I wanted to post this on my photography page on facebook, but the filmstrip format I created it in was not compatible (unless I wanted it to be 1″ tall and virtually impossible to see) SO, I decided to post it on my blog and share a link. Enjoy these “outtakes” from a recent engagement photo session we did with the gorgeous Ellen Neeper and her wonderful fiance, Blaine Wensler 🙂
Ok, so it’s hard not to get addicted to Pinterest. It’s basically a virtual bulletin board where you can categorize and “pin” and save all the great ideas you find online! Recipes, projects to try, or just anything you love. By linking to your facebook or twitter account, you can create your own login for Pinterest here: http://pinterest.com/
Anyway, I’ve decided to add a category to my blog for the ideas I’ve found on Pinterest, and have successfully tried. To start off, one of my favorite categories: Food. To take a look at my Pinterest board in the “Food” category, go here: http://pinterest.com/beaubeth/food/
Here are 2 recent food ideas I found on Pinterest which I successfully re-created and loved:
#1: Home-made Egg McMuffins!
Yum! So, here’s the secret…
Spray a non-stick muffin pan with cooking oil, break an egg into each muffin cup, and bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes. Put cheese (and meat optional) and then egg on one half of a toasted english muffin. Top with other half of english muffin to create a sandwich. You can buy canadian bacon in circular shaped pieces which are perfectly sized for these sandwiches, but to save money, we just used lunch meat. It would be great with sausage patties or bacon as well! Make sure to freeze these for about an hour, uncovered, before wrapping individually with foil or saran wrap. They will accumulate condensation if you wrap them immediately. Place individually wrapped breakfast sandwiches in a sealed plastic bag and store in the freezer until ready to eat! Re-heating in the oven or toaster oven is preferred, but if using a microwave, wrap sandwich in a paper towel and heat for a minute or so (until hot)
And #2, a new favorite “healthy” dessert snack.
Chocolate stuffed Raspberries:
They are the perfect mix of tart and sweet! I used white chocolate chips…just stuff into the raspberry and you’re done! Wash and dry raspberries before using. I tapped each berry on a paper towel to shake off any excess water before stuffing with a chocolate chip. I stored them in the serving glass, covered in saran wrap in the refrigerator until I served them. I later found that storing them in a plastic bag was not a good idea. Two days after I made them, I tried to transport them from Kansas City to Oklahoma in a ziplock bag for my parents to try, and they were mush by the time I got there! So. Not sure how long these can keep before they start getting mushy, but I would suggest storing gently in a tupperware container or in a bowl lightly covered with saran wrap, and planning not to wait forever after making them to serve and eat!
And…….
Of course, I’ve also had my share of Pinterest “Failures” as well. I will save you the laugh you’d get if I posted visuals to document these failed attempts, but I will briefly describe two of them.
Cheesy Zuchinni Squash bake. Turned out runny! By the time I baked the zuchinni and squash long enough to get the cheese on top to melt and brown nicely, the veggies had cooked to sogginess! I’m not even sure how to avoid this next time… maybe fry the zuchinni and squash in a skillet first and broiling in a pan afterward to melt and brown the cheese? Who knows.
Strawberry chocolate pie. Ok, this failure was totally my fault because I deviated from the directions a bit. It was a simple dessert, requested by my husband on his birthday (he was sadly disappointed). An oreo crust, filled with cut up fresh strawberries, with chocolate drizzled on top! Such a great concept! Until I didn’t like the looks of the fresh strawberries I found at the store so I opted to get a bag of frozen strawberries instead. Seemed like a good idea, especially since these strawberries were already cut for me! Less work! Yes!
…..No. What was I thinking? I don’t know. But, I decided to just dump the bag of strawberries into the pie crust (so easy!). I used a chocolate topping which was supposed to harden in minutes, and I squeezed this all over the pie…even making a nice looking drizzled pattern on top. Wow! I’m done! Just put the lid on the pie, and refrigerate until ready to eat! The strawberries would thaw by the time we were ready to eat it in a day or so, right? Right. They would thaw and get soggy and runny. Which would would in turn make the crust soggy, as well as UN-harden the chocolate topping! By the next evening when I proudly pulled out my pie, I was sadly surprised to find the result I think I should have expected if I would have thought things through a bit more. Ha! Oh well, better luck next time!
25 days til….
CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!
The countdown has officially begun, and so far we have 2 advent countdowns in our house. The first is a tree my sweet husband made for me last year, with pegs to hang an ornament a day until Christmas. The second is an awesome handpainted box with 25 drawers, each with a handmade, ‘shabby’ vintage-style ornament to go on the tree. My mom got this for me years ago and I love it 🙂
Can’t wait for Christmas…Let the countdown begin!!!!!
