Victorian Hat & Costume DIY - A Wild West Murder Mystery Party

Our friend Amy hosts a murder mystery party every year for her birthday (which is right around Halloween).  Over the years, I've been a 1950's housewife, a 1920's flapper mob daughter, a Governor's daughter surrounded by pirates (a la Elizabeth Swann), a "Downton Abbey" style housekeeper, a fairy princess, and a 1980's prom-goer.  Coming up with a costume for the party is literally one of my favorite times of the year.
   
So this year's theme is "Murder at the Deadwood Saloon", set in the Wild West of 1874.  And my character was "Holly Hickock", a Southern belle / professional poker player.  The character description called for "fancy dress"...

...so I guess not selling this old bridesmaid's dress in our recent garage sale was a blessing in disguise! I spent some time Googling "Western Victorian era women's outfits" and eventually settled on a plan:

I had the dress, some black lace leftover from my prom outfit the previous year, a choker style necklace, and tall pointy boots that could pass for Victorian era.   I ordered black lace fingerless gloves from Ebay, along with a black lace fan (not shown in the drawing).

I found this video for how to make a quick "no sew" bustle to make the dress poof out a bit in the back, and bought a bag at the thrift store that would work for $3.50. Stuffed it with some lightweight material (a poofy underskirt from last year's prom outfit).  Pinned the black lace to the dress to make shoulder straps (since strapless dresses weren't common for the period, and it added some accents to the dress).

But the hair accessory...what to do?  I knew I could easily get a feathered hairpiece from Ebay, or a fascinator....but I kinda wanted to MAKE something.  I absolutely love the hats the ladies wear in the movie Tombstone, particularly the character of Josie:

...but finding something inexpensive was proving difficult:  ready made period-piece hats were $50-80, and most DIY hat sites were still using relatively professional tools and supplies that I knew would add up quick.  Other DIY sites recommended using a child's size hat so that it would sit on top of the head (rather than fitting around the crown), as is typical of the period's style.  But even then--the base for the hat was going to be $8-9, plus the cost of trimmings.

Finally, I found one website that shared something that appeared pretty easy--just some fabric, ribbon, and flowers over a cheap hat frame.  But then I couldn't find a link to the hat she'd used.  And at some point, The Hubs looked over and said, "I think you could make that with a Cool Whip container and some cardboard"...And I realized he was right.

SUPPLIES:
Small Tupperware bowl (or Cool Whip container)
Thick cardboard from a small box (I used an empty diaper box)
Tape measure
Real or makeshift protractor
Scissors
Box cutter or Exacto knife
Hot glue gun
Double-sided tape
Fabric
Ribbon
flowers/feathers/baubles for decoration

DIRECTIONS: Trim up one side of the box, and then use the tape measure to draw a line from corner to corner--this shows the center of the box.  Then use your protractor to draw a circle around this central point (this made about a 9 inch circle for me).  Double check with the tape measure to confirm it's about the same distance around--retrace in areas if you need.  Then trim off the outside edges.  This will make the brim of the hat.

Next, place your container on the cardboard, and use the tape measure to make sure you're centered.  Hold the bowl down firmly, and trace around the outside edge.  

Use the Exacto knife to trim out the central circle (do this on a cutting board so you're not gouging into a table or countertop). As shown above, this created about a 2 inch brim for the hat.

Add the bowl, and voila--you have your hat frame, for $0!

Next, you'll need fabric to cover it.  Find something that matches your outfit--in this instance, since I'm using an existing dress I don't have any "leftover" fabric to use, but I do want a sash for my dress, so I can make the sash and the hat out of the same fabric in order to tie the two together.
I've had this orange & gold shot silk in my craft room for years--made a vest out of it for The Hubs' costume during the Pirate murder mystery party.  I love the colors so much, and the dress is neutral enough that I can make it work.  

