Finished product:

Supplies needed: stapler, vellum, ribbon (optional), paper cutter, glue/way to attach the ribbon (I used my Xyron sticker maker), and battery operated tea lights.

I bought 3 sheets of 8.5″x11″ vellum from Hobby Lobby yesterday; originally 69cents but they were on sale for 50% off. One sheet I left full size. The second sheet I cut to give me a 6″ height. The third sheet was cut to give me a 4″ height and then the remenant was cut to give me a 3″ height.

I didn’t bother removing the price stickers, just made sure the seam would cover it. Each piece was rolled into a tube and stapled top, bottom, and as many times as needed in the middle to hold the tube shape.

You can stop here and leave the luminaries plain or you can dress them up with ribbon. I dug out some brown ribbon from my stash and wrapped around both the top and bottom of each tube. I think this could also be cute with ribbon just on the bottom.

Once the luminaries are decorated how you want plop them on top of a battery operated tea light (I got two 2-packs at Dollar Tree) and enjoy! Lights out action shot:

Remember, vellum is flammable/will melt, don’t expose it to direct flame if you decide to use an actual candle.

Linking to the parties listed in my sidebar.

Take some red potatoes and give them a wash and a rough chop.

Place into a casserole dish:

My potatoes were divided into two dishes since my husband doesn’t like ranch. His potatoes got butter and some spices instead. Into your casserole dish with the potatoes add ranch dressing, shredded cheese, and some bacon bits. Stir to combine.

Bake, uncovered for about 45 minutes at 375degrees or until tender. You don’t want the potatoes to turn to mush as you aren’t trying to make mashed potatoes but you don’t want them crunchy either.

Yum!

Leftovers are tasty the next day for breakfast.

I have also made this dish on the grill. Instead of using a casserole dish, make a sealed foil packet and toss on the grill. This dish can also be made with regular old russet potatoes but you will end up with more of a hash consistency as the russet taters don’t hold their structure as well as the red taters.

Here is the backstory on how I came to own the dresser. My paternal grandfather was a dumpster diver. He found this dresser left at the dump and brought it home to store some tools. At the time it was a beat-up dingy shade of white. I was in college and was about to move into my first apartment and needed storage. Dad told Pawpaw, and Pawpaw cleaned out this old dresser and gave it to me making me promise that when I didn’t want/need it anymore I would give it back to him. I gladly accepted and proceeded to paint the dresser a happy yellow (it was a rental with all white walls, I needed color!) and then glue the fabric flowers for a little more added interest.

The dresser moved with me to my second, third, and fourth apartments. While I was in the fourth apartment Pawpaw was diagnosed with fast moving, terminal cancer and died. The dresser (now even more dear to me) moved with me to yet another state and another apartment and then finally to my house where I live now with my husband. I was 20-ish when I first received it and painted it yellow. 10 years later and it was time for a change.

The dresser, no longer needed for clothing storage was moved out to the shop and had the paint stripped, sanded, and was primed.

It sat in this state for several months while I tried to decide what color to paint it and where to put it. As mentioned last week, I’m in the process of giving my Husband an area of the house that is decorated more for him. This room is our second bedroom that is what we refer to as The Office due to no beds but several computers being in that room. Hubs’ favorite sports team is the Chicago Bears. The team colors for Da Bears are midnight blue, orange, and white.

I hate orange. Can’t stand it. As a result orange will only be used in very, very small amounts. But the midnight blue? That I can work with. Especially once I played around with the Valspar Color Explorer for their spray paints and saw that the colors I would eventually paint the office would all work well together.

The dresser received a coat of navy blue spray paint in a gloss finish. And is now serving duty as a printer stand with storage. I am very pleased with it!

This post will be linked to several of the link parties posted up top.

But this morning when I noticed yet again how many coffee grounds I was tossing after brewing my coffee I wondered if there was anything better to do with them other than toss them on my potted plants. So I googled and came up with some interesting things that I will be trying. There are more options out there these are just ones that I would be comfortable doing in my own home.

• Toss them in your compost (I am saving them in the freezer in a ziploc bag until I have enough to make it worth trekking out to the compost pile).
• Use the grounds as an exfoliant when washing your face.
• Work into the soil around your garden plants, said to help repel some pests.
• Rumored to help repel cats from scratching in your garden as well.
• Also rumored to help repel fleas if you rub onto your pet.  (I can just imagine my dog with a coffee buzz, will probably pass on this one.)
• Use as a deodorizer in a sachet, in a bowl, or rub directly onto hands.
• As a dye/stain.
• Soap additive.
• Some have used dried grounds tied into paper bundles as fire starters.
• Dry grounds inside a pin cushion have been rumored to be better than the poly-fill for keeping needles sharp.

