#plus the kitchen is getting renovated at the same time and i gotta be Present w the ppl doing it so it gets done

[pinayelf]

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[parsleybabe]

Home Made Simple S01E03 - Chicken Party

We’re starting off with the exact same team as on episode 2: Host Lady, Chef Guy, Deco Guy and Wood guy. The episode centers around Caprisha, who just bought a house and is turning forty and wants to invite her friends to the party at her new place. Her bff is also there to help. Basically, they’re going to focus on the woman’s garden and turn it into a party location. I’m really bad with names, but I’ll keep referring to Caprisha by her name, because they say that name soooooo often in this episode and make songs and puns about it that I actually managed to remember.

My personal highlights:

We’re starting out with Deco Guy introducing a yellow color theme and Chef Guy deciding to make the party lemon themed, as there is a lemon tree in the backyard. I’m genuinely worried that Host Lady is going to lose her shit over the yellowness again, based on what we’ve seen from her previously, but she remains surprisingly calm.

Wood Guy suggests they could build a pergola and explains to the audience what that is with pictures and descriptions. I don’t know, maybe they just aren’t as common in the US? But for a brief moment I’m worried they might start explaining other basic building structures like garages or front doors or whatnot as well. Fortunately they don’t. But they do explain the pergola twice in the episode, because Caprisha and her bff also don’t know what it is, and the renovators have to fill them in as well. Anyway. Everybody is totally into the idea of building such a thing, except for Host Lady. Because, “A pergola is an enormous project.” No, no no no. No! “That’s too much!” So they say they’re scratching the idea, although it looks super fake.

I don’t really get what the big deal is, in the first place, because pergolas are very easy to build and it won’t take up a lot of time either, you just need to screw some wood pieces together and anchor them in the ground, for example by using iron bars. Definitely not more of a hassle than the storage benches from episode 2, but what do I know?

Chef Guy is extraordinarily camp in this episode, which, don’t get me wrong, is totally fine. It just takes me by surprise because I had to actually check if he’s the same Chef Guy as in the previous episodes, that’s how differently his personality comes across. Maybe it’s just the girl party theme of the episode that he’s feeling, though.

Anyway, they’re emptying lemons to use them as party food containers for granita later. Ooooh, I spot a Dawn Power Clean cameo while Caprisha is rinsing out the lemons. It’s like spotting the Stan Lee of home renovation. It’s a bit funny tbh, because Caprisha’s at the sink but her hands and the lemons are out of frame, instead you get the soap dead center and placed strategically right under her arm, so you can read the brand name without obstructions. I don’t even care anymore, I’m just glad they didn’t use the soap to rinse out the lemons.

Next, they’re standing in the dog run of Caprisha’s garden and it’s surrounded by high, smooth grey walls with barbwire on top. To be honest, it looks like a mix of a prison and a chicken coop. If I were doing anything to that backyard, I’d take the barbed wire down and paint the walls a different color. Instead, they’re talking about building a lounge inside it. Alright, you could do that too, I guess.

Deco Guy and the bff are now working on party invitations. The plan is to put the invitation inside a music CD, then put that in a fancy orange gift box, wrap it as a present and hand it out as an invitation. It’s actually a neat little gimmick, but quite expensive and time consuming just for an invitation, if you ask me, depending on how many friends you have. You could say, it’d be easier to build a pergola, but maybe that’s just me.

So, Deco Guy shows a simple invitation that he printed out from the show’s homepage, and… yeah, simple indeed. It’s literally a square with the most basic party info written inside. Like, in the most basic font, Arial or something, just black print on yellow paper. You could type that up in word quicker than searching for it on their website, but okay… Then he shows her how to cut out the paper, how to put it into the CD case and that into the box and how to wrap a ribbon around the box and make “a nice little bow”. All very important steps that you don’t wanna miss, or you’re not gonna be able to do this on your own. Hmm, he states that the invitation costs “literally pennies” and I am left to wonder how they managed to get the ten to twenty gift boxes and CDs for free.

Okay, now Wood Guy and the bff stand inside the “prison” part of the garden and are gonna build the lounge seating area. Cool, cool, cool. They got a lot of same sized wooden bars and are screwing them together to form squares. They stand the squares up and place them side by side in a row to later put a large sheet of wood on top to form a bench. Easy, simple concept. I actually do like it, but I can already tell that that base is going to be too high to sit on the lounge comfortably. Your feet won’t be able to reach the floor. Should have made rectangles to keep the benches lower, but maybe that was too complicated? They’re using an electric screw driver to put in the screws and you can totally see the wood break all the way through to the end of the bar, both when the bff and Wood Guy are doing it. It’s neither addressed nor fixed though. I guess the whole thing isn’t meant to last anyway, because they also don’t put any varnish on the construction, even though it’s meant for outside, so.

Meanwhile, Chef Guy shows Caprisha how to make some mousse for the party, and it’s an alright recipe too. It just cracks me up a little how Caprisha tries some and expresses, “It’s nice and light!” And Chef Guy totally jumps on the “light” aspect, even though the mousse is made of basically sugar, cornstarch and whipped cream.

We’re back in the garden and the benches are coming together.  The seats are now at the hight of Wood Guy’s upper thigh without any cushions or padding yet. But I assume you could work around that. As I mentioned, it looks like a chicken scoop, so why not add some chicken ladders going up to the roost, right? They briefly show that they’re going to use more wood to make a backrest at an angle, and then we see the finished result, but we don’t get to see how they work around sharp edges or cracks. They also don’t mention that you should probably sand the wood so you won’t get any splinters. But I’m not an expert, so don’t listen to my layman’s opinion.

As a filling for the empty lemon cups, Chef Guy and Caprisha are preparing some the granita, which is basically frozen lemonade with sugar. I’m sensing a theme and it’s not the lemons. I wonder if there’s gonna be any non-sweet food at the party at all. Doesn’t look like it though. But it doesn’t matter, Chef Guy and Caprishado a little sexy victory dance in the kitchen, because freezing lemonade is hard and they deserve that. And then he gives her “the gift of cleaning”, which translates to filling up the dishwasher in front of a smartly placed bag of Cascade dishwater tabs, then gently taking a tab out and placing it into the slot before turning the machine on. Cameo #2. The gift that keeps on giving.

Back in the garden, Wood Guy and Deco guy are having a talk while sitting on the half-finished lounge and letting their feet dangle. I don’t wanna say that they look small on the too high bench, let’s say… youthful. But the truth is, they’re having a really deep conversation and heart to heart, because Wood Guy opens up about his love for pergolas and confesses that he can’t let go of the idea. Deco Guy is super supportive and they decide to tackle the obstacles. Have some respect for these men, for real though. Wood Guy admits, “I’ve never seen it done before.” And Deco Guy understands the pressure, “We’re going where no man has ever gone before.” And then they talk briefly about having to draw up the steps to build it because “it’s really simple.”

Now they gotta convince Host Lady. Instead of anchoring the wooden build in the ground they want to use deck pair footing inside plastic flower pots as floor weights. My idea would have been simpler, safer, cheaper and longer lasting, but I guess you could do that too. I still don’t know why they need the flower pots at all, but, on the plus side, Wood Guy drew little stick figures on his sketches so that Host Lady can understand what he’s talking about, and who cares about the flower pots anyway. She has to let them do it now, right? She does and Wood Guy gets “a gold star today.”

He actually deserves one, btw, because – for the first time ever on this show – we do actually see footage of him and the girls building the whole thing including all the steps he talked about before.

We’re back with Deco Guy, Caprisha and her bff inside the house. He’s teaching them how to sew straight lines to make a pillow. And that’s as complicated as it gets. He also shows them how to fix the fabric with pins and does it wrong (puts them in line with the sewing direction, which will get them stuck in either the sewing machine or your fingers, instead of pinning them sideways to the direction, so you can easily pull them out as you’re sewing). Fortunately, the two ladies don’t know how to sew and won’t even notice. And since they’re now “master sewers”, they get to sew a whole bunch of pillow cases overnight. Right before the party. Because why would the birthday girl need any sleep, am I right?

So, it’s the next day, and the pillows are done. Deco Guy is excited but criticizes the “fresh, out-of-the-fabric-store smell.“ Now, I don’t know where he bought the fabric, but all the fabric stores that I’ve ever been to smelled lovely. And new fabric usually doesn’t have any smell at all. Maybe that’s different where they are though, I assume. But, fear not, Deco Guy is a true hero because he brought some Febreze Fabric Refresher which will both freshen up the pillows and add to the ever growing family of product placements on this show. And, man, does it smell good. They all agree on that and we’re getting lots of footage of them spraying the pillows very elegantly with their new super weapon.

We’re now back in the kitchen with Chef Guy and Caprisha and he’s gonna show her how to make whipped cream out of cream and syrup, because clearly the other food they got doesn’t have enough sugar. They put it onto the previously made mousse and it looks like… chicken poop. Which started out as a joke on my end, but genuinely must be the unspoken theme of their party. I didn’t even plan this when I began writing this review. I genuinely edited the title just now.

Back out in the yard, Host Lady and Wood Guy are talking about building a fire pit in the center, and that sounds like a really cool idea, I have to admit. This is something that’s gonna last and will come in handy later whenever you wanna have a garden party. It’s great. However, instead of building a fire pit, they just drop sand and big pieces of gravel onto the floor and put an empty grill bowl on it, like a random makeshift beach bonfire. This is the most disappointed I have been so far on this show.

Host Lady then steps inside and suggests that she and Caprisha will decorate the inside of the house with lemons in case any guests come in and need to use the bathroom. The instructions are, “Make sure to have enough toilet paper, light some candles and hang out fresh hand towels.” I have no idea where the lemons actually come into play and they don’t show it either, we just see them step into another room and that’s it.

The final results of the “renovation” are now prepared and shown. Suddenly there are several big pink, yellow and orange tables and étageres standing around which serve as displays for the food. They are the biggest eye catcher in the whole garden. But all we got to see about how those came into play was in a brief overall work process montage (where amongst many other things Deco Guy was shown for about half a second, painting them). No idea if they built them themselves or bought them. It’s never addressed and they’re just there.

Host Lady goes to get the girls and loses her shit “bright yellow” style when she sees them. The pitch of her voice is higher than ever and she throws her hands up and screams, “You look gooooood , guuuurrrrlll!!!” and then puts her hands to her hips and screeches, “Woooooooooooooow!!!” , except it sounds more like a police siren. I mean, it’s a nice compliment. A bit super over the top and super loud, but… nice, I guess. Maybe they couldn’t take the barbed wire down because it belongs to the neighbors who put it up in fear of the weird Host Lady.

Anyway, back to the final look of the garden. The lounge benches are now painted, no idea when that happened, and they now have padding and cushions and pillows and are even higher than before. Sadly, no chicken ladders though. But Caprisha and her bff won’t have to use the bench anyway, because they get a couple of swinging chairs as a gift for under the pergola (which they need to remove for the party, but can keep afterwards). Yaaaaay!