ideas

A Blogging Brain Adjustment

Posted by Nat on Feb 20, 2012 | 2 comments

Hi friends,

I am in the process of doing lots of little things in order to do one big thing: simplify my life.  I am re-evaluating lots of aspects of my day-to-day routine and world.  How much “stuff” do I really need?  How much time can I devote to different things I want/like/need to do?  These are questions I’m asking, answering, and then moving forward with based on the answers.  It’s shaking things up a bit.  I know the end product will be awesome because I will have less stuff, more focus and (hopefully) more energy.

To add to the mix, my husband and I are laying pavers outside our patio so that we no longer have a mud pit for a play yard for the kids.  I am so excited, and so exhausted at the same time.  This weekend has been a whirlwind of back-breaking work, sweat, laughter, tears, time with just me and my man, missing my kids, and PB&J for dinner because we’re so tired (and also wondering how much money we have left in the bank).  Today is the last day- we have to finish, because tomorrow it’s back to reality, patio or no patio.

And so, then next time you see me will likely be Thursday.  I need a break from posting every day, and that is also something I’m examining- do I really need to post every day?  I’m thinking it’s not sane for me at this current time.

But guess what?!  You will SEE me Thursday because the ladies at Chronically Distracted have assigned a VLOG for our Happiness Project.  My first reaction:  “I need to put on makeup for that.”  My second reaction:  “No way.  Not gonna do it.”  My third reaction:  “Buck up, Nat.  You can do it.”  So, after I figure out the best angle for my face, I will follow through the assignment and you will actually get to see me AND hear me on Thursday.

See you then!

Nat

I have decided it’s too much for me to post every day along with all of the other things I want to accomplish.  For example, this weekend, instead of enjoying our extra day with my husband, we are

Mini Cupcake Baking Tips

Posted by Nat on Feb 14, 2012 | 1 comment

To all of my lovely readers:  thank you for visiting my blog as often as you do!  Would you help me out?  I’m working really hard on my blog and I’d love you to help if you have a few seconds.  If you like what you read, if you find it interesting or useful, please pass it along.  You could leave a comment below (be sure you’ve clicked on the post title if you’re on my “home” page), you could pin a photo to Pinterest (there’s a “Pin it” button at the bottom of this post), or you could share a link via Facebook.  Anything helps.  If you’re not a blogger yourself you may not know that the world of blogging revolves around sharing and comments- they are sort of the currency of the blog world.  Thanks so much!  And now, back to the post at hand….

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I was busy making mini-cupcakes for the kids to take to school, thus the lack of posting yesterday.  I’m capitalizing on the fact that one teacher just said to bring something, and I did not specifically hear the words, “healthy snack,” so I’m bringing mini-cupcakes.  That way, if it was supposed to be healthy, it’s just a mini-cupcake rather than a full-size one, and the teachers can eat them if they want to hide them from the kids- I don’t mind.  Ha!

While I love eating mini-cupcakes (or 7 or 8), I loathe the batter process.  All those tiny cups that have to be filled “just so,” the washing of the pans….  Today I discovered a new trick that I’ll share with you to hopefully make it go faster and neater for you, too.   I’ll also share some other tricks of my cupcake trade.  They aren’t revolutionary or anything, but if you’re a new cupcake-making person, hopefully they will help.

As I said, my issue with the process was getting the batter into the cups.  I didn’t want to waste a pastry bag, but… pouring the batter from a measuring cup into those little tiny cups was also too messy.  Spoons don’t work well- the batter falls off the spoon and doesn’t always go where you want it to.  Yesterday was my “a-ha” moment.

Here’s what you do:

Make your batter.

Also (not pictured) prep your mini-cupcake pans.  Either line them with paper or spray them with a non-stick baking spray.  Or if you’re REALLY good, smear butter all over them- I’m a spray person these days.

Line a 4-cup measure with a gallon food storage bag, preferably one with two layers of zips.  You may have to use something else if your measuring cup is too wide.  My cups are the “OXO” brand and it fit perfectly.

