Pickle Recipe

The pickles I canned at the beginning of this month are awesome - go ahead and try it yourself, the recipe is easy and the process is fairly quick!

15 small pickling cucumbers

40 fresh dill sprigs

2 large onions, sliced

10 garlic cloves, sliced

1 qt water

1 qt white vinegar

1 cup canning salt (do not substitute)

Cut each cucumber lengthwise into 4 spears. In a large ziplock bag, combine the cucumbers, dill, onions and garlic; set aside. In a saucepan combine the water, vinegar and salt and bring to a boil stirring just until the salt is dissolved. Let it cool and then pour over cucumber mixture and let sit overnight in fridge.

Next day, divide cucumbers evenly into 4 jars and then divide up onion mixture into jars evenly and pour juice until jars are full (you will have left over juice). Steam bathe (bath?) them for 15 minutes. Place in cool area or fridge for 10 days. Keeps good for 3 months.

I'll make these again =) I thought they looked a little wilted to me when I first opened them, but they're crisp - yea!

Cucumber Salad Recipe

1/3 cup rice vinegar
1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup water

1/2 tsp kosher salt

1/4 tsp pepper

3 cucumbers, thinly sliced

1/2 cup red onion, sliced

1 yellow, orange or red bell pepper, diced

Combine vinegar, sugar, water, salt and pepper in a small saucepan and let it simmer just until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat, let it cool to room temperature. Prepare cucumbers, onion and pepper. Add to vinegar mixture and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. Yum!

Bookmark with magnet

Here's an idea I stole off the Internet for making bookmarks with magnets, works great! I used it with my lesson on Living in Love & Harmony. Just score an 11 inch long card stock at 5 3/8 and 5 5/8 and fold. Put 2 different pictures/handouts on either side and place sticky magnets on underside.I took this stuff from the lesson and used some freebie digital scrapbooking graphics: The girls got Valentine Cookies too:
Incoporated the story of The Little Red Hen because we learned importance of sharing the work in the home and I changed the 'bread' to 'Valentine Cookie' per an idea from Vonda.

Someone got a puppy!

Meet Cannella - yup, we got a puppy! So cuteness and playful:

Her name means cinnamon (which is a good description of her coloring) in Italian - Jonathan came up with that =) We will probably call her Ella for short.

Paper Cupcakes

I designed a cupcake for each Beehive, they got to choose the colors, so we could have a cute display in our classroom (mostly to make it easier for the girls to be aware of who was missing that week from church). The cupcake freebie digital kit is found on Sugar 'n spice site.

I couldn't find any sprinkles (fast enough), so I shrunk down a bunch of freebie graphics and made my own ;)

Valentine's Card for Jonathan

Here are some cookies I dropped off at work for Jonathan, I used to make a lot of what I brought so he could share with his co-workers, but he didn't like to share - LoL As if I didn't bake him up yummy stuff all the time - but now I only make enough just for him ;)

I made lemon frosting for his cookies since he loves lemon flavoring.

1/4 cup butter

4 oz cream cheese

1 cup powdered sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla (could probably omit)

1/2 tsp lemon flavoring

1/2 pinch of salt - hehe

just enough milk to make it the consistency you like

Cream butter and cream cheese together, add the powdered sugar, flavoring and salt. Add milk a tiny bit at a time until thickness of frosting is desired. Add coloring if ya want to the whole batch or in smaller bowls with spoonfuls of frosting.

I dropped off a card I made too. I cut out letters KISSES and then cut my rectangles using card stock, traced the letters onto it and then cut out some of the letter to show just enough overlap, glued the letters on the cardstock and then added cute graphics, yeah a lot of work ;)

I did a 'freebie' search for digital scrapbooking to find all the cute things I added in this card.

I typed two small love notes on 2 graphics, added some words to the graphics and printed them out and let my plotter cut them out. I added some ribbon and it was finally done =)

Jonathan found a card that said 'kisses' on it for me too this year:

Can you tell that's our word? hehe We ate at the Purple Cafe on Thursday night to beat the Valentine's Day crowds - it was sooooo yummy. We had an artichoke dip with crab on bread and a lobster mac and cheese (gruyere cheese) with these amazing crispy green onions on top. I think they should change the name to a pasta dish so it seems more appetizing, but we highly recommend it - now to see if I can duplicate it! =)

Potato Salad Recipe - Yum

Chop up 1 cup celery and 1 cup white or red onion:

Add 1/2 cup light mayo, 1/2 cup sour cream & 1/3 cup apple cider vinegar, 2 tsp kosher salt & 1/2 tsp pepper:

2 1/2 lbs boiled & cubed red potatoes, 3 hard cooked eggs diced & 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley:

I like to eat it while the potatoes and eggs are still warm, but it's super yum chilled (for at least 2 hours) too:

Valentine Cookies for the boys

I used to only make goodies for holidays for the boys when they younger and bring to their elementary school so they'd feel special, but now that they only have 1 & 2 years left, I feel like I have to do it again ;) And they loved it! I guess the moral of the story is - don't stop bringing stuff to school for your kids because they really do like it. I didn't sign love mom or anything, but they both said I could have =) Awwww.

