Deece Purch: A $20 Thrifted Chair

David and I did a tremendous amount of paring down of our furniture when we moved from Massachusetts to Oregon last year. We went from having a couch, coffee table and living room chair to just having a loveseat couch... and a Tucker Tote covered in blankets for an ottoman. Normally we don't do too much entertaining at home, so our lack of seating wasn't doing much harm. It was just making our living room look pretty sparse. But when my sister came to visit a couple of weeks ago and we didn't have enough seating for three people in our living room, it was pretty obvious we needed to add a chair to the room.

Now we've got more company heading our way - Dave's brother is coming for a visit this week, all zee way from Florida - so there was some urgency to finding the right chair at the right price to add to our living room. We've been dreading making the trek to Ikea in Richmond, because it's a real pain in the ass to get there and then you have to actually deal with Ikea once you arrive! #Oy.

So when I found thissss little lady at the Salvation Army on 4th Ave for $19.99, I knew it needed to be ours... immediately:

We've actually contemplated buying this exact same chair from Ikea before. It's called the Pello and it normally sells for $60. The one I found in Salvay wasn't perfect... but it was damn close to it!!

There were just a few rogue spots in the white fabric of the chair...

... plus a couple minor knicks and marks on the wooden frame:

I checked the entire chair to make sure that the white fabric cover was removable, so that I'd be able to bleach it and wash it easily. Seeing that the cover would be really easy to remove and wash, I was sold.

.  thanks be to gloria  .

Not long afterwards, the chair was home in my living room! All I had to do was unzip the cover in a few places to remove the 4 different cushions, spray the whole cover with bleach water, throw it into the washing machine, and then let it air dry. It came out perfectly! I used some regular kitchen cleaner and a soft cloth to clean the wooden frame, removing all of the random marks and scuffs on it. Honestly, it looks pretty damn close to new, if you ask me! To boot, it was $40 less than it would have been at Ikea PLUS it took us less than 10 minutes to get to the Salvay with our car, load the chair in, and bring it home. You can't beat that!

Next on the "furniture" agenda is to buy me a new desk that I can use as a crafting/collage-making surface. We also need a real ottoman, though the Tucker Tote is really classing up the joint...

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Making Fresh Rolls with Peanut Sauce at Home

A couple years ago, my good friend Sarah taught me how to make fresh rolls at home, complete with homemade peanut sauce for dipping. But the frighteningly fragile, delicate nature of rice paper plus the daunting task of mixing my own peanut sauce kept me from trying to make them on my own - without my Sarah to guide me. In the last few months, however, I've made these little guys three times... and am actually pretty proud of how the entire dish has turned out each time!

While a couple of the required ingredients are admittedly a little obscure, once they're in your pantry/fridge you probably will not need to re-up on them for a long time. So there's a happy thought to tuck under your pillow. 

Ingredients:

Fresh Rolls:

- 1 pound of chicken (I used tenderloins)

- 2 carrots (I used 3 but it ended up being way too much!)

- half a head of romaine lettuce 

- 1/2 cup basil

- 1/3 cup mint

- rice paper sheets (you can get a package of these at any Asian food market)

- salt & pepper

Peanut Dipping Sauce:

- 2 tbsp peanut butter (crunchy or smooth, doesn't matter - I've used both)

- 2 tbsp water

- 1 tbsp soy sauce

- 1/3 cup Hoi Sin Sauce

This recipe makes enough for two people.

Directions:

Season and cook your chicken. I effing hate touching raw chicken, how 'bout you?

It's more fun to build your fresh rolls if all of your veggies are nicely shredded.  I cut my romaine and basil into thin strips, shredded my carrots, chopped the chicken into bits, and left the mint leaves as-is. 

The peanut sauce can be made to your own tastes. I like mine a bit sweeter, so I add a little more peanut butter and a little less soy sauce. Dave prefers his to be saltier, so he goes heavier on the soy sauce.  Start by mixing the peanut butter and water together and combining them well. Then stir in your hoi sin sauce and finally add the soy sauce. Definitely taste as you go!

Hey here's something you may not have dealt with at home before - rice paper! Whoop whoop! So the bad news is that this is a tricky step and it's really easy to tear the rice paper. The good news is that rice paper appears to come in enormous packages with tons of sheets, so there seems to be some wiggle room for error.

