Cranberries and Snow

For Thanksgiving I decided that I had to make homemade cranberry sauce.  I am not sure if anyone in my family actually likes it, but Grandma would always make it from scratch. So I cut the recipe in half.  I also had to try a fresh cranberry, it was pretty tasty, not nearly as sour as I was expecting.

The good thing is that it can be made in advance so it will not cut into time on Thursday.  

And here is a view of my backyard this morning.  Last year we didn't have a white Christmas, this year we might have a white Thanksgiving!

ProNov: Vanish and Trim

Before the second coat of varnish goes on the boards need to be lightly sanded with 220 grit paper and then the dust removed. Two swipes of the paper knock down any of the fibers and will make the finish feel very smooth.  If more than two coats are going to be applied this step may or may not be needed between 2 and 3.

Angela came over and helped with the second and final coat of varnish. With two people it went quickly.

Yep, in the pictures it looks about the same.

The last part of Project November was to reattach the trim pieces that frame out around the plaster. These were modified to remove one edge that most of them were damaged on. then sanded, the stain was touched up, and re-varnished.  Most of this happened over the summer and the fall.  I am excited to have them out of the work shop.

you can see white edges here that will be covered on the end of the vertical boards:

They help to make the whole project look finished:

the orange sure looks different in each photo....

 Dad came to help install them and then we cleaned up.  I was happy to move thing back into the dining room, like the plants.

And wine glasses and pictures.  We also got the table ready for Thanksgiving....

Read more about this project:

the first idea...

Sanding and scraping here, and here 

Staining

Varnish

ProNov 7 and 8: Varnish

Over the last two nights I have gotten 85% of the first coat of varnish on.  And on Monday I really didn't try too hard. Here is a picture of the varnish.  I think it is really hard to see a difference so I am also putting a before picture in here to make me feel better about where it has come from.

the before:

I need to work on consistent angles.

Days ? And ?: Sand and stain

The dull roar of the sander gives you time to think about a lot of things, like man it would suck to have to move in with the plastic all over the doors

good thing I am awesome and took it all down. (You're  welcome Andrew)

 So here are some pictures of when sanding and clean up was done.

There is still dust all over the house, but we picked up a lot of it.

Then the stain started going on about Noon on Sunday: 

The lighter pieces got several coats.

Dad applied the pre-stain to help the oak soak up stain and I stained.

 Which made dad the photographer:

This is the last board to need stain, its about 8:45pm 

Chocolate Covered Popcorn

Dear Cousin Bekah,

Two years ago you made this amazing chocolate covered popcorn.  It was lightly drizzled with the perfect chocolate to popcorn ratio.  Both milk chocolate and white chocolate versions were delicious.  They were perfect, my coworkers devoured the extras.  And you told me it was easy.  Right? make the popcorn, melt the chocolate, drizzle-  Perfection!

I finally went to make some.  I popped the popcorn in my new Stir Crazy popper (that went fine, I have been eating a lot of popcorn recently). But melting the chocolate became a problem.

I used a small container of dipping chocolate, I have used these before to make things like chocolate covered strawberries. I started heating it in the microwave, the chocolate wafers started to melt, and become one blob of chocolate, but they never melted father, slowly becoming a super heated mass of grainy chocolate with the texture of wet sand. So I moved to a makeshift double boiler, ie two sauce pots.  It looked like it was going to melt, but it didn't.  So here I was with my popcorn all made and burning-hot chocolate sand.

At this point the chocolate was as good as ruined so I decided to add some almond milk- maybe that would help. I realize that almond milk and normal milk are not actually ingredient in chocolate, even milk chocolate but I may as well try something.

With the almond milk added it looked more like melted chocolate, so I put it on the popcorn.

Now, I know what you are going to say, 'it looks great, it tastes fine, see it was easy' but I don't think that it was suppose to take 30 minutes to 'melt' the chocolate, I don't think randomly adding some almond milk was part of the process. Maybe it didn't work because the chocolate was old or maybe there really is some trick to it.

Anyways, I think the recipe could use a little work.

Your Adoring Cousin,
Heather

ProNov: Day 3 and 4

Really? This sounded like a good idea, 2 weeks before thanksgiving

You know that you are having thanksgiving here?

I just found saw dust behind my ear.

That board looks fine, leave it

"Well, you never want to redo a project so then you just have to ask yourself, how long am I going to live here, 5years? 10? 50? "-Roy on determining how much time to spend on a given project.

How about a two tone dining room?

(read about days 1 and 2)

See the sanding Continue

Project November: Day 1 and 2

Project November: Wood work in the dining room.  Step one remove everything from the dining room.

Don't forget the before pictures:

Seriously, did a dog to that?

See everything is out and there is a lot of wood work.

Until mid October I thought that this project was going to be a lot like this.  But as I started sanding I had the realization how bad some of it was, how much there was and how much I like power sanders. Sherwin Williams is also pretty excited to do some stain matching. So the sanding started. The varnish gums up the sand paper pretty quickly, so out came the scrapper:

And the scrapper works pretty well.

here is some of the progress made as on Sunday night:

Dad made a lot of progress with the scrapper:

I could not keep up with the sander.

In general there is not a lot to say about this. It is just a lot of time.  Tomorrow you might just get pictures, or I might be loopier and you'll get more sass. (read on)

Trim in the Dining Room

I wrote this post last November.  But I have to post it before Project November.

The vertical beams had dents and dings, presumably from furniture hitting it. And there is a ton of woodwork in the dining room so redoing every piece would be an enormous project and probably overkill.

Some dings.

So we sanded it down with 120 to get the finish off.

Then we found some stain that was a good match and dabbed it on with a rag.  We needed the wood to soak up a lot of color.  The stain was allowed to dry to the point where it no longer looked super wet, then the excess was removed by a combinations of dabbing and wiping.  It needs to dry for four hours before a coat of polyurethane is applied. 

here is a picture of the sample piece.  I was really happy with how it turned out so we worked on staining the other pieces.

After the original coat of stain, the wood still had some light spots so I would dry rub more stain on to them a little bit every day.

A little bit of varnish and they look really good! I realized that there were many other pieces of the trim and wood work that needed this same treatment.

Continue reading about this project: Project November

New Living Room Layout

I finally rearranged the living room and dining room. 

The way it was since I moved it was to divide the space into two via the IKEA book shelf.  When I first moved in the dining room had to function as a make shift kitchen until the kitchen remodel was done.  (what was that like? click here to read about it) Luckily that ended after three months. But the book shelf was still in place creating division, and two small spaces verse 1 larger space.

The living room space was facing the window to contribute to a sectioned space feeling.

I moved the book shelf to the winter room and rotated the living room furniture. The coat rack also got moved. And cleaning always helps.