Jan3

Hiatus cancelled! Hahhahahaha… sigh.

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Oh hi! It’s Jane!  How’ve you been? I’ve been good. Busy, buy good. Fun fact: DECEMBER IS CRAZY PANTS.

I decided to make most of the gifts this year, which was a wonderful and terrible idea. Did I say terrible? I meant completely and totally awful. Oh, they all turned out alright. In fact, I was rather impressed with my ability to knit. I’ve been knitting for ages, but never went beyond a simple pattern using purl and knit. Starting in October I made 4.5 scarves. Well, the 4th is almost done. I need to finish that and give it to the person… anyway, 4.5 scarves. One I ditched because I knew I would never get it done before I could give it to Jaime. Sorry, Jaime, you have a half knit scarf in my cupboard. It’s not my best work, anyway.

Michaels has a not so great yarn selection. I mean, it’s okay and all, but it’s really not that great. I wanted nice yarn for these gifts. After clicking through basically the entire internet, I settled on knitpicks. I regret nothing. If you’re looking for some nice yarn at an affordable price, go for it. To me their shipping seemed kind of high, but as I normally order from amazon with my prime membership, paying anything for shipping seems high. No worries though, because I ordered a poop ton of yarn and enjoyed every moment of it.

I went to purlbee.com for most of my patterns. I made the april showers scarf for my mom, the lace checkerboard scarf for my mother in law and the color change scarf for my Aunt. I did a variation on this cable knit scarf for my girlfriend-in-law (bro in law’s lady). I honestly think that the cable knit was my favorite, but that’s probably just because I changed the pattern just enough that I felt like it was mine. I wish I had pictures of all of them, but I never did take any. I’ll see if I can get people to send me pictures and I’ll add them to the post as I get them.

For the cable knit scarf I used a fingering weight yarn (this one here, to be exact, in the color harbor) and size 3 needles. I bought a large set of straight needles and circular needles from amazon, both by stitch berry. Some of the needles are a little wonky, but most of them are fine. They’re bamboo needles, and it turned out that one of my size 3 stick needles had a splinter in the end. I tried to sand it down with no luck, so I ended up using the circular needles for knit and the straight needle for the cable step. Honestly, this was much better. With two cats and a two and a half year old, knitting projects seem to get yanked off of the needles more times than not. I HIGHLY recommend watching her video on cabling if you’re nervous about it. Seeing someone else do it makes it just so much easier. I couldn’t find a hook needle, so I just moved my stitches to the right hand needle, and then moved them to the straight needle. it added some time, but nothing too terrible.

My pattern was:

Row 1: K1, P1 to end of row

Row 2: [(P1,K1)*3, (K1,P1)*6]*3, (P1, K1)*3   (goodness I hope that makes sense to you)

For rows 3-12, repeat rows 1&2

Row 13: [(K1,P1)*3, Cable 6 stitches forward, (K1, P1)*3 with the stitches on the left needle, then (K1, P1)*3 with the stitches from the cable needle.]*3,  (K1,P1)*3

Row 14: [(P1,K1)*3, (K1,P1)*6]*3, (P1, K1)*3

And repeat times infinity. I will take pictures and count rows the next time I see my G-I-L and I will update this post.

Anyway, each scarf took anywhere from 2-4 weeks to complete based on complexity, free time, my two and a half year old, colds, traveling, house parties, my inexperience as a knitter, and sleep. I thought starting in October was a great idea, but now I know that I need to have these things started in April if I ever do it again. Which I probably wont, because who wants a scarf two years in a row?

That’s what I’ve been up to. It’s a new year and I have plans, but as for now I’m, just glad that it’s wasn’t QUITE a full month that I was MIA here on this lovely little blog. Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday, and a fantastic New Year!!!

jane

 

Dec4

Snowman ornaments

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Have you noticed that time seems to be speeding up? I have. I can’t believe how little time there is left until Christmas… 21 sleeps, if you’re not counting like me. I have so many projects to start AND finish between now and then its amazing I can even sleep at night.

I’m glad I already made my snowman ornaments, although to be honest it’s not very time consuming. I do recommend having someone to help you with small hands if your little one is in the toddler stage, as mine is. I’m pretty sure I’d have had paint everywhere if my husband weren’t there to grab her hand.

Buy cheap ornaments from Dollar Store, Garden Ridge, anywhere really. I like the frosted, but shiny would work, too.

Buy cheap ornaments from Dollar Store, Garden Ridge, anywhere really. I like the frosted, but shiny would work, too.

