Jen Caputo

Kitchen Renovation: Day 20 - Counters!!!

Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness! (said in my best Tessie from Little Orphan Annie voice)

We have running water!

We have counter tops! (Silestone Quartz in Ivory Coast)

We have stools!

We have this awesome new cactus (I found him for 12.99 at Ikea today.. a little more than I'd have liked to pay but I thought he looked soooo cool! The pot he's in was 1.99. I am in love with those pots!)

woo!  It was obviously so so so exciting to come home today. The counter tops are so beautiful but the running water and working dishwasher... well that's just priceless :)

Can I say how much I love my farmhouse sink and my pull down faucet?  I LOVE them!!! The water pressure is crazy strong, the different sprays on the faucet are so useful. Oh.. and the instant hot water? Just makes me want to immediately have a cup of tea (If I knew where my tea was...)

I thought I'd share a few more views of the craft room too, so here is a full view from all corners.

 

Foodie Weekend + New Craft Room pics!

Friday we took the day off work to go downtown and have lunch.  It was the last day of Chicago Restaurant week  so we headed down to David Burke's Primehouse for one of the most delicious lunches ever!  We started out with appetizers.  Lobster Bisque with a Lobster Spring Roll for me and East & West Coast oysters for Adam. Followed by a dry aged New York Sirloin for me and a 28 day aged boneless Delmonico Steak for Adam.  Dessert was Apple Cheddar Pie for me (granny smith apples, aged cheddar, salted caramel ice cream - INCREDIBLE) and Slice of Prime for Adam (layers of rich chocolate mousse, cake and fudge, s’mores ice cream).  Yup, taking the day of work just to go out to a fancy lunch was SOOOOOOO worth it :)

To continue a weekend of fabulous food, last night we went to the Mitsuwa Marketplace and picked up $50 worth of sashimi to make our own sushi.

On this trey is:

• Seaweed Salad
• Avocado
• Cucumber
• Unagi (eel - the cooked fish in front)
• Toro (tuna)
• Chutoro (the incredibly delicious fatty underbelly of the tuna, most expensive thing on the board, we ate in raw instead of in rolls)
• Real Wasabi Root - this is the first time we'd ever seen it in a store.  It's EXTREMELY rare and when you can find it, it goes for $100/lb.  We got about 2-3oz of it

Yum Yum Yum!!!

Tonight we are making Mussels in wheat beer.

As hard as it may be to believe we did do other things than just eat this weekend. I'd been wanting to hang a pegboard in my craft room for quite some time and I finally got around to going out and getting the stuff.  I'm so thrilled with it!

Also, I don't think I ever showed you guys this desktop organizer thing I got.  I picked it up around Christmas time from JC Penny's - it was on mega clearance for about $70 or something (originally $300) and it was the exact size to fit my desk.  I totally love it, all of my essentials are right in front of me (black, white, kraft, and glossy cardstock, PTI stamps, coloring utensils, etc.)

A closer view of the pegboard

 

We screwed a curtain rod to the top of the pegboard to hold my punches (I didn't think it would fill up so fast...)

The main reason I wanted the pegboard was to hang up all my flat things like alphas and stickers and rub-ons.  I previously had them on one of those Clip-It-Up things but I was just not a fan, this will make it much easier to page through my goodies. I haven't decided what will go in the wire basket I fastened to the board yet.

Let me know if you have any questions about anything :)

Technorati Tags: Craft Room,Peg Board,Sushi

A few more gift packages

I got a few more gift packages to give to neighbors or party hostesses done this afternoon so I thought I'd share.

This one holds some gourmet hot chocolate along with some peppermint stick stirrers dipped in chocolate. Yum!

Close up of the tag,

I made the patterned paper for these by using the Warm Winter Wishes tag from PTI's 2008 Holiday Tag Collection set.  I created a mask so that I could just stamp the steaming mug and then stamped around them with circles from the Borders & Corners set.

Credits
Stamps: PTI 2008 Holiday Tag Collection, PTI Borders & Corner - Circle
Paper: PTI Spring Rain, PTI Berry Sorbet, PTI Dark Chocolate, PTI Vintage Cream
Ink: PTI Berry Sorbet, PTI Dark Chocolate, PTI Vintage Cream Other: Fiskars Border Punch, EK Success whale of a punch (circle), Nestabilities, PTI Berry Sorbet Satin Ribbon

And this one just holds lots of yummy candy

Credits
Stamps: PTI Snowfall, PTI 2008 Holiday Tag Collection
Paper: White, PTI Spring Moss, PTI Berry Sorbet
Ink: PTI Spring Moss, PTI Aqua Mist, PTI Berry Sorbet
Other: PTI Berry Sorbet Satin Ribbon, Acetate, Nestabilities, Cellophane Bag

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So the other day I went and took a bunch of pictures of my studio to show you everything I'd done lately but before I got a chance to post them, I went and changed a bunch of stuff... (I got this awesome new piece for the top of my desk too - can't wait to share!!!)

Anyway, here are a few pictures I took the other day so I'll share them but it's different now so I'll have to update in a few days.

So here was the view when you walked in

Some of you may have seen this before but I don't think I ever showed it completely together.  The two pieces on the back wall are the 4x4 Ikea Expedit's. 

The island is made from the Crop-In-Style cubes, I made my own top by cutting a piece of wood to size, painting it white, and ordering a custom self-healing mat for the top.

