Growing Green Onions -- A Pinterest I did it!

Source: homemadeserenity.blogspot.com via Paulette on Pinterest

I saw this, and I didn't really think it would work.  Last week Monday, was Chinese New Year, and I used quite a few bunches of green onions.  I figured I would give it a try.

Here they are after one week.

You can see where I made the initial cut to the onions.

They have doubled in size, and they start growing almost immediately!  I really hope that these last, because it is really awesome!  Thanks pinterest!

Go Ahead and Buy that No Touch Soap Dispenser

Been holding off buying one of these, because the refills are so ridiculously priced?  No problem, refill them!

My 64 oz. soap cost $4.99.  Those refills hold 8.5 oz for $4.99.  One of these big guys will refill 10 of the small ones.  That's a savings of $4.50 each!  And that is if you use the soap at full strength!  I often water it down, because it dispenses too much soap for a single handwashing, especially if most of the handwashing is done by kids.  I use about 1/3 - 1/4 water.  It still feels nice and thick, but its thin enough for the kids.

You will need your empty refill container, soap of your choosing, and one of these cheapo condiment squirt bottles.  Please have a dedicated bottle for this, and don't use ones you've used for food.  Fill up your squirt bottle with soap, and pop it into the top of the refill container.  You will defeat the valve temporarily with the nozzle.

Fill it up to the bottom of the colored cap, and pop it on your dispenser!

Linking up!!

Make Your Own Bisquick One Picture Post

Linking up!

Thanksgiving Treats-- A Pinterest I made it!

Source: ourbestbites.com via Paulette on Pinterest

Inspiration and realization!  These looked pretty easy, and fun for Melissa's class party.  20 turkeys it is!!

I used one regular sized container of regular oreos, and there were just enough for this.  Your results may vary, since they're packaged by weight.

Each Turkey requires:
2 oreo cookies
1 mini peanut butter cup
1 whopper
6 candy corns
Chocolate Icing

You'll want to add the candy corns to the tail first.  I did end up breaking a few of the cookies, and had to "glue" them back together with the chocolate icing.  If you do break them, put that broken part towards the back.  :)

Peel all of your mini peanut butter cups.  The easiest way I found was to remove the foil, and freeze them.  After frozen, remove the paper so the cups stay nice and pretty.

After they have been peeled, remove a small portion so that they will lay flat on the cookie.  Then attach your whopper to the opposite end and the candy corn beak to the whopper.  The original picture shows a shorter beak, but I was being lazy and didn't cut them.  I think they look fine as is.

 You can now attach the body to the cookie!  I added a little turkey waddle with a piece of fruit roll up!  Add your eyes and feet now if you like.  I didn't add them because the 5 year old were just going to eat them as is anyway.  It took me at least an hour to make 20 of these buggers.

Cinnamon Glazed Pretzels -- A Pinterest I made it!

Source: organizeyourstuffnow.com via Paulette on Pinterest

I was inspired by this pin of Cinnamon Pretzels.  I was doing some last minute teacher gifts, and thought that they would be super easy to make.  I had a bag of Dollar Store pretzels in the cabinet, so it was working out to be an easy and fast gift!

The original recipe is:

2/3 Cup Vegetable Oil
1/2 Cup Sugar
2 teaspoons ground Cinnamon
1 16-ounce package Small Pretzels

Combine Oil, Sugar and Cinnamon in a pan and add pretzels to coat.  Bake 30 minutes at 300°F  Cool on waxed paper.

Okay, people, seriously they came out so bad that I threw them away and didn't take a picture!  The sugar did not stick to the pretzels at all.  I started doing some looking online, and found that this was a common problem with this particular recipe.

Back to the drawing table!

I was then thinking about those lovely cinnamon glazed almonds.  Those seemed to have the cinnamon sugar stick to them.  So I found another recipe.