It’s a simple project and aside from the ornaments I had everything on hand. White acrylic paint, black and orange sharpie, and some ribbon to hang the ornament. Also, something to rest the ornaments on while they dry – an egg carton works very well. Easy enough.

The Did absolutely loved having her hand covered in paint.

The Did absolutely loved having her hand covered in paint.

Since The Did is still pretty young we painted her hand instead of letting her dip her hand in the paint. The hardest part was getting her to spread her fingers when she grabbed the ball. I think if we had done a few practice tries without paint it would have been a touch easier, but who knows. The hubs had to quickly wash off a few because they were just too mushy and messed up, but most of them came out pretty good (some without thumb prints, but oh well…)

You get the idea. It's a hand print, are they ever clear? Except on windows... those are pretty clear.

You get the idea. It’s a hand print, are they ever clear? Except on windows… those are pretty clear.

I let them dry and then drew on the snowmen. I thought about adding scarves etc., but decided that simple was better. Also, less work.

I think it's pretty freaking adorable!

I think it’s pretty freaking adorable!

I’m pretty excited about how it turned out. I made these before Thanksgiving and gave them to the grandparents and one Uncle (and will give the other one to the other Uncle when I remember). I’m going to mail one to her gread-grand mother eventually… here’s hoping it happens in the next 15 days and makes it there by Christmas!!

Pretty easy, and super cute. Thank goodness for pinterest!

Happy Pinning!

Jane

Nov29

Crispy Sweet Potato Fries

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I’m not sure how many of you have tried making sweet potato fries, but it can be frustrating.  They brown, but don’t get crispy.  For me their either underdone on the inside, or way too mushy.  I can’t make crispy regular french fries either so I probably shouldn’t feel too bad about it, but I LOVE sweet potato fries.  LOVE them!  And before I get too long winded these fries were awesome, and when you dip them in the sauce they are AMAZING!  Hubby and I ate every last one of them in no time flat.  That and the recipe didn’t call for any salt and they still tasted amazing.  So, I suppose I should share this tip even though I just want to make them for a party sometime and impress everyone.  Sneaky I am.

Here’s the original pin to the recipe on this blog.  I’ve tagged both because Karen is a much better writer, photographer and french fry make than me and you should totally head on over to see how she does it!

Ingredients:

Sweet Potato (1 makes more than enough fries for 2 people)

Corn Starch

Olive Oil

Cut potatoes until they’re a “medium” thickness.  As you can see in this picture mine are all over the map thicknesses, but they ALL came out perfectly delicious.

Let potatoes soak in water for an hour to half the day.  (Not mandatory, but recommended)  I let mine soak for about an hour.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Throw a tablespoon or two of cornstarch into a plastic bag.  This is where the author notes (at the end of her post) about it taking a few tries to figure out the right amount of oil and cornstarch.  !  Thanks for the warning at the end…  Anyway what I will do next time is add a tablespoon at a time as the next step is to “lightly” coat each fry in the cornstarch and the cornstarch likes to stick!  So just put a handful in the bag, mix and then shake off any excess.  Finish coating all of the fries and put them on a nonstick pan.  I sprayed mine with Pam to make the flipping part easier.

Next add 2 tablespoons of olive oil over the fries.  Now you can use as much oil as you want, the more oil the crispier the fry, but the less healthy it will be.  I used about 3 I think.

Spread out your fries and bake for 15 minutes.  Flip them over and bake for 5 minutes more if needed.

I didn’t see the fries as Hubby flipped them, but they probably would have been fine coming out after 15.  They weren’t burned, but some of the smaller fries got more browned.

Now for the sauce.

Mix together 1/2 cup mayonnaise with 1 teaspoon of Sriracha sauce and 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper.  Hubs took our Sriracha sauce to work so I just some red hot pepper hot sauce we had around and it was amazing!  I also skipped the cayenne pepper because I’m a wimp, and adding the hot sauce scared me.  But it was amazing, and we ended up making a second batch as we gobbled the first batch down in no time flat.

I hope that you enjoy these yummy fries,

and Happy Pinning!

Jaime

Nov27

Pizza Balls

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Pizza again?  I know, I know, but seriously we do pizza every week, and I owe it to myself to change it up every once in awhile!  And what better way than to make them into bite size poppers?  I saw THIS pin and thought these would probably make a great “low” mess option for the twins.  You know, as long as I don’t give them a bowl of sauce to throw.

These are super easy to make with very few ingredients which makes this a great option for nights when I don’t want to go through the entire process of making a whole pie.

