Thursday, December 4, 2014

Cooler weather sparks new projects

Spring, summer and fall keep me busy with outside stuff.  Outside stuff makes me happy (maybe not cutting grass and weed eating). Cooler weather keeps me inside which can be good and bad.  I tend to feel more blue in the winter but it also forces me to find things to do that I might not normally think of; things I'd ignored during the warm days. Lately I've been stepping back and looking at our house and what needs attention.

James and I have talked about taking each room one at a time and giving it the attention it needs.  When we fixed up the house years ago we opened up every fireplace that had been bricked shut. For some reason I never completed the job with the fireplace in our bedroom.  We can use it but I never made it look nice.  I exposed the brick but it's not a finished look that was supposed to be exposed.  It's all uneven and rough.  It was meant to be covered.  Some bricks stick out real far and others are recessed.
I've decided to mortar over them and come up with a nice finish but can't decide what that might be so for now we're looking at a somewhat even mortared surface.  At least it fills the gap between the mantle surround and the brick.  Tile maybe?  I don't know. It may wait another 8 years.
The dimmer switch in our bedroom has been broken for a long time so I finally installed a new one.
Why do we wait so long to do these things?  It only takes minutes to fix. There are some very real hazards to doing this though.  It required scissors to open the dimmer switch package.
I do love a dimly lit chandelier in a bedroom.

I recently experimented with a new cheese, Drunken Goat Cheese.  It wasn't as good as I wanted it to be but it sure looked pretty.  The semi-hard cheese was soaked in a brine and then a wine bath. It had a mild taste but nothing to brag about.
Yesterday I made a bunch of soap and some cheddar cheese, which is still in the press.  The yellow stuff is soap, not cheddar cheese.
Tonight I'm experimenting with the effects of salt and ammonia fumes on copper for some arts and crafts projects.  Growing up my parents gave me an craft present every Christmas (that I can remember) and that was almost always my favorite gift.  I've never outgrown this.  I expect more blue on the copper by tomorrow.
I also continue my fascination with bed springs.  Don't ask me why this is.  I guess I like rusty metal.  I don't know what this will become.  For now I stare at it and imagine possibilities.

I think that's what winter is for, imagining possibilities. 

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for the reminder and encouragement. We will be using this winter to get our house ready for maker in the spring. Glad you told me the yellow stuff was soap. I thought it looked like delish cheese!😉

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