Pinteresting: DIY Air Fresheners

So as I've mentioned before, I'm *ahem* slightly addicted to Pinterest. Oh, just a total of 22 boards and over 1,300 pins, not addicted at all, I CAN QUIT ANYTIME I WANT.

I say this with a small amount of annoyance because while I have all these great pins, I've yet to try most of them out! So since I have all this free time on my hands for now, I'd like to try at least one new thing from one of my MANY Pinterest boards out.

This week is actually kind of busy; I have some things going on that I need to prepare for, so I wanted to pick something easy to try out for the first round, and with a high likelihood of success. So I found a pin on my Housewifery board for air fresheners made from fruit and herbs.

Source: theyummylife.com via Sammi on Pinterest

I decided to go with the "Williams-Sonoma Scent", which consists of lemons, rosemary, and vanilla extract; I used the miniature slow-cooker method, since I have a handy-dandy Mini-Dipper.

The original "recipe" is for 3 sprigs of fresh rosemary, 2 lemons, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract. The changes I made based on cost/necessity/size of mini-dipper: I used baby lemons (2 babies for every 1 regular size) 'cuz they were on sale for 10/$1; I could only fit in 2. I couldn't find fresh rosemary at the grocery store, so I threw in about a half-teaspoon of dried. The mini-dipper only fit about 1.5 cups of water. With all this half-ing of the original recipe, I figured it would be best to half the vanilla extract - and I figured right, 'cuz the extract is STRONG.

My verdict: It's subtle and it's nice! Every time I breathe in deep, it smells like either lemon or vanilla, neither of which is bad! As you can see, mine's not NEARLY as pretty as the website's thanks to using dried rosemary (which isn't really a part of the scent). I also like that it's all natural stuff, so I'm not adding chemicals into the air AND I can still re-use the mini-dipper for food stuff, too (my personal favorite use so far: chocolate fondue!). Plus using the slow-cooker method means I don't have a super-hot stove-top burning all day and posing a possible fire risk; slow-cookers don't burn hot enough to be a danger (although naturally I keep all possibly flammable stuffs away from it just in case, because duh).

Edited to add: Once it gets simmering after about 3 hours, the rosemary kicks in, the scents all combine and it smells HEAVENLY. Oh muh guh. Only downside is that it only really smells heavenly in the kitchen - the rest of the place is very subtle but clean-smelling. So I need to figure out how to make the WHOLE house stink good, not just the kitchen (although I'm not complaining when I walk by the kitchen - yum!).

This was perfect: easy, nice-smelling, and it makes me feel like a housewife. Now to find another Pinteresting project!

When My Back Gets Better...

My back is feeling MARGINALLY better (and regardless of its status, I'm still going into work tomorrow *sigh*), but it's just painful enough that I decided to stay home and rest it rather than attend the all-day poker/Super Bowl party our friend had (The Hubs went, of course, because his team was playing for the first time since he was a KID! Unfortunately, it didn't end well for his team). So my day was super-boring - 3 days straight at home=SUPER BORED OMG. Work will be a RELIEF. (Plus we have a bunch of furlough days next week so I just need to make it until Friday if my back's being a huge jerk.)

Also, tomorrow is my volleyball league's last game - I've missed the last two and I still don't think I can play. *sigh* I'm going to go watch/grab a drink with them afterwards, 'cuz this is my only season playing with them as they're playing ultimate frisbee next season. =( Figure it's better to at least say goodbye in person than avoid the game. But since the next season starts in 2 weeks and this back is taking 2+ weeks to heal, I'm avoiding next season and will join up again in summer. Still, SO FRUSTRATING. Hopefully I will get myself in better shape by the next season. Just more disappointment to add to the recent ones. :(

So to motivate myself to get happy and get better, here's a list of stuff I plan to throw myself into when my back is feeling better:

• Valentine's Day! I actually had enough personal money to surprise my husband with a nice V-day activity (which will benefit me also) - our local minor league hockey tickets against the SF Bulls (which feeds into the SJ Sharks)! I wish I could afford Sharks tickets, but gas + time to get down there alone make the cost prohibitive, let alone tickets for the cheap seats! Hopefully it's the though that counts. This doesn't include making his favorite meal for Valentine's day itself (the game is the Saturday afterwards); Valentine's Day is a big deal for us because it was our first date (cliche', I know) and I made his favorite meal on that date. :)
• I might also make some V-day cards for my grandmas, as I like to do. :) I'll certainly have the time with the furlough break, whoo-hoo!
• Making our dining room table an actual table. It's a clutter catch-all, and I'd like us to start taking time to eat at our table together. That means I need to make it more appealing to eat there. :)
• Cleaning up my craft area/FINALLY putting away our (artificial) Xmas tree. Yes, it's still up. Yes, we're lame. HEY, my back's been out!
• Catching up on our laundry because OMG IT'S INSANE. 