It’s never too early to start decorating for Christmas, right? (This is coming from the girl who had her tree up from Thanksgiving until Spring Break last season)
Well, I’m finding that it is quite a challenge decorating in a one-bedroom apartment. Last year, in our 3 bedroom house, we enjoyed our big tree, lots of decorations, and lights outside (which, by the way, we could turn on and off from our bedroom with a remote! Fancy, fancy, thanks to my handy husband) This year, we’ve downsized into a small apartment and in order to decorate, I’m realizing I have to completely remove all the existing decorations to make room for Christmas stuff. And where do those decorations go?? Still trying to figure that out 😉 Anyway, we’ve talked about putting some lights out on our patio that we can enjoy from our huge sliding glass door/window, and we’ve decided we shouldn’t attempt putting up our large Christmas tree in here for fear we’d have no room to live! I’m planning to make a Christmas wreath for our door but haven’t gotten to that yet.
So far, I’ve put together a Vintage menagerie on top of one of our bookshelves. I’m IN LOVE with all of the items I used here! …May add a few more touches still, but for now, here is what it looks like:
Here is a close up of the cloche, with tiny tree and miniature Nativity under it:
And a grouping of trees I put on one of our end tables by the couch, with the big hour-glass Steven picked for us from Pottery Barn last year. I love this because it’s like snow falling in the hour-glass…of course!
And, last but not least, another small detail that makes me smile. The little dangly-legged birdie with snow on his boots that Steven bought me at the Christmas Shoppe in downtown Parkville about a month ago. He is sitting on top of a box of advent drawers that holds ornaments for each of the 25 days of the Christmas countdown. My mom got it for me and I love it. I have a few “adjustments” to make to the tree that holds the ornaments, plus, we can’t start the countdown until December so….you’ll have to wait to see a picture of the whole thing 😉
Finally, a long-awaited day of crafting with my mom. We didn’t even make a dent in all the ideas we’d like to materialize into finished projects, but we did accomplish quite a bit! Take a look. Be inspired!
Leather cuff bracelets made with vintage buttons and buckles:
Just measured our wrists, attached a button at one end of the leather strip, and made a slit at the other end large enough to go over the button but tight enough that it wouldn’t slip out. So easy! We used a vintage belt buckle for the bracelet on the left, and just had to slide the buckle right onto the leather (and cut the leather so that it was a snug fit and wouldn’t slide around). For the bracelet on the right, I used handstitches to gather a strip of lace trim and make a flower, then glued a vintage jewelry piece to the center using this really awesome glue called E6000. Works great for many things! The cream colored bracelet shown in the middle photo with the leather cuffs was made from a random piece my mom found while antiquing. It had all those amazing rhinestone accents already attached somehow to this leather strip (who knows what it used to be?) Anyway, I fell in love with this scrap piece awhile back and always wanted to make something with it. All we did was use the E6000 glue to adhere the leather strip to some coordinating canvas ribbon and there is an adorable bracelet (Just tie it on) I wore it to church the next day and it was just as cute as I hoped it would be 🙂
Canvas Art:
The next project was concepted by my mom. The idea was to cover canvases with burlap and frame vintage jewelry pieces with a small vintage, metal, oval-shaped frame (We ended up painting the canvases black first so that the white wouldn’t be so stark showing through the holes in the burlap. It definitely gave it a much richer look) We thought the composition needed another element besides the framed jewelry, so we each chose a scripture card that meant alot to us (my mom has a huge jar of these little vintage cards that have scripture on them) Mine is John 6:35 “I am the Bread of Life: he that cometh to Me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on Me shall never thirst.” It has this poem verse under that which says: “Fountain of grace, rich , full and free, What need I, that is not in Thee? Full pardon, strength to meet the day, And peace which none can take away.”
I love how they turned out. My mom has been collecting bow pins for me for awhile now and she already made me a wall hanging with several of them…I absolutely love these three mini bows in this frame. And I just love burlap 🙂 See the materials and finished products below:
Baseball flower:
My mom found a cute idea in a magazine that she wanted to try. She bought 3 baseballs at an estate sale, removed the leather, and used the pieces to make a baseball flower like the one shown in the magazine. We opted to glue the pieces together rather than try to sew through the tough leather. We found two buttons to pair together for the center (clipped off the loop on the back with wire clippers to get a flat surface to glue) I think my mom is going to cover a square canvas with black burlap and mount this in the center. So cute!
‘Count Your Blessings’ dry erase board:
Ok, here’s a great idea I got from my new addiction: Pinterest. Framed burlap (if budget allowed, I would have used a larger, more ornate frame) where you can list out the things you are thankful for using a dry erase marker. The dry erase marker we have didn’t work very well, so our board is currently “blessingless”, but we have a lot to be thankful for! On the To-Do list is to get a new marker and fill this up so that when guests come over they don’t think we are ungrateful grumps! 😉 I attached a handmade flower to the bottom for an extra decorative touch. Just gathered a strip of wide lace trim using hand stitches and tacked it into a circle to create a flower shape, pinched 4 small squares of burlap into leaf shaps and hot glued them onto the lace, and glued a vintage button in the center.
