DIY Pottery Barn Anchor Paperweight/Bookend

I was reading the most recent Pottery Barn catalog a couple of days ago when I saw this photo:

Honestly, I'm not a giant fan of the idea of covering a couch with denim, and that coffee table has too much glass for my preference. But... do you see the cute anchor on the second shelf of the table? The little cast-iron bookend-looking one?

I certainly saw it, and I was taken with it immediately. It isn't for sale, though (and it would be out of my price range if it was). So, I had to come up with a way to make a copy for my own space. It worked out so well that I figured I'd share the how-to with all of you!

The Pottery Barn version isn't even for sale, but I can't imagine it being cheap. My version isn't quite as sturdy as cast iron, but it only cost me about a dollar.

Menu Planning Monday & Free Menu Planner

Every Thursday, we get a big load of food from our CSA. On Saturdays, we go to the farmers market and fill in any gaps that we feel like our CSA didn't fill for the week. Then, it's time to eat!

However, if we don't plan out what we're going to do with all of our delicious produce, I know we're going to lose some of it to rot. Food from a CSA usually doesn't last as long as food from the grocery store, because it is almost always perfectly ripe when picked. So, it's important to have a plan for how we're going to use the delicious bounty of our local harvest without letting any of it go to waste.

I used to plan a menu and then go grocery shopping based on that plan. Now that we eat almost exclusively local, seasonal foods (at least during the harvest months, when the only non-local things we eat are organic canned beans and coconut milk), I have to reverse the process. Someone else picks the food I'm going to get, and I have to be creative to make it all work for us. It's been an exciting adventure trying to figure out how to do that.

Eventually what I did was to come up with a dual-function shopping and menu planning list (as you see above). It works in either way--you can fill in all your available ingredients and then make a menu plan from those, or you can write a menu plan and choose the ingredients you'll need to buy to make it. But it's all there together so you always know exactly what food you have or need, and what you're going to be eating.

I've included my list (a knockoff of the Anthropologie style "What to Eat" and "All Out Of" notepads) at the bottom of this post as a downloadable file so that you can print it out and use it too! It's been formatted to fit a full 81/2 x 11" page so you have plenty of room for writing and can store week-by-week copies in a binder if you want.

Want to see how I do it? Below the cut, I've shared this week's food supply and the menu I made out of it so you can see what I'm talking about.

Anthropologie Rosette Bedspread Tutorial

I am almost speechless with admiration over this beautiful Anthropologie-inspired duvet made by Kirstin of kojodesigns. I don't know what I love most about it--the awesome low price? The fact that it completely captures the beautiful appeal of the much more expensive original? The simplicity of the project?

Nope, I can't decide. I love everything about it equally.

Kirstin used jersey (pillaged from t-shirts and some king-sized sheets). Sarah at This Crazy Blessed Life recreated the look using Kirstin's tutorial, white muslin from Wal-Mart, and an Ikea duvet for a total cost of (brace yourself) $53!

Compare that to $288 for the king-sized version at Anthropologie and you can color me totally impressed.

Ballard Hacking: Homemade Weathervane

One of the things I love to see more than anything else is ideas and inspiration for how to copy upscale, expensive things accurately and on the cheap. For instance, I cannot even handle the way that Tracy from Tracy's Trinkets and Treasures created a free  version of Ballard's $149 horse weather vane.

Tracy's horse is made out of wood and paper. Ballard's horse is made out of wood and cast iron. But, displayed on a shelf out of reach where it isn't likely to be damaged, does it really matter if your weather vane is just cardstock?

I think not.

Check out the whole process over at Tracy's Trinkets and Treasures.

Homemade Pop Tarts

I think most people under the age of 30 love Pop Tarts, or have loved them at some point in the past. But if you're like Mr. Scrimp and me, that love has been tainted by your knowledge of how absolutely terrible they are for you--am I right? (You don't need to answer that; I know I'm right)

Pop Tarts, for me, have always fallen into that heartbreaking category of "processed foods that are impossible to make at home," along with Ecto-cooler, Little Debbie Oatmeal Cakes, and Eggo waffles. Let's just face it, people. Some foods are delicious because they are full of horrifying chemicals. And, probably thanks to their vividly colored fillings, neon sprinkles, and tooth-aching sweetness, I just always assumed Pop Tarts were one of those things.

Proof that I was wrong?

Enter the Los Angeles Times (really) and their recipe for homemade Pop Tarts--oh wait, I mean toaster pastries, because convention demands we lie to ourselves and pretend that toaster pastries that aren't Pop Tarts are still worth eating.

Are they Pop Tarts? Technically no. Stupendous Man refuses to eat store-bought organic toaster pastries and although I know he'd try these, I doubt I'd be able to manufacture something that tastes like a perfect replica to him, primarily because there are only one or two situations in which I will willingly use corn syrup and as for the rest of the crazy things they put into Pop Tarts, I don't even know how to pronounce half of those ingredients, let alone where the home cook might buy them.

Still, a toaster pastry that I can fill with my own homemade jams or jellies? Or frangipane? Or Nutella? A Nutella-filled pop tart!! You have my ear, L.A. Times. I am definitely going to give this recipe a try, and I am just going to try and ignore the fact that each one has nearly 500 calories in it. I sleep through breakfast and skip lunch on many Saturdays, making this a totally acceptable weekend breakfast because shut up.

So it might not be healthy in terms of calories, but I'd rather sit down and split a single, chemical-free homemade, Nutella-filled pop tart with Mr. Scrimp any day than stock my pantry with brand-name cancer pastries.

Pottery Barn Hacking

For those of you not in the loop on the latest slang, "hacking" in this sense just means copying something expensive and making your own for cheap or free. Want a good example? Check out this Pottery Barn hack by Angie of The Country Chic Cotttage.

Inspired by this Pottery Barn banker box storage set, Angie made these out of some left-over Christmas tins and some chalkboard paint:

Instructions here at Someday Crafts.