Ties: Made for a Man, Cute Enough for a Woman

Before New Years eve I had wanted to get something cute and new to wear for the occasion, but I didn't have much money to spend. So I find in those situations it's best to go to a vintage shop because 

A.) It's "new" to me 

B.) There's always unique things that you're very unlikely to see someone else wearing and 

C.) CHEAP! I ended up getting a nice dress for only $16, but that's another story.

While I was shopping in this particular fabulous vintage shop I saw in their jewelry display case a lot of fabric necklaces and upon further investigation I realized they were made from men's ties! Fantastic idea, and I knew I could easily do it myself.

So while having a craft day with my best friend, we went to Goodwill in search of some good tie candidates to be made into ties. I found a sharp dark gray and silver one and best part: only $1.50

So what you need to make your own tie necklace:

Old tie

Needle

Coordinating thread 

Straight pins

Embellishments; beads, sequins, buttons, whatever you like really

Lay your tie out on a work surface. Using straight pins, pin the tie into a circle (you can adjust the size later). Then begin to make pleats in the tie, remember to make it curve so it sits right when you wear it. This is the experimenting part, so put in all your pleats with pins and adjust according to how you like. Then using your thread and needle, make small stitches at each pleat to hold it in place. Then go wild with embellishments!

I used iridescent sequins and glittered buttons

My best friend made me a pin with her button maker

And when you're tired of making necklace ties, nap on them! (Fanny the dog)

Quick Breakfast

If there's one thing that makes me more like my dad than my mom, it's breakfast. My mom could care less for breakfast food, she'll even order a BLT sandwich for breakfast when they go out sometimes on Sundays to Linda's Wilmot Cafe*. Which doesn't technically serve lunch on Sundays, but they make an exception for her :)

Now my dad on the other hand LOVES breakfast food and so do I. Anything, eggs, pancakes, bacon, sausage you name it, we like it. I especially like French Toast, so when I came across a recipe for 2-minute French toast in a cup I had to try it!

What you need:
Microwave save mug. I used my over-sized one to make it easy, plus it's so darn cute!
Butter
2 slices of bread
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
sprinkle of cinnamon
drop of vanilla extract (optional)
 Powdered sugar and/or syrup for topping

Coat the inside of the mug with butter. Cut up your slices of bread into cubes and place in mug. I ended up using 3 slices cause I had really thin bread and the cup was so big. In a separate small bowl, crack your egg, add milk, cinnamon and vanilla and whisk well. Pour over bread, let soak up for a moment and then cook in microwave for just 2 minutes. Top with powder sugar and syrup.

It tasted really good! I wish I had a better dense bread rather than just the cheap generic white bread. The thick Texas style bread would probably be great for this recipe.



*If you live anywhere near Wilmot, you must try Linda's Wilmot Cafe. It's a really nice country diner with great food and a fun eclectic decor.

Paper Heart

Keeping up with my Pinterest project theme, the next project I chose to do was in preparation for Valentine's day. My boyfriend is not too keen on decorating for holidays other than Halloween and Christmas, but after a trip to the dollar aisle at Target I won him over with robot Valentine gel clings.

Can't beat that for a dollar!

Anyways on to the project! SO EASY!

Supplies:

8-12 strips of paper 11"X2"

12" of ribbon

Craft glue

Fold each strip of paper in half, the short way. Apply glue to one of the ends facing outward, curl both ends of paper in towards the fold and glue to each other. Repeat to make all your hearts. Arrange hearts in a circle.

Then begin gluing each heart to the one beside it. I found it easiest to just glue into pairs first. Before you glue all of them, glue in place one end of your ribbon to each side of a pair. Then finally, complete the circle. Viola! A beautiful wreath for you to hang on your door, and I'm fairly sure that you probably have all the supplies you need on hand already.

I think I will try making a shamrock when St. Patrick's Day comes around.

PAA- Pinterest Addicts Anonymous

Hi, my name is Sami

Hi Sami


And I have an addiction to Pinterest.

Okay so it's not so "anonymous" but seriously they need a support group for members of this site. It's the most fantastic time waster I've ever experienced. So in order to justify my addiction I am actually going to start doing all the stuff I "Pin" that I say I'm going to do. Today I completed a project that I've had on my mind for awhile now; decorating my earbuds. So here's a quick tutorial!