Perfect for a fancy Southern gal, don't you think?
I started by putting a couple bands of double-sided tape around the outside of the bowl, and then laid the fabric over that, allowing for plenty of extra (which could later be trimmed or tucked up inside the hat).  Then I tightly tied the ribbon around the the bowl portion.  The ribbon and double-sided tape will both help the fabric to adhere to the top portion of the hat.

Then, because my bowl has a lip on it, I used hot glue to adhere the fabric to the top of that lip to help tack it in place (more than likely, I'm going to want to use this bowl again in the future, so I chose hot glue, rather than something like spray adhesive.)

Then I started wrapping the fabric around the brim of the hat, creating some pretty folds/pleats as I went, and secured that fabric to the bottom of the cardboard brim with hot glue.  I used safety pins to help hold the pleats in place so I could come back through later and sew them down. 

After sewing, I used some additional hot glue on the inside of the bowl to help hold that fabric inside. (In retrospect, I should have saved the inner cardboard circle from making the brim--I could have pushed it into the bowl to help keep the fabric taut.  Live & learn...)

Then the question became..."How the heck to I make this thing stay on my head???"  Especially since I wanted it to sit forward on my head a bit, like the picture of Josie above.  The answer?  Hair combs!  I picked up a pack and then stitched two onto opposite sides of the interior of the hat, so I could push them into my hair, toward each other, and keep the hat secure.

Once I felt confident I could get this beast to stay on my head, I flipped it back over and busted out my trusty glue gun--we need some flowers up in hurr!!!

I found a nice fall bouquet at Hobby Lobby--I picked a bunch with a nice array of different flowers so I could take them home and see what worked--and then still have a really nice fall decoration for our kitchen table.
Since the hat is small, there was only room for a couple flowers...I mean really, I probably could have gone nuts having seen some of the crazy hats that were around during that time....but I decided to keep it a little subtle. Then I sewed the extra ribbon from the band into a bow at the back, and voila!

The sash for this was also quite a project.  If I would have JUST made a sash, it probably would have been way simpler...but I had quite a bit of this gorgeous fabric leftover...and it was fairly common for gals of the time to have lots of layers and frills and ruffles.  So...I decided to add some EXTRA to this dress.

I knew the weight of the extra fabric in the back would pull at the sash, so I wanted to make sure it would hold up well throughout a party.  It occurred to me that using an existing belt would work well.  So, I wrapped the fabric around this elastic belt (pinned it until I was ready to sew).

For the back ruffle, I laid the fabric out flat on the floor, and the started folding pleats along the top, and pinning them together as I went.  Then I pinned the ruffle to the sash.

I ironed the sash portion to get a good seam along the top and bottom edge, then sewed the bustle to the bottom flap of the sash.

Then used hem tape to adhere the sash to itself around the belt.  Finally, I hemmed the edge of the bustle to hide the rough edge, and voila!

All the pieces came together to make a lovely old-timey fashionista southern belle....who was not terribly integral to the story of the evening.  

I mean...when your "big secret" that you have to hide from everyone is that you're not *really* from the South... You're probably not going to play a huge role in the evening's performance.  That's OK though.  We had a blast, and the Hubs won Best Dressed for the evening!  

21 Day Keto Diet: Day 2

I  fear that I've somehow given birth to a "morning person"... Lil' Man was awake at 6:05a this morning, sitting in his chair, reading a book, and shouting, "MaaaaMaaa, time to wake up!  It's daylight outside!  Maaamaaaaa....open the door!"

Breakfast:
Coffee with 2 Tbsp heavy cream and 1/2 packet of Splenda
Breakfast Casserole
1/4 cup raspberries
water

Lunch: 3 Deli roll ups, 1/2 avocado, 3 dill pickles
Mixed veggies (carrot, celery, radishes, cauliflower), more water

Afternoon Snack: chicken bouillon (my office was cold so I was craving a cup of something warm)

Dinner: Chicken salad with grape tomatoes, bacon and red cabbage, along with pickles, olives, and provolone & unsweet iced tea. I used the cabbage leaves to make wraps and included the cheese....SO GOOD.  Between the mayo in the salad, the crunch of the cabbage, the bacon, tomatoes and cheese, it was like eating a BLT!  Definitely doing this again.

