Written on January 29th, 2010 by Peter6 comments
The majority of home improvement blogs tend to present the viewer with a very carefully constructed representation of continuity. In short, most blogs show a visitor something that the blogger has found which has been overwhelmingly positive; a force in their life has been discovered and utilized in way that makes not only home improvement, but life in general a more noble and harmonious pursuit.
We, however, prefer a more honest approach and are more than willing to familiarize you, dear reader, with our cock ups, as John Cleese might call them. We want to tell you when we screw up, because we think mistakes in homemaking are productive. Mistakes help us learn and by sharing our failures with you all, we can help you learn in a more honest fashion.
So here is an epic fail:
It began so innocently, with a beautiful, sunny Sunday afternoon of thrift store shopping. My betrothed and I found what might be the best antique store in Austin, a little place called Out of the Past, after the masterpiece of a film noir with your favorite bad boy and mine, Robert Mitchum. We paid this place a visit, met the store’s wonderful proprietress, and purchased two beautiful silver pieces for use in our upcoming wedding. As with most vintage silver one may find, these pieces were tarnished. As we were leaving the store the owner called after us, “Now don’t go buying any of that silver polish! It smells! Use toothpaste instead.”
Well, I attacked this project full bore, thinking it would give me an opportunity to share a thrifty tip with our readers. Unfortunately, I was wrong. Yes, a man was wrong. Somehow the planets aligned and the forces of nature turned against the human race: a man was wrong. The toothpaste did not yield any results. I then tried soaking the silver in warm water and baking soda. Again, nothing.
The picture above serves as both a before and an after. I did manage to remove one microscopic spot, but I would assume that scrubbing furiously for an extended period of time using oatmeal could have produced the same result. (No, I haven’t read any evidence that oatmeal can polish silver.)
The moral of this story, unfortunately, is that some home remedies are sheer quackery, like the nineteenth century elixirs of life sold at medicine shows across the U.S. This did not work, so by all means, use your toothpaste and baking soda for, respectively, personal hygiene and troublesome stomach ailments, not for imperfections of silver.
When I was visiting Clay, he showed me a quick trick for cleaning grimy faucets. You will need is baking soda, vinegar, a plastic bag, and a rubber band.
Pour some baking soda and vinegar in the plastic bag until the mixture starts to bubble like a volcano. Then attach the bag to the sink using your rubber band. Wait awhile–we forgot about it for a few hours but I’m sure an hour would have sufficed.
Remove the bag and enjoy a cleaner faucet! It’s that easy and look at the difference!
Don’t you wish you had a friend like me to post photos of dirty places in your house? 
Thanks Clay!
Written on January 14th, 2010 by Peterone comment
I do most of the cooking at home and we try to make low cost meals be the rule. Doing so is good for two reasons. First, when we do splurge on something, like fresh tuna steaks, it is extra special. Second, it makes it easier on our budget to have friends over for dinner. Here are some helpful bits of information that can get you started on making low cost meals.
One of the easiest ways to make low cost meals is to invest in fresh herbs that you can grow in your home. Indoors or outdoors, most herbs are hearty and grow quickly. Having your own herbs saves lots of money at the grocery store. Herbs also drastically improve a dish. They don’t just look cool.
Recipes (especially stews and sauces) will often call for dried herbs and the best way to handle this side of cooking is to purchase a set of spices. It is pretty easy to find an eighteen spice set, which often comes with its own rack. It is especially helpful to get one of these if you are beginning to cook, because you will learn pretty quickly which spices you use the most, and can avoid stocking up on spices you will never use. We got one of our first spice racks from Costco. Then as we wanted to try new spices, we bought them in bulk, sometimes with a friend so that we wouldn’t have to worry about using the spices before they went bad and we could share the cost.
Unless you are roasting garlic, buying, storing, and cutting whole cloves of garlic wastes time and money. We bought a large jar of minced garlic and cannot tell the difference between the jar and the chopped garlic I have repeatedly labored over in the kitchen. Having worked in numerous restaurants, I can attest that they have all relied on this method as well, because chefs do not have the time to cut their own garlic for all the dishes they make.
If you are tight on cash, it is tough to get over the fear of cooking something that might taste bad, but you will save money in the long run. Start simply and make one dish repeatedly, and practice until you start to improve. The dish should be relatively cheap, like pasta with fresh tomato sauce, which does not require very many ingredients and can be made in small amounts.
Images courtesy of The English, Garden, The Flying Pig and Eathy Finds.
Yesterday I had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. So you can imagine my delight when I came home and there was a package for me sitting on our front porch! When I saw the box I instantly knew what it was: Christmas presents! It may be a little late but after Peter and I returned from our trip I ordered my friend a letter press calendar that I had been eying for quite some time–and since my mother taught me always to give gifts that you would want to receive, I ordered one for myself as well. Here’s what the package looked like what I cut open the box:
Complete with a little note from Pistachio Press, the Etsy seller that I ordered it from.
Pistachio Press was inspired by vintage tea sets to create the delicate designs that grace this year’s calendar. The pages are attached with a gray ribbon (my favorite color) for an elegant, feminine touch.
Here’s the lovely image that Peter and I will be looking at on our wedding month!
I opted to put the calendar in our office simple because it’s too pretty to procrastinate hanging. I’m not sure if this will be the calendar’s forever home, but for now I think it really softens some of Peter’s boy decor.
The best part of this purchase–Sarah, look away– is that I managed to buy the calendars for 20% off because I waited until after the New Year to make my purchase. It was difficult worrying that I may come back from my vacation to find them sold out, but the price cut made it worth it. Have you bought yourself any belated Christmas gifts?
This weekend we arrived back at the condo feeling inspired by my cousin and ready to conquer some unfinished tasks. The first thing on my list was to unclog the the sink in our bathroom. The drain has been slow for a long time and while it was annoying, it was never terrible enough to motivate us to do anything about it. Finally I decided to pick up the Zip-It off the floor and give it a try.
I decided to spare you by not taking any photos of the ick that I pulled out of the sink. Overall, the tool was easy to use but in our case it was no where near as simple as they make it seem. On my first attempt, I inserted the Zip-It into the sink and pulled it out. There were teeny bits of grossness attached but I didn’t actually pull anything, other than the Zip-It itself, out of the sink. I tried it again, this time fishing around a bit–still nothing. After a few attempts I finally managed to pull up some hair but the Zip-It didn’t bring it all the way out. I actually had to use my hand and fish yuck out of the drain. It was horrible. Then I realized that there were minor clogs in each quadrant of the sink stopper.
(Illustrating three of the four quadrants. Note: This is not my actual hand.)
Each required the Zip-It to loosen up the clog and bring it to the surface. But more importantly, each required me to touch (albeit wearing gloves) the grossness that was clogging the sink. I’ll be honest: it was horrible but I thought you deserved fair warning. This tool is not glamorous my friends–but it did work. Our sink now drains without a flaw. Have you tried using the Zip-It? Did it work like it claimed or did you end up with an unfavorable process like I did?
Images courtesy of Amazon and Handyman How-To.
