Home

Homemade Beignets

This past spring my family and I made a trip to New Orleans. At the top of our list of treats to try were Cafe Du Monde's beignets. It was a great experience and the tasty, powdered sugar puffs of dough were just enough to send our 10 year old into a treat-induced stupor -- no lie, he fell asleep at the table. :). To be fair we had been walking the quarter all day so anything would have probably put him to sleep, but we still love teasing him (especially since we have a photo to prove it). He mentioned the beignets in passing a few weeks ago and later asked if[...]

Homemade, No Recipe, Soup-Making 101

Hi there! How many of you have leftover turkey, ham, vegetables or other foods from your Thanksgiving meal? What do you plan to do with those things?...Cause' there's only so many sandwiches you can make. :). What about turning some of the leftovers into soup/stew? And not some scripted recipe, but rather a bit of experimentation. I don't know about you, but when I make these kinds of meals my family really enjoys them...its like they know I had to think about this meal a bit more and they seem to appreciate the effort. [...]

Last minute, Easy, Thanksgiving Decoration!

If you are a Cricut user I've got a super quick (and easy) project to personalize your Thanksgiving table. I used Cricut Faux Leather, but you can use whatever you want - cardstock, real leather, acetate, etc. If you look in design space and search for "napkin ring" it will pull up lots of options. I chose the plain circle because I wanted to add additional things to the ring (you can keep it even simpler by choosing a pre-designed one). Search for "leaf" in design space and chose two that you like. Slice the letter of your choice by sear[...]

Brown Sugar Spiced Salmon

Well, my family has dubbed another recipe a keeper! My kids like most mild-tasting seafood, but have had a hard time adjusting to the stronger flavor of salmon. After trying the brown sugar version they were hooked! They did ask me to make it a little less spicy next time, so you might want to reduce the amount of pepper if you have little ones (or if you don't like it hot). I served this dish with steamed asparagus and a King's Hawaiian Sweet Roll. You can click here to go to the recipe. If you try it come back and let me know how it turned[...]

Arkansas Fall Painted Wood Sign

I love browsing the internet for new projects. Lately I have seen lots of painted wood signs that signal the beginning of the Fall season. I thought about what fall meant to me and my family and then created a sign that reflected why we love this time of year. I did my best to take pictures of the various steps in the process so that you can see how I got from the plain sign to the finished design. Supplies: Cricut Explore (plus regular blade and regular mat) Wood sign (unfinished) Paint in your choice of colors (I used acrylic,[...]

A Smoky Twist on Meatloaf

Enter the classic american meal - Meatloaf, mashed potatoes and green beans. Who doesn't love the homey comfort this meal provides? I know my family does. They always ask "are you trying to knock us out (make us go to sleep) with this meal?". I always smile when they say it because it is their way of saying "thanks mom" for cooking one of our favorites. I used the McCormick meatloaf packet and recipe (clean eaters don't kill me - I'm sure there is a recipe somewhere on pinterest for a homemade version). I used ground turkey in[...]

Homemade Mozzarella!

Oh My Goodness! I made homemade mozzarella cheese and it was so easy! Had I known how easy it would be I would have made it a long time ago. There are several websites that give the directions on how to make it, but I used Eat. Drink…Better’s instructions. I did not see the measurement for salt in the recipe so I just eye-balled it…probably less than ½ tsp. There are two items that you probably don’t have in your cabinet…citric acid and rennet, however, I found them easily at Whole Foods Market. If your store doesn’t carry the products both of them ca[...]

Heat Transfer Vinyl Tshirts (w/Cricut Explore)

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL!!?? I know we are more than a month away, but football camp and 7 on 7 season is here. What better way to support our son/brother than to sport his school colors/player's number? These only took a couple of hours using the Rhinestone Wizard, my Cricut and my handy dandy heat press (I'm so glad I have this -- it really speeds up the process). However, you could totally do this project with just a cutter and vinyl. I used magic templates from The Rhinestone World and then imported the design into design space (for the football designs[...]

Spicy Tomato Soup (In my DASH blender!)

It's been a while since I've made a post...sorry! While I have the best of intentions life tends to get in the way. Anyhoo, while outside today I noticed that I had several red tomatoes that needed to be picked and when I came inside of the house realized that my cherry tomatoes needed picking as well (I guess I have been out of it lately)! Since the tomatoes were a bit over-ripe I decided to try out my blender's soup making capabilities. I originally bought my blender as an alternative to the $500 blenders out there and was pleasantly surprised with the results.[...]

Homemade Brown Sugar

A couple of weeks ago I was making pancake syrup for some really sweet college kids and realized that I didn't have enough brown sugar to make as much as I wanted them to have. I went ahead and gave them partial bottles and promised them a refill once their bottles were empty. In the meantime I started thinking...there has to be a way to make brown sugar from home. After a few minutes of searching Pinterest I found a recipe from Martha Stewart's website. I decided to give it a try since I was making a sweet potato souffle that afternoon and needed brown sugar[...]

Subscribe And Let's Be Friends.