Lace Candle Jars - Pinterest Winter Challenge

Much to the dismay of my darling husband, I have been collecting glass jars to hold candles since I used them to light the pathway of my 26th birthday BBQ. I recycled most of them when we moved but then started over again. I have even made purchase decisions based on the jar size/shape. Before you put me in the crazy pile, I should point out that I am generally not interested in cleaning gross jars so my collection is not much larger than 10 and, a you will soon see, most are tea light friendly. I love the simplicity of the glass jars for illuminating my balcony in the summer. So, when I saw this pin I knew I had to dress up my jar collection

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In the past, I have been overloaded with inspiration after one of Sherry and Katie's Pinterest Challenges. However, I never had a project to add. This time I have two which came together in the right time frame to participate. In this post, I will detail my new candle holders. The other project is the final reveal of my white and grey chairs which will get their own post. If you want to read the rules and check out the hosts and other participants head over to YHL for over 600 links and be prepared to get sucked into the creativity. You have been warned.

Full disclaimer, I have since unregistered myself from Pinterest after reading a couple of articles pertaining to the legal protection of its user agreement. Specifically, the company puts all the risk onto users for any potential copyright infringement. This recent Forbes article links back to a couple of others and explains the situation pretty well, comparing Pinterest to Napster. I don't want to rain on the Pinterest party but I just do not feel comfortable promoting a site I am no loner happy to use. 

So, with the above inspiration photo in mind, I headed out to my local secondhand shop in search of a doily or two to spruce up my jars. In life, this was a spontaneous project that I did not intend to blog so I don't have before photos of jars (think small olive and sauce jars) or the doily I ended up buying (it was yellowed and stained but large enough and with distinctive patterns I could cut out. 

This is a really simple project that can set the mood for a casual evening get together. It also seems to be a popular addition to an outdoor shabby chic styled wedding. Most importantly it is cheap and easy with a capital E. Here are my jars in action:

 

You will need:

Modge Podge (or any brand of decoupage glue) 

paint brush (small but does not need to be fancy as you will ruin it with glue)

glass jars (save these as you use them)

lace

My total cost was 0.50 EUR cents for the doily! I had the glue and brush from prior use and jars are all recycled. 

So, once you have gathered your supplies, set them out so you have a feel for the different sizes and can approximate what bits of the lace pattern you want to use on each one. I started by picking a non-stained section of lace and snipping it out. I found it was super easy to separate the patterns in my lace so that is what I did. You can see my inspiration photo used a more delicate lace and just wrapped it around the jar. If I had bought new lace by the yard, this would have been fine but since I used an antique doily that may have been created by hand, the pattern was larger and more defined and I wanted to really highlight its intricacies. So, I snipped, figured out placement and then brushed a thin layer of glue on the jar. I then stuck the lace on and applied a thicker layer of glue over it. Keep in mind that the glue will make the fabric thicker, feel free to use that to your advantage in designing the jars. In the jar below, you can see, I left a bit of the fabric standing over the top. This bit was fully covered in glue so it would stand on its own like that. For fire safety, I will only use a small tea light in that jar to be sure the flame is no where near the fabric.

My lace doily had three distinct patterns. The parts that looked like flowers, the parts that looked like paisley and then a cross hatch pattern in the middle. You can see a bit of an imperfection in the center of the large flower below. This was the biggest flower and fit perfectly on my largest jar so I decided I was fine with the imperfection. After all this was a recycled project and I was going for an antique look for my cake party anyway.

Here is the finished product acting as a centerpiece on my dining table. I think these little guys will get to stay indoors now. You may notice I mixed in a few non-lace covered candle holders, both types are from IKEA. While the tall candle stick is an orphan since its mate broke a couple of years ago and has since been discontinued, the small tea light holders can still be purchased and are the flip side of the holders used in the first photo with purple candles. They cost less than 1 EUR each and can be used for tapers or tea lights and I love this about them.

And that's it, low effort, high impact. Now that I used these jars, I will recommend only using tea lights inside them. I used small pillars (also from IKEA) in 3 of the bigger jars and by the end of the day noticed the rims were black. In the photo below, those flowers are in a vase but it looks like they are in the largest jar which may be a great alternative use for these. 

