Button, button, Who in the heck sews with buttons??

So I know you don’t know this, because I haven’t posted any of them, but I have been in a sewing mood lately and yesterday I finished my 4th dress. Currently I’m working on non-matching/matching dresses for all my girls to wear to my 2nd daughters baptism coming up in March!  The first one is finished a turned out great.  BUT that is not what I wanted to share with you today (I’ll share those when all 3 of them are finished).  SEW I decided to try and make a dress that required buttons for my 3 year old.  I found some really cute corduroy that I wanted to use and as I was looking through the patterns I found a pattern that’s style, I thought matched corduroy really well.  So I got it.  LATER when I actually got around to reading the directions I realized it had BUTTONS as fasteners, like real live buttons, not fake decoration type buttons.  Needless to say I was a little nervous, but I like a challenge so I decided to try the button instead of doing what my brain was screaming at me to do, (you know like cheat and use snaps or Velcro or something).  The top of the dress came together flawlessly, then it came time to actually sew on the buttons.  Well I’ll forgo the sad story of me spending 3 hours looking for, while tearing apart my entire house something I thought I needed, to then borrowing it from a friend, to finding out I had what I needed along. Sorry this is all getting really long.  In short I read the directions and made beautiful practice button holes!  I was ecstatic, then when I went to do it on the actual dress, well let just say that, they work great and it could have been worse.  All in all I’m glad I tried it and I would definitely try it again.  Lessons learned: Reading directions, really helps.  Trying something new is always an adventure!!  So here is the finished product, I can never get that great of pictures of dresses sorry. 

Oh there is suppose to be a band at the bottom of the dress in a contrasting color, I left that off for now because, the buttons I had didn’t match any of the colors of fabric, I had and it looked really funny, so I thought I would add a ruffle of the same fabric on the bottom instead, or look for some green material to match the current buttons or look for some buttons that match the fabric I do have.  But for now she loves it and wears it all the time!

French Bread

You know me, I LOVE a good yeast bread recipe.  Well I found this on Pinterest the other day and knew I kneaded (hee hee)  to try it. It turned out wonderful and it was super fast especially for a yeast bread, it takes roughly 90 min. You can print the recipe right here it’s called Fabulous French Bread and boy howdy it is fabulous! And of course I can’t wait to play around with it and add some herbs and other fun flavors.  I served it with creamy broccoli soup and it was perfect dunked right in the soup or with butter and a bit of strawberry freezer jam, YUMMY!   Hope you make it and enjoy it soon!

ENJOY!!

Carrot Cake

It was my husbands 35th birthday last weekend, and he is a carrot cake lover. So most years I make him a carrot cake for his birthday.  Here is the recipe that I use, inspired by my mother-in-laws recipe.

Ingredients

2 cups of flour

2 tsp. of soda

2 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. salt

1 cup white sugar

1 cup brown sugar

4 eggs

1 cup of oil

3 cups of grated carrots

2 tsp. vanilla

Directions

In a large mixing bowl, ( I use me Kitchen Aid) cream together the sugars, eggs and oil.  Then sift and add the four, soda, cinnamon, and salt. Mix well, once it is combined add your carrots and vanilla. Mix again and bake at 350 for 35- 45 min.  For a bunt pan bake 350 for 45-55 min.  Let cool and frost with cream cheese frosting.

We like this recipe for the frosting.

2 cups of powdered sugar

8 oz. cream cheese softened

1/4 cup of butter

2 tsp. of vanilla.

Enjoy!!

Rosemary Olive Oil Artisan Bread

Remember at Christmas when I made the Bacon, Onion, Artichoke Bread?  Well way back then I had wanted to try a Rosemary Olive Oil version.  This weekend while my in-laws were visiting I decided to give it a go, and all that I can say is WOW!! I have been day dreaming about it every since.  It was so great, I liked it even better than the Bacon Onion Artichoke one.  Seriously it’s so easy and yummy you should try it, like now.

Rosemary Olive Oil Artisan Bread

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups of warm water

1 TBS of yeast

1 1/2 Tsp. of salt

3 1/4 cups of flour

1 – 1 1/2 tsp. of Rosemary

1 – 2 TBS of Olive Oil

Directions

Add water, yeast and salt to a large mixing bowl.  Then add the remaining ingredients.  Mix, the dough will be really wet.  Let rise for about 2 hours. Place a baking stone in your oven with a shallow pan underneath of it. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.  Punch down your dough and add just enough flour to your hands and dough to form a nice tight ball.  Shape your dough into 2 round loaves. Place your loaves on parchment paper on a side less cookie sheet.  Allow your loaves to rise for 30 minutes.  When they have risen 30 minutes cut slits in the top of your loaves. (An X works great.) Slide the loaves including the parchment paper onto the heated baking stone.  Then add a cup of water to the pan underneath the baking stone.  Bake your loaves for 30-35 minutes.   Remove from the oven and let cool completely.

