The Lazy Cook

In my house, my husband does most of the cooking.  I used to do a lot of the cooking before we had two kids and before he decided to be a health nut.  Now that he's watching what he's eating, I just let him do the cooking because he needs to know all the proteins, carbs, and what-not in stuff.  Today, I decided I would try to be the helpful wife and make a quick and easy meal in the Instant pot.  I feel like a soup would be good.  I am a home health nurse, so I eat a lot of my stuff in the car and I think that drinking a soup would be easy. So I look up "easy healthy instant pot soup."  Up pops this beauty!  I look at all the ingredients.  I have them....ish.  I don't have fresh veggies, but I have frozen broccoli, and a frozen broccoli normandy blend that has the cauliflower and the carrots it calls for.  The recipe calls for sauteing onion....well some onion powder will do and almond milk?  Ummm....skim milk will be fine.  And parmesan from the can will also work just fine, right?  I threw everything in the instant pot, frozen and all! 10 minutes on the steam mode and then used the immersion blender and all was done!  It was easy peasy and yummy!!!

Magnificent Magnets!

So, a few years back I made a magnet board out of an oil drip pan for the boys' play room, similar to this one that I saw on Pinterest.  It's just a simple oil drip pan I got at Walmart and spray painted it to match the colors of the play room.

(My personal magnetic board isn't pictured because it's in the boys' play room and well....it's a huge mess!)

When I first made the board years ago, I used the magnetic letters on there so the boys could play with them.  However, as they got older and knew their alphabet, I started thinking that they needed different magnets.  I ordered some picture magnets from Shutterfly, but those add up quickly!  Then I came up with a genius idea!  Use the magnets that businesses give out for free and put stickers on them!!  The magnets are so thin that you can easily cut them into any shape! It was a fun activity because the kids could help me by picking out the stickers they wanted and putting them on the magnets. It's a fun quick way to add some fun to hanging up all their "masterpieces."

Pinterest Makes Me Happy and Motivated

It's been 4 years since I decided I wanted to share my adventures in comparing myself to people on Pinterest.  I failed miserably at following through with what I had in mind, like many people on Pinterest!  Well, I'm going to give it another go!  I figure writing something up once a week will all me to set a goal, think of fun things I have done, think of time I have spent with my family, doing something for someone, even just spending a few glorious minutes alone on a computer without doing work or mindlessly scrolling something, I will be doing something to better myself!

Look at this quote I found on Pinterest: 

Today, like many days lead me to Pinterest. Max, the younger of the two boys, wanted to make banana muffins.  Okay, sure, we can do that. i have TONS of frozen bananas in the freezer for when we make smoothies.  Well, those are "too brown."  Well, we went to the store and got some barely yellow bananas. When we got home, it was off to Pinterest to find an easy recipe.  We decided on this one.  It looked simply and easy enough.  The only problem then is that we didn't have any baking soda.  My husband decided to use the last of it for the hot tub to even out the pH levels.  Hmmmm....well off to Pinterest to see what I could do for a baking soda substitute. Yay!  Other people have fallen into this problem and the nice people at Tollhouse even made a nice graphic to help me out!

After getting all the ingredient squared away, we were able to make some lovely banana muffins out of some barely ripe bananas.  I'm not sure if the state of the bananas or that Max picked the super large muffin tins, but these took 10 minutes extra to bake than the recipe stated and they are still very moist in the middle.  They taste good, actually more banana-y than normal.  I think it's because I generally use REALLY ripe brownish bananas.

Keep Calm and Drink a Beer

Since I like homemade gifts for Valentine's day, I thought I would make one for my husband.  It's the golden rule right? Do unto others?  So, crafty things for guys doesn't always turn out that awesome or well received, however that I made is awesome and was well received.  I can't really put into words what I made him, so here's the picture:

  I, of course, found the idea on Pinterest.  It was a super simple and relatively inexpensive thing to make.  I got a 11x14 inch shadow box from on clearance at Michael's for $10, cut a slot in the top big enough for the bottle caps to go in, and put on the vinyl quote I cut out using my Silhouette Cameo. This can also easily be done without a machine by using stickers. (In full disclosure....I accidentally put the vinyl on upside down so the slot is on the bottom of the frame now, but eh, it still looks cool and it functions.)

If you aren't as frugal as I am, they do sell shadow box frame at Michael's for $40 that have a sliding top just for the purpose of dropping things into the top. The display picture is of wine corks.

So to tie the gift together, I bought my husband some beer. I went to Hy-Vee and the Wine and Spirits manager could pick up at my blank stare at the wall of beer that I needed assistance.  He happily helped me pick some beer that "have the same taste pallet as Spotted Cow", which is one of my husband's favorite beers.  I don't know if I should take it as a compliment or not that the manager then didn't card me.... 

After my craft efforts and the subtle hints of the Valentine's advent calendar I made for my husband (discussed in a previous post), I was pretty positive I was going to get something nice on Valentine's day.  Yeah....you what they say about assuming...you make an ass out of u and me.  That's what I did. My husband didn't even have a card for me.  He did make me an omelet for breakfast and put a candy bar in my car when he started my car to warm it up for me. (The warming up the car thing is a daily thing per our agreement that allows his beloved sports car take up my spot in the garage.)  So I know I really shouldn't complain because I won't allow him to spend much money, but really? He couldn't even take a crayon like he did last year and scribble out a card?  I thought for sure when I got home from work in the evening that there would be a little surprise for me, or at least a hand written note since I had given him 14 plus nice handmade valentine's card.

Yeah... I need to keep calm and have a beer.  Probably shouldn't take one of the special ones that I bought him, though, huh?

May the Force Be With You

My oldest son loves Ningago, star wars, and the color green.  He wanted to tie all of these in to his Valentine's card.  He and I browsed Pinterest for ideas since the store didn't have any that really popped out at him.  We settled on a photo card with a glow bracelet inserted in it to look like a lightsaber.   After some editing on PicMonkey, this is what our cards ended up looking like:

 Can you tell that he's a ninja Jedi?  K, cause I really can't either, but he says that that's what he is and I'm happy that he's super excited out his Valentine's cards.  Sam's Club photo made these super cheap in the wallet size (you order one print and it's actually two that you cut apart yourself.)  The glow bracelets came from the Dollar Tree. I bought a pack of 15 for $1.

And now I know why there is adhesive card stock!

I saw a really cool grandparent's printable on Pinterest that someone was selling on Etsy, so I thought I would try my hand at something similar.  This is the pin that I saw from JackandJillyDesigns on Etsy:

My mother in-law has four grandkids and I think that there are no more coming, so I thought this would be a cute thing to try.  I found a quote on a similar designed stating "My greatest blessings call me Grandma."  I know my mother in-law laments never finding anything with "Grammie" on it, so personalizing this is something she would really appreciate. I used my Silhouette Cameo to design and cut out something like this and use the middle square as a picture frame.  I wanted to add more pops of color so I added scraps of paper behind the cut out area.  I thought this would be pretty simple, however, finding the fonts that worked well together and the sizes and all that was a little harder than I thought.  Then, I stupidly cut it out on card stock. I had to hand glue all the little insides of the letters.  Wow, I learned something on that one: Adhesive card stock is worth it!  Also, maybe a printable isn't so bad!  It would probably have looked nicer since on the really thing cursive font, it kind of gummed up the paper, particularly on the "s" and "g".

This is my product, with out the picture in it or having it in a frame yet, but you get the idea.

Subtle Daily Valentine's Reminder For Husbands

So Valentine's Day is coming up pretty quickly.   Since I have a mom that loves the after holiday sales, I have a lot of holiday hand towels and gel window stickers so BOOM...I'm now decorated for Valentine's day!
My husband really isn't a holiday kind of guy, particularly not Valentine's day. That's fine by me most of the time, because his idea of gifts is different than mine.  I LOVE heartfelt things. He prefers to purchase items.  Don't get me wrong, the year I got my Nikon DSLR I was all for commercialism! I've used that camera AT LEAST a few times a week for 3 years now.  My favorite gift from him, however, was a heart he welded out of muffler piping and wire coat hangers.  He made it for me our first official Valentine's day together 8 years ago.  This is a picture of us using it as a photo prop when my oldest son was 2 weeks old.

I haven't gotten anything handmade since...Okay, I take that back.  He made me this card last year:

Anyway...I saw this idea on pinterest  from the Silhouette America Blog for a Valentine's Day Advent Calendar.

I loved that idea!  I changed it a little.  I didn't include numbers and I titled mine "I love you because..."  Here is mine:

I got the frame for $1.99 at a thrift store and used cross-stitching floss for the "wire."  Michaels sells a set of mini clothes pins in variety of colors for $19.99. (I know I will do more with all the other colors of the clothes pins.)  You can also get a small package of white clothes pins there as well.  Then I used scrap book paper to make the envelopes and cards.  I didn't use the cutting machine like the original person did on the Silhouette blog. Mine was all by hand.

My husband really loves it and I hope this will serve as a reminder that Valentine's Day is coming and handmade simple things can mean a lot!  We'll find out in a week and a half!