Recipe Re-Run

I know I have posted this before but it deserves a re-post. We have been making this almost every day! They kids love to make sandwiched with it. Unfortunately it makes a small loaf and my math skillz are not up to calculating how to increase it (without having a breadmaker overflow issue). I like this with tomato bruschetta for breakfast. I have been using rosemary from my neighbors’ gardens (because I killed mine when I moved the pot to the other side of the yard). I chop it fine using my pampered chef chopper thingie. I am saving the stems (sticks?) because I saw Marth Stewart used them as skewers for something and I wanna try that. I make this on the speedy setting and can have a loaf ready in 2 hrs!!

Jo's Rosemary Bread - courtesy of Allrecipes.com

· 1 cup water

· 3 tablespoons olive oil

· 1 1/2 teaspoons white sugar

· 1 1/2 teaspoons salt

· 1/4 teaspoon Italian seasoning

· 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

· 1 tablespoon dried rosemary (note: I am using fresh)

· 2 1/2 cups bread flour

· 1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast

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Homemade Gatorade??

Saw this and had to try it.

Cue angels singing! This stuff rocks! I doubled the recipe and used a whole pkt of kool aid mix and poured it into an empty orange juice jug. Yay!! I plan on saving the few gatorade bottles in the pantry so I can refill them with this stuff.

So I used:

• 64 oz water
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1 packet unsweetened Koolaid

I also used the fake salt instead of regular – more potassium and we had it on hand anyway.

Spray Painting a Knife Block

  I love wood and I love spray paint. Usually I do not paint wood but . . . I saw this idea and then everyone in the blogosphere was doing it. Always late to the party, I had to try it, too! I had found this pampered chef knife block at a yardsale ($2 I think – I *know*! I was thrilled!!) and thought if it came out ugly I would just find another knife block at the thriftstore or yardsales. They are pretty easy to find.

So, I spray painted it using Oil Rubbed Bronze and it looks good! I’ve been using for a couple of months now and it is fine. No chips or anything. And no, I did not even sand it a smidge – just washed it good and set it in the sun to dry.

I sprayed the bottom (I thought it was the easiest way to paint the bottom edges), then just sprayed and flipped and sprayed some more. I gave it pretty good coverage and no clear coat. Love it!!

  Yes, that is a plate (glued to a candlestick) cakestand.

Yes, those tomatoes are from our garden.   Yes, we have wood laminate countertop and backsplash.

And yes, the ORB painted block looks much better than the old blonde tone wood did.

. . . . . . . .

And this basil is thanks to Julia and this is the second little bunch to root for me. I tried to plant the first one in a pot outside and it died within days. I am a horrid gardener. Anyone wanna tell me how to grow this outside? There are sooo many roots on these!! And all I do is change out the water ever couple of days.

 

Woodworkin’ in the Shed and Rescuing a Vintage Buffet

  When we got the new carpet in the living room we took a look at our tired cheap old plain entertainment center and decided it was time to let it go. We had bought it in a rush after the last time the house flooded and we were ready for a change. See, we are saving up for a flat screen TV as a family X-mas present and knew we wanted a vintage, long, real wood, something to go under it and also knowing our living room is HUGE and, well, *HUGE HUGE*, scale was something to think about. Selling our entertainment center proved harder than we thought and we ended up giving the sidepiece to a friend and free-cycling the main unit. No one is buying entertainment centers nowadays.

On Craigslist (duh! where else??) we looked at oodles of buffets and sideboards and record players and finally found a kinda banged up buffet that had been languishing on CL for over a month. Asking price was 80 and he took 40. It was at his friend’s house and the friends wife (or girlfriend, I cannot recall) wanted it outta the spare bedroom. Woo-hoo! Score! We loaded it into the truck and squealed the tires as we drove away (not really, but I was all smile-y and thrilled and doing the happy dance in my seat –while Pete rolled his eyes at me but thankfully he saw the potential in the piece, too!)