Source: getoffyourbuttandbake.com via Paulette on Pinterest

1/3 cup butter
 2 egg whites, at room temperature
Pinch of salt
 1 cup sugar
 4 cups whole natural almonds
4 teaspoons cinnamon

1 Tablespoon pure vanilla

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease a large cookie sheet, and set aside. In microwave safe dish, melt butter. Set aside. Meanwhile, beat egg whites with salt until very frothy; gradually (very slowly) add sugar, beating to stiff peaks. Gently fold in almonds and cinnamon. Pour melted butter & 1 Tablespoon Vanilla into almond mixture, and fold in. Pour mixture onto pan, and spread out evenly on greased baking sheet. Bake about 30 minutes, tossing every 10 minutes, until glazing mixture has set up around almonds. Do not wait until the glaze is totally dry. Let cool, then store cooled nuts in sealed container.

*Don't panic if they glaze mixture hasn't stayed in stiff peaks. If will work just fine!

But I am not going to crack open some eggs just for the egg whites.  Sorry, I'm too lazy for that.

My recipe was this:

1/3 Cup Oil

1 Tbsp. Cinnamon

1 Cup Sugar

4 Tbsp. Water **

4 tsp. Meringue Powder **

1 16 oz. Bag of Pretzels

**Meringue Powder and Water are substitutes for 2 egg whites.  Feel free to use egg whites if you like.**

Combine the oil, cinnamon, sugar, water and meringue power.  Toss with pretzels, and bake at 300° for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Since I packed every single one of these up for the class party and teacher gifts, I will have to add the picture later, but I promise they look exactly like those almonds but on pretzels.  They were delicious!  I am definitely going to be making more for my Festivus Party!

*****Edited to add picture*****

Spinach Artichoke Dip -- A Pinterest I made it!

Last week, my dear husband took us to Outback.  We don't make it a habit to order appetizers, because after you finish them, you are usually too full to eat your dinner, but we made an exception this time since we were famished.  Blooming Onions are just gross and oily, cheese fries you can get anywhere.  We narrowed it down to flatbread pizza or Spinach Artichoke Dip.  Since we're cheap, we opted for the dip.  Not only did we enjoy it, the kids did too!  So, I went on the hunt for the recipe. 

I can generally find what I'm looking for on the internet.  In fact I have had people contact me to find something for them.  But, alas, I could not locate a recipe for Outback's version of the spinach artichoke dip.  I did however locate one for Houston's version here.

Source: copykat.com via Paulette on Pinterest

If you read my blog and look at any of the recipes, you know that I'm not one for adhering exactly to the recipe, so of course I made some substitutions.  I also did not measure anything, and just eyeballed it.

I made it roughly like this.

• 1 can artichokes (drained)
• 1 (12 ounce) package fresh spinach, chopped
• 1-2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 block softened cream cheese
• 1/3 cup freshly grated sharp provolone cheese
• 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
• 1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 small can water chestnuts, chopped

This is what it looked like before I baked it.  I did top it off with some more parmesan before putting it in to cook.  Sorry its not a better picture.  I took it with my cell phone.

I'll have to post the after picture later, since I'm taking this to my parents for dinner tonight. Hubby made pulled pork on the smoker, and we're having all kinds of yummy stuff.  I'm going to see my Godmother who I haven't seen in 15 years!

After baking and tasting, I thought that this needed a bit more garlic.  I only baked a portion of the full recipe, so this is about 1/3 of what it makes.  Here's the picture:

Exercising with Wii

I picked up this game NFL Training Camp for the Wii for $10 at Wal-Mart.   

Developed in collaboration with NFL strength and conditioning coaches, users will experience the thrill of competition while challenging friends and family in authentic NFL football drills with real NFL players. EA SPORTS Active NFL Training Camp with Total Body Tracking uses the included heart rate monitor and wireless motion tracking to provide a challenging workout and help deliver measurable results. It will link to the EA SPORTS Active online hub where users can share training results and challenge others to beat their personal best, as well as track progress toward specific fitness goals. EA SPORTS Active NFL Training Camp brings the real NFL training camp experience right into the living room.