…..And, last but definitely not least…..
Decorative vintage photo pillow:
Here is a gift my mom made for me…inspired by something similar she saw at a craft mall in OKC. She used old photos of my grandmother and tied them along the front of the pillow she made out of black burlap. I LOVE the rhinestone pin she found for the top! She says looking back, she would probably have wrinkled the ribbon before tying the photos on, just to give it a textured, worn look. If I ever change the photos out, I may try that…but I love it just the way it is. She did a great job. Now I need a cute bench at the foot of my bed to display it on 🙂
We went to the pumpkin patch with my inlaws last year, and this year went with both sets of parents. We started a new tradition where each person has to pick out a miniature pumpkin/gourd which is their favorite. It’s pretty funny to see who picks what. The girls always have something pretty or cute, and my father in law always picks something that looks like an alien because he loves Sci-fi!
Here are our choices:
Steven is always determined to find the most perfect pumpkin in the patch, so that is the one in the middle. Then, our family picks from left to right:
My dad picked the one that looks like a bell pepper,
My mom picked the one that looks like a Hawaiian flower,
I picked the white one (you’ll see what I wanted it for in a bit)
Mom-in-law picked the tiny orange one,
Steven picked the, once again, “perfect” shaped cool-looking one
Father-in-law picked the green alien life form gourd 😉
SO, here is what I wanted to do with my white one. If I would have had a cute teacup and saucer, I planned to put brown decorator’s moss in the cup and put the pumpkin on top… but for now, I used this old spring I got when antiquing with my mom and mom-in-law that same weekend. I love it! I used paint that you squeeze out of a tube, which made the dots easier to draw, but if I didn’t have that, I would have done the dots with acrylic paint and the end of a paintbrush. Another idea I had but didn’t end up trying was to spray paint one of the mini pumpkins black, and then paint white polka dots and have sticky rhinestones in the middle of some of the dots. Also would have loved to make a G monogram on the front of a bigger pumpkin to put outside our door. Will save that for next year, I guess!
And here is the fall wreath I made for our door… wreath was $1 at Walmart and sprigs I put in it were 40% off at Hobby Lobby 🙂
…And then I’ll leave you with a laugh…
Have you ever seen a leaf this big?? Gunny hasn’t!
I decided to make a section of my blog for the things “i love…”
you know, appreciation for the little things in life 😉
“i love…” #1:
‘gruffy & gunny’
Here is a recent photo I took while playing around with a new camera lens. (I was playing with depth of field, so Gruffy is supposed to be blurred in the background)
I love it when they cock their heads in opposite directions for a photo!
And now, Gunny gets her own 5 minutes of fame because I got 2 super cute shots of her:
How can you resist that cute tiny face!?
And then, my favorite new artwork in our home…
Gruffy and Gunny from the perspective of a 5 year old:
I know, stiking resemblance huh? You can totally tell which is Gruffy and which is Gunny! This was made by an adorable little girl I nanny for. The 2 scribbles at the top of the picture are dog treats- one for each. When I told her that I’d have to be careful when showing it to G&G because they would think those treats looked so good they’d want to try to eat them, her response (after a concerned look and a few moments of thought) was: “Well, maybe you should put the picture in a frame so they can look at it but not be able to eat it!”
Ha! So (of course) I did!
Well, I’ll end with this pic. Can’t really top it! But, I’m sure Gunny and Gruffy will work their way back into my “i love…” section. Often. 😉
Every diary I’ve ever started, I haven’t made it beyond about a week’s worth of entries…if that…
BUT, I am really optimistic about starting this blog in hopes of fueling and organizing my various creative outlets. Well, here it goes! Wish me luck!
Creative pursuit of the week:
I’ve always wanted to try making some fabric flowers. After a purchase of 2 vintage hankies on a shopping outing in downtown KC with my mom and mom-in-law last weekend, I decided to see what I could come up with.
Paired with some great vintage polka dot fabric I already had, I thought these 2 hankies would be perfect to use for my flowers:
And the results:
Now, all I need to do is decide how I want to use them! I’m thinking I’ll keep them clustered together like they are in the photo, and attach a felt backing so I can make a hairpiece or something. I think these would be perfect for a baby headband 🙂
I’m definitely planning on making more and trying new techniques. I need to have a flower making day and come up with lots of different variations! One thing I will try differently next time is to glue as I go along instead of hand-stitching. I think that probably made this project more time consuming than it had to be…
lilbirdietoldme 