Monday, October 31, 2011

Halloween 2011

Obligatory vomit pumpkin
Wart-ridden pumpkin


Loot! Kids loved the glow stick bracelets :)

My favorite thing were these jack o' lantern paper bags that we made. Boyfriend cut out stencil-faces and taped them to the bags (yes, I got him to do crafts!). I spray painted around the faces and lit them up like lumenarias. I LOVED them!


I was inspired by this pin as well as the Pinterest Challenge by Young House Love/Katie Bower :)

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Beet Cake

I get this weekly veggie box with an assortment of new fruits and vegetables that I normally don't buy myself. This week it had beets, to which I said: WTF do I do with beets?  Thankfully I found this Beet Cake recipe. The recipe says "don't knock it 'till you try it". So I tried it. And it rocked.

The batter was an awesome pink color, which got me totally excited for the end result...


Sadly I guess the pink color cooked out and I was left with ordinary-looking cake.


Ordinary but DELICIOUS. Tastes like a cousin to carrot cake and I bet it would be amazing with cream cheese frosting.


Try it!

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Yucky Closet Makeover

WARNING: On a scale from 1-10, the interest level of this makeover is about a 3. That's only slightly more interesting than sitting on the couch watching "Everybody Loves Raymond" and not doing the makeover at all. Scroll down at your own risk.

There's a reason it's been almost four weeks since we moved and several of our rooms still look like this:


I blame Hallway Closet.


Doesn't look too bad with those bright flashes, but that's some seriously scratched up 1950s lead paint in there!


And don't even get me started on that floor. I don't think it's been cleaned since they removed the original carpeting (I found a thread of it stuck to the inside corner. It was maroon).


Oh yeah, here are the shelves we took out. Sagging particle board with peeling contact paper, yum.


And now the after (let me just warn you that I could not properly white-balance these photos to save my life):


We bought some pine boards for the shelves (which we had cut at the store) and used the leftover sample paint from Sherwin Williams to paint the walls a nice light gray. The shelves were painted with SW's trim and door paint in a nice clean white (apparently it has enamel in it which makes it super durable). 


This one is more color-correct thanks to *twitch* camera flash.


Here's the floor. I was on my hands and needs scrubbing that shit with a sponge and it's still slightly darker than the rest of the wood floor in the house. Whatever.


Time for a budget breakdown!
Paint: $6 for sample paint; already had white paint
Shelves: $27
...Yep, only $33.
And then I messed it all up by going to IKEA and spending, like, $100 on closet organization accessories. Damn you, IKEA, and your cute but deceptively-affordable storage solutions!

P.S. Holy crap, I almost forgot to point out the gray walls in the hallway! We painted all that ugly yellow this weekend and it looks AMAZING. You can see the unpainted baseboard there that was the original color. More pics to come.