Painting Project Interrupted

My weekend project was to clean out the closet by the back door, paint it, and get it organized.

What do you think?  It's definitely a long over due project.

However, like normal, this project got interrupted by something more fun. In this case it was a bucket of rose hips I picked a few days earlier.  I'd been cleaning up the yard at my apartments which included cutting back the wild roses.  I try to cut them back and clean them up every few years.  I've never seen the rose hips this thick, or so ripe, so I couldn't resist picking them.

Bucket of  Rose Hips

Then I had to decide what to do with them.  Messing around on line, I found a recipe for Rose Hip Marmalade (Jam)  It sounded interesting, so I decided to give it a try.
http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/rose_hip_jelly_and_jam/

These wild rose hips aren't very big, and I had a lot of them, so it took hours and hours and hours to get them all cleaned.  But boy were they pretty when I got them done.

Cleaned Rose Hips

Then I had to de-seed the 2 quarts of them to use in the marmalade.  And that took many more hours.  But finally I got them done, and cut up the other fruit, and got it all cooking. WOW, did it smell good.  The marmalade is a bit spicy tasting, and maybe a bit too sweet.  IF I make it again, I'll try cutting back the sugar a bit. But I'm happy with how it all turned out, though the whole process took me two days.

De-seeding

Marmalade Cooking

And then I had lots of rose hips left over, so I cooked them down and tried to make some jelly.  That went a bit faster since I didn't have to de-seed the rose hips first.  That rose hip juice is pretty tasty, and but the jelly came out as syrup.  I'm not sure why, but I like to make waffles, so now I have some rose hip syrup to serve with them.

Finished Products

But that still left me with my planned project undone.  So Sunday afternoon I took everything out of the closet and noticed the sheet rock had separated in the corner.  I'm blaming that on earthquakes...lol.  So I got out my roll of sticky fiberglass stuff, and mud and fixed up the corner.

Wet Mud in corner

Then today when I got home, I got the closet painted, with minimal paint splattering.  

Clean painted closet

The paint dried pretty fast, so I put up the closet hanging thingies I bought at Home Depot last week. I got all of my yard tools and chainsaw hung up.  And there is still room for the folding ladder when I bring that inside.  I may eventually add a small shelf, but for now I'm happy that it's all cleaned up and organized.