Pour in your batter.  (Are you impressed?  I took the photo with my LEFT hand while pouring with my RIGHT.) 

 Zip up your bag.

 Turn your bag and smooth all the batter away from one of the bottom corners.  Snip the corner of the bag.  Make it small- you can always make it bigger.

 Mine was actually a smidge too big, and it was probably about an inch wide, so next time I’ll make it 1/2 inch and see if that helps.

 Carefully move your bag over your pans and start squeezing!  The batter comes out fast unless it’s a thick cake batter, but you’ll get a rhythm going and pretty soon all of your pans will be full.  Love it!

 Here’s that red one up close:

 This made the process of mini-cupcakes sooo much easier.  And here are my finished products:

Now some other tips:

• To frost cupcakes, regular or small, the fastest way… I always use a pastry bag with a #16 Wilton tip (or some other star tip).  It is so much faster to use the pastry bag, and it really doesn’t take that much practice to make them “pretty.”  All frosting is pretty, really.  If you find yourself reading this and thinking, “No way.  There’s no way I can do that…”   If my girl scout troop leader could simultaneously teach 8-12 girls scouts, all sixth graders, to decorate cakes, then you can try it.  Just try it once.  You’ll thank me.  I frosted about 50 mini-cupcakes in 15 minutes yesterday.  Boo-yah.

• If you’re displaying your cupcakes and it’s possible, frost them AFTER you position them.  For example, I’m taking these cupcakes into school today.  I frosted them after I placed them in their containers.  The less you have to move something after it’s been frosted, the less likely it is to get messed up.  This is impossible with a cupcake stand, but with platters it works great.

• For the best tasting cupcakes on little time, I use a box mix of cake but I always make fresh frosting from scratch.  If you think about how long canned frosting sits on a shelf waiting to be used…. it’s really just shortening with sugar.  Bleh.   Buttercream or whip cream frosting is yummy and preservative-free.  My favorite is buttercream, and I love this recipe– it’s super easy.   For some reason dry ingredients sitting around doesn’t bug me as much as frosting on the shelf.  Just me.

I used that red silicone heart tray for the first time today.  For me, the jury is still out.  I was expecting them to just fall out of the silicone, but they didn’t.   Anyone love them and have any tips?

Do you have any cupcake tricks?  Please share!  I also wrote a post about making a hat cake- you can read it here.

Anna’s Mail Slot

Posted by Nat on Feb 8, 2012 | Comments Off on Anna’s Mail Slot

My daughter, Anna, loves two things:  art and mail.  She’s a very creative little soul, and she likes nothing more than the thought of sending one of her creations to someone far away, whether it’s a friend in town or her cousin, Paul, in Kansas.

We were getting to the point where I needed to have a system for her because she would give me a piece of paper and tell me it needed to be mailed to (insert name here).  I’d set it down, and then days later she’d ask if I sent the paper, and I’d have no idea which one she meant.  So I whipped up this little mail slot and stuck it on the side of her art station, which I’ll talk about more later.  I love it because it works AND it doesn’t take up a lot of space.  Would a little mailbox be cuter?  Yes.  Would it get lost, in the way, trampled and tripped on, too?  Yes.

Now, when she has something to send, she gets to stick it in her mail slot, and I can ask her who it’s supposed to go to when I get mail ready to send.  You’ll see in the photo on the right she’s stuck in a special drawing for someone. 🙂

I’d like to say this is a tutorial, but I came up with it so fast that I didn’t take totally detailed pictures.  The light is very wonky, too- it was too hot to have the kitchen shades up (in January!) so the light is very yellow.  Better to have weird lighting than no lighting at all…

You will need:

• three sheets of 12×12 scrapbook paper (ignore my four sheets there- I had one extra).  I went with traditional red, white, and blue to mimic our postal service, but you could make them whatever color you like.  (I really wanted to find some air mail paper but had no luck.)
• You could easily do this with glue or a glue stick, but I found zips adhesive strips to be super fast and less messy in this case.
• I also used adhesive squares.
• Some decorative letters are also nice, but not necessary.

Take the paper that you are going to use as the front of the slot and cut it in half diagonally as shown below.  I used a ruler to eyeball it because it won’t fit in my paper cutter.  Do NOT paste them together yet.

With your trim color, cut yourself five (not four as shown below- see?  Horrible tutorial!) 1-inch strips, and fold them in half.  Crease them so that they are folded very precisely.

If you’re using a glue stick you’ll take the diagonal edge of one of your triangles- the edge that will go where the mail will enter the slot.  This will be the covered-up edge, so you don’t need to cover the whole edge.  I would probably apply the glue to the white strip (nice and thick) and then press down. Let dry, flip it over, and glue the other side of the white strip down.

For the zips, you can see I cut a length just a bit shorter than the white and then pressed it down.  Turn over, repeat.

Either way, trim the extra off after it’s set.

This is what you end up with:

Now you can adhere the blue/front pieces together at the bottom.

Put your red/back piece behind the blue/front pieces that are now glued together.  Use your remaining white strips to trim the bottom and sides.  You will have to trim here and there to make it all flush at the corners.  This is where the zips came in super handy, but if you don’t have them, I’m sure glue will work fine.  Just be sure to use a heavy-duty glue in case your kid wants to send lots of mail. 🙂

Stick some letters on if you want/have them,  and you’re done!  Anna loves having this, and it has taken one more thing off the counter.

Do you want some fun mail?  I have about a bazillion pieces of art I could send you….

Today I’m sharing on:

Make Your Own Coffee Creamer {Genius!}

Posted by Nat on Jan 23, 2012 | Comments Off on Make Your Own Coffee Creamer {Genius!}

My sister, Stephanie, is responsible for this one.  Thanks, Steph!

She can tell when I’m on a kick.  Lately I’m on a “make my own stuff” kick, as you may have read in my post about making my own laundry detergent.  Soon after that post, Stephanie texted me that she had tried making her own coffee creamer and it tasted pretty good.  She shared this link with me.   I immediately gravitate to all things chocolate, of course, so I decided to give the mocha recipe a try.   I also happened to have dry milk in my pantry (bread making) and hadn’t used it yet.  I had all of the ingredients (only three!) so I made it up.  I have to say…. I like it!

A lot of whether or not you might enjoy this creamer is, I think, going to be based on how much you need the cream experience in your coffee.  While it doesn’t give me that, “MmmmmMMMMMMMM!” experience that some of my favorite flavors of creamer give me, it still does the job of making my coffee taste less… like coffee.  And the cocoa is very nice- at the end it’s almost like having a cup of hot chocolate- nice!  What I like most is that it’s not made with high fructose corn syrup, it’s only three ingredients, and those ingredients are simple.  Sugar?  Yup.  Sugar is not going to kill me if I put just a few (okay, three) spoonfuls in my coffee.

If you like the experience of watching your creamer take over your coffee and change it from a dark, black mass of caffeinated sludge to a caramel-colored, smooth warm drink… this is not going to do it for you.  As shown above, your coffee will not look that much lighter.  But it does make your coffee taste… less like coffee and more like creamer.  There are other flavors listed on the link, but here’s the recipe I used:

Mocha Coffee Creamer

• 1 cup sugar
• 2 cups nonfat dry milk
• 4 teaspoons cocoa

Of course, I did add a bit of this and that helped with the creaminess.  Nom-nom.

Stephanie tried the orange flavor.  She said that she used Splenda and it was very sweet, but she still liked it.

Thanks, Steph!  And thanks, “desertgal”, whomever and wherever you are!

DIY: IKEA Chair Makeover, Part I

Posted by Nat on Jan 6, 2012 | Comments Off on DIY: IKEA Chair Makeover, Part I

Warning:  I am going to embarrass myself in a bit with photos of our actual kitchen chairs.  My hope is to help all people everywhere feel better about how gross their kitchen chairs are.  We are not alone.  

