Meowcellaney: Wallpaper Prep

HOUSE RANT WARNING!  You have been warned.  Continue at your own risk.

Who-da thunk?  Historically wallpaper paste, known commonly as "sizing," is made from Wheat Flour!  Well, now doesn't that just pose a bit of a dilemma.

See, I have this ceiling that I want to paper with a neat-o blown acrylic tin-look wallpaper.
Here's the ceiling:

Here's the wallpaper.

So, I'm reading instructions all over the webs and stuff.  Like, yeah, that's plaster.  Actually, I think it's horse hair lath.  My house took it's form somewhere between 1886 and 1900; the census data, deed, and city maps all disagree.  The deed says 1903, the maps give range from 1886-1908 since they weren't produced regularly, the census shows 13 people aged 2 - 52 living in this tiny 4 room dewlling during 1900.  So it appears to have been here by 1900, at least to some extent.  More research needed.  Regardless, though, the original wall stuff is still what composes the interior throughout.  I stripped these walls of their many many layers of paint and old paper, and primed, but that's just normal primer sealer.  Not wallcovering primer sealer.  I didn't know, when I painted, that there was a difference.  But it's sounding like that's less of a quandary when there's plaster in question than there would be with dry wall.  Outside of the redone bath, there is no drywall in this house.  So I'm pondering, because I wasn't really considering doing more priming.  I have to read the primer bottle again, from the primer I did get, need to find out exactly what I do have slathered up there.

Got the primer at Construction Junction when they still sold paint for $5 a gallon.  Oh how I miss that paint selection.  They say it was too costly to them to continue their salvaged paint sales.  My version of being low VOC and saving the earth stemmed from wanting to save money.  But when I thought about it more I realized that the used paint was going to give off it's VOC anyways, and then land in a landfill, so the fact that I was using it was decreasing the ecological foot print, and I was saving money too.  That's a good oops.  Did you know that if you take a sealable container to Home Depot, they will put paint tint in it for you for free?  So I can touch up the colors I have with paint tint at no cost.  The clerk looked at me really weird, but he handed it right over, with the blessing "if you really want it?"  They did the same for my mom on a distinctly separate occasion, and for a friend of my mom's whom she learned of this from, so there is a pattern of behavior here.

Except for the bad sound quality and goofy looking person, this is a pretty darned good tutorial.  However I bet he's just plain crazy for using sissors to trim the edges; I like the way lowes demonstrates trimming, instead.  So I need a straight edge trim guide.  Yes, you heard me!  There actually is a tool I don't already have.  OH MY!  (I also still don't own a monkey wrench.  I think I'm afraid of attracting monkeys.)

To re-prime or not to re-prime.  That is the question.  Whether tis nobler in the mind to... rely on the non-pourous nature of historic plaster, or to oppose the work I've thus far endeavored to bring more paint and risk ruining the painted surfaces I've created with new primer splatter.

Yup.  That is indeed the question.

More on this soon!

Earithia: Garden Insta-Jungle, also, Florida

Turns out this month is an all-time high for hits on my blog, which I think is pretty cool.  This whole making-it-easier-on-myself-to-post thing has been working out for keeping me more in the loop.  Also, if I get 5 more hits during August... then I clear 90 for the month!  Woah.  You guys and gals in Russia that are pinging my site totally rock my socks!  I've no idea how you found me, too cool.


So there's this nifty thing that happened recently, I got to spend 5 days at Clearwater Beach, Florida, and it was the most relaxing and wonderful thing during which no one could keep me out of the water.  Going right before school started was perfect since there was very little collegiate debochery.  What a laid back town!  I got a few very nice photos of our visit.

Causeway over the Gulf

 Funny little yellow footed bird was not shy

 Beach sun rise photo series

 Even a departing RAINBOW on my last day there

And on my return, I am overwhelmed by the sudden growth spurt in the garden!  It's a jungle, and it gave me no warning.

I didn't know a tomato plant could get 8 feet tall!  Woah!  These are hillbillies gifted from a friend.

The Sunchokes went bonkers, what a sight, I can't wait for them to bloom!  There must be a million tubers underground.  I had to trim access to my walking path, it was impassible.

Tons of Cayennes, they just need to go red.

Strawberries are back at it.

Brassicas went wild.

My harvest on return was intense, look at all this deliciousness produced from 7 days neglect!