Ingredients:

You can use crescent rolls or biscuits

Pepperoni

Cheese (We used cheddar, monterey jack, and mozzarella)

Egg

Parmesan Cheese

Italian Seasonings

I made far less than the recipe on the pin and tried it with crescent rolls first.  I took each triangle and divided it in half.  So of the 8 crescent triangles I made 16 balls.  Layer a pepperoni, some cheese, and one more pepperoni, then roll up and flip over.

After you’ve got them all in the pan brush them with the egg and sprinkle with parmesan and italian seasonings.  Bake at 425 degrees for 15-20 minutes.  Keep an eye on them because they brown easily.

These were delicious!  They tasted like Tostinos Pizza Rolls, only better because you knew exactly what was in them.  Dipped in some homemade pizza sauce they were even better.  I plan on making a huge batch of these to freeze as they microwave great from frozen.  We made these using biscuits as well and I wasn’t as impressed (neither were the kids, as evident by most of them ending up on the floor).  I divided each biscuit in half to make them go farther, and I’m not sure if they would have tasted better by using one whole biscuit or not.  A test for another time…

Here’s a real quick shot of the little ones enjoying their crescent pizza balls:

Happy Pinning!

Jaime

Nov20

Christmas Sign

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I started collecting pins for Christmas ages ago. It’s a good thing, too, because I haven’t had a free moment to pin for at least a month. Fortunately I have a collection of ideas that I’ve been planning on accomplishing for awhile now, and not adding to that list is helping my sanity.

On that list is the all encompassing “Decorate the Mantle for Christmas” item. Anyone who has a mantle knows that this involves many different aspects. This is my first mantle decoration experience, and I’m kind of at a loss. Thank goodness I pinned this many moons ago. The sign itself is available for sale through her etsy shop, but she also gives a general overview as to how she made it. Making it was far more in my budget than buying it could ever be (not to mention there’s a pretty high demand and not a lot of product).

The project started when my husband, being awesome, made a trip to Lowes for some things and remembered that I wanted some boards to make this sign. He and I had previously talked about how big the sign should be, so he got all of the measurements right. I have no idea where he found the boards in the store, but they’re called “craft boards” and I got the size 3/8 x 4 x 24″ and two brace boards all made out of pine. They were perfect. The original sign is also made of pine, but there are some knots etc. in the boards that make it a touch more rustic. I don’t mind the missing knots.

Supplies minus the screws.

So, the hubs and I each grabbed a foam brush and generously spread some of Rust-Oleum’s Sunbleached wood stain on the pine boards. We only did the fronts of the boards, and the side of the bracing boards that would face the front. It was quick work, and we left it out in the sun to set. I was going to wipe it off and all that jazz, but I really liked how it looked so I just left it.

Finished color.

Once it dried I attempted to put the boards together with hot glue. It didn’t work, but it did make it easier to screw the boards down. The glue sticks enough to ensure the spacing that you want with the boards, but it’s not enough to hold it all together. I spaced the boards a little bit because I like how that looks, using a credit card to get the proper spacing. I’m not good with drills, so the hubs pre-drilled and screwed the boards together for me.

I cannot take credit for the screws, but I can probably take credit for the stain. Me = not a neat painter.

While he was doing that I searched for the prefect font for the board. This took approximately one billion hours, but I finally found and fell in love with Strawberry Avalanche from dafont. I love font websites. It makes me feel better about having horrible handwriting. I played around with font sizes for ages as well, and came up with this:

It was a lot of work, though it doesn’t look like it.

I used the following font sizes:

For unto you is = 140; born this day = 200; in the city of David a ____ which is = 120; Saviour, THE= 200; Christ Lord = 350.

I really hope that makes sense. Anyway, I used the pencil tracing method which I love. I shaded behind all of the letters and then traced them onto the board. It was time consuming, and kind of hard to see since the pencil is almost the same color as the stain.

The writing actually showed up better in the camera flash.

I used a sharpie paint pen to fill in the letters. I was on the fence about this when I went to Michaels, as they cost $4 and thought that was an outrageous price. I regret nothing. I highly recommend it, as it made my life so much easier. Totally worth it, especially if you have a coupon!

I colored in the words an drew on a start and presto!

Voila!

Hubs and I screwed in some hooks and picture wire and hung it up on the mantle above the Nativity. I’m hoping to get the rest of the mantle looking spiffy and then I’ll take a whole picture.

I really, really love this sign. I know that not everyone is religious, but you could definitely use this method to make any number of awesome signs. I know the original pinner sells blue signs with “Let It Snow” written on them, along with those birthday plaques that I see everywhere. Honestly, it’s really not that hard and it’s so easy to customize that you can put anything in the whole world on there.

Happy Pinning!