Did you also make something for the latest Pinterest challenge? Add a link in the comments...I want to see. 

Last Weekend

 Last weekend I had a cake party. More appropriately and in German, I invited some friends over for "Cafe und Kuchen." Cafe und Kuchen is a German thing in my mind and I associate it with Omas (grandmas). It's essentially eating cake and drinking coffee in the afternoon, so I have no complaints about the concept but I think the Oma association comes from the fact that they are the ones who have time for such a thing. To be fair, it is mostly a Sunday afternoon thing for most. Anyway, enough rambling I am no expert, I just like cake...and coffee...and friends. So, I decided to organize a cake party of my own. P was here for the weekend and kindly drove me to a supermarket where we bought lots of ingredients for an afternoon of baking.


I planned to bake 5 cakes in all, 4 using authentic recipes from German Omas and one following a recipe from the internet, Guinness chocolate cake as a nod to the upcoming St. Patrick's Day that Germans do not celebrate. Last summer, for my birthday, my wish list included baking items and family cake recipes and my colleagues really came through. However, this was the first time I was getting around to actually trying to bake these cakes. Unlike the internet, family recipes tend to have less instruction and leave more room for interpretation which was pretty intimidating for me. Also, each cake called for 4 eggs so 30 eggs, 1.5 kg of flower, 300g nuts, Guinness, cream, and lots of sugar later I had everything I needed to spend the day baking. And then this happened...

Luckily that had nothing to do with my baking. I dropped a flower pot that had been holding spare change while moving something in the kitchen. The kitchen which I had so thoroughly vacuumed just hours before. You can also see we have replaced the industrial strength wet/dry vac with a Dyson which is A-mazing. Minor set back but moving on to cakes...


I found the inspiration for this Chocolate Guinness cake online and it did not disappoint. It was rich and moist and even though I made mine in a different pan than suggested, I did not have a problem getting the intended results. I didn't get leftovers either as P took the rest to his office. I will make this again even if it is not near St. Patrick's day.



This is a Fanta cake, make with Fanta orange soda. It kind of looks like a volcano so I just went with it when adding the glaze and let it pool at the base. The cake and glaze both have a slight hit of orange but more in the way that it tastes fresh than in an overwhelming this is an orange flavored cake. It is also very moist and tastes like a classic birthday cake. We got to enjoy the leftovers for breakfast at our department meeting Monday morning.  The only part I would change is the frosting. I think an orange butter cream using either a fresh orange or orange buttermilk would be better than the glaze. I would also try this as a cupcake.




The apple cake and whipped cream. I cannot take credit for this as I was too lazy to peel apples so this only made it onto the menu when P volunteered to do the peel removal. This is a German classic. Unlike an apple pie, this is actually half cake topped with the fruit of 6 apples. It was moist and delicious and there were sadly no leftovers. This was the winner for best cake best on the basis of the small piece of the cake chart remaining (my guests were mostly researchers, and the German term for a pie chart is cake chart, you really have to turn your nerd on for that one).

The last cake is not exactly a cake and I have no idea what to call them in English. I made the dough on Saturday, balled it up and refrigerated overnight. On Sunday I rolled it out and made the egg white and nut filling then cut, filled and rolled like mini croissants before popping them in the oven to bake. I had lots of filling leftover so I tried to make some meringue cookies in my whoopie pie pan which turned out to be an epically delicious fail that got washed down the sink because I didn't grease the pan first. The actual dessert was delicious and approved by the recipe owner.



In addition to baking, I had fun setting up the party. As I mentioned the idea of a cake party makes me thing of grandmas, I went with a bit of a vintage theme. I was super excited to buy an antique tea pot and some matching dishes (top left corner of below photos) for the occasion. P thought they were redic but I love them. I also picked up a lace doily and deconstructed the lace to decorate my jar collection. I think I will write that up in its own post for the current Pinterest Challenge since I got my inspiration for that from the internet.