I got a ton of weeding done, very productive Friday gardnening evening.  I also think I've caught up on all my vacation-related technical difficulties.  I had bad luck on a handful of things down there.  You'd think I'd gone wild, though it was in fact a family reunion and very calm... glasses apparently had defective cryzal coating which the salt water air aggravated to the point they are unusable, sent those back on warranty; my tooth filling cracked which is fixed now, I saw the dentist Friday, all better if my sinus will just calm down now; toenail cracked from all the running and tumbling in the sand and surf, so it's super glued, and the night I sat in the surf in the dark and watched the thunderstorm hitting the Gulf of Mexico I left my sandals, so now those are replaced.  I hope that's it!  I had one technical difficulty per day of work missed!

I'm going to need to be making more Laundry Soap very soon, have some laundry running now, just popped open the 3rd bottle of soap from the last batch.  I've been catching up on washing blankets and stuff.  I'm also thinking about tackling the ceiling project in the stairwell finally!  I really want to, it's gonna be so pretty, and it's a long time since I first conceived this idea, it's so very much time to get that rolling.  And as usual, I'm enjoying my Fancy Chocolate Milk very frequently.  I put vanilla extract in it tonight.  Nummy!  Also, I have to try this.

I hope everyone is well!

CombODDnation: Poka-dot Cream Sausage

There's something very interesting here, you see it?  I swear it's not just something imaginary.  We're not just staring at thin air, even though that's what we usually do.  And it's actually not a bird in the yard, either.  No.  You knew it wasn't a bird because we're not making that weird bird noise right now.

It's Poka-dot Cream Sausage!  This was so yummy!

The baby maters keep coming a mile a minute, so I keep doing funny things with them.
All kinds of funny things.

Anyways, as usual, this is super easy!

With about 2 lbs of ground meats of your choice
(This is the "sausage combo pack" from Khuns' Market, 1 part ground pork, 2 parts beef.  Omg, YUM!)

Smoosh ground meat into 2 balls
Squash one ball flat on a plate
On this squashed flat ball make a little pile in the middle including:
     2 Tbs fennel seed
     2 chopped up fresh cayenne peppers
     Dolup of about 2 oz cream cheese
Squash the second ball of ground meat on top of it all and fold together until it's rather evenly distributed.

Make a dent in the top of this spicy creamy enormous meat ball and plunk down a big handful of baby maters in that dent.
Gently combine the tomatoes into this enormous meatball you're building.  Add as many baby tomatoes as suits you by again making a dent in the meatball and folding them in.  More maters is more yummy, but also makes the sausage patty more likely to fall apart on you.

Take off sausage patty sized pieces, flatten them and place them in the skillet.

On very low heat, cook these until fully browned.  I used the smallest burner, the back burner, and the cream cheese didn't melt out of it, just got all soft and nice.  Here they are when done and ready to be lifted from the skillet.

You can serve this with additional cream cheese, or with cooked greens, such as my chard and beet greens, which I use the grease from cooking the sausage to simmer those to a delicious green yumm-ness.

Not much going on here, it's summer and the garden has decided that this week is the week for growing exponentially!  Endless supply of tomatoes, and the strawberries are pickup up again now.  Starting to see a stink bug population on my bean plants, scrambling to thwart that trouble, they are so destructive.

Also, I smashed a banana into my Lego Yogurt today, and it was PheNom.  I'm on softer foods for a few days, until my tooth can be looked at tomorrow.  Problem with a filling, it hurts.

Happy college move in week :p lol.  I work at a university, it's mayhem.

CombODDnation: La'Rouge Cercle

See what I did there?  I got all creative with the naming convention.  I really don't know french.  I'm sure that's way beyond obvious here.  I'm just being a terrible dork.  Plus it sounded kind of gross in English.  These are over-easy eggs with a red circle of baby maters.  Simple and delicious.  And if you have wonderful friends like I have who spoil you with gluten free bread on the random, than you can do it up one more level...

It's easy!  Preheat the oiled skillet (things flip easier when the oil is heated up before it's used).  While the eggs are all uncooked and stuff, just set the baby maters in a circle around the yoke.

IF you have gluten free bread, this is a nice touch, but not necessary at all.  If you do, you can place the slices of GF atop the uncooked egg parts.  as the egg cooks it will solidify and become part of the slice.

Flip it over when the edges of egg start to brown a bit.  If you have the GF bread there you'll have to toast it for a while to get it to cook through to the rest of the egg.  If no bread there, then just flip the egg and skillet it for another minute or so and you'll have yokey eggs with baby maters cooked in.  2 to 3 minutes and it'll be cooked the whole way through.  And it looks cute.  :)

YUM!  This is Udi's white bread.  It tastes yummy, very dense and the texture is really bread-like.  With toasting like this it gets much more crunchy than I expected, it actually snaps like a cracker after this.  Also it really gets a sweet taste to it.  Good stuff!

