Sharpie Glasses

If you have been on Pinterest for more than 30 seconds, you have seen no fewer than 6,000 pins telling you to buy Dollar Tree plates/cups/wine glasses, decorating them with Sharpies, baking at 350, presto chango life long keepsake. Have you tried it? I have. A couple times actually because I did not quite learn my lesson the first time.

The whole concept of Sharpie-decorated glass is kind of like Communism… Really great in concept but not so much in reality.

First of all, I was mislead to think that I could have some semblance of artistic ability while drawing all over those $1 cups and plates. Lies! My creations would have been beautiful if one of the kids did it, but no. I am a perfectly capable 33 year old woman who should be more than capable of drawing something, anything that does not look like a bird pooped on it.
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The good news is, if you hate what you have made, just wipe it with your fingers and whaaalaaaa it is gone, even after baking. And if you want to keep your hands clean, drop that suckah in the dishwasher and that is all she wrote Billy goat.
Honestly, I think that the Dollar Tree and Sharpie put those tutorials on Pinterest and laughed all the way to the bank. Obviously, I’m not bitter about this at all.

*Deep Breaths*

Last week I met my pal Megan for what was supposed to be sushi but ended up being meatloaf (ain’t mad at ya Seikisui… OK maybe I am but we will get past this). I was a little early so I hopped on Pinterest while waiting for her to get there. I saw this Sharpie glass tutorial and heard the needle scratch across the record. Could it be?! I read the tutorial and it seemed completely legit.

Only one way to find out! I hopped on Amazon and ordered some Sharpie paint markers before Megan arrived for dinner.

Three days later I was sitting on my couch surrounded by Sharpie paint markers, a wine glass, and two coffee mugs from the Dollar Tree. “You’ll be fine!” I reassured myself when the flashbacks of my last Sharpie-drawing fiasco kept popping into my mind. I mean, hey, what’s the worst that could happen, right? I get a couple new coffee cups after all my awful artwork washes off in the dishwasher?

OK, my drawing is still sketchy, but this time I kept it simple. I mean, even I can make polkadots with a marker. When I was finished, I put them in the oven at 350 and let them bake for 30 minutes, just like she said to do. I let them cool down in the oven too, but for more like 24 hours than the 3 hours she recommends because I basically forgot all about them. {Whoopsies!}

The result? Success! Artwork that stays even after dishwashing. The green wine glass, white mug with heart, and black mug shown here were my test pieces this time. The other mugs and plate? Welllllllllll, those are the awful pieces I made before. As you can see, they have stood up to the test of time. The coffee cup with words on it was never even used! It has just wiped off from handling. I put glasses with Sharpie paint through the dishwasher and it did not even touch the designs I had put on them! Now if I can just find some kind of marker that helps my chicken scratches become more art like ;)

Sriracha Salmon Fish Tacos

I have been trying so hard to work on my fish cooking skills. I eat fish regularly at home these days, but it is always the same old same old thing: salmon or tilapia filet {purchased individually wrapped and frozen from Costco… a single girl’s dream come true!} with lemons and Old Bay wrapped up in parchment paper and baked in the oven. It truly is delicious, but like I said, I have been wanting to branch out. I have a whole Pinboard dedicated to fish recipes, but to be quite honest, cooking fish scares the heck out of me. The thought of undercooking this mystery food is terrifying. In fact, until I read the Skinny Rules and used Bob Harper’s recipes I had never even thought about cooking fish because it just seemed so daunting. So here I am, salivating over all these delicious-looking fish recipes on Pinterest and continuing to prepare the same old same old lemon and Old Bay fish.

Last week, it felt like it was around 3-degrees outside and I just could not get warm. I spent all day at work chugging chamomile tea trying to warm up a bit but it just was not enough. Around 3 in the afternoon I decided I needed something with a little kick in it for dinner to help me thaw out from the tundra I felt like I spent my day in. I hopped on Pinterest and saw this awesome recipe for Srircha salmon. Done. Done. And DONE!

I swung by the grocery store on my way home and picked up the ingredients I would be needing: a salmon filet {no time to thaw one of my frozen filets}, a couple limes, and green onions. Don’t you just love an awesome recipe with not a lot of ingredients? Got home and collected everything else: brown sugar, wax paper, salt, and of course the Srircha. I had every intention of following her recipe exactly, but then I squeezed a fist-sized big glob or Srircha into my bowl I was mixing the sauce in and then realized she said to use 2 tsp. Whoops! Other than that, I stuck to her recipe completely, including the cooking method and time, which was very different to the way I normally cook fish.

