July Recipes

I try very hard to not cook the same things over and over.  Of course we have our family favorites, but I also enjoy cooking new things.  I try to cook something new each week.  In the past, I have subscribed to many cooking magazines to get new ideas.  I would tear out recipes that interested me.  Just recently I create a new organized way to store and save these recipes.  You can read about that here - Recipe Binder.  Now I have Pinterest :) The nice thing about Pinterest is I don't have to print off the recipes.  I can pin them to my boards and quickly access them on my iPad when I am meal planning and cooking.  Here are my recipe boards if you want to take a look:
                               Yummy Snacks                                   Slow Cooker
                               Delicious Desserts                                Soups
                               Drinks                                                  Daily Dinners

                               Good Morning Breakfast                       Lunches

Here are some amazing recipes that I tried this past month.

Pancake Mix
This site has a ton of make at home mixes.  I have only made the pancake/waffle mix twice and it is delicious.  The recipe makes quite a bit of dry mix so I store it in a plastic container that I got at Walmart.  There are several other mixes that I want to try such as one for corn bread and an all purpose quick mix that you can use to make coffee cake and cinnamon rolls.  The site even has printable labels that you can attach to your containers to always know the wet ingredients you need to add to the mix.

Skillet Corn Bread
I love to watch Food Network, and the Pioneer Woman is one of my favorite shows.  On her blog, she gives a very tasty recipe for corn bread.  It calls for an iron skillet which I don't have.  I used a glass dish instead.  I preheated the dish in the oven to warm it to simulate cooking it on the stove top.  The corn bread still got a crispy crust on the bottom.

Honey Mustard Pretzel Chicken
I am always looking for new chicken recipes and this one is a winner.  It was very simply to make and tasted amazing!  The only thing I would change for next time is to add less water to the dressing to make it a little thicker.

Caramelitas
A very good friend of mine makes these and they are delicious so I thought I would give a try for the family gathering we were having at the lake.  I watched Kelsey Nixon make these on her her show Kelsey's Essentials and it looked pretty easy.  First, you have to make this salted caramel sauce to use in the bars, but I am sure you could use an caramel sauce you wanted.  They were very good!

Updating the Closet

A couple months ago I completely did an overhaul of my master bedroom.  It badly needed some updating.  However, I didn't have time to update the brass and mirrored closet doors.  Our master bedroom is rather small so we like having the mirrors reflect the sunlight and make the room seem a little bigger.  The closet opening is rather large so it was going to be pretty costly to buy new closet doors.  So, I decided to try and spray paint the brass.  Overall, the process was very easy, just very time consuming.

The doors are fairly large and I was worried about breaking the mirrors if we tried to take them down and move them to the basement for me to paint them.  Therefore, I had to paint them as they were hanging in the room.  Here are my supplies:  spray paint, tape, sheets, and lots of newspapers.

The first step was to cover the mirrors and the surrounding are with newspaper and sheets to make sure that only the doors were getting spray painted.  This was the time consuming part!

Next was the spray paint.  I ended up with 4 thin coats.  I think the end result was well worth the afternoon it took.  It is amazing how getting rid of the 1980's brass can really change a room :)

DIY Canvas Prints

I have always liked the look of canvas prints, but could never bring myself to pay a lot for them.  About a year ago I came across this blog post from Literally Inspired on Pinterest that changed everything.  I can make them myself!

The hard part was choosing what pictures I wanted to use.  Once I had that done, I waited for Walgreens to have a great sale on photos and ordered my three 11 x 14 photos.  I love Hobby Lobby and Joann's Fabric so I know that they frequently have artists canvases on sale.  When the sale was right, I picked up two packs of two 11 x 14 canvases and some mod podge.

I finally had time this summer to complete this project.  It was so easy!  The blog post gives very easy and simple directions to follow.  I painted the canvases one afternoon during nap time and then finished the project the next morning.

Here are my beautiful canvases!

The 4th of July @ My House

My husband's favorite holiday is the Fourth of July so we tend to do celebrate this holiday more than the average family.  I thought I would share some of the craziness that goes on around our house in the beginning of July.

Decorations
Flags and the colors red, white, and blue are all around our house.  The front of the house has bunting on the porch, an American flag flying, and something patriotic hanging on the front door.

At the back door guests are met by Uncle and a festive star hanging on the back door.

  

Inside the house, little flags are tucked all over.  Here is the center of my dinning room table.

Festivities
Of course there are always great places to go and people to visit on the Fourth.  We usually head to Kewaskum to visit my brother and sister-in-law and watch the spectacular fireworks show there.  Then we also have Celebrate Waupun attended at home.  This is a four day long festival with live music, rides, and of course more fireworks.  We also usually hit up at least one cook out, either at our house or a friend's place.

Food
Of course when you travel to the cook-outs and watch fireworks, you need some good food.  Here are a couple of treats that I made this year.

I make these cupcakes every year for my husband to take to work.  Of course I try to keep a couple at home for myself.  This year my daughter helped with the sprinkles and the flags.  I think there were more sprinkles on the counter and floor than the cupcakes, but she had a good time helping mama :)

These Rice Krispie treats are a new treat this year.  I found them on Pinterest and thought they looked like something that my daughter could eat with out making a huge mess.  I made these during her nap to try and keep the sprinkle mess to a minimum :)  I do think I need to get a better star cookie cutter for next year.

I hope everyone has a great and safe Fourth of July!  After all the craziness, come back and share what  fun things your family does to celebrate the holiday.