3 Meals from Leftover Turkey Bones

When planning a get together with Family (both my side and Husband’s), I usually get the “bring some extra containers for leftovers” reminder. This Christmas it paid off – we got the leftover Christmas turkey carcass!

We knew that if we rendered the turkey we could easily cook a lot of the remaining meat off those bones for a second meal as well as make a huge heaping helping of homemade turkey stock for future meals.

So yes, as we drove the 150+ miles home, we changed the words to the song, “I’m Getting Nothing’ for Christmas” to “I Got A Carcass for Christmas!” because we were anticipating a couple of meals to come out of those smoked turkey bones.

My apologies to my vegetarian readers because this post is going to be all about cooking meat. While Husband and I do eat many vegetarian meals, we like to satisfy our carnivore instincts too. Chances are I will use the word carcass quite a bit because you never really get to use that word in polite society anymore. OK, well, ever. In the meantime, you vegetarians can kick back and make Husband’s vegetarian friendly Homemade Orangina instead – it’s yummy!

How to Render Bones into Soup Stock/Broth

I'm Apartment Therapy's Best of Creative Reuse!

Look at what I found waiting for me in my feed reader after the Christmas holiday. Apartment Therapy’s green blog Re-Nest choose my picture frame dog feeder as one of Re-Nest's Best Creative Reuse of 2008 projects!

This is an amazing way to close out my first blogging year. As you may recall, Apartment Therapy’s Re-Nest featured two of my Condo Blues creative reuse projects on their blog in October, Blitzkrieg’s raised dog feeder, and my wine glass chandelier.

So, let’s see, that’s a big THREE stories featuring yours truly on Apartment Therapy this year. I blog I love and read even before I started blogging. Next goal – write an article or have a project featured in Readymade – another of my all time favorite magazines.

What a great way to end 2008! Have you had any unexpected good things come your way this year?

Did you enjoy this post? Get more like it by subscribing to the Condo Blues RSS Feed

A Quick and Easy Modern Christmas Decoration

As I was decorating The Condo for Christmas, I had a little problem. I needed an extra holiday something on one of my side tables. Something not so rustic folksy. Something more long the lines of the Retro Modern Bauhaus Contemporary Found and Funkified Da Da-Danish decorating style I’m striving for in The Condo.

I didn’t want to jump into the car and go to the store and buy something because honestly, I knew I wanted something on that side table, but I had no idea what. In other words, going to the store and trying find and buy the perfect holiday something was a kin to a multistore and multiday vision quest. And while fun, I just didn’t have time for that. Not that day.

So I scrounged around and came across my decorating standby – the giant martini glass. You may remember that I filled it with seedpods from a neighborhood park during the Fall.

Woven Danish Hearts and Junk Mail Snowflake Window Decor

Some of my neighbors hang wreaths or swags on their second floor windows. I really like this look, on the freestanding Cape Cod style condominiums in my neighborhood. I thought I’d do the same this year. It should be easy enough, I thought because I could hang the wreath by opening the windows and hanging the greenery from the inside. In theory, this would have worked well. However, in the alternative decorating universe that we call The Condo, I forgot that I sealed the inside of the windows in October for winter.


In order to hang the greens, I would either have to remove all of the rope caulk from the inside of the windows or get out a ladder and climb up on the roof of the porch and possibly fall off of the roof because I am. That. Talented. Neither of these tasks was very onerous but both lacked appeal since I wanted to do the outdoor decorating job quickly and immediately – it was cold outside!

Oh, and I had one other small problem.

I didn’t buy greenery for the windows.

A shopping trip changed all of that. No, I didn’t buy wreaths or boughs of holly. That would be too easy. I walked by Anthropology’s holiday windows and found them covered in paper snowflakes.

I got inspired.