I tell you what, that salmon recipe is the business. The gal over at Baker by Nature sure knows what she is talking about; the fish was cooked to **perfection** and had flavor to boot. I never would have thought to zest a lime over the fish before covering it in sauce. Brilliant!! I chose to use her fish recipe in tacos, so I chopped up some Spring Mix lettuces, a tomato and cucumber, and some cilantro to put on top. My original intention was to make a salsa with the tomato, cucumber, and cilantro, but I made the mistake of making in the food processor instead of just chopping it pico-style and it was so gross and smelled so strongly I threw it out. No need to ruin perfect salmon with half ass salsa, right?

Throw all that on some tortillas, add some quinoa and brown rice along with some black beans and corn and you have a deliciously warm dinner ready in about 25 minutes. Just for funsies, I threw some of the excess sauce in the black beans and corn while it was cooking for some extra flavor.

Honey Pork Loin with Apples

Big Sister invited me and the dude to come to Dawsonville, Georgia with her family and our parents to visit a pumpkin patch. The dude and I decided to make a day out of it, and it was just the perfect Fall afternoon adventure.
We left in the morning with coffee in hand and a great playlist complete with Dave Matthews, David Gray, and Blues Traveler because nothing says Fall quite like some chill music and pumpkin spice!

We followed my parents to an apple orchard in Ellijay for lunch because we were a little early for the pumpkin patch. I love Ellijay during apple time! You can get fresh apples for next to nothing, and they also are selling all the apple fried pies you can eat. (For me, the limit is 2.) (Ok, maybe 3…don’t judge). We bought 5 million apples or so and then were back on the road heading toward Dawsonville and Burt’s Pumpkin Patch.

Finally, we arrived at the pumpkin patch. I had never been to one before, but we will be going back every time Big Sister will have us! We had so much running around behind Weston snapping pictures and listening to him talk about all the tractors. We even went on a hay ride!

On the way back, we stopped by Ellijay to shop and have dinner. I got home exhausted, full, and over the moon with happiness.

Flash forward to about a week later when I was looking at the 4 million or so apples I had left. I had to cook some of them, but I had never cooked with apples outside of pies, so I turned to Pinterest for inspiration. I made a pork loin based on this recipe. It! Was! So! Good! It was so good, I ate almost half of it the first night! I shared the recipe with my mom and she has made it twice since then! It is so easy to make, you can have it any night of the week without taking much time at all to prepare. The original Pin called for a Crock Pot, but I got a late start and did not have time to slow cook it. I will be doing that in the future though!

What you will need is easy enough: 3 pound pork loin, 3 apples, some honey and cinnamon. {I also added some turmeric because I have been trying to eat it everyday, but it did not really add or take away an flavor from the pork.}

I sliced the apples up, leaving the peel on and layered some in the bottom of a casserole dish. Then I cut slits in the pork loin about 1″ apart. Inside each slit, I poured some honey and then put an apple slice in each one. I covered the top with turmeric, a layer of honey, the remaining apples, and then cinnamon. It baked for almost an hour and then was ready for serving. The apples get mushy and it makes for a perfect side dish. I thought with the honey and all it would be really sweet, but it was not at all. It was the perfect savory dish to come and enjoy after work.

And enjoy it I did. I had it for lunch and dinner the next night. So good!

Boys of Bean Town Stew

A couple months ago I went to see New Kids on the Block with my sisters and some friends. I gotta say, after 20 or so years, they still have it!! I wanted to swing from the rafters to get to Jordan Knight. Oooh wee!

In honor of those awesome boys from Boston, I renamed one of my favorite recipes Boys of Beantown Stew. This recipe is actually called New England Baked Bean Stew, and little sister made it for me one night when I was staying with her and her family. I put the original recipe on Pinterest, but when I make this recipe I usually just use it as a loose recommendation.

This is my go-to for last minute easy dinners because I always have the ingredients on hand. I make it for guests, and have yet to meet someone who does not like it. I even made it for my picky eater vegetarian friend Brandon, and he ate the whole pan!

