Green Onion Glory

The Idea

homemadeserenity.blogspot.com

 My Interpretation

This might have to be the shortest blog post ever.  There's not much I can say about plopping some onions into a glass of water.  Though, I'm told I can turn a 2 minute story into 20.  Let's test the theory.

First of all, I bought some green onions as an ingredient for a recipe very similar to this one: 

http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/loaded-potato-soup-10000001152941/

Loaded Potato Soup.  Yum!  Is anyone else hungry?  The recipe I use is in a slow-cooker cookbook, but this one is pretty darn close.  I only used half of the onions, so I cut up the other half of them and did this:

 lunchinabox.net

Brilliant, I tell you!  Chives frozen in a water bottle ready to sprinkle.

After I cut off all the green stuff, I plopped the white ends into a glass of water and sat them in the dining room window. Honestly, I forgot about them for a few days.  When I remembered to go check on them, they already had a couple inches of new green stalk growing.  They grow fast!!  Every few days I changed the water in the glass, and they were ready to cut again in less than 3 weeks. The really funky part is that the roots keep on growing as well and end up looking like spaghetti in the bottom of the glass.

The blog post says you can pretty much just keep this process going indefinitely.  I found that the second round of window growing didn't go quite as well.  The onions grew much slower and some of them barely grew at all.  There were only a couple of stalks that grew as quickly as the first round.  I wondered if it was maybe because they're not getting any nutrients from soil???  I got tired of messing with it and decided that green onions weren't all that expensive and I don't use them very often.  I trashed the second round and moved on.  The first round was totally worth it, though!  

The last issue I had was deciding what to do with the glass they grew in for 6 weeks.  It was one in a set of six.  In order to explain why this poses an issue, I have to tell you that I can't drink any beverage out of a glass that has recently had milk in it.  Even if it's been through the pipin' hot dishwasher, I can still smell the milk.  Is that weird???  Regardless, I couldn't imagine trying to drink my water or iced tea out of a glass that housed green onions for 6 weeks.  My husband also said that every time he used one of the glasses, he would wonder if it was the onion-y one and get a little grossed out.  Ultimately, we decided to toss it before it became a problem. :)  The moral of the story: choose your onion glass wisely.

Paper Towel Tube Wreath

The Idea

seeyoutheredesign.com

My Interpretation

Ta da!  I gotta say...I'm pretty proud of this one.  I decided somewhere early in my Pinterest journey that I need to start saving my paper towel rolls for a craft.  I originally thought I would do this one:

http://tali-schiffer-oren.blogspot.com

Super cute for basically free wall art, but I ultimately decided to go with the wreath idea.  I'm glad I did!  The hardest part of the whole project was being patient enough to get through all those paper towel rolls.  I started saving toilet paper rolls in the beginning as well, but the cardboard was a different color and texture than the paper towel rolls.  The toilet paper rolls also seemed a little thinner and less stable.  

I also really enjoyed reading the DIY blog attached to the wreath.  That girl is funny!  Maybe even funnier than me.  Wait...maybe I decided I don't like her after all. ;)  And to add insult to injury, she is for sure a better and more thorough picture taker than me.  Hmph!  Point is, if you want to do this project for yourself, go read HER blog! 

I will tell you that I used some white satin wired ribbon to make that big ol' bow. 

I learned how to make it and several other bows by watching videos on YouTube.com.  I can't find that exact video or I would direct you to it. Doh!  Also, I bought the little glittered pear/berry/leaf/pine cone decoration at Dollar Tree.  It was a Christmas tree decoration, but I thought it was generic enough not to only be used at Christmastime.  As I'm sure comes as no surprise, I hot-glued everything.  I didn't attach any sort of hanging apparatus, because I figured it would hang easily on any nail or hook. 

The only question I'm left with is how well it held up after hanging around for awhile.  Since I gave it as a gift, I don't have an answer.  I can only cross my fingers!  I would totally hang one in my own house, though!  As a matter of fact, I think I will...just as soon as I use 90 bagillion more paper towels.

Muffin Tin Breakfast

The Idea

thevillagecook.com

My Interpretation

This blog post may be a little difficult for me to get through.  I'll muscle on and tell you why at the very end.

I wanted to make these little beauties from the moment I laid eyes on them.  Then, on a Monday morning when I stayed home with my sick little man, I saw my opportunity.  I had all the ingredients, but decided to use sausage instead of bacon, simply because I had half a package of sausage I needed to use up.

