Red Snapper in White Wine Garlic Butter w/ Zucchini, Squash, and Carrot Pasta with Roasted Petite Potatoes

NEW recipe on new Culinary Elegance blog!  http://culinaryelegance.blogspot.com/

Red Snapper in White Wine Garlic Butter w/ Zucchini, Squash, and Carrot Pasta with Roasted Petite Potatoes

Sophia and Friends. :-)

 Little Friends!  Sophia with Tristan and Alexander after services

 Look at that smile!  Makes you melt like butter!  Oh, and don't worry I was right behind her to catch her so she wouldn't fall.  We've got it all covered.  ;-)

Sophia has gotten into purses these days.  She loves carrying around Aunt Carolyn's purse...AKA...my purse.

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(Above:  Culinary Elegance's gluten free Beef Stroganoff with Pan Seared Garlic Butter Asparagus, and a Brown Rice Biscuit with Avocado Puree....whole wheat for gluten tolerant s could be subbed in,)

Family Time! ...and friends

I joked with my sis in law about how I'm always spending time with Sophia and posting pics as a proud Aunt, and that it had been awhile since I'd posted a pic of Sophia with her parents.  I was able to take the fab pic.  I am happy with its turnout for a candid pic.
Below:  Sophia and I usually take a short walk to the waterfall every week, and this week Mr. Welsh and his son also visited it as well.  Sophia told them to smile though ironically if you notice in the pic she is in above, she is not smiling.  :-)

Piano and YOU -tube. ;-)!

Getting back into the game.  Plans have changed a little, and I will be resuming piano lessons in January with an award winning teacher here locally.  I have started a YouTube channel that I plan to update.  Last year, I updated practice sessions on the blog, this year, I'll only do updates on the YouTube channel when I have a song all ready to perform.  I'm no where where I want to be with the piano, but I'm hoping for increase in growth focusing heavily on that talent.  Above is a rough recording I did last May when piano lessons were coming to an end for that semester.  We'll see where the "yellow brick road" leads!  :-)  Feel free to follow my you-tube easy listening piano channel.  (It will be easy listening once I'm accomplished, anyway!) 

Reupholstering my Office Chair

Office chairs can be expensive to replace, and my chair definitely was well worn.  Instead of ordering a brand new chair, I wanted to try to save money for the work by reupholstering my own office chair.  It was a fun project, but it's a lot of hard work, and once one has committed to this, you have to see it through.  There's no going back.  :-)  Here are some pics of how worn my chair was.  Being that I sit at the front desk, I didn't think that was representing well.

...so the first thing that I did was go to Hobby Lobby and bought a cute little feminine hammer.  Yes, I asked one the clerks if they had girly hammers, and they did!  It's covered in flowers....and the beauty of it is that it also converts into three screw drivers.  It's a hammer and flat head and Phillips head screwdriver in one.  The handle unscrews and turns into the screw drivers!  So girly!

Then I selected the fabric for the chair.  Being that the chair belongs to work, I had to be considerate of what fabric that I chose to represent well, and to match the decor that is in the office.  The chair belongs to work, so it's not mine to do with as I please.  I chose a deep red and gold to match the scenery already at the front desk.

When I got back to the office and began working on the chair, I was surprised to find that my chair was put together poorly by the company that we had originally bought it from.  Instead of screws, they had cheated and simply put heavy duty staples in it to hold it all together.  What!  I know!  I was able to use a regular, as shown below, staple remover to simply pull the staples out.

Thanks to my everyday staple remover, I was able to remove all of the staples that were holding the plastic and the fabric to the wood.  Once removed, I used the old fabric as a type of pattern to cut out the new fabric.  If you are adding new padding in, you can also use it as a guide to cut that out as well.  I didn't have fabric shears on me, so I had to use my office scissors.  I will say that those things are definitely not made to cut fabric.  I think I would have done better with a knife, but it got done.

As a temporary guide to hold the fabric in place, I used masking tape.

....starting on the back of the chair.....I decided to complete it first. 

The time had come to nail in the upholstery nails.  I wanted to put the chair back together right.  Instead of the cheap staples.....the real thing that is suppose to be used to reupholster.

...so I nailed in well over half of the nails around the chair, but it took me over an hour to do so b/c of strength, or maybe I should say a lack of strength.  Cory S. offered to help me hammer the nails in b/c it was taking me several hits per nail to drive it in, but since he's a student and was on the job I told him I'd be fine, so another 20 minutes went by with my girly hammering...and that was when handy man Dan walked by and offered to help.  I gladly accepted the manly help this time.  Three strikes and you're out, after all.  :-)  Wow, he finished the rest of nailing in about 10 minutes.  He would only hit the nail twice and it would be in.  I was thinking, I should have just gotten "man power" from the start.  Could have saved time, and lots of noisy hammering in the office!

Voila!  My office chair's new look!  Costed around $30 for everything including upholstery fabric, hammer, and upholstery nails, etc.  That's a lot cheaper than a new office chair of this type that costs $200-$300 new.  Conner B. is going to come and secure the bottom plastic on with a professional tool when he gets the chance putting on that last touch.  In the meantime, this is how it looks now.  It's very functional, more comfy.....happy with it!

Update with Conner fastening on the plastic piece properly with the screw gun.

Being a Little Random

 A random post.  So a few months back a friend and I had an art night.  I took painting as a fine arts credit back when I was in college, but I always used the mediums of acrylic, oil, pastel, oil pastels, and graphite as mediums.  I never used water colors, so using you tube, we found water color tutorials, and tried it out.  It could be way better, was happy with it enough to matte and frame it.  I may give it to my niece.  However, I don't see any real talent of service developing from this, so this will probably be my first and last water color painting.  One thing that I'm trying to focus on is doing things that are of service to others and not just selfish things.  I don't see any real talent that pops with this in my life story book!  Others can serve in this much better.

 Total randomness, I found these slippers at Ross!  It's a shoe persons dream!  You can wear your cute slippers and clean with them too!  Productivity and a nice workout as well.  You are the human mop!  ;-)