Have you ever had a project that all of a sudden you just HAD to finish?  A switch goes off, and WHAM-O- you simply must. Do. It. NOW.  That’s where I am with this one.

I’ve been hunting for months on Pinterest and the WWW for fabric to use to redo our kitchen chairs.  I hemmed and hawed and then realized that the problem is not that I can’t find fabric I like, it’s that I don’t want to buy fabric online.  It weirds me out.  I’m sure someday I’ll do it and it will be great, but I’m a very tactile person- I don’t want to buy something sight unseen that my rear end is going to sit on for who-knows-how-long.

I digress.  Here are the chairs in their current state.  I hate them.  (I also can’t believe I’m showing you how bad they are, but hey- it’s cleansing in a way…)

(upper left:  for some dumb-a** reason I thought it would be okay to put the vacuum on the chair while vacuuming bugs out of the ceiling-fan light.  Duh.) 

It’s not just the seats, though. The frames have had their fair share of…  well, here- have a look:

Dirt, milk, juice, food, nicks, fading- the works.

I should say that while I do hate how dirty they are, I also think they have held up surprisingly well for IKEA chairs.  They’ve been with us through two moves, for five years, we have never had to tighten them, and they are never uneven on the floor or anything.  They deserve a little pick-me-up, eh?

Here they are in my kitchen.

They totally don’t match.  We used to have a dark table that they matched, but that table is long gone.  Now we have a huge birch table (love it) and the dark chairs just do. Not. Match.

So, this weekend I will be finishing them up.  If you’ve been to my Facebook Page you may have noticed I posted about the fabric I chose.  You’ll have to wait and see what color I chose for paint when I post the final product next week- can’t wait!

Do you have anything in your house that needs a pick-me-up?

2012: Resolution Schmezolution!

Posted by Nat on Jan 2, 2012 | Comments Off on 2012: Resolution Schmezolution!

Happy New Year!

(photo taken by the lovely Amber of LifeArt Photography)

Hello everyone!  Happy 2012!  I hope that you had a marvelous holiday season filled with family, friends, and food.  Don’t forget the food. 🙂  I had a wonderful visit with my family in Kansas that included lots of giggles with grandparents, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins, as well as… you guessed it… FOOD.  My family knows how to EAT- I love it!

Every year I sit back and marvel at what 12 months can bring.  One year ago I was pregnant, anticipating the arrival of our baby girl, Emily.   Now she’s here, adorable and healthy, and our family is complete.  I’ve left my teaching job, I’m a SAHM but soon I’ll be a WAHM part time. Un. Real.

The trend, of course, is to talk about what resolutions we might have this time of year.  I have done resolutions in the past- entering them into a list on my phone to “help me remember.”  Yep- doesn’t work.  Out of sight, out of mind- that’s me.  Plus, life with three kids always keeps things busy, interesting, and crazy, and other things tend to creep over those resolutions.  So this year, I’ve decided to have a theme.  I’m going to come up with a print or something to put somewhere to remind me daily what my theme is and try to stick to it.

What’s my theme?

“Keep it happy.”

Why?

Who doesn’t need happiness?

I’ve seen too much hardship in 2011.  Too many friends losing loved ones, too many struggles, too many battles with illness.  And really, all anyone wants, is to be happy.  So I want, this year, to make sure that everything I do focuses on keeping things happy.  Sort of like Ella Fitzgerald and her song, “C’mon Get Happy.”

I do have a few “must do” items on my list that will likely disappear.  I need to go to the dentist yesterday.  I need to make good on a laser treatment that I bought on Groupon- I’m thinking upper lip.  I need to go to the dermatologist because I have NEVER BEEN to the dermatologist and I live in flippin’ “TAN” DIEGO!!!!   But those should not be resolutions- those are more like, “Dude, it’s 2012 and you said you’d do this stuff in 2010!” kind of things…

I look forward to posting more this year, learning, and hopefully expanding my little corner of real estate on the WWW!

Do you have any resolutions or themes for 2012?  I’d love to hear about them!