Jane

Nov15

Cake Batter Fudge

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Cake Batter fudge. Yum. I made this a few weeks ago to bring to a mega-huge party that my friends all throw. I saw it here, and thought “yeah, that’s easy. I’ll do it.” It was extremely easy and quite tasty (though it doesn’t really taste at all like fudge, in my opinion). I honestly think it’s about as straight forward as mac and cheese from the box.

Ingredients. Easy.

Instead of using additional sprinkles, I just got the funfetti mix. It worked perfectly.

2 C cake mix

2 C powdered sugar

1 stick (1/2 C) butter

1/4 C milk

Mix mix and sugar together. Add butter and milk and, without mixing, microwave for two minutes. Most recipes say to remove immediately, but I was on the phone and definitely left it in the microwave for anywhere from 2-6 minutes. Who knows.

Mix.

Mix everything together, and throw into a greased pan. I don’t know if the greasing is necessary, but I didn’t want to find out the hard way.

“Bake” in the fridge.

Throw it in the fridge for an hour. Or the freezer for 30-45 minutes if you’re feeling frisky.

Nom.

It tastes amazing. If you like the cake batter flavored ice cream, this is right up your alley. Like whoa. I love it. I made it again (in a smaller batch) but grabbed the recipe from a different website unknowingly. Pro-tip: this is the perfect ratio. The other recipe had too much milk and it turned out kind of a disaster. A delicious disaster, but still – definitely not something I would have been excited to take to a party like I was with this stuff. It was amazing. I also made saltine cracker toffee, which was a ginormous success, but that is a story for another day!

Happy Pinning!

Jane

Nov13

Putz Houses (part 1)

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I have a confession to make: I have already started decorating for Christmas. By “started” I naturally mean that I’m almost done. I have a lot of crafts that I want to get done between now and then, but I have so many gifts to make that I don’t know if I’ll be able to get them all done.

One thing that I knew I *had* to do was make a few Putz houses. Also called glitter houses, they are the most adorable things ever and they are completely and totally diy-able. My friend, the amazing Mary, told me about them this summer and I’ve been thinking about how great they are going to be ever since.

I went to the website Little Glitter Houses, which has everything you could ever hope to imagine and more when it comes to glitter houses. I decided to take their advice and go with the Basic house as my first attempt.

Supplies. Pretty simple.

Ages ago I bought a six pack of poster board from walmart for this project. I’m talking July awhile ago. $3 – not too shabby. You could also easily use cereal boxes or cracker boxes. I also skipped everything for the base, because I want to make a little village and don’t need the bases. If you have a craft knife, a cutting surface, glue, paints and poster board or the equivalent then you have everything you need. Scratch that, a printer for plans. That is essential. I cut out all of the pieces and realized that the little edging around the house wasn’t in the plans. I just re-traced the top of the house and then measured it out and cut with my pinking sheers. Done.

Pieces to a putz house.

I should warn you that I got super excited about getting the house put together and glued it before I should have. I’ve made a few since, and with those I painted first, them attached the pieces to the house, and then glued. Much easier that way. I also lined the windows with tissue paper. I plan on putting the “flameless votive” candles in these, so the base is open and I want to light to shine through in a pretty manner.

Applying tissue paper after gluing the house together – not the easiest way to do it.

This project is pretty easy if you’re good with a craft knife. I should warn you – it’s time consuming and addicting. I’ve made four already, and plan on making more.

Little house, you are so cute.

I’m waiting to glitter all of my houses at once – if I glitter them. I don’t know if I want to deal with that forever, but I think it’ll look super cute with the glitter. I also haven’t added any snow to the houses because I’m worried it’ll mess them up. I’d probably paint it on, and if it looks like poo, then where will I be? Maybe I’ll cut some snow out and glue it on and then cover it up with glitter. One never knows.

I’ll post again with all of my houses and my finished village. It’s going to be adorable. I hope!

Happy Pinning!

jane

Nov8

Crockpot corn Chowder

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So, when I got married my husband had a crock pot. It is kind of old, and takes forever to warm up, but it still mostly works. I’ve only used it for appetizer meatballs and cheese dip. As I mentioned before I was going to do freezer meals, but my freezer is too small.

I can, however, do some crock  pot soups! I’ve tagged a few on Pinterest, but this Corn Chowder looked so yummy I had to try it first.

Ingredients!!! Hooray!!!

1 can whole kernel corn

1 can cream style corn

2 C half and half

4 Potatoes (I ended up using 3)

1 C onion

8oz diced ham

2 C chicken broth

1/4 C Butter

1 red bell pepper (optional)

Directions: Peel and dice potatoes. Dice onion and bell pepper. Combine all ingredients but butter and half and half in crock pot and cook on low 7-8 hours. Add butter and half and half and cook 30 minutes more. Done!

