August 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.

Chocolate & Peanut Butter Birthday Cake
My husband loves the combination of chocolate and peanut butter, therefore I wanted to try and make a chocolate and peanut butter birthday cake for him.  I had never made a cake from scratch, but this chocolate cake recipe was very easy and tasted great.  After doing some searching, I found this peanut butter frosting recipe that was also very easy.  I decorated the cake with mini peanut butter cups and Reese's Pieces on the top.  My husband was very surprised :)

Waffle Cinnamon Rolls
This isn't really a recipe, but a new way to cook an old favorite.  Many Sunday mornings, we have the cinnamon rolls that come in a tube.  We have tried many different bands and flavors.  I was very intrigued when I saw a pin on Pinterest showing them cooked in a waffle maker.  They were amazing!  My whole family loved them.  My husband liked them the best with the white icing and syrup (not the most healthy thing in the world :) )

Corn Salsa
This corn salsa was so easy to make and very good.  I am always trying to find side dishes for when we have Mexican food such as tacos or enchiladas.  After doing a quick search on Pinterest, this is one that looked delicious.  I have had many corn salsas at work that other people have brought in to share so I thought I would give it a try.  The only thing I will change about this recipe is to add less corn :)  I know it is corn salsa, but it my husband said it was a little too much.  If we are not going to eat it all at one meal, I would also add a little avocado each time we eat it instead of all at the beginning.  The avocado got too brown and mushy the next day.

Side Note:
I recently went to a Wild Tree Freezer party.  In a nut shell, I got together with seven other women, drank some cocktails, ate some snacks, and prepared 20 meals for my freezer in about 2 hours.  20 meals!  It was so much fun, I can't wait to do it again.  My plan is to use most of these once school starts, to make getting dinner on the table a little easier.  If your interested, you can head to their website for products and to find parties in your area.

What's in the Garage?

We have lived in our house seven years and our garage has always looked like this:

It has always been a collecting spot for items we didn't use, but didn't want to give away, and items that we use quite frequently.  Now that we have a very active two-year-old with lots of outside toys, I needed to bring some organization to this space.

One side of our garage is a work bench that my husband has been pretty good at keeping tidy.  The other side has built in shelves that desperately need some organization.  Every summer I have been in the habit of going through what we have an trying to get rid of things we don't use, but I never really "organized."  This summer was going to be the summer this happened.

First, I took everything off of the shelves and tried to put them in categories to help determine how I was going to organize.  Once this was done, I had the following:

• Water Toys
• Kids Toys
• Sports
• Killers (insect repentant, weed killers, etc.)
• Chairs
• Tools
• Baby Car Seat Stuff
• Seasonal Decor
• Flags
• Planting Stuff

Some of the stuff would fit in plastic tubs so I chose to get clear ones where I could place the labels on the inside and we could easily see what was in each tub.  I did use one extra tub we had laying around to save some money.  Items that wouldn't fit in a tub, I grouped together neatly on the shelves.  

Surprisingly, I didn't have many items to donate or throw out.  Everything just needed to be contained / grouped better.  Here is what the shelves looked like before and after:

Once everything was neatly organized, I found I had tons of extra shelf space.  My goal is to not let this space accumulate "junk."  My thought is that maybe some of our outdoor decorations that are currently stored in the basement could be moved out here.  I am going to think about that for a little bit and just enjoy all the extra space in the garage at the moment :)

Organizing the Pantry

Ever since I started monthly meal planning and only having one big shopping day at the grocery store, my pantry has really grown.  It was a small space to start with, so it really needed some organizing.  My pantry is located on a couple of shelves in my laundry room.  There are no doors on it so I have some curtains hanging on a shower rod to conceal the mess:)  Here is a picture of it before:

The first thing I did was empty off the shelves, trying to place items in like categories.  Once that was done, I looked at the categories I had created to see if I could condense them into about four or five categories.  Here are the ones I came up with:

• Condiments
• Mixes
• Snacks
• Canned Goods

Next, I had to find some baskets, bins, etc. to hold the different items.  I was hoping to not spend any money on this project so I hunted all over the house looking for extra containers.  What I found that worked kind of surprised me - diaper boxes!  They fit perfectly on the shelves and the food items fit perfectly in them.  To hide the fact that they were diaper boxes, I covered them with scrapbook paper and created some labels for each one.  I did find one basket and decided to put snacks in.  

Here is the finished pantry:

I was able to put all of the food items on the bottom shelf and my weekly meal bins on the top.  We eat at least four nightly meals at home.  To help make meal time easier during the week, on Sunday's I put all the items needed for each meal together in a bin.  This includes items from the pantry, the recipe, and any spices needed.  When it is time to cook, I pull the bin from the pantry and have everything I need at my finger tips without having to make multiple trips to the pantry for items I forgot.  

Something for the Front Door

My mom was going to donate this snowman picture.  I saw an opportunity to create something for my front door!

My first thought was to break the glass with the snowman painted on it to remove it and then hang something else in the middle of the frame.  Upon further inspection of the frame, I found it to be cracked in a couple of places and I feared it would fall apart if I broke the glass out of the center.  I realize that I was going to just have to paint over it.

First I gave the frame a fresh coat of white paint and then I decided to paint the class a dark gray.  It took several coats on the front and the back of the glass to completely cover the snowman.  If you held it up to the light, you could still see it a little bit, but this is going on my front door where there would be no light shining through it so I wasn't too worried.

Now I had to decide what to put in the middle.  I had a wooden letter B that fit perfectly.  The front of our house gets a lot of sun, so I didn't want to paint it a color that was going to fade and need repainting every year.  I decided to use a shiny silver that I found in the basement.  I attached the letter to the frame using some hot glue.

I think this will look great on the front door all through the winter!

Baby Shower Gifts

This past summer, my mother and I hosted a bug themed baby shower for my sister-in-law.  I had a lot of fun planning the different parts of the shower and creating the the games, etc.  After seeing all the great baby gift ideas on Pinterest, I wanted to put together my own gift baskets as well.

First up was a gift basket for the baby.  I went to Target and purchased some smaller items from her registry and a few items that I knew every baby needs.

I also found an adorable blue and white rope basket to put all the goodies in.  I started first by placing the taller blankets in the back of the basket to add some height.  I had thought of taking them out of the packaging and rolling them, but was afraid that if she got the same blankets from someone else, she would be unable to return these because they were out of their packaging.

Next, I took the diapers out and divided them in half.  I wrapped a brown ribbon around each group of diapers and placed them on the sides of the basket.  Down the middle of the basket, I placed the lotion and the baby wash.  I rolled up the cute shirt and placed that and the ball in the front.

Here is what my finished basket looked like:

I also wanted to make a "hospital survival kit" for the mother.  I got my ideas of what to include in this gift from my own experience and from this post I of course found on Pinterest.

Here is what I decided to include in my survival kit:

• Her favorite candy
• A notebook and pen for taking notes, jotting down thoughts, etc.
• Personal products - lip balm, deodorant, shampoo and conditioner, hand sanitizer, lotion, breath mints, mouthwash, toothbrush and toothpaste
• Hair ties
• Make-up remover wipes
• Kleenex 

I got most of the items in the travel section in the health and beauty department at Target.  I found a cute little mesh bag in the "One Spot."  It was made to keep vegetables fresh in the fridge :)  I got tag for the bag here for free!

My sister-in-law loved both the gifts, especially the "Survival Kit."  That maybe a gift that I make for all the expecting mothers in my life.