once the layers were all dry, I carefully took off the tape.  The heels themselves looked really good.  However, because the original shoes were black with pink accent stitching, the silver heels looked a little weird overall. I probably should have picked either a pink or a black glitter.  Oh, well.   

With the shoes looking strange, I decided to just go big and glitter the shoes completely. (Isn't cool how I just used "glitter" there as a new kind of verb...you know "I glittered the shoes," rather than "the stars glittered in the sky.")  I didn't add any more tape back on and just tried to do an even and neat job with painting on the modpodge/glitter mixture.  I did three coats to match the heels and made sure to get in and around the little decorative embellishment of the front of the shoes.  I also used a toothpick to clear the holes that originally were riveted holes on the shoes.  

After all the layers were applied and finished drying, I added two coats of a glossy indoor/outdoor sealer on it.  This is to make the shoes more waterproof (because modpodge isn't waterproof) and to make the final texture of the shoes really smooth.  

Here are some photos of the final product.  My shoes are certainly wearable again, which is great!  They are also really glittery, without being rough or risking any glitter flaking off on clothes or making a path of glitter when I walk.  And sample wearings around the house seem to show that the coatings are flexible enough to bend and work with the shoes as I wear them walking around.  

I think this is a great technique and I may have to try this again to make some Wizard of Oz-style ruby slippers at some point.  I also think it would be cool to do some shoes that are modpodged with stuff from comics, books, or magazines.