To make it, chop up an onion, green pepper, and a kielbasa. Saute them on the stove, and when the onions become translucent, stir in two cans of diced tomatoes (juice and all), a can of rinsed Great North Beans, a can of rinsed Kidney Beans, and ¼ cup brown sugar. Let that simmer for a while until everything gets nice and mixed together. 

That is it! It is so easy and off the charts delicious! Enjoy!

Mini Apple Pies

Maybe it is because it is fall.

Maybe it is because the holidays are right around the corner.

Whatever the reason, I have become much more addicted to apples than usual. I can not seem to eat them fast enough! I have apple bars in both of my Scentsy burners. I try to eat 2-3 a day year round, but here lately I have been eating closer to 5-6. If I packed them in my lunchbox, I would probably eat 10 a day. I have little Jif to Go packs that I can dip them in, and I love anything sprinkled with cinnamon so sometimes I just do that to my apple slices. Just typing this, I am salivating like Pavlov’s dog really craving a big juicy Gala.

In my last post, I mentioned making mini apple pies that I had seen on Pinterest. I like the concept, but the attached recipes do not excite me too much. Last night I had two thoughts running through my head: 1 – I wonder how those mini apple pies will turn out on Thanksgiving. I hope they are not bad. Maybe Thanksgiving isn’t the best time to try out new recipes, and 2 – Mmm, apples. I decided that since I was making apple pie filling to freeze anyway, it would not hurt anyone if I decided to try to make some mini apple pies.

I guessed my way through and you know I love experimenting like that. I have a pretty solid apple pie filling recipe that has never failed me, but I decided to work on my crust recipe a little. I mean, it is not that is bad necessarily. It is pretty darn good to be completely immodest, but it uses frozen shortening. I hate shortening. It grosses me out. You absolutely cannot get it off a measuring cup or a spoon to save your life. Scooping it out is bad enough, but the thought of disgusting frozen fat in my freezer grosses me out. I decided last night to make a shortening-free crust by adding more of a completely nondisgusting solid fat called butter.

Another motivation to make the mini pies is that in addition to shortening, I am not a big fan of cutting cakes or pies. Growing up, I was the punch server at just about every wedding my cousins had and my sister Nicki was the cake cutter. Even now, I can serve punch like a champ, but I never got the cutting skills like Nicki did. Two years ago, a friend asked me to serve the cake at her wedding. I thought, “How hard could this really be? Nicki did it when we were ten; I’m thirty now. No problem at all!” How hard could it be?!? Throw in a glass or six of wine, and you will have the perfect setting for the story of me butchering my friend’s wedding cake. It was ugly. I started making only cupcakes after that for fear I would have to recreate the ugly cake serving incident of 2010.

The pies turned out deliciously, and I like that they were small. It is perfect for someone like me who lives alone and wants dessert without having to make a whole stinking pie. Not to mention, no more cutting. The stress of deciding the perfect serving size and then cutting it and transferring it to a dessert plate without dropping it or destroying the crust has been completely removed from the process. My personal preference is enough crust to make the insides not so spicy sweet, but some people like a lot of crust and some people like as little as possible; this method allows you to make a little of each. Maybe on some use a top crust and on other just a strudel? It is the perfect use for my new humongo muffin tins.

And, just for you, I am including the recipe below. I also just decided to post one recipe a day of what I will be serving next Thursday between now and Thanksgiving. Maybe it will inspire me to get in the ballgame and actually grocery shop for the holiday.

OOH, and here are a couple warnings from the middle sister before you make your pies:

1: Just because it has apples, do not be fooled. This is in no way, shape, or form a healthy recipe or a diet food. In fact, if you are feeling adventurous and want to add a couple more calories, try sprinkling the tops of the crust with some brown sugar. Yummmm!!

2: You may want to throw in a couple extra apples when peeling them. If you are like me, I always scoop a little of the filling out into a bowl so that I can “check the taste.”

Cheers!