I sprayed the tin with cooking spray, as directed, and lined the cups with hash browns.  I didn't add cheese to them like the recipe called for, because I was afraid it would burn. Probably just silliness on my part, but, nonetheless, no cheese.  Besides, I added enough cheese on top to throw myself into lactose intolerance. 

While I had the hash browns cooking in the oven, I browned my sausage on the stove.  This is an added step, since it would have been much easier to use bacon bits as suggested, but I couldn't let my sausage go to waste, now could I?

The next step was cracking the eggs into the tins.  I must say, this was my favorite part!  I know, I'm easily amused, right?  But there was just something about breaking that egg and seeing it cradled inside the hash browns that made my heart happy.  It's the little things...

Finally, I sprinkled my sausage crumbles, cheese and parsley over the top and placed the tin back in the oven to finish cooking.  They came out looking great and smelling wonderful.  They tasted awesome, too!  I would like to tell you that I'm going to try them with bacon the next time, but unfortunately I think this is a dish that won't ever appeal to me again.

Now that you've worked up an appetite, let me just go ahead and ruin it for you.  I mentioned earlier that this post would be hard for me to get through.  I also mentioned that I was at home with my sick little man that day.  Well, he was sick with the stomach flu, and Mommy and Daddy caught it later that afternoon.  Have you ever gotten sick after eating something and then never been able to eat it again?  Yeah, that's me with this dish.  Even the photos are hard to look at.  I actually still have a few in my freezer that I froze that day in expectation of eating them for Sunday morning breakfast with the family.  Not gonna happen.  I may as well toss them.  Guess my sausage went to waste, after all.  Sigh...  With that said, PLEASE don't let my story deter you from trying this.  It really was good - the first time around.

Wreath Love

The Idea

teachcraftlove.blogspot.com

My Interpretation

It must be the old lady coming out in me as I near my 30th birthday, but I can't seem to make/buy/seek out enough pretty wreaths these days.  Adorning my front door or the resting place of a loved one makes my heart smile a little.  I love the colors of the original wreath, but chose fall colors and flowers for the wreath I made to take to the cemetery in honor of my mother.

I bought the grapevine wreath base at JoAnn's for about $8, all of the flowers from Dollar Tree, for (once again) a dollar per bunch, and the letters from JoAnn's for about a dollar a piece.  I already had hot-glue sticks, a glue gun and some acrylic gold craft paint at home, which I also used.

I cut the flowers from their stems just below the bloom with wire-cutters.  I thought they were just plastic and tried to use regular ol' scissors.  Fail.  Next, I started gluing them directly onto the wreath in matching pairs.  I got a good pattern going and covered half of the wreath. 

Next, which I should have done first (duh!), I took the the letters out to the garage to paint.  I could have been gluing on flowers as the paint was drying.  I set them on newspaper and painted away.  Double fail.  After the tops were dry, I went to flip them over to paint the bottom and they had stuck and dried to the newspaper.  That is when I decided that I would always take the time to pull out a drop cloth to paint on instead of being lazy and grabbing some newspaper.  I peeled off the letters, picked off the stray newspaper bits and started over.  After they were, dry I hot-glued them directly to the wreath, as well.  I'm kind of a hot glue junkie.

The wreath held up fairly well out at the cemetery from the beginning of September to mid-December.  When I took a Christmas wreath out there to replace it, it had only lost two flowers.  The letters stayed on, but were a little loose.  Not too shabby.  I made a fairly similar version for my Papaw when he passed away a couple weeks after I placed Mom's fall wreath out.  Here's a photo:

I apologize if this post feels a little melancholy due to the fact that I happen to have made wreaths in honor of loved ones who have passed.  Don't feel sad.  I wasn't feeling sad when I made them.  In fact, I was quite happily thinking of all the good times we shared and how much they would love and appreciate my show of remembrance.

Peppers and Eggs

The Idea

backtoherroots.com

My Interpretation

Not too shabby, huh?  Well, to be fair, this one is pretty hard to screw up.  Cut up a pepper of your choosing, throw it in the skillet, crack an egg inside it, cook, flip, cook, put on plate, eat.  Best of all, it was good!  I originally found this photo and thought it was supposed to turn out like this, though:

flickr.com/photos/fabfrugalfood/6205095149/

I expected the egg whites to stay contained within the pepper.  Yeah, not gonna happen.  Even if you cut the pepper with laser precision, which I definitely didn't do, I suspect the only way you're going to get this more buttoned-up look is to cut the excess whites off before you plate.  I wasn't cooking for Bobby Flay that day, so I just gobbled mine up as-is.  I also learned something else very important that morning; my 18 m/o son loves red peppers!  How cool is he?

