Window Re-Purpose : Hair Bow Holder

After almost 11 years and 2 kiddos, we have outgrown our starter home and purchased a new (to us) home in the country.  I am super ambitious and ready to become a homesteader ... now!  Ha ha!  For now, I have a lot of decorating to do!

I am a big fan of the upcycled, shabby chic, vintage farmhouse style.  Does that make any kind of sense?  Well, our 40 year old home still had the original, 40 year old windows.  We replaced the windows before we even moved in, leaving us with 30+ old windows ... GOLD!  My head is still swirling with possibilities!

I have finished a few DIY projects and one of them is a hair bow holder for my girly girl!  My four year old never leaves home with out a bow, and I make hair bows for local craft fairs.  Needless to say, we have a lot of them!  I did not take pictures of the steps, because I just didn't think about it.  I will try to re-create some of the steps for you to make the instructions easier to follow.

The first thing I did was to clean up the window and remove the hardware and the strings that were hanging from it.

Next, I removed the glass.  Well, I didn't ... my husband did.  I thought that once I popped out the little edge pieces, the glass would come out easily.  Not quite!  There was a massive amount of sticky adhesive that did not want to release!  He was able to use a scraper to kind of cut through the adhesive and get the glass out.

I chose to paint mine white.  I roughed up the wood a little with some sandpaper and layered on several coats of white paint.  Then the fun begins, it's time to distress the window!  Use sandpaper to remove paint in several places, as much or as little as you like.  You can also use a chisel or flat head screw driver to take out some little chunks too.

I chose to put chicken wire in where the glass was to clip the bows onto.  After it was cut to the appropriate size, I lined it up in the open space.  My hope was to then put the edging pieces back in to hold it in place.  Unfortunately, they didn't want to fit back in place.  No problem!  I just stapled it into place.

To go along with the distressed look, I thought that burlap would look great.  I found ribbon style burlap at the local craft store.  The window is actually very light-weight once the glass is removed, so I rolled the ends of the ribbon (to prevent it from fraying and pulling apart) then stapled it into place.  Then I tied a little bow for decoration.

I decided that I liked the look of the the latch hardware, so I screwed it back into place.  Voile!

Green Goddess Dressing

I really enjoy dipping veggies and meat in green goddess dressing.  I had actually never heard of it until I visited a restaurant called The Melting Pot.  If you've never heard of  The Melting Pot, it's a fondue style restaurant and it is AH-MAZING!  The main course came with an assortment of sauces.  Among those sauces was a liquid gold called green goddess.  So yummy!

A short time ago, I was watching Food Network.  I am addicted to Food Network.  I have learned so much from watching the programs.  A gal named Kelsey Nixon shared her recipe for green goddess dressing, and I quickly wrote down her instructions.

As is typical of me, I altered it to fit my own personal taste. (Something I learned watching Food Network!)  So here is my take on Kelsey Nixon's Green Goddess Dressing.

Gather Your Ingredients:

1/4c mayonnaise

1/4c sour cream

1 ripe avocado

Zest and Juice from 1/2 of a lemon

A hearty handful of parsley, about 1/2c 

A small bundle of chives, about 1/4c

A pinch of salt and pepper

Make It:

There is really only one step; place ingredients in a food processor and chop it all together.  There is just a tiny bit of work to prep the ingredients.  

*Make sure the avocado is RIPE!  It will be slightly soft and starting to turn brownish/blackish.  

*When zesting the lemon, only take off the yellow.  The white part, the pith, is bitter and unpleasant.  Take care when juicing so that you do not get any seeds in your dressing.  If you LOVE a strong lemon flavor, go ahead and use the whole thing.  I found that a whole lemon was just too strong.