Caramel Apple Cinnamon Rolls

So today I’m watching my friends kids for her while she is on a little vacation.  That means I have 9 kids running around here and I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to use them as guinea pigs.   So while I was making bread this morning I decided to turn my Apple Cinnamon Instant Oatmeal Bread into Caramel Apple Cinnamon Rolls.  

This is what I did.

First you’ll need some dough I used this recipe that I just made up today, but you could use whatever your favorite recipe is.

Roll the dough out like cinnamon rolls. (Incase you didn’t read the recipe the little chunks in the dough are dried apples)

Slather it with butter

Then I peeled 1.5 apples but I should have used 2.

Then I grated them

and added some cinnamon, sugar and cornstarch.

Then I sprinkled the grated apple over the dough and added a little bit more cinnamon and sugar over the top of it.  I would have preferred to use brown sugar but I was all out   then I rolled it up.

I would have also like to sprinkle brown sugar in the bottom of the pan before I placed the cinnamon rolls down but because I didn’t have any I used caramel sauce instead, oh and a few chopped pecans.

in the other pan I made a crunchy crumb topping kind of like an Apple Betty and sprinkled that over the top.  

Then I let them rise for about 30 minutes and baked them at 350 degrees for about 28 min or until they felt done.  Make sure you oven rack is set below the middle of the oven!

Remove from oven and dump out on a plate.  ENJOY!!

Caramel Apple Cinnamon Rolls

Apple Betty Cinnamon Rolls

Apple Betty Cinnamon Rolls with Caramel Sauce

or Apple Betty Cinnamon Rolls with icing

They must have been good because they didn’t last very long!

Apple Cinnamon Instant Oatmeal Bread (yeast)

I love making bread, and with 5 kids I make a lot of it.  I also like to experiment with new bread recipes, I have had this idea kicking around the back of my brain for awhile now and last week I gave it a try and it turned out okay but today I made it again and was really happy with the end results.

The recipe

2 cups of warm water

2 TBS yeast

1/2-2/3 cup of honey

6 cups of bread flour ( I used a mixture of whole wheat and white)

3 packets of Apple Cinnamon Instant oatmeal

1/2 cup of dried apples chopped really small

1 tsp. of cinnamon

1 tsp. of salt

2 TBS of oil

1/4 cup of applesauce

Mix in your mixer for 2 min. Let it rise until it doubles then punch it down, dump it out on a floured surface and knead it a few times working in more flour if needed then form it into 2-3 loaves (I’m not really sure how many loaves of bread it will make because I only made 1 loaf and the rest I made into something else) and let it rise until it’s an inch above the pan then bake at 350 for 30 minutes.  Remove from pan and let cool and a wire rack.  ENJOY!

Shirred Curtain/ How to

I needed some new curtains to go with my new bathroom. So I had and idea to shirr a curtain to add a little “pop” but I didn’t anticipate how beautiful they would be.  I LOVE THEM, I just love the look of them they turned out better than I imagined.  Now I want to make more for my daughters bedrooms.  Oh and they were super easy to make just a little elastic thread and a pre-made $5.00 curtain. 

This is how I did it.

You’ll need a spool of elastic thread. 

and an empty bobbin.

Loosely wrap the elastic thread around your bobbin until it is full. 

Then place it in you machine just like you normally would.  Set your stich length to the longest stich and get sewing.

Make sure you have your curtain right side up while you sew.  Don’t forget to go back and forth at the beginning and the end.

Keep sewing right side up until you have the desired width.

I used both of my hands to smooth out the un-shirred part and to help guide it through the machine. 

My original plan was to shirr the whole curtain (actually my original plan was to to something a little different) but I liked it like this a little better.  I still want to try the original plan for something though so stay tuned.

So in the end I used one really long curtain.  I cut it in half and used both ends to fill up the window.  I could have used half of it and shirred less rows and it would have worked too. 

LIKE THIS

I also thought about making a valence.

LIKE THIS (kind of, I didn’t make the valence so I didn’t finish it off)

But since I had the curtain I used all of it

LIKE THIS

Cherry Blossoms

I needed some art for my bathroom redo.  I have some seriously awesome artists in my family (like people who actually sell their stuff) but alas I DID NOT GET ANY OF THAT TALENT, I have zero artistic ability, but what I do have are mad cutting skills so after the trashcan went so well I decided to do more contact paper art. Each picture cost me about $4.00 to make… so YEAH!

I started off with these they cost me $8.something for the 3-pack.              @ (Wal-Mart)

Then I painted them all burnt umber. I liked the lines in the paint so I only did one coat of burnt umber.  The paint was like $1.something

When I was doing the trashcan I noticed the cherry blossoms in my clipart and I knew then, I would be using them.  I just enlarged them to the size I wanted, then I cut my contact paper to 8.5 X 11 and put it through my printer.   Then came the fun part, cutting them all out.

After they were all cut out I placed them on the canvas.

And carefully painted over the top of them.

I added two coats of white and peeled the contact paper off as soon as I was done with the second coat, while it was still wet.

I’ll show you how it all came together when I do my big bathroom reveal. (hopefully soon)

Italian Tomato Alfredo

I came up with this recipe one day when I need something fast to bring to a friend.  It is a quick and tasty recipe that uses canned tomatoes and alfredo sauce for a little different twist on an old favorite.

• 1 package of fettuccini noodles cooked to package directions

The Sauce

• 1 jar of your favorite alfredo sauce or you can make it from scratch
• 1 can of Italian diced tomatoes. Or you can use the regular diced tomatoes and add some Italian seasoning. ( I usually don’t drain the Italian tomatoes but if I use the regular tomatoes then I drain them.)
• 1 jar of sliced olives
• 2 cups cubed cooked chicken breasts
• 1-2 medium zucchini diced small.

ENJOY!

Harry Potter Wand

My kids love Harry Potter.  They play it constantly and they have wanted real wooded wands forever, but the ones we saw were $50.00!  We have 5 kids and that was never going to happen (okay even if we had 1 kid I wouldn’t pay that kind of money). BUT my husband has always liked to carve stuff so he decided he would make them each a wooden wand for their birthday.  I got him a carving set from Michaels for Christmas so he could carve them and all he used was one wooden dowel (and stain) and he got 4 wands out of it!  Our kids love H.P so much that they wanted certain characters wands. So we went online and they all picked out the wand they wanted.  He finished the first wand just in time for #2’s #7 (Ginny’s wand).  She LOVES it and it turned out really well.

Before & After

Irish Soda Bread

A couple of years ago I was searching for a new recipe for St. Patrick’s day and I came across Irish Soda Bread at allrecipes.  IT IS AWESOME!  Now I make it every year for St. Patrick’s Day and a few other times during the year as well. It’s super easy and delicious.  I have also brought it to school to share with my daughters classes on St. Patty’s Day.  There is always a discussion on allrecipes about  which ones are really traditional but since they’re super tasty I don’t really care.  

Irresistible Irish Soda Bread

Amazingly Easy Irish Soda Bread

Irish Soda Bread

Here is a version that doesn’t use buttermilk ( I haven’t tried this one before). .  Nana Dot’s Irish Soda Bread

But you can always substitute milk + vinegar for buttermilk in a recipe.  1 TBS of vinegar + 1 cup of milk = 1 cup of buttermilk.  You should let the vinegar and milk mixture set for 5 minutes before using it in your recipe

Today I made the Irresistible Irish Soda Bread.   Once you mix all of your ingredients it’s more of a wet biscuit.  I like to bake mine in my circle casserole dish. 

It’s so good and super easy to make you should give it a go sometime.

“Holy enormous slab of butter batman!”