Hopefully I'll come up with more baby mater recipes soon, I have too many!  Yay!!

CombODDnation: Baby 'Mater Sauce

We've had a couple of cool days here.  Downright chilly at times, it's almost as bizarre as it was having summer in April.  If it lasts more than a few days, it may be more so on the unusual factor.

This week, my favorite Lego Yogurt flavor is clove and cinnamon, by the way.  Last week I was using honey instead of brown sugar, which was so different, almost savory.

So yesterday I made sauce from the zillions of baby tomatoes that are growing in the rear plot.  These little guys are volunteers so I don't know what variety they are, probably some cross breed.  And I will note that it's a little odd to fire up the canning supplies for 16 ounces of can-ables (which is different than cannibals entirely) but that's what I did and it wasn't as much of a fuss as I thought it would be.  But I think I should have added lemon juice for the acidity, and didn't, so we'll see how well the sauce holds in storage.  And you remember the lemon juice, okay?

It's seedy, but it's delicious.  Not exactly your Italian grandmother's sauce, but freaking yummy.  And who wants to be wasteful with all the amazing harvest, afterall?  Oh, and the first cayenne grated into the mix, wizard.  Could have used two, it isn't that spicy.  My fingers were spicy, though, oh my!

And I cooked and cooked on the smallest burner at the lowest heat setting.  Which worked because, as I said, it was darn near cold that day.  August got lost, November took up duty for a day or so.

When it was way cooked down I spooned it into two jars just like the ball book says to do, and gave them the canning bath.  The result is in my cupboard.

And I ATE the rest on some chicken.  Yummmmmmmmm.  :)  There was less than an 8 oz jar left after, which looked like dinner.  Here's dinner!

I love being not wasteful.  :)  Need to eat the rest of that cabbage head in the frigger.  It's early for cabbage coming ripe, you know.  Maybe I can plant another stand of them?  Maybe.

EatNote: Almond Milk

So it turns out I'm backwards; Almond milk makes me ill.  But I gave it a good solid try before switching back to cow and had a few thoughts to share with anyone who is giving it a try.  I have a different but equally not-fun response to soy milk.  I can handle little bits of either, and tolerate them better when they have been heated than when cold, but over all, it's a failure. 

But for starters, I want to ramble.  See, I have this theory that the generations of milk and dairy farmers going back through my family have caused me some unique evolutionary traits.  Seriously.  I'm not kidding. 

Why?
Well.

It is incredibly common to those with Gluten problems to also have milk problems.  Cow milk problems.  I can literally live off of nothing more than cow milk... for days.  I have done.  It works fantastically.  Also unique to my existence is just how quickly the elimination of red meat from my diet triggers anemia for me.  I need cow products.  Seriously.   If I start to feel dizzy on a regular basis, my first thought is "when's the last time I've had cow meat?"  And I add it to the grocery list.  One day when I have money I really would like to start buying organic cow products for my health.

There still are cow farmers in the distant family, still in the same region as great grandfather and all his lineage had.  About 15 years ago they switched from milk to beef because of cost.  I got quite the instruction as to costs involved in cattle rearing based on product desired once that I visited.

So, yeah, there's that. 

However, during a couple months of trying to use Almond Milk while trying to determine why I was unhealthy more often than usual, I learned a few things.

First, it doesn't need heat for as long, can stand higher heat temperatures, and isn't going to end up with that gross skin on the surface that happens when you overheat cow milk.  Basically, microwaving 1 cup of cow milk for 3 minutes at 80% is the same as 1:45 minutes at 100% with almond milk.  In the oven and on the skillet, shorter and hotter cooking times are also applicable.  Up by 25 degrees and down by 15% of the total cook time is about right.

It doesn't turn your coffee as light a color.  Don't base your expectation of the creaminess of your coffee on the color of the mixed liquid.  It will be creamier than it looks.

It's dryer.  I needed greater quantities in baking than the amount of cow milk being called for in the recipe.  Like 1/4 cup more.  Or an extra egg.  Things dried out in the oven if treated normally.

So there you are.  Almond milk tips.  Considering how poorly I handled it, these will be the only tips on the matter from me.  I don't like being ill.  The whole I'm-fine-when-it's-heated thing really made it difficult to point to what was going wrong, glad that's sorted and I'm back to healthy me. 

Yay!