The final cake I do not have a solo shot of is in the bottom left of the above photo and it was delicious. It is lovingly referred to as Oma Kuchen. It's a dense cake with raisins and chocolate bits. I love it for breakfast and it pairs so well with black coffee. I will be making this again for sure, it is also on my mental list to bake for Christmas in RI. I think nuts would be a great addition and cranberries could substitute nicely for raisins.

All in all, there were zero cake fails which makes me so so happy. We also successfully entertained 15 people in the living room and everyone had a place to sit. This Kuchen party did not turn into a Küche party! 

Chairs 2 and 3

When moving in with a partner, most people have the problem of duplicate belongings. Two beds, 2 TVs, an extra sofa, 20 glasses, 12 coffee cups, it's a great problem to have. When moving across the Atlantic to your first  apartment as a couple after previously living with roommates, you don't have that problem. In fact, we had exactly the opposite problem. We had nothing. To be fair we had some things. I brought a down comforter (the only thing light enough to vacuum pack in my suitcase. P had a full set of ugly brown dishes (which I still use 5 years later), a 2-person love seat, a life sized cardboard Yeti, an outdoor light fixture, a terrible framed poster of abstract 90s styling and two computers. You may notice we were lacking many essentials, we didn't even have a kitchen sink! As i got acquainted to the BYOK philosophy of Germany apartments, we got "lucky" and scored a free kitchen from friends of P's family who were upgrading. You know the catch is we had to remove the kitchen and it was 3.5 hours away. The whole family got on board, thankfully that included an Uncle who is a master carpenter, and we tore that baby out and loaded it into a U-Haul (but of course not because U-Haul is not in Germany). The U-Haul overnighted at P's parents' as we made the drive home to prepare for its arrival the next day. While there, P's mom took the occasion to unload some furniture she thought we could use. Included in this surprise furniture was a pair of bentwood chairs with cane seats. They were well worn with a dark wood stain that had all but been worn off in places. But, they matched each other and they were perfect because we were planning to host Thanksgiving and had a serious shortage of seating. We used them in Braunschweig, we took them with us when we moved to Mannheim and then we packed them up and moved again. They were thrown about, stepped on, left on the balcony, and generally abused. I never gave them a second glance. Then I started getting my found chairs in line and realized these guys could use a good makeover. This weekend, I hand sanded each of them and applied a couple of coats of white lack to each. 

Since the majority of the chair was a round surface, I used a round brush instead of the foam roller. I made this decision based on the photo on the package of brushes/foam rollers I bought. I think I may break out a foam craft brush for a third coat if there any remaining brush strokes when the paint is fully dry but so far it is looking good. In the photos below, you can see the difference between one and two coats. The closest chair has two coats in case that difference was not clear. 

These two babies are still in progress, hopefully I will have a chance to finish them sometime this week. I noticed the last photos I uploaded from my phone were terrible quality. I loved the Polaroid effect thanks to a Retro Camera app but it did not translate well to the blog. These were also taken on my phone without that app. Hopefully they turn out better. I am still waiting for Instagram to make a droid app. So, anyone else engage in any painting projects this weekend? Any chair make overs? I just found some internet inspiration for a whole new type of upcycled chair but I am trying to resist it until I have actual free time. Anyone know when Instagram becomes Droid friendly?

Chair 1 of 4 = COMPLETE

Back in my old apartment, the one with a garden and garage, I redid my first salvaged chair.That was May of 2009 and it has been sitting in my living room ever since. If you read my blog back then, you may remember I mentioned that I had a second one just like it. Well the second one multiplied thanks to P's mom who had a similar single chair to donate to the cause and I had 3 ugly peeling wooden chairs. I decided the next two would match and I would do something a bit more fun than black on black. This time I didn't have a garden (read: no spray painting) and it was the coldest weeks of winter the Mann has seen for decades. So, for the past two weeks I have been engaged in an indoor sanding, painting, waiting, painting rhythm. For Christmas, my husband bought me a band sander because he is romantic like that. Seriously though, he has a knack for buying the most unnecessarily powerful industrial strength items. Hence why we own a wet/dry vac but that's another story. I was excited to try out the band sander which is what motivated this project.

