I’ve always loved to make my own wall art. The easiest, least skill-necessary, wall art project I’ve done is framing paper. Pretty paper, some scissors.. and BAM instant wall art (I usually hear a BAM because at some point I drop either the frame or the scissors on my foot!). But injuries aside, it is crazy easy. My most recent project stemmed from a visit to The Paper Source, the most wonderful and evil store. Wonderful because it has tons of really fabulous paper and other crafting supplies, plus the employees are super crafty and always have great ideas. Evil because I want to buy ALL THE PAPER! Luckily this time I escaped with only a few sheets.
One sheet of paper, frames & mats from Ikea and instant wall art! Total project cost = $25. Continue reading
Mmmm… brains!
After successfully making chicken stock I was pretty proud of myself! My next task was to use it on a good recipe. I choose to make chicken and dumplings. It’s one of my favorites, since it minds me of Girl Scout camp. The first time I had it I was sitting around a campfire, while the counselors taught us how to cook outside. The recipe I make now I adapted from a Williams Sonoma recipe (found here). In the past, I bought a good chicken stock from a health food store. The homemade is SO much better but using store bought does make the recipe go pretty quick. To be realistic, I’m guessing in the future I’ll probably only make chicken stock about half the time due to time. The Boyfriend LOVES this recipe & it’s great comfort food for fall. Plus, the dumplings look a little like brains, so it’s perfect for halloween! Continue reading
I’ve never made chicken stock before, but was always interested in trying it. When I’m trying to make something for the first time, typically I search the internet for a few recipes I like and work from those. This recipe is a combination of about 4 different ones I liked. I have to say it was a success! Making chicken stock was pretty easy, and a great use for the leftovers after The Boyfriend made a fantastic beer can chicken the day before. The stock tasted so much better than store bought, we’ll definitely be doing this again!It’s the end of the season, so I thought I’d talk about how we managed to go on eight camping trips this season, with little packing stress. The key was organizing the tent trailer (a.k.a. “pop-up” trailer). Most of these tips apply to camping in general. It is a work in progress, so below I’ve shared what we did this summer.
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The hall closet can very easily become a mess. Sheets, towels, toiletries… they can into one giant messy avalanche. Our system has been to contain all the little stuff in plastic totes, allowing us to easily carry things into another room should we need to use them. Plus putting things away is a breeze. Here’s how I’ve organized our hall closet…
After combining households, our garage was a packed. While I had some nice cubbies the previous owner had installed, they were practically falling apart. Then the Boyfriend came home with a kitchen’s worth of free cabinets (my reaction: what! can’t you see what our garage already looks like!)
After my initial shock of coming home to this… Continue reading
We’ve been crazy busy the last few weeks, mostly because we’ve been camping three weekends in a row and are going again this weekend (crazy? most definitely!). So all i’ve had time for was a quick craft. I have some measuring cups that were developing a problem. The numbers were wearing off. Heaven forbid I mis-measure while baking! This is a great set that comes with both a 2/3 and 3/4 cup so I wanted to fix them up. Enter paint pens! These might be one of my most frequently used craft materials. They work great on a variety of materials, including plastic.
When I talked about multiples I had around the house, one of the things I brought up was band-aids. I had 8 half-used boxes laying in a big pile! So I decided to organize our first aid supplies. In my house especially, band-aids should be easy to find! Safety first in our house, after all. This was a pretty quick project, only taking about 15-20 minutes. Continue reading
We have a lot of basil in our garden. In fact, it has expanded into the lettuce area. The great thing about the basil’s hostile take-over of the garden bed (I think it’s in an alliance with the peppermint) is that we have to find lots of ways to eat it. Oh, darn! One of my favorite basil using recipes is Pasta Caprese. It’s easy, quick, and great for a summer day.
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