Pinterest Projects

Pinterest Projects: Butterfly Canvas

Posted by on Mar 19, 2012 | Comments Off on Pinterest Projects: Butterfly Canvas

Ever since I saw this post on Whatever, I have wanted to do this project with my sweet little Anna.  The moment I saw it I added it to my “Things I’d Like to Make” board on Pinterest.  Anna loves butterflies, paint, and crafts.  I wanted something for our craft/office/guest room over the bed.  While I’m not totally pleased with the yellow I ended up with on the canvas, I do love the effect and the bright colors it brings to the room.

Here’s our paper pre-butterfly punching.  The act of painting the colors itself was therapeutic.  I’ll let you guess which one is Anna’s.

 

I bought three different butterfly punches (used a coupon for each one), and all of them were Martha Stewart brand.  They all worked so nicely.

I didn’t let Anna help with the hot glue- something about 4-year-olds and hot glue doesn’t go together for me.  But the end result is lovely.  I may move it to Anna’s room when I figure something else out for this wall- it doesn’t seem quite big enough, but we’ll let it sit for now.

I would advise a few things:

  • Get yourself a nice set of watercolors with lots of color options.  I did a first round with just the Crayola watercolors and the effect wasn’t as nice.
  • Use  nice watercolor paper.  It’s very thick and dries better.

Happy butterfly creating!

 

 

 

 

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Do Yourself a Favor… {Make this soup!}

Posted by on Feb 1, 2012 | Comments Off on Do Yourself a Favor… {Make this soup!}

Warning…  this post has a lot of bird-walking.

Sweet Potato Chowder, folks!  I’m tellin’ you.  Nom nom.

This chowder is so good that I started writing the post before I even tasted it.  Yeah, I know.  What I like most is when a soup you cook for just about 30 minutes tastes like it’s been cooking all day.  This one tastes just. Like. That.

Here is the one picture that turned out well.  Good thing it’s a closeup of bacon.  (If you’re vegetarian, don’t leave! I think this recipe would be delish sans bacon, too.)

 

This is like a “twofer” deal because you get the original recipe and my own adaptation.  Why my adaptation?  I don’t like chilies or peppers.  Isn’t it funny that my last name is Chiles but I don’t like chilies?  🙂  I always want to spell it chillies.  Or Chili’s like the restaurant.

Anyhoo, I pinned this recipe recently on my Food & Drink board.  Man, that board is getting crazy.  I need Pinterest to start allowing drag and drop editing with boards because mine are a bit cluttered.  I digress.

Here is the original recipe from Real Simple:

Ingredients

  • 1/2 pound thick-sliced bacon, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
  • 1/2 sweet red pepper, diced
  • 1/2 sweet green pepper, diced
  • 1/2 large white onion, diced
  • 2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
  • 3 13-ounce cans chicken broth
  • 3 canned chipotle chilies, finely chopped
  • 2 14-ounce cans corn
  • 1 cup low-fat milk
  • kosher salt

Directions

  1. Cook the bacon in a large stockpot over medium heat until it begins to crisp, 6 to 8 minutes. Spoon off all but 1 tablespoon of the drippings.
  2. Add the peppers and onion to the bacon and continue cooking, stirring frequently, until the vegetables are tender, 3 to 5 minutes.
  3. Add the sweet potatoes, chicken broth, and chipotles and simmer, covered, 15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender.
  4. Stir in the corn, milk, and ½ teaspoon salt and cook until heated through.

 

My problem is that chiles really don’t sit well with me, both in taste and digestion fun.  I just don’t put them in my food.  And the taste of any pepper- red, green, yellow… makes me want to gag. However, if you look at that recipe, you’ll see that it has quite a bit of chile and pepper action going on.   I knew that if I didn’t substitute anything else in for the chilies and peppers it would be pretty colorless and bland.  I also love a good, creamy chowder, so here’s my new, adapted version of this soup:

Nat’s Sweet Potato Chowder

Ingredients

  • 1/2 pound thick-sliced bacon, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
  • 1/2 large white onion, diced
  • 2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
  • 3 13-ounce cans chicken broth
  • 2 14-ounce cans corn
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1/2 cup heavy cream
  • 8-12 oz. frozen peas, to taste
  • kosher salt
  • Greek yogurt for serving

Directions

  1. Cook the bacon in a large stockpot over medium heat until it begins to crisp, 6 to 8 minutes. Spoon off all but 1 tablespoon of the drippings. (I found that when I spooned off the grease it was exactly 1 tablespoon.  Just sayin’.)
  2. Add the onion to the bacon and continue cooking, stirring frequently, until the onions are tender, 3 to 5 minutes.
  3. Add the sweet potatoes and chicken broth and simmer, covered, 15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender.
  4. Stir in the corn, peas, milk, and ½ teaspoon salt and cook until heated through.
  5. If desired, plop on some Greek yogurt.  Enjoy!
Yes, I basically just added peas and then there’s the whole milk/cream thing, but I appreciate details recipes.
Lastly, I’ve been curious for a long time about the difference between the sweet potato and the yam. I once made some sweet potato biscuits with what I thought were yams.  They turned out horrible.  HORRIBLE.  But I can’t blame it on the  yam, because this video I found points out that I most likely just had a different kind of sweet potato on my hands.
What Is the Difference Between Yams and Sweet Potatoes

 

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A New Chapter: We Have a Piano

Posted by on Jan 12, 2012 | 1 comment

We have a piano now.  Seems a bit full circle.  You may or may not know that I majored in music education in college.  I played piano as my main instrument, though I also play flute.  In high school my parents recognized my desire to make music a big part of my life, and we got a Steinway grand piano.  I got to pick it out.  Talk about amazing.  So if you told me back then that someday I’d be excited to have an electric, plug-in piano, I would have scoffed and said, “Never!”  Ah, how things change.

Once we got the piano, this whole room seemed to come together in terms of furniture arrangement.  Our poster of Louis seems so much more appropriate now with something musical underneath him.  Before he was just hangin’ out, smokin’ a cig.  Now he has some company.

My parents gave this piece of art to me years ago- I think they got it in New Orleans.  We finally got it framed and it now hangs next to Louis.  I love it because it combines my two instruments, flute and piano, into one piece.  Rad.

Why the electric?  We have kids.  Who sleep.  The only time I can possibly play for my own enjoyment is when they are asleep.  With an electric piano I can plug in the headphones and play to my heart’s content.

I am also loving our lamp.  I recovered it after being inspired by this pin.  As much as I would love to buy one as I saw it, I couldn’t justify it when I had all the materials to make one myself.  Music paper, hot glue annnnnd…. done!

Now if I can just get my confidence and my super-speedy fingers back….

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Pinterest Projects: Laundry Detergent!

Posted by on Jan 11, 2012 | 3 comments

I want to share the things I try from Pinterest that work, so I shall begin another series here on CC:  Pinterest Projects.  Sometimes I’ll devote an entire post to them, other times I’ll just mention them within a post.   I think it’s important to do more than just pin things- you must try them, too!

I was immediately intrigued by this pin.   The thought of making a boat-load of my own detergent and then not having to buy it for a long time…. awesome.  So I did it.  I made my own laundry detergent.  Here’s the original post in case you’d like to make your own.

I put mine in a giant glass cookie jar from IKEA.  I love it.  It’s so nice to have this instead of a big ol’ plastic bottle of detergent.  Does it work?  Yup.  Does it smell good?  It does.  It doesn’t necessarily make your clothes smell amazing, so if you need spring-fresh clothes you’ll want to add a fabric softener or something along those lines, but our clothes are clean.

 

Other tips I would add:

Order everything you need from Amazon.  It’s so much easier than driving all over kingdom-come for the ingredients, as they are not necessarily all in the same place.  What I really love is that everything the ingredients come in, for the most part, is recyclable.  RAD!

Mix it up outside, and wear a mask.  There will be soap dust everywhere, but it will smell amazing.  Love it!

If you grate the soap by hand, it’s quite a nice workout for your arms. 🙂

 I’m pondering trying the dishwasher detergent next.  Woo hoo!

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