Aside from laundry, these are all things I'm looking forward to. I just need my back to STOP BEING A BITCH DAMMIT. ARGH.

Summer projects 2012

Ok, first off, holy crap HOW IS IT JUNE ALREADY?

It feels like the year is flying by, and I still can't believe how fast it went. Is that just a thing as one gets older, we lose all sense of time? Or do the days just stretch out so long that we lose sight of them until they've passed and accrued into months and years?

Anyway, I'm not here to wax poetic, I'm here to plan projects. Main reason being right now I have very little coming up, job postings are already drying up *sigh*, and I need SOMETHING to distract me other than daily housework. Seriously, I suck as a housewife - I'm getting better, but man oh man it's a chore to make me do chores. Yet when I re-purpose the idea as a "project", it somehow gets done. *shrug* Don't know how or why, but I'm going to run with it.

Last summer my project was decorating our living room, dining area, and bedroom walls. This wasn't too much fancy stuff, just lots of framing free artwork from the internets, personal pictures, and hanging my own canvas/shadowbox collages to dress up the joint. Whatever, it worked, I was able to do it for relatively cheap, and it really added motivation to keeping our home cleaner for both The Hubs and myself, because we finally LIKED where we lived and wanted to keep it looking pretty.

So aside from finding a job, what else can I do to occupy my time so I feel I have worth and don't go insane? Well, I finally figured out what I wanted to work on, and it's actually two things that should be relatively cheap and fun to do as well!

Project #1: Get the pantry/kitchen in order.

You guys, our pantry is a disaster. Like, there are designated shelves for stuff, but it's still packed with crap because when I think of "cleaning", the one area I rarely consider is the pantry. So there's near-empty boxes of stale crackers and spices I used once that we need to get rid of, like, YESTERDAY. Then I would like to find an organization system to get the pantry in order... I'm still debating if the pantry will stay a pantry for goods, or change it over to housing pots/pans/plates, or a mixture of the two. We have a TINY kitchen, where counter space is at a premium, and I have an awful lot of stuff that needs to be stored SOMEWHERE that our tiny cabinets can't quite house. Switching out the pantry and cabinet functions (even if it's just a couple) might be just the way to go... I dunno, still deciding. So here's the plan for dealing with the pantry:

1. Purge. Throw out the expired/stale/carbs-I-can't-eat-anyway crap out!
2.  Decide on organization and designate. Ultimately, I want each shelf to have a specific purpose, and the best way to go would be to use the open-the-door-THERE-IT-IS visibility of our big pantry (Which, seriously, was one of the major things that made me go OMG THIS APARTMENT IS PERFECT, it's RARE to have such a large closet/pantry in one bedrooms where I'm from). Once I get it purged, I think it'll be clear to me what I should do with it, and I'm thinking that most likely it'll be turned into more of a storage space for pots/tupperware than for spices/food. Might serve my tiny kitchen space better. I'll update as I work on it!

Project #2: Decorate some more!

Yes, there is still more decorating I want to do. Not a ton, but it's something to do that will make me happy.

The funny thing is that the reason we didn't decorate for so long is that for most of my life, I've moved around. I'm not an army brat, but I am a child of 3 divorces. The longest I've lived somewhere since I was 10 was 3 years... until The Hubs and I moved in together. We've been in our apartment almost 6 years now... but it took almost 5 for me to realize that we should FINALLY decorate! We're hoping to move in the next year or two, but since we'll most likely be here for a little while longer, might as well finish the decorating job.

There's not a lot I want/need to do. Only two projects, really.

1. The big blank wall in the living room - in my decorating spree last summer, the only thing I could not figure out was what the hell to do with the shared wall between the apartments. It's just this big blank space, and it stymied me. I think I have an idea that would work:

   

   Click the link to go to the site!

