Every year my compost bin hosts a tomato plant. Every year the little tomatos would be nibbled to oblivion by the not so little ground hogs. This year, I did not clear the grass growing around my compost bin and it had grown over the anaemic golden mop. Today I cleared out the grass and guess what I found?
Amazingly there were two completely ripe tomatos that were not eaten by ground hogs. Unfortunately, they were so worm infested, they went straight back into the bin again.
Even for a woman like me with not too many (I stubbornly insist) pieces of jewelry, there comes a time when some organization is simply important. For one, I cannot for the life of me remember the pieces I have and therefore land up wearing the same-old, same-old pieces of jewelry over and over again. Finally this summer was the year when I got to sorting out all of my dangling pieces that have hooks.
I converted an old tea box with a plexi glass door into a jewelry organizer. At first I simply used this as is, with the cardboard partitions that were used to separate the individual tea sachets to separators for jewelry. But that really did not keep the ear rings in their intended place. Unfortunately, I have no pics of that mess.
Remember the other trivet that was turned into a doorway key organizer? (Click here if you don't). I had another one saved up inside and it was in worse (or better) shape, because all of the crisscrossing pieces of wood had come un-done. I simply hot glued 4 of them in a staggered fashion like below and screwed on the hooks. Then I hung up the ear rings and rings. Done. Just be warned that screwing the hooks onto the wood could give you blisters!
Old Tea box with plexiglass door converted to ear-ring and ring organizer
Staggering the pieces of wood gave me the ability to hand longer pieces on the end and shorter ones in the middle!
You can tell I got tired of screwing those hooks towards the end!
I plan on hanging it vertically on the wall. So easy to just take one look and know what you have. I do have to make a few more for the chains and necklaces and also the ones that have no hooks to hang them by!
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Here is my twist on the ranch dressing. I do not usually buy mayonnaise and I have never made my own, so my dressing had to be mayonnaise free.
The Dressing
Ingredients:
1/2 cup Sour Cream
1/2 cup Greek Yogurt
3 or 4 spoons of extra virgin Olive oil
Fresh dill finely chopped
Fresh chives, finely chopped
Horse radish (prepared in vinegar) per taste
salt to taste
pepper to taste
Add the sour cream, greek yogurt, olive oil, prepared horse radish and a little water in a blender and blend until everything is fully mixed.
Pour it out into a bowl.
Add the chopped herbs and mix by hand until everything is well blended.
dill
Fresh pepper and chives
The dressing
The Salad:
Mixed greens of your choice
Pepper Jack cheese (I am in love with this thing, but don't seem to like it melted)
You could throw in some nuts, but I did not.
Toss with dressing. Done!
Wood pallets come in several sizes and types. The ones I scored from my garden cinder block delivery were large and looked like this:
This was too big for the projects I wanted to try and so I put it off for a while. Until on the way to work one day I spied a stack of pallets that were just the right kind -- stronger boards and also heat treated. I talked to the owner of the beer wholesaler and got me a couple of those boards. They looked like the first pic on this post.
I started by sawing off the appropriate end of the pallet using a Ryobi reciprocating saw. To end up with this
It already looked like a shelf, except it had no bottom. To make a bottom, I sawed off one of the narrower planks on the remaining piece of the pallet which gave me this
And the leftover pallet looked like this
Hmm this itself is an interesting shape and is giving me more ideas. But, I have to stick to my project on hand for now.
Then came the Grand Sanding! I used some 3M sand paper with coarse and medium grit, but soon tired of it and decided to invest in a power sander. So got me a Ryobi orbital 1/4 sheet sander and went to town on the boards with it.
I then used Minwax Espresso satin to stain the bottom board to see if I would like this color for the entire shelf.
I really loved it, but was not too sure that I would like for the whole shelf to be this color, seeing as it is so dark. So I decided to paint part of it white with some house paint I had lying around and stain part of it this color.
All I had to do now was attach the bottom to the shelf and then hang it over the rods in the kitchen nook (see here for the kitchen nook). I originally planned on using an L-bracket on the inside to screw the bottom to the rest of the shelf, but it was impossible to get into that tight spot with my screw driver. So, I found some wood screws that I simply used to screw the bottom to the sides of the shelf
Wood screws attached the bottom to the sides of the shelf
Now I am all done except for the hanging on the wall part.
Now I finally have a place to put my oversized baking accessories that had to be stored in the oven until now!
All I have to do is find a safe way to put it up on the wall!
