At Home in Gilbert: The Acero Cooley Station Blog

Fun Things To Do With Paint for New Year Creativity

Many of us go into the new year with hopes to be more creative, whether that’s to follow a dream, build a new skill, continue a hobby, or just break up the routine with something relaxing. However, inspiration is not always an easy thing to come by, and creative plans can be stifled by the pressure to come up with something on your own. Today, we’re hoping to alleviate some of that pressure for our creatively-inclined residents of all skill levels with this list of fun things to do with paint! String Painting What you’ll need: Paper 18-inch pieces of string. Any string will work! Liquid watercolors Small cups A book you don’t mind getting paint on What to do: Pour your different watercolors into your cups, one cup for each color. Then, put a string in each of the cups, leaving a couple of inches hanging off the side so you can grab it easily. Then, fold the paper you’re using in half. Put the folded paper in the middle of the book you don’t mind getting paint on. Pick your first color, and pull the paint-soaked string out of the cup. You want a good amount of the string to be coated in the paint. You may want to use your finger and thumb to scrape off excess paint. Arrange your string in any configuration on the folded paper, on the inside, and then refold it with the string inside. Placing the string in an interesting shape will help create the effect you want! Then, shut the book with the folded paper inside, and while pressing firmly down on the cover, use your other hand to pull the string through the paper and out. Repeat with as many colors as you’d like, until you’ve created a beautiful piece of string art that satisfies you! Acrylic Pour What you’ll need: Acrylic paints in your preferred colors An acrylic pouring medium Cups to put your paints in. Disposable plastic cups might be easiest. Something to stir A canvas or paper Some newspapers or other scrap paper, to go under your canvas and help avoid dripping What to do: Start by selecting your colors, with a different cup for each one. Add a small amount of each paint to its own cup, just enough to cover the bottom of the cup. Then, add your acrylic pouring medium. A general rule of thumb for using a pouring medium is 1 part paint to 3 parts pouring medium; you want more of the medium than the paint. Add the pouring medium to each paint cup, and stir until well mixed. Then, using a clean cup, combine your colors by layering the different paint mixtures on top of each other. Use more of the colors that you want to be more prominent, and you can repeat them in the layers. Place your canvas upside down on top of the cup with all the different colors in it. Place your hand on the back of the canvas, and your other hand around the cup to hold it steady, and quickly flip them so the canvas is right-side up and the cup is upside down on top of it, and then wait for the paint to pour down onto the canvas! While it’s dripping down onto the canvas, you can apply a base color like black or white (also mixed with the pouring medium), by pouring it onto the canvas and then spreading it across the canvas, around your upside down cup. You can do this with a palette knife, but if you don’t have one, a regular plastic knife works just fine. Finally, either drag your upside down cup across the canvas to spread the colored paint, or lift it up and allow it to flow. You can tilt the canvas in different directions to allow it to fully cover the canvas. You can use different tools to lift up the colors and expose different layers, or move the paint’s direction to create all kinds of cool effects. Then, just let it dry, and you have a beautiful acrylic pour piece! Segmented Canvas With Painter’s Tape What you’ll need: Paints of any kind, though watercolor is likely to work well for this project. A canvas Brushes Painter’s tape or masking tape Scissors What to do: Use your tape to section off your canvas in the desired way, creating different shapes. Triangles, squares, and rectangles of all different sizes are all good options: the idea is to make shapes in the canvas that can be blocked off, so you’re painting directly inside those marked lines, and thus have individual sections of color in a way you wouldn’t ordinarily be able to, due to the difficulty of painting within such straight lines. You can create interesting visuals, and even create a cool card to give someone. We hope these ideas have been inspiring in some way, residents!