I started out with the wooden chair and once again could not bear to take a complete before picture. The above is  what it was looking like after one coat on the legs and two coats on the upper. I was excited to try a new paint type and method, Lack with a foam roller. I think Lack translated to lacquer and I am pretty sure it is oil based. Either way, the finish is smooth and shiny but it took 3 coats to get there. Since I was doing this by hand and each part of the chair required painting four sides with three coats, I saved time and paint fumes by leaving the back and seat au natural. I have plans for those.

As far as the new sander, it was too intense for such a project. I could not get into the parts where the legs met the base. It is not able to bend and the back of the chair has a natural bend to it. However, it did strip the old finish from the wood really well on the straight legs. Overall, it was much quicker than the last chair I hand sanded but I am left pining for a tiny iron shaped hand sander to get in those curved and crevices. I also got lazy and did not follow up with hand sanding which would have really fixed all of my complaints.

So, after sanding, I wiped it down with a damp paper towel to get rid of any residual dust. Then I got right to the paint. The interesting about this chair is that its previous owner completely reinforced all the joints. I'm talking serious screws and glue that I could not remove. So I broke out my small paint brush and got as much white lack in those crannies as possible. I realize I could have properly covered the screws with wood filler but that would have required another trip to the hardware store so I made do.

I applied each coat using the Sherry method of thin and even to build up the coverage. The first coat of paint did very little to effect the look of the chair leaving me doubting the outcome and wishing I had considered primer. However, coat two was already showing a huge improvement. Leaving a day a of drying time between each I had the third coat on by the end of the weekend and was pretty happy with the look. I decided three is the magic number here.

Then I decided to move onto another painting project while waiting for the rest of the materials I ordered to arrive via post. Since the paint was open and the roller still in good condition. I cleared off this entry way table I build a while back and moved it into my kitchen painting station. It has been naked pending my decision on a color. First I  wanted black than white than I considered a color like navy and even a stain. White won once I saw the final result on the chair but that's another project for another day.

Around this time, my apartment was beginning to smell like paint and the weather was breaking a bit so I moved my projects to the balcony to breathe for a couple of days and then my fabric arrived. Determined to do things the right way, I washed the fabric and let it dry before getting to work on the upholstery step. I must admit, I didn't take any pics of this phase which would have been nice. I don't find upholstering hard or scary and I credit my mom for this. She re-upholstered our dining room chairs when I was a kid and I watched. They came out great. I also upholstered some sheep (used in a production of Joseph) for drama club in high school which was a nice way to practice. Anyway, The foam was the other half of the piece I bought for the first chair and the fabric was ordered from dawanda.de which is Germany's answer to etsy.com. I can say I will not be ordering fabric online from a private seller again unless I get a recommendation. I ordered two types in three colors and was only happy with the quality of one. The other faded unevenly after I washed it and has a lot of defects in the print. The third is the same as the faded in another color but I have not washed it yet. So, I just cut the foam and used wood glue to clue it to my wood. I decided to add some foam to the top as well and this required piecing 3 cuts together but was not hard. The next step is generally to cover everything in quilt batting but that was a failed odyssey that I am not yet ready to talk about so I just went straight to the fabric. Finally, I have this,

I am really happy with the finished chair and can't wait to get its twin into my workshop to have a matching set. I know I should have done this assembly line style but I really wanted to see the outcome and I only had enough foam for one chair which is the excuse I prefer over my own impatience. Have you ever upholstered a wooden chair? Do you have any idea what type of primer I should use on the next chair?

ETA: All photos taken on my Samsung Galaxy S2 using the Retro Camera app except the last one which used an app called Camera Effects. I am rather let down by the quality and will go beck ot using my real camera for future projects.

Technology Got the Best of Me

I figured out the app problem. It was not really complicated but then became a bit more problematic. First, one of my two MIA posts went to my old wedding blog but now I know how to change the settings to only post here in the future. It becomes more problematic in that the app is not so great. I tried to post twice on Saturday and got an error which forced the app to close twice. I sent the second one off to Google as a bug report in hopes of a future update. Eventually, my post and accompanying photo logged as processing but nothing came of that. So, it looks like I will have to rewrite that post when I upload the photos on my lap top.

On a related note, I must admit to being completely dense at times. I used my phone as a camera for the first time at a party on Sat. and there are some really good photos I want to share with their subjects.The next morning, I tried to think about how I could do so without emailing the photos one at a time. I came into my office this morning and when my office mate asked if I uploaded the photos so she could view them, I got momentarily frustrated and told her I have not figured out how to easily do so. Then, before she could answer I screamed out I can plug the phone into the lap top! And this is just one example of how I miss things that should be apparent. I also wore my sport pants inside out to do sports last week. Not clear to anyone else as they were black but I should have realized as the inside was a bit fleecy and the outside a bit shiny...such is my life.

Blogger App and Green Onions AKA Frühlingszwiebeln

I got a smartphone for Christmas (thanks P!) bringing me right into 2009 just in time for 2012. The point of this is not to tell you I was shamefully behind on my technology consumption but rather to now complain that technology has let me down. Once of the first apps I grabbed was blogger and I posted twice, once about snow and then about green onions. Both posts are not visable on the blog. The snow one may have been a bit of a whine but the green onions was based on an article I found on how to re-grow the green bit.

This is the green onion re-growth method I tried to post.


As mentioned in the original post, it is a simple method to freshen up the green bits once used or slightly wilted. This interested me for two reasons. First, I really prefer green onions to traditional onions even though I know they are not intended to substitute for the other, I often choose these instead. Second, I recently had dinner at a friend's place and he wanted to just use the white part and throw out the green in a salad he was making. Growing up, I only remember the opposite, use the green, disgard the white bit near the roots. I was not sure if this was a German vs. American thing or personal preference. I'm pretty sure P always starts witht he white bits too but he mostly never says anything when I use the green.We agreed to put half of the green bits int eh salad and everyone agreed it tasted good. Which brings be back to the linked post above. In the comments, some people noted that they throw out the white while otheres claim the white is the best. May it is not a cultural difference at all if I assume an English blog is mostly commented on by Americans (which is a huge and completely not scientific assumption). So now I am intrigued, do you use the greens or the whites? Have you ever re-grown green onions? And where did you learn either practice? Is it a cooking thing or a regional thing or just a case of I do it because my mom did it. I'm pretty sure I fall into the latter mom category.

New Year's Resolutions

I know new year's resolutions are boring and have a reputation of not being followed through on. I also know it's not even the first week of January. But I tend to be a procrastinator and often give up on long term goals if no one is watching. So, for the sake of accountability, I will pretend I have readers and put my resolutions or rather goal for 2012 out there on the Internet for all to see.

2012 Goals

#1) Successfully complete my Dr. degree - this is really the most important thing I can and will do this year.

#1a) Be proud of anything I put my name on, specifically as it applies to paper writing - this will  hopefully work on the procrastination induced stress habit I have.

#2) Lose 7kg via sustainable methods and sustain healthy habits beyond 2012.

#3) Sell mostly all of my belongings before moving at the end of the year.

#4) Be happy and make time for things that will make me happy. :)

#5) No shopping before June (hopefully by then I will have lost those 7kg) In 2009 I didn't buy anything (aside from food and such) for the whole year, this year I aim for 6 months and then will reevaluate.

#6) Visit a new continent.

#7) Start project 365 on my birthday and keep it up

#8) Finish the year with holidays in RI and make time to visit the ocean.

Bonus: Take kite surfing lessons in north Germany (if I get the chance to do this there will be many photos to share but it depends on improving my core strength as well as finding the time for travel and lessons which may push it to 2013 but it is surely on my bucket list).

Those are my mostly spontaneous previously thought out goal for 2012. To keep myself in check, I will check in every couple of months or so and see how they are going. So far, I've gotten started on a couple and are happy with my progress but it's still January so that barely counts as an accomplishment. Maybe I should have added a line about the blog but I still am not able to make the daily commitment necessary to recruit readers, maybe some day.