Meowcellany: License Plate Media Holder

Okay, so I made this thing for my new kindle and cell phone:

Out of this stuff and some screws:

I spent 99 cents on a set of small hinges.  That's it.

I wanted to share how I did this, because I put great value in having a connection to my possessions like this.  As a society, we are so dependent on buying things, I think we've lost touch with the ideal of making our own unique and very personal possessions, things that tell a story of our life.

My very first car had the plate number CAP 9706 and when they issued the new plates I was distraught that my number had changed to DKD 7434.  I'd had the old number memorized, and was convinced I'd never remember the new one.  I was also quite upset that when pronounced, it phonetically came out to basically sound like "dicked 7,434."  What an atrocity, I had been wronged by the DMV in a very tangible way.  Clearly.   It may have even been an intentional encroachment on their part.  Don't you agree?

Here we have these plates.  My history, regaining a place in my daily life.

I don't care that I could sell these.  I'm not up for commission.  Just for the record, I want to say that.  I'd rather see others bringing their clutter to a better daily use and thinking creatively about their belongings.  I'd much rather see that.

So what do we have?  2 license plates, a 1x2x3 or so peice of lumber, and some foam from shipping (I order apple products as part of work, these boxes are packing from the Apple Superdrives which packaging I brought home instead of sending to a landfill.)

You'll also need: a drill, saw, various screws, 2 hinges, and some combination similar to a gated hook, a chain, tiny nuts/bolts/washers, and a picture mounting clasp.

And here's how I came up with the idea, because if the shoe fits....

So I drilled several holes in plate #1, then measured, cut and mounted the wood, leaving something like an extra 1/8 to 1/4 inch give space between the devices and the slats.  I'm lazy and have a large collection of tools, so I used a circular saw (I had 7 types of saws to choose from).  You can use whatever saw you have, thin wood like this isn't much of a problem.  Most normal drill bits will put holes in the license plate metal no problem.  Drilling pilot holes into the slats is a darn good idea with wood this thin, otherwise you're very likely to split it with the screws.  It's also recommendable to take a rasp to all the rough edges of the wood.  Or sandpaper.  Whatever you got.  The rasp made very quick work of it.

An afterthought - save the plate you most prefer for the next step.  The plate used above doesn't show as much in use as the one that becomes the door flap below.  I'm still "dicked 7,434."  The DMV still wins, over a decade later.  Oops, this time it's my fault.
So then I started scraping foam off of cardboard with a pancake lifter from my kitchen.  It worked.

I cut the foam to dry fit in all the places.  And put hinges on the bottom of the casing.  I didn't end up using those clamps.  Thought I'd need them, but really I didn't use them at all.  They're still sitting on the table looking lonely right now.  I also got the glue (goop brand) out of the freezer at this point, could have stood to do this sooner.  Goop keeps best in the freezer, it's completely crazy like that.

Then I got the front door to go on.  I used sharpie marker to see where the hinge screw holes should go.  I needed a bigger drill bit so that the little nuts would fit in the license plate holes I drilled.  Washer, bolt, washer, nut through each hole.  That holds it on great.  The shorter and tinier the bolts the better.  You can also see that I attached a picture backing hook in a similar way to the side that opens.  This is the eyelet that the hook goes through to hold it closed.

So then I put glue on the wooden parts and smooshed foam into place with books.  My bookshelf has lots of stuff about gardening and herbs and natural medicine.  Can you tell?

And the next day I placed the foam to line up with the indentations, held it in with painters tape to test the alignment, glued it down, and put books on again.  You can see the painters tape there.  And my growing mess.

So you can see that I measure the openings in the wood to gain access to charge ports and power buttons, here is the microUSB port on my cell phone showing.  Turns out that between this gap and the metal, the sound of the ringer and the vibration setting carry BETTER than the phone would just on it's own.  It's loud!

Here's a view of it closed before I put the carry chain on.    You can see the screws I used to affix the back license plate to the wood slats, and you can see the hook that holds it shut.  This is the gated type of hook that has a spring to hold it shut, otherwise it's just a normal gate hook.  The spring is fancy and a little clumbsy to operate, so if you have a better idea, have at, and comment for me to let me know what you do with this.

The chain is held on by wire strung through the original holes at the top of the CAP 9706 plate.  Wish I would have thought of that before it was all constructed, but it wasn't too hard to just slip the wire in there after all is done.

Now...
Please go make something cool out of stuff you already have!  Because you're awesome like that.
And comment to tell me what you made.  Maybe even send me pictures?  Because you rock.