Culinary Experiements

It's been so long since I've done this, but I wanted to share my explorations in strange culinary adventures. I made a cauliflower pizza crust that I had read about in a number of blogs.  K was kind enough to be there try it...I wouldn't call it a smashing success but it was fun. I also made an arugula pesto to go on top of one too with my leftover arugula.

After "ricing" the cauliflower and mixing in all of the ingredients, you pot it in the oven for a bit.

Then you can add your toppings. I went with garlic and cheese on one.

Pizza sauce and cheese on another.

And a spicy arugula pesto on the last one. (Yes, I made 3).

 

I had some extra arugula so I put it in the magic bullet with some olive oil, Parmesan cheese and garlic.  It was spicy, but good. I'd probably add some spinach or basil or something to make it less strong next time.

They were by no means delicious, but they were still edible. The garlic definitely saved it if you ask me. But the verdict, don't try these again.

The next strange culinary experiment was a quinoa burger patty.

I cooked them on the stovetop. They started to fall apart, not quite the texture of burgers you want.

But they were round, so at least they had the shape of burgers...

I didn't have any buns, so a whole wheat tortilla had to serve as the vehicle. They weren't bad, but lacked some flavor. Maybe I should have added cheese? Cheese makes EVERYTHING better. Right?

Hopefully soon I'll have some more strange things I've tried!

Fall!

Fall is one of my favorite seasons by FAR! I just love it! The colors, the leaves, the cold breeze. The decorations. And I thought, I could make my own wreath. So after a shopping trip to Michaels, I picked up a wreath made out of faux branches and red and orange berries. 

I wove the berries into the branches and used hot glue here and there to make sure it stayed. 

It worked great! I love the fall colors on our yellow couch. 

And it looks even better against our red front door!

 I also decided our house could use numbers (since we don't have any). So I printed up some bold numbers on an orange and gray chevron background and put the paper in picture frames from Ikea. I hot glued ribbon to the frames to hang them up together. The roomies didn't like the festive colors so I also tried out red (matched the door, went with fall, Christmas, Valentine's day, 4th of July, basically all the holidays) and a mismatch of frames.

We ended up going with red in all black frames. The ribbon didn't last outside for long, so we ended up propping the frames up on the front steps, which worked fine until it rained. And then...well it was strange. The color behind the numbers dripped and then disappeared but the black numbers are still black numbers. I don't know. Either way I am STILL looking for a good solution to our house number problem.

I also decided to make some fun fall treats: Pumpkin truffles! They have nothing to do with pumpkin other than they are orange. But so cute and so tasty. I made regular Oreo Truffles (like the footballs from the last Superbowl Party) but I  used the vanilla Oreos and added orange food coloring to them and dipped them in Orange dipping chocolate. I found green licorice and cut those in half to use them for stems. I wish you could see the orange inside. I had wanted to use limited edition candy corn Oreos, but couldn't find any.

 I'm clearly still working on dipping the chocolate, but they turned out fine. I also made pumpkin muffins and wanted to make a cream cheese icing (and dye it orange) for the tops so they would also look like pumpkins. But I didn't have time. You'll soon learn that I love theme partys. It's sort of an obsession. And oreo truffles and nutella stuffed sugar cookies. I pretty much make them for every type of party and change the color or shape. Thankfully they are always a crowd favorite, so this 2 trick pony doesn't feel bad about it.

Fall also meant trips to Harper's Ferry to Hike with my newly married bestie and her hubby and kz and an annual trip to Summer's Corn Maze with some of my favorite college girls.

Newly married bliss. 

 

I'd say it was another successful fall. Lots of baking and crafting and mazing and hiking. Plus some DELICIOUS crock pot recipes. Not to mention...Frankenstorm...my next post...

The JamPak

I moved into a little place called the JamPak with 3 other girls (5 if you count the two living in the basement, I usually don't). The name is a combo of the landlord's (aka 2 of our pastors) first names. Anyway, we have come to love the name. So part of my nesting when I moved in was a craft project involving the name. 

Recently (and by recently I mean back in September when I first started this project) I have seen a lot of pinterest links of yarn wrapped letters. And it has become sort of an obsession. Thankfully the roomies were on board. So one Monday night, during our weekly house watching of Revenge, we each wrapped a letter. 

First, I attempted to practice the yarn wrapping with an old idea vase and some hot glue. 

It was an utter failure.

 I decided less glue was better. So I laid out the letters on the ground (had to figure out if I like the look of all different letters...I did).

So for 43 intensely suspenseful minutes, we wrapped our letters. Some of them were harder than others and we didn't really every figure out the best way to do it. I think if i were to do it again I would wrap all the tricky parts and the ends first using lots of hot glue, then go over it all to give it a cohesive look. I'm pretty happy with how my "a" turned out though.

And the LOVE the look the of the finished letters!

 And now our house has a name! We even moved the letters to the fireplace mantle and I think they look great! (This pictures gives you a sneak peak of some of the other craft projects that I'll get to soon!)

Nesting

So I have been in my new house since April, and with one roommate moving out and taking a lot of decorations and furniture with her, I decided it was finally time to settle in. So that meant scouring pinterest for lots of cute ideas and heading to Goodwill and multiple craft stores to get my projects started. I am SO EXCITED about some of them.

