Pinterest Discoveries of the Week

I have been debating writing a blog like this for some time. I have come to the conclusion that since no one is paying me to write blogs I should utilize that freedom and write about things I enjoy. So, as a dutiful reader, if this blogs is boring to you then just skip over it. No one is paying you to read my blog either. However, I make a piercing internal squeal every time I get a comment on like on my blogs.

I hope to make this type of post a weekly thing. Maybe some recipes, some inographics, pretty pictures or Farm-esque how-tos that I find on Pinterest. I won’t pick more than 10 because I feel like that this post will be entirely too long if I do so.

Sweet pins from Pinterest

Homemade Siracha Sauce
I mean doesn’t that picture just beg you to make it? I don’t know when I will get a chance to make this deliciousness. The recipe is

pretty darn easy too. I’m sure you would dice everything tiny and strain it if you didn’t have a food processor.  I think if I made it myself I would use it more often in my recipes at home. I would definitely use homemade Siracha in my Spicy Thai noodles. Yummo! As soon as I read the blog title out loud Kit started searching for Fresno pepper seeds. Looks like we’ll e ordering them from Sustainable Seed Co.

 Adorable Blue Heeler Puppy
I think I pinned this one twice by accident. My eyes just keep dancing back and forth between his little fat tummy and his round puppy face. Although Kit prefers red heelers, this is the same type of working dog that he wants on the farm. Kit’s last heeler passed away before I met him. I don’t know how I will feel having a dog that is smarter than me on the farm, but they sure are sweet looking dogs.

After finding some CoffeeMate seasonal creamers on sale at Kroger I got inspired to make my own. I knew Pinterest would have a copycat recipe so I went on the hunt. Yes, Pinterest is my Google-search for recipes. Don’t worry, Google, you’re still my go-to for stupid meme images that I want to share. Pinterest did not disappoint. After I gather a few ingredients I hope to be refilling my legit Coffeemate bottle with my own creamer. Here’s the link to my favorite Creamer Copycat Recipes pin.

It should come as no surprise that I have been pinnning some fitness/exercise stuff and going through some of the pins I already have. I have had to delete or repin some to make then link to the correct site. So hopefully if you go through my Fitness pinboard you will have an easier time of things. I accidentally ended up at a Pilates class the other night at the Y and my core/stomach muscles are still sore. Yes, two days later. Obviously, this is something I should do. So as to not bombard you with a thousand fitness pins I will just share one about Great Warmup Exercises and another that has several Arm Exercises with dumbbells.

Next up is a pin I just had to have after tasting it. It seems I do this a lot after just having visited my SiL’s house. We pick something online and I bug the crap out of her until she shares the recipe with me. This Greek Salad dressing is divine! I am hoping to switch over to all homemade dressing as soon as we run out of our store bought ones. Kit hasn’t tried this and is skeptical of many vinaigrettes, but I could also make him some ranch or blue cheese sometime.

Another pin I added to my Beautiful Things board was a pendant with a Shakespeare Quote on it. It comes from one of my favorite

plays–Much Ado About Nothing. Sadly, this pin links to a website where you have to be a member to view the products. Ain’t NOBODY got time for dat!! Perhaps instead this could be an embroidery project. I would love, love, love to have this in a pendant though. sigh.

Another thing Beffers made for me during our last visit were carrots roasted in amazing. I believe it was honey and balsamic vinegar? I love carrots and generally cooked carrots scare me. People tend to want to overcook them and drown the in purse sweet stuff. Not how I like my carrots. These were cooked just right and the honey wasn’t the main player. Delish!

The final recipe was one Beffers and I decided would be our next trial drink when we get together. We love Angry Orchard cider and mojitos. This might just blend those two things together nicely. The  The Angry Crisp Mojito. During my last visit we made Angry Aliens for my brother’s Alien Invasion themed birthday party. They went quite well with our screening of Mars Attacks. Oh yeah….I forgot to tell you all about my brother’s Alien Birthday. I should really work on that.

What cool pins have you discovered recently?

Would you like me to share more pins in the future??
About Cooking
Farm Stuff
Cute Pictures
Embroidery                       ?? Tell me, tell me.

**All photos belong to the original bloggers that I have linked.**

Purse Inventory or Crap I Carry Around

Everyone carries random crap around in their purse. Often times my purse ends up being the black hole home that tells the story of my recent handlings. My brother decided I needed some more fun and silly pictures for this blog post. Big thanks to my guest cartoonist is Onewitherr. They definitely add a spin to this post.

Inventory

• An opened bag of honey lemon Ricola cough drops with Echinacea.
  They are delicious and have been my friend during the past week. I don’t know if it was allergies or a sore throat, but I’m glad to be feeling better.

• Lemony scented moist towelettes that I stole from Chili’s. I feel no shame for jacking them from the dinner table. The wrapper reads, ” Pepper some freshness.”

• Pack of Orbit gum with three pieces left. Wildberry remix flavor.
  As are many of my purchases (cough drops), I bought my gum at my favorite grocery store–the salvage store.
  

  Purse full of random crap

• A wadded up Walmart receipt with 13 items on the list. I recently went “nice” clothes shopping for work. I will likely share a blog with my clothes choices soonish.

• Circle tin of Nivea hand creame for when my hands are super rusty. As the weather gets colder my hands get more dry and sometimes crack. I try to put lotion on my hands and drink extra fluids, but the cold fights dirty.

• Artistry brand light up lip gloss. A gift from my cousins up North. I like to wear this when I wanna feel fancy. When you unscrew the top the light turns on and there is a tiny mirror on the side of the tube. Like I said, to feel fancy.
  

  Dumping my junk

• One dollar in quarters. The soda machine at my new work only takes quarters. It is a good indulgence for my lunchtime. I also have three random pennies.

