Sunday, March 17, 2013

Define: Behind



I have meant to write a blog so many times in the last month, and just haven't gotten there.  Partially because my laptop won't work unless it's plugged in, and Jamin keeps stealing borrowing my cord.

One of the few that I actually remember is about putting up curtains in our bedroom.  Our house is heated by radiators.  Big, tall radiators.  In our bedroom, the radiator is right in front of the windows.  I had been searching for curtains for a while, but my length constraint was making things difficult.  Finally I decided to just make my own.

In the interest of getting them made quickly, I ended up buying a tablecloth at Target instead of real fabric.  I know I'll go that route eventually, but we had these awful roll up blinds that didn't really work and smelled like b.o., so...tablecloth it was.

Also, it was $11.18!

I cut it down the middle and hemmed the edges.  Simple enough, but I swear this happens to me every time I try to sew something.  It is totally avoidable (obviously I am just not careful enough) and so frustrating!


Anyway, I finished and put them up!




Last week I took them back down again to paint some stripes on them.  They were kind of boring.  Probably because they are a tablecloth.  The stripes also helped to block a bit more light, which is great!  The streetlight on the corner shines in at just the right angle to be obnoxious and the stripes really do help.  It's also nice for the days we get to sleep in.







I don't know if it's weird that they go with the stripes on the wall, but it works for us.

While I had them down, I decided to redo the way I was hanging them.  I had just sewed two lines down the top and slid the pole through it, but it was hard to open them since there was so much fabric bunching up.  I cut a few rectangles and sewed them onto the back, which helped a lot.  They don't look very pretty, but no one is going to see that part, right?

I have managed to keep up with my recipe a week from Pinterest!  I don't remember what order I made them in anymore, but it's going down as a win in my book because I remember what I made.

Strawberry pizza was one of them.  And it was delicious.  I've actually made it twice now, and used the crust and cream cheese sauce to make a fruit pizza for potluck at church.  The ingredient list calls for cream cheese, lemon juice, and vanilla for the cream cheese part, but when you get to that part in the directions it says to add the sugar.  I just added sugar until I liked the taste, which I think is one of the best ways to cook.  I was also lazy about doing the "cutting in" for the dough, I just cut up the butter and threw everything into my mixer.  It never really got a great dough consistency, but it tasted just fine!

Another one I tried was this pot roast.  We'll definitely be having this one again.  I wasn't sure what kind of meat I was supposed to use (I'm still not sure, which makes me feel really stupid...), and I don't think I ended up using the right thing, but Jamin loved it.  Pot roast meat normally has that stringy, flaky kind of thing going on, but this meat ended up being like steak.  Next time I make it I'll probably just use the same kind of meat because he loved it so much.  The problem is I can't quite remember what it was....shoulder something?  I do know that whatever it was, it wasn't cheap.

I tried my hand at skillet lasagna, and it was not great.  I did some tweaking without actually trying the original recipe, which may have been the problem.  The recipe gives directions for making a sauce, but I already had my spaghetti sauce in the freezer, so I just unthawed a bag of that.  Then I didn't really measure any of the cheese I added.  I think I went a little overboard on the ricotta.  It didn't turn out horribly, but I haven't mentioned trying it again, and neither has Jamin.

Yesterday I tried these biscuits, and oh man, they were good.  Next time I'll add more garlic (I'll be honest, I didn't measure, so maybe the recipe called for more than I used), but that's the only change.
They were super easy and they're already all gone.

I'm sure I've got other things to post about, but this is already a pretty long one, so I'll end it with the hope that I don't go as long in between posts next time!