One of the first things I did? Organize the kitchen cabinets of course! That included the Dollar Store and matching containers, labels, and lots of pretty organization. One roomie is Gluten free which means you don't just have white flour and whole wheat flour, you have almond flour, tapioca  corn meal, coconut flour, rice flour. Basically, if you can grind it up and cook with it, she owns it. The hard part is they come in plastic bags that can't be resealed.

So when we took everything out of the cabinet, this is the mess we were left with. Bags and containers and a hot mess of disorganization.

So after a trip to the Dollar Store, I came home with 20! containers. Blue (Gluten Free Flours) and White (Gluten filled Flours). Most of the small flour bags we had fit PERFECTLY in the containers I bought. The sugar and bigger flours were put in larger canister. To keep things straight I used black address labels, with the intention of finding or making better ones. Below you will see some of them stacked together.

Excuse the poor lighting in the picture, but I was using my iPhone and it was at night. I put all the Gluten free stuff on the left and the remaining flours, sugars, mixes on the right. The bottom shelf is reserved for sprinkles, cupcake liners, cookie cutters, and chocolates. And the coffee grinder.

And I had to take a picture of the table all cleaned off. So pretty.

And of course I instagrammed a shot of my handiwork.

I wasn't quite done though. I bought some oval labels at Staples and using their online computer program printed out pretty labels. One for the lid and one for the container.

Here's a sample of one of them.

Not to be outdone, I had to add labels (of the Chalkboard variety of course) To our canisters that sit on our counter. 

From Dirty to Delightful-Grimy to Gorgeous (or how I cleaned my kitchen)

When I was little, one of my favorite things to do at home or my grandma's house was sit on the kitchen floor and use a wet paper towel to clean up dirt marks on the floor. I know that sounds really strange, but I love watching things go from dirty to clean. It's probably one of the reason I always enjoyed infomercials so  much. I know, I was a strange child (although come on, that has to be every mother's dream).

I'm not really sure that has changed much though...

Before I moved out of my last apartment, I decided to give things a good clean. We had had lots of different instances involving mice and I wanted to clean back behind the fridge and stove to ensure there were no mice or nests left.

This is what I started with...

 Now if that isn't the most disgusting thing I've ever seen...I don't know what is. (PS the green is some sort of mouse poison I think.) There is something gross that at some point was dripping down the wall. There is so much dirt and grime I wasn't even sure where to start. But I swept and scrubbed and after a lot of elbow grease and holding my breath, This is how it looked at the end of a couple hours...

 Now it's definitely not perfect, but its about 3000% percent better! It didn't all come off the wall or the floor, but I'd say I got about 90% of it. And while it was disgusting...I have to admit I also thought it was a little fun. I love watching things going from dirty to clean.

And I may or may not keep these photos on my phone just to look at them and admire my handiwork every once in a while (even if I don't live there anymore...)

I forget, have we met?

Well it's been a while! I've been a little busy with all my domestic adventuring. I moved, which gave me lots of opportunities for new crafts and organization and even some new cooking ideas. And thanks to pinterest, and a little placed called Community Forklift, I have more projects and ideas than ever! It's a little overwhelming to be honest. But also really fun and exciting at the same time. So what have I been up to? Well, I'll give you a little sample of all the craziness that has taken place since last March.

1. Cleaned behind the fridge and stove of my old apt (This was amazing!)
2. Yarn Wrapped Letters
3. Old Re-purposed Shutters 
4. Lots of gourmet meals (ok, not gourmet, but new meals)
5. Spray paint (Including a gem called CHALKBOARD Spraypaint. It's amazing).
6. Old door into headboard
7. Kitchen cabinet into nightstand
8. Christmas decorations (new house, new decorations)
9. Festive Fall Wreath
10. Painting Class
11. Fancy New desserts
12. Coffee beans and Vanilla Candles (a scent that can do no wrong)
13. Kitchen Organization 
14. Some sewing attempts (not as many as I would have liked though...)
15. The start of a window seat
16. Organized stairs
17. The perfect DIY wedding gift
18. Frame Art
19. State art (because who doesn't love everything in the shape of the state of Minnesota)
20. Knitting attempts
21. More (failed) meal planning attempts

Maybe that's it? It sort of felt like I'd done more in the last year...but I guess not. There are probably a number of started but unfinished projects too...So hopefully blogging again will help me stay motivated to finish some of these projects. But I've been busy. Really busy. I started taking classes again, which is fun (I know, school - fun? But it's true! I LOVE my Career Counseling class!) But that is beside the point. Between Bible Studys (2) and class and friends and a boyfriend, I have little to no time to do anything! Not true, I have plenty of time. But I'm also training for a half marathon...so...less time I guess. I just need to get better at organizing/being productive with my time. And still balancing that will taking time to rest and pray and spend time in God's word. Because that is really the most important thing but the thing I am so quick to ignore. 

Anyway. Balance. That is what it is all about. So I'm hoping to get things done, learn to say no, and honor the Lord with my time. In the meantime, I'll blog about some of the things that I've done the past year, and add photos so the blog is a little more interesting. In the meantime, here is a picture of my chubby baby sister: