Meet My New Office Chair

One thing I know I want for my new office is a fabulous chair.  And it's gotta be comfy too - I spend hours editing pictures.  And it has to be cheap.    That vintage Thomasville buffet was slightly over budget!  And I didn't want a DIY project on this one...too many of those...too little time.

Enter this chickie.

She needs a name.  Maybe Yasmine.  Something exotic.  I'll be taking suggestions.  ;-).  She was on clearance at Cost Plust (yay).  PLUS I had a 10% off coupon (YAY!).  So for only $150 I brought her on home.  That's pretty good considering I've been looking and boy, new, fabulous chairs are EXPENSIVE.  What the heck is up with that?

The only problem with this chair is that she's a little low for a desk.  She's clearly meant to be a sassy, cocktail-in-hand lounger.  But I figured I wanted the chair on casters anyway.  So hopefully I'll be able to fix the whole 3 inches too short with a pair of "heels."  :-)

She's pretty fabulous though, right?  She's gonna look amazing next to my buffet painted green!

Vintage Buffet

In designing my new office/craft room, the first thing on the list is storage.  My old room was in dire need of it, which is why it often had just bags of craft goods on the floor...there was nowhere else to put them.  I was in one of my favorite consignment shops when I found this:

by the way, don't fret, it actually does have all the hardware.  I had just gotten so excited that 
I had already removed one of the cabinet pulls and drawer handles before I shot the before pictures!

A vintage Thomasville Buffet.  I HAD to have it.  I stood there mouth open just looking at it.  Seriously.  Three different people stopped to ask me if I was ok!  But even though it was love at first sight, I'm the kind of girl who needs to check all her options.  But before I left, I asked about it, asked if they could come down in price.  The owner agreed to a 10% discount as it had only come into the shop about two weeks earlier.  And then I asked if she could hold it.  This was something I'd not asked before in a thrift/consignment shop.  She said that she'd hold it for 24 hours and give me the first right of refusal.  Remember, it never hurts to ask!  But of course my next few thrift stops didn't turn up anything nearly so fabulous.  So I bought it!   It's going to be amaaahzing painted green in my new craft/room office, don't you agree?

Real Men Develop Amazing Quiche Recipes

Thomas Keller is a genius.  I know I've talked about his recipes before.  Even complained a little bit about the labor involved.  But then I made his quiche.  And now, all is forgiven.  It's not that this recipe is quick, it's not.  It's very detailed and it requires being made at least a full day ahead.  But it is, as my husband says, "the best quiche I've every had."  He ought to know.  He ate HALF of it.  And for the first time didn't say, "that could use more cheese."  What he doesn't know is that this recipe calls for a fraction of the cheese I normally use.  This recipe rests soundly on the custard.  Before this recipe, I never thought of the filling of a quiche as a custard.  But that's exactly what it is, when I realized this, it was a huge revalation.  I suppose I never thought of it as custard because no quiche I've ever had actually had the consistency of a custard.  It was always...well...eggy for lack of a better word.   But this quiche, when done correctly, is like eating silk.  The primary reason the texture is allowed to develop correctly is that it's made in a 2" deep pan.  This is key.  You cannot use a pie pan.  I used a spring form pan (Thomas Keller calls for a 2" ring mold.  Swapping to a spring form pan was the only change I made in his recipe).  If you follow his recipe you end up with this:

Isn't that the most beautiful quiche you've ever seen?  Majestic.  Fit for kings and queens.  This ain't your momma's quiche.   I'm not going to post the recipe here.  Because, well, I don't have the energy to write the recipe in my own words.  The recipe is pages long in Keller's Bouchon cookbook.  But I encourage you to check the book out in the library or just take the plunge and order it.  It's a stunning book...if you are a serious foodie, you'll never regret the purchase.  

