Mushrooms from compost

Y'know I've been doing quite a few "outdoorsy" posts of late, which is kinda odd, because we're smack bang in the middle of Winter, Down Under and really any sane person would be inside under a blanket watching movies and eating comfort food.

But the skies have been so clear with the sun warming the cool air, so I've been jumping at the chance too potter around the yard. It does help that I live in a city with very mild winters - where people pull out the woolies when the temperature drops to 22 degrees (thats 71 for those who do things in fahrenheit).

Anywhoo - I digress. Mushrooms. Love 'em. My favourite way of eating them? Nice and simple. Here is the recipe that I always fall back on if I feel like a lazy dinner, or just have a heap of mushrooms to use up!

Mum's mushrooms on toast recipe.

Ingredients:

Small bag of mushrooms (or a few handfuls, whatever you've got) - cleaned and sliced

1x clove of garlic - crushed

1x small brown - finely diced

cream / sour cream / cream cheese

butter

toast to serve - fabulous on toasted sourdough bread

1. Put a small knob of butter in a frypan with the onion and garlic, sautee over a low heat until onions start to caramelise

2. Add sliced mushrooms and stir until they are softened and fragrant

3. Add a little bit of cream to create a sauce - add as much as you like, but it honestly only needs enough to hold everything else together.

4. Turn off heat and continue to stir until sauce thickens.

Serve on toast. Yumm!

But hang on.. this post was supposed to be about the garden! ok, let's get to that now.

At almost $10 a kilo, mushrooms aren't cheap, but I had never considered growing them until I saw those 'mushroom farm in a box' ditties that you can buy from nurseries.....  But then I came across mushroom compost.

Do yourself a favour. Google mushroom farms in your local area.

My local mushroom farm sells bags of mushroom compost for $1. The bags are used to actually grow the mushrooms in. As soon as the bags stop growing commerical quantities of mushrooms, they sell them as compost. But talk about your lucky day, those bags still have some mushrooms left in them!

Can you see those teeny little white spots? Baby mushrooms.

Mushrooms like damp, dark spaces, and luckily enough, I have one of those in my back yard where nothing seems to grow. Here's how I created my mushroom patch.

1. gently place all the mushroom compost out on the ground in your chosen area.

2. cover with newspaper or cardboard.



mushroom patch - day one

3. wet cardboard thoroughly.



Mushroom patch close up - day 3



And that's it! Just make sure that the compost stays damp (not too wet) and the mushrooms aren't exposed to the sun (or they'll get burnt and turn brown) and you'll have your own ready supply for your favourite mushroom meal.

Mushroom patch - day 5



Mushroom patch - day 7  



This bowl of mushrooms were collected from the patch on day 7. Certainly enough for two people! Comparing them with mushrooms bought from the grocer, these are much more firm in texture, have only the faintest smell and are a very pale colour inside.

Happy gardening!

Amy

Dog bed cover from fabric scraps

You've probably realised by now that my puppy, Bridget, makes an appearance quite frequently in this little blog of mine! Well she is my furbaby, so she does get spoilt alot of attention in our household. Ok yes, she gets spoilt too.

She does have her moments though. Like the dog bed I bought her when she first came to live with us. She was a tiny 1.2 kilos (2.6 pounds) and was too small to even climb onto the bed! She spent the first few months sleeping on a towel on the floor.

She got bigger, of course and discovered sleeping on the bed was more comfortable than the floor. She also discovered a love of zippers. Well, of chewing them off anyway.

I decided to make a new cover for her dog bed, however, once I took off the old cover, I realised what a sorry state the bed was actually in. All the poly filling inside had moved around, leaving it looking like a right old mess.  

Some re-stuffing was clearly in order.

I cut a decent sized hole in the top of the bed and then using the stuffing from some old polyester filled pillows.

I packed it firmly into the bed, trying to ensure it was even and not as lumpy!

Then using a simple stitch, I handsewed the hole back up. For extra strenth, I then blanket stitched over the edge.

Clearly the little miss was impatient to get her bed back. She decided to come and take a rest before I'd even put a new cover back on it!

Now for the cover.

To avoid the chewing off of any NEW zips, I decided to make a super simple pillow slip to cover the bed. Here's how:

Firstly, select your fabric. I used a dark coloured linen for the bottom and a patterned furniture fabric for the top. They were just some scraps I had in my sewing drawer.

Use the old cover as a template, cut a rectangle from your chosen fabric, adding a little extra for seam allowances.

Do the same for the other side of the cover, but this time, add extra for a seam allowance around all sides, as well as extra for 'tucking in' the slip. Oh yeah and it's a good idea to wash and IRON all your fabric before sewing.

Pin the insides of the fabric together.

Then sew together with the front 'good' sides facing in. You'll also need to fold the extra 'tucking' bit of fabric over and sew that into the sides. Think of a pillow case - I'm hopeless at trying to describe it, but get a pillowslip and turn it inside out if you need to work out the best way to do it! 

If you have a serger, you can finish the edges of nicely. I don't, so i decided to do a zig-zag stitch around the sides as well as a straight stitch. Gives it some extra sturdiness.

Once you're done, turn it inside out and put the pillowform back inside, carefully tucking it into the extra flap of fabric.

And there you have it! A puppy-approved dog bed cover. With no zips or buttons to chew off too!

No getting her off it now.

Happy sewing!

 

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Pimp my Cubes!

When I was young(er) and single, I lived in a share house (our little bachelorette pad). Other than our singledom, the other thing my housemate and I had in common was our lack of money and furnishings! We were always on the lookout for bargain-basement furniture. 

