So far....

This year I'm making Mother's Day gifts. It's so hard to find something they will need/like/want so this seemed easiest. Well, kind of. The making part of it is the less easy side of it. The picture below is my inspiration....I decided to make paper rose wreaths.

I think the wreath in the photo is made of newspaper, not positive. I considered a lot of options as far as the paper source and knew right away I would recycle something rather than buying paper. There were going to be a lot of paper roses so buying a ton of paper wasn't something I wanted to do. I liked the idea of the newspaper and the black/white color, but newspaper is messy and too fragile. I have some old books I got at an estate sale for making cards and decided that's what I'd use. And when I say old, I mean old. Not old enough or interesting enough to be worth anything (I think they were .25 cents for each book), but interesting looking due to the aged color and texture. So I started making paper roses out of the pages. Here is what I have so far.

My roses are rolled tighter than the ones in the inspiration wreath and I like mine better. I like how the edge of the old paper is aged and has a slight bit of color to it...it's actually a pinkish hue so it works well for the roses.

It's time consuming to roll each one and then glue the rose so it won't unroll, but it's mindless work and relaxing. It took 55 roses to cover an 8 inch straw wreath. The straw wreath is covered with strips of paper from the book so if any space that shows between the roses wouldn't look bad. This is the back.

Next I'll have to get some antique lace or ribbon to make a bow and possibly add some antiqued glitter. Since the roses are made out of old paper, I'm going with the vintage look. I showed it to Greg and he said it looks like a lot of work....it is, so I hope the Mom's like them :)

Love this song. And, she's beautiful!

Removing Glitter Nail Polish

For all the girls who love glitter nail polish as much as I do, but hate taking it off....this is for you.

Glitter nail polish is like cement! Getting it off your nails is a serious pain in the ass. You have to scrub and scrub and then scrub some more to get it off. However, last summer I learned of a way that has taken all the scrubbing out of the picture. It's still a bit of a pain in the ass, but it's worth the time. It takes about 10 minutes. As I was doing this process, I thought "maybe I should blog about this!"

So I took pictures. Forgive the poor lighting and terrible photo quality. I was trying to take a picture of my right hand with my left hand....not easy since the button to take the picture is on the right side of the camera....but I digress.



Items you will need are: Cotton pads, polish remover and foil.



1. Cut 10 squares of foil that are about 3x2 inches.
2. Cut cotton pads into 10 squares that will cover your entire nail with a bit of overhang.
3. Douce the cotton pads with polish remover. I pour some in the cap and dunk the pads in it.
4. Lay the cotton pad over your nail and then wrap the foil around your finger. Continue process for each nail.
5. I let them sit for 3-5 minutes depending on how thick the coat of glitter polish is.



6. When it's time to remove them, grasp the foil ends and twist back and forth so the cotton pad is rubbing against your nail.
7. Pull the foil and cotton pad off together.
8. Voilà! Not a speck of glitter polish remains!

KONY 2012

Recommendation

I have to be honest and tell you I don't really care for garlic bread. I'm not sure what happened because I used to love it. But I've lost my taste for it. Especially frozen garlic bread. There are some restaurants that have good garlic bread, but mostly I'm not impressed.

On a whim we tried Trader Joe's garlic & herb butter. Greg loves garlic bread so we saw this and thought it was worth a try. Even if I didn't like it, I was sure he would like it.

For once he didn't finish off my piece of garlic bread! I usually take a bite or two and I'm done. But this was pretty good :)




Sadly I forgot to get a picture of it after it came out of the oven! Oh well, you can imagine it looked pretty standard. But the taste wasn't standard at all. Give it a try :)

Food on the Table

Have you tried Food on the Table? It's a website that works off of the grocery store(s) you shop at. It selects dinner menus based on what's on sale in the store(s) you choose. You add preferences, the kind of stuff you like to eat & diet restrictions, and it gives you recipes. You can see reviews by other people so you have an idea if the recipe is any good. If you want to make the recipe, you can modify it to feed between 1-8 people and it will give you a shopping list for the recipes you select. You can also look at the nutritional information if that's important for you. So far I really like it!

I'm not sure if it's always free to sign-up, but I had a coupon code which is FEBFREE.