Craft Room Redo

For a long time I've been wanting to redo my craft room.  Craft room.  Ha!  I have to use the term loosely.  Because my craft room has consisted of a plastic folding table and bags of stuff everywhere.  A glorified junk room that was, if I'm honest, a half a pile away from being nominated for Hoarders.  Let's keep it real, shall we?  Here are a couple before pictures.

I mean WOWZERS, right?  No wonder I never wanted to go into this room!  And let me tell, you every time I did clean it up, in like 30 seconds it somehow ended up just like this again.

And these curtains.  UGH.  They were the hubby's before we met and when we got married, I just didn't have the heart to tell him no way jose...especially as I had thrown out all of his other stuff.  LOL!

Other than some more junk in the room, that's it.  Two plastic drawer bins, a plastic table and some curtains that were really not my cup of tea.  Oh, not to mention, it had been painted by the previous owners a truly horrific shade of yellow (which you can't quite tell from the pictures).

The room got cleaned out!  And I'm in the process of re-doing it.  I'll be posting progress pictures as I go so stay tuned.   And please, don't turn me over to Horders just yet.  Okay?

Suzy Homemaker

Recently I've started to make my own bread.  I finally took the plunge and bought a Bosch mixer and a Nutrimill wheat grinder.  Needless to say, making my own bread from freshly ground whole wheat makes me feel very Suzy Homemaker.  Seeing this is quite satisfying:

You start to feel quite impressed with yourself.  Virtuous even.  Like you could have been a pioneer - maybe even "Ma" on the Little House on the Prairie.  But these thoughts are fleeting, because then you look around and you realize the dirty secret they don't tell you about Suzy's kitchen: it's a disaster.  I'm pretty sure "Ma's" kitchen never would have looked like this.

Wow...how'd all that stuff get on my counter?

  

Yes, leftover bacon grease on the counter is essential as are not one but TWO pairs of scissors.  Because, when your kitchen is this horrific, you can hardly be expected to remember where you put the last pair.  Until you realize they were right next to what you were trying to open.  


Making bread is definitely an adventure and I'm even learning to do it without taking out every item in my pantry and covering my counters in goo.  I love the Nutramill.  It's truly amazing how much natural oil freshly ground whole wheat has! And I love the Bosch, I can make 5 loaves of bread in one batch.  We usually give one or two loaves away, freeze the loaves the other loaves and I only have to make bread about every 6 weeks!  


Right now I'm using a basic bread recipe from Shar's Bosch.

• 6 cups warm water, approx. 115 degrees
• 2 tbs. Sea salt
• 2/3 cup canola oil
• 2/3 cup honey
• 3 tbs. Dough enhancer
• 2 cups high gluten bread flour 
• 3 tbs. Saf instant yeast
• 6 to 8 cups of fresh ground flour - to start; I've used up to 11 cups before.

Everything goes right into the Bosch up to the fresh ground wheat.  I add the wheat quickly one cup at a time until it pulls away from the bowl.  It really is something that has to be gauged by sight and not measurement.  The first time I made it I thought something was very wrong that I added 11 whole cups!  But the bread was fantastic.  Once the mixture begins to pull clean from the bowl, I let the Bosch kneed the dough for about 8-12 minutes until the gluten has developed (you know it's developed when you can stretch the dough thinly without it tearing).  Then it's ready to get dumped on the counter (spread some vegetable oil on the counter first).  The bread pans get greased and the dough gets divided into the pans.  I like to weigh mine so that I know they are all the same size and then I know that the cooking time will be the same for them all.  Let them rise until the tops are about 2 inches over the side of the pan.  I cook the bread until the temperature is between 190-195 degrees.  Remember just like anything else the bread will continue cooking after it's removed from the oven so don't over cook it!  


The force is strong with freshly made bread.  But refrain from eating it right away you will.  What?  My Jedi mind trick didn't work?  Yeah, we've caved a couple times too.  But just know that just like anything else, the moisture needs to redistribute after cooking so if you slice it right away, all that steam will escape and the remaining bread will be a little drier than it otherwise would.  There's an easy solution for that...just eat the whole thing. Right away ;-).  


