Creating Kitchen Storage

I have a serious kitchen addiction.  I love cooking and baking which leads to dozens of kitchen appliances, gadgets, and utensils.  When we moved into our current apartment, we lost a lot of cabinet space.  But what we lost in cabinet space, we gained in really tall ceilings.  I would have loved to use wooden crates to store all my extra stuff, but that would end up being really expensive.  Instead, I sewed a dozen large burlap and fabric bags to store everything.   

They are more floppy then I'd like, but it still gets the job done.  I bought probably 2 dozen yards of burlap and the same of orange broadcloth.  It was a simple job to sew them into boxes and topstitch the top.  They look much better than just throwing everything on top and no one needs to know about my kitchen addiction.

Yearly Resolutions: Cheesemaking

2014 will be the year of cheesemaking.  I love the idea of making food.  Not just cooking food, but actually making it.  I have a few friends who brew beer, but I have zero interest in doing that.  So I thought about where my interests are.  Wine and cheese!  I'm not going to attempt to make wine... well I'm saying that now.  Check back in a few years.  So the answer is cheese!  
 

There are so many online recipes and advice for people wanting to make their own cheese.  I have bookmarked lots of these pages and have scheduled once type of cheese to make each month.  I'm starting off easy with soft cheese that don't need any extra ingredients that aren't already in your kitchen.  Then I'll move onto hard cheese and trying to make my own cheese press.  That will be interesting.  

My first cheese was creme fraiche.  I know that isn't really a cheese, but I read that it was a great place to start.  I unfortunately forgot to take pictures.  I was way too excited about it!
 

My February cheese was queso blanco.   I found the recipe over here on Urban Cheesecraft.
 

I have always found queso blanco that you buy in stores to be pretty bland.  It works well on Mexican dishes, but doesn't really add anything to the flavors.  The most fascinating part of the cheese ended up being the flavor!  

 

You use vinegar or lemon/lime juice in the recipe, and it imparts some of its flavors onto the cheese!  I used apple cider vinegar and my queso blanco has a slight apply flavor.  It isn't much, but I find it way more interesting than store bought queso.   

Next up, I think I'm going to make another batch of this using lime juice and maybe I'll toss in some jalepenos!

Stay tuned for my March cheese: Ricotta.

Introducing... The Fleece Foxes!

I originally saw this on Pinterest, and fell in love with the idea of a fleece fox that looks kind of a like a fur stole would.  I bought a bit of fleece and shearing fabric, and just cut by hand.  It took a couple cuts to get all of the sizing right, but once I had it cut, it came together very quickly. 

It has become my new winter scarf because it so warm too.  It is about 8 inches wide so it can cover my neck completely.  And it has become so popular among my friends, that they have started a fake band called the "Fleece Foxes" where they wear my fleece fox.  Yeah... I have strange friends.

Stuffed Toy: Robot

A few months ago, our friend had a baby and a few weeks ago we finally went over to see him for the first time.  We brought along a dozen cupcakes for the parents and a stuffed toy for the baby.  The stuffed robot is a series of squares all sewn together. 
 

I didn't think it would be nearly as big as it ended up.  Looking the squares on a table, I thought it would be half the size it ended up.  Whoops!  

PS- Zoey was a big fan of it, as you can tell.

Yearly Resolutions: Woodworking, Staining Furniture

This has also been the year of staining.  I refinished a midcentury coffee table that we had gotten from a friend.  The finish on the top was partially scraped off and it was chipping a bit.  So I sanded it, stained it, and tossed some poly on it.  A note to all the other DIY'ers out there... don't power sand in your apartment.  It doesn't work.  Well it does work, you just have dust everywhere.  I didn't have anywhere else to do it, but I also wouldn't do it again.

And my current project, which is a holdover from last year, is a new set of bedside tables.  My brother built the tables for us as a Christmas gift.  I wanted something that had midcentury lines to cater to my taste, but was stained in a rustic dark color for my husband's taste.  I did a few layer so of stain and lots of layers of poly.  Now we have a partially matching set of bedroom furniture!  

Here are the boxes post stain.  Now they are just waiting for the legs to arrive!