Pre-Thanksgiving (semi) Madness, 2012 Edition

I love the holidays!!  I feel like Halloween is the last exit before the insanity known as Thanksgiving to Christmas.  My typical holiday thoughts are, “Why do I have to buy ____ another ____ this year when they all ready have a million of them?” “Why does my father continue to refuse to make a freaking Amazon wish list? Does he not know how much time and heartache it would save everyone in the whole stinking world if he would just come out and say, ‘I want this.’?!?!”  and “How many toys can I buy the kids before it just seems excessive?”  And do not even get me started on buying for my best friend.  We are best friends.  How hard should it be to buy him something?  Well let me tell you, it is impossible.  Last year I had this great idea for the perfect gift for him and bought 5 Commodore 64 computers on eBay, had a guy rip them up for the stupid sound chip he likes so much, and then around January 31, his present finally arrived and I cried when I saw that instead of the amazing looking steam punk style clock I was expecting and had described to the guy, I was holding a $5 picture frame with a crappy clock face and 4 of those stupid chips hot glued to the corners of the frame.  I did not even give it to him until almost March, and when I did, one of the chips fell off into his hands.  Argh.  That still gets me fired up!

This year I refuse to get lost in that delirious shuffle.  I would like to say that I, the Middle Sister, the infamous Christmas Eve shopper for all gifts that usually finishes shopping on Christmas morning at the Kroger on Walnut Avenue has finished my Christmas shopping all ready.  That is right.  I am done… except for the kids, which is too much fun to do online.  I would like to further this amazing statement by saying that I am putting a strict spending limit on the kids.  When Payton turned 2, I went to Learning Express and bought every single age-appropriate toy they had in the store.  I am not doing that this year… well I plan on not anyway.  I just get carried away sometimes…

Also, next week is Thanksgiving.  In the spirit of living simpler, I scaled down the invitee list to 5 and the cooking list to something much more manageable than trying to create every dish I enjoy at my family Thanksgiving where you have 25 people cooking.  I am just one person, and I have to reign it in at some point.

So, here is my 2 week countdown to Thanksgiving… much better than last year’s absolute madness.  I am pretty excited to accept this challenge for semi-maddness:

This Week:

Finalize the menu.  I never pour over a menu like I do when I cook for my friends.  They are some picky eaters!  Joining me at the table this year are my friends the Smiths, brothers from Washington who can not go home for the holiday, the Gentrys, who are going home for the holiday but will be ready for dinner afterward… or at least Mr. Gentry will be, and my wonderful best friend who is from another country and would not otherwise celebrate Thanksgiving because it is not his holiday.  My bestie will eat just about anything I put in front of him.  I love to cook for him because we love the same foods and he will try anything I put in front of him, no matter how much it looks like dog poop; long story short, he is not my problem when menu planning, although I like to make soup when he is dining with me and I cannot for the life of me think of a good soup recipe I want to try.  The Gentrys are pretty easy to cook for too; he is a vacuum like most men and she is just too darn polite to tell me she does not like Brussels Sprouts so she will eat them anyway.  She loves pumpkin pie so I am making one just for her.  The Smiths… well… they are… different.  Way different.  The younger is not so bad; he will at least try new things.  The older… well… he is pretty.  I have to remind myself of that on holidays when I cook for him.  He is a vegetarian who does not eat vegetables.  That is not a typo.  He also is lactose intolerant and refuses to try new things, does not like anything vinegar (my go to!), mushrooms, or tomatoes.  Yeah.   “Why invite him over and cook to his specifications?” you may be wondering.  I made the decision to cook Thanksgiving dinner last year because it makes me sad that not everyone shares the luxury I do of having family nearby.  I wanted to make sure that everyone I know has a family at the holidays, even if it is an adopted one.  I choose to make kooky weird food for him because I love him… and his kooky weird food is not that hard to make since it all comes out of cans. So here is my menu… until it changes again.  Turkey… should go without saying.  I make mine in a crockpot and it is awesome.  Stuffing… really fancy too.  It comes from an old family recipe that came over the on the Mayflower with the Pilgrims. (AKA: Stove Top).  And then there are the normal staples: cranberry sauce (made from scratch with bourbon because seriously, what is not better with bourbon?), corn (of the canned variety, per Mr. Smith’s request), creamed potatoes, black olives (blech! Another Mr. Smith request), endives au gratin, green beans (for me and Mr. Smith), green bean casserole (yep… 2 beans), macaroni and cheese, sweet potato casserole,  deviled eggs, sweet potato casserole, broccoli with white sauce, and homemade biscuits.  For dessert we will be having flourless chocolate cake, apple pie and pumpkin pie.  I found on Pinterest little mini apple pies, and I am totally going that route for both the apple and the pumpkin.  It is just so much easier to make,serve, send out leftover, and clean up.  WHEW!