Supplies:
Earbuds of your choice
8m (8.7 yrds) of embroidery floss, color of your choice (you will use almost all of it)

I used my laptop to secure my earbuds to  make it easier to control

 Step one: Start at the plug end of your earbuds. Tie the thread securely to the end.

Step two: Begin a basic "friendship knot". Now, I don't know the technical terms for making these, knowing how to do it has just been embedded in me since my days as a Girl Scout. So the break down steps are as follows:
Hold the earbud wire in your left hand (if you are right handed). Hold the threat in your right hand. Using your left thumb (or finger), hold out the thread and cross over the wire to the right, making a "4" shape like so...

See the "4" shape?

Next, bring the thread under the wire and through the "hole" of your "4" shape. Pull up on the thread until there is no wire showing.

Repeat until you finish where desired. I only did mine up until where it splits into the two separate right and left earbuds but you could go all the way, you would have to get additional thread though.

Nerrrrrrrrrrrd!

Tip: Since my thread came in a plastic sleeve I wrapped the excess around a flashdrive to make it easier to hold on to while making each knot.

Finished project

I love my variation thread color! 

This one did take me awhile, but in my defense I was distracted by the marathon of "Face Off" on G4. Hope you enjoyed this tutorial!

Summer Eats

Best thing about summer? Cookouts of course! I'm a huge fan of summer foods, anything from brats to salad dishes to cool desserts and everywhere in between. The first recipe to share is what I brought for a family 4th of July party: Strawberry Pretzel Squares...yep I said 'pretzels' alright. Some people's reaction to the combination is "Ew" but usually after they have a bite they're hooked by the salty sweetness.

2 cups finely crushed pretzels

1/2 cup  Sugar, divided

2/3 cup Butter or margarine, melted

11/2 pkg. Cream Cheese, softened

2 Tbsp. Milk

1 cup  thawed Cool Whip topping

2 cups boiling water

1 pkg.  (6 oz.) JELL-O Strawberry Flavor Gelatin

1-1/2 cups cold water

4 cups strawberries, sliced 

Heat oven to 350°F.
Mix pretzel crumbs, 1/4 cup sugar and butter. Press onto bottom of 13x9-inch pan. Bake 10 min. Cool.

My pretzels were a bit on the large side. I think I'll put them in a food processor next time

 
Beat cream cheese, remaining sugar and milk until blended. Stir in Cool Whip; spread over crust. Refrigerate.

 

Add boiling water to gelatin mix in large bowl; stir 2 min. until completely dissolved. Stir in cold water. Refrigerate 1-1/2 hours or until thickened (spoon drawn through leaves definite impression). Stir in strawberries; spoon over cream cheese layer. Refrigerate 3 hours or until firm.

YuM! Now go try it, it's TOO easy not to!

 WAIT! There's more! This is a double recipe blog day for AOP! (I know, not procrastinating? that's so weird for me, don't worry I'm sure it's just a phase).
I've been on a BLT kick lately and then I remembered this fantastic BLT pasta salad that used to carry in the deli at the store I used to work at. So I attempted to make my own little creation.

8oz. pasta noodle (rigatoni or macaroni work best) cook, rinse and drain according to package
8 slices of bacon cooked until crispy, crumbled (reserve drippings)
1 cup mayonnaise
4 leaves of romaine lettuce chopped
1 plum tomato, chopped

Mix bacon drippings into mayonnaise and pour over pasta, bacon, lettuce and tomato. mix until incorporated. Refrigerate for 2 hours.

BACON BACON BACON :D It'S BACON!!!!

Southern Livin'

Hey Ya'll! Shortly after finishing the spring semester I went on a week long vacation to North Carolina to visit my best friend and fellow blogger Melania from LUSH-ous Baking. Since she moved down to the south I've truly missed our girl-time together where we would craft, eat good food (and bad-for-you food lol) and watch movies together. So that's what our vacation was mainly about, just doing things like in the good ole days where we were just a 15 minute walk from each other.

On one of the days during the vacation we were inspired by the southern cooking queen herself; Paula Dean. And here are the results:

Southern Red Velvet cake recipe from Boozy Baker

 First we decided it was only appropriate to make something "Southern" so we chose to do Southern Comfort Red Velvet cake from the new baking book The Boozy Baker that I gave to Melania for her birthday. (I love that the author's name is Lucy Baker!)

Preping

 We had to make a run to the ABC Store. For us Yankees who don't know that's what the liquor stores are called in the South. They can't buy hard liquor in grocery stores like we do! I don't know how a Wisconsin girl could live that way...lol.

