ART WORK

Small SUMMER HOME

FABRIC CORK BOARD

  "Small Summer Home" 

 I needed something to hold papers and schedules.

I found cork boards at DI (thrift shop) 

WHAT WHAT

The big board $8.00 small board $4.00

Painted boarder with white spray paint. 

 I found dang cute fabric at Hobby Lobby. On sale!!!

Used 3M Super 77 Multipurpose Adhesive.

Cut fabric a little bigger than the cork board.  Sprayed with adhesive in sections and spread on board using patching spatula to smooth and tuck in extra fabric into wood frame.

 Paper towels covered my cork board to spray paint wood boarder.

FINISHED RESULT

*NEXT PROJECT*

 CABINET IN LEFT CORNER

Chair Make Over

Found these stinking cute chairs at the DI (thrift store)

 WHAT WHAT

Shopping at Down East I found a table on clearance for $100.00.

WHAT WHAT 

The table was perfect to put the chairs around. I'm going to touch it up and fix it, but it's in storage until we move into our new home we are building.

 Found this white vinyl at Jonann's Fabric. Had a 50% coupon off a purchase!

WHAT WHAT

Recovered 8 chairs. My fingers are still aching. But they turned out really cute. 

MY GIRLS

 

My LIFE 

pic by I-phone

Anthropologie Creation

I was looking for cute mirrors to hang in my daughters room. I found these cute log mirrors on the Anthropologie Website. Perfect mirrors to buy, until I saw the price 2,000 dollars.

Small town connections

In Heber, we found a log yard and had them cut (chainsaw) logs into 3 inch circles. The circles were way to thick so we found a cabinet maker in town who cut down another inch to the circle log. 

NOTE *Take full log to cabinet maker. Makes better cuts and looks better. And Cabinet maker won't cut fingers off trying to cut a 3 inch log circles on machine. 

   

 *Sanded circles with a high grit sandpaper.

 The log yard worker suggested the finish spray to use. I believe it's a polyurethane that prevents yellowing.  

*DEFT clear finish spray- Satin

Sprayed logs on both sides. I spayed them 3 times on both sides letting them dry 1 hours in between spays.

 My cousin and I ran to Michaels craft store and found the mirrors to place in the middle of the circle logs. I was thinking I would have to custom cut the mirrors, but Michaels had the perfect circle mirrors for a very very low price! 

*Make sure you pick logs that will work with the mirror sizes at Michaels.

 The cabinet maker suggested a mirror glue. He picked it up for me. But this is the product I used.

 *Gunther Ultrabond Mirror Mastic 

I let the glue dry over night.

Top- Anthropologie $2,000

Bottom- Laura creation $150.00

Pics from I-phone.

EZ-PEEZE Brownies

EZ-PEEZE BROWNIES

 

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EZ-Peeze Brownies

Ingredients

Refrigerated cookie dough

Reeses's cups or Oreo's

Prepared box of Brownie Mix

Preheat oven at 350* 

Squish 1/2 of each square with cookie dough on the bottom of the pan.

Place Reese's cup upside down on top of cookie dough. Top with prepared  brownie mix, filling 3/4 full.  Bake for 18 minutes. 

 I prepared these brownies in the evening after dinner. I was hoping to take goodies to work to share with coworkers the next day. 

It was simple and easy and fast to make. 

I sprayed the pan really well with Pam spray.

OK, so I filled the pan a little above 3/4 brownie mix. Still optimistic at this point, I let the brownies cool down. Covered them well and decided to remove the brownies from the pan in the morning.

Easy to make, not so easy to take out! I tried using a knife to cut around the outside to help unwedge the brownie from the pan. I used plenty of pan before placing ingredients in the pan.When removing the brownie it came out in chunks, and stuck to the pan. It tasted great, but didn't look so great!

FAILED

BAD TO THE BONE

PICTURE BY LAURA                                                                                     
EDITING BY HAILEY

THREE BEER STEINS AND A TABLE

Beer steins from Mother Vonk

Table and Chairs from local Thrift Shop

Daughter from MOMMA P

This is freaking awesome............edited quote from Macklemore. 



 

Basket full of Goodies

 Fancy Smancy Egg Deco

Every year I check out the Easter selection of decorations, and never find anything I like. I decided to make these nifty eggs for my silver vase. 

Supplies

Styrofoam eggs 

feathers

glue gun

sequins 

straight pins

I found all these items at Micheals.

Sparkle Eggs

 A little time consuming, but they look awesome. I decorated the small styrofoam eggs with this project. My attention span would not tolerate using the big eggs. I start pinning on the bottom and work up. This uses a lot of pins and sequins.  Coaxed my girls into helping me.

Feather Eggs

I found a packet of colored feathers and used a glue gun to hold the feathers on the egg. I started on the bottom of the styrofoam egg and worked up. I placed the glue on the bottom base of the feather and placed it on the egg.

 JUST BREATHE

RUM CAKE

 

A little for the cake a little for ME........

 Easy Rum Cake. When I delivered my third child one of my great bowling partner's brought me this awesome cake to our house for dessert. Every time I make it people LOVE IT! 

RUM CAKE

Ingredients 

1 yellow cake mix

1 small instant vanilla pudding

1/3 cup oil

1/2 cup of (white rum)

1tsp vanilla mixed with a 1/2 cup water

4 eggs

Mix together all ingredients and pour into a greased bunt pan

Bake at 325* for 50 minutes

Let cool down and remove to a plate and pour over glaze

RUM GLAZE

1/2 cup butter

1/8 of water

1/2 cup sugar

bring to a boil and add

1/4 cup rum

Boil for 2-5 minutes and pour over cake

 Spray heavily with PAM

 MIX

 BAKE

 GLAZE

 ENJOY

Triple Chocolate Muffins

Triple Chocolate Chunk Muffin

 Knock-Offs of Whole Foods Chocolate Chunk Vita Top Muffins

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Recipe

Ingredients:

1 3/4 C Oats
3 egg whites

3/4 C unsweetened cocoa

1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce

1 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 C hot water

1 cup sugar substitute (like splenda granular OR 1/4 C +2 TB stevia

1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (or use white chocolate or peanut butter chips)

    PREHEAT oven to 350*. Line (12-cup) muffin pans with foil cupcake liners or spray muffin tin with non-stick cooking spray. Set aside. In a blender or food processor, mix all of the ingredients together, except for the chocolate chips. Blend until oats are ground and mixture is smooth. 

PLACE mixture in a bowl and gently, stir in 1/2 of the chocolate chips (set the rest aside). Scoop mixture into prepared muffin pans. Place muffins tins in the oven for 10 minutes. After ten minutes, remove muffins form the oven. (but don't shut off the oven), and distribute the other half of the chocolate chips on top of each muffin.

PLACE the muffins back into the oven and bake for an additional 2-5 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool muffins before removing from pan. 

Calories:116 Calories per muffin or 58 Calories per muffin

PRO's
Tastes GREAT
GIRLS loved the peanut butter chips
I loved the dark chocolate
Easy to make
Never used tooth pick
Baked in 15 minutes....PERFECT

CON'S
Cook 5 minutes and then add chocolate chips on top of muffin and cook remaining time. Five minutes was not enough time to melt chocolate chips on top. Proof with the pictures I took of the Muffins.

Girls

Happy girls are the prettiest
....Audrey Hepburn

Oreo Pops

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We had a fundraiser this late summer and I needed to bring a dessert for the bake sale. The hardest part of this recipe was separating the oreo's to place the stick in the middle. The oreo's kept crumbling apart. The kids had a lot of rejects to eat. 

 Recipe

Oreo Pops

Oreo's, sucker sticks
melting chocolate
 sprinkles
 sucker bags
 bag ties

 Melt chocolate in 30 second increments until melted, stir often.
Dip you stick into your melted chocolate. Open Oreo and press the chocolate coated stick into the frosting center
Put cookie back together
Let cookie sit (dry) for  5 minutes or more
Dip both sides of the cookie into melted chocolate
Place on wax paper
Decorate with sprinkles or more chocolate
Dry
Wrap and tie

  
My friend shared a secret with melting the chocolate for the top of the pops. 

* Place chocolate chips in a large zip lock bag. Place in microwave and melt checking every 50 seconds. Snip the corner after chocolate is melted and start and spreading! BRILLIANT!

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 This recipe I actually really liked. I had a LOT of zucchini and basil in my garden this year. This recipe was perfect to help use up what I had in my garden. With Amanda and I trying to be Gluten-Free this recipe was pretty darn good. Mustard, barbeque sauce or ketchup gives the sliders a  little more kick of a taste.

Recipe

Zucc Sliders

• 1/2 lb ground turkey
• 1 diced garlic clove
• 1 tbsp diced red onion
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 2 tbsp chopped fresh basil
• 1 large zucchini
• olive oil

Mix the meat, garlic, onion, salt and pepper, and basil well in a bowl. Cook small patties in a pan that are the size of the diameter of your zucchini. While burgers are cooking, slice your zucchini in quarter inch slices. Drizzle them with olive oil and sea salt on both sides, and grill using a grill pan for the awesome grill marks (otherwise, a regular pan works just fine.) Cook zucchini for just a few minutes on each side so that they stay firm and do not get soggy.
Top your zucchini bun with burger, and add your favorite toppings. You can add a slice of avocado, tomato, lettuce, mushrooms, ketchup, mustard.

Growing up

 

Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things......

Pom Pom Addict

POM POM ADDICT

 
My new favorite toy for making Pom Poms. I looked on pinterest on how to make pom poms. Someone posted cutting circles out of cardboard and wrapping the yarn around the cardboard. I tried it and it SUCKED! I was browsing overstock.com and saw these nifty items below! LIFE SAVER! You can purchase these at most craft stores. I found mine at MICHEAL'S.

.

I used a four pack of bottled juice from Harmon's. Emptied and washed the bottles. Sticks I found at Ikea. Made the pom poms and glued them on the stick.

Wrapped yarn around my candles.

I was on a yarn kick this season. 

I used yarn to wrap my gifts instead ribbon. While shopping around I saw the cutest letter ornaments at Anthropologie. They were a bit pricey. I went home and played around and discovered doubling some pipe cleaner as the base of my letter and wrapping the yarn around the cleaner made for some cute letters.

Sweet Things

Cake Stands I made for project. 

  Drinking glasses and metal serving platter, are from Dollar tree. 

I found a paper punch from Michaels. 

I cut a circle from scrapbook paper and punched the outside to make the paper look like a doily.  

A little spray paint from Home Depot.  

SWEET little dessert stand.

 

Sweet Potato Hummus. I love anything with Sweet potato in it. I made this a while ago, but it's my favorite Hummus.

Recipe

Ingredients:

1 pound sweet potatoes 

1 tsp cumin seeds

1 lrg lemon, juiced

1 tsp salt

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1/8 tsp black pepper

1 TB Olive Oil

3 tsp brown sugar 

Zest of one orange

1 TB tahini*

Pita slices, toasted, or bagel chips

1 tsp crumbled feta

1 tsp toasted pistachios 

*Tahini is a thick paste made of gound sesame seeds. I found mine at Harmons. 

Prepartion:

 Bake or microwave sweet potatoes until fully cooked. Allow the potatoes to cool, then remove the skins and discard them, retaining flesh.

Toast the cumin seeds on low heat, then crush by hand. (Seed's can be crushed by using a mortar and pestle or by smashing between a sauce pan and cutting board. 

Add seeds and sweet potato to the food processor together with the lemon juice, salt, cayenne pepper, black pepper, olive oil, brown sugar, orange zest and tahini. Blend until smooth and creamy (you may want to add more salt or sugar depending on the sweetness of the potatoes). 

 Serve hummus with toasted pita or bagel chips. Sprinkle with feta and toasted pistachios.

    

         

8 months of Catch UP

 ME CASA

Lamp compliment of West Elm.... the light it projects sucks!

 Cuckoo Clock from Germany.....ordered online.....will get there someday.

 Lighting from Pottery Barn.....worried when light bulbs burn out.

  

Table Trays from DI......mint condition.

Top black frame has a stitching from Grandma Vonk....compliments of Mother Vonk.

 

  

Pillows made by Mother Vonk for Christmas this year. I found the material from Hobby Lobby.

  
 Living Room....my lovely hardwood floors.

  

I got this idea for my mirrors in the Entry Way from the Winn Hotel in Vegas.

 

 Office decor....Made these from a pinterest idea...me in left picture....

Old Clock.....paint and Stain.....New Clock.

 

Rain Boots..... I guess it's decor for the House.

Lace Pics compliment of Mother Vonk... Crystal hangers from Pier One Imports.

Lovely wrapping paper that I never use.....to much work to wrap a gift