Cava de Sangria recipe

Our local spanish restaurant has this amazing cava de sangria and I decided that I would attempt to make it. Fortunately they offer up a recipe online here. My version used a California "Champagne" rather than cava and some other more generic liquor choices. 

1 375ml bottle of Brut Sparkling wine 
1 lime
2 oz of orange juice or a 1 fresh orange

2.5 tbsp simple syrup
1 oz of cointreau
2 oz of brandy
splash of sprite

I mixed all together with some ice in a small pitcher. You can add more or less of the simple syrup to give it the level of sweetness you desire. Simple syrup is one part sugar to one part water, brought to a boil to melt the sugar and then chilled before using. Yum!

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Just wasting time

I made a floor plan for our house.  Now this is definitely not the best use of my time right now but in the future it could help with bathroom renos and such.  Here is the floor plan for our house and here is the current plan

Splashing about...

To celebrate a job done on the CPH exam I decided to install our new toilet flushing system.  Now for as long as we've lived here there has been some small amount of leaking to our master bathroom toilet.  I was contemplating changing parts out to see what would solve our leak but then I stumbled upon this idea the other day.  It is a dual flush converter for toilets.  I know it doesn't sound very exciting but I like weird stuff.  Anyway, I had seen these dual flush buttons in England and Mexico on our travels and thought it was pretty neat that with one button you get just a bit of water and both or the bigger of the two buttons gets you the full (normal) tank of water.  So a few days ago I ordered this particular model on Amazon and it arrived today!  

box and it's contents (please don't judge the carpet.  We don't like it either!)

The old toilet situation

See the water shut-off valve below the tank...

Installation was really easy.  No tools required!  First you turn off the water, flush the toilet and take out the existing handle.  Then you have to remove the existing flapper and plop a few of the new pieces into place.  

The new flusher button!

I know its silly to be excited about such things but this could potentially save lots of water and money!  The advertisement says it could save up to $100 a year in water costs.  Well worth the $19 I paid for it if that turns out to be the case. 


You can see Jasmine is ever so willing to assist in the process :)

My dog assistant... not very helpful, but oh so cute!

Which Cleans Brass Better?

I'm doing an experiment today (in between studying for my CPH exam) on what product cleans pennies better.  So I mentioned in my post yesterday that I'm trying to decide what to cover the top of our coffee table with.  River rocks and tiles were two top contenders but I've been inspired by something else since then.  Pennies!  What else is one to do with all the excess pennies lying around the house, the car, my purse?  I have to admit, I'm not the first to have this idea.  There is a great bar in Athens, GA that my husband and I loved to go to called  Copper Creek Brewing Company.  Their entire bar top is covered in pennies!  It looks lovely and way more classy than a table of bottle tops.  Not that bottle tops wouldn't be great for a bar top someday but just not for now. 

Back to my original idea... I need a way to clean all those pennies we already have because some of them look kind of dingy.  My first thought was brasso!  I had many years experience cleaning my mom's brass pot rack and kitchen collection so I thought it would be perfect.  The only problem is that it really stinks up the house.  So if you decide to use this do it outside!  Currently I have a cup of pennies soaking in the stuff.  

Then my husband says to me "Soak them in Coke!"  Apparently he's tried this, albeit with English pence, and it really does work.  So...

Now I've got that experiment running too.  Not as smelly as the brasso and hopefully the results will be better!  

I've calculated how many pennies I would need to cover the whole table top and its around $13 worth.  This isn't too bad considering that 15 lbs of river rocks was about $15 and I think I would have needed more!  

Just imagine how lovely its going to look with all these shiny pennies!  I'm excited!  What are your thoughts about my project?  Have you tried cleaning anything with coke before?  

Ideas...

I need some input here people!  Firstly, I would like a new name for my blog.  I like to DIY/Craft/Design stuff but it needs to be catchy, but not gimicky.  

The other thing is a project I recently undertook.  I refinished our coffee table because the top was rather beat up from years of abuse.  I've painted it but it still needs some help because the wood filler wasn't sanded down that well and it gets used as a dinner table almost every night so water and food landing on it is inevitable.  I was thinking first of tiling it but realized that may become rather expensive and very time consuming.  

My next thought was that I could use an acrylic bar top coating over some river rocks.  This may be relatively economical and look quite stunning.  This is a picture of some grey/black river rocks that I picked up at Target to test out.  5 lbs of rocks does not seem to go very far!  But I'm still debating it.  My hubs isn't sure about the boarder I would need to create in order to keep the acrylic from over flowing.  If I can work out a way that I could use the boarder but then take it off once the acrylic has solidified that may be even better.  

Finally, I think the house needs more greenery.  I have shyed away from it in the past because of all the animals in our house but I'm hoping that it may help filter the air a bit more to give a fresh smell.  Maybe I'm completely crazy but I think it will help.  This is my first plant idea. 

The current state of the living room.

With our new ficus!

Just a little photoshop magic to help me decide.  

January Project

Now it doesn't take me a whole month to make my projects but it does take that long to post them.  

This is what I used to organize some of my crafting supplies.  There are many other places in the house but I like this because it is mobile and stores things nicely.  What I don't like is that its kind of ugly and you can see everything in it, especially when its out and around the house.  So I had some left over fabric from a table cloth I bought at Target and made this...

Pretty cool slip cover if I may say so.  To make this I placed the fabric on the drawers upside down.  Then I pinned it all together at the seams, which are around the top three corners and one long seam down the back in the middle.  I then simply sewed it together.  It was a bit trial and error at first.  My sewing skills are coming along slowly.  


I had enough fabric left over to make the pillow in this picture below.  

I'm going to try to post more projects as I go along, but since I'm working on finishing up my masters degree things might take a while.  


Until then,


~J