Saturday, July 28, 2012

Honey Do……

 

On a regular basis, I have to remind, and remind, and remind, Jeremy to do something. I can’t place the blame on him though, because I should know by now that if I want something done, I must write it down, or email it to him.  This whole debacle got me thinking that I need to have something that is bright and in sight for him to see. Thus comes another use for the umpteen thousand pieces of scrapbooking paper I have upstairs in the craft room.

Disclaimer-I do know that umpteen thousand is not a real number.  Just thought I’d defuse that bomb before it explodes.

So.  I got a cheap-o wood frame from the Dollar Tree, some paint from Hobby Lobby, and got a piece of manly man paper from my paper selection to make an erasable Honey Do list.

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I painted the frame a nice green color with a foam applicator, and cut the paper to size so it fits in the frame.

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The glass allows me to write on it with a dry erase marker, and command strips allow me to hang it on the wall without a nail.

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My next venture is a menu planner. I’ve seen a bunch of them on Pinterest that I like, but I’m still deciding which one I want to put the effort into.  I’m also working on envelopes made from double sided scrapbooking paper.  I’m going to use them to put money in so we can adopt the Dave Ramsey budget strategy.  I figured if I’m going to do it the Dave way, I can’t use plain white ugly envelopes. I have to “princess” it up a bit. 

 


Now for your viewing pleasure, wet Sox.

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Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Trying it out….

 

There are a lot of things on Pinterest that I’ve seen that I have wanted to try to see if it actually works.   I’ll demo one here today.

Waffle Iron Hash Brown.

Here is the original picture

I have a circular waffle iron, but I thought that I’d try it anyways.

Here is the iron:

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The hash browns and cooking spray I used :

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I added some to the iron:

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I let it cook for what seemed to be two hours about 10 minutes. Different waffle irons take different amounts of time. I like my hash browns crispy, but that would have taken a lifetime a while when we were super ready for breakfast. Obviously you’d alter cooking times depending if you like your hash browns crispy or soft.

Here’s what the finished product looks like:

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I gave Jeremy the first batch, and on mine I added an egg to it.  THAT was awesome! It cooked in no time at all!

With the egg:

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The final verdict: It takes way too long.  I like to add EVOO to hash browns while they are cooking and I didn’t want to do that in my waffle iron. Why? Well because I didn’t want my next batch of waffles to have olive oil in them. Do you know how hard it is to clean a waffle iron?  I should have snapped a shot of the disaster this stuff left over! It’s going to be hard enough to get the spray out of the nooks and crannies. The egg cooking in it was fantastic! That is one thing I will take from this, and it was my own idea to add it! I didn’t see that one on pinterest, so I’ll claim it as my own. Hah!


I learned a great tip from a friend at church recently. She doesn’t belong to pinterest (even though I told her she should totally post this idea!!)  and is adamant about staying clear from it, so I told her I was going to share it on my blog.

Cutting green peppers has new meaning to me now. There really wasn’t any way I thought of doing it aside from the old slice it down the middle and then scoop out the seeds and white flesh. Well, friends, my eyes have been opened. 

Here we have a  green pepper just waiting to be cut.

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Instead of cutting it down the middle, you’re going to cut right next to the stem on four sides. Here are my poor attempts at getting nice shots while Jeremy is cutting. Really. I know the photos are terrible.

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After cutting all four sides, you have the white flesh and seeds leftover in on little square package that can be tossed into the trash.

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SO much less mess than the old cut down the middle job.

I’m now hoping that no one else I know knew this trick.  Because if you did, you forgot to tell me about it!!


If you live in our neighborhood and see smoke pouring out of our yard. Don’t worry, we’re not on fire. Jeremy has found a new hobby in smoking food.

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We’ve had a smoker for a while, but it just sat there because he hadn’t yet figured out how to use it correctly.  Well now since he’s actually figured it out he smokes ALL the time!  Yesterday we were sure the neighbors behind us had their A/C on because we smoked up the whole street. (Mind you it was in the 70’s….not really a need for A/C.)   At least for now this is a pretty cheap hobby.  Most of the things involved are under $20.  It’s a whole lot easier to fulfill his wish list of wants with this hobby than his computer hobby!  I’m super excited for when he’s ready to smoke ribs! He says he’s “not ready to do ribs” yet. I guess being the perfectionist he is, he’s got to get it down to an art first.  I’ll let you all know how it goes when he does get to the rib smoking part.


I thought I’d run out of things to post here on this blog after a while, but I really haven’t!  I’m quite surprised at that!  I guess it just means that my life isn’t as boring as I thought.

