November Catch-Up

 

 I had a quiet but enjoyable birthday dinner with friends at Ryleigh's Oyster Bar in Baltimore.  $1 bivalves are hard to beat, and they were some of the best and freshest-tasting I've ever had.  Even Hans liked them!  Later in the month the party continued as Hans and I went out for Thai food and then saw Verdi's Requiem at the Strathmore performance hall in Maryland.  It's convenience for transportation and easy parking has made it a new favorite venue of mine.  Don't get me wrong, I love the Kennedy Center.  However, the 1-1/2 hour trip home via metro/car is a little excruciating when you leave the theater at 10pm.

The performance was pretty great.  I told Hans that it wasn't going to be very relaxing music, and to just wait for the Dies Irae.  For most listeners the second piece of the requiem is recognizable.  The chorus did a great job of wailing in misery and the percussionists did their part with gusto.  The soloists were good too, but the soprano's voice did not carry well.  The mezzo-soprano was our favorite and the tenor was originally from Maryland!

 

 

Getting ready for Thanksgiving was definitely a lot of work.  We invited some people over for dinner and games, so I felt the need to really make an effort.  I don't know where the hours escaped to on Thursday!  I saved myself a lot of stress by doing all the precooking, chopping, and dessert making on Wednesday but the day was still full.  I think the dishwasher was run 3 times by the time we went to bed but that kitchen was spotless at the end of the night.  We had a great time, good drinks, and managed to prevent the end of the world in a game of Arkham Horror.

Ingredients for two kinds of stuffing, and a salted bird ready for it's overnight seasoning

   Even Bunsen knew it was time for a post-dinner-cleanup glass of wine at the end of the night!

We hope everyone else had a nice and not too crazy Thanksgiving.  Christmas is in less than 30 days?!

Blueberry Cosmo

I came up with this recipe to replicate a drink I had at the upstairs lounge of Galyn's in Bar Harbor, Maine.  It was a rainy day and after spending the afternoon hiking through wet and brushy primitive trails, our cozy corner table where we perched next to an open window with the chilly sea air was exactly what we needed.  The hot buttered rum helped too.

Blueberry Cosmo:
1.5 oz Stoli Blueberry Vodka
1 tbsp Grand Marnier
1 tbsp Rose's Lime Juice
Dash blueberry syrup (just enough for color)
Shake with ice until cold, strain, and serve with a few fresh blueberries in the glass as a garnish.

DIM Headboard For Less than $100

No, that's not a typo.  Here's the Did-It-Meself headboard project I completed this afternoon.  Though I just realized that some people might think that it's "dim", like "dumb".

Moving on!

It wasn't the kind of headboard I originally set out to make this weekend.  Yesterday I went to a local salvage warehouse with the hope that I'd be able to find some old boards with character that I could fasten together, but alas, I struck out.  I figured I should just get some new boards from the hardware store.  But then this morning I got to thinking: I've never stained or sealed wood before and I don't have a very good place to do it.  It's the end of June, so the air is too hot and sticky to allow any sort of finish to cure properly.  In the end, since this is my first crack at really building anything, I decided to go with something simple: An upholstered board.

After finding some fabric I liked it was a struggle to pick out the padding material.  When I was finished I was very happy that I went with some extra cushy quilt batting rather than the expensive green foam they sell at fabric stores.  The foam would have been way too stiff and difficult to work with when I was hammering upholstery nails later.

At the hardware store they were kind enough to cut the plywood I bought into the dimensions I needed, so all I had to do was break out the stapler I bought...

...except that the staples I bought weren't the right size.  What was I saying about being dim earlier?  Sigh.  One more trip to the hardware store later I was ready to begin.

The actual stapling wasn't hard.  It was just a matter of making sure the fabric was pulled tight (though not too tight).  Finishing the corners was similar to sewing.  For the back of the main board I slipped some extra black fabric I had lying around under the edges of the front fabric.  It's hard to see in the picture but I added one more final design element by hammering some decorative nails around the border, which proved to be the hardest part because those darn rounded nails bend like crazy!  I went through about a dozen failures before I finally got the technique down thanks to this neat trick.  The side planks were secured with 8 screws apiece.

Hans isn't really a fan of the pattern and some of the nails got spaced a little goofy on one part, but for a first attempt at something like this I'm satisfied.  I will probably either keep it for a possible future guest room or re-cover it if I ever find some truly awesome fabric that Hans and I both like.

I wasn't paying close attention to the time but I'm pretty sure this all took less than two hours.

Here's the cost rundown (the fabric and batting were half-off at Jo-Ann):

Plywood: $28 (bear in mind it started as a 4'x8' sheet)

Two 1"x4"x4' Pine Boards: $9

Decorative Nails (2 boxes): $3

Batting (2 yards): $8

Cover Fabric: $20

Total: $68

If you want to count the stapler and staples I had to buy the total comes to $81.  

Not too shabby!