Staff Luncheon Invitations

A good friend of mine is in charge of our PTO's staff luncheon this year.  A day that we set aside to show the teachers, administrators, and staff at our school how much we appreciate them.  She had the idea for a picnic theme and asked for my help with the invitations.  Of course, I went straight to Pinterest to gather some ideas.  (What did we do before Pinterest?  I guess we had to be creative on our own. haha!)  I found this free printable from Hello Lucky and liked the idea. But the card didn't quite work for what we wanted to do.

So I went to work.  Now, I'm not a digital designer.  I think it is a very cool thing and wouldn't mind learning how some day.  But I didn't have time to learn before the invitations needed to be distributed.  So I did my sample the old-fashioned way.

I took a piece of cardstock, adhered a strip of red gingham scrapbook paper to it, and adhered some ant stickers I found at Michael's randomly around the card.  Then I scanned it into my computer, opened the jpeg file in Photoshop Elements, cropped it to the size I needed, and added the text.  Once I was happy with the way it looked, I arranged them 4 per page and printed them.

To make the RSVP cards, I just resized the original scan to about the size of a business card, arranged them to a page (I think I fit 9 per page), and printed them also.

Once they were all printed and cut, we stuffed the brown lunch bags with the cards.  We folded the brown bags to look like envelopes, wrapped some red gingham ribbon around them, added an ant sticker or two, and placed the name tag on the front.



The tags were cut out by my Silhouette Cameo.  This was the first time I tried the print and cut feature.  Now that I have a printer that works, I expect I'll be using that feature over and over again.  It is very cool.

If I'd had more time, I probably would have inked the edges of the tags before adhering them.

(You can see I blanked out some information.  Names, etc.  My friend probably wouldn't be too thrilled to have her information posted to my blog.  And, yes, I know that May 6th is a Monday.  I didn't catch that until after the invitations were distributed.  Ugh.  Thankfully our guests didn't mind our error.)




Then I had this large Ball jar and a spool of the red gingham ribbon that wasn't going to work for the invitations (wired and too wide).  So I wrapped the ribbon around the jar, attached the tag, and placed it in the school office for an easy way to RSVP.

The luncheon is on Thursday.  We will be preparing what food we can tomorrow and the rest Thursday morning.  And we're praying it doesn't rain on our picnic!  Otherwise we will have to move it inside.  Right now there is a 40% chance of rain on Thursday.

We hope the teachers and staff enjoy this special day!


Linking with Kleinworth & Co., Project Alicia, In the Moment with ..., and Live and Love ... Out Loud.

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Strawberry Salad with Strawberry Balsamic Vinaigrette

Like I shared last week, we have really been enjoying that strawberries are back in season.  In my recent pursuit of recipes that use strawberries, like the Strawberry Banana Muffins I shared last week, I also found this yummy Strawberry Salad recipe on babble.com.

You need for the salad:
Mixed greens
Chevre (goat cheese) (I just broke it into chunks)
Strawberries, quartered (or sliced if you like)
Almond slivers
Strawberry Balsamic Vinaigrette (recipe follows)

Arrange the desired amounts of each ingredient on a plate or toss in a large bowl.

To make the Strawberry Balsamic Vinaigrette, you will need:
5 large strawberries, cut in pieces
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons pure maple syrup or honey
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

Combine all ingredients in a blender or food processor.

I made this salad for a ladies' dinner at our church last week and it was a huge hit.  I quadrupled the vinaigrette recipe and put it into an empty olive oil bottle that I had saved.  Turns out that I didn't need that much dressing for the salad that I took to share, but now I have the dressing already made.  Which is great because it is my new favorite dressing.

A couple things I did ... I pureed the strawberries before adding any of the other ingredients to the food processor.  And since I quadrupled the recipe, I ended up not having enough honey, so I threw in some stevia until it tasted sweet enough for me.  :)  I used freshly ground sea salt and bottled lemon juice, since that is what I had.

Also, the recipe on Babble actually calls for candied almonds, which I'm sure are really good, but I opted to just have plain almonds.  

