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:

Ho, Hum No More!

The Idea
laurenconrad.com

My Interpretation

Let me start this post by telling you about these really terrible pictures I bought.  I can't even blame their ugliness on a gift.  You got it, purchased by me in a moment of pregnancy panic.  My baby shower was being held at my house and my very bare living room walls needed SOMETHING on them, ANYTHING!!  I went to J.C. Penny's to spend a gift card and after many a lip-curl and eye-roll ended up with these beauties:

What am I supposed to be looking at, here?

I know, I know - you can barely see half of them, and they are being over-shadowed by the gigantically-pregnant beauty in the green dress.  The problem is that I don't have a better photo and forgot to take a "before" picture.  Trust me, though, hideous. Also, I would like to apologize to anyone who might own and display these pictures in their home and think them lovely.

The first thing I did was went to Wally World and bought some pretty scrapbook paper.

Ta, Da!

Next, I cut into the brown paper covering the back of the frames in order to remove the prints from inside.

Seems simple enough.

After getting the paper off, I had to pry back some staples to remove the cardboard holding the print into place. I took the print and matting out and replaced it with scrapbook paper. I did have to trim the paper down to size.  Then I put the cardboard back in and pushed the staples back down. I covered the now-exposed staples with packing tape so they wouldn't scratch up my walls.  It looked a little somethin' like this:

Keepin' it classy!

The tall, skinny picture posed a little more difficulty.  To my knowledge, scrapbook paper doesn't come in the tall and skinny variety.  Therefore, I put two pieces of scrapbook paper, one on top of the other, and covered the seam with a ribbon that I pleated and then hot-glued. 

Yeah, it's sideways.

The final result turned out pretty well, in my very humble opinion!  Mucho, mucho better than that icky photo trio from yesteryear.  The clock was a $16 Goodwill purchase.  We'll talk more about my Goodwill addiction, later.  They say, "One day at a time", right? (Insert nervous laugh.)

Sew Mappy

The Idea

                                                                 maryruffle.tumblr.com

My Interpretation

I knew as soon as I saw this pin who I would craft it for - my BFF out in Fife, Washington.  After all, she is the one who sent me an invite to join Pinterest. One of my very first projects should undoubtedly be a thank you gift to her for getting my crack-like Pinterest addiction started, right?  Right!

This one was definitely quick and easy. I bought the black frame from the Dollar Tree for, you guessed it, a dollar. By the way, they have surprisingly nice frames for a dollar. I ended up buying several more and framing photos of my son to give away to relatives at Christmas. You do have to clean up the glass a little, but worth the elbow grease, in my opinion.

Next, I googled "free printable maps" and found my USA map at http://www.freeworldmaps.net/.  Note: this particular map came with a watermark of the website name.  It spanned across Mexico, the southern part of Texas and Florida.  Since I didn't need that portion, nor would it fit in my frame, I trimmed it down and, voila`, no watermark.

After I had it printed and trimmed, I took the paper over to my sliding glass door and pressed the map side against the glass.  This allowed me to be able to see through the paper.  It helped that it was daylight outside.  I'm not sure this method would work at night. ;)  I took a pencil and drew a small heart around Indiana, where I live, and one around Washington, where she lives.  I then drew a straight line, again on the back side of the map, between the two hearts using a pencil and ruler.

Finally, I took some regular ol' red thread (embroidery thread seemed a little thick to me) and sewed my hearts and dotted line through the paper.  Here's how the back ended up looking:

Not as pretty as the front, huh?

Lastly, throw that puppy into the frame and admire your handiwork.  See?  Told you that was an easy one.  I'll leave you with one final photo with complimentary glare.