Meanwhile, my kiddo had all my favorite carbs...

BBQ chips and grilled cheese...yum.

Daily Totals: 1461 kcal, 116g fat, 17g net carbs, 79g protein

Bobbi's Day 2 Thoughts:  Still no major issues. I did feel a little run-down today, but it may be just because I was at my desk most of the day and didn't move around enough.  But I'm eating tasty food and don't feel deprived. Though... the Clearance sale on King Cake and Paczki's at the supermarket was a little tempting.

DK's Day 2: (still out of town for work)

Breakfast (at the Hotel): 1 egg white & veggie omelette, 2 egg & cheese omelettes, 2 sausage patties, 2 packets picante sauce, 1 pork sausage link, water, black coffee + 1 Splenda --He found out later that this totaled 13 carbs (fillers in the sausage and omelettes), so he had to be really conscious of what he ate for the rest of the day.
Lunch: 1 boiled egg at 3pm (not really hungry), water
Dinner: Baconator with Lettuce Bun, no ketchup or tomato, from Wendy's. He used the mobile app so he could customize more easily without having to take a lot of time in the line ordering.  This was pretty good.

After Dinner: Fiber supplement, Powerade Zero

Thoughts: I feel fine--not foggy or dizzy like yesterday.  I feel like I could go run on the treadmill,  but I might get a little light headed.  I'm concerned about not getting enough potassium & magnesium and I really don't want to get the "keto flu", so I'm thinking about picking up a supplement or some Powerade Zero's to keep with me.  With so many carbs in breakfast, I had to be really careful about what I ate for the rest of the day. I wish I would have known how many carbs were going to be in the things I ate for breakfast so I could have given myself more leeway for dinner.

21 Day Keto: Day 0 (Prep)

The Hubs convinced me to do a 21 Day Keto Diet with him.  We've got a trip to Cancun coming up next month, so we thought it might help us get "beach ready" (well, as ready as two almost-40 year old white people can).  We did a fair bit of reading before deciding to do it, because in general I'm not a fan of "diets"--and most nutritionists agree.  The "diet" that most nutritionists recommend is simply "eat less, move more" and have a moderate balanced diet with none of the "can't have *insert food*" restrictions.  That being said, we both know folks who have lost a lot of weight doing keto, so we were interested to see if it lives up to the hype.

As with any diet, the first step is PREP.  So I created a Pinterest board with recipes that sounded good, especially leaning toward anything that starts with the word "easy".  Because life is chaotic.  We also brainstormed some of our existing favorite recipes to see what meals we already like could fit into the keto diet--like our Zuppa Toscana (but with turnips in place of potatoes and heavy cream instead of half & half) and my favorite balsamic glazed chicken with onions & mushrooms.

Then I hopped on PepperPlate, my handy-dandy meal-planning website, and started planning for the first week (note: my one request was that we wouldn't start until after Mardi Gras).

In order to track macros (70% fat, 25% protein, 5% carbs), I front-loaded each of these days' meal plans into my FitBit tracker, to make sure we'd be hitting the target ratios.  

Then I headed to the store and stocked up on supplies:

(Ignore the potato salad.  That's for a Mardi Gras Potluck at work. And is sadly not keto-friendly.)

Our shopping list included:

Heavy cream

Butter

Sour Cream

Pork Sausage

Cabbage (green and red)

Olive Oil Mayo

Deli Meat (pepperoni & salami) & Smoked Provolone for roll ups

Broccoli Slaw (for this sesame Asian chicken salad)

Pepperoncinis & Pickled Okra

Meatballs (which may or may not be eaten during this keto thing--they're 5g carbs in a serving, but I had 2 coupons that were getting ready to expire)

Steamable cauliflower rice

Avocados

Cucumber

Cauliflower

Bell Peppers (for these pepper "sandwiches")

Frozen tuna steaks

Spaghetti Squash

(Note: we already had 2 dozen eggs at home, and 8 packs of bacon, which is why we didn't need to buy any of those things.)

