Joyful Abode

Tomatoes are such a lovely fruit. I enjoy them so many ways… but I am insanely picky about them.

I don’t like to eat the ooky seed/slime part, so I always de-seed my tomatoes before slicing them or cooking them. I am also kind of weird about the skin. It’s fine if I’m eating slices of tomatoes on sandwiches or plain with salt, but if the tomatoes are cooked, I can’t stand eating the skin. It’s just a weird texture by itself, I guess.

So I had to figure out how to easily peel tomatoes for when I make my beloved tomato pie. I figured it would be easier to do all at once before cooking it than to pick out the peel pieces before/during each bite I take. haha!

First, you’ll need tomatoes, of course…

And a bowl of ice water…

And a pot of boiling water.

It’s really very simple! All you have to do is put the tomatoes into the pot of water , leave them there for one minute, then fish them out with a slotted spoon.

Submerge the tomato in ice water until it’s completely cool.

Now, barely pierce the skin with a paring knife, making a small slit.

And start peeling. You’ll find that the skin comes away from the tomato quite easily.

And you’ll be able to peel off large pieces…

Until the entire lovely tomato is free!

It’s so quick, it only takes a little while to do a whole bunch of tomatoes. You can put them all in the boiling water, then ice water at the same time. After that, it’s just a simple slit and peel for each!

After this, I de-seeded them and made the best tomato pie I’ve ever made! More on that later. *sneaky grin*

Shisha (the Hindi word for “little glass”) embroidery is also known as mirror-work or abla embroidery. Originally, pieces of mica were used as the mirrors, but later, thin blown-glass pieces were broken and used. Today, small mirrors are commercially available for shisha embroidery. If you use these, make sure to file the edges first so the mirrors aren’t sharp.

I like using paillettes, those large sequins with a tiny hole in the side. They’re extremely lightweight, not sharp at all, and readily available in many colors. They worked perfectly in my “Local pride” apron. I also think it would be really neat to use coins from around the world in shisha embroidery.

I’ve recently gotten really into playing with embroidery, and I decided to at the very least do this one tutorial to share my love of the art form with you all. All you handcrafting/DIY-type folks, get ready!

1. Gather your materials. You’ll need fabric, an embroidery hoop, a sharp needle, a shisha mirror (or paillette or coin), and embroidery floss.
   
2. Secure your fabric in the hoop tightly. Thread your needle and knot the end of your floss.
   
3. Place your shisha on the fabric, and secure it with a crossing of foundation stitches.
   
4. Now, duplicate the foundation stitches, but turned 45 degrees… like this.
   
   Until you get this.
   
5. Now, you could leave it at that, and decorate around it. It’s pretty secure and it looks pretty, right? But if you’re more interested in creating a solid frame for your shisha, continue. Poke your needle up through the fabric beside your mirror.
   Then, slide your needle under the foundation stitches, from the center toward the edge.
   
6. Pull your needle through and tighten the stitch, then work one backstitch right next to your mirror.
   
7. Now, your next stitches will be like blanket stitches. Again, thread the needle under your foundation stitches from the center to the edge, but make sure your thread is looped UNDER your needle as you pull the stitch tight.
   
8. From now on, when you work the backstitch after your blanket stitch,make sure to initially poke your needle through the previous backstitch. This will create an attractive chain around your shisha.
   
9. Once I get mine shishsa started, I like to take it out of the embroidery hoop. You can if you want to, but you don’t have to. Keep working steps 7 and 8 around the mirror.
   
   This is why I like to take it out of the hoop. It allows me to sort of bend the fabric backward to have more control over my backstitches.
   
10. Keep going until you’re finished!
    
11. Are you proud of yourself? You should be! You could stop there, or you can decorate it some more (back in the embroidery hoop for this). I started with a border of turquoise chain stitches, to match my paillette.
    
12. And then… oh look! The shisha is shining with happiness!
    
13. I finished mine up with some delightful little french knots.
    
14. Enjoy! And join the flickr group to show off your own shisha embroidery.

I’ve read all sorts of tutorials and how-to instructions for making a homemade lightbox for photographing things… and I’ve tried a couple of them.

The cut-up-a-cardboard-box-and-line-it-with-tissue paper thing didn’t work out for me. It felt flimsy and didn’t even yield decent pictures (for me, at least).

Then I combined some different thing I have read, seen, and heard about, and came up with a pretty decent solution to my macro photography woes.

You will need:

• one of those milky white/clear storage containers, like Rubbermaid or Tupperware or whoever makes them
• several clip-on lights. You can use what you have, or buy inexpensive ones from Lowe’s or Home Depot. Make sure you get some that will handle the watts of the bulbs you wish to use. We don’t want to start a fire!
• Stuff to clip the lamps onto.
• A power strip to plug all of the lamps into.
• Light bulbs. I’m using full-spectrum “GE Reveal” halogen bulbs. They have a halogen bulb within the regular outer bulb, which is nice because you don’t have to worry about getting your fingers’ oil on the halogen part and making it explode.
• Some sort of background material. I bought a white poster board and a black poster board.
• White fabric for diffusing the light.

These are the lamps I got. I think they were 7 dollars each. There was a smaller size for 6 dollars too.

My light bulbs. Like I said before, they have a halogen bulb inside the regular glass bulb. Very cool.

I’m clipping my lights onto random things, propped up by other random things… it really doesn’t matter because those aren’t ever in the photos (unless you’re writing a tutorial on how to make a light box). The containers kept falling over, until I stuck some weights in them. Now they’re good to go.

This may seem like common sense, but plug all of your lamps into a power strip. The awesome part is you can leave all of the lamp switches on, and just use the power strip’s switch to turn them all on and off at once. It’s a little thing, but very cool.

Here’s my general set-up so far. The box is on its side with the background material in it, and lights clipped all around it (and one on top). I guess you can tell I’m not using my tripod, because it’s over there on the left looking lonely.

Make sure your white balance is set to the correct setting (for my box that’s usually the tungsten setting… or I’ll do the manual setting, in which you just point the camera at the background, click, and then it’s set!) That will take a pretty good picture, but there will be some glare. This photo is unedited.

If you want to reduce the glare, take a piece of fabric…

And drape it over the lightbox, between the lights and your product. I just kind of threw it on top, but if I were feeling perfectionistic, I would smooth everything out. I’m still obviously not using my little tripod, as you can see it in that picture, looking sad.

That’ll give you a less glare-y photo, but slightly darker.

Which can easily be fixed by playing with levels in any photo editing program.

It may not be perfect, but it’s way better than what I had before (stick the product on a background and try tons of angles and light sources to try to get it to be well-lit and good-looking).

Works for me!

I took all of my stationery photos using the light box, too. Very helpful, and I’m happy with the results!

Step 1: Get some fruit. Wash it and make sure it’s dry. In my case, the fruit was cherries.

Step 2: Dump some chocolate chips in a bowl. More than you think you’ll need. Microwave for 30 seconds, stir. Microwave for 30 seconds, stir. Repeat until the chips are melted.

Step 3: Stir in a couple tablespoons of shortening, for smoothness.

Step 4: Dip fruit in chocolate and place on a wax-paper-lined cookie sheet or tray. If you followed my directions and melted more than you needed, find something else to dip. Cookies, pretzels, or in my case, Clementine wedges.

Step 5: Put the tray in the fridge, but not for too long because condensation will discolor your chocolate.

Step 6: Do not open the fridge and have the fruit fall all over the floor (or in my case, do this). If this happens, salvage the fruit that did not touch the floor.

Step 7: Enjoy.

Technorati Tags: chocolate, cherries, clementines, fruit, cooking, chocolate-covered, dipped, recipe, gourmet

I’ve been wanting to re-cover my office chair for a while… to match my bulletin board.

Then, this post from Design*Sponge reminded me recently, and I finally got off my butt to do it. However… I wish I had a chair like theirs, because the top part (the part your back leans on) on mine cannot completely snap out of the plastic frame. WISH IT COULD.