Peppermint and White Chocolate Oreo's

The Idea

cupcakesandcrablegs.com

My Interpretation

Was that a rimshot, I heard?  Yeah, mine kinda look like a joke, don't they?  I'll tell ya' what, though...I'm willing to bet they tasted just as good.

When I saw this pin, I had the idea of making these to give as gifts to neighbors, babysitters, extended family, etc.  I was originally going to gift them wrapped up in those decorated Pringles cans you've seen on Pinterest, but came to the conclusion that no one I know eats Pringles, and I wasn't going to be able to get my hands on any empty cans without buying new ones and dumping the chips into the garbage.

Wasn't meant to be.

jengrantmorris.blogspot.com

                                               
I bought my white chocolate, little round peppermints and Oreo's and set off on a journey.  If you've read the blog attached to the original pin, you know there isn't a whole lot of instruction.  Which is okay, since I probably wouldn't have read the whole thing, anyway.  I have an issue with seeing a picture of something, saying, "Oh, yeah - I can pull that off", and then winging the whole thing without any sense of direction. I did, however, google some instruction on melting chocolate.  I've heard that candy can be super hard to perfect.  I decided to go with the microwave method since there seemed to be less of a chance of me burning something.  Also, I don't have a candy thermometer to make things a little more professional.  It went a little somethin' like this:

Pour white chocolate chips in microwave-safe bowl

Microwave for a minute

Stir, stir, stir

Microwave 30 seconds

Stir

Microwave 30 seconds

Assume that's probably a good consistency, move on to dunking Oreo's

Something I still haven't figured out is how to dunk a cookie into chocolate using any sort of utensil but not leave a utensil mark behind.  Maybe I should have googled it.  Regardless, I dunked my Oreo's into the white chocolate and then laid them out onto wax paper to cool.  I felt like the chocolate was a little thick (maybe not hot enough?) and didn't entirely cover all of the cookie, but decided it was good enough for a first attempt.

The last step was adding the peppermint crumbles.  There is probably a company somewhere on this planet that makes peppermint crumbles already done up for you, but I decided to crumble my own.  Not nearly as pretty.  Also, I wonder if crumbled candy canes would have looked any differently.  Maybe they would have been easier to crush, anyway.  Those little peppermints are tough!  I put mine into a plastic baggie, wrapped the baggie in a dish towel and set to work.  I would like to tell you that I used a hammer.  Unfortunately, my husband was out on a remodel job that day and had in his possession our only hammer.  I improvised and bashed those little boogers with a rolling pin.  Yikes!  It was loud and violent, but they succumbed.  Lastly, I sprinkled my peppermint crumbs onto the top of the still-warm chocolate.  The red striping wasn't as vivid, unfortunately, but not a total bummer.  I let them cool completely and then packaged them up!  They tasted pretty amazing, really.  I mean, beauty isn't everything, right?

 

Classic LOVE

[Post Before The Post: As I'm sure you've already gathered, I'm no photographer.  Crappy, crappy photos abound.  However, photography is not something I'm interested in adding to my dazzling list of accomplishments.  Please bear with me.  Now, on to the races...]

The amazing women I work with at the salon decided that we should do a "Wine and Canvas" event for our Christmas party this year instead of going out to dinner.  If you don't know what "Wine and Canvas" is, you should go to http://www.wineandcanvas.com/ or maybe even http://www.whatholedoyoulivein.com/. (Don't actually go to that last one.)  If you live in the Indianapolis area and are interested in hosting such an event, you should totally contact Andy Stone (See "Art With Andy" on Facebook).  That guy was a blast and did an amazing job! Anywho, here is what my canvas ended up looking like:

Are you speechless? Did I knock your socks off?  Yeah, yeah...you're just being nice.  I know I definitely have some room for improvement in the painting department.  It was sure fun trying, though!  And drinking wine!  And laughing with my girls!

I quickly realized after painstakingly choosing to paint in pastels and getting this...(ahem!)..."painting" home, that I have not a single pastel object in my house to match it.  Whoops!  It all turned out for the best, though.  After chatting with my BFF out in Washington, she expressed that she would be honored if I would send the painting out to her to hang in her little girl's room.  Maybe she was just being nice, too.  Maybe she's trying to ward off goblins.  It was a nice gesture, nonetheless.  She says it's now proudly displayed in little MJP's room and sent this picture to verify that she hadn't shoved it into the back of the closet: