almost makes perfect - Page 146 of 147 -

it’s a medicine cabinet MAKEOVER!

03.17.12

Has anyone bought this?

Don’t. It makes you crazy. It makes you want to redo your medicine cabinet. So I did!

Our medicine cabinet was cluttered, and ridiculously overstocked. The medicine cabinet does not need products we don’t use every day, let alone every week in there. I started by removing it all and only picking out the essentials. Then, I removed the labels on most of them. Sorry boyfriend.

And then… I painted it.

It took me about 15 minutes to decide whether or not to paint the shelves. But I went for it. I used leftover paint from my Rast Hack (Anvil by Martha Stewart).

Because we live in an old craftsman, windows are painted shut and all the paint jobs have been painted over and painted over. I totally should have sanded before painting. Oh well.

UGH. Now the problem with making the prettiest thing in your bathroom be something that is normally hidden behind a door is that you don’t want to close the door.

eating this: lime cheesecake

03.15.12

My hairdresser Stanley wrote a cookbook. Yes, he does hair AND food. I’ve had the cookbook for a year but this is the first recipe I got around to trying. It turned out super moist, but like he says in the book, it is better to serve one day after making for texture and taste. Well I actually think even 2 days is best.

The recipe was simple, I only had two obstacles! The first was my zesting! I don’t know my own zesting strength and always over-zest. But it tastes perfect in the cheesecake.
Um, thats WAY too much zest right?! OOPS.

The second was measuring 12 ounces of cream cheese. Ok, so the packs come in 8. This means I buy two 8-ounce packs. Then I cut one in half.
But is that half?! Which one is more half?! I had to Sophie’s Choice this one.

Lime Cheesecake
(adapted from Completely Delicious by Stanley Penner)

first layer:
1 graham cracker crust pie shell (9 inch)
12 ounces of cream cheese (he recommended for easier blending, warming in the oven for 5 minutes)
½ cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
zest of one lime
2 tb fresh lime juice
dash of sea salt

second layer:
12 ounces sour cream
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 325°. Blend the warmed cream cheese and sugar in a bowl with a fork. Add one egg and blend. Add second egg and blend again. Blend until smooth.

Add vanilla, lime zest, lime juice, and salt. Blend with a spoon.

Pour mixture into the pie shell and bake in the center rack for 30-35 minutes. When the outer edge of the cheesecake starts to split, it’s done.

While that’s baking, prepare the second layer. Blend sour cream, sugar and vanilla in a bowl and set aside.

Remove cream cheese pie from oven and pour the sour cream layer on top. Start pouring in the center and spread about in a circular motion with a spatula.

Continue to bake for 10 minutes more. Remove from oven, let cool, and then cover before refrigerating. Definitely wait a day or two for eating.

making this: it’s an office supply MAKEOVER!

03.15.12

What’d you do today? Spray paint all of your office supplies? Yeah, me neither. Yes I did.

How dare these objects be so useful and take up so much space on our desks but usually look so ugly! In theory, I’d like to buy some nice vintage ones like this, but there are like 5,000 other things I’d like to buy on etsy, so spray paint works. I wanted to mix things up and spray some white, some gold, but Gideon refused the gold as usual. So I decided my tape dispenser would be the lone gold.

Jeez! Taping these things up is a pain in the assssss.

The real show-stopper.

OMG White.

And VOILA. Our desks are 20% nicer to look at now!

2 Comments

uncategorized

nicole’s bedroom

03.15.12

My best friend started redecorated her bedroom and abruptly stopped after she painted the walls and thought she made a mistake with the color (which I recommended – oops!). Here is my plan for what she can do to spruce up her room and love it again.
1. “what’s up tiger lily” vintage movie poster / 2. hemnes dresser / 3. venetian mirror / 4. vintage floor lamp / 5. ruffle duvet cover / 6. ikat silk pillow / 7. flamingos throw pillow / paint : solitude by behr

3 Comments

recipes

eating this: rack of lamb with mustard soy glaze

03.13.12

My mom has been making this recipe forever, aptly named “the love meal”. It’s one of the easiest, no-fail but impressive dinners I can make. One of the best parts of this recipe is that you probably have almost if not all of the ingredients for the marinade in your kitchen already. This rack that we bought at Pavilions was a little smaller than most, so I probably should have compensated by cooking for a minute less, but it still came out medium rare. Just a tiny less pink than I would have liked.

Rack of Lamb with Mustard Soy Glaze
(serves 2… or 3 if you eat less than me.)
1 8-rib frenched lamb rack
4 tb olive oil
2 tb dijon mustard
1 tb fresh parsley
2 tb soy sauce
2 grinds fresh ground pepper (or more)
1 large garlic clove

Whisk all of the ingredients together in a bowl until it forms a mayonnaise consistency. Coat the lamb rack generously on both sides. Broil for 5 minutes on each side.

Turn the oven to 400°. Bake for 10 minutes (for medium rare).

Remove from oven, let stand for 5 minutes before carving.

We served the lamb with roasted fingerling potatoes and a beet salad.

1 Comment

uncategorized

the office – before and after

03.10.12

When we first moved in, the office was definitely the afterthought. As you can see from the before picture. It was a mess. And quite yellow!

Since then, we replaced our huge eyesore expedit shelf (the first thing you saw when you walked in was a huge black thing. Ugh.) with another… expedit, we switched rugs, got 2 matching pillows, hung a Confetti System garland (christmas gift from boyfriend slash me winning the fight for it), and the worst task of all… cleaned up. A little. The room came out super colorful, unlike the rest of our house. Gideon wanted to get the rug in the baby blue color instead of grey. It arrived way more saturated than photographed on the site. I tried bleaching it twice, but it didn’t really fade it anymore. I think grey would have been a better choice.

We also organized the hell out of the closet. That right there is prior to shelving being put up.

Woo! ORGANIZED! Just don’t look up or down.

Here’s the wall next to my side of desks. Yes, we have tandem desks. Hanging are mementos of trips (The Parker Palm Springs map, a Luau photo, the menu from our dinner from Chez Panisse, AND my beautiful love art from age 6!)

And our little sitting nook. Yes, we always keep those blinds closed. We live in the streets of Hollywood.

1 Comment

recipes

eating this: super easy go-to brownies

03.09.12

My dad has been making this brownie recipe my whole life. As long as they don’t overcook, they’re just gooey and buttery enough that I can’t remember ever bothering with another recipe ever.

Unless it’s this mix, which I like to keep on hand for days when we stay home and do a bunch of vicodin.

Super Easy Go-to Brownies

4 squares unsweetened chocolate
2 sticks of unsalted butter
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 ⅓ cup flour

Preheat the oven to 350°. Melt the chocolate and butter in a pan. In a mixing bowl, beat together the remaining ingredients.

Once the chocolate and butter are completely melted, pour the mixture into the mixing bowl. Beat until mixed. Pour batter into a sprayed glass pyrex. Cook for 20-23 minutes. I check at 20 with a toothpick. If the toothpick is drenched in brownie, I’ll put it in for another minute. If it’s only slightly drenched, take them out!

how we covered an unused door… part 2.

03.08.12

What’s that? You don’t have huge oversized fawns hanging in your house? How weird!

So it’s probably not the first thing I’d hang in our office, basically taking up the entire wall, but look how it is underneath!

This tapestry from Urban Outfitters was our cheapest and easiest option for now but it’s not really working for me. No idea why you wouldn’t want a wall sized photograph of fawns. We’re trying to figure out our options for covering the door and we don’t want to spend much doing it.

chalkboard. We could buy a large piece of plywood and paint it with chalkboard paint. But then we have to buy some kind of huge frame and yada yada.

a memo board. We could buy Homasote and cover in fabric… Gideon thinks this is too girly.

vintage american flag. Since Photoshop doesn’t make things to size for me, I have no idea if and where you can buy a huge vintage flag, but I’m guessing ebay.

oversized antiqued mirror. I found this tutorial on how to do it with mirror panels, which given the size would probably be the easiest way to handle DIYing this bad boy.

UGH!

See how we covered the door in our living room.

1 Comment