Thrifting at the Antique Co-Op

The Craft Antique Co-Op is an enormous Antiques Mall in the town of Greece just north of Rochester.  We try to pop in every time we travel back to Rochester.  The weekend before last Computer Genius and I managed to spend several hours sans children strolling the hundreds of booths there.

These are some of the things we saw.  It's Rochester, the birthplace of Kodak, so we saw tons of vintage cameras in several booths.

I loved this adorable canister set, but CG gave me "the look" so I set it down.  The little one had a tiny chip on the back of it, but I thought $9.95 for the set was a steal.

This little juice carafe was only $8.11.

Can you imagine taking this old Tube Radio, selling for $59.99, and turning it into a funky dry bar?  I can.

There was a ton of really neat furniture being sold.  I thought the legs on this marble topped table were interesting.

And what an unusual little chair.  I'd never seen a chair with a leg in front like that.  I wonder if it was just a "look" or if there was some purpose to it.

This abalone and resin tabletop was really pretty in person.

I loved this chest.  The inside was papered in calligraphy.  It was priced at $200, but everything in this booth was 20% off.

Several artists have booths at the Co-Op, also.  I loved the photography by Dave Beadling.  He's currently showing at the Braddock Bay Gallery.

Don Strenz woodworking had some really gorgeous pieces available.  Several boxes and cutting boards of every imaginable shape like these guitar shaped ones.

What about this chevron one?  Love it!

So what did I leave with?  A couple of framed artworks that I bought for the frames, a candy dish, some jewelry, and some gifts for friends.  I have a project in the works for those frames which I hope to reveal sometime next week.

Thanks for popping in and thrifting with me.  I'm joining Little Red House's Mosaic Monday, and Pink Postcards' Transformations and Treasures.

Working Through My Stash

Hello, everyone, my name is laxsupermom and I'm a fabric addict.  It's been 6 weeks since I've stepped in a fabric store. 

That was a lie.  

I was there yesterday, but I only bought some trim.  I ogled the new fabrics, and pawed through the Red Tag shelves, but stayed true to my vow not to buy any more fabric until I've made a real dent in my current fabric stash.  I dream of having things under control & organized like Missy at Little Green Bean.  Check out this post where she created mini fabric bolts for her stash.

The problem is that I think my stash needs to be fully contained in my craft room before, I can begin to sort through it all.  Right now I have some spillover into the guest room.  So here's another sewing project as I try to burn through some of my addiction.

Do you all remember the gorgeous Dining Room furniture we inherited from Computer Genius's great aunt?  Here's a reminder of what the table looks like.

I've been using placemats with this table, mostly because I only have 1 tablecloth that fits it the way we currently use it with only 1 leaf in.  Our previous DR table was much wider and bulkier, so most of my tablecloths are either too big, or too little because they're the ones we use for the "kids table" at holidays.  Naturally that meant I went looking in my fabric stash for a suitable tablecloth fabric to put over CG's great aunt's table pads. 

This is the one I picked.

I loved the pattern of this fabric and snagged it for only $3/yd a couple of years ago, a veritable steal for outdoor fabric.  The fabric's soil and stain resistance made it a shoo-in for this quick and easy project.  I cut the fabric to size, and hemmed all 4 sides, then attached some fun ball fringe, which is the trim I bought yesterday, to the edge all the way around.  8 1/3yds of the ball fringe was less than $15 using a 40% coupon.

This was all basic straight line sewing so I won't bore you with the sewing machine pictures, but here it is on the table.

And here she is all ready for dinner.

Thanks for popping in and sewing with me.  I'm linking this up to Between Naps on the Porch's Metamorphosis Monday.  And don't forget to check out Debbiedoos' Newbie Party.
 

Pecan Sticky Buns

These pictures aren't the best, so I'll apologize in advance.  I, in fact, almost didn't post these, but stuff happens in every kitchen so I thought you'd understand.  I made a southern favorite, Pecan Sticky Buns, last week to bring on our trip out of town. 

I made them in my kitchen, and baked them at my in-laws.  Which is where things went a bit awry.  You know how all ovens are slightly different?  You can adjust for an inexact temperature in your own kitchen pretty easily.  If you know that your oven runs 25 degrees hot, you just adjust the temp down 25 degrees every time you use it.  Well, my in-laws range is a dinosaur which they're planning on replacing in an upcoming kitchen refresh.  It's temperature is off by somewhere around 100+ degrees.

