21 Day Challenge

Sign me up. I'm probably crazy to try something like this when my bedroom currently looks like this:

Or to put it in words, it's a construction site, and most of my clothes are consequently jammed into the guest bedroom closet. I'm not even sure where some of them are, because James took them out when he painted the ceiling of our closet. Hmmm. I'll have to check with him about that.  But even so, I'm kind of excited about this idea. I learned about it from Rebekah at Verdant Bents.

As you might guess from the picture, we've got this whole bedroom makeover in the works. Since it will include the closet, over the summer I've been trying to go through my clothes and get rid of things that don't fit and that I don't love to wear. I've also been trying to replace some of the clothes I've been divesting myself of with clothes that do fit, that I do love to wear. I've been thinking a lot more about clothes than I usually do, which is why I'm keen on this idea, despite the craziness going on around here.

This challenge is hosted by Freckles in April, a new-to-me blog. I really like that Kayla does fashion blogging as a regular girl on a budget, and that, like me, she gets a lot of her clothes at thrift shops. Other things we have in common: we both have freckles, were born in April, and like to cook healthy foods for our families. So I'm going to trust her enough to spend August 15-September 4 getting dressed based on her prompts, and, um, posting pictures of my outfits on the internet. Should be fun. Go check it out. There are even cool prizes involved, if you want to join in. 

Transfiguration

Our parish has commissioned a set of festal icons from iconographer Dennis Bell, and we received three new ones this week. One of them was the Transfiguration, so not only did we have the blessing of the first fruits today, we had the blessing of the new icon. You can see it's still wet with holy water. I wish you could see it in person, instead of my poor effort with my cell phone camera. It's quite beautiful. I wanted to display it larger so that you could see some of the details. I had to edit the html of my blog template to change the margins, so please let me know if that's resulted in any weird formatting for you.

I also took some pictures during the blessing of the icon, but later when I was taking the picture of the icon itself, I wondered why the camera just wouldn't seem to focus. Then I realized the lens was smudged. That explains why my pictures have been so blurry this week! I wish I could pretend my picture of first fruits below is intentionally blurry for artistic reasons.  Ah, well. Sometimes I think I might enjoy getting a nice camera and learning photography, but for now I'll see if I can improve things simply by keeping the lens clean.

 

Tomatoes are the fruit of the vine for this Indiana girl, and the yellow tomato is literally the first fruit from that plant. I picked these this morning before liturgy. We sliced them up and ate them afterward, along with the grapes and other fruits which people had brought. It was lovely.  I hope you have had (or will have) a lovely feast day as well .

Joyous feast!

Fast Food Friday: TLTs

Since we're in the midst of the Dormition fast, I thought I'd share a favorite summertime fasting recipe. At the beginning of August tomatoes start coming on fast and furious in central Indiana. It's also usually so hot and humid that anything that requires much cooking is pretty unappealing, making the classic Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato sandwich a perfect dinner. I remember having them often this time of year as a kid, but of course, I've been a vegetarian for now for about 10 years. So, no bacon for me.

Enter tempeh "bacon."  While we occasionally eat vegetarian meat substitutes, I avoid them during fasting periods. I just don't see this as one, because honestly, it's nothing like real bacon. It has a totally different texture, and it just doesn't taste like meat. But it does make a smoky, flavorful sandwich filling that's a great foil for lettuce and tomato. This recipe is adapted from Vegan with a Vengeance by Isa Chandra Moskowitz.

The ingredients:

3 Tbs. soy sauce
3 Tbs. apple cider vinegar
1 Tbs. molasses
1 Tbs. tomato paste
1 Tbs. water
1/4 tsp liquid smoke
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 8 oz. package of tempeh
2 Tbs. oil for frying

Measure all the ingredients but the last two ingreients into a container for marinating, such as a covered baking dish.  Whisk them together until well combined. Slice the tempeh into 1/4 inch. thin strips. The shape doesn't really matter, but I cut them like this:

Add your strips to the marinade and make sure the strips are well coated. Treat them fairly gently, or the tempeh will crumble. Put in the refrigerator to marinate for at least an hour. I did this in the morning before I went to work. The night before works great, too.

When you're ready, heat your oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Add your tempeh strips, and cook about 3-5 minutes.  How long it takes will depend on your pan and how hot your stove cooks. They go from nicely browned to burnt to a crisp quickly, so watch them carefully. When they are browned flip them over and cook for another 2-4 minutes, until the other side is browned. Remove from heat.  You can toss them with the remaining marinade (take out the garlic), if you like.

 

Enjoy on a sandwich with fresh tomatoes and lettuce. Yum!

 

If you are looking for an easy, no-bake fasting dessert , I made these PB Crispy Treats last week, and, well, they are long gone now, so James and I recommend them.

Be Awesome

So, I mentioned the last time I was here that I have been spending wasting time on Pinterest. And that is true. Maybe I'll be inspired to write about a few of the other things I've managed to do lately, but last week I read this over at Young House Love.  And I thought a Pinterest Challenge was a great idea, so I took them up on the invitation to create my own spin on something I've pinned.

This week is my brother's birthday, and I had pinned this poster, which I thought was right up his alley. It is a quotation from Barney on the TV show How I Met Your Mother. But I didn't really think he would dig the yellow, and I have no idea if this poster is still available, so I wanted to make my own version.

Source: assets.lukesbeard.com via Sarah on Pinterest

I invested $15 and one Saturday into this project. First, I picked up a 2x4 foot canvas at Michaels with a 50% off coupon.  Beyond that I only used supplies I already had, which included a paint sample I bought to test the color for my bedroom (Smoke Screen in Olympic paint from Lowes), and some red and black craft paint. I think it was $15 well spent.  And I had fun making it, so I can't complain about it costing me a Saturday, either.

I rolled on the Smoke Screen with a mini-roller. I really like this color; it's blue in some lights, grey in others.  I didn't put down anything to protect the carpet because we are going to be tearing it out any day now. (Can't wait!) While it dried I played around with layouts and fonts for the text. I settled on Britannic Bold and Segoe Condensed. Then I printed out the letters I needed to make stencils. I just did this in MS Word. I printed the stencils in landscape orientation so I could fit more letters per page. I used the outline effect on the font so that I wouldn't waste a ton of ink, which was wise since my cartridge is almost empty.

Then I spent a few hours cutting out the letters while watching HGTV Design Star on Hulu. I mostly used scissors, but I used an exacto knife for the little ones and tricky parts. Finally, I got to paint. I mixed together red and black paint to make the dark red and used a teeny tiny brush from a kids watercolor set to paint all the letters. I dry brushed "sad" to make it look a little sad. I painted  "awesome" with straight red to make it stand out. The color scheme kind of reminds me of the St. Louis Cardinals jerseys from the '80s, which is perfect, because my brother is a huge Cardinals fan. I used the lid from a popcorn tin to trace the circle for "true story."  The lid even fit in with the color scheme. I just scotch taped my stencils to the canvas to paint them on, and I eye-balled the placement.

It probably took about eight hours total to do this project. The stencil cutting and painting were both time-consuming, but my method got the job done. It could probably be done more quickly if your tools are superior to mine. If I would change anything, I'd stretch the letters in "awesome" to make them a little taller. If you're more particular than me, you could pencil in lines for guidelines for your stencils. But all in all, I'm really pleased with how it came out, and my brother loved it. Which is awesome.

Edited to add: By the way, be sure to go check out all the other great Pinterest inspired projects at the blogs of the amazing challenge hosts:

Bower Power
Making a House a Home
Style by Emily Henderson
Young House Love

Things to which I have been up

Since the last time I wrote here I have:

• Spent a long weekend with our dear friends in Grand Rapids. Young men don't turn 6 every day, you know.
• Celebrated my own birthday. For my 6th birthday, I got a Peaches and Cream bicycle with a banana seat. For my 33rd, I got an enameled dutch oven and Legos.
• Entered with faith and love into Holy Week, and passed through it to celebrate the most glorious Resurrection of our Lord.
• Sung and proclaimed Christ is Risen! throughout the Paschal season. I'm sorry I didn't do so here this year, so I'll say it now: Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen! Because, of course, this is always true.
• Spent Bright Week in Decatur, Georgia for a conference for work, thanks to a grant. It was a really good conference, and I enjoyed Georgia very much. 
• Watched the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Braves in extra innings.

• Removed the wallpaper border in my bedroom, at long last.
• Loved heading straight to the farmer's market after work each Friday since the beginning of May.
• Gotten out of the cooking funk I was in, thanks to the joy of fresh veggies, and tried some tasty new recipes. I think I was really ready for the change of seasons. 
• Failed at finding my kitchen cleaning mojo when I got back in the cooking groove. Consequently it seems like the kitchen has been in a constant state of disaster lately. Ugh. 
• Planted my vegetable garden and my herb and flower pots.
• Weeded.
• Watered
• Weeded
• Watered.  Ad infinitum, it seems; we've had very little rain here since I planted the garden.
• Said good-bye to my beloved green VW Beetle. It needed over $3,000 of repairs. With much anguish, we decided it wasn't worth it to put that into the 10 year old car.

• Purchased a 2007 Honda Fit. It made more sense to put the $3000 toward a new car. I've mourned the Beetle, and am finding the new car to be a very good Fit for me.
• Spent Memorial Day weekend with my parents, and went to the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. It's huge. And free--if you're anywhere near Dayton, you should check it out. 
• Celebrated the Feast of Ascension, (speaking of things that are up).
• Signed up for Pinterest and have found it to be a lovely way to waste time, as well as a way to organize links that is fascinating to this cataloger's brain.
• Celebrated the Feast of Pentecost with green attire, kneeling, and a fund-raising dinner for a mission that's working to purchase a building.
• Spent some time with my grandmother.
• Been playing Word Feud. 
• Contemplated what I want for this space. I'm trying to decide whether it's valuable for me to establish some kind of discipline for when I post, or to just continue to let the blog be something I do when so inspired.
• Squeezed in a few other things here and there.
• Attempted to live a Christian life, with mixed success. 

And if you made it through that, we're pretty well caught up.