Surrounded by Amazing

On a daily basis I am humbled by the talent around me. I have a husband who can pick up anything new and excel at it. Just this past weekend he taught himself how to change all the spark plugs and coils (I don't even know what those are really) on his truck. It took him about 5 hours, and he saved us some serious $$$. He also has taught himself how to play the piano, guitar, and picked up my violin once and made it sound pretty great! Am I leaving anything out? Oh yeah he's pretty much great at every sport. Ok, so I have a very talented sister too. She sews custom drapes for designers for a living. She started sewing at the age of like 8, I think. She started with learning to crochet with my Grandma; after she passed away she continued and taught herself how to sew quilts and made costumes for us. I really need to post a picture of us in some of her stuff growing up...it would be AWESOME(ly funny.) Then in highschool she sewed her prom dresses and took some home ec classes and got hooked up with a seamstress who sewed for a designer. There she learned how to do a few things, but mostly realized she needed some sewing courses. She did that. She is now awesome and has this mind that can engineer all kinds of drapes, and as you've seen flower pots out of barnwood. My mom, not having tons of time, but can write, sew, and paint/draw well and bake so GOOOOOOD. Also, she did lots of crafts with us growing up and has an amazing green thumb both for the table and for pleasure. So with all this awesomeness you can get kinda down on yourself, but I don't. I like who I am, but mostly I focus on these awesome people. I should mention that Andrew comes from a line of awesomeness too...and I didn't take pics of Andrew's handy work, but here's my sis' latest awesome thing she did for me.

Andrew gave me a Kindle for V day, I promptly damaged the screen...just a little.
THANKFULLY it self healed, but I knew I needed a cover to carry it in.

Pretty cool it has this pocket front and back. You can stick whatever you like in...
I should mention I totally stole the idea from etsy.com. They had the
 idea, but none of theirs seemed sturdy enough to tolerate any kind of
 blow that might injure my screen. This has cereal box in it to
sturdy the fabric enough to protect the screen.

This is the one I stole it from, and when I decided it
 looked a little plain and to add my twine details. I
think we can agree...mine's better!



My Kindle. It slides in the top.




So you can see the cool details. I decided that this twine I had would make
 great fringes. I love this button. It has a really great contrast in the wood grain, which
is my favorite. Also, it's not even wood. It's recycled plastic. I have no idea how
they do it, or who they are, but it's awesome!



Oh yeah and this was on $10 worth of materials, I have a lot left over too! The covers I looked at on etsy and amazon were about 20-30 dollars. I am so excited about my cover.
Man I love being surrounded by AMAZING people!

A twist on a new Classic

Andrew and I have a favorite P Dub (that's my favorite signature that the Pioneer Woman uses) casserole...chicken spaghetti. I usually change it up a little, because I don't like cooked bell peppers. I love them fresh but only tolerate them cooked if someone else cooked them. So my latest change up was to add mushrooms to the top under the cheese, because I thought (and was right) this would allow the mushrooms to keep there texture better. They didn't get all mushy! Also I used a cup of sour cream as a sub for the second can of cream of mushroom simply because I only had one! Oh yea I'm not a huge fan of the pimento either, I just leave that out. Here's the link: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2007/06/chicken_spaghet/

Random

Ok so this is truly out of nowhere and not even really blog worthy. Icing or frosting? Is there a difference? Which term do you prefer? I personally think I grew up with icing and frosting sounds kind of funny? Do you ice the cake or frost the cake?

The End.

P.S. If you google icing and frosting you get similar but different images.

Teal...heck yes!

OMG...how I love Ree!

I got my final Christmas present yesterday in the mail. Ree Drummond's second cookbook from The Pionneer Woman blog that I love and reference a good bit. I'm enjoying browsing and scheming when I might try some new recipes!!!

Lime filled pastry with Fruit

I was looking for my "family" chocolate cheesecake recipe on Eagle brand's website for a coworker. I found out that I can no longer find that choc cheesecake recipe, but found this recipe and had to make it. I love refrigerator pies!!! I love lime!!! I've always wanted to make a real tart!!! I might have the confidence to give that a try now. I used this recipe, but as I tasted it wanted it a bit more tart! I added approx 3/4c lowfat sour cream instead of the 1/3 c. It did not mess up the fillings ability to "set". I also used about 3/4 can of sweetened condensed milk, because I had a can in the fridge and that's how much was in it! (I'm such a complex individual)

My photo's aren't the best, but this was light and creamy and limey, limey, limey....yummy!

Ingredients

1 sheet frozen puff pastry (one-half 17 1/4 oz. pkg.)

1 large egg white, lightly beaten

1 (14 oz.) can Sweetened Condensed Milk

1/3 cup lime juice

1/3 cup sour cream

Strawberries and blueberries, enough to cover the top

Instructions

LET folded pastry thaw at room temperature 20 minutes.

HEAT oven to 375°F. Unfold pastry onto lightly floured surface; roll out into 15 x 10-inch rectangle. Cut a 3/4-inch wide strip from each long side of rectangle; cut a 3/4-inch wide strip from each short end of rectangle. Set aside the 4 strips.

PLACE pastry rectangle on ungreased baking sheet. Brush with egg white. Lay pastry strips on top of pastry rectangle, aligning outer edges of strips to fit. Brush strips with egg white and sprinkle with sugar. Prick bottom of rectangle several times with fork.

BAKE 20 to 25 minutes or until light brown. Cool.

COMBINE sweetened condensed milk, lime juice, and sour cream in medium bowl. Spoon into cooled pastry rectangle. Cover and chill up to 4 hours. Top with berries before serving.

P.S. My "family" cheesecake recipe is from Eagle brand and is delicious. I have it at the house if you need a copy!

Barn wood Planters

So do you remember when I was bragging about my niece buying a horse and us helping build the barn? Well I did and actually just did it again! I'm so proud of her for saving bday and Christmas money, and she was actually pretty humble about it giving credit to her grandma for "matching" what she earned.

Anyway, so we were helping my Sis and bro-in-law build the barn, and the women's job was to go tear down another old barn for usable wood to use in the tack room of the new barn. Well, on round two it was just my Mom and myself looking for "good" wood. It was kind of a joke; we probably almost killed ourselves a bunch from tearing down walls with the roof almost collapsing on us and not to mention we didn't really know what "good" meant. Later my Sis told me it meant it had to be at least 1 inch thick and not have to many cracks in it. We ended up bring back some good stuff, but a lot of unusable wood for the barn. My Mom is a lover of all of creation. She is very frugal, but generous; I think she just has "thou shall not waste" embedded in her DNA. She couldn't stand that my Sis was just going to burn the wood, plus she tends to like the rustic style. To be honest, we all kind of like that style. I was chatting with her about projects we could do with the left over wood. I said we could build some planters out of the wood and she LOVED the idea. Hannah and I didn't really have any great ideas for her birthday, so we decided to build the planters for her birthday. They turned out well, but by far not perfect. She loved them! Mama's bday was last Sunday.

We ended up putting some plastic pots in these; we were afraid that the aged wood wouldn't hold up well with all the moisture of a plant. We also have planned to try and make some picture frames from the barnwood and put up some newly printed photos from our Pacific NW trip(woot woot)! This may be a challenge, but I'm really hoping it will work out!

Chillin' on a dirt road

Laid back swerving like I'm George Jones...ok so I hate that that song advocates drinking and driving and smoking and it's totally inexcusable that I love it. But I took this picture a while back heading to my moms house one evening and I just thought it was pretty and I'd share...