Tried and true

You might recall that my New Year's Resolutions were to try new recipes, make more crafts and be more frugal.

Have I become more frugal? I think so.

Have I done more crafting? Ummm...no. But I am relatively caught up on laundry, so I think it evens out.

Have I tried new recipes?  Yes!  While I've made a point to blog about the new Martha Stewart and Everyday Food recipes I've tried, I've had great experiences with meals and desserts from other bloggers and websites.  Also,  Pinterest has become a great source of new recipes for me.  I have boards for general recipes, desserts and vegetable dishes, and I am trying something new as often as possible.

Here's what I've tried, along with the links and my reviews.

Creamy Garlic Pasta by the Cheese Pusher:  OMG this stuff is amazing. I love this recipe. I've made it as a side dish and seeing how it was inhaled by my family, I made it again. The second time around, I added diced cooked chicken to make it the main course. Yum!

Cheesy Vegetable Chowder by Lulu the Baker: this is another great recipe. I foresee creating a crockpot version of this for cool fall nights.

Baked Potato Soup by Mama Loves Food: this was okay. I think I experimented a bit with the amounts of ingredients and technique here (and we all know how that usually turns out for me!) so it wasn't as tasty as I had hoped. I'll try this again in the fall, and next time I'll be sure to follow the instructions.

Crock Pot Chicken Taco Chili by Reds:  this is pretty good (and a good break from regular chili), and as far as cooking/prep go, it's a breeze!  I like to combine any leftovers with rice to make my Tex Mex Chicken Casserole.

Chickpeas in Spicy Tomato Sauce by Food.com: this was okay. I didn't make the recipe as spicy as it could have been, but this was a hearty (and different!) dish. Serve with rice!

Blueberry Breakfast Cake from Alexandra's Kitchen:  this is so, so, so delicious!  It's so cake-like that I feel guilty for eating it as breakfast instead of dessert. Word to the wise, however...Alexandra mentions in the instructions that the cake might need 10 minutes or so longer in the oven...my experience is that it most definitely needs longer time in the over. Just so you know.

Baked Sweet Potato Chips (shown above) from Martha Stewart:  these are amazing. I could eat them all day long!  Keep in mind that I had a sheet of these burn, so at the halfway mark you'll want to keep a close eye on these and probably decrease the baking time.

No Bake Cookies from Lick the Bowl Good: these cookies were a favorite when I was a kid, and I still love them just as much.  I increase the amount of oats by one cup when I use this recipe.

Terribly Terrific Toffee from A Southern Grace: NOM NOM NOM  I've made this recipe three times in less than a week now, and I might do another batch or two this weekend. This toffee, based with plain old saltine crackers, is easy to make and even easier to eat. Give it a try!

In fact, give all these recipes a try! And if you have a recipe I might like, or that you'd like to see featured on The Martha Initiative, be sure to let me know. Happy cooking!

St. Patty's Day fun

Today, I want to share some fun St. Patrick's Day ideas that I've pinned:

I'm loving the homemade shamrock shake, the mint chocolate chip cookies and all the fun treat ideas for kids. 

In case you want to have some St. Patrick's Day fun of your own, there are some great FREE printables on the Catch My Party blog.  I am really liking this "Preppy Plaid" collection from MJ Paperie, especially the beer bottle labels.  Cute!

I hope everyone has the luck of the Irish with them this weekend!

A TMI PSA: don't drink and drive.  Or text and drive. Or drink and text.  Well, maybe that last one isn't so bad, but still, it's better to be safe than sorry!

Martha Monday--Corn on the cob cupcakes

Months ago, I came across these charming corn-on-the-cob cupcakes on Martha Stewart and immediately pinned them to my Barnyard Party board where I was gathering inspiration and ideas for Little Miss' second birthday.

Since then, it has become one of my most repinned and 'liked' items on Pinterest.  Who knew that cupcakes candied up to look like corn on the cob would be so popular?! Because they were a hit on Pinterest I knew they'd be a hit at Little Miss' party, and I just had to make them.

These may look complicated, but honestly the hardest part was finding a store nearby that sells jelly beans in bulk by color (at Woodman's, for those in the Fox Valley who need to know!).   The corn kernels are various shades/flavors of Jelly Belly's; I believe I used lemon, pineapple, cream soda and pina colada.  The pat of butter is a yellow/lemon Starburst candy, and the pepper is black sanding sugar.

Isn't that fun?  The cupcakes were a real hit.  All this week I'll feature details from our "Down on the Farm" themed birthday party for Little Miss.  Happy Monday!

Party on Pinterest

I'm having a party on Pinterest! At least, that's where I'm planning Little Miss's second birthday party.  We're having a "Down on the Farm" themed party, and it's going to be awesome! 

Take a look at the board, and let me know what you think!

A colorful Valentine's Day

Little Guy and Little Miss will be giving out these adorable crayon hearts for Valentine's Day:

Though it's been making the rounds on Pinterest, I first saw this idea in Family Fun a few years ago. Start by breaking up crayons. There's no need to buy new crayons for this project; I simply used all the crayon bits and pieces that my kids have broken over the past two years, as well as the crayons they get whenever we go to a restaurant. Between the crayon box, the diaper bag and the bottom of my purse, we had more than enough crayons to make 24 crayon hearts.  In fact, I could probably make 24 more!

Little Guy and Little Miss had a fun time filling the molds.  I broke each crayon into 3-4 pieces, and each heart-shaped cavity holds 6-8 pieces of crayon.  I always like craft projects that my kids can help with; not only is it fun for the family, but it also gives them a sense of ownership and pride in the finished product.

The baking molds went into a 230F oven for 10-15 minutes.  As you can see, some brand/type of crayons didn't melt well, but otherwise everything melted just fine. After the tins cooled, the crayons popped right out.