Enjoy!!

Pinterest Flops

So like everyone else on the planet, I like to play around on Pinterest now and again.  I also like to try some of the things I see.  Most of the time they turn out great however here are a couple of things we didn’t care for.

Premade biscuits in the waffle iron.  The flavor was really off, and we didn’t care for the texture either, they’re really dense.

Crock Pot Orange Chicken.  It wasn’t horrible just not good enough for me to EVER want to make it again.

I know that not everything I try will turn out great but I never would have tried this two things without Pinterest (hence why it’s so awesome). Plus it saves my poor favorites bar from getting so stuffed full of links. My next Pinterest recipe that I plan on trying is Mexican Stuff Shells I can’t wait!!  Hope you all have a great week.

Dear, Jenette

No, I haven’t died, and there is nothing wrong with me.  I haven’t been blogging lately it’s true.  BUT I have been doing things.  Just this week I sewed 2 dresses, which I will provide pictures of….someday.  I have been reading A LOT not a lot to blog about there.  I have been cooking and feeding my family, most of it yummy things.  I have been cleaning, grocery shopping, and enjoying my family all of it wonderful, just nothing I felt like blogging about.  It’s true since my surgery I haven’t felt much like blogging, maybe my gall bladder was the organ that ran my blog and now that it’s gone, it wont’ be the same, but I doubt it.  So don’t worry dear sister, I’ll blog again…someday.  Probably someday soon. 

Winner, Winner Chicken Dinner!!

So I finally can let you all know which pie was the winner of the Great Pie Bake off!  Sorry it took so long but, with surgery and the holidays it was bound to happen.  So here are the top five pies.

In 5th place- Amy of Social Studies Momma Apple Pie with Buttermilk Crust

I seriously loved this pie, it was really, really great and not runny at all which can be a problem with apple pies.  I would make this again any day, and I’m normally not an apple pie person, but this pie changed my mind.

In 4th place- Emily & Jaime @ Everyday Art

Pear Plum Pie

This was personally my favorite pie of the competition, I LOVED IT! I would recommend making it and soon, it has definitely made it into my personal cookbook, of things to make over and over again. 

In 3rd place- Sharon @ This Thrifty House. Chocolate Magic Mousse Pie

There is nothing not to love about this pie, it’s easy and yummy and I will definitely be making it again!  Plus if you don’t want to make a crust you can just serve the mousse in a cup all by itself.  So awesome!

In 2nd place- Stephanie’s

 Chocolate Peanut Butter pie

Chocolate and peanut butter a match made in heaven! And that is definitely what you get when you eat this pie, a little slice of heaven.  I loved that this was a frozen pie, it adds a little ice-cream quality to the pie that puts it over the top. Well done Stephanie!

In1st place-.

Pumpkin Pudding Pie

Well this is the pie that took the grand prize and the $25.00 gift certificate!  It’s super fast and easy to make and it was half of the judges favorite pie, (probably why it won ).  So if your craving a little pumpkin pie around the holidays and don’t want to go to all the trouble of making one, or if you don’t have the patience to wait for it to come out of the oven this is a great alternative and a great recipe! So Congratulations!

Now as you know personal preference goes a long why in deciding what a person likes. For instance, I am a fruit pie person, I would choose a warm fruit pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream over any other pie, any day.  And I wouldn’t touch a pumpkin pie with a ten foot pole. So I thought I would give a shout out to those pies that ranked first for some of the judges that didn’t make it into the top five pies and they are

Luscious Lemon Pie

Millionaire Pie

Nestle Pie

Also because I’m the owner of this blog, and the maker of all of those pies I’m going to give you my top five pies, and you will see what I mean about being a fruit pie person.  Though I have to admit that both of the chocolate pies that made it into the top five, I would eat those again anytime both were suburb, delicious, sublime!! Please can I have some more-tastic!

#1 Pear Plum Pie

#2 is really a draw, I just couldn’t choose so alphabetically they are

a. No-bake Lemon Raspberry Cheesecake

b. Strawberry Glazed pie

#4 Sour Cream Lemon Pie

#5 Apple pie with buttermilk crust

So there you have it, the results of the pie competition.  It was a really close battle pie #2 & 3 were only separated by 3 hundredths of a point!! and the top pie only won by 1 point.  So very exciting. I had a great time making the pies, and I hope you had a fun time watching.  Well that’s it until next November when the pies start rolling out again!!