2014 pinterest challenge – week 10 March 16, 2014

This week we head back to my new Etsy shop.  Again, I don’t have a specific Pinterest Pin to refer to, but this was a challenge along the lines of Week 8 and coming up with an ornament that would appeal to a larger audience.

We have a Goldendoodle named Buddy, as you know.  I am a member of a Facebook group of Goldendoodle owners.  We all got our doodles from the same breeder and this gave me an idea.  I designed an ornament based on Buddy and added it to my Etsy shop with options for different colors and personalization.  It has been a week since I did this and it is by far my best seller!  I have enjoyed creating these ornaments and personalizing so much!  It gets a little challenging at times finding times to work on them around taking care of little guy and keeping up with the house, but I absolutely LOVE it!  I think this will continue to be a best seller for me and definitely as we approach Christmas I see this really taking off!

Here is the listing:  https://www.etsy.com/listing/181765898/felt-christmas-ornament-goldendoodle

Please stop by and check it out!  I also had 3 of my other ornaments sell, so in addition to the doodles, I need to make more of the regular ornaments!  What fun!!!  I am really enjoying having this little business and can’t wait to see how it grows!

Thanks for reading!

2014 pinterest challenge – week 9

I know I am late in posting this but here goes.

So I decided upon this Pin – Crock-pot Chicken Corn Chowder

I made it the way I was supposed to and upon tasting it, all I could taste was the cream corn.  I was so disappointed.  I thought I would try to add more flavor so I put some chicken bullion in it and thought it was ok then, still not great.  I put it away to try the next day and WHOA was it salty!  Too salty!  What the heck happened?  I honestly could not eat it.  It was horrible.

I took no pictures and unfortunately we did not end up eating it.

It was bound to happen.  Not all of them will be winners and this one was not!

Back to the drawing board, I mean Pinterest board.

Thanks for reading.

2014 pinterest challenge – week 8 February 28, 2014

Ok, this one is going to be a little different.  There is not a specific challenge that I am doing, but it is more of an idea that has been percolating for several weeks and this week finally came to fruition.  I have alluded to this in one or two of my previous posts.  I have perused many a Pinterest post and have seen a lot of handmade items.  I have ALWAYS wanted to make handmade Christmas ornaments but could never decide what I wanted to do.

Well a few weeks back it hit me!  My Mom made these wooden ornaments back in the 1960s (from a kit) and they have been a fixture on our Christmas tree since then.  The tree doesn’t seen decorated without them.  So once night as I was trying to fall asleep my mind came to those ornaments and I realized I could recreate them with felt!  Felt is pretty easy to work with and you can do so much with it!  You have no idea how excited I was to realize this idea!  It has evolved a bit from there.

I started piecing things together (no pun intended) and came up with the materials and started working on the patterns for the ornaments and then I came up with a name for my Etsy shop!  I signed up and got the name registered to me and then started making the ornaments.  Oh how much fun I have had creating them!  My goal was to get 8 completed and then open my shop.  This week I did it!  Monday to be exact!

So that is my challenge for this week.  I am still working on creating more ornaments, but at least I have the shop open!

You are probably thinking it is the end of February, why is she posting about Christmas ornaments?  Well, it is never too early right?  Ok maybe it is.  But I wanted to be able to get a head start on this and get my name out there!   Here is one of the ornaments.

So please stop by and have a look at my items.  Each one is hand cut and handmade.  I can also do special orders!  https://www.etsy.com/shop/FeltNostalgic/  and here is my Facebook page as well.  Please stop by and “Like” it if you like what you see.

I am so excited about this and excited to come up with more unique designs.  And then eventually I want to expand to other holidays as well.

Thanks for reading!

2014 pinterest challenge – week 7 February 17, 2014

We are currently being snowed-in and so I decided to make this recipe for lunch.  Crispy Cheddar Chicken   I had actually planned to make this last week but never got around to it.

This is such an easy recipe.  I had a package of 3 chicken breasts (I always use Perdue – my favorite).  I cut them each into 3 semi-equal pieces.  I got my bowls of milk, cheddar cheese (I used a package that was already shredded) and then the crackers.  I actually had a small container of mini ritz-like crackers on hand and used them.  Dipped all pieces in the milk, cheese and then ground crackers and put them in the 9×13 baking pan and baked according to the directions.

While that was baking I made the sauce.  I had gotten 2- 10 ounce can’s of the cream of chicken soup (I did not see a 14 ounce can.  So when I put both of them in the sauce pan I added a little more butter and a little more sour cream to make up for the extra soup I used.

This was soooo good!  Hubby loved it and so did I!  Definitely a keeper!!!  I added a side of canned peas to round off the lunch and ended up using more of the sauce on the chicken.

Thanks for reading!

2014 pinterest challenge – week 6 February 15, 2014

I decided to do my Pinterest challenge for this week to coincide with Valentine’s Day.  Hubby had to work, so I actually put this together on Valentine’s Day and gave it to him this morning.

Here is the original pin for a fruit bouquet.

I was actually going to buy one from the major company that makes them.  Hubby prefers no strawberries because of the seeds and when I called, they didn’t really have anything without strawberries.  They suggested a box of cut up, chocolate covered fruit such as apples or pineapples.  Although the lady on the phone told me she wasn’t sure if they would have pineapple for Valentine’s, even though Valentine’s was only 3 days away!  Anyway, I asked what the price of the box was and she said $52.  WHAT???  She said that was the small, which I find hard to believe unless that particular local shop only had that size.  Anyway, I decided that it was just CRAZY to spend $52 on basically a couple of cut up capples!  So I thought I could do something myself and turned to Pinterest.

I did get hubby a fruit bouquet from this location for Father’s Day last year.  It was his first Father’s Day and I had a 6 month old and was in no position to try to make something like this.  So I actually saved the vase and the insert.  All I needed was the fruit and some skewers and I also picked up a set of the flower cookie cutters.

I chose Pineapple, Cantaloupe and grapes.  Here is my progress and the finished product.  It is kind of on the small side, compared to the picture in the pin, but I still think it turned out really well and hubby liked it!

I cut out 3 sizes of the flowers and one heart shape.  The metal flower cookie cutters worked better in the pineapple.  The heart shape is plastic and was a little tougher to get through.

I used my crinkle cutter for the cantaloupe, just like the major chain does.  However for the balls, I had to use a cookie scoop for the large ones and since I don’t have a melon baller, I used my measuring spoon for the smaller one.  Worked ok, considering.

I opted to cut out the core from the pineapple and put the large balls in the center for the flower.

One step I did not do is to put something to cover over the insert in the vase.  I don’t think it looks too bad the way it is.  For a first try I am quite pleased!  And all told I probably spent about $5 for the fruit that was used in the arrangement.  In total I spent less than $15 and we have half the cantaloupe left over and a ton of grapes.

Thanks for reading!

2014 pinterest challenge – week 5 February 7, 2014

I know I am late in posting this.  But here it is!

This one I found via my cousin who posted it on Facebook.  Here is the pin for the Gluten Free Cheez-Its.  We are not a Gluten free household so rather than head to the store and get gluten-free flour, I used all-purpose flour.  So you can make it either way.  I also used salted butter rather than unsalted as my cousin said she would do that next time to give it a bit more flavor.

They were pretty easy to make.  And I had these cute little cookie cutouts so I used the heart-shaped ones since we are getting close to Valentine’s Day.  The recipe also says to roll the dough out to about 1/8th of an inch.  Well, I have a nice rolling-pin with attachable ends to roll to specific thicknesses but I did not have 1/8.  I did have 1/6th.  I think that this is the reason I had to bake them a little longer to get them to be crunchy.  I had 3 cookie sheets full and the 3rd sheet turned out the best.  I tries to bake the other ones longer, but they just did not get that crunchiness of the 3rd one.  We will still eat them, but they would be better with a little crunch!

The little bit of cayenne pepper adds just a hint of a kick.  Not really spicy at all, but you can tell it has a little something to it. Overall it was fun to make these and I might do it again in the future.  I would for sure bake them longer.  Here they are!

Thanks for reading!

2014 pinterest challenge – week 4 January 26, 2014

This week and the Pinterest Challenge got away from me a little bit.  Little guy was not sleeping that great so we all didn’t sleep that great, so motivation was a little hard to locate and I was also working on another project.  But I did manage to fit a project in this morning.

I am sure a lot of us had a drawer or cabinet with Tupperware (or similar) bowls that are thrown together with the lids in a big ol’ mess.  Here is mine:

Ok, so it isn’t that bad.  But I know I must have some extra lids and some things I have never used.  Also the lids even though they look sort of straight, are all over the place.  You can’t tell but I have lids in the back that are underneath some of the containers.

Anyway, I have wanted to come up with some sort of storage system for the lids so that when I pull one out, 3 more don’t fall on the floor.  I saw this on Pinterest.  Refer to number 29 for the idea of taking a CD holder to use for the lids.  Now I did not have the type of CD holder that they show in the picture.  But I had a similar CD holder that I wasn’t using for CDs.  I actually had some miscellaneous items in it that really wasn’t working.  So I emptied the drawer and matched up the lids I had with the bowels/containers I used and here is a picture of what was leftover.  The small containers I have NEVER used for any food items, so I may try to re-purpose them for the project I have been working on this week (will discuss later).  And I had all these extra lids.  Who knew?

So I added my CD holder and lined up the containers so that they fit together and added the lids and voila!

Two of the lids did not fit well, so I put the large one under the large container and the other one is right outside the lid container.  Not a huge difference visually, but organizationally a big change.

Thanks for reading!

2014 pinterest challenge – week 3 January 19, 2014

Before I talk about this week’s challenge, I need to follow-up on last weeks measuring cup challenge.  It did not turn out as good as I had hoped.  The Command strips holding the 2 largest cups actually fell off.  The cabinet is a laminate material so I am not sure if that is the reason or the strips don’t hold the weight that they claim they do (1/2 pound) or those 2 strips happen to be duds.  I will try again and see if they hold.  If not I will have to figure something else out.  In the meantime, I also need to figure out how to stop the clanking.  hmmmm . . . more to come.

As far as this week’s challenge, I thought I would try another recipe.  Here is the original pin of the Slow Cooker Melt in Your Mouth Cube Steak and Gravy.   I don’t like mushrooms, but hubby does and I can pick them off, so I thought this would be a good one to try and easy too!

I made this yesterday.  Got everything in the crock pot by 8:30am and set the timer for 8 hours.  I really do love crock pot cooking and will probably do a lot of it during this year of challenges. 🙂  After adding the gravy mixes I let it cook for another half hour and while doing this I steamed some green beans (The original picture looked good so why not.)  I also made a pasta side dish.  Got them plated and totally forgot to take my photo before we started eating; it looked so good.  Anyway, hubby stopped eating his and I was able to snap this.  He had already finished off one of the pieces of meat.

I would say it was a success.  Hubby kept making the “mmmmm” sound while he was eating it, which is always a good sign! 🙂  He also said he really liked it.  I really liked it too!  The meat was so tender and even though I do not eat mushroom, I think the flavor was wonderful.  I used 2 packets of mushroom gravy mix and one packet of brown gravy mix.  The gravy did not get as thick as I would have liked.  So next time I will probably take most of the liquid out and thicken it on the stove with a little cornstarch before serving.  But all in all a very good, VERY easy dish!

Thanks for reading!

2014 pinterest challenge – week 2 January 12, 2014

So I decided to tackle one of the kitchen cabinets.  Here is the original pin that inspired me.  I really liked the idea of hanging the measuring cups on the door.  Whenever I needed one I usually had to pull all of them out and then search for the one I needed.  Now this would make things easier and also give me more room on the shelf.

This is a cabinet I store my baking supplies in, as well as a few other items.  Here is the before:

In the pin, it shows a cork board attached to the inside of the cabinet.  I really didn’t want to do this (seemed a bit too fancy for what the cabinet was) so I came up with another idea.  I used Command hooks.  The hooks were just a tad bit wide for one of the measuring cup sets ( 1/8, 2/3, 3/4 & 1 1/2).  They had a different handle.  So thanks to hubby for suggesting I trim the hook.  What I actually did was use one of my heavy duty nail files and “sand” off the edges a bit.  Then the hole in the handle fit perfectly.    Here they are ready for the cups:

I chose to stagger them so the cups fit better since the door isn’t that wide.

After that, I went through everything in the cabinet and got rid of outdated things, rearranged and voila!  A much more organized space!

Thanks for reading!

P.S.  Project is not quite finished.  I failed to realize that if you open the door quickly the cups make quite the racket.  So I am going to have to fix this somehow.  Mind still thinking about it.  Will let you know what I end up doing.

2014 pinterest challenge – week 1 January 5, 2014

I wasn’t sure if I would be able to start my challenge just yet.  We have been getting inundated with snow!  Hubby and I ventured out yesterday before the storm hit and I was able to get what I needed to complete my 1st pinterest challenge.

BBQ’d pulled pork sliders.

Here is the original pin.  I started cooking this yesterday morning.  I used a combo of two different BBQ sauces.  I used Sweet Baby Ray’s Honey Barbecue Sauce and KC Masterpiece Original.  I used  a little over a cup of each, A&W Rootbeer and cooked it on slow for 6 hours.  When I put the meat on the Hawaiian buns I left the sauce a little thicker than what the original post showed.  It was a hit.  Hubby liked them and we even had the leftovers for lunch today.  YUMMY!  I still have some left so we may even have more tomorrow. 🙂

I decided to do one more recipe today and made this.  I have never made snow ice cream before, but my Mom did when we were little.  It was quite yummy!  I put it in the freezer and will have some for a treat tonight!

Well, I am off to a good stat!

Thanks for reading!