Finally, because I know I have a busy week, I went ahead and started some meal prep:  bagging up veggies for lunches, making deli roll-ups, this breakfast casserole, and this chicken salad (cooked the chicken in the Instant Pot, and added avocado and dill pickles).

I'm planning to try to post each day--the first week will be interesting, because The Hubs is also traveling for work.  So I'll try to make sure each post represents both of our challenges/thoughts on the program, so we have both a  male and female opinion.

Have you done a Keto diet? I'd love to hear about it!  Please leave a comment below, or on Facebook or Instagram!  Thanks!

Satsuma Pecan Muffins

So, if you're from outside of the Gulf Coast or California, you may be asking, "what's a satsuma?"  That's because up here, they go by other names: Halos, Cuties, Sweeties.... Yes! Those little mandarin oranges, that are so great to snack on (for kids and adults) because they peel easily and don't have big seeds.  

Satsumas are a popular backyard tree in Louisiana, where the temperate climate serves them well. They originated in Japan in the 1800's, but Louisianians have definitely adopted them into their culture.  Abita makes a Satsuma beer, you can get a satsuma snowball, find satsuma marmalade, and there's even a town named Satsuma.

We keep a stockpile of mandarins in our car because I can easily eat them while driving, as can Lil' Man (without making a big mess in his car seat).  I also like that they're a good food to share with panhandlers or the homeless (oranges and bananas are both great for this, but oranges stay better in your car longer.  A lot of folks who need some help don't have great teeth--I've tried to hand out apples before and had them politely turned down because they couldn't bite into them.)

And they're super-cheap this time of year (because they ripen from October - December), so we always have a 3 lb bag of them in our house.  But that also means that we need to go through them all, which can be a challenge.  So I started looking for recipes to use them in, and found this one!

Full disclosure, today's recipe is a spin from one over at CuliCurious. I've made enough changes to sort of "make it my own", but I have to give credit where it's due, because I don't think I would have thought to make muffins from them on my own.

INGREDIENTS:
2-3 satsuma mandarin oranges, plus 1 tsp orange zest
1.5 cups flour
0.5 cup old fashioned oats
1/2 cup unpacked brown sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 Tbsp Steen's cane syrup
2 large eggs
0.5 cup plain Greek yogurt
6 Tbsp melted unsalted butter
1/2 cup pecan pieces

DIRECTIONS: (makes 6 jumbo muffins or 12 standard muffins)
Preheat the oven to 400F.

In a blender or food processor, add the peeled satsuma pieces and pulse until pulpy. Should make about 2/3 cup of liquid.  To this, add the other liquid ingredients (cane syrup, eggs, milk, yogurt, melted butter, ) and mix until combined.

In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients (flour, oats, brown sugar, baking powder, salt, nutmeg, zest, cinnamon) and mix to combine, then add the liquid ingredients, but don't overbeat--it's okay if there's a few lumps.

Gently mix in the pecan pieces, and then let rest for 5 minutes before transferring into greased or lined muffin tins.  We made 6 large "Texas-size" muffins, but would also make about 10-12 standard muffins.

If making jumbo muffins, bake for about 20 minutes...if making standard muffins, about 15 minutes.  Check with a toothpick--the toothpick should come out clean and the edges of the muffins should be pulling away from the tin.

Transfer to a cooling rack once done--if you let the muffins cool in the tin, heat/steam can't escape fast enough and they can end up being mushy.

Note:  I originally made these with just 4 tablespoons of butter, and they ended up a touch dry, so we added butter.  The recipe above calls for 6 tablespoons of butter so they should be nice and moist.