Also… I am very much a visual learner. SO… I like to cater to visual learners too. I needed WAY more photos than two “after” shots. So here is my version.

To begin: One Ugly Office Chair

Turn it over, and unscrew the seat from the base. Very simple, indeed.

Rip off the ugly useless cardboard if you feel like it, then lay the seat on your fabric, making sure the fabric is facing the right way if it is patterned.

Staple the straight sides using a staple gun.

Don’t work clockwise or counter-clockwise… work with opposing sides (like left, then right, then top, then bottom).

After that, pull each corner point as far in as it can go…

and staple the four corners with one staple each.

At each corner, now you have two “pockets” of fabric. Put your finger in the center of each pocket, then flatten it to the bottom of the seat to make a pleat. Staple each pleat.

Now you will have two pleats at each corner, for a total of eight.

Do some extra stapling wherever you feel it’s necessary, then trim your fabric pretty close to the staples, but not too close.

Now, cut a piece of muslin about the size of the chair bottom. Folding the edges under, staple the fabric to cover up the edges of your pretty fabric. Again, do top, bottom, right, left (or similar).

I folded the corners under separately too, because I felt like it.

Feel around for the screw-holes and then poke some holes in the muslin with a pair of scissors.

Now you’re ready to screw on the base again. (See the holes?)

So… screw it on!

If you’re lucky, like the folks at Design*Sponge, you will be able to pry the backrest of your chair off for its makeover. If you’re unlucky like me, you’ll need to use some biceps. I borrowed some biceps for my chair-prying.

The backrest doesn’t actually pop off… it’s still connected in the middle. So this stinks.

But it’s workable. Lay your backrest on some fabric, or some fabric on the backrest, and trace around it. Then cut around the tracing, giving yourself several inches on all sides. LEARN FROM MY ERROR: leave more wiggle room than I did! It will make life MUCH easier.

Make a running-stitch around the edge of your backrest fabric with some heavy thread (I used embroidery floss). The thread color doesn’t matter, because no one will see it.

Sit the fabric on the backrest, and pull the string to gather. If you’re lucky, you’ll get to tie the string ends together when it’s nice and gathery. If you’re unlucky, like me, your string will break.

Starting at the bottom, and working your way up both sides (and then to the top of course), tuck the fabric edges in-between the cushioned part and the plastic part of the chair back. A flat-head screwdriver is good for this. Then, snap the plastic back in place (just squeeze really hard and it’ll snap).

Voila! Your office chair is no longer ugly!

I hope you saved your seeds from when you carved your pumpkin! They are delicious roasted and topped with various things.

Last year, I read a bunch of methods of and recipes for roasting seeds… and combined a few of them to do mine. It turned out very well. Of course, I’m sure there are plenty of ways that work just as well. Feel free to post your recipe/method in the comments!

Wash your seeds and get off all the goop.

Soak overnight in salt water.

Dry and toss seeds with olive oil.

Sprinkle with toppings. Lawry’s seasoned salt is really good. I did a garlic salt version last year, but it wasn’t my favorite. Cinnamon and sugar is a delicious combination. Try whatever you think sounds good!

Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, for about 35 minutes or until they’re toasty and delicious.

The cinnamon sugar ones were my favorite last year. Mmmm…

I actually haven’t carved pumpkins this year yet. I’m going to wait a bit longer so that the pumpkins don’t rot before Halloween, BUT… I wrote up this tutorial last year, and I thought it would be helpful to some people who might be reading Joyful Abode this year.

Before:

The pumpkin awaits its transformation. Tools await their destiny.

Step 1: Cut a lid. Make a notch in the back, so that you can easily replace it the right way.
Mine’s bleeding!

Step 2: Remove the lid and cut off all the nasty stringy stuff.

Step 3: Scrape out all the gooey stuff from the inside. Save it so you can get the seeds for baking!

Step 4: After everything is all scraped out, tape your pattern to the pumpkin. If you are drawing it on, go ahead and do that instead. I made mine in paint and printed it out. If you like my jack-o-lantern carving template, it’s available in free stuff.

Step 5: Use a poker (a toothpick or a seam ripper would work if you don’t have one just for pumpkins) to poke holes around your pattern lines. If you drew on your pumpkin, you can skip that.

Then remove your pattern.
It’s hard to see the pokey holes, isn’t it?

Step 6: Rub flour into the holes so you can see them. Wipe off excess with a damp paper towel or sponge.

Step 7: Carve away! Start with the smallest holes, then proceed to bigger ones. This will help keep the stability of the whole thing as you cut.

Step 8:
Light with a tea light, and turn off the lights! (I rubbed cinnamon onto the underside of my lid, so that when I burn the candle the room smells yummy.)

For a while, my jewelry has been lumped together in a jewelry box. When I want to wear earrings, I have to hunt for mates… when I want to wear a necklace, I must first unravel it from a tangle of its cousins.

Not anymore! If you have this problem too, you might enjoy making some gorgeous jewelry boards for your bedroom (or dressing room, if you have one… I have heard of such things).

You’ll need frames. Buy them on sale! Sometimes Michael’s has a selection of frames on clearance. I got mine at Linens n Things. Buy one get one 1/2 off.

You will also need cork. I bought 4 square-foot boards from Michael’s with a 50% off coupon. I only spent 5 bucks on them.

You will need hot glue, a ruler, an exacto knife or similar blade, stapler (regular kind), fabric, coordinating ribbon, coordinating pins, and a FEW minutes.

Remove the glass from the frames, but save the cardboard. Using the cardboard as a guide, cut your cork to size. It’s ok to piece it in order to make it big enough. No one will know.

Then, use your amazing hot glue gun to affix the cork to the cardboard.

Now, cut your fabric a little larger than your cork/cardboard mess. You can always trim it later, so err on the larger size. Place your mess cork-side-down onto the wrong side of the fabric. Stretch and staple. Staple a lot. And look out for those corners!

Now, if you just want a plain old covered cork board, you’re pretty much done.

For the magical jewelry boards though, pull out your coordinating ribbon.

Turn over your boards and measure where you want your ribbons. Mark with a pen. Don’t worry… no one will see the back.

Now, wrap your ribbons and staple staple staple (on the back, of course).

See what we’re getting at? Now they’re ready for the frames!

You’ll probably have to kind of cram them into the frames, because they’re a little bulkier than a photo… but it’s worth it. Make sure you secure your board by bending the little metal thingies down.

Check it out!

Now pull out your coordinating pins and your ruler. Add pins below your ribbons, about an inch apart. These are what you’ll hang your necklaces on. I pushed my pins in almost all the way, and then bent them out a bit so they’re like hooks.

Now, hang your jewelry and you’re ready to go! Hook your earrings over the ribbons, and hang your necklaces.

I really like this because everything is out where I can see it. It also really looks like the jewelry is framed, and since I chose frames, fabric, and ribbons that coordinate with our bedroom, it’s like a piece of art.

Let me know if you make some! I’d love to see photos.
And if you have a different solution for your jewelry storage, please comment about it. Another reader may prefer your solution.

So, I watch the Food Network. Kind of a lot. And I’ve learned a LOT of things from it. I don’t think I’ve ever made a recipe directly from a show… maybe the closest was when I mimicked Rachael Ray’s mustard-based potato salad. But I didn’t use her measurements.

I get ideas from the shows. Alton Brown teaches me about the science of cooking. Rachael Ray’s 30 minute meals teaches me about efficiency in the kitchen. Paula Deen teaches me to love the good ingredients, like butter. Next Food Network Star teaches me about types of food I normally wouldn’t be exposed to, and phrases like “amuse bouche” and other goodies.

And from the Food Network, I have learned how to cut an onion without crying. Some people swear by chewing gum, turning on a burner and cutting near the stove, holding a piece of bread in their mouths while cutting, putting the onion in the freezer before hand, wearing goggles, cutting under running water, or carefully dissecting the onion to get the whole middle out before chopping. I’m not kidding. I have seen all of these methods on the internet. My guess is that you’ve tried one of these methods too.

