Belated Bastille Day Celebrations Begin!

Bonjour DIYers! So I know that Bastille Day was officially on Monday but we didn't have much time until this weekend to begin the festivities. Jason and I are already prepping for a major French-o feast tomorrow but that post will come after the bazillion calories have been prepared and consumed. I wanted to start the festivities off with a project I did a while back but is very appropriate for the holiday. Originally, I saw the most adorable towel at Anthropologie; you might have seen it before:

freaking adorable

Welp, I wasn't about to pay $42 for a tea towel, plus I wasn't even sure how I would decorate a room with a tea towel so going off of the original idea I decided to create a fun wall canvas for our guest bedroom (that just happens to be francais-themed). I had a largish square canvas laying around so I started by painting it red, white, and blue in the order of the French flag:

not too much talent necessary for this step

Because I wanted to give the room a bit more of a "rustic" French theme I white-washed the canvas after letting it dry. To do this you add some water to a bit of white paint and mix. How white-washed you want it is up to you but try with more water at first and see how you like the look. You can always paint over it with the red or blue:

white-washing gives the canvas a little more of a distressed look

Now comes to the part that you might need a little more painting prowess (or just be good at copying things like me!) I don't trust myself on the first go so I decided to paint the Frenchie Bulldog on separate sheets of canvas. I used tear out sheets of thin canvas pictured below:

Comes with 10 sheets, plenty for screw-ups

I found a generic picture of a Frenchie that I liked the pose of and decided to start with the head first. This is really where you can artsy and add whatever details you'd like. I started by drawing in pencil and once I got the head shape that I liked, I added French details and painted the face:

scary!

wouldn't be complete without a mustache!

While I set the head aside the dry, I started on the body. Again, I just drew by hand in pencil going off of the original picture, then added the French details:

Now for the easy part!! All I did was cut out the body and the head and modge podged the whole thing to the French flag canvas! Easy Peasy!!! I apologize for not taking pictures of the lettering in progress but I just printed a font that I liked the look of in the same size that it would be on canvas and copied it by hand as best I could, then followed in black paint. Voila! A custom art piece for a fraction of the cost of a towel!

A Little Aloha with Spam Musubi

Aloha folks!! Sorry for the long post delay but I was busy stuffing my face and watching Hula in a recent trip to Hawaii. The ladies in my family like heading to the Big Island during Merrie Monarch to watch the amazeballs dancers compete in the Merrie Monarch Festival and this year we drug the boys along too. Like I said before, I basically spent the entire time drooling over the gorgeous dancing men (and women, shooot they were gorgeous) and eating everything Hawaiian food-related in sight.

somanymusclesahhhhhhh

pigging out at an all-you-can-eat Hawaiian buffet with Carly (left, yeah that's not me, close though) and Jason

So, with Hawaiian food on the mind, I bring you a tutorial on the greatest snack food of all time, aka Spam Musubi. For those of you who have been to Hawaii you'll know that these beauties are EVERYWHERE. Like pick one up in the gas station to munch on status. But they are so ridiculously easy to make that we often times make a batch to just have in the fridge to snack on throughout the week.

Of course the glorious thing about this recipe is of course the main ingredient: SPAM. Here's where I become a bit of a hypocrite. For the most part we try really hard to eat organic, non-GMO, healthy yadda yadda but Spam really is my downfall. Spam sandwiches, spam and eggs, spam just by itself, you name it, I'll probably eat it. Spam musubi is of course no exception. 

For starters, if you're thinking about making enough for a bit of a stock in the fridge, cook about 3 cups of short-grain "sticky" white rice (this yields about 12-15 musubis). Do this about 40 mins before you think you're going to want to start making the musubi so your rice will have time to cool a bit. Then, start prepping your nori (seaweed) which will be wrapped around everything to hold in all the musubi loveliness. You'll want the regular, square nori you can find in most supermarkets in the Asian isle. Once you have several slices out (you'll need one packet and have extra to make the 12-15), cut them in half and set them aside. 

cutting in half like a pro

Now it's time to slice and cook up the Spam. For the 12-15 musubis we used two cans of Spam but this depends on how thick you want to the slices to be.

you can cut it thinner if you want, but really, who doesn't want more spam??

Then cook it up. Now here's where you know Spam really is sketchy because you really don't have to cook it if you don't want to but browned Spam has a lovely salty flavor that is unparalleled in musubi.

cooked on the left, cooking on the right. mmmmmm golden Spam

Once your Spam is done cooking go ahead and set it aside and get ready for the fun, really super re-purposing part. In Hawaii they sell fancy little plastic musubi makers that you can buy at any major food store. Orrrrr you could just rinse out the Spam can and use that instead. I'll show you how to use both below:

fancy on the left, old-school on the right 

First, I'll show you how to rock it the old-school way with the Spam can (or really Jason will since his beautiful hands were doing the fancy work in the pictures). Take your rice and start pressing it into the Spam can. Put enough pressure where your're confident that the rice will stick together, and fill to the top:

It's the world's greatest hand model!

Once filled, turn that can upside down and "fwack" it out. That's really the best word I know how to describe shaking something until food comes out. I looked it up in Urban Dictionary and apparently is means to be slapped with a fish (wtf?) but really fwacking is the best way to describe getting rice out of a spam can:

Maybe a video would have been best to really appreciate "fwacking"

TADA!

