Staining Island Cabinet

Remember this?

Since I have been working like crazy, I decided to take a couple of days off. What did I decide to do? I decided to finally stain my island cabinet that my dad and I built during Christmas.

I found these triangles while I was at Lowe's and absolutely love them. I don't have to worry about lifting the legs to stain, getting stain all over the floor or having it stick to the cardboard.

One more layer of polyurethane and I should be able to bring it back into the house. I'm a little scared of screwing the hinges of the doors on so I may wait for my dad to come visit to finish it up. If I had painted the cabinet, then it would be no problem if I messed up, a little putty and paint could cover a mistake, but it is a little harder to cover a mistake with stain.

Free Tree from Lowe's

Lowe's is celebrating Earth Day by giving a million trees on April 23, 2011.

Food

I've been traveling like crazy the last two weeks. Therefore, I have been cooking like crazy for my family.

I try my best to be very accommodating, preparing everyone's favorites to eat while I am not home. Because of food allergies, I've had to label everything just to make sure.

Since Japanese food is not one of my kids' favorite choices, while I having been traveling, I've been eating a lot of Japanese food.

Yum!

Oatmeal Butterscotch Cookies

For a sweet treat, try these Oatmeal Butterscotch Cookies

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup (1-1/2 sticks) butter or margarine, softened
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 cups quick-cooking or regular rolled oats, uncooked
• 1-3/4 cups (11-oz. pkg.) Butterscotch Chips

Directions

1. Heat oven to 375°F.
   
   
2. Heat butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar in large bowl until well blended. Add eggs and vanilla; beat well.
   
   
3. Combine flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt; gradually add to butter mixture, beating until well blended. Stir in oats and butterscotch chips; mix well. Drop by heaping teaspoons onto ungreased cookie sheet.
   
   
4. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until golden brown. Cool slightly; remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. Cool completely. About 4 dozen cookies.

Mushroom Tart

I love mushrooms and onions so when I found this recipe, I had to try it. It's been the perfect recipe to make whenever any of my vegetarian friends come over.

Ingredients

• Flour for rolling out puff pastry
• 1 (from a 17.3-ounce package) sheet frozen puff pastry thawed according to package instructions
• 1 medium onion halved and thinly sliced
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• Coarse salt and ground pepper
• 2 packages (10 ounces each) white mushrooms trimmed and thinly sliced
• 1 packages (10 ounces) fresh baby spinach
• 2 ounces soft goat cheese crumbled

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. On a floured surface, roll the puff pastry out to a 16-by-10-inch rectangle. Trim uneven edges. Place the pastry on a baking sheet. With a sharp knife, lightly score dough to form a 1-inch border. Using a fork, prick dough inside the border every 1/2 inch.

Bake until golden, rotating pan once, about 15 minutes or until tender.

Meanwhile, in a small saucepan with a tight-fitting lid, toss onion with 1 tablespoon oil. Season with salt. Cover and cook over medium heat until onion begins to brown, about 5 minutes. Stir. Continue cooking with cover on for 15 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes. Set aside.

In a large saucepan with a tight-fitting lid, heat remaining oil. Add mushrooms; cover and cook until tender and all liquid has evaporated, about 10 minutes. Fold in spinach; season with salt and pepper. Cover and cook until wilted, about 5 minutes more. Drain any liquid.

Top dough with mushroom-spinach mixture. Scatter onion and goat cheese on top. Bake until cheese is lightly browned, about 15 minutes.

There were no left-overs for our family.

I had to cut myself an edge piece because I love the puff-pastry crust.

New Storage

Remember this?

I wrote about it last summer when I bought them. I was so excited when I read that the wood would never fade (yeah, right) and that I would never have to re-stain. That was truly the ONLY reason why I bought it because I knew I didn't have time to re-stain lawn furniture every year.

I wanted something made from rattan because it up kept well, but I ended up with this which I absolutely regret. Within a couple of months, it fell apart and became this:

Of course, I didn't give up. We repaired and repaired and repaired these trunks until, I found that it just wasn't worth my time anymore. When I saw my rattan trunks on sale at the end of the summer last year, I quickly nabbed up a couple.

I built them this weekend and was just so excited to get rid of our wooden ones.

Beauty to my eyes. They match the rest of my furniture and they are no maintenance. What did I learn? You should always go with your instincts and definitely wait to get what you really want instead of settling just because you see a little red clearance sticker that is too good to pass up.

Ruched Pillow

What can you do with some old clothes? Absolutely anything.

After the garage sale last month, we had bags of clothing to give away. I went through every bag and pulled some clothes purely because of the fabric.

Here's my sister's dress. After trying it on and seeing that it just wasn't all that flattering on me,

I decided that I would turn it into a pillow for my sister because I loved the eyelet fabric. It's vintage looking and shabby chic which is exactly my sister.

So after hearing for the upteenth time that she wanted a ruched comforter set like this one sold at West Elm, I decided that I would use her future bedding set as my inspiration.

I removed the bodice from the dress and slipped the skirt part of the dress over a pre-made pillow. I hand basted one side of the pillow.

Then, I pulled the thread on one end.

This caused the fabric to gather. I spaced out the gathered fabric evenly across the pillow.

Once it was gathered, I sewed the opening of the pillow together, right sides together.

Once that was done, I flipped the fabric around on the pillow and sewed the other end to a zipper. Since, her colors are white, gray, and teal, I decided to keep the pillow a little fun with a teal zipper instead of white. I love it!

Next, I basted the front of the pillow four times. This will keep the ruching even. I first basted it with two columns, but decided I liked the double thickness effect, adding another column beside the first two about 2 cms apart.

Voila! A dress turned into a pillow.



Do you like my house warming gift?

She loved it, but then she asked me to make her another one.

Sorry, no dress left for another pillow. ;)

Black Widow

My hubby was cleaning out the pool skimmers this weekend and when it flipped open the lid, this is what he saw. It's pretty scary to see a black widow inches away from your fingers.

Lesson learned: From now, use a stick to open the lid...just in case.

Mandatory Scrapbooking

When I have time, I do enjoy scrap booking. Despite the fact that half of my craft room is devoted to embellishments and scrap booking paper and tools, it is hard to find the time to update my boys' scrapbooks.

Fortunately, each year, my kids' pre-school requests parents to make a scrapbook page for each child. I'm down to only 2 kids in pre-school now. One year, I had to make a page for each kid all in one weekend which was crazy because I didn't have any pictures ready and sifting through hundreds of images took time.

This year was a little different. I was prepared! Every time I uploaded images to my computer from my camera, I made an additional copy of my favorite images into a favorites folder. So, when I needed images this year for each child, I went straight to that folder and voila, the best pictures where already sorted for me.

With online photo-printing, I didn't even have to leave my home to order prints. That made this years school mandatory scrap booking a lot easier. As much as I dislike having to make the pages in such a short amount of time, I realize that forcing me to make a scrapbook page each year, forces me to be somewhat up-to-date and allows not only me, but my kiddos to stroll down memory lane with a flip of a page...and that I love.

Bloomin Azaleas

I planted these Azaleas last year, but they had already bloomed before I planted them so seeing them bloom this year for the first time was great.

I don't have a green thumb so seeing them thrive makes me so happy!