It sat in the shed for a couple of month and then Pete got to work. Sanding and sanding and more sanding, teaching the kids to sand by hand (child labor laws do not apply at our house!), gluing veneer and puttying the patches that were too far gone to resuscitate. Then he used a maple wiping stain and a bunch of clear spray finishing cans that I always pick up at yard sales and cleaned the handles – which are kinda like shells and are either Bakelite or some vintage plastic and it looks great!

We moved it into the house and I love it and think it would look great in the dining room if we decide it does not work in the living room! It matches the table and looks great under the dining room window! But for now the plan is to have it in the living room.

Stay tuned for the other piece of furniture Pete is refinishing at the moment – it was a craigslist freebie!! A vintage radio/record player cabinet!! The plan is to put the two pieces side by side (they do not match perfectly but we are hoping they will look good together) and the radio cabinet will house the electronics – the cabinets are a smidge wider than the buffet’s cabinets- and the buffet will house the DVD’s, games, etc and the dream TV will look nice hanging on the wall above the two gorgeously refinished vintage rescued pieces.

sugarfree chocolate pie!

http://genaw.com/lowcarb/chocolate_truffle_torte.html

Found this and have made it 3 times now. The kids dig it- although they eat good sized pieces!

Yummy!!

quick oven bread

I saw this link and have been making it quite a bit – some more successfully than others. It is really yum fresh from the oven and comes together in about 20 mins.

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Crafting with candlesticks

  I have been busy making these lately. I saw this craft making the blog rounds and was inspired. Then it became something of a passion and now I would say we are entering addiction territory. The recipe is simple: plate + adhesive + candlestick. Buuuuut the plate can be a small saucer or dish or bowl or platter. The candlestick can be tall or squat or something else (I have used a vase, a drinking glass and more!). Alot of folks on the web are picking up candlesticks at the dollar stores- trust me, get one without wax on it if you get it from the thrift store. It will take you longer to remove the wax than to make one of these! The plates, saucers, bowls, etc I have been mostly picking up at the thriftstores for under a buck each.

  The adhesive is supposed to be E6000 but I happened to have an opened tube of Plumber’s Goop in the shed so I used it and it has worked like a charm. Both are washable (although I hand wash not dishwasher for these) and stable. They do stink so proper ventilation, ok, people?

  You turn the plate (or bowl or saucer etc) upside down and then take the candlestick (or similar) and neatly glob or squeeze the adhesive onto the candlestick and adhere it to the plate. I sorta use my finger widths to judge if it is centered because some of the backstamps are not in the center. I put another plate and a weight on top to help it adhere well and give it a few hours before turning it rightside up and letting it sit for another day or two to cure.

Any clue what the base on this one is?? It is a ceiling fan light fixture!! I found a set of 5 at goodwill. They are gorgeous with cut diamond pattern and etching. And they nicely work on the larger charger sized plates.

  I have them all over- on my dresser to hold earrings etc, one on hubby’s dresser for change, one by the sink to hold bits and bobs, a big one on the island with fruit. The plan is to give them to some teachers at the school for val day (even though a couple have xmas poinsettias on them). I store them upside down on my pantry. I used them at the holidays and the varying heights make a nice display on the buffet.

       But I think I will be making these for awhile. Can you see one holding a cupcake as a birthday gift, or cookies (wrapped in plastic wrap) or in a bathroom with a bar of soap (not with my kiddos around but it would look cute in someone else’s house!). The only downside seems to be that my taste is vintage floral and glass and that might not be everyone’s cup of tea.

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Valentine’s worksheets

Here are some valentine worksheets for you to enjoy. I have some of these colored, cut out and taped to my livingroom windows. Cute!

 

 

 

 

     

 

 

Enjoy!

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Closet Case

So, it took me almost a week and I do it a couple of times a year but . . . . the craft closet is clean!!

Ahhhhh, I love it when it is all organized and neat. We *really* need to start doing more crafts and use some of these supplies up! Seriously, how many pipe cleaners and glitter and googley eyes does one family need!!

And there are crafting things not in this closet- shhh! I have 3 spin art machines (shuddup! stop laughing!!). One is the Explosion and I have never used it (50c yard sale find). I think I will let that go soon.

 

I am *such* a labeler! And I use whatever I have handy. Most of my supplies are from yardsales. It is handy to have the craft closet but we are just not crafting regularly. I hope to keep up with the goal of one craft a weekend.