I decided to save a bit of time by using a pre-made cards for the crayons. I found this one, from The Long Thread, that prints out four to a page. Sweet!

Though it may look complicated, this Valentine's Day project is really easy to do and doesn't take a lot of time.  The hardest part might have been breaking the crayons!  Overall, this took less than an hour to do and it was a fun project for the kids.

And bonus: Little Guy's preschool friends will get a crayon, and not a sugary treat, for Valentine's Day.  That really makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Valentine's Day inspiration

Valentine's Day sneaks up on me every year and I'm not sure how it manages to do that, being as it comes with chocolates and flowers (two things that really grab my attention!). 

Maybe I don't notice right away because it's still winter, or maybe because Valentine's Day is on the heels of the Super Bowl (which is a really big deal in my house)? For whatever reason, I haven't done too much with Valentine's Day.  However, now that the Little Guy is in preschool and has to give Valentines to his friends, Valentine's Day has become a BIG DEAL in the TMI household. 

Being a Martha Stewart enthusiast, I want to make some homemade Valentines for my kids' classrooms rather than picking up a box of ready-made cards at the store.  It just makes sense to me that for a holiday revolving around love and friendship, tokens of such should be handmade.  Fortunately, I'm finding a lot of great Valentine ideas on Pinterest.

With all these great ideas, I'm set for classroom Valentines for Little Guy and Little Miss for the next 10 years or so.  I am constantly amazed by the wonderful crafts and fun ideas I've found on Pinterest.  Take a look at my Valentine's Day board, and you will be, too!

Mag-neato!

Here's yet another great thing I saw on Pinterest and replicated: an oil drip pan magnet board for the kiddos.

Like most households with small children, we have a ridiculous amount of fun magnets.  My kids play with these a decent amount, but for some reason they played the most with the magnets just as I was starting to make dinner every night.  As you can imagine, having two small children parked in front of the refrigerator during meal preparation time was not convenient.  Especially when I am rushing to get a meal in the oven before those two small children turn into ravenous wolves.

In addition to battling the kids to stop playing with magnets long enough for me to get in and out of the fridge, the magnets themselves were tearing up my walls when the fridge door was completely open. Not cool.

Tee hee.  I said "cool" while talking about my refrigerator. See what I did there?!

Enter one oil drip pan. I bought this at my local Super-Walmart for $9.96--it was in the automotive section.  It had an oily coating (no doubt to make it easier to get actual oil off) but that came off easily with a de-greasing cleanser. 

Big Guy secured the drip pan to the wall with screws, and it is located under our huge cork board communication center. The kids can still play with their magnets in the kitchen, but now they are not directly underfoot.  Score!

This magnet board was an easy and inexpensive solution to a small but vexing problem.  And now that the kids' magnets are gone, my refrigerator front looks so much more organized and clean! 

Right?! Well, maybe not...the stuff that's left is mostly mine.  I'm working on it, okay?

Hand- and footprint crafts for Thanksgiving

I love Pinterest, I really, really do.  For a while I've been pinning super-cute kid art made with their hand- and footprints. Little Guy, Little Miss and neighbor Adithi made some fun art for Halloween by sticking their hands and feet in paint.  Now, there are a few ideas on my "Hand and Foot Print Art" board that are perfect for Thanksgiving.

Making any or all of these would be a great project for the kids leading up to Thanksgiving, or on the day of as they are waiting for the feast to begin:

My best advice, if you are using this as an activity on Thanksgiving Day, is to enlist the help of older kids or teenagers to help the younger ones.  This gets the older kids involved and keeps the younger kids busy so you can focus on guests or cooking.  But not cooking your guests, because that would be wrong.

Please note: these art ideas are not mine.  They were found by me and pinned, or pinned by other Pinterest users and then re-pinned by me. For original sources, please visit my Pinterest boards and you can find the source material/links there.  Thank you!

Kids' crafts for Halloween

Lately, I've been finding a lot of inspiration for fun kid crafts on Pinterest. And just in time for Halloween, I found these great projects using hand and foot prints.  With MOM2 and neighbor Yogita's help, our kids got to turn their hand and foot prints into some fun Halloween art.

Using regular craft paint (which washed off those little hands and feet quite well), the kids made hand print spiders, foot print ghosts and hand print stems on pumpkins.  Now all they have to do is draw in the faces.

Check out my "Kids Crafts and Activities" board on Pinterest. There are lots of fun hand/foot print art ideas for animals, holidays, and special occasions.  This project went really well and the kids had a lot of fun...can you guess what we'll be doing when Thanksgiving comes around?

Happy kid crafting!

Manda Monday--Pinterest

Have you heard of Pinterest?  It's a great (free!) online program that works like a virtual bulletin board. Whenever you see something amazing online, whether it's an image, product, recipe or whatever, you can 'pin it' onto your board for future reference.  The location of the original info is saved, so if you pin a recipe for example, the picture and your comment stay on your board along with the web address for easy reference later.

The lovely Dora from Waubonsee Community College introduced me to Pinterest--"you'll love it!" she said-- and now I'm obsessed!  Any spare moment I have lately has been devoted to finding and pinning all the great ideas on the web that I want to save and refer to later.   You can make as many bulletin boards and pin as many things as you like. You can follow other people's boards for ideas, and people can follow your boards as well.

The Little Guy's birthday is next month and we're having a dinosaur-theme party. I've been using Pinterest to keep track of all the cool dino-party ideas I'm finding online:

I have boards for Halloween, kids' activities and crafts, recipes I want to try and more.  You can follow me on Pinterest here and see what I'm up to. 

Are you on Pinterest?  If you find lots of inspiration and cool ideas online that you want to save, then this application could be quite useful for you.  Happy pinning!