Recipe Review Roundup

Perhaps these posts will be interesting to no one but me, but I have decided to start doing what I am going to call Recipe Review Roundups every so often. Basically, they will discuss some of the recipes I have tried recently. It will document what I liked and what I did not like about the recipes, where I had trouble with the process, what I ended up changing, and how they were received by Patrick and I (and sometimes David).

I think it important to note that Patrick is not exactly what you would call a picky eater. He has a super high metabolism and generally likes anything that can fill him up, and has a special love for spicy things after living in Fiji for 2 years and eating Indian food there. Things fall into 3 categories for him: it is inedible, it serves its purpose as food (fills his stomach and tastes okay), or it is really good. The middle category can really have a large range of how much he likes it, but it is hard to get him to elaborate upon it (I did not marry a man of many words).

Particle Board Bookshelf Makeover

A couple Saturday's ago, Patrick and I helped a neighbor move around some furniture in her small apartment in order to allow delivery of a new bed. She decided that she had all too many books in the process and began to get rid of several of them. She also had two particle board shelves that were, in all honesty, really ugly. She planned to get rid of them because they didn't really fit where they were and, as previously stated, they were ugly. Still, the storage would be helpful to her, and after having a hard time finding the right thing to replace the storage for a very low price, I suggested just making over the shelves.

Baby Food Jar Week: Coin Sorter

Continuing on the theme of confessions, here is today's edition: My husband and I are nerds. And I am completely okay with that. How nerdy, you ask? Well, let me describe our most recent date night to you. I was trying to come up with a final project for baby food jar week. Patrick first suggested coating the inside with metal and making a resonating chamber, though he reasoned that it might be a bit hard to tune. I kind of shot down that idea because I have no idea what we would use a resonating chamber for and didn't think you all wanted to read about my making it. After discussing a few more options, we came up with this fabulous date night activity: we had a competition to see who could build the better coin sorter using baby food jars as the vessels to catch the coins.

Baby Food Jar Week: Baby's-First-Christmas Ornaments

Since I started yesterday's post with a confession, I suppose I shall start today's with one as well. Here it is: I never believed in Santa Claus. I know, right? Pretty crazy stuff. This confession has been met with a number of reactions through the years, but the most common opinion seems to be pity--that somehow my parents failed me by never telling me that Santa Claus was real. But in all honesty, that is a little bit obnoxious to me. I don't feel like I missed out on anything , except maybe having a cool story about when I found out that my parents had been lying to me my whole life, and I am okay passing on that. When everyone else is sharing their stories, I just tell people the story about the mean third grader on the bus in first grade that had just found out and wanted to spoil it for me. He said "Santa Claus isn't real," and I said "I know." I don't think it was quite the reaction he was looking for.

Baby Food Jar Week: Apple Jars and The Projects That Got Me There

So, I have a confession: I don't like Halloween. I really don't like scary things and gore is even worse. It just bugs me.  When I was little the candy was fun, but I have been past trick or treating age for some time. Dressing up can be kind of fun, but I don't like how so many women's (and teen girls') costumes are so revealing and degrading. I am pretty sure little boo peep had a longer skirt; that would not be practical  to shepherd sheep in. I suppose in a year or so, David will be old enough that it might be fun again, but for the time being, I am not a Halloween fan. But I digress.

In any case, I tend to not decorate for Halloween (which again may change as David gets older). Still, something about these jars was screaming pumpkin (which I reasoned could also just be autumn decor). So I made some cute little pumpkins. Cute little pumpkins then begged for cute little faces. From pumpkins came the obvious idea for other Halloween decor of Frankenstein monster heads and ghost faces.

Baby Food Jar Week: Storage Vessels

Though this use is a lot less crafty than some other things I will show you this week, the most practical thing I have found to do with these little jars is the same thing they were made for: store things.

The first things I stored were actually homemade baby food. Not only were the jars convenient storage containers, they also helped me get a better idea of how much David was eating when I wasn't feeding him store bought baby food. Since David is a skinny little fellow, the doctor often asks me detailed questions about how much he eats and having the baby food in little jars helps me answer those questions more precisely.

Baby Food Jar Week: Tea Candle Holders

I have a bunch of baby food jars--half a closet shelf bunch. (The other half is full of toilet paper tubes, but that is a subject for another day). I have collected these jars faithfully knowing that they would be so useful. Then, I failed to actually use them mostly because I didn't know what to use them for.

I have decided to force myself to use all these fantastic jars by declaring this week Baby Food Jar Week. I will make a post about one use for baby food jars per day until Friday. Some of them are ideas I came up with, some of them are things I was inspired to do by someone else, and some of them are somewhere in between.

Today's use is as a cute little tea candle holder. There are millions of ideas for ways to make candle holders out of these little jars. You can use Mod Podge to put tissue paper on the outside of the jar like in this post from Tinker Lab. Or you can put doilies around the outside of the jar like in this post from Our Mush Push. Or you can use rub on transfers like in this post from Finding My Aloha. Or...well, you get the idea.