Brian and his dad built a bathroom in the basement. They put up walls, a shower, tiled and installed a sink. It came out wonderful. In an attempt to recycle, instead of throwing away the closet door from another room, Brian used it in the basement. It probably used to be white years ago, but it had turned yellow. I told Brian that I would paint it white and I wanted to Faux Bois (wood grain painting technique) the panels of the door. Here is how it came out...
I used this tool, which I purchased at Jo-Ann's a few years ago, to create the Faux Bois or false wood pattern. I actually bought two of them because they were on clearance for a dollar. Good thing I did buy two because the dogs thought it would be absolutely adorable to take the one I had on my crafting table and chew it to bits. I am a fan of Faux Bois because of Martha's love for it. I also used this tool to create the background of our Christmas cards last year.
Here is the finished door (minus the handle) repainted white and then the Faux Bois painted the panels. I did not want the colors to be too crazy so I just took some of the same white color that I used to paint the door and mixed a little bit of black paint into it to create a grey color.
Here is a close up. I love how it came out!
Brian and I had a quiet dinner at home the other day and I told him I would make a strawberry tart. Here are some photos of that process.
Mise en place. I started out by getting all of my ingredients and supplies ready. I then made a graham cracker crust with butter, sugar and a pinch of salt. Brian gave the small hand food processor in the bottom right to me quite a few years ago for a birthday present. I love it and use it all the time.
Graham cracker crust is not hard to make. Preheat oven to 350˚F. I use one entire plastic package of graham crackers (put int the food processor to create crumbs) from the box of graham crackers to make a crust, three tablespoons of granulated sugar, a pinch of salt and one stick of melted butter. Combine all of those ingredients in a bowl and then press the moistened crumbs into a tart pan with a removable bottom. To ensure that all of the crumbs are pressed into the pan evenly use the bottom of a measuring cup to press them in. This bakes for about 10-13 minutes then allow it to cool completely before filling.
While the crust was baking I made the filling: 1 8 oz package of cream cheese (room temperature), 1/2 C. powdered sugar, 2 tsp. vanilla, 8 tbs. unsalted butter (room temperature), a pinch of salt and about 1/4 of a cup of sour cream. Place all of these ingredients into a bowl and thoroughly mix with a hand mixer.
Here is my finished tart. I used 1 lb of fresh strawberries sliced and placed on top of the filling. This last step is just to make the tart a bit more visually appealing and make it look delicious. Place 2 tablespoons of strawberry jelly it in a microwave safe bowl, microwave for about 30 seconds, use a brush and coat all of the strawberries with the warmed jelly. The tart then needs to chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour.
The last thing I would like to mention is my Momoyama Tree Peony. I will never get tired of blogging about this. Brian bought this for me a few years ago for a birthday present. Last year (exactly to the day) I posted about this tree peony and that it had bloomed one flower. It was so beautiful and huge! This year it has 5 buds on it and they are huge, I would say about 8 or 9 inches across and the petals look like beautiful crepe paper. I love these tree peonies and I am so thankful to Brian for getting it for me.
Here is the peony bush with the flowers.
Here are some close ups of the huge flowers, I thought the one from last year was huge, but this year they are gigantic.
We will be having house guests for graduation so I hope these peonies make it until then. I would love to cut one or two of them and put them in vases inside.
1 comments:
Congrats on your graduation!! Great blog entry as always.
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