This is basically the method Rachael Ray uses, and it works like a charm every time.

Don’t worry about peeling the onion before you start. First, cut off both ends of the onion. Don’t do measly slivers. Cut off chunks. This is the part that will save you from crying.

Then, turn the onion on one of the flat ends, and cut it in half.

Then, remove the whole outer layer. Don’t bother with peeling off the papery-thin bits. That takes too long, and onions are cheap.

Then, you have two lovely onion halves, ready to be chopped, sliced, or diced to your liking.

AND you will have tear-free eyes. (I had just taken a shower, so my skin looks a bit moist and glowy… but my eyes aren’t red or teary!)

I love the idea of salt scrubs, but the fact that my legs often have scratches on them makes me wary of trying them anytime soon. So I decided to make my own sugar scrub to use in the shower.

The directions I used were based on a bunch of different “recipes” I found online.

1. Get a jar that seals well.

2. Put about a cup of sugar in it. I mixed white and brown just for fun.

3. Pour in some oil… I wanted to use avocado oil, but it’s super-expensive, so I settled for EVOO. Do not use mineral oil or baby oil, because those can clog your pores. Yeechk.

4. Mix it all up.

5. Add something to make it smell good. I added a little bit of lemon juice, but if I like the way the scrub works, I will buy some essential oils… probably some yummy warm smells like orange and sandalwood.

6. Put it in your bathroom so you remember to use it in the shower!

Now, I just got out of the shower and used my scrub for the first time. My skin feels fabulously smooth and incredibly moisturized, however, I will definitely make some changes next time!

First of all, I was confused about what room I was showering in… I know it was the bathroom, but between the olive oil and lemon juice, it really smelled like I was dressing a salad in the kitchen.
Next time? I’ll use avocado oil, grapeseed oil, or jojoba oil (which is the closest to our natural oils).

Also, while the lemon juice made for a refreshing scent, it wasn’t exactly invigorating, which is what I want in my morning shower. I think next time will call for that orange/sandalwood mix, or maybe sandalwood/vanilla.

I’ve got to use up this salad dressing …I mean scrub…first though!

How to make hard-boiled eggs:

1. Choose eggs that have been in your fridge for a while. Not the ones you just bought yesterday. Don’t ask me why… just trust me.
   
2. Put your eggs in a small pot (you don’t want them to have too much room to party and crack). Fill with enough cool water to cover the eggs plus about an inch extra.
   
3. Bring to a boil.
   
4. Lower heat to a slow simmer, cover. Wait about 15 minutes.
   
5. Remove from heat and IMMEDIATELY run very cold water over the eggs, dumping out the hot water at the same time. Continue until the eggs are cool too the touch.
   
6. Peel and eat OR Put them in your fridge for later. BUT draw faces on them first so you know which ones are boiled and which ones are raw. Happy eggs also make a great lunchbox treat.
   

You will need:

• one picture frame, whatever size you like. I used 18″ x 24″
• a piece of corrugated cardboard cut to fit your frame
• cork tiles, which you can find at Michael’s next to the whiteboards, about 10 dollars for 4 (12″ square)
• pretty fabric, a little larger than the area to be framed
• hot glue gun + glue
• stapler + staples
• x-acto knife

Step 1: Glue the cork to the corrugated cardboard. You will probably have to cut some pieces, but that’s okay. No one will see! Just make sure they are pushed close together, no gaps.

Step 2: Try out your fabric in the frame, just to make sure you like it.

Step 3: Lay your fabric wrong-side-up on the floor or table. Then place your cork+cardboard cork-side-down on top. Stretch the fabric around it and staple to the back. You can use a regular stapler for this; just open it up. Start at the middle of each side, then work toward the corners.

Step 5: Install the fabric covered cork in the frame. I took mine to Michael’s and they did it for free. Lovely!

Step 6: Hang and use!