If you've ever watched Paula Dean in action you know no matter how messy she never takes off her rings!

Don't forget your BLING ladies!

Always tell your Kitchen Aide mixer how much you appreciate it!

Bunny Shaped cake forms; cause why wouldn't you?

I shocked Melania with my speedy decorating skills!

I felt it needed more cream cheese frosting...and got a delicious ghost bunny out of it.

RAWR! Bunny taste GOOD!

Also if you're curious to know what we did with the rest of the Southern Comfort bottle we made a grand discovery that it is amazing with another Southern treat: Cheer Wine! Try it now! Remember it's 5 o'clock somewhere!

I chipped my tooth and I think I ate the piece that broke off!

Today's blog title is brought to you by my former classmate Janice after I made everyone decorated molar-shaped sugar cookies for the last day of class; out of context it sure does sound like a shocking statement!

 

 

 

Janice's "chipped" tooth!

Sugar cookies are something I have a lot of practice with at work. I've literally made dozens of dozens of various shapes and designs for holidays, sports and events. But when I do it at work it's easy; the cookie dough is premixed and so is the royal icing. So rather than take the easy route and give everyone in my class just the 'run of the mill' mass production cookies I thought I'd give myself a little challenge and make my own cookie dough and icing. It was easier than I even thought and tasted 10x better than the ones I make at work (it's cause love is a flavoring you know heehee).

Here is a wonderfully and simple sugar cookie recipe:

1 Cup butter (room temp)
1 Cup powdered sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 1/2 teaspoons almond extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 Cups sifted flour

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F

Cream butter. Add powdered sugar. Blend in egg, almond, vanilla, salt and flour. Chill dough in refrigerator until firm. On a lightly floured surface roll dough into 1/4 inch thickness. Cut with cookie cutters, or if you're crazy (and cheap) like me you make your own template out of cardboard and cover it with plastic wrap and use a knife to individually cut out each one.... 0_o
Place on greased cookie sheets and bake 8-10 minutes. *Cookies should NOT brown*

After the cookies have fully cooled, now comes the the tedious and sometimes a bit frustrating decorating.

Royal Icing recipe

4 Cups powdered sugar, sifted
2 tablespoons meringue powder
5 tablespoons water

Combine all ingredients in stand mixer. Mix on low speed until sheen has disappeared, about 7-10 minutes. Will have a matte appearance. It will be incredibly thick; if it seems too difficult to get out of the bowl or even attempt to hand mix, go ahead and add one tablespoon of water at a time until it is manageable. Transfer to a container with a tight lid to prevent icing from becoming hard during decorating.

Add enough water (one tablespoon at a time) to get it to pass through your piping tip of your pastry bag. I used a Wilton #4 tip. Outline all  your cookies, this serves as a border to hold in the rest of the icing. Now water down the rest of your icing until it's very smooth but remember just a little bit of water at a time. If you do get it too watered down you can add more powdered sugar but it's easier if you just don't get to that point. The icing should be to the consistency of where you pull the spoon out when it drips back into rest that it dissipates in about 2 seconds. The next step is called "flooding" where you fill the space inside the border you created before. Where I have gaps I just "shake" the cookie back and forth to smooth it out or use a tooth pick if there's air bubbles.

Outlined

"Flooded"

Now comes the boring part, you let them dry...and you wait and you wait and wait and wa...you get the picture. You're probably going to have to do those other things that you've been putting off, but we all know if you're like me you'll probably watch a movie or two instead. And then it's still going to take awhile...take a nap too.

Okay so now that you've been so patient you can decorate them more with other colors or if you like them just as is you can put them in individual cellophane bags. I decided to write each one of the girls names on them, because I'm a glutton for punishment. So I took my left over frosting (which don't worry you'll have enough plus a little more to do all these steps the way I did) and I mixed a tiny bit of purple coloring and put it in the piping bag with a #3 tip. After you're done with your decorating go back to waiting a long time again because you don't want all your hard work to get smeared or smashed when you go to package them.

Finished product. (That lumpy heart one was a practice cookie)

Tips:
*These take much practice, don't get frustrated if it doesn't work perfectly the first time. This is a trial and error project for sure.
*Give yourself a few days ahead of time if you're making these for a special occasion. They take a very VERY long time to dry!

Happy Baking! =D