Food Glorious Food!

This is me at dinner...ok not really but I feel like this sometimes.  I love food!  Who doesn't (no nasty comments I'm aware some people don't love food).  I love the recipes that I find on Pinterest and I was just looking through my recipe board in order to start planning meals for the next few weeks and I realized that I have tried a lot of things and haven't bothered to blog about them.  So I'm just going to do a recipe rundown of all the things I have tried.

1.Lemon Fudge- Yuck.  It is like eating a mound of lemon frosting, WAY to sweet

2. Carrot Apple Coconut muffins-  I love them!  However I made them for the kids and they don't love them, the flavor is great but I need to puree the fruit and veggies next time so the kids will eat them, I do love that they are sugar free though.

3. Turkey taco lettuce wraps-Delicious!  I actually used ground beef because I just don't like ground turkey, but the lettuce wraps as a taco shell was delicious and even if you use beef it will save on calories.

4. Texas Roadhouse Cinnamon butter- Heavenly, I gave it away as christmas Presents this year.  yummo!

5.Asian Slaw- great, fresh salad.  I used broccoli slaw instead of regular cole slaw and I added some cold teriyaki chicken to it and used it as a main dish.

6.Sweet and salty roasted chickpeas- yuck...next!

7.Crock pot BBQ ribs- AMAZING! so simple and delicious, there were NO LEFTOVERS!

8. Hawaiian sweet roll Ham sandwiches- yummy but you won't feel good after you eat them.

9. weight watchers honey mustard crunchy chicken- really good but they only count as weight watchers if you use fat free dressing....which I didn't have

10. jalepeno poppers- perfect...Superbowl possibility.

11. Slow cooker thai peanut chicken- just kind of blah

12. Cranberry salsa- best thing I ever found on pinterest, there is a plate of it in my fridge right now and I'm taking it to christmas dinner.

13. double crunch honey garlic pork chops- I insist that everyone try this recipe, it is THAT good!

14. 7 Layer tostadas- fast and easy for a weeknight meal, and there is lots of variation possibilities.

15.Homemade Cherry limeade- of course it's good, its Cherry Limeade

16.  Caramelized Chicken- very good, If you are going to do it in a crock pot keep it under 4 hours otherwise you will have jerky...no joke...and don't go run errands and forget about it either.

17. Spring rolls with Spicy peanut sauce- I had to spice up the sauce a little bit but it was great, and I love spring rolls, there is a great step by step recipe on the link.

18. Cajun Chicken pasta- it's like cajun fettucine.  I know that sounds like a strange combo but it turns out so delicious!

19. pf chang lettuce wraps- a new favorite!

20. crock pot orange chicken- meh.  It's ok but, there are better recipes.

21,ham and cheese crescents- it's ham and cheese and buttery rolls....of course it's good.

22. Honey soy glazed chicken- It is my experience that Martha Stewart will never steer you wrong in the kitchen.  

23. sliced baked potatoes- just not as good as I wanted them to be.  ok but not great.

24. Honey chicken- One of my favorites at the chinese takeout place, and a pretty decent make your own take out, but really heavy.

25. sweet and spicy honey garlic shrimp- So Amazing!

26.  cake batter rice krispie treats- eh I'll stick with the regular ones.

27. Best ever beef dip sandwiches- lives up to its name.

28.  Cheesy chicken lasagna- I'm lactose intolerant...I don't know what I was thinking, but Peter loved it.

29. Comeback sauce- It has a great flavor but it is way to heavy to be used on a daily basis...maybe if you were having a BBQ with fries....lots of fries.

30.  slow cooker coconut chicken curry- very good, very easy.  Great comfort food.

31. toasted ravioli- you bread and fry ravioli then dip them in sauce.  so delicious and bad for you, but they also take a lot of work, I don't think this will be a repeat.

32. Coca Cola Chicken wings.- yum!  mostly taste like sweetened soy sauce.  Who knew coke had such a prominent place in modern chinese cooking.

33. zucchini fries- too much work! you want fries make fries they are so much easier.  you want veggies eat veggies.

34. Dr Pepper sauced boneless wings- SO GOOD!!!  This is a definite for the superbowl!

35.  Crock pot Mac & Cheese- I have tried so hard to like baked mac n cheese and I just don't....blah.

36. Cinnamon roll pancakes- Fantastic breakfast!  And while your at it try the cream cheese topping...might as well go all the way right?

37. Crock pot kalua Pork-  The best part is that it cooks for 16 hours so you have 16 hours to drool over your crock pot.