When I came across these simple cubes, they met all my furniture criteria:

Cheap? $20 each. TICK

Minimal assembly? a few screws. TICK

sleek and functional? They're white boxes Amy, DUH. TICK & TICK!

I completely forgot a 'before' photo, so here's one which you can pick up from Walmart for $25 at the moment



They really are versatile little ditties. I bought three and they really can be arranged anyway you wish. I've used them in our previous apartment in the entryway - stacked three high, side by side on a countertop as a mini bookshelf and currently as a unique bedside table in our guest bedroom.

The walls in the guest bedroom are a light grey colour and I'm imagining a colourscheme of black, white and grey, with a punch of yellow in the accessories. Whilst the white cubes against the walls are quite striking, I feel like they could do with a little pimpin'. So I've decided to add some stencilled images to the backs of each.

Firstly, I unscrewed each cube

I measured the back square and using a funky sheet of scrabook paper, I cut out design that took my fancy and created a stencil.

Next, using simple black acrylic paint, I carefully stenciled the design onto three white squares of paper.

I then taped one onto each of the back boards of the cubes. I did it this way so that I can change it again if the mood takes me.  

I then reassembed the cubes back together, being careful not to tear or damage the back decorated side.

And there you have it!

I played around with the layout a bit - here they are stacked three high.

But decided that I really liked them as a little bedside table. What do you think? How gorgeous is that gerbra by the way? Such a vibrant red.

And what about the lamp? I think it matches so perfectly. It was a $4 lampshade from IKEA, which I recovered in some cute patterned fabric which I had lying around. Pretty simple to do - no tutorial required. Just grab your fabric and a glue gun!

  

I really love a cheap and chic make over like this. I would love to hear about your simple makeover stories - any makeover plans for the weekend?

Amy

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The hall table of all hall tables

I love a good blog. Food, baking, DIY, renovation blogs, you name it. On one of my daily blog trawls, I came across The Little Brown House and this headboard to hall table post. Fabulous! I thought, as I had just recently pulled this interesting little feature down from our entry way. 

It was kinda cute, and it did kinda work in the space, but once the red wall was gone, it too, was destined to be obliterated (well, stored under the house). So off I went, scouring local Op. shops and demo yards in search for the perfect, soon-to-be hall table.

Now here's the bit where I tell you I found the perfect piece, hidden away in the back of the junk yard, so perfect it practically jumped out at me as I walked past and what's more it was marked down to 75c or something ridiculous like that.

Sorry to disappoint you people. This ain't Hollywood.

I admit, I gave in. Instead, I went in search for buying a ready made hall table. No cutting / sanding / DIY'ing at all.

And wouldn't you know it, I couldn’t find anything. Nadda. Zip. Nothin' at all.

Bugger.

I decided to have one last try at my local lifeline megastore and came across this little beauty.

It's an off-white/cream colour, with some dents and nicks and some weird shaped stains that had soaked through the paint. You may also spot some little funky orange spots all over too..Although it comes up remarkably well in the photos, let me assure you, it was pretty gross.

Yeah, it's certainly not the bargain basement price I was after, but heck, I was not going to be defeated with this!

My only real issue was size. My entry is only teeny Being without a tape measure and not wanting to look like a dork for asking, I decided to measure it with my wallet. Figuring my wallet was about 8 inches long, I measured 1.5 wallets deep and about 6 wallets long.

Let's break for a little insight about yours truly. I'm a virgo by birth and I certainly live up to the stereotype. Love to plan. Hate surprises. Borderline crazy attention to detail. Colourcode & coordinate everything. Birthday party coming up? Let me take care of it. Need to organise a hen's night / baby shower / your own wedding? Step aside sister, that's my territory. Yet to totally contradict all that, I can be incredibly lazy. Hence the measurement by wallet.

I got it home and then the inevitable. It didn’t fit.

Damn you wallet measurements!

We were off by about half an inch. Dammmnnn.

So I lugged the thing down the stairs decided on my plan of attack.

I decided to cut off not only a bit of width, but also length as well. For this, I recruited my trusty old handsaw. Plus, this time, I measured. With a ruler.  

I then sanded up all the cuts, and gave the whole thing a thorough sanding and a cleanup.

I used White Knights Squirts undercoat to prime it all over, followed by a few coats of White Knights White Satin. (Does anyone else get that desire just to drown the whole thing in one go? Spray paint dribbles are not nice, but damn it tests my patience doing lots of lighter coats!) I managed to finish both cans on this little ditty. It was the first time I used White Knights and I must admit I was kinda disappointed. The coverage just wasn’t there for my liking.  

I then applied some quatrefoil wallpaper printed paper to the back of the shelf. I had planned on stenciling it on, but I was soo not in the mood. I found a quatrefoil image online, recoloured it in Publisher and then printed it out on regular old A4 paper. Don't judge me - I'll get around to stencilling that baby on one day soon...

Et Voila! Look at that baby now! Perfect.

A few hints for first timers -

1. Wack a tape measure or even a measuring tape from your sewing draw into your bag if you're furniture shopping. You could even snitch* a paper one from Ikea next time you're there! (*I don’t condone stealing- they give those babies away for free anyways).

2. Be persistent at your local thrift shops and demo yards. They might not always have what you're looking for, so go in with an open mind and you might come away with something even better than what you first planned.

woo hoo! Check me out on The DIY Show Off, DebbieDoo's Newbie Party and TDC's Before & After Party. Thanks for showing me some newbie love, blog land!!