Oh, PS...Don't try this recipe in a KitchenAid, unless you want your motor to burn out!  This recipe is Bosch friendly only!

Easter Table & The CSI Project Guest Judge

This has been one crazy first quarter.  Yup.  Spoken by a true Business Analyst.  How did it get to be the end of March?  I seriously don't know how that has happened.  This year, I'm not hosting Easter so even though I had been on the lookout for a great tablecloth (which I found...and will put in the pile for next year), I thought I would share with you my table from last year.  I'll let the pictures do the talking.

On a different topic:
I'm so excited that I am the guest judge for the CSI Project this week.  And boy what a week it will be!!  I'll be judging the Spring Vignettes challenge. How awesome is this going to be?  Awesome but oh, so, hard!  There are so many talented ladies out there, I just can't wait to see all of their creativity.  If you've never been to The CSI Project, hop on over and check out this week's challenge  and while you're there stay a while, Dee's blog is fantastic!   




And if anyone is visiting from CSI,  thanks for stopping buy.  I'd just love for you to say "hi," stick around, hang out and grab a cup of coffee :-).

Surgery and Random Thoughts

So I'm back.  Kind of.  Surgery sucks.  This was my second sinus surgery...but this time I also had a septoplasty.  BONUS.  ;-).  Ugh, painful.  I'm still in lots of pain.  I don't really have a real post since laying on the couch, sleeping and watching Burn Notice doesn't really amount to a whole lot of interesting DIY.  But I do now have this incredible urge to do some subway art that says, "My Name is Michael Weston.  I used to be a spy."  Wouldn't that be awesome?  Anywhooooo...here's what I'm working on:

-Trying to get the swelling down on my nose.  I'm pretty sure that's why frozen peas were invented.

-I'm in the process of re-doing my psycho, hoarder-esque craft room into a proper office/craft room.  You know, a room that isn't one pile away from an intervention.  Maybe I'll share a before picture.  But I'm pretty sure you'll judge me.  I judge me.

-Trying to get through the hundreds of work emails and catch up on projects that I've missed out on in the 2 weeks I was off of work.

-Oh, I also wear my sunglasses in the office now.  It's not just because my eyes are so sensitive to light these days or because my head pounds with the fists of a thousand monkeys, but it's also cuz, I'm super cool like that.

-I've realized I need a proper vacation, one that doesn't involve medical leave because my nose had to be sliced and diced.

-I'm in constant debate about colors for said craft room.  I'm kind of into kelly green right now and lots of other colors.  Or do I want to go neutral.  Oh, someone just decide for me.

-I'm supposed to be picking fonts and other fun stuff for a blog re-do (and with a migration to Wordpress).  But I lost all my favorite blogs when my hard drive crashed.  :-(.    So I have no inspiration.  It's so hard to find all my old favorite daily blogs.

-Oh, yeah.  My hard drive crashed.  On my 90 day old Macbook.  That did not build confidence.  Thankfully it was under warranty so it was free to fix.  But I lost everything except the wedding pictures I had just done.  THANK GOD.  If I had lost those wedding pictures...can't even think about it.  I did lose all my blog stuff.  But oh well, live and learn.  We now have Time Capsule back up all set up.

-I get to take a fantastic photography class from the super talented Kimberly Jarman.  Wooohooo!  SOOO exciting.

-I'm pretty sure I found my Easter tablecloth.  Initially I was going to use these pretty paisley table runners that I found at HomeGoods but then I came across an awesome tablecloth at Macy's on superdooper clearance.  I know, fascinating stuff.

-OMG did you know there are now Annie Sloan stockists in the Phoenix area?  That is so amazing.  One of them even does workshops.  Of course she's about an hour's drive from my house but who cares?  It's Annie Sloan!!

Ok, I think that's enough randomness for one post.  I'll be back in a couple weeks with some progress on the craft room.  Does it take everyone else FOREVVVAA to re-do a room?