Chicken Noodle Soup

Greg made soup Sunday. It's the best chicken noodle soup I've ever had. He's made it before when I had a cold and maybe it's just my imagination, but it did seem to make me feel better. Try it :)

******

Cooking + prep time: About 2.5 - 3 hours

1 whole raw chicken (with bones & skin for flavor) cut into it's parts
3 celery stalks, cut into 2 inch pieces
1 large onion, cut into big pieces
2 carrots, cut into big pieces
3-4 stems of fresh thyme (or 1 teaspoon dried)
3 ounces 'fine' egg noodles
Chicken broth/stock

Put chicken in a large pot, cover with water and bring to a boil.

After about 20 minutes, skim off the icky foam that floats to the top.

Turn down to a simmer and cover. Cook for 30 minutes.



After 30 minutes, add the veggies and the thyme - put the lid on and simmer for another 1.5 hours.





Remove from heat and strain into a bowl that's big enough to hold all the broth.

Put the the liquid and the vegetables back into the pot.

Separate the chicken from the bones & skin, cut into bite sized pieces and put in with the broth.




Bring the broth back to a simmer, add in the egg noodles then cover and cook until noodles are done.




Add another 2 to 4 cups chicken broth to make up for what has evaporated during cooking.



Enjoy a bowl of delicious homemade chicken noodle soup!

Happy Valentine's Day

In honor of Valentine's Day, I share this with you.

So Sweet!! <-- click link

Have A HOT Valentine's Day!

And, today I want to make hot sauce! The woman in the video reminds me very much of someone I don't like so that was unfortunate. But maybe she'll remind you of someone you do like! Or may she'll have zero affect either way! :)

Urban Cheesecraft

This is pretty darn cool. I'd really like to make some cheese now :)

Bacon Jam

**UPDATE: The bacon jam was at hit at the pot luck!

Bacon jam. I know, I know. Totally unhealthy but it's not something you eat all the time.

I'm faced with having to go to a lunch pot luck at work tomorrow. Trust me, if I could find a way to politely decline, I would. But this time getting out of it would be hard to do. I had to think of something to bring that would be easy. I leave the house at 6:45am so I don't have time to be making something before work. I also didn't want to bring anything that had to be either hot or cold because that's just a total pain in the ass. I looked at pot luck stuff on the internet and most everything was a hot dish. Then I saw this bacon jam recipe. I've never had it and it sounded good and it also sounded kinda gross. However, people who had tried it and left comments raved about it! And.....it can be served at room temperature! When I read that part, I decided I was making it. I did consider a few other things off and on because....well....it's bacon jam. It just doesn't sound all that appetizing. But then I figured I could make it over the weekend and if wasn't any good I'd still have time to get something else.

I made it yesterday. While I was cooking the bacon, I got the idea to take pictures of the process. Mostly because of the photo below. I don't think I will ever have another chance to take a picture of 3 pounds of bacon. Again....I know.


Cook the bacon in the oven. This is the only way to cook this much bacon. If you do it on the stove-top, it would take forever and would be soooo messy.





Now cook 4 gigantic onions that have been thinly sliced until they are mostly translucent.





Add all the liquid (cider vinegar, brown sugar, maple syrup, strong coffee, pepper) and bring to a boil.








Add the bacon.





Here it is reduced by half.




Here it is cooked all the way down and the onions are caramelized. This isn't as dark as I think it's supposed to get, but getting it to this point was probably 2 hours. I wasn't keeping track of the time. I called it done here because I didn't want to risk burning it. After cooking that long, having it burn would have been really sad.





Let if cool off a bit and then zap it in the food processor. I have to admit, when I saw it at this point I was worried. This is not what I call appetizing. If I were serving it to family, that's one thing. But this will be people at work, most of whom I hardly know, so if it looks gross, no one will touch it. And no one wants to have the dish everyone is whispering about and making faces at.





I put it to the true test. Smeared it on some bread and gave it to Greg. He's on the picky side and I know he'll tell me what he thinks. If he made a face or spit it out, I was going to the store for plan B.







He ate the whole piece of bread and gave it 2 thumbs up! I also tried it and it's good. It's kinda sweet but not a lot, oniony, and definitely bacony. I wasn't able to taste the maple syrup or coffee at all. There is a cider vinegar flavor but it's not overwhelming or too strong. A plus is, it smells really good :)

I think it looks better on the bread so I'm going to make some up on the tray that are ready to eat. That way people who are considering it can try it on an impulse. When people start saying it's good, others will go for it. It's bacon so there will be people who will just see the fat and calories on a slice of white bread....but oh well. I'll let you know how it goes! Wish me luck!!