Mischief Managed

All of yesterday's projects were total successes!

The chocolate chocolate chip cookies are outrageously good. They are going to be added to next year's cookie party for sure. I'm currently eating them for breakfast because R. isn't up yet and I can't get in trouble. hee hee.

The trickier project was the new chalkboard in the kitchen. This was much harder than I thought it would be. I planned to just yank it down and spray paint it a few times, but R. made sure we did it right.
He was very careful about how we took it down, so we didn't hurt the wall or the board. pah!. Oh, you know what? There's nothing at all under the board. I fully expected a hole or an old utility box, or at least a portal to another dimension, but there was nothing! I guess somebody put it up so they wouldn't have to drill holes in the adobe to hang the towel bar. Now I feel kind of bad that I've been making fun of it for so long.
I sanded the board and took out all the old nails and screws. Then I spackled all the holes and sanded it again. Then I put on the first coat of chalkboard paint and actually waited to put on the next two. My patience and maturity are astounding.
After four coats, it's very smooth and looks just like a real chalkboard. I can't write on it yet. Sigh. It has to cure for a whole 24 hours. Tonight at exactly 9:16 I'm going to write all over it. Yay!

I'm up to something

I have big ambitious plans for today. The first involves this really awkward corner in my kitchen. It's right by the stove. Some genius patched some kind of problem with the wall with a giant piece of wood that sticks out about an inch. It used to be sort of off white and dingy, but I painted it bright orange to make it blend in. That sounds kind of funny. You generally don't paint things bright orange to make them more subtle. Anyway, it's very ugly and very weird. There are all kinds of nail holes and screws in it. There are two towel bars right on top of eachother- everything about it sucks.
So, I'm thinking about making it into a chalkboard! I bought the chalkboard paint, now all I have to do is take down the huge scary piece of wood, sand it, and remove the dozens of tiny nails and screws. I can't wait. We can write our menu on it, or write recipes on it while we cook, or keep the shopping list up there. I can hardly make it worse, right? I mean, it's a giant orange eyesore now, the worst that can happen is I make it a giant black eyesore.


The other thing I have up my sleeve for the afternoon is this:


hell yes.

What is this?

Dear Ashley,
I'm very sorry that you've been stuck eating cupcakes for so long. Here's a new post just for you.

I bought this at the antique store the other day. I'm very excited about it and I can't wait to use it....except for one little thing. I don't know what it is!

It's a flower-shaped tube with little metal caps on both ends.



I don't generally buy stuff just because it's flower shaped or anything, but this was only a dollar and I saw big potential. I suspect that it is a kitchen utensil, so I'm pretty sure it's food-safe (I washed it about eighty times). My first thought was molded jello- that you could slice up and have little flower-shaped chunks of jello. Well, ok, that wasn't really my first thought. My first plan for it is probably not very practical (or possible). I want to bake cake in it. Chocolate cake, that I will slice up and then ice. Ooo! Or brownies that could be sliced with blobs of ice-cream on them!

On the boring side of experimentation, we could just freeze ice or juice in it and then float it in a pitcher of iced tea or something. Or punch. More awesome (and less likely) options include molding ice cream and then refreezing it . Wouldn't little flower-shaped ice cream cakes be delicious and pretty? You could potentially also use this like a big cookie cutter. You could make a sandwich, and then jam this into it, cutting out a flower-shaped sandwich and then move on to the next sandwich, filling the tube with a stack of pretty sandwiches. Unfortunately, I think only me and Katie would appreciate such fussy sandwiches. It kind of makes me want to find someone to throw a shower for!
What else could I use this for? Does anybody know what this thing is actually supposed to be? Aunt Joan? Ever seen anything like this? The store also had star shapes and heart shapes, so if this works, I'm going back to get more. Normally, I would have been all over the star shape, but I'm playing it safe with no tight corners. It's very hard to get a failed attempt at molded cake out of little star points.