   Obviously my version will not be for a nursery, nor am I decorating with an adorable baby girl. (At least not yet ;D.) But this would be a cute way to fill up a lot of the empty space without overwhelming the living room, I think! Not to mention it's certainly reasonable, cost-wise. I'll use fabrics in browns, soft pinks, and pale yellows with soft gold-painted letters.
2. The Dining table - I've had this project in my head forever and I've got all the pieces to complete it, but I just haven't gotten around to it. My table is this fabulous 50's-diner style piece that I loooove, but I've been wanting to make it nice so we're not tempted to use it as a storage piece as we tend to do. (Us eat at the table? Whaaaa?). So I want to slap a tablecloth on it (a nice white cotton one, simple) that I might need to make myself 'cuz the dimensions of the table are weird. Then I want to finish my cute table runner that I'm making out of dollar-store dishtowels (seriously, it'll be SUPER-cute and so easy), and a centerpiece out of this awesome thrift store bowl I bought that looks like a lemon cut in half with white paper flowers and fake lemons I found. Since my kitchen/dining room decor is lemon/lime with turquoise and silver accents, it'll look SO CUTE. Plus maybe it'll make us eat at the table more often! :D

I also want to finish overhauling this cute straw-like handbag I have that was given to me by a friend who didn't want it - I meant to finish it last summer, and I got as far as fixing some torn seams. I'd like to add some bright yellow and orange fabric flowers to it to dress it up.

Figuring out my summer projects actually makes me happy and really excited for the summer, which is a nice change from the dread I usually experience. ;) It'll be a good distraction that benefits more than myself. Plus it'll give me something to blog about! Yays all around!

The Holiday Trinity: Xmas Decorations, Including an Easy Xmas Wreath Tutorial!

So, I love Christmas. Like, love love LOOOOOVE it. I wanna make out with it. I wanna gay-marry it in NYC, that's how much I love it. Not for religious reasons, though I do love that it's all about showering loved ones with gifts and celebrating the end of the year with your family and loved ones. Peace on Earth and Good Will Towards Men, baby.

What adds to this year's excitement is also the fact that this is the first year in a while where I've really wanted to decorate. Previous years have been either because I was too busy working as a teacher to give a crap (and by the time you're on vacation and CAN ACTUALLY CARE, it's the week before Xmas so what's the point if it's only going to be up for a week), or I was too depressed because I was unemployed to give a crap. Weird cycle, I know.

Well, this year I'm unemployed but REFUSING to be depressed about it (and I'm mostly successful in this refusal, I'm proud to say), so I had the time and energy to devote to it. This is probably the most decked-out I've had ye olde apartment, and since I'm doing it on a restricted budget, I'm ok with that.

We actually talked about getting a REAL tree this year, which would be either of our first time's having one on our own (i.e., without our parents doing all the work), and while you can get them for a reasonable price at the supermarket, I saw a fake 6" at Big Lots with pre-installed lights for the same price as the supermarket trees - and figured since we'd still need all the crap for the real one, let's just get the fake one that doesn't require a tree stand and constant watering. We bought some cheap ornaments while there, and got out all of our other Xmas stuff (which has now accumulated to a point where I needed a bigger container for all the decorations [with some of my Fall stuff thrown in] and a separate one just for gift wrapping stuff) and Xmas-bombed the apartment.

I only forced The Hubs to humor me for the actual tree piecing-together/decoration; we put on Christmas music and got to work. The best moment is when we plugged in the tree to make sure we'd put it together correctly, and the lights came on; my face broke out in the hugest grin because as a kid, we always used the multi-colored lights and it was so amazing to see them for some reason, that little bit of magic came back for just that millisecond. I happened to glance at The Hubs right after, and he had this sweet smile he gets on his face when he sees I'm delighted. It was a special moment for me.

For this year's tree, I stuck to red, silver, gold, and green sphere ornaments, with some gold-edged (fake) crystal ones put near lights for extra sparkle; I also put up special-meaning ornaments I have, like the ones my ex-stepmom makes for gifts most years (she takes clear ones and decorates them with glitter and ribbon each year, and usually that fake-glitter snow inside - they're really gorgeous!) and my "baby ornaments" that my mom gave to me when she decided she didn't want to put up trees anymore.

The blue china ornament is from our honeymoon; the green w/ white decoration is my baby ornament, the gold angel is also from when I was little, and I bought the pearl M at Michael's a while ago ('cuz our last name starts with M)

Other decorations include a little pastiche of ornaments near the front door (my mom painted the 3-piecers!) that didn't fit in the tree's "theme" this year; some cute tealight lamps and another ornament that's too heavy to be on the tree on the bookshelf; and a welcome mat and wreath for the door.

The "pastiche" - the Snowman ornament actually has a music box that plays "Frosty the Snowman"!

The tealight lamps and the too heavy ornament with a secret...

... it's also a music box! I love the little skating scene inside. It plays "We Wish You a Merry Christmas"

The front door wreath!

That wreath, btw? I "made" that. "Made" meaning bought a wreath and added ornaments to it as I saw fit. (STILL COUNTS.) The best part is that I did it in such a way that I'll be able to keep using the base wreath but change up the colors/ornaments every year! It was easy, took me an hour, and I took pictures so you can do it, too! Click the "Read More" link to find out how...