Thursday, April 30, 2009

Beautiful Fruit Pizza


CRUST:


-1 yellow cake mix
-1 egg
-1/2 cup melted butter or margarine

Mix cake mix, egg and margarine together and spread
on greased and wax papered large pizza pan.
Bake 15 minutes at 350 degrees. Cool.

TOPPING:

-4 ounces cream cheese, softened
-1 cup confectioner's sugar
-4 ounces Cool Whip topping
-fresh fruit (blueberries, kiwi, strawberries,
peaches, mandarin oranges, bananas, etc.)

NOTES: I have found that this particular crust is a
little crispy the first time you serve this fruit pizza,
but it is nice and soft the next day.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

For the Love of an Appliance.


Holy Crow! Did you know you can cook things OTHER than Rice in a Rice cooker? I feel like I have been opened to a whole new world of cooking. As if I wasn't already IN LOVE with my rice cooker. The great part is, the rice cooker NEVER burns your food, which I am usually a pro at doing. Brilliant! Here is a good no rice in the rice cooker recipe that you can try! Yum.

Rice Cooker Mac n' Cheese

2 cups Macaroni
1 cup chicken stock or water
1 cup heavy cream or half and half
1 1/2 cups of your Favorite Shredded Cheese
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 teaspoon garlic salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper and salt

Place pasta, chicken stock, and heavy cream in rice cooker. Press cook! When it goes to 'warm' add the other ingredients and stir. Close lid and keep it turned to 'warm' until you are ready to serve it. The best part... its easy PEA-sy to make!

Monday, April 20, 2009

hippity hoppity

i have been looking for easter baskets for my girls, and was having a hard time finding anything that i liked... then i thought, why don't i make them! duh! and it would be 'cheap cheap' (nice baby chick reference eh?) i finished these two days before Easter, and although they weren't what I had pictured in my head, I LOVE how they turned out. It is always funny how things work out that way!
just so you know, using felt as appliques is SO easy... also wonder under is my new BFF. that stuff is a-ma-za-zing!

click HERE for the free pattern provided by Dabbled

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Sweater Vest and Matching Leg Warmers


Ready for a fun project that requires no sewing. My friend Jessica saw this idea on Good Things Utah. Anyway, here's what you do, go through your closet and find an old wool sweater that you don't wear any more...or go to Savers or DI or Good Will and find some wool sweaters. Go home and wash the sweaters in hot water in order to shrink them. Then simply cut off the sleeves. The sweater becomes a sweater vest and the sleeves become the leg warmers or leggings. So, here are the steps:

Step 1: Get a wool sweater.

100% wool is probably the best, but as you can see mine is 98% lambswool, 1% nylon, and 1% lycra spandex.


As you can see, the washing instructions clearly show that you should not wash a wool sweater in hot water. However, since we want it to shrink, go ahead and ignore that. Also, I threw mine in the dryer for a bit after I washed it and that seemed to be fine.


Step 2: Wash your wool sweater in hot water to shrink it and then allow it to dry.



Step 3: Cut off the sleeves at the seams


Step 4: Find a cute little girl to wear it like my neighbor Chadley.


She is about 4 1/2 years old and was the perfect size for my new sweater vest and leg warmers.


So this sweater went from a GAP woman's size S to 4T-5T...pretty awesome huh?

After cutting off the sleeves at the seam you will need to even them up so that they have a straight top. Also, according to Chadley, the wool leg warmers were a little itchy for her so I would recommend having your child wear tights or something like that under the leg warmers.