Set the table.  Thanksgiving is the only day I use my china.  I can not wait to pull it out again this year!  In my perfect Martha Stewart world, I also make some new placemats for the table, but we will see how much the sewing machine comes out in the next few weeks.  Setting the table this week will just be one less thing for me to think about next week when I lose my absolute mind.

Make apple pie filling.  I am hoping you can make this in advance and freeze it.  If not, I foresee a scrambled run to WalMart on Thanksgiving Day!

Finish all my Home Organization 101 projects.  All I really lack are my upstairs bedrooms.  They really just need some purging and good, old fashioned deep clean.

Repaint the downstairs bathroom.  I do not know what happened with that last can of paint.  It was just poorly mixed or something and looks like absolute garbage on my walls.  Thankfully that bathroom is a whopping 4′ x 5′ and takes about 30 seconds to paint.

Early Next Week:

Grocery shop.  I have most of the stuff all ready, but I will need a bird, wine, eggs, cheese, olives, and endives, as well as wine and other drinks.

Prechop all vegetables.  It saves so much time day of!

Take Cheese for a bath.  He has gotten pretty smelly the last couple days.  Ick!

Day Before:

Thaw turkey and clean it.  The benefit of only cooking for 5 omnivores is that I can get a tiny turkey.  The cleaning it is the worst part!  I have to remind myself mind / matter.

Make cranberry sauce.  It is so much better the next day!  I just have to remind myself not to drink all the extra bourbon!

Thaw apple pie filling.

Make creamed potatoes.  It is so easy to warm it up!  I see no reason why I can not just make it the day before. I am having creamed potato stuff bar with bacon, sour cream, Ranch dressing, onions, and cheese since everyone likes theirs different.

Make macaroni and cheese.  Once again, it is so much better the next day!

Day Of:

Everything else.  Oh geez!

No time like the present!  I have to remind myself “I love the holidays! I love the holidays!”

Home Organization 101: The Dining Room

This week’s challenge on Home Organization 101 is the dining room. I have been dreading this! Since I have been cleaning out and purging stuff from all of my other rooms, all of the recycling and donation items have found themselves in that room. With Thanksgiving less than a month away, I knew this was going to need to be addressed, but I have been hoping I would wake up one morning and everything would magically have gone to the charity store, dump, and recycle center. That did not happen, so I had to just put some elbow grease into it instead.

Behind the kitchen, my dining room is probably my most used room for entertaining. I love to cook big dinners and have friends over to share them. When I walk in there, I am reminded of holidays and birthday celebrations and I plan on adding many more memories to it as time goes on.

In addition to a dining area, this room wears a couple extra hats. I like to wrap presents on my dining room table because it is the perfect size. It is also perfect for sewing big projects; I have a bench on one side of the table which is awesome when sewing because I can keep all my tools right beside me.

I keep so much stuff in my side board / hutch too. It is one of very few deep storage spaces in my house so it is the home for my platters and other big serving pieces. It also is where I keep the china my grandmother gave me when I moved into my house; it is so pretty I should use it more than once a year! I like to use cloth napkins and placemats and I do not think I have ever met a set I did not like because I had a ton in there… most of which were unused.

My china was stacked in my sideboard with paper towels between them that always stuck together and the cups were wrapped very delicately in baggies. I bought these storage pieces for it on Amazon. Love them! Now my china and all the matching pieces are stored safely and in an organized manner. I also put my aprons, placemats, and napkins in baskets in the cabinet to make it easier to find them.

On top I have two small cabinets that used to hold some brown glass, Advent candles, holiday salt and pepper shakers, cocktail napkins, batteries… you name it and it has been in them at some point. Now all that remains is all of my cocktail napkins corralled into one location. Seeing them all together made me realize how many I really had… wow! The other cabinet is empty!!!

When my sister bought her house, this piece was in her bathroom. She also has an old home and this was used as a make shift linen closet. She finally moved it out of her bathroom to give her some more space, and now it has landed in my dining room. It is perfect to store wine glasses, bottles, and the cute decorative plates that normally just hide in my side board.

And with this my entire downstairs is complete with the Home Organization 101 challenge. All I lack is the bedrooms and I will be set!

