Cornbread Supper

I was inspired by this recipe: http://peptogirl.blogspot.com/2006/04/yummy-mexican-cornbread.html

...but I'm lazy and I already had a mix for cornbread in my cabinet that was smoky jalapeno flavor. We bought it at Robertson's, our favorite place to stop along I-35 on the way to visit parents. They have the best beef jerky, and now I can vouch for the cornbread mix as well! I baked the cornbread all by itself in the cast iron skillet in the oven, covered it with ground beef and rotel, topped with cheese, salsa and sour cream. It was SO good. I'm SO full.




It looks pretty fitting to have the cornbread in front of our Texas platter/recipe holder, doesn't it?

Dining Room Makeover - Part 3 - The Whole Room

So you'll see in the first picture that we didn't in fact HAVE a working dining room. Alec had a home office right there in the middle of our living space and I did not like that. It was kinda ugly, and looked a little dorm-like. I was also tired of sitting on the floor to eat my dinner so I wanted a table. Here is the room before the remodel:







Here is the new improved room for actual dining:





I don't love the curtain, but inspiration hasn't struck me on a better solution for that yet.

Dining Room Makeover Part Two - The Table!

We forgot to take pictures of the table before we started sanding. It looked pretty cool just sanded down that I was tempted to leave it that way... but I had already painted the chairs and that would have looked so crazy! Here is the table before and after my paint job:

Dining Room Makeover Part One

Part one will show you just the chairs for the dining room table. We scored these beauties at the salvation army for super cheap. That's my favorite price to pay! FYI - I did not take the arms off the chair, we just only got one captains chair.



Cheap chairs + black spray paint + Ikea fabric = new fabulous chairs!

Paintings!

I had two special gifts to make. One was for my friend who generously gave me an awesome sewing machine! Thanks Deanna! The other was for Alec. I promised him at least a year ago that I would make some wall art just for him because one of his favorite things was a collage I had made a long time ago. I went for basically the same concept on the two paintings I made, but I made Alec's painting have some black texture kind of like wood grain just by streaking the brush. I made the heart 3-d by painting it on with Spackle and then covering it with regular paint. I love how they turned out!

WOODGRAIN ROCKS!

Another Red Velvet Art class project completed! The content of this plaque is a reference to a private joke between Alec and I, but it basically means "love you" to us... although we realize it means something totally different to most people! eek!

Wedding Scrapbook gift!

Alec helped me make this as a wedding gift for my oldest friend Jana and her new husband Grant. I hope they liked it! The style of the book was inspired from my Red Velvet Art online class and with help from my friend Deanna!

New/Old Sewing Machine!

I'm so excited! My friend Deanna gave me her grandmother's sewing machine to use. Not only does it work well, it is SO cute! I can't wait to sew, sew, sew! As you can see from the photo, I was too excited just to see if it worked to even move my notebook out from under it. I have now corrected this problem. :)

I finally made the sunglass cases that were part of my Red Velvet Art online class:




http://redvelvetgirls.typepad.com/

Etched glass wine glasses!

So my friends are in a band, and I wanted to make them some wine glasses with their band logo on them. I think they turned out well! :)

Here are some of the process:

Chair project

I wish I had remembered to take a "before" picture of this chair. It was stained brown but most of the finish had come off. The upholstery was so faded I couldn't tell what it had looked like. We picked it up on the side of 183 at a junk resale yard. The guy who ran the place told us it used to be in the capitol building in Austin, and I choose to believe it. I decided it needed a high gloss black coating and some cool fabric from Ikea. I love it!