Recently I came to a decision, since most of the house is my taste and style Hubs needed at least one place in the house that was “him”. I decided that the wall above his desk in our office (read: second bedroom) would be a great place. The plans are to make him some word art, hang some of his Legend of the 5 Rings art, and make a “geek shelf” that has some things on it that represent him. This project is one for the geek shelf.

Hubs is a hardcore Nintendo nerd. He does things in video games that leave my mouth wide open going “Huh? How’d you do that?!” So I got the idea of making a shadow box with some Nintendo controllers.

I bought an 8×10 shadow box from Hobby Lobby. A large piece of craft foam was cut to size for the background:

I found an image of the Nintendo logo and used my SCAL2 software with my Cricut Expression and cut out a stencil from shelf liner vinyl.

Originally the logo was going to be red:

But when I peeled off the stencil, the acrylic paint had formed a skin across the top of the foam rather than adhering and it came up with the stencil. Hubs said silver was also an accepable color for the logo and thankfully I had some silver Rub N Buff.

I kept putting on the Rub N Buff until the stencil was fully filled. Then I gave it a light buff with a paper towel to make sure it was dry and a little shiny.

After carefully peeling away the stencil the Rub N Buff was declared a success!

The craft foam with logo was hot glued onto the backing of the shadow box and trimmed down enough so that the back could still be shut into the case.

I had two controllers I wanted to use for this shadow box; one of the original Nintendo controllers and one of the SNES controllers. I eyeballed them into place, trimmed the cords down, and then hot glued them into place as well.

Finished product!

Hubs likes it and it makes me smile that we’ve got some custom art that really represents him. I will be showing more projects off for his wall as I complete them.

You need:
16 oz. sour cream
8 oz. mayo
fresh dill
dried dill

Chop the fresh dill:

Into a bowl toss the chopped fresh dill and then add the sour cream and mayo. Stir to combine. Mixture will look like this:

For most people this is already a tasty dip and you can stop here. But I love dill, I want no doubt that I’m eating a dill dip. So I usually add about 2 tbsp. of dried dill.

Give it a stir so the dip looks like this:

Snack time!

This dip can be made fat free by using fat free sour cream and fat free mayo. Plain yogurt may also be substituted for the sour cream.

I’m working on a “Geek Shelf” for my husband. It will be a shelf to display things that people think of when they think of him. One of those items will be a set of six sided dice (yup, we are gamers). I found these dice on clearance at Hobby Lobby:

They aren’t bad, just not our style. So the indents have been filled with wood putty at this point. I need to sand them smooth, paint the base color, and then paint the pips. They will probably end up the Chicago Bears orange with white pips.

This dresser redo is still not done (the yellow and sunflowers were done by me over 10 years ago):

I lost my inspiration for what to do with the dresser. We don’t really need it in the bedroom. Today inspiration stuck, the dresser will be painted a dark blue and put into the office as a printer stand with storage.

This board is having its redo, redone.

When I pulled the painters tape off the stained part (which had a week+ to dry), this happened:

I just haven’t wanted to deal with the disappointment of redoing my redo. Sorta like when knitting something and the yarn misbehaves, the item gets frogged and the yarn gets to sit in time out for a while.

I’m still patching the ceiling of the kitchen (yes, that is a bird nest). I only do one patch at a time, when I have time:

I’m also painting the bathroom, a little bit at a time when I get some time. It is small but there are no straight lines thanks to textured walls and a house that was built in the late 1920s.

I’ve also been hanging some of my late grandmother’s paintings. The old way was a pain in the butt and involved these drywall anchors that you had to use a drill bit and hammer to install and then a screwdriver to install the part the picture would hang from:

The new way is much faster and easier and involves these, and no tools other than my hands:

They do actually work as advertised. The only problem I’ve had with them has been when I didn’t get enough leverage to properly twist and “self drill” the anchor.

Our house feels much more like home with some of Grandma’s paintings on the walls.

I’ve also got some knitting projects lined up. Picnic Knits helped kick off a knitalong on the Knittyboard of her Gaenor shawl. I’ve got the pattern, my yarn is wound but I haven’t cast on yet thanks to being busy all last week and this week hasn’t been any better for time to devote to something that is going to stretch my knitting abilities.

I’m also planning on knitting a Pasha for my husband’s geek shelf. This is also going to stretch my knitting abilities with some techniques I’ve never done before. I need to get the yellow and white yarn for this project. Or not…as he just informed me that he couldn’t decide if it would be cute or lame for me to make him a knitted penguin.

So, as you can see, lots going on and not much to show for it!