Upcoming crafts: shrinky dinks (gotta use the leftover bits from the xmas ornaments), hand casts (think the boys can hold their hands in a Hook Em sign while in a bucket of goo?), and beaded cd case magnetic picture frames. Stay Tuned!

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Pocket Magnets

      I’ve made these for over a decade. They are a standard gift for teachers and I make them in batches to have on hand year round. They stick to ‘fridges to hold coupons and pens, lockers to hold pens, metal file cabinets to hold scissors- whatever.

They are super handy and easy cheesy to make. I use outgrown jeans or pick them up for cheap at yardsales. I look for the rattiest jeans and offer 50 cents. Since all I use is the pockets, I like to freecycle the denim – usually to a quilter.

     How to:

Usually I trim all my pockets in small batches and toss the pockets in one bin and the denim in a bag to pass on.

Trim as close to the pocket as you can leaving a bit at the top to fold over and make a nice hem. (is it called a hem if it is at the top? I dunno).

I run a bead of glue along the flap and fold the pocket over (as opposed to folding the flap over the pocket).

 

    

I am not sure if it saves me some burns but that’s how I do it.

Warning: glue guns are hot and you WILL burn yourself. I keep a glass of ice water handy to plunge my fingers in when I do get molten glue on them.

 

I do all the glue gunning in batches, too.  Even if I do not have enough magnets in one sitting I usually finish out the hemming since I know it will just save me time next round.

    

I buy the magnet strip on a roll (using a 40% off coupon when there is nothing else I need so I have a good stockpile of it). Dryfit the pieces and trim to size. I use a lot of magnets because I know how much handling I do with these pockets. But I also recycle those freebie magnets- but keep the ratio low. Most are pretty lightweight.

 

Place the first strip across the top and then fill in the back.

      Running the bead of glue on the magnetic strip and then using your fingers to turn it over and place it down is the hardest part of the project- the glue overflows or squeeze out from under and gets ya!

 

This took about 2 hours.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

See the layered ones? And the embellished ones? I love finding toddler jeans or embroidered jeans and layering different shades of blues. The jewel stones were leftovers from another project.

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Cool contest!

CONTEST: http://delightfullearning.com/2010/01/lacing-buttons-review-and-giveaway/comment-page-3/#comment-2991 is running a great contest for a wicked cute toy button lacing toy. Since ours is now considered vintage, I had to enter in hopes of winning! Check her site out – it has some really great homeschooling ideas!

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Have you ever spray painted a *DOOR*??

You can and it works great!! We have had this sad white bathroom door for years. It was dingy (boys with dirty hands will do that) no matter how much we tried to clean it, it just looked grubby so I made an executive decision to spray paint it and sent Hubby off to Home Depot for supplies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He came back with a trigger sprayer and a few cans of celery green paint.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tape the knob and spray away. Flip, repeat. Hang and admire.

ahhhhhh - - You have to trust me that it looks good because my Autistic son likes to peel paint and the doorframes look reeeeeally bad. When i get a chance to repaint them, I’ll take a follow up photo. *sigh* The project list continues!

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Vintage Vals - Remixed

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A little photoshopping on a few of my faves from this post and these are ready to print. This weekend we did spin art t-shirts so this project will be next weekend’s. I am thinking thumbprint hearts and names (in cursive, print and by mommy, respectively) on the back of the cards and use the envelopes I got for free.

How do you score free envelopes, you ask- easy! Hit all the targets, CVS’, etc you can on the day after valentine’s day, Halloween etc and ask the folks changing out the greeting cards nicely. They will give you as many as you want- otherwise they get THROWN AWAY!!

(Note: not completely happy with the cowboy card- but it was trickier to work with. might re-do it)

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Vintage Valentines

Sooo, I went a googlin’ and found some of these and then found this flicker group and this website.

I saved a bunch – here are some.

My plan is to print them out and use them in place of store bought cards for the kids. I also wanted to put a few on the mantle. They also help my autistic son learn about puns – something he has a hard time “getting”.

                

     

           

      

   

        

       

 

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