I can fix that!

So, some time back I bought this shirt online and once it arrived it was too tight in the bodice so I gave it to my daughters. They decided that they like the shirt, but not the long sleeves.

Somewhere around the same time I also bought these pants on ebay. When they arrived I found that the flare in the legs was pretty major.....like I couldn't see my feet at all.

So, I was trying to decide how to take in the flare on the jeans because the seams on the inside of the leg and the outside are finished off and anything I did would be noticeable.

Then one day an idea struck me and I decided how to make things work out so that we would all be happy. I did the only logical thing. I cut the sleeves off on the shirt and the flares off on the pants. Woohoo!

I hemmed the sleeves on the shirt. Done! And the girls are happy with it.

I just have to add here that every time I use my sewing machine my husband gets a whole new set of brownie points for buying it for me!!

Just look at the beautiful job it did when I hemmed the sleeves on this sheer fabric!!

I took the lace that was in the middle of the sleeve and down at the cuff and separated it from the fabric. Then I stitched it together in one long strip.

I turned up the raw edge on the jeans (with right sides touching) and stitched the lace around the bottom and again around the top of the lace.

Ta-dah!! New capris.

And they're cute too!!

So now we're all happy.

I love it when I can take the things I am unhappy with and turn them into things that I AM happy with.

A New Look

Every year my parents give us one of those big tins of popcorn. And every year the kids devour it and I throw the tin away. Well, this year I decided to try to make something useful from it.

It started like this:

I roughed it up with some steel wool. (Not the mafia kind of roughed up, just a little scratching the finish. HA!)

Then I coated it with a thin layer of mod podge and applied a couple of sheets of scrap booking paper. Of course it needed two sheets plus about 1-1/2 inch of a third sheet of paper. One of my daughters was quick to point out that I didn't match the seams.

I sent her to her room.

Not really, but I did tell her not to inspect my work so closely.


Here's the finished product. Well, maybe finished. I have paper to do the lid but haven't done it yet. I can't decide if I should or not. I mean, the red actually matches.

So, I did this with no idea of what I was going to use it for. But this morning I think I actually decided to use it to hold the wild bird food. Right now it's just in the bag sitting on my pantry floor and won't this look so much better than that?

If I keep making things that are cute to hold the stuff in my pantry I'm going to have to take the door off and force people to go look at it when they come to my house.

More cooking.....

This time I made these quick and easy pizza rolls as one of our snacks for family movie night.


Pizza Rolls:

1 pkg. canned biscuits
1 small jar/can spaghetti sauce
cheese cubes
pepperoni (or other pizza topping favorites)


Preheat oven to 350F.

Flatten each biscuit dough piece. (I just did this with my hands as I was preparing each roll.)

Place a spoonful of sauce, cube of cheese, and a slice of pepperoni (or your chosen toppings) in the center of each flattened biscuit dough piece. Fold the dough around the toppings and seal.

Place on cookie sheet about an inch or so apart.

Bake for 12 - 15 minutes, or until golden brown.

They are good just like this. This is the second time I've made these and this time when they came out of the oven, I rubbed butter on the top and sprinkled them with a little garlic salt. I think it would also be good with parmesan cheese sprinkled on top. I'm going to try that the next time around.


On a side note:  I usually take my pictures when my kids aren't around. In a house with four teenagers there's always someone around to 'help' me if they're here (or awake).  When I was trying to take these pictures one of my daughters, Abigail, kept photo bombing them.

 

She's using a zoo pals plate.

Yes. I only have teenage children and I'm still having to buy zoo pals. LOL

Cream Cheese Cake Mix Cookies

I saw this recipe on facebook, so I don't know where it came from and this is all just from memory.



Anyway, I made these cookies with white chocolate M&Ms in them. They taste really good, and they stay soft and chewy.

(Obviously photographing food is not one of my strong points.)

Cream Cheese Cake Mix Cookies

8 oz. package cream cheese - softened
1/4 cup butter - softened
1 egg
1 box yellow (or white) cake mix
add-ins of choice

Cream together butter and cream cheese until smooth.

Add in egg and continue to mix until fully incorporated.

Slowly stir in cake mix. The dough will get thick.

Add in your treat of choice. (I used white chocolate M&Ms but would be good with all kinds of things.....chocolate chips, toffee chips, chopped peanut butter cups or snickers bars, etc.)

Bake at 375 F for 10 minutes.



Like I said, the cookies are really good. But, a word of warning......

I make a batch of cookie dough, but then only make 8 cookies to put into my children's lunch each day. I made this dough in the morning so the first batch of cookies was a breeze. Then I put the leftover dough into a container and put it in the fridge. Well, the next morning when I made the cookies the dough was a sticky mess. The cookies still tasted great, but once you chill this dough it's VERY sticky and hard to work with. But, the silver lining here is that it really sticks to the spoon so once I get the dough on the cookie sheet there's still a big glob left stuck to the spoon and what choice do I really have but to eat it? So maybe it's not so bad that it's sticky after all..............

I need to craft....

We have been so darn busy that there is no time left to craft. OR, if there is time there is certainly no energy.

And for all of you crafty folks out there, you know we need an outlet or we start to go a little stir crazy.

Just look what not having an outlet has caused me to do!!!

I took it out on the dog!!!

It's my daughter's dog and my daughter was less than amused.


But, honestly, the rest of us couldn't quit laughing and it managed to stay on for about a week before it wore off.


If you want to try it yourself I just used an eye liner pencil.

I'm sure I wouldn't have done it at all if my daughter hadn't told my that I 'couldn't' do it. HA!

Mmmmm.........muffins........

We have a client that is an older lady and she likes to shell pecans when they're in season. So at Christmas time she told her kids that she wanted pecans to shell. Well, they came through with about 300 pounds of pecans for her. Then, she also knows another man that owns and orchard and dropped by out of the blue one day and brought her another 300 pounds!! So, she's been giving pecans to everyone that she can.

I just happened to stop by to pick up her paperwork in the midst of all of this and was the happy recipient of a couple of bags of shelled pecans. And they're really good too.

So, I've been making goodies with pecans in them. We don't generally like pecans in our breads or cookies so I've been looking for things that revolve around the pecans. I came across this recipe for Pecan Pie Muffins at The Girl Who Ate Everything.

They were really good!! To be honest, I don't really care much for pecan pie (I know! I know! My mother wonders how I can be both a southern girl and her daughter.) but I really liked these. They're gooey and decadent and just all around good.

My how time flies!

Wow! It seems that another bunch of time has passed since I was on here last. I haven't really had time to work anything new. I've got a couple of recipes that I'll share soon but that's been about the whole of it.

It was a crazy busy tax season at the office and with quarterly reports now due it hasn't really slowed down much.

We've also been busy dealing with the crappy stuff that life sometimes throws at us all.

Two weeks ago one of our dogs was poisoned with anti-freeze. What a horrible thing to do to an animal. It's an awful way to die. And the daughter that this dog belonged to was very attached and involved with her dog and she loved him so very much. It's been heartbreaking to see her go through the hurt of his death and how awful it was.

Not long before this happened, she painted this picture of him:

Not bad for a 14 year old girl that's taking art at school for the first time this year......if I do say so myself. lol

She is coping with it by drawing and painting and I'm glad she has that outlet.

Another daughter was in a pageant yesterday and when we got home I found that our refrigerator isn't cooling. *sigh* I am completely grateful that we have another refrigerator in the garage that doesn't usually have much in it so that I at least had somewhere to put the food until we can get a repair man out to the house.

But somewhere in the meantime, I'll try to get back to doing things that I like.....