 

 

Or is it? 

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Magazine holders.

 

If you’re like me, you have a bunch of magazines lying around the house just waiting to be looked at again.  I have such a hard time tossing out magazines that could possibly be used in the future. Most notably my Paula Deen, Rachael Ray, and Cooking Light magazines.  I’m in the process of putting up shelving in the kitchen, and I really wanted to keep those magazines near in case I needed to find a recipe.  Now, the other week I went to Ikea and found a pack of 5 magazine holders that were plain white, so I snatched them up. (I wish I would have grabbed 2 packs of them!)  I then went to Hobby Lobby to get scrapbooking paper so I could start my project. 

I put the holders together, got tacky glue, scissors, and laid out my paper choices.

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The next step is to turn your paper over so the white side is showing up, and trace the end of the holder you want to cover. I covered the long end so that as it sits on the shelf you actually won’t see the magazines in it. 

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After you trace, cut out around the lines, and carefully glue the paper on to the holder.  I think the hardest part here is lining up the ends….especially when the magazine holders don’t sit quite straight on the table. Thanks Ikea.

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As you can see…I’ve got them all lined up together after I’ve finished, and they don’t sit level to each other.  Once the magazines are in there, I’m sure it will be fine.


I really need to learn how to take better pictures.  Of course when I’m taking them with my phone, you can only get so-so shots. I like to use my phone, because we have a program called Sugarsync that transfers every picture I take to my computer immediately. So all I have to do to insert a picture is click “add photo” and it’s right on my computer. No wires. No waiting.

I might have to start using the real camera though, because on other blogs the pictures look SO much more appealing than mine do!

Sunday, July 1, 2012

My Favorite Things….

 

I read a couple of blogs where the author wrote about things that she was enjoying at the moment.  I thought that would be fun! Here goes!

*Downton Abbey. 

I love a good period piece.  This one starts off right after the sinking of the Titanic.  It’s quite a fun drama to follow, plus there are  some fun romantic story lines. I finished season 1, and started to re-watch the first episode while Jeremy was home.  His interest kind of peaked when I started it. The next day I got a text from him saying “Curse you woman!!”. Apparently he wound up watching season 1 as well because he got hooked. We even got a 21 year old guy from our church hooked on it!  Hah!

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*Gotye and Walk Off the Earth. “Somebody That I Used to Know”.

I like the original Gotye song, but Walk Off the Earth’s version is just SO cool!

Original version.
Walk Off the Earth version. LOVE!!

How did they even come up with the idea of 5 people playing 1 guitar?? Genius!


*Felicity.  Yes. The show Felicity from the 90’s.  This is what happens when you don’t have Satellite anymore and your husband puts in volunteer hours at the church leaving you home by yourself.  You get stuck watching Felicity on Netflix. There’s just something about that opening theme song that takes me right back in time.  Back when life was a whole lot easier.  I wonder if any of my other friends feel that pang in your stomach when you hear/watch it. Please do let me know. Enjoy-

Turning back time….


* Iced Tea with Lime and Stevia.

                                Limes --- Image by © P.Ginet -Drin/photocuisine/Corbis

It’s been SO hot in our house without A/C that we have to come up with ways to cool off.  One of them is Ice cold tea with lime squeezed into it. Then I take add a little dropper of stevia.  Such a refreshing drink!


*Taking pictures of the cat while he’s in strange positions.  I’m sure when I have kids one day I’ll add photos of them doing strange things….but until then, you all get Sox. Deal with it. Hah.

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*Evening Spa treatments for my feet. 

So year round in the Summer, my feet look like they went through a blender that swallowed bolts. Cracked. Dry. Gross.  I finally got tired of it and decided to go to Sally Beauty Supply and get supplies that a pedicurist would use. Every night I soak my feet in warm/cool water that I’ve added a skin softener to. Then I use a pumice stone to grind and scrape smooth my heels. Next I use the foot scrub just like they would at a nail salon and rub it in to exfoliate.  On the weekends I will then apply a foot mask, let it sit for 10 minutes, and remove it.  To finish it off, I apply an overnight cream to my feet. Let me tell you- my feet look SO much better!  I’m not embarrassed to think that people behind me in line can see the cracks on my heels when I’m in flip flops. Plus, I now look forward to my nightly foot soaks. It’s quite relaxing!

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I think that’s enough for now. Next time I’ll share a little tutorial on sprucing up magazine holders to make them look cute and fashionable. 

Lisa