Friday, November 16, 2012

Stuffed Pancake Bites

Pin It Is breakfast a big deal in your house? I know my hubster wishes I would make a bigger deal about breakfast in our house... But I just don't except occasionally. It's not that I don't like breakfast. I do. But I would usually prefer to just eat a light breakfast and then wait for lunch. But these little guys have saved the day. Easy and quick. About the only way I can do breakfast.

 
Original recipe found here
 

What You'll Need:
2 Shake and Pour Bisquick
1/2 lb. sausage

I saw this idea here, but didn't see the recipe. I made this as quick and easy as possible. I used the Bisquick pancake mix that you just add water to and shake it up. Then I browned the sausage in a pan. Once it was done, I added a little sausage to each muffin cup, and then poured some pancake mix into each cup. Just enough to cover the sausage. I baked them at 350 for about 5 minutes or so. It just depends on your oven, but it wont take long for them to cook. Once they are golden brown around the edges, and have a golden center, they're done.

Done! You can eat these plain or have a little syrup on the side for dipping. Enjoy!

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Tuesday, November 13, 2012

My Thanksgiving Mantle

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Hey Ya'll! I know I've been slacking on putting up new posts lately. But, I hope you enjoyed the taco cups recipe, and the tutorial on how to make your own lost socks sign!

Today I wanted to share my Thanksgiving mantle with you, and a few inexpensive and last minute crafts you can do to spruce up your mantle for the holiday.

 
Whatchya think?! I love LOVE that yellow fabric, and the little mason jars turned out so cute. I filled the brown wire urn with some vase filler and some mini corn that I found at my grocery store. You may remember it from my fall mantle. I also kept the antique cheese graters and little gourds up there as well. 


Tehe. I really don't know what it is about that yellow fabric that I like so much, but it is just ca-ute! I had a bunch of that fabric left over from my Fall Wreath where I made some rosettes out of it. And don't we all love antique window frames? Swoon.


This little banner was super simple to make. I just cut out some triangles, printed out GIVE in the font that I wanted, and then was able to put the paper under the fabric and trace over the letter with a paint pen.Worked like a charm. Then I cut some twine and hot glued the triangles to the twine. The whole thing took me about 15 minutes. Perfect decoration to throw up there for last minute decor.

 
 When I saw these bottles at Tater Tots and Jello, I thought they were awesome, so I wanted to make my own version. Enter spray painted mason jars. I already had a bunch of mason jars handy, as well as some Krylons Ivory spray paint, and the stickers I needed. You know a craft is meant to be when you happen to have ALL the supplies on hand to make it.


So I just put the stickers on the jars, gave them a very light coat of spray paint since I wanted them to look a little worn and faded, and then peeled the stickers off when they were dry! Easy peasy! And since I wanted them to look even more worn, I got out a very fine grit sand paper and gave them a little light rub all over. Done!


And that's my Thanksgiving Mantle. See what I mean? Done and done. The banner and jars cost me nothing since I had all the supplies on hand, and everything else on the mantle was already there from my previous fall mantle. So this mantle cost me a whopping 0 dollars to make!

So look around your house, dig through your craft stash, and see what you can put together. You will probably surprise yourself, and your guests will have something pretty to look at while they're chowing down on turkey. Yay!

What are YOUR Thanksgiving plans? Have you decorated for it, or do you put up Christmas decorations instead?

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Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Need a place for lost socks...{Tutorial}

Pin It I did this post as a guest post for Hannah over at Young and Crafty a while back, but I wanted to share it with you guys here too! Enjoy this fun tutorial!

So, who of you out there like to do laundry? If you said 'I', then I'm not sure we can be friends... Just kidding. But seriously, I don't really enjoy doing laundry. It's not my most hated of the chores, but it's not at the top of my list. And it seriously disturbs me when I know that I put nothing but pairs of socks into the washer/dryer, yet the dryer does not return all of the pairs back to me. What does it do with them? I'm not totally crazy, so I know that it's not just hoarding these socks away somewhere... So the only logical conclusion that I could come to, was this: Dryer lint must be the ashes of the socks that the dryer has eaten. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.  {Anyways}


I have recently moved into a house, and the laundry room decorations are a work in progress since I lived in an apartment before and didn't have a laundry room. And of course, some of the decor in the laundry room also must be functional. Well, when I came across this Lost Socks Sign from Somewhat Simple on Pinterest (where else?), I was in loooove. I h-a-d to have one. The only problem was, my cricut machine wasn't working so I didn't have any way to print and cut Vinyl lettering. What's a girl to do? Well, I'll tell you. HAND STENCIL AND PAINT. Does that frighten you? Well, it shouldn't. I came across this tutorial from My Pink Life, and I was like, Haaaaallelujah! Jackpot! Now don't get me wrong, it's not easy, and is more difficult with the bigger variety/difficulty of fonts you choose, and also with the amount of lettering you have to do, but for a small project like this, it's a gem.

