Monday Musings #2

*First things first!  I'm a guest blogger on Craft Goodies today.  I'm so excited to be featured.  Thanks again, Wendy!  I shared my Peanut Butter & Jelly Mini Cupcakes.  Be sure to go check out Wendy's awesome blog. 

*Somehow I have been doing more cooking then crafting lately.  Which is weird.  I have never really liked to cook but I'm starting to think about recipes and getting excited to try new things.  Like tonight, I'm going to attempt to make homemade crab rangoons.  I'm addicted to crab rangoons from the local Chinese take out and I'm spending way too much money on them, not to mention the calories.  I'm hoping these ones turn out well, if they do I will share a post on them.

*I gave the Tutu to little girl.  She looked adorable in it.  The 17 inch waist was way too big like I feared but I fixed the situation and she looked so cute in it.  I can't wait to make another tutu.

*I bought some plates and cups for Marc's 30th Birthday party.  I really need to get motivated and send out invites, I think I'm doing email ones and get the rest of the stuff for the party.  I have set a goal to start his burlap banner this week.  I also bought the burlap that I'm going to use as a table covering.  I hope it turns out like the vision I have in my head.  I wanted something more boy oriented and not girly for his party and I hope the burlap achieves that and still looks good.

*I haven't solved my couch covering problem yet.  I really need to do something before the party.  Eeek.  I also want to refresh my curtains somehow.  My mom suggested a ribbon valance, so I have to think about that.  I'm just worried all the ribbon will cost a small fortune.

*Speaking of small fortunes....Marc & I are doing a modified "No Buy March".  If you haven't heard of this before, basically you aren't supposed to spend any money. Obviously, we need to buy groceries and gas each week but that's it.  I say we are doing a modified one because we have made a few exceptions.  Like $100 to spend towards Marc's birthday party, I need to get a haircut this month and $25 to Target if we need any miscellaneous house things.  We have been working hard to pay off our debt and we are doing a good job but we are still spending frivalous money and we need to stop.  I want to save more and get the debt paid off asap.  It's going be VERY challenging for me, especially not spending any money on crafts but I do have a HUGE HUGE HUGE supply of things that I can do.  This will force me to use up some of my supplies.  We have also set a grocery budget of $250 for the entire month, which will include any food take-out.  We need to stop spending whatever we want and have more structure.  I think it will be good for our wallet and good for our health.

*Last musing for this Monday, if anyone is interested in blog swaps or guests posts, please email me!  I have a contact button on my sidebar.

Awards!

I've been given two awards!!

#1 - The Stylish Blogger Award by

Melanie from The McMommy Diaries 

& 

Monica from A Mother's Touch

THANK YOU!!

The are rules that go along with winning this award. 

Here they are:

1. Thank and link back to the person who awarded you this award.

2. Share 7 things about yourself.

3. Award 15 recently discovered great bloggers, or less, up to you.

4. Contact these bloggers and tell them about the award!

7 Things About Myself.

1.  I love love love to read.  I probably read more than I should, I have a tendency to not get things done when I'm sucked into a good book.  I'm already on my 22nd book of the year, check out my Reading List tab to check out what I've read this year.

2.  Without a doubt, my favorite food is Lobster.  Yum.

3.  I have a Realize Band (gastric band) which helps me lose weight.  I've lost about 86lbs since August 26, 2009.

4.  I'm addicted to Sex and the City.  I own all the seasons and both movies.  I watch them over and over, especially when I'm crafting or cleaning.

5.  I'm afraid of birds.  They freak me out.  Which is funny because I love to decorate with birds.  I just don't like them flying around my head.

6.  My favorite TV show is Dexter.  If you haven't watched it, you really must give it a try!  

7.  I have two cats, Sully & Ruby.

Bloggers I've Chosen to Receive this Award

1. Positively Positive

2.Living Life Photographically

3. 3 Beautiful Kiddos

4. The Crafty PCA

5. Just Crafty Today

I also received this award from

Jamie @ The DIY Home Sweet Home Project 

1. Thank and link back to the person who awarded you this award.

2. Share 7 things about yourself.

3. Award 15 recently discovered great bloggers, or less, up to you.

4. Contact these bloggers and tell them about the award!

7 More Things about Me

1.  I love to take pictures and have lots of photos hung around my house.

2.  I once had food poisoning so bad that I was in the ER twice to get IV fluids.

3.  I love living in New England (minus the snow), there are tons of great historic sites to visit.  My favorite being Orchard House where Louisa May Alcott  lived in Concord, MA.

4.  I love everything Disney.  I have been to Disney World 9 times.

5.  I have an addiction to buying fabric, I really need to stop.

6.  I'm on a kick of reading Historical Fiction.  Especially around the Tudor period in England.

7.  I would love to travel to England.  I have never been, my great grandmother is from England and I really identify with the English culture.

Bloggers who I'm Awarding

1. The McMommy Diaries

2. Jet Setting Divas

3. Flowing Creativity

4. Baby Deals Dujour

5. A Modern Day Fairy Tale

Thanks again for the awards!!!

Rockin' Lobster Sliders

I'm from Maine and even though I live in Massachusetts now, I'm a Maine girl at heart.  Always will be.

When you think of Maine, what do you think of?

For a lot of people it is lobster.  I love lobster.  In fact, my Aunt introduced me to lobster when I was 2, I've been in love ever since.  When I was trying to think of something different to cook for dinner tonight that would be yummy and that I could share on my blog, inspiration struck when I thought "lobster sliders".

Let me tell you, I impressed even myself.  I'm not a confident cook, so I become a bit nervous and start doubting what I'm trying to do.  Luckily, Marc was there to help me and even helped me kick up the flavor a bit.  They super easy to make too.

Ingredients:

*2 Lobsters

Steamed by the grocery store, they usually don't charge for it and 

it's way easier than cooking them yourself then having to wait for them to cool.

*Mayo

*Lemon

*Pepper

*Chives

*Thyme

*Butter

*Dijon Mustard (not pictured, last minute addition)

*Dinner Rolls

First shell your lobsters.  No easy way to do this, just have to put your strong fingers on and do it.

While Marc was shelling the lobsters, I made the mayo  mixture.

I probably used between 2 and 3 tablespoons of mayo.

Then I diced up some chives, not a whole lot as you can see.  It's really a judgement call for what you want yours to taste like.

I squeezed some lemon juice into the mayo as well as a few grinds of pepper.  Again, no exact measurements.  I just eyeballed and tasted to get the flavor I wanted.

After I took this picture, I added in a very small amount of Grey Poupon mustard.  I don't think regular yellow mustard would have worked as well.  As for the mustard quantity, I would say I added less than a teaspoon of mustard.

In a saucepan I put 1/2 a stick of butter and some thyme leaves, I heated the pan on medium so I didn't scorch the butter or thyme.

While the pan on was, I would move rotate/shake/not sure of the cooking term the pan to incorporate the thyme into the butter.

Liberated Lobster Meat.

Action shot of chopping lobster into smaller pieces.

Those are Marc's hands, he is not handy with a camera.

Once the Thyme/Butter mixture was melted, I brushed onto my dinner rolls that I cut in half.

I put the oven on broil and popped them in while I did the last few steps of the lobster mixture.

Nicely diced Lobster. 

I had leftover butter & thyme after brushing the dinner rolls so I poured that over my lobster meat first.

Then I added the mayo mixture.  

Crispy and delicious rolls.

Voila!  Lobster Sliders!

The one thing I will do differently next time is leave out the chives.  I didn't like the taste of them with the thyme, luckily we added so few that the chives didn't ruin the taste of this batch.

Out of the 2 lobsters, I was able to fill 4 sliders.  Our lobsters were on the smaller side but I feel it was a decent portion, especially if you serve it with a side dish.   You could make more of a mayo mixture to make your lobster go further, but I wanted a subtle mayo taste.

Linking Up at...

Debbiedoos Newbie Party     So You Think You Are Crafty Party

Too Cute Tutu

I love girly girl things, which is funny because I wasn't overly girly girl when I was a kid nor am I personally.  I like the girly things but if you looked at me you probably wouldn't guess that I do.

I'm crazy over tutus.  If I could get away with wearing one and #1 look cute and #2 not be hauled away to the crazy bin, I would wear one ALL the time.  

But I can't, so I don't.

That doesn't stop me from making my very first tutu ever for my friend's 1 year old daughter.  My friend lives out of New England and this is the first time I'm meeting her little girl, I am very excited.  So this meeting gave me an excuse to make a tutu.  

I googled a bunch of tutorials to find the instructions, there are 1,000s of them out there.  I even bought a tutorial from Etsy today to make different styles, stay tuned for how those turn out.  

The best part is that I only used my dreaded sewing machine to sew the elastic into a loop and I could have even sewn that by hand.  Dreaded sewing machine only because I'm not at all confident in my sewing skills.

Now I didn't have the little girl available to measure so I googled until I found some measurements, one said 17inches for 12 month old.  I asked little girl's Mom and she is in 12 month sizes right now so I went with that.  I think the 17 inches is waaaaay too big but I don't have kids so I could be crazy.  Other tutorials said measure your child's waist and then take away an inch, others said measure the waist and add two inches.  

Confused?  So was I.  My solution to the problem was to call my Mom, ask her what she thought of the 17inches and she said go for it.  My back up solution is to bring a safety pin so that we can pin any excess elastic if it's too big for little girl.  Heck, she will grow into it.

I think with my next tutu I am going to try the ribbon waist where you just tie, it's kind of like a tutu apron I guess.  I'm tutu crazy now so I expect I will be making a lot of these.  We know three pregnant people right now and one is having a boy, let's hope the other two have girls so I have someone to give these future tutus.

Are you ready to see my creation?  

Adorable!

I bought the shirt but I have hopes of learning how to applique in the very near future.

 I did not sew the tutu to the shirt, I figure little girl can grow with this tutu a bit so the shirt will change.

I just safety pinned the tutu to the shirt for picture taking purposes.

I'm super happy with how this turned out and I'm already scheming my next tutu.  Hmmm...wonder if my kitty, Ruby would wear one?  Just kidding!!!  

Linking up to these...

Debbiedoos Newbie Linky Party

So You Think Your Crafty Party

Vicious Crafting Cycle

My husband, Marc is away this weekend and I have been looking forward to crafting and creating all week.  I find myself in my vicious craft cycle yet again....

I woke up at 6:30 this morning.

I went on the internet and looked up the links of projects I had saved that I want to make.

I couldn't decide what I wanted to make.

I chatted with my Mom a bit.

I decided what I wanted to make.  Baby Burp Rags, some fabric flowers and perhaps a Tag Blankie.

I dug out my fabric bin, not happy with my selection I knew I would be buying some fabric.

I went to Target to pick up cloth diapers for the Baby Burp Rags and a few other things that were needed.

I went to Joann Fabrics to pick up some snuggle flannel (50% off, woo hoo!) and some other fabrics, ribbons and thread.  I have a fabric addiction.

I came home, threw all my fabric into the wash.

I waited....and waited for the fabric to wash and dry.

I ate lunch.

I took the fabric out of the dryer and folded it.

I ironed the cloth diapers.

I ironed some fabric for the burp rags.

I cut the fabric.

I pinned the fabric.

I did all that fun stuff and I have three burp rags waiting to be sewn.  Yes, only three.  I'm pathetic.

I decided to cut and iron the fabric for the tag blanket.

I now have two not so squares of fabric that want to be sewn into a blanket.

I am now exhausted without a single completed project.

Sigh.

This always happens.

I must plan better.

Peanut Butter & Jelly Mini Cupcakes

I mentioned on Monday that I was going to be testing Peanut Butter & Jelly Mini Cupcakes.  Marc requested them for his 30th Birthday Party which will be on April 9th.  I wanted to test these out but not have a bunch of cupcakes in my house so with Marc going to Vermont with a bunch of his guy friends today, last night was the perfect time to make them.

Supplies:

*Yellow or White Cake Mix & Ingredients to Make Mix

*Vanilla Frosting

*Creamy Peanut Butter

*Jelly

*Filling Tip

*Decorating Tip

*Mini Cupcake Liners

Not everything is pictured here, sorry!

I first made the cake mix and lined my mini cupcake pan.  Then popped the pan in the oven.  I followed the box directions for oven temp and cooking time. 

FYI: Because I made mini cupcakes, they took less than the 20 minutes for full size cupcakes.  Just keep an eye on yours while they bake.

 While my Mini Cupcakes baked, I got out my new Dessert Decorator, which rocks!  I hate the frosting bags so I spotted this and decided to give it a whirl.  I bought mine for $14.99 at Michael's.  Well worth the $15 because it had a filling tip and the decorating tips.  Plus you just wash out the tube, no messy frosting bags, no frosting coming out the bottom.  Can you tell I like this? 

Filled with Reduced Sugar Grape Jelly. 

 I only have one Mini Cupcake pan so it took awhile to cook the 5 batches.  I still had cake mix leftover too so I could have made more but it was a work night and with one pan, I was ready to be done.

While I was baking and waiting for the cupcakes to cool, I mixed my Peanut Butter Frosting.

I took the lazy easy way out.  I just used vanilla frosting and mixed peanut butter into it.  There are tons of from scratch peanut butter frosting recipes on the internet so google that if you want to do it homemade. 

If you go the method I used, melt your peanut butter in the microwave for 15 seconds.  I had to do mine another 10 seconds, just be careful because you can burn the peanut butter.

I mixed in about 1 tablespoon of peanut butter at time until I got the right flavor.  Don't worry about doing too much or too little, mix in until you have the peanut butter flavor you want.

I did about 3 tablespoons to 1 can of Vanilla Frosting.

I did have a frosting emergency, one can for this many mini cupcakes (5 dozen) was not enough. Marc had to go out in the middle of me frosting the cupcakes to get more frosting.  Oops!

 Filling the cupcakes were super easy with my dessert decorater.  I let the cupcakes cool for about 5 to 10 minutes.  These being mini cupcakes, they cooled down super fast.  With larger cupcakes you might have to wait a bit longer.

  The directions said to insert the fill tip about 1 inch but as there were mini cupcakes, I didn't quite go down that far.  These were the first ones I filled and about halfway through I learned that if I pulled the plunger back a bit before I removed the tip from the cupcake then it wouldn't leave the bubble of jelly at the top you see in the picture below.  The ones with no jelly on top have not been filled yet. 

 The bummer about having only one Dessert Decorater tube is that I had to wait for all 5 batches of cupcakes to cook, cool and fill with jelly before I could switch over to my Peanut Butter Frosting.

I will be sure to buy another mini cupcake pan before Marc's Party.

I'm not a great froster so I tried to do a smooth "bubble" or "dot" of frosting.  To do this, hold your tube at a 90 degree angle in the center of your cupcake and frost until you have the size frosting you desire.  I think if I had backed off the tube a little before removing I wouldn't have had such a wispy tail on the end of the cupcakes.

Ta Da!  Peanut Butter & Jelly Cupcakes.

They are just like the sound, a sweet peanut butter & jelly sandwich in cupcake form.  Delicious!

Things I would do differently next time are....

*Try full sugar jelly and probably strawberry jelly instead of grape. 

I just used what we had at home for these ones.

*Use 2 mini cupcake pans to get the baking done faster.

*Have 2 cans of frosting on hand so no running to the store in the middle of frosting.

I'm already brainstorming ideas for another flavor of cupcakes for the party in April. 

I think two flavors would be nice to have.  Any suggestions?

Linking up to these Parties.