First, make sure you have a pan that is large enough to hold your rice paper. That's important. Put about an inch of water into the pan and heat it up - you want the water to be a little hotter than "warm"... which is a confusing way of saying, "Make sure you can still touch the water without burning ya poor little hands!"

Remove a sheet of rice paper from your package and slide it into the water, like so:

.  gym clothes, what what  .

.   well dippity dooooooo!!  .

Monitor the submerged rice paper by touching it a bit. When it's become pliable and the edges are beginning to turn up, it's time to take it out of the water.  Here's the tricky part. You gotta pull that sucker out of the water while a) trying not to tear it and b) not letting it fold over on itself. The sheet is going to be sticky and will try so hard to stick to itself, but it's your job to not let that happen. Try to spread it out gingerly with your fingers and stretch it to its circular form:

If parts of it are sticking to itself, I kind of dip those parts back into the water to unstick them and then continue taking the entire thing out of the water. Seriously, there is enough rice paper in your package for you to practice this a couple of times if you want to. I'm all about the practice rounds.

Lay the sheet of rice paper down onto a surface where you'll build each fresh roll. I go with a rubber cutting board because I've found that the rice paper likes to stick to wooden cutting boards.

Now it's time to build your roll. Add your veggies and chicken, layer by layer:

.  lettuce makes a good base  .

.  then chicken and carrots  .

.  sprinkle it with basil  .

.  lay your mint over the top  .

... and roll 'er up! Start at one end and treat it like a dainty, fragile burrito - tucking in the sides and rolling them in as well. 

Sweet, delicious, fresh success!  Heyooo!

Guys, they're so good.

Serve with your peanut sauce and enjoy the shit out of these!

If you try making these at home and don't tell me about it, I will be so mad at you. 

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Sweat Roundup of the Week!

I got slightly back on track this week with my workouts, after an embarrassing week of fitness last week. A lot of my favorite YouTube fitness channels have been putting out some great workout/exercise videos recently so those have been inspiring me and giving me lots of ideas to take to the gym.

.  i stepped in gum the other day while walking to the gym wearing my workout sneaks  .
.  it was a real buzz kill  .

6/9

Walked 6 miles around Vancouver with David!

6/11 (lower body & core)

5 mins elliptical

20 deadlifts, 20 lbs each hand

40 reverse crunch + leg raise

30 booty kicks each leg

40 weighted side bends, 20 lbs each hand

20 heel presses  (+20 mini pulses at the top) on each leg

35 lying overhead raise + double crunch, holding 5 lbs

30 weighted calf raises, 20 lbs each hand

1:40 plank

20 squats, 20 lbs each hand

30 cobras

6/12 (upper body)

5 mins elliptical

Started with the Sexy Tank Top Arms In Time For Summer routine 3x, 7.5 lbs each hand:

- 10 reverse fly

- 10 deltoid fly

- 10 deltoid raise

***

12 tricep kickbacks, 7.5 lbs each hand

12 chest press on exercise ball, 12.5 lbs each hand

12 lat pulldowns, 70 lbs

6/15 (cardio, lower body & abs)

20 mins elliptical

20 deadlifts, 20 lbs each hand

40 reverse crunch + leg raise

- 40 bridges

- 20 single leg bridges on each leg

50 Brazilian crunches

20 kneeling lean-backs

30 weighted crunches on exercise ball, holding 15 lbs

30 weighted calf raises, 20 lbs each hand

35 lying overhead raise + double crunch, holding 5 lbs

60 side lunges + plyometric pushoff, 30 each side

1:10 plank

20 squats, 20 lbs each hand

30 cobras

12 lat pulldowns, 60 lbs

When it comes to being healthy, in general, I'm really not too bad on the fitness front... but I fear that I'll never have visible abs because APPARENTLY those are "made in the kitchen" and #goodlord do I love my sweets. How do so many women replace ice cream, cookies and chocolate with like almond milk yogurt pops sprinkled with stevia??? When I get sweet cravings during the day, I satisfying the craving with some fruit. But come nighttime, post-dinner, you can't keep me from my straight-up-diabetes-inducing chocolate or ice cream. Honestly, it's already on my mind before I'm even through with my dinner plate!!