I would like to add a special shout out to my sweet mother who helped me with this room. She worked her tail off helping me get this room organized, clean, and set up more functionally. I love her so much and always appreciate her help on things… Even I did have a bratty moment (or two).

If you want to participate in the Home Organization 101 Challenge you should check out A Bowl Full Of Lemons. This blog is great!

Burlap Silverware Holders

Well, after being off work for a week, I am both dreading and really excited about going back. I am not excited about waking up at 6 but I am ready to get out of my house and back to the grind. Ho hum…

I will post later on the Home Organization 101 challenge this week, but wanted to write about a small 10 minute craft project I did for my dining room tonight.

I have a ton of burlap left over from my grandfather’s party, and wanted to use some of it up. I had seen on Pinterest some cute burlap silverware holders and I wanted a set of fall-themed ones to use until Thanksgiving.

First, you have to measure the silverware to get an idea of how wide and long the holder will be. I ball-parked 5.5″ by 9.5″. Then cut the burlap, keeping in mind to add to the length for the fold. I sewed the sides to protect against excessive unraveling, but it can also be glued.

To make them more fallish, I stenciled on a leaf. Make sure to put a piece of thick paper in the slip or you will have paint on everything!

Then it just has to dry! Voila!! I made 6 of them for my table. Now I must invite people for dinner to use them!

A Visit from the Niblings, Lent, and Two Birthdays

Last weekend, Mom and I went to Atlanta to pick up the niblings for a weekend visit. I cannot believe how big they have gotten in just a couple weeks! Here are some pictures from the weekend :)

They left on Monday and I missed them immediately of course. Good thing I knew I would be seeing them this weekend… But more on that later.

Wednesday was Ash Wednesday. Easter is my absolute favorite time of year, and I am so glad the season is finally here! For Lent I giving up carbonation, but I am also taking on some things to help me be closer to God. I cannot wait for Easter! I can’t believe my class is almost over!

Thursday was my birthday. I turned thirty-something and had the best day. This is how my coworker decorated my office:

Jason had invited me out for cocktails after work, and little did I know he and my sister had planned a surprise party for me! I walked in and there were my friends sitting at a table eating Scotch eggs and having drinks. I had no idea!!!

The last picture is the coconspirators who put the whole thing together.

Saturday was my Dad’s 60th birthday and we had a party for him at their house. Memama and Grandad came over and Brooke, David and the gang came up. Nicki had found on Pinterest the cutest gift idea. We’ve spent the last month collecting letters from his friends, family, and coworkers sharing funny stories about him. We put them in a scrapbook and he loved it!

Do you want to know a secret? I’m going to be an Auntie again in 5 months or so. Congrats Nicki and Bryan!!

Valentine’s Day Goodies

Sunday I got all into the Valentine’s spirit and baked some Pinterest-inspired goodies for the folks at work. Here’s what we made:

I split a sugar cookie recipe in half and colored one half pink and left the other plain. The uncolored half was cut into little scalloped hearts and the pink was made into bigger scalloped hearts. My original plan was to cover the small one in pink royal icing and leave the big one plain, but then I got the brilliant idea to make my Pepto-pink icing strawberry flavored. Dear Lord, it sounded so good, but wasn’t good at all!! Strawberry icing is awesome on petitfors, but heinous on sugar cookies apparently. Back to the drawing board!! I made another batch of icing that using almond flavoring and it balanced the taste out pretty well. Whew!! Besides, I think it’s cuter with the white icing. What do you think??

After the cookies were baked, iced, sprinkled, and speckled together, I scrubbed the red and pink dyes off my counter and started on project #2. I pinned these a couple weeks ago and have been drooling all over the picture ever since:

I’m link to her blog here. It’s a really cute blog!!

I don’t have a jelly roll pan so used a big cookie sheet with higher than normal sides, and they turned out perfectly delicious. And they looked great on my new rose-covered platter Kathryn gave me for Christmas.

Today I brought them to work and they barely made it through lunch! I was out of vegetable oil, so I used butter instead, which probably didn’t hurt.

After I cleaned up the kitchen (again), I cooked a late dinner just in time for the most intense Downton Abbey… How I that even possible anyway?? Sunday was Cheese’s birthday so we had extra snuggle time on the couch. I can’t believe my baby dog is 4!!