Work Life Balance

A few weeks ago I started reading a book called "I Know How She Does It: How Successful Women Make the Most of Their Time".  The author found a few hundred highly successful women, most of which who happen to also be working moms, and had them log their time for a week, and then analyzed the results.

(sidenote: if you're interested in the journal, you can find them here.)

I've gotten a lot out of this book, but mostly this: Stop thinking about your time as a day, 24 limited hours.  There are 168 hours in a week.  If you work 45, and sleep 56 (8 hours a night), there's still 67 hours for other things. You have a 1 hour roundtrip commute?  Then you still have 62 hours left.  You spend 3 hours a day getting ready and/or eating meals?  You still have 41 hours, to do with what you will.  Basically: STOP MAKING EXCUSES.  It's not that you don't have time to do the things that bring you joy--you're just bad at managing your time.

I'm not saying this to anyone else. I'm saying it to myself.  I had a wake up call.  Since having my kid, I've dropped my gym membership, stopped going to my caving grotto events, and just generally stopped doing a lot of things, using the excuse that "I'm a busy working mom". 

Which I am.  Sure.  I'm also a giant hypocrite. I'm in charge of time management and productivity training at my company...

But what have I been doing with those "free" hours?  Sure, 26 of those non-working-sleeping-eating-commuting hours are the weekend, and weekends tend to fill up pretty quickly at our house.  Those other 15 hours?  What am I doing with those?  I'll tell you...

...sitting on my couch scrolling through Facebook or Pinterest, with the TV on in the background (all hail the DVR).  That is our nightly ritual after Lil' Man goes to bed.  Get home from work, dinner,  about an hour or so of playing with the kid, and then *boom*, we're vegetables.

There are so many better things I could be doing.  Or at the very least--things that I could be doing WHILE watching TV!

So...I made a list.  A list of Things that I Would Like to Do More.

• Crochet.  I learned to crochet from my mom when I was a kid. I'm not good at it--I know exactly two stitches. My mom is left-handed, so I had trouble learning from her.  But I can still make things.  Chunky yarn hides a litany of poorly spaced stitches. I've got a basket overflowing with full skeins of yarn, but haven't made anything in a couple years.
• Crafting. I enjoy making things. I have a Pinterest board.  I have a CRAFTING ROOM IN MY HOUSE.  In which I've never made a thing (except beer.  We're pretty good at that).
• Crossword Puzzles.  My ideal weekend would start with a cup of coffee and the answer to 1 Across.
• Volunteering.  We currently volunteer at our church 2x a month, but I'd like to do more.  Usually my bi-monthly blood donations fill this need, but because of a trip to the apparently malaria-riddled Punta Cana, I'm benched until April of 2018.
• Exercising.  I'm a Flabby Abby and I know it. I get winded coming upstairs from the basement.
• Blogging.  I have about 10 recipes I could post right now, but don't make the time.
• Education.  There's some MIT Open Courseware classes I downloaded several years ago, planning to help fill gaps in my formal education.  I've never started any of them.
• Devotions. I have an alarm on my phone that tells me to do a devotional every day at lunch.  This gets ignored more often than not.
• Play outside with my kid/husband.  I see very little sunlight.
• Spend quality time with The Hubs. Sitting side-by-side watching TV at night while we each have our computers in our laps does not count.
• Have lunch outside the office.  I eat lunch at my desk almost every work day. And not necessarily because I'm working through lunch. Far too often I end up watching YouTube videos of people cooking while intoxicated, or Irish folks saying funny things about American food that wouldn't be half as funny if not for those awesome accents, or comparing street tacos to lavish meals.  Which, sure, is entertaining, but there are better ways to use this time.
• Date Nights.  This is probably something every couple with kids wants more of.  But sitters are pricey and we don't have local grandparents to drop our tot off with.

Quite a list.  But none of these are all that daunting individually, or even costly (Date Nights probably being the most so).  And the big revelation--most of these aren't even things I need/want to do every DAY.  Just MORE.

So, then I started thinking: how often could I reasonably do these things?  Or how often do I want to?  When can I fit them in?

What	How Often	When
Crochet	2-3x / week	While watching TV in evenings
Crafting	1x / month	An evening or weekend
Crossword Puzzles	1-2x / week	Saturday or Sunday mornings
Volunteer	1 hour, every other month	After work
Exercise	3x / week	Mornings? (ugh), during lunch, evenings
Blog	2x / month	During lunch, evenings
Online Course	2-3x/week	During lunch
Devotions	daily	During lunch (come on, lady, it takes like 5 minutes.)
Play Outside w/Family	2-3x/week (in good weather)	Weekends, After work
Quality Time w/The Hubs	every night	Before day care pickup / After Lil' Man goes to bed
Lunch Out	1x / week	During lunch (duh.)
Date Night	1x / month	Any Night

So...I started trying. I started small. On Sunday, I worked on the Washington Post crossword online while I drank coffee and made breakfast. Granted, I then didn't have time to shower before church, but hey...I did a thing.

I found an online devotional that I liked, and added a shortcut on my internet taskbar to make it as easy as possible to NOT ignore my daily lunchtime reminder.

Then on Tuesday night, I played card games with The Hubs instead of vegging on the couch.  And it was nice.  He slaughtered me, but it was still nice.

And then the next night, I grabbed some yarn and started working on an infinity scarf while we watched Expedition Unknown.

The next morning, I had to get up early for a work meeting. Both The Hubs & Lil' Man were still asleep, so I did on the USA Today crossword while eating breakfast. (I suspect that USA Today's puzzles don't get harder as the week goes on, because there's no way I could finish the newspaper's Thursday crossword in 17 minutes.)

Friday night, I cut out of work a little early and met The Hubs for happy hour at our favorite watering hole.  Then after picking up the kid, we played outside in his "water table" (read: storage tote filled with water and toys) while waiting for dinner to cook.

On Saturday, my brain woke up early, so instead of rolling around for another half hour, I got up, ran up & down the stairs 10 times, did about 10 minutes of floor exercises in the basement, then made a cup of coffee and read for a bit. Was it a LOT of exercise? No.  But it was better than none.

And obviously, I found made some time to blog, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this.  Did I hit all of my items? No.  But I had a great week.  And that's the real point, right?  I made time to do things that bring me joy, and it didn't require any sacrifices--I just used my time more wisely. Hopefully I can keep it up.  I suspect the exercise will be the hardest part--because it's not really something I WANT to do, but it's something I know I NEED to do.  So I'll work at it.

Hope you all have a joy-filled week and can make the time to do things you love.

Pinterest Project: Basement Bar

So, we recently did a little DIY/Pinterest project in the basement of our new house. More "DIY" than Pinterest, since we really just used Pinterest more as a "pinspiration" than anything.  Yes...typing that word made me gag a little.  But anywho...I really love how it turned out.

So our new house, which I love, came with this weird alcove in the basement. I'm 90% sure that the previous owner had a bunch of bookshelves tucked into it, but I forget from when we did the walk-through.

The basement already has tons of storage (the doors to the right in this photo are our game closet), so using it for a closet didn't seem to make sense.  Reading nook was a possibility, but it's really dark right there, so that would require adding in some lighting.  It was too shallow for a play area (plus, as the kid gets bigger, I'm sure the whole downstairs living area will become his play area).

So, what to do with it?  Currently, the downstairs living area is our "movie room" (though we haven't made much use of it yet).  So it struck us to turn the alcove into a small "dry" bar (no plumbing in this area of the basement) for drinks and snacks.  This freed up some space in our dining room upstairs (which is where our wine rack used to be, but since our new dining room is a little smaller, there isn't really space).

So...where to start?

With a fridge, of course!  We found a black mini fridge on the FB Marketplace for about $40.  Therefore it seemed to make sense to focus our build around this.  I visualized the fridge, a wine rack, and a cabinet or two for closed storage that would potentially be lockable.  Then a countertop and some shelves above.

My initial sketch. Please ignore typos.

We priced cabinets at the big box home improvement stores, but everything was higher than we really wanted to spend, or was too tall/short.  So I would periodically visit the thrift stores near my office to see if there were any end tables that might work.  I finally hit paydirt-- $7 for this fiberboard laminated TV stand.  It was in rough shape and needed some love, but overall it was sturdy, and the doors were in decent condition.

The top and the casters made it considerably taller than the mini-fridge, so we just removed those.

Then, there was the wine rack issue.  Our existing wine rack was just about right as far as height, but the wrought iron detailing along the sides wouldn't allow it to fit in the space we had left.  I searched FB Marketplace and Craigslist, but could never find anything that would work (or that hadn't already been snatched up, or the lister wouldn't respond, etc.).

Mid-process pic.  You can see how the current wine rack just isn't going to work.

I saw some pics on Pinterest showing wine racks made out of wooden crates, and had a "Eureka" moment.  We could find a crate that would work, and then use some plywood that we already had on hand to make an "X" shaped divider.  Brilliant!  Now...all I have to do is find a crate that fits the space!

...whiiiiiich was harder to accomplish than originally thought.  Everything seemed to either be too narrow or too short--but if it was too short, stacking two would make it too tall. *sigh*  So, I went to DIY Project Mecca:  Hobby Lobby.  After much searching through the store with my tape measure in hand, I found a large crate that measured 14 inches wide by 29 inches tall.  It was a little short for what we needed, but I knew we could work with that.

Meanwhile, the Hubs took care of finding the countertop and the shelves.  We recently got a Menards, and they were running Grand Opening sales, so we got some great deals on white-laminated MDF, measuring 8 feet wide--just a bit wider than the alcove's opening.  The countertop had to be notched to fit, but I think the Hubs did an amazing job.

So then...we had a dark brown laminate cabinet, a black fridge, and a light brown crate.  Guess it's time to paint!

The interwebz told me I should probably sand the laminate cabinet and then prime it.  But I am lazy.  So instead, I found black satin spray paint that would adhere to laminate.  The project took about 3 cans, which were $5 each.

We waited for some beautiful weather, and then spread out a drop cloth in the back yard, weighted it down with rocks, and I went to town. (I also painted some of our outdoor fixtures while I was at it.)

Overall, it took 2-3 coats. And I probably SHOULD have scrubbed the laminate at least a bit before starting--I think the previous owner had used some sort of oil-based polish on it at some point, so the paint didn't adhere great to the doors or front edges, but the rest looked pretty good.  In order to save on paint, I only painted the surfaces that would show--there was no point to do the sides that are hidden in the alcove. So I just wrapped onto the sides a bit.  And I only did part of the shelves as well, so that I could put down patterned contact paper instead for some fun detailing.

We used some pieces of 2"x4" to shim up the difference in height between the cabinet and the wine rack, and painted those black as well.

Once everything was coated evenly and was dry, we put it all into place, and then added the counter and shelves.  I decorated them with things that had been on our old wine rack and other miscellaneous bits and bobs. 

We also added a glass rack to the lowest shelf so we could hang wine glasses out of the reach of our little one.  Finally, we bought 6 puck lights at Home Depot to add some light, since this corner is really dark.  

All in all, really happy with the result.  It works perfectly for what we need, adds a little "wow" to the basement, and just seems like a smart use for the space.  Also--we don't spend a ton of time in the basement right now, so I kinda like that I have to earn my calories for a beer/soda/glass of wine by  going up and down the stairs. It also keeps the sodas a little more out of reach, so they're not just there to grab in our kitchen fridge.

Overall cost:
Fridge: $40
Cabinet: $7
Wine Rack: $30 (originally $49.99, with 40% off coupon)
Paint: $15
Counter: $17
Shelves: $2
Brackets: $18
Glass Rack: $12
Lights: 22
GRAND TOTAL: $163