I love sprinkles! I would have spent more time decorating them, but as I had the idea to bring cookies to school on Thursday morning that I'd have to bring them to school that day because there was no school on Friday! But they were tasty and the boys could have cared less if I spent more time making a pattern or not so messy - hehe

1 cup butter

1 cup powdered sugar

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

3 1/4 cups flour

1/2 tsp cream of tarter

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

Cream butter and sugars. Add eggs and vanilla - cream until fluffy. In a separate bowl add all dry ingredients and stir together. Then add to butter mixture. Refrigerate 2 hours or longer. Roll out and cut into shapes, bake on parchment paper at 400 degrees for 4-6 minutes.

Frosting that dries hard:

2 cups powdered sugar

3-4 tbsp milk

1 tbsp corn syrup

1/2 tsp vanilla

Mix together, add color if desired.

Beaded Watches

My mom picked out like 10 different beads that didn't really go together . . . ;) I was able to use some of them and by the 4th pattern, she liked it - LoL
I put together a YW value color watch too:

Jewelry Designs

I beaded a green jewelry set:

And a pink jewelry set:
Fun, fun =)

Keaton as a Red Wolf

Here is Keaton as the mascot at the High School:

He says the head part is very uncomfortable. Last time he wore it the bridge of his nose hurt for 2 weeks. So we didn't get to see him in action, he was told he was going to be the mascot the 2nd half of the basketball game (and we didn't get there until right before halftime =( But I guess the film people were there early so he ended up doing it for the 1st half.

Visiting Teaching Handout Feb

Some more self reliance stuff - I think we must have missed this in the past so we're getting it in abundance now ;) We had a church lesson on it, last month's HT and VT messages as well as this month's HT & VT message.

I used the house template from papercakesandicing blog and just used it with the scripture D&C 88:119 from the VT message for this month. My flower stem says 'Managing Resources wisely 'stems' from' and the red flower middle part says 'wise planning' and in each of the flower petals it says 'financial matters', 'personal health', 'education', 'home storage' & 'emotional resiliency'.

My handout found here.

YW Handout for Home Environment

I had the girls each choose a name for their 'home' and I made a handout for lesson #5, Manual 2 on Home Environment:

I used the quote 'Order is essential in the heavens otherwise, chaos would rule. Order is just as essential in our homes' on the temple picture and the scripture D&C 132:8 about a house of order, not confusion.

Then I incorporated 'when life hands you lemons' . . .

and gave them lemonheads instead of lemonade since it was fast Sunday!

The quote from the lesson says:

Decide now how you will positively influence your family members and home life when 'sticky' situations arise. YOU can make a difference by keeping the spirit present.

Canned Pickles

I have been doing a food co-op for the last 6 weeks and get lots of fresh veggies/fruit for $15. My friend PJ gave me a recipe for canned pickles since we got cucumbers in our last basket.

I marinated it overnight:

Then I strained the juice and brought it to a boil to make sure the salt was dissolved. Distributed the spears evenly and then the onion/garlic/dill mixture and filled the jars with the vinegar/salt juice. I boiled them for 15 minutes and they all sealed! hehe Yes, that's the best part when you're canning ;)

The recipe says to wait 10 days before tasting . . . so if this post is deleted in 10 days, then you know they turned out disgusting - LoL And if they're yummy, I'll post the recipe =)

Bracelet Redo

My friend gave me this bracelet last year - I loved the silver parts with the shiny hearts and sayings, but the smaller beads were orangish and sort of didn't really go with the sparkley red:

Another thing I loved about this bracelet was the red dangling heart charm - see it? So cute!!!

So I rebeaded it with beads that I had and now I'm really excited to wear it. It looks like a Valentine's bracelet, but I think maybe I could wear it year round if I wanted! =)

Egg Soufflé Recipe

18 eggs

1 cup milk

1 cup sour cream

¼ cup butter

1 ½ tsp seasoning salt

Optional:

1 can diced green chilies

1 cup shredded mozzarella

3-4 artichoke bottoms, sliced

3-4 Portobello mushrooms, sliced

Melt the butter and spread evenly on 9x13 pan. Beat eggs with seasoning salt until fluffy. Add milk & sour cream and beat again until mixed. Add chilies & cheese, mix until blended. Pour into pan and add sliced artichokes. Bake 20 minutes. Turn temperature to 400 degrees (but don't wait for the oven to heat up to 400 before you put the dish back in the oven) and add mushrooms on top and immediately put back in the oven, bake another 15 minutes or until middle isn’t sloshy – maybe another 5 minutes more – so 35-40 minutes total.

I used 2 pie pans because my kids don’t like mushrooms or artichokes and just divided the mixture up evenly.

Mix up the ingredients, we like pepper jack cheese in it too.

No Soliciting

We were driving out of the neighborhood and we saw the Penguin Windows people walking door to door for the 4th time since September and I got irritated! If I was looking to buy windows, I'd budget for it and go looking for a few estimates. Who decides on a whim that yes, they want new windows and will give their business to someone knocking on their front door without checking around to see if that's the best deal or not? Please! ;)

Anyway, I made a 'No Soliciting' sign and I'm pretty pleased with it ;) Yeah, pretty much we're not buying anything from anyone who knocks at my door . . . unless it's girl scout cookies - now, who can resist those? =) Is my message clear enough?

The fun thing about not using vinyl on tile is that I can use cute patterned paper. The not-so-fun thing is that it is a lot more work!