Do you eat dessert every night? What do you eat for dessert that you don't feel crappy about later?

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A Few Good Things

I went out for a solo picnic one night this past week and ate my dinner next to the beach while enjoying this view:

The bald eagles near the Burrard Bridge have been out in their tree in plain view lately: 

Walking along near Granville Island recently we came upon a whole gaggle of geese and goslings eating their way across a green lawn. The goslings were still super fluffy looking - I thought they were adorable:

Blue Stripes and Polka Dot Nails

A few days ago, one of my favorite nail polish bloggers, Polish Me Please,  posted an adorable mani using a bright yellow nail polish. She had yellow stripes on all of her nails with yellow polka dots on her accent nail and I loved the combo of the two. I had never tried the "strips of tape" technique to create stripes, but I've seen it around for years. It was time for me to give it a try myself!

The gist of the technique is probably kind of obvious, but you cut up thin strips of tape, press them onto your nails, and then paint over them with another polish. When you remove the tape, you're left with stripes.

I wanted to try a nautical-looking nail, so I picked out a navy blue polish - Sally Hansen's Blue It. This turned out to be a bad choice for a nautical nail because it's much too bright a blue for the job. I also needed a white polish for this look, so as usual I used my Sinful Colors Snow Me White polish.

First and foremost, cut your strips of tape. You do not want to be messing around with that task while you've got any paint on your nails already, right? I used masking tape... I literally have no idea why. Don't YOU do that too, for god's sake. Use Scotch tape, like a normal person would.

Next, paint all of your nails 2 coats of white and let them dry tooootttalllllllly totally totally. I made the mistake on Round 1 of this project of not waiting till my white nails were completely dry before laying down the tape. The result is that when you go to pull the tape up later, the white polish comes up with it! #Blurgh.

Now it's time to lay down your tape strips across all your nails except for the ring fingers. Laying the tape onto my nails in straight lines was actually harder than I thought it would be and so it took longer than I thought it would.

Using the blue polish, paint over the top of all of your nails, in the same direction as the tape. This is going to cause a mess all over your fingers. While this polish is still wet, peel off the tape strips. I read that it's good to use tweezers for this part, and that was a great tip. It keeps you from screwing up your nails by using them to peel the tape off.

Use a dotting tool to add blue dots on ring fingers:

And clean it up!

This was pretty labor intensive, if you ask me. I can't see myself doing this again - not to so many nails at once, anyway. I'd probably do it again as an accent nail.. and I'd definitely use Scotch tape and a different blue.

Have you done the tape technique before? It's good for color blocking too, which I will probably try soon.

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Monkey Puzzle Tree

Since moving to the West Coast in January 2012, I've run into all sorts of botanicals that don't exist in Massachusetts. It's so cool to see how different things grow in such different climates!

We've got gorgeously green grass here from the combination of the ultra rainy and beautiful sunny days...

... palm trees...

... these crazy things (this purple ball of a flower is about the size of a small soccer ball!!)...

... and my personal favorite, the Monkey Puzzle tree!

The Monkey Puzzle is a type of evergreen, and I first encountered it in Portland, OR last year. It's so interesting to look at - its "leaves" remind me of something armored that a dinosaur might have on its back, like a stegosaurus.

  

 

Do you have any cool plants or trees growing in your neck of the woods? What's your favorite flora to stumble upon?

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Suffering from Multiple Musical Personality Disorder

My musical tastes are pretty varied - nothing insane or super indie or anything... but varied, nonetheless. On top of that, I have a neurotic tendency to get songs stuck in my head. I mean, reeeeeeally freaking stuck. Like can't-turn-the-song-off-even-in-the-middle-of-the-night kind of stuck.

Sometimes it's tricky to navigate both of the above traits simultaneously. What do I mean? Well, here are the three most recent songs that I've got on endless repeat in my brain:

Fantasia - When I See You



Aerosmith - Hole In My Soul



Ace of Base - Living In Danger



Da fuck? Like, if that was a playlist it would be the playlist that no one liked, except for me. I hope you've enjoyed this peek into my brain... and also that peek back at Ace of Base's awesome 90s style.


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