That's it!  Let me know if you try it and what you think!  I just picked up some more strawberries today so I think this will be my lunch tomorrow.  YUM!


Linking with Kleinworth & Co. - Your Best Weekly
Project Alicia
In the Moment with ...
Live and Love ... Out Loud

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Strawberry Banana Muffins

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Now that strawberries are in season and are pretty inexpensive, we have been buying and eating them like crazy.  As much as I love to just eat them as is, I also wanted to find some recipes that use strawberries.  I pinned a bunch and tried one out recently.  It is a variation of the Strawberry Muffins I found on Feisty, Frugal, & Fabulous.

Her recipe is as follows ... 

Strawberry Muffins

Prep time:  10 mins

Cook time:  20 mins

Total time:  30 mins

Serves: 12

Ingredients

• ½ cup butter or margarine, softened
• ¾ cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 cups flour
• 2 tsps baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• ½ cup milk
• ½ tsp vanilla
• 1½ cups chopped strawberries
• 3 tsps sugar
• ½ tsp cinnamon

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Cream butter and sugar in a large bowl.
3. Add egg and mix well.
4. Mix flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl.
5. Next, alternately add the flour mixture and milk to butter mixture in the large bowl.
6. Add vanilla, then gently fold in the strawberries
7. Spoon batter into muffin pans (this makes a dozen muffins).
8. Combine sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle over muffins. You will have a lot of sugar, but this allows you to be as generous as you like.
9. Bake at 400º for 20 minutes.

Notes

The batter will seem really thick – no worries though, it’s supposed to be!

I have a bunch of bananas that need to be used up so I thought I'd mash one up and add it to the batter.  I threw it in before adding the flour.  And then I reduced the amount of milk by a little to compensate.  YUM!!  I had never had these without the banana added, but I loved them with the banana.  They are so moist and delicious!  And Doug loves them.  The kids aren't big on muffins with fruit in them (they don't like blueberry muffins and Alex is the only one who will eat banana muffins), so they haven't tried them.  Which just leaves more for me.  Although I'm not sure that is a good thing.  :)

Oh, one thing to note, the recipe says the batter makes 12.  I was able to get 16 muffins from this recipe.  Maybe I should have put more batter in the cups but they were already pretty full.  And I didn't sprinkle the cinnamon/sugar mixture on all of them. Just a few.  I wanted to see how they were with and without.  I like them both ways.  :)

Also linking with Project Alicia, In the Moment with ..., and Live and Love ... Out Loud.

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Chewy Granola Bars

A good friend shared a recipe with me recently for some chewy granola bars that I just had to share with you.  They are so good!  And so much better than the store-bought kind.

My boys love these!

I do have to tell you that these pictures are of the ones she gave us.  She spread some Nutella on them, which makes them even yummier.  I haven't made them myself yet.  But I plan to.  Soon.

Blogger doesn't appear to have an add on for making recipe cards so I made my own in PSE.  It's not perfect, but it will do.  It is a jpeg file that you should be able to click on and print.  I hope.  :)

You can add just about anything you want to the bars.  Chopped apples or raisins would probably be good.  Whatever you like!  She even gave me some chia seeds to add to them.  I guess they are supposed to be really good for you.  I had never heard of them.

That's it for me.  Hopefully next week I'll have something to share that I actually made.  :)  I have the challenge to make a Yoda birthday cake for Nick.  He's turning 10 this Saturday and requested Yoda.  My friend who made his Angry Bird cake last year is busy this week and is unable to make his cake this year.  So here's hoping it turns out well!  It is a little lot above my skill level.

Thanks for stopping by!  Have a great rest of the week!

Linking with: Kleinworth & Co., Project Alicia, In the Moment With ..., and Live and Love ... Out Loud.

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Throw Pillow Covers

So I told you recently that I've been trying my hand at sewing.  I finally completed some place mats that I started over a year ago.  Then I jumped right into making a stand/case for my Kindle.  I'm now looking into the possibility of making some curtains for our home.  We have blinds up on almost every window but only one has curtains.  And blinds for our big picture window in the living room would cost almost as much as we paid for the window!  Yikes!

In the meantime, I kept seeing tutorials for napkin pillow covers.  They looked easy enough so I thought I'd give them a try.

I went to our local home store and found napkins on clearance for 50 cents each.  I scooped up 3 and a pillow insert for 6 bucks at Walmart and headed home to see what I could come up with.

The middle pillow is the one made with the napkins.  Basically you just leave one napkin whole and cut a second one about 1/3 of the way up.  I had bought the 3rd napkin just in case I messed up.  :)  Lay them right sides together with the hemmed edges inside and sew around all four sides.  (See the second photo in case I just totally confused you.)  Then turn right side out and slip your pillow inside.  

They didn't have a great variety of colors at the home store - lots of solid browns and greens.  And black, which would be a big no no having a golden retriever.  I'd be picking her hair off of them all.the.time.  So since I wasn't really loving their selection, I went to Joann's and bought some home decor fabric.  That fabric was used to make the two flowered covers.

I just cut the fabric to 19 inches square (the pillows are 18 inches), then did the same as I did with the napkins - cutting one side about 1/3 of the way up.  Of course, I had to hem these.

The one thing I learned is that I needed more fabric to overlap.  I really have to tuck to get the opening to close so the pillow insert doesn't show.  But I still like them.  And I could probably use velcro or something to keep them closed.  When I make more, I will remember to overlap the fabric a bit more.

I'm still thinking about what to make next.  I like being crafty!  Maybe I can make some furniture covers for our ugly couch and loveseat.  :)  Although I'd rather just buy new furniture.  Especially since we've never bought new furniture.  Ever.  And our couch is incredibly uncomfortable to sleep on.

Linking with Kleinworth & Co. Your Best Weekly, Project Alicia, In the Moment with ..., NC Sue, and Live and Love ... Out Loud.

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Barbecued Beef {recipe}

After having barbecued beef sandwiches at girls' night recently, I decided I needed to make barbecued beef for the family for dinner.  This meal is always a big hit and provides leftovers for a couple days.   I got the recipe out of a slow cooker cookbook years ago.  It is sooooooo good!

This was my lunch today.  A bbq beef sandwich, steamed green beans from our garden, and baby carrots.  YUM!  Although, I did end up having two sandwiches.  They were small, more like sliders since I put the meat on last night's homemade dinner rolls.

Normally when we have this for supper we have the bbq beef, mashed potatoes, and a vegetable.  Which is what we had last night.  Oh, and the homemade dinner rolls.  But today for lunch I put the meat on a dinner roll, sprinkled some cheddar cheese on top and put it under the broiler for a few minutes to warm and the cheese to melt and the bun to get toasty.  YUM!

The recipe:
3 pounds boneless chuck roast
1 1/2 cups ketchup
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons Dijon-style mustard
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon liquid smoke flavoring
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder (I substituted minced garlic since I didn't have any powder)

Directions:
Place roast in slow cooker.  Combine remaining ingredients in large bowl and mix well.  Pour mixture over roast.  Cover and cook on low for 8-10 hours or on high for 4-5 hours.  Remove roast from slow cooker, shred meat with a fork and place shredded meat back in slow cooker.  Stir meat evenly to coat with sauce.

Spoon onto buns or serve with mashed potatoes, rice, or whatever you desire!  Enjoy!

Linking with Kleinworth & Co. Your Best Weekly, Project Alicia, In the Moment with ..., NC Sue, and Live and Love ... Out Loud.

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Rainbow Fruit Kabobs

So last week I showed you my Over the Rainbow Fruit Platter that I made for my daughter's St. Patrick's Day party at Youth Group.  It was a HUGE success and was nearly all gone by the end of the night.

  Well, I also volunteered to bring fruit to girls' night at my friend, Laura's, house Friday night.  Since she and I are not eating sugar, this gave us something sweet to eat after a yummy dinner.  Instead of making another rainbow platter, I found some skewers at Walmart and made rainbow fruit kabobs instead.

Not that I need to tell you :) but I used strawberries, mandarin oranges, pineapple, green grapes, blueberries, and red grapes.

I thought about putting a marshmallow on each end to cover the skewers, but that would defeat the purpose of a healthy dessert.  And even though I'm not a big marshmallow eater, Laura said she really likes them.  And I didn't want to tempt her.

I was going to take them in my new pitcher that I bought from Zulily but they wouldn't all fit in.  And the strawberries at the bottom kept falling off.  So I just took them in an aluminum cake pan.  They didn't look as nice but it worked.

They were a big hit and I came home with an empty pan!

While at girls' night, a friend taught us how to belly dance.  It was great fun!  Laura did a blog post about our fun if you want to check it out.   There might be an, um,  interesting picture of me in there.  :)

Thanks for stopping by!

Linking with Kleinworth & Co. Your Best Weekly, Project Alicia, In the Moment with ..., NC Sue, and Live and Love ... Out Loud.

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Over the Rainbow Fruit Platter

Keira needed a snack to take to Youth Group tonight where they are celebrating St. Patrick's Day.  Since I'm not eating sugar, I had to come up with something other than cupcakes or cookies to make.  Thanks to Pinterest, we now have a great healthy and festive snack to share.

A rainbow fruit platter that contains strawberries, mandarin oranges, pineapple, green grapes, blueberries, and red grapes for the rainbow; mini marshmallows for the cloud; and ROLOS for the pot of gold.  I found the little plastic shamrocks at a local craft store today at 50% off.

I'm having to be very strong and not give in to eat a ROLO, because I love ROLOS!  I mean, they are chocolate and caramel!  How can you go wrong?!  But I am determined to resist.  I will stick with the fruit.

I hope the teens enjoy this healthy snack. 

Linking with: Your Best Weekly, In the Moment with ..., Project Alicia, and Live and Love ... Out Loud

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I MADE THIS!

I'm so excited!  I wanted a cover/stand for my Kindle for a while now but couldn't find one that I really loved.  So I did some searching online and found a tutorial to make my own.  And I did!  I actually made one!  A novice sewer ... made a Kindle cover!  I'm so pumped!  It's not perfect, but it is pretty good.

A little self portrait going on there.  :)

I wanted one that would stand up so when I'm reading while eating lunch or trying to view a recipe while cooking, my Kindle would, well, stand up.  Without me trying to prop it up on something and risk it falling over.

The tutorial that I followed was here.  So I won't bother with trying to give instructions because theirs are pretty good.  The only adjustments I made were to make my elastic a bit longer and my fabric a little larger than what the website says.  That gave me more room for error, which I found out the hard way that I needed.  :)  After spending a few hours at a friend's house on Monday doing some sewing and then having it not work.  But that is how we learn most things ... the hard way.

Like last night when I was making Italian bread to go with dinner and I forgot to put the yeast in the bread machine.  And I didn't realize it until it was all done mixing.  I did manage to salvage the bread - just kneaded the yeast in the dough after taking it out of the machine.  And letting it rise for over an hour instead of 30 minutes, which is what it would normally need.  It turned out okay but was much smaller and denser than it should have been had I remembered the yeast.  And it was way more work.  You can bet I'll never forget the yeast again!  :)

Anyway, once I was done with the Kindle cover/stand, I hemmed a pair of Keira's jeans and fixed a zipper on one pair of Alex's jammies.  

I also learned how to change the foot on my sewing machine from the standard one to a zipper one.  And I learned how to do a whip stitch.  I feel so educated now!  :)

I'm going to see what else I can make now.  We still need curtains in our home, so I think I'll try my hand at them.   So many possibilities!  :)

Linking with Gina's Your Best Weekly, In the Moment with Sarah, Project Alicia, and Live and Love ... Out Loud.

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Chicken & Gnocchi Soup - Your Best Weekly

Let me preface this by telling you that I am NOT a food photographer.  I try, but not often enough to be very good.  My problem is probably that I'm trying to photograph food when I'm hungry and just want to eat it, which is the case with today's recipe I am sharing.  :)  I had just finished exercising and was really hungry for lunch!  So I didn't want to spend a lot of time setting up and photographing my lunch.  I wanted to eat!  :)

I have shared this recipe before but it has been a while.  And I have tweaked it some since then also.

Chicken & Gnocchi Soup (like Olive Garden's)

This is the suggested recipe.
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 stalk celery, diced
1/2 onion, diced
1/2 carrot, shredded
1 garlic clove, chopped
3-4 chicken breasts, cooked and diced
1 teaspoon thyme
salt and pepper
Knorr homestyle stock, chicken flavor (optional, but highly recommended)  :)
4 cups chicken stock (I use broth)
2 cups half and half
16 ounces potato gnocchi
1 Tablespoon cornstarch (optional)
1 cup fresh spinach, chopped

Cook chicken (I use my pressure cooker), let cool, then chop into chunks.  Set aside.  (You could also use a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store.)

In a large soup pot, heat olive oil.  Saute celery, onions, carrots, and garlic until soft.  (I usually wait a few minutes to add the garlic since it seems to cook faster than the other veggies.)

Add chicken, thyme, salt and pepper to taste, and one of the little packets of Knorr homestyle stock.  (I just recently discovered how yummy the Knorr homestyle stock makes some of the things I make, so while this isn't necessary, it will rock your world!  Okay, not really, but it will make this soup really, really tasty!)  If you add the stock, just mix until it melts.

Add chicken stock/broth and half and half.  Heat to boiling.

Add gnocchi.  Gently boil for 4 minutes, then turn down heat and simmer for 10 minutes.

Add spinach and cook another 1-2 minutes until spinach is wilted.

If you want thicker soup, mix cornstarch with 1-2 tablespoons water and add.  (I have never needed to add cornstarch.  The soup is just perfect for me without it.)

Serve with salad and/or bread and enjoy!
***********

Now when I make it, I don't really measure anything but the half and half.  Everything else I just wing it.  For instance, I never measure the olive oil - I just pour.  I also used 3 carrots this time, 2 garlic cloves, and a couple handfuls of spinach. We buy baby spinach in bags so I just remove the stems and rip it apart instead of chopping.  It is just easier.  And it doesn't hurt to have more veggies in your soup, right?

Oh, and I always add more than 16 ounces of gnocchi.  We buy our gnocchi at Sam's Club in 3 packs.  Each pack has 1.1 pounds in it and I add two packs to our soup.  The gnocchi is the kids' favorite part of the soup.  :)  That's probably why I never need to add cornstarch.  The extra gnocchi probably helps thicken the soup.

I made a loaf of French bread to eat with our soup last and everyone loved it.  And I get to eat leftovers for lunch for a few days.  Yum!

This is very similar to Olive Garden's soup, but we just ate there recently and I got their soup.  I have to say - I like mine better.  Maybe because we make this once a month or so and my taste buds have gotten used to it.

Anyway, that's my share for this week.

Thanks to Gina for featuring my little monster valentines from last week!  They were a hit with Alex's classmates!

Linking with Gina for Your Best Weekly.

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Monster Valentines

For some bizarre reason I decided to make the boys' valentines this year.  I guess I was feeling a little ambitious.  I mean, really, store bought ones aren't that much money and take way less time.  But I figured I have this Silhouette ... I may as well put it to use.  And I didn't need to prepare anything for either of their valentine parties this year, so I had time.

I showed Alex a few different ideas and he decided he wanted monster valentines. So I found a few cute monster shapes to download and cut them out on some patterned paper I have had forever.  I cut some card stock down to a small card size (3x4 inches I think) and adhered the monsters.  For some extra fun, I picked up some large wiggle eyes at the craft store instead of using punched circles, which was my first plan.  Then I just drew a mouth with a black marker.

Alex signed them all then I adhered a couple candy bars to the inside.

I found a Monster's Inc. font for free online and downloaded it for the phrase inside.  Printed it on printer paper and adhered to the inside.

As you can see, we went with some unconventional colors for Valentine's Day, but I really like how these turned out.

Easy peasy!  And I feel so crafty!  :)

Now to finish Nick's and help Keira with hers!  (Yes, even 14 year olds can still do valentines - at youth group anyway).

Linking with Gina for Your Best Weekly, 
Project Alicia, Live and Love ... Out Loud, and In The Moment With ... for Wordless Wednesday's

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