I preheated the oven to 375, read part of the newspaper, came back, opened the oven door and was hit in the face with a blast furnace.  I quickly turned the heat down, went away came back, and judged the temp by feel.  I literally placed my hand in the oven and didn't place the pans in there until it felt like it was about 375.  Not exactly the most accurate method of testing temperature.  Cooking is art - a little of this, a little of that see where the flavors take you.  Baking can be art, too, but first and foremost it's science - too little leavening and your cakes won't rise, too much fat and your cookies will spread too thin.  Rhome410 at Friday is Pizza, Monday is Soup just wrote a terrific post about what happens when your flour doesn't have enough protein.  And of course finally, messing with temperature affects the science of baking.

Enough about what went wrong.  Here's how I made these sticky buns which tasted good, but were a bit more done than I'd have liked.  I started with a batch of my brioche dough.  After the dough doubled in size, I gently turned it out onto my sweet rice flour dusted counter, and very gently rolled it out into a rough 11"x18" rectangle, and dabbed softened butter all over it,

 then folded it in half, dabbed more butter, and folded it in half again. 

I wrapped this quarter sized hunk of dough in plastic, and put it in the refrigerator and left it to slowly rise for another 8 hours.

Just before pulling the dough out of the frig, I prepared the pans.  In a saucepan over medium low heat, I combined 4 tbsps butter and 1/2 cup honey,  and divided the mixture between 2 - 9" round cake pans.  I sprinkled 1/2 cup brown sugar over the mixture in the pans.  I also crushed 1 cup of pecans in a ziplock baggie with my meat tenderizer.

I gently rolled the dough out into a more precise 11" x 18" rectangle, brushed it with melted butter(What, more butter? You bet,) sprinkled it with 6 tablespoons of cinnamon sugar, and the chopped pecans.  Notice how I didn't put any pecans on the one end?  The roll will seal better if you leave the end bare.  I then rolled it up starting with a short side, making a fat roll. 

I sliced the roll into 8 fat slices, and placed 3 pecan halves on each slice to pretty up the tops.

I placed the slices pecan side down in the pans, 4 to a pan.  Here is where I wrapped them up and placed them in a cooler for the trip to Rochester.

After baking in a 375 oven for 10 minutes, you should reduce the temp to 350 and bake for another 25-30 minutes.  Obviously with my temperature malfunctions, this didn't work out exactly right(note the burnt bits.)  Still they tasted pretty good, just slightly overdone and not as moist as they should have been.  After you pull them out of the oven wait for 5 minutes, then invert them onto a serving plate.

Here's a pulled apart piece on my fork.

Thanks for popping in for my {mis}adventures in baking.  I'm linking this up to Glute-Free Homemaker's Gluten-Free Wednesdays, Prairie Story's Recipe Swap,  La Bella Vita's Seasonal Saturdays, and Remodelaholic's Recipe Swap Sundays.

Updating with Pillows

It's official - it's a snow day from school.  They started with a 2 hr delay, but the mix of sleet and snow is just too much and they've canceled school for the day.  I know I've said it before, but it bears repeating:  This has been a ridiculously long winter.  Long winters have me looking for spring, which means updating the inside of the house for a bit of flowers and sunshine.  Remember the lemon fabric I used to make that fun, girly apron?  I used some of it to make a pillow cover to dress up our living room sofa.

I just made a simple pillow cover like I showed you with this reindeer pillow tutorial.  I like making pillow covers vs pillows, because they store easier flat and can be rotated while keeping the pillow inserts out.  Plus you only have the expense of one set of inserts and I'm cheap frugal.

That wasn't quite enough spring for my sofa, so I looked around for some inspiration.  I've been seeing floral embellished cushions everywhere like this one from Pier 1.

Not one to spend $39.95 on a pillow, I made one from some satin in my fabric stash.  I made a whole bunch of the fabric roses that I showed you how to make here and attached them to another pillow cover with the tails left from stitching the roses together.

Here's the sofa before.

And After.

Thanks for popping in and sewing with me.  I'm linking this up with Just a Girl's Show and Share Day, and Domestically Speaking's Countdown to Spring Party.