 Since I don't have the time or money to visit the gym on a regular basis, I figured that this would be a great alternative.  I've done the workouts a few times on the easy setting, and it was quite enough!    The online tracker gives some nice information, and I especially like that it keeps track of my heart rate with the tracking system.

Here's a little shot of just one of the online reports.

I love this and it really does get me exercising, which is a huge deal because I've always hated exercising.  It was definitely worth the $10 investment!

Mr. Bones

9 milk jugs later, I finished my pin!!

Isn't he super cute?  I had no real pattern to go off of, just a picture, so I did the best I could.  And of course I saved the cut outs and extras to make more!




Pin It

A super cute model!!

A close up of the feet, modeled after my own!  Those were probably one of the more tricky things to cut out.

Arms and hands, again, modeled after my own.

Pelvis.  Took some tricky thinking to attach it to the other milk jug.

Here's a close up of my wizardry.  Cut a slit in the bottom jug and forced it into the top.  Then punched holes in both and tied with embroidery floss.

 Shoulder blades.  Again a little tricky to figure out how to attach those suckers.

Head attachment.

 And the beautiful head cut out with an exacto knife.

 Most of the joints were attached like this.

And one final shot with model.  He took me about a month to make, including collecting the jugs, and being lazy, and then cutting most of him out in one day.

The next step is to paint him with our glow paint!!

Got my Downy Unstopables Sample from Vocalpoint

Don't you just love getting stuff in the mail?  A free sample of something is great!  It's even better when it's something that I have really been wanting to try!  Have you heard of these Downy Unstopables?  We use a lot of unscented things due to allergies, just because that's how they come.  Not necessarily allergic to the scents, but we can keep them to a minimum.  That's why I figured this would be great.  I get to add as much or as little scent as I want.  I got the Blue Fresh Scent, and it smells really nice.  It is a bit overpowering for me, so I think I will like a bit less than the whole package in my wash.  I'm going to try it out today!!

You can always sign up for Vocalpoint!!  Check it out here!

Coffee, Tea and Me

I have started drinking more coffee.  I was drinking this instant coffee that I could use my IngenuiTea pot and make one cup at a time.  Until I ran out of coffee.  Then I had to use beans.  I can drink one really big cup a day, and I'm good.  So I resorted to using our french press.  Yuck what a mess to clean.  So then I decided just to use our super awesome coffee maker/espresso maker and ended up drinking 3 really big cups of coffee on Friday which was not so good. 

This weekend, DH took me out to FL Mall and we stopped at the Teavana store.  I wanted to pick up some of the White Ayurvedic Chai Tea that my Mom had, because it was awesome!  Now, I have been in a Teavana store before, and it is pricey, but the teas are excellent.  I saw the price on the gigantic bin said $5, so I got 8 ounces.  Too bad the guy didn't mention it was $5/ounce.  I didn't find that out until we were all done.  I started talking to him about a substitute for coffee, so he talked me into this mix which smells a lot like coffee, and had some really expensive teas in in.  Almond Biscotti, Honeybush Vanilla, Black Dragon Pearl, and Matevana.  I was getting concerned, but again, I know that the tea lasts a long time, and you can steep it more than once.  $77 later, I was done.

I really wanted to come home and try out my blend, but it was 9:00, and I can't drink too much caffeine that late, so I had a nice cup of the Chai.  I waited until this morning to try my new blend, and it smelled great!  I added just some sugar to it to try it, and took a great big whiff of it.  The first smell, you get this strong almond followed by chocolate and fruit with a hint of vanilla.  The first sip tasted like....tea.  I was so bummed.  Then I thought, maybe some creamer would help.  So I added some of my favorite hazelnut creamer, and that made it taste like english style tea.  Oh well.  It is a delicious tea which reminds me of a cookie.  And I have always liked milk in my tea. 

Maybe if DH ever lets me back into a Teavana store, I will just get some of the Matevana instead of this very expensive mix.