Organization Tips for National Clean Off Your Desk Day

January 11th is National Clean Off Your Desk Day, and with all the work and life that happens at our desks, it couldn’t come at a better time. A clear surface and organized space means lower stress, easier transitions, and fewer steps needed to get your work done. Part of the reason our desks get so cluttered to begin with is that, sometimes, leaving clutter sitting is easier than putting it away. So National Clean Off Your Desk Day isn’t just about clearing the surface — it’s about creating a system to prevent clutter in the future. (But it’s okay if you need to do a thorough clean again next year!) We’ve split the process into three steps, from planning, to organizing, to a clean workspace: Prioritize what you use most See that coating of clutter on top? Leave it there, for now. It’s no use trying to put desktop detritus away before you’ve carved out a space to put it — if you cram things into drawers right now, they’ll come right back out when you reorganize! Instead, strategize first. Develop an organization system that gives you easy access to what you use most, and saves less-accessible drawers for lesser-used items. Items you pick up every few minutes, like a calculator or pencil, belong on top of your desk. Items you use several times every day belong in your easiest-to-access drawers, and items you rarely use at all belong in your desk’s least convenient drawer: that one at the very bottom, or maybe the one that jams upon opening. Think about ease of use, and also think about saving your back from bending over twenty times a day just for a fresh sheet of paper! Reorganize your drawers Now that you’ve strategized, it’s time to set that organization system to use. If your organization system hasn’t changed at all, that might be a matter of just shifting a few things around—but if your desk has been working against you for a long time, especially if you can’t figure out why, it’s time to take everything out. This cuts down on organization time in the short term, and makes for a smoother system in the long term. You’re not just patching up what’s not working, you’re organizing from scratch! For quick access to small items, like paper clips or thumbtacks, consider a drawer divider. If you have to file papers, now might be the time to invest in a drawer insert to hang your files vertically, rather than creating a pile to dig through. If you find items you don’t use at your desk at all, set them aside in a small box or bin. Complete this step with what’s already in your drawers before moving on to your desk’s surface. I know that clutter on top looks tempting, but the finished-job feeling of clearing your desk is another reason we’re saving the best for last. Put away things you don’t need Now you can shift your focus to the top of your desk. Look for simple ways to slim down which tools earn the honor of staying on your desk’s top. Do you need a pen cup filled with two dozen working pens, or will two or three suffice? Consider decorations too: Your workspace should be uplifting, but too much decoration can still cause more stress than it alleviates. Moving some decor up off your desk’s surface and onto the wall will help give you some breathing room. It’s also time to clear away coffee mugs, water bottles, old scraps of paper or wrappers. Bring cups or dishes to the sink and garbage all the way to the trash can. Everything feels better when the job is done all the way. If there’s extra room in your bottommost desk drawers, those items you don’t use can be shuffled back into them — we understand the need to make the most of your storage! But if you have the storage space, try to give anything you don’t use at your desk a home away from it.

Delicious Local Restaurants for National Spaghetti Day

National Spaghetti Day is January 4th, and we thought we’d celebrate by pointing out some excellent local restaurants that serve spaghetti dishes worth trying sometime soon! As our residents know, we love any opportunity to showcase the things that make our neighborhood and the Gilbert area so special. So, without further ado, here’s three nearby restaurants with wonderful pasta dishes for National Spaghetti Day! Baci Italian Bistro Family-owned and run, Baci Italian Bistro has been serving Gilbert since 2002, but the first version of the restaurant was opened in Illinois in 1990, by the same family running the Gilbert version now. They have an array of tasty Italian dishes, including pasta such as gnocchi florentine, pasta ala baci, and sausage boscaiola. They’re doing both delivery and takeout, so feel free to give them a call and order dinner to bring home! Eatalio Pasta & Wine Eatalio Pasta & Wine serves, as the name may suggest, pasta, pizza, and wine in the Gilbert area. They have both delivery and quick curbside takeout, and serve a selection of delights, including carbonara, capellini pomodoro, and even classic fettuccine Alfredo. Zappone's Italian Bistro Zappone’s Italian Bistro also has both takeout and delivery services, making it easy to get a bite when you want it. They serve award-winning Italian food, featuring pasta that’s handcrafted in-house every day with fresh ingredients. They have both a dinner and a lunch menu, as well as a separate cocktail menu. Their pasta selections include, among many other options, spaghetti and clams, amatriciana with pancetta, and lobster fra diavolo. We hope you enjoy exploring some of these wonderful restaurants, residents, and eat something delicious soon, whether it’s for National Spaghetti Day or not!

New Year's Resolutions You Can Keep

We think everyone can agree that this past year has been a lesson in even the best laid plans going awry. No one could have really planned for exactly what 2020 held. And now, going into 2021, we’re looking ahead to the new year, and we want to talk about New Year’s resolutions. Oftentimes, we go into the start of a new year with very specific, lofty goals, and then feel disappointed in ourselves when we don’t achieve them exactly as intended, or can’t sustain a major life change with no build-up for very long. The problem here may actually be the resolutions we’re making, rather than us for not keeping them. You can’t control life, and when we make pronouncements like ‘this year I’m going to run every single day’, we inevitably set ourselves up for failure that can discourage us from making progress on our goals later on. This year, with 2020’s unpredictability in mind, let’s try to make some more basic, simplistic New Year’s resolutions that are keepable. Try For “More” Rather than a massive overhaul that requires meeting a very specific goal, whether that’s pounds lost or books read, we should consider a more easily fulfilled goal: the word “more”. Think about going into the new year with that word in mind, rather than a big statement along the lines of “in the new year, I’m going to write a little bit every single day.” It’s hard to control every single day, and when we fail at such big, specific goals, we might feel defeated enough to give up entirely. “More” is broad: in the new year I want to cook more, read more, be more creative, eat more fruit. Doing it more than the year before is a success, even if it’s just by a little bit, and that little bit can add up to a habit that sees you doing these things more and more in the coming months and years. It’s an encouraging success -- doing it more than the last year is enough, and every time you get a little further on it, you’re just succeeding further at the goal. It’s a mindset that can lead to the genuine building of better habits. Start Small It can be incredibly easy to feel that the new year is the start of everything changing and set goals that are a little too ambitious right off the bat. We understand -- there’s a temptation to start strong, and finally make the changes you’ve been talking about! But it also makes it easy to burn out quickly, and it’s much harder to get that momentum back after that happens. Start slow and small, and build up towards that big ultimate goal you have. Rather than beginning with “every day”, start with a couple of times a week, and increase it as you go. Be Kind To Yourself The most important part of recognizing that you can’t predict the year when it comes to making your goals is to remember to be kind to yourself and give yourself leeway when you feel you’ve messed up. Succeeding at a resolution is more than just what happens on one particular day, and you’ll be a lot better at getting back up and starting again tomorrow if you forgive yourself for not always being 100% up to snuff. Happy 2021, residents! Whatever your goals are, we wish you the best of luck in achieving them in the coming year.

Recipes for National Cocoa Day

There’s something about hot chocolate that brings to mind winter, and the holidays, and cozy nights in. It’s warming, and delicious, and always feels like you’re treating yourself a little bit. Well, it is winter, and the holidays are certainly fast approaching, so with the excuse that National Cocoa Day was on December 13th, here are a few twists on the classic hot chocolate recipe for you to try at home. Unicorn Hot Chocolate This recipe is colorful, playful, and sweet! It’s a fun variant for fans of white chocolate. Ingredients: 1 cup of white chocolate chips 2 cups of milk 2 cups of half-and-half 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract Pink food coloring Whipped cream and sprinkles for garnish Directions: Combine your white chocolate chips, milk, half-and-half, and vanilla extract in a saucepan on your stove. Then, heat the ingredients over medium heat, whisking constantly until the mixture is hot. You don’t want it to boil, just to heat. When it’s hot, whisk in your food coloring until the resulting color is your preferred shade of pink! Then, simply split the drink into mugs, and top with whipped cream and sprinkles. Peppermint Hot Chocolate Peppermint is another classic holiday flavor, so combining it with hot chocolate will make you feel doubly festive. Ingredients: 1 ¼ cup of whole milk ¼ cup of cream ¼ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips 1 tablespoon of sugar 1 tablespoon of peppermint baking chips ½ tablespoon of cocoa ½ tablespoon of vanilla extract Whipped cream for garnish Directions: Combine your milk, cream, sugar, and vanilla in a saucepan over medium heat, and bring the mixture to a boil. When it’s boiling, remove it from the heat, and add your cocoa, chocolate chips, and peppermint chips to the mixture, and whisk until everything is melted together and the mixture is smooth. Then, pour your drink into individual mugs, and top with whipped cream! Peanut Butter Hot Chocolate This is a creamy, decadent recipe that’s basically peanut butter cups in a mug. Ingredients: 2 cups of milk ½ a cup and 1 tablespoon of chopped up peanut butter cups ¼ a cup of powdered sugar ¼ a cup of unsweetened cocoa powder 2 tablespoons of creamy peanut butter ¼ tablespoon of salt Whipped cream, for garnish Directions: Heat your milk in a saucepan over medium heat, until it’s hot but not boiling. Then, whisk in your powdered sugar, cocoa powder, and salt until the mixture is smooth. Add in your peanut butter and the ½ a cup of chopped peanut butter cups, and whisk again until it’s all melted in and combined. Bring the mixture to a boil, and let it boil for about one minute, or until it begins to thicken, stirring regularly as it does. Then, remove your saucepan from the heat. Split your drink into mugs, and top with whipped cream and the remaining peanut butter cups! We hope you enjoy these recipes! Let us know in the comments if you give them a try, and how they turned out.

Local Gilbert Bakeries for National Brownie Day

National Brownie Day is December 8th, and we want to take the opportunity to highlight some local Gilbert bakeries that are great options for fulfilling your chocolate-y cravings! Rise Up Bakery Rise Up Bakery is a local shop that’s been family owned and operated since 2014, and provides baked goods made from scratch every day with fresh ingredients. They like to give back to the community as well, holding high school fundraisers and giving tours of the bakery to school groups and scout groups. They have a whole section dedicated to brownies and bars, including a festive candy cane brownie, a peanut butter brownie, a caramel brownie called carmelita, and more. It’s a delicious option for all your brownie needs. Cinnaholic Cinnaholic features online ordering, so you can take it easy. They sell classic homemade fudge-style brownies, and a whole assortment of cookies and edible cookie dough, if you want something to go with it. They also have some seasonal items like wreath cakes and gingerbread house rolls. Their baked goods are all freshly baked, and vegan, for those who want that option. The Great Gadsby Bakery The Great Gadsby Bakery’s website is currently being renovated, but their Facebook page has all the necessary information to know what they sell! They have a rotating menu, and do call-in orders for pickup. They have a special holiday menu, including a holiday dessert box if you want an assortment of goodies, which feature delicious salted caramel brownie squares! This is another family-run bakery. We hope you liked this selection of local bakeries for National Brownie Day! We’re a big fan of pointing out some incredible local shops that our residents might not have been to before, and we hope this could help inspire you for the next time you want to satisfy your sweet tooth.