38. Dirt Cups- Why I waited till I was 28 to learn how to make dirt cups I don't know, but they are a great desert for kids....or teenagers....oh heck everyone likes em.

Ok well that is it.   I hardly ever make the same thing twice so I'll keep trying new recipes and sharing them :)  

Make your own green glitter....or the case of the crusty pile of green salt

I still don't have my camera back...ummm Mom...I kind of use that a lot.  I tried to make my own glitter because I was making my own 

Calm Down Jar for the girls and I needed more glitter because I had used most of my glitter supply to make glittery letters to go over my piano that spelled 

Joy.

So I was really excited when I saw this picture on Pinterest 

MAKE YOUR OWN GLITTER!!!

Awesome!!! Now I can avoid one more trip to JoAnns...it get's a little weird when more than one employee recognizes you because you have been in more than 3 or 4 times that week.

Ok so the recipe says to mix up some salt with some food coloring and bake it on a tin foil lined baking sheet, and 10 minutes later you will have a 1/4 cup of gorgeous glitter.  

well I decided to make green glitter cause it's my favorite color and I thought it would work well in the purple calm down jar I was making...sounds cool huh?

Well what I got was a sheet of crusty green salt, not sparkly at all.  I used gel food coloring so maybe that was it.  I'm willing to try this one again with liquid food color but for now my calm down jar is just a little less fabulous than I want it to be.  That's ok it doesn't calm the kids down at all it makes them run around screaming SPARKLES!!! SPARKLES MOMMY!!!!

get ready to laugh

Ok I'm willing to try just about anything, and I'll even post pictures so we can all have a good laugh.

I tried this sock bun curls tutorial about a month ago and it didn't work because my hair was not long enough to get all into one pony tail on top of my head. 

That girls hair turns out so pretty!  I'm so jealous! I want curly hair, but my hair is just too short.  

so I got to thinking (this is where I usually get into trouble...I get a BRILLIANT idea!) what if I did multiple buns and used some small children's socks?  (I was folding socks at the time and was trying to figure out where the matches to all these little socks had gone)

Ok so I tried it last night....

 Peter thought this was an awesome look, although he was laughing so he might have been being disingenuous.

 Here is the back (that lower bun would prove to be a literal pain in the neck and was ripped out by some crazy woman trying to sleep, obviously she doesn't subscribe to the "pain is beauty" philosophy)

 and side.  It kind of reminds me of when I was in middle school and I used to wear my hair in 2 buns on top of my head.  I was a weird kid.

 and this is what I looked like this morning after removing the buns.  Do I look a little tired?  Yeah Claire came and slept with me last night and she is not an easy sleep partner.

 My hair looks like it's been through some sort of horrible ordeal, and I don't think it wants to talk about it.  I tried brushing it out to get those "Hollywood waves" talked about in the video.

 Here is my version of "Hollywood waves"

Now this will work with longer hair, I know this because I've seen it in multiple Youtube videos and a semi pretty curl did come out of the bun on the very top of my head.  So maybe if I grow my hair another foot it will work.

If you see me today don't be surprised to find me with my hair up!

What a Mess

 How to paint laminate furniture without sanding.  Without sanding my eye.

Number 1 this took 3 days.  I don't have a garage so I spent 3 days with two of these bookshelves in my bathroom (my only bathroom) and trying to keep the kids out of there as much as possible (obviously they had to go in there at least a few times a day).

 Do you like the color though?  I love the color.  It will go great with the fire engine red bed that is coming soon....trust me, it will look cool.

Number 2 the paint didn't go on even, the roller left all sorts of weird streaks and stuff.

Number 3 These bookshelves are to be used by small children and they are already chipping and I haven't even put books on them!

Look at that mess.  Ok so I'm super frustrated so I turned to my good friends...chocolate, google and pinterest.  I think I've figured out what I'm going to do to make these look good.

First I'm going to just have to use them for now because I don't have the time to fix them.

second  I'm going to sand off all that paint

third I'm going to use this tutorial to re prep the book shelves (it would have been nice to know that my primer takes a full week to cure....and that if you really want to use your furniture you will need to sand the laminate finish off first)

Fourth I'm going to use spray paint to get a better finish.

ok so If you pinned this tutorial that claims you can paint without much sanding (well there is some light sanding but obviously not enough) unpin it.  I would say to pin that one in my step 3 but I haven't tested it yet so I can't really say.
Sorry no sanding girl, your dresser looks really cute but it just didn't work for my bookshelves.