Now that's a big block of rice so with a sharp knife, cut the rice into sections. Again the thickness is all based on personal preference but we cut one Spam can block of rice into three slices:

Jason loves showing off his sushi knife any chance he gets really

Now if you're lucky enough to have one of the musubi contraptions I'll show you how to use that. Pull the top off and stuff enough rice into it for one musubi. Remember with this, you'll be squishing it down with the topper so put in enough rice where you think it'll squish to give you enough for one musubi. Do this all over one piece of nori and then squish the rice down and lift the whole box up and you're set!

so fancy!

Now to make the magic happen. Choose your topping of choice:

Katsu sauce or Soy sauce? I personally prefer it traditional and stick with the soy sauce but Jason is a katsu sauce man. If you've never had katsu sauce, think like a BBQ sauce almost. Kind of sweet. I always stock up on Katsu sauce in Hawaii so I'm not sure if you can buy it in regular mainland supermarkets but if you're hankering for it, drop by an L & L and grab some to go!

Now that the hardest decision has been made for the day, pull out your halved piece of nori , place the slice of rice in the middle and top with your favorite topping:

traditional for me with soy sauce

or how Jason prefers with Katsu sauce

You're almost there!! Place a piece of cook spam on top like so:

And now it's time to seal that baby up! I usually keep a small bowl of water next to me while doing this next part because water will help seal the nori together to hold everything up. Wrap the nori on either side of your spam/rice block and tap a little bit of water along the edge to seal:

PAU!!! You can immediately saran-wrap them and store them in the fridge to enjoy over and over again or you can be like Jason and immediately eat them all. Either way, enjoy that aloha goodness!

that is one happy camper

The Library: From Start to Finish

I can't believe I'm actually writing about our library being COMPLETE (almost)!!! When we first moved into this house, the giant empty room in the front was one of the reasons I signed my name on those mortgage papers because right when we walked in the door our Realtor said, "now how's this for a library huh??" Aaaaand the fact that it still had room for a pool table was enough to make Jason happy.

Home of the future library! This is what it looked like for about 4 months

It started with us finding a pool table and a couch, and for about four months, my books were in boxes piled against the wall. It was frustrating because I would think about re-reading a Harry Potter or Jane Austen and then realize that all of my precious books were stowed away. Jason started tackling the design of the library around mid-September by being a typical engineer:

show off

I mean I'm not going to lie, I was impressed. He's an electrical engineer and just decided to learn Autodesk CAD for fun but for all you DIYers with dreams of building bookshelves, you don't have to do this step, it's just fancier this way. So after doing all the maths he needed, the building started.

wait for it.....

TADA! And we had one, unpainted bookshelf for about a month

While he slowly kept building, I slowly followed by painting. Painting was a whole other animal. We decided to paint the entire room a nice neutral and calming color so we chose Sherman Williams Aloof Gray. LOVED how it turned out. For the trim and also the color of the bookcases we chose Behr Ivory Palace. Each shelf took several coats of wood fill, sanding, painting, sanding, more painting, then a matte polyurethane to finish it off.

then there were two

The days started getting colder and Christmas was fast approaching. We knew that we wouldn't be completely done by Christmas but we wanted to be nearly done so we worked through the cold. Two weeks before Christmas saw me out there in 30 degree weather shivering while listening to radio holiday stations, breaking every ten mins or so to go stand in front of the small space heater we had set up. We had to prevail though!!!

you have no idea how ecstatic we were at this point (sorry for the poor quality pic)

pretty close huh?

By the holidays we had all the bookshelves done except the last one on the right side and the overhanging unit. Jason kept putting that one off because I think both of us were a little terrified to make a wooden shelf hang over our heads while we read but he eventually buckled down and drew out his plans.

adding the final touches

THOSE PANTS AGAIN

After assembling everything, I spent the next morning populating all of the new bookshelves and was actually pretty pleased to find that I had more space for MORE books!! bwahahahaha!!! We finally received the custom frame we had ordered for the crowning jewel of the library, the Pride & Prejudice print that I bought about three years ago, pining for the day I would have a library to put it in. Get this thing:

at first glance it's not much...

but then you get closer and realize...WHAT

IT'S THE ENTIRE TEXT ON A SINGLE POSTER. SHUT THE FRONT DOOR

Yeah I know, I was pretty much blown away when I saw it. It's from this awesome company called Lithographs and I had to control myself to not buy every single poster/shirt/bag they have on their site. Bibliophiles, check it out. Now for the other library piece that finally gets a home was my Stitch (yep as in Lilo & Stitch) painting that Jason had given to me as an anniversary gift about six years ago. I remember when he gave it to me he said it would be the perfect piece for a library and I really could not agree more:

OMG dying of cuteness overload

When I saw everything up, books in the shelves and pictures on the wall, my heart literally stopped. Ok well maybe palpitated a little bit, but some emotional stirring happened because I think we've been waiting for this day for so long that it's hard to believe it's finally here. There are some final touches that still need to be done that I'm hoping to get to this year. Pool table re-felting (get rid of that awful bar green), curtains for the huge window, recessed lighting and eventually I want to get a big library chair to put on the other side of the couch but I have time for those things. IT'S DONE

think we could fit a grand piano in here somewhere?

featuring the coffee table Jason built, more on this in another entry

And as we speak, my own personal Mr. Darcy has fallen asleep in the newly completed fruits of our labor and I suppose I'll let him rest....FOR NOW! mwahahaha!!

Some closing notes to all your DIYers that are thinking that this is beyond your grasp. Don't be crazy, it's not. This room was imagined, designed, and built by an Electrical Engineer and a Biologist. If you've got some patience, a will to make beautiful things to hold books, and some power tools, you can do it too! Email me if you want more specific deets and I'll help you out to the best of my ability! All you Belle's out there, your libraries are within reach! (now where's my sliding ladder?!)