I was skeptical, I won’t lie.

Listen, if you’re a crock pot newbie like me, don’t worry. It looks like this will never cook down and there isn’t enough liquid. There will be. I added the red pepper because I love them and it seemed like a good fit for this chowder. It totally was. I normally use vegetable stock, but as I was adding ham anyway I decided that chicken would be better. I think that was also a good call. Normally I do “no salt added” veggies, but I opted to get the regular cans and add less salt later. Seriously, I was on a good decision roll. I kept my crock pot on high all day, but it only cooked for about 6 hours. It just doesn’t get as hot as a newer one would. I stirred it occasionally and hemmed and hawed over whether or not it would turn out okay.

After 6 hours of crock potting.

Look at that! It almost looks like soup! Okay, it completely looks like soup. I don’t use potatoes often so when I checked at the four hour mark and they weren’t super soft I was concerned, but they got soft but not mushy by the six hour mark. It was perfect. I added the butter and half and half and let it cook for 30 more minutes and then ate the daylights out of it. The whole house smelled so good and I have to tell you, this stuff was amazing. I added just over 1/8 tsp of pepper, a dash of salt, and then a dash of garlic salt for good measure. DUDE. Perfect. My hubs likes it too, and I think it may become a staple because yum.

I shall eat your for dinner and leftovers for lunch and it shall be glorious.

This makes a pretty decent amount, so we have plenty of leftovers that I’m super stoked about. Hope you make this and enjoy it as much as I did!

Happy Pinning!

jane

Nov6

Canvas Art

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This is sort of a two parter as I would like to take some more time to make this really stand out so bear with me!

Two years ago I found some small canvas’ on sale at Michaels and thought that it would be really sweet to use AB’s (then 18 months) handprints and “art” skills to make some cute Christmas gifts.  I wasn’t able to reign in the enthusiasm she had with using real paint or able to get very good handprints so I had her help me with something else and had put these away in my craft room.  I recently found them and thought it would be really fun to use the fall foliage to maybe showcase a leaf over a handprint and be able to show off some of her painting in a fun way.

As with most of my projects I don’t give myself enough time to fully develop the exact steps and so I will show you what I have done so far, and then later this week I’ll post how I was able to fix it (hopefully!)

Here is the painted canvas I chose for this project:

Here is the leaf I chose for the stencil:
I used some spray adhesive to attach the leaf to the canvas.  If you spray the adhesive and let it sit a bit before adhering it the glue acts like a sticker and will peal off instead of sticking to the canvas.  I should have used more adhesive to make sure that the leaf stayed attached as it was really cold today and after the first pass the leaf lifted off of the canvas making the picture not as clear:
So now back to the drawing board to figure out how to make this cool orange canvas into something better!  Comments on suggestions are more than welcome. :)
Happy Pinning,
Jaime
Nov1

Breakfast Pizza

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Why should you only be able to eat pizza at night?  Obviously we love pizza at our house, and so when I came across this little pin on Pinterest I thought it looked like the perfect breakfast for my little munchkins.

These are the original ingredients:

  • 1 (8-ounce) can reduced-fat refrigerated crescent dinner roll dough
  • Cooking spray
  • 12 ounces turkey breakfast sausage
  • 1 cup frozen shredded hash brown potatoes, thawed
  • 1 cup (4 ounces) shredded fat-free cheddar cheese
  • 1/4 cup fat-free milk
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/8 teaspoon black pepper
  • 1 (8-ounce) carton egg substitute
  • 2 tablespoons grated fresh Parmesan cheese

I used ham instead of the sausage, and I didn’t have any frozen hash browns so I made my own as shown below.  And instead of egg substitute I just used 4 eggs.  It seemed to work out perfectly.

For the hash browns I just shredded the potato (about half a large) and then squeezed out as much liquid as I could.  I would recommend the frozen as it’s not as much work.

Preheat oven to 375°.

Separate dough into triangles. Press triangles together to form a single round crust on a 12-inch pizza pan coated with cooking spray. Crimp edges of dough with fingers to form a rim.

Cook sausage in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat until browned, stirring to crumble. Drain.
Top prepared dough with sausage, potatoes, and cheese. Combine milk, salt, pepper, and egg substitute, stirring with a whisk. Carefully pour milk mixture over sausage mixture. Sprinkle with Parmesan.
Bake at 375° for 25 minutes or until crust is browned.
Happy Pinning!
Jaime