Here is the wall that the door is on.  The shelving unit on the left is the Making Memories Embellishment Center, the one on the right is actually an over the toilet thing from Target.  The embellishment center stores glitter in the top row, small colored embellishments (brads, photo turns, pins, etc.) in the second row, buttons in the 3rd. The 4th is empty, haven't figured out what goes there yet.  And then of course the bottom two are holding PTI ribbon. The green canvas is an art project that may one day get done for my living room.

Here's a view of the top of one of the expedits.  The ink holder is just one of those wooden napa valley cassette holders (you can only find them on ebay these days). The bottom middle two baskets hold loose ribbon on foam core. In the upper right corner is this guy:

It was such a brilliant idea I thought... I took one of these Ikea boxes and punched a bunch of holes in it.  Except, I couldn't punch them because the material was some insane astronaut technology stuff, so I had to drill them... which resulted in shredded box everywhere.... Then I had to go buy the grommets and the guy at the hardware store had no idea what a grommet was... or he did, but he didn't think I did so he kept trying to show me something else. I finally wound up with these but they only had them in brass so I had to spray paint them silver.  A day later, I finally had the front of the box assembled then I had to figure out how to attach the dowels to the inside of the box.  After trying lots of ideas, I finally decided to make some supports out of polymer clay and super glue them to the inside. 

I do not recommend trying one of these yourself :)

This is the die-cut station, it's sitting on another Ikea Expedit, this is the 2x4 one.  I still have the old original sizzix machine but it works with all of the nestabilities and cuttlebug embossing folders so I see no reason to upgrade.  On the far right is my wishblade.  The basket in the middle stores all of my nestabilities and cuttle bug folders and stuff.

Speaking of nestabilities, this is how I store mine:

These are CD holders meant to hold 3 cds. Find them here (did not order mine here, cannot vouch, I happened to have these since college).  I took all of the extra pieces out of the case, added some magnetic strips and I was good to go.  For the inside piece I glued down a piece of chipboard to give me a flat surface to put the magnetic tape on.

Ok that's it for now, I'll have to do a more detailed post at a later time but let me know if you have any questions!

Breaking In the Craft Studio

Adam was in Michigan this weekend so I had 2 whole days to myself to break in the craft room and get things organized a bit more... I worked soooo much!  I have giant garbage bags of stuff to throw out and huge piles of other stuff to put on eBay.  So, I'd say at the moment the studio is like 85% organized. Woohoo!

One of the biggest undertakings was getting things like buttons, brads, eyelets, flowers, etc. organized by color.  And once I did that, I needed some place cool to put them all.  I knew what I wanted in my head but couldn't find it in any of my typical places (Ikea, Amazon, Target, Overstock).  But, I did find these shelves at Target in the bathroom section that worked pretty darn well.  (I think it's meant to go over your toilet.. LOL)

Excuse the bad lighting, I just took the picture around 10 pm so there wasn't much to work with.

And a close up:

I have 3 jars in each color: buttons, flowers, and other stuff (like brads/eyelets/clips/etc.)  The spice jars are from Ikea.

Inside the cabinet is all sorts of spray paints and glues and stuff. The doors are perfect to hide this not so pretty stuff.

And to truly break in the room, I made a few cards!

I painted the image with watercolors.  The scallop punch is by Martha Stewart... I don't actually remember who made the stamp images, I think the swirly one is by Art Impressions.

Same scallop punch by Martha Stewart, stamp images are by The Angel Company. Stamped the images in chalk inks, flung shimmery watercolors over the image.

The Angel Company Images colored with colored pencils. Scallop scissors.

The Angel Company image.

So while I was working my butt off in the studio, the cats were lounging on their favorite spot of the couch. And in a few mere seconds, they went from cuddling and  bathing each other...

 

.... to an all out war...

Goofballs...

House Pics

Lots of you have been asking for pictures of what I've been doing with the house and since i had a house warming party this weekend I thought I would take a few pictures while I had the camera out.

So, let's start with the bedroom.  This is what it looked like before:

And this is now:

The bathroom before:

Now:

The Kitchen before:

Now (we didn't do much except to take down that nasty wallpaper and paint):

Living Room before:

Now (we desperately need artwork in this room):

And this is Kitty in her favorite spot:

And how about a few more of the craft room? hehehe  My custom table top arrived on Friday and is now installed - LOVE IT!

I don't think you've seen this angle yet.  Here you can see all my rulers! :)

If you notice the box in the first picture next to the expedit... well it's another expedit! Those tall ugly shelves are going away and will be replaced with a full wall of expedits!  Yay! 

 

Now, who wants to come over and clean my kitchen while I lay on the couch and watch HGTV all day?

More progress

Nothing is really in it's final place as I'm just trying to get boxes unpacked (about 5 more to go... LOL).. but I thought I would update.

The rest of the cubes showed up and so Adam installed the desktop for me (which at the moment is basically just a piece of plywood).  I did decide to go ahead and order a custom full size self-healing matte to cover the entire work service to finish it off which is why I didn't buy nicer wood - it will be here on Friday!!!

Tonight I attached those hanging  metal pails and other side (by the window that you can't see) I screwed in a bunch of cup hooks and they are currently holding my collection of rulers (yes I said collection of rulers... can you tell I'm an Engineer?)

The ink pads are all over the table because I decided to spray paint my ink pad holder :)