Here is what you will need:
Wood plaque of some sort
Ribbon
Staple Gun and Staples
e6000 adhesive
Large clothes pins
Acryllic paint colors of choice
Carbon paper
Paint pen
Regular pen
Artistic eraser
Sand paper

Ok, first take your sand paper and go over your whole sign. This may not be necessary depending on your plaque. I got this unfinished wood plaque at Hobby Lobby a while ago. Then you can give it a nice coat of paint, whatever color you choose. I used antique white. Once it dries you will most likely need to give it another coat. I did three coats on mine to get really even coverage.


And it helps if you have a really cute little helper giving you a hand :). While that is drying, go print off the font that you want to use for the words. What you will need to do, is open a word document. Then go to the fonts tab, or the drop down arrow (it's different depending on what version you have), and click text effects. Then click on text fill, and choose no fill, and then click on text outline, and choose solid line. It will be best to print in landscape. The fonts I used are Ck Cursive Regular and Pea Noodles Girlfriends. Two of my fave fonts!

Now you need to trace the font onto the plaque. First cut your paper so the two words can be side by side and then tape them together, and then tape one end down onto the plaque so that it stays straight and won't move. Now slip the carbon paper under your printer paper, and begin tracing over it with the regular pen.


Try not to touch the paper where you don't need to because the carbon will rub off onto the plaque.


Once you get it traced, it should look like this. And you see that little eraser? You can use that to erase any marks where the carbon rubbed off onto the sign. I got it at Hobby Lobby, in the painting section. It erases charcoal, graphite, and more. Now you're ready to fill in your letters. I used a paint pen for this, since the font was really skinny, and I was using black. Paint pens are easier to maneuver, but generally come in only primary colors. Although I have also seen some neon ones. You can also use a paint brush and paint if you have had some practice doing this sort of thing before.


That's the pen that I used, and it worked great. Just follow the directions to get the paint flowing, and be careful to not press too hard, or a lot of paint will come out all at once. I already had some black clothes pins lying around, so I didn't have to paint mine. But I did add the polka dots. I just squeezed a little antique white paint onto a plate, and used the end of a sharpie marker to make my little dots. The end of a pencil eraser would work great too, but I couldn't find one. The fun thing about this part, is that the options are litterally endless. You could paint all sorts of different patterns, or glue cute scrap book paper on there! After the polka dots are dry, glue the clothes pins onto the board where you want them, using the e6000 adhesive.


Now, is everything dry? Good. Now you can sand until your little heart's content. I usually like a pretty heavily distressed look, so that's what I did. I sanded on the clothes pins, on the edges of the sign, and over the lettering.


As you can see, it will "smear" the paint a tad. That's why you need to make sure that the paint is good and dry before you take the sand paper to it. Now the last thing for you to do, is to staple on your ribbon so it can hang on the wall!


I looooove it! And it's the first thing that I've hung up in the Laundry Room. It already makes me feel better about having to do laundry.


Sooo, what do ya think? Are you scurying around to gather the things you need to make this?

Sorry this post is so long. I didn't quit realize it would take so much to explain this tutorial. But I like to be thorough... So there you go! If you make one, send me pics or leave them in the comments below so I can see what you did!

Oooor, if you don't feel like going through all of this trouble to make your own, you can always visit my Etsy shop and order one! It would make a super cute Christmas gift... Just sayin.



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Sunday, November 4, 2012

Easy Taco Cups

Pin It Dinner really doesn't get much easier than this. And ever since I made it, my hubster has requested this every week. I love when I can find a hearty recipe that is easy and filling. Look at these bad boys:

 
 
Don't these look like they were difficult to make? Well, they weren't! And it's really the best of both worlds when something looks like you slaved over it when really, it took like, no effort. Yeaaaah. I adapted this recipe from here.
 
What You'll Need:
6 tortillas
1 lb ground beef
1/2 cup Mexican blend shredded cheese
1/2 cup salsa
 
First you'll want to grease up a muffin tin. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. While the oven is preheating, cook the ground beef and taco seasoning in a pan, and then drain the grease. In a bowl, mix the salsa and shredded cheese with the beef mixture. Stir until well blended. Now, I have to be honest. I didn't really measure this out when I was making it. I just added cheese and salsa until it looked good. So if your mixture looks a little dry, add a little more salsa.
 
 
 
Now you're going to cut up your tortillas for the muffin tin. I was able to get two squares out of one tortilla. Just push the square into the muffin cup, then fill the cup with the beef mixture. Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes. However, you'll need to keep an eye on these to make sure that the tortilla cups don't burn. Every oven is different, and since the beef has already been cooked, you can adjust the time as necessary.
 
 
 
And that's it! When they're done, you can add any garnish you like. We added cheese and sour cream to ours. Mmmmm. Hope you enjoy these!
 


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