• 6 tampons. There are four different styles. and three different brands represented. It looks like a bunch of different wrapped candies. Some of them are brightly colored and fun (I love the UKotex packaging). This may sound a little psycho, but typically I forget to throw some in my purse until !surprise! Then I throw an entire box into my purse and forget until….It’s a vicious cycle.

• Mission Skincare mint chapstick. A gal can never have too much lip product in her purse. This is my favorite colorless lip stuff. The mint is fresh but not like a breath mint burn.
  

  I might could open a tampon dojo

• A Bic Atlantis black ink pen. Similarly to tampons, I often end up with absolutely no writing utensils or a thousand in my purse.

• A snack sized snap lock baggie with 9 Advil pills in it. This also makes me look a little crazy. I didn’t have a travel sized bottle and I needed something to cut the edge off of my scratchy throat last week. Now it is just squirreled in my purse for the occasional headache.

• Personal checkbook/wallet. This is expected, right?

What weird crap do you carry around either on purpose or accidentally?

Exploring the final frontier via purse

Luau Island Party

A couple of weeks back I went on a mini-vacation, just to get away from it all. I decided that I was going to the beach….In Illinois.
My SiL, Beth and brother planned an epic Luau party. Here are pictures, links, descriptions and recipes to what we did for our Par-tay.

Essential Party Supplies

• Accessories
• Food
• Music

Accessories

Believe it or not, it is very difficult to find Luau related party garb in September. However, true party planners never come up empty. After visiting several stores we got serious and ended up at a party supplies store. We hunted all over before finally getting desperate and asking gentleman sporting an officials vest—He was labeled as a Halloween Expert.

He also turned out to be a store expert and pointed us directly to the quarter aisle of luau supplies. We didn’t need much. We left the store with three sparkly leis in our favorite colors. We also grabbed a pack of shiny umbrellas to embellish our drinks. I brought some large colorful smoothie straws from home. They were purchased at salvage for $1.25.

Some things we didn’t find in the store is pictured above. Because money can’t buy a Hawaiian style skirt such as this! If you’re looking at cost or supplies needed: Staples and stapler, grocery sacks, and a binder clip for quick clasp of skirt. We’ll get to how you make it later.

Essentially, we purchased all of our accessories for under $10.

Food

I would call the drinks daiquiris, but truly, they were so much more than that. We added: very ripe bananas, frozen strawberries, mango, fresh pineapple, and tropical punch flavored white rum. Blend well and serve immediately with awesome umbrellas.

       Asparagus. Yes, I did just have this in my fridge and it needed to be cooked up. I love asparagus. If you cook it, I will eat it. This were laid out on a cookie sheet with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roasted in the oven until delightfully crispy.

The very best and the highlight of supper was our Waikiki Beach Chicken and Tom’s Waikiki Beach Tofu (he’s vegetarian). Want to know the original recipe that Beth based the above on? Here is the original Waikiki Beach Chicken recipe.
We loved it! Here are some of our recommendations: We backed off the sugar in the sauce to 3/4 cup instead of a whole cup. You could back down to a half cup. We liked ours on the salty side, no worries, a dash of soy sauce and overnight the flavors mellowed so it was even better! We used boneless skinless chicken breasts and it did seem to take forever in the oven—This could have been because we were starving and are like small children waiting for Santa.

I don’t have much advice about the tofu version. Tom said it was delish though. If you have questions, please hit me up and I will consult the veggie-guru that is my brother.

Music

Why is music so important? Don’t ask such stupid questions. This will set the mood and help aid in the silliness that is a faux-Hawaiian. The more important question might be, Kat, what did you listen to? That is something I will answer. We used Spotify to keep our music rolling throughout the evening. No, they aren’t paying me money to use their name and yes, I wish someone was paying me for this drivel.

The obvious first choice here, the soundtrack from Lilo & Stitch the Disney flick. Now, I don’t care if you like the movie or not. The music is sweet.
Beth and I wanted to get in the mood before the party got started. Hawaiian Roller Coaster Ride and a little Elvis. How can you go wrong?

Tom was smartsies. He found this premade Hit Nation playlist on Spotify and it had nice nice tunes on it. Both playlists are, as you may have noticed, finite. We needed more music so we added some tracks from these selected artists: Beach Boys, I accidentally added and discovered Spike Jones and His City Slickers, and more songs from that dude that sings Somewhere Over the Rainbow (Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwo’ole, I didn’t know either).
I am pretty sure I have discovered that next silly artist that my brother will get into. Spike Jones and His City Slickers have lots of weird and funny songs. Go ahead and listen to Water Lou (drip, drip, drip). I am sure that it is on….ah, there you are.

Tom also added some more awesome ambiance to our party by muting and playing this youtube video that shows 43 minutes of Hawaii landscapes and such. It was beautiful. If you need something to play in the background of your life, I highly suggest this.

Let me know, via comments, if you are interested in a step by step instructional blog on how to make a Hawaiian style “grass” skirt. Just to recap, we used grocery sacks (Kroger has brown!) that were fanned out or staggered then stapled together. If you are making one for a child or small adult you may want to add a second layer around to add more fluff. Cut slits almost to the stapled area (leave about two inches). Use a binder clip to pin it around the waist quickly. Do not try to go to the bathroom in these guys—you will want the quick removal aspect.

Tom is cutting the slits in his grass skirt.

 

Now, go and enjoy your own luau party!!    We did some hula dancing tutorials on youtube, but ultimately were too full and just laid around the rest of the night. It was great fun!!

Day 361: Car Chase Face

Don’t worry. As the designated passenger I took the photo. As a proper send off I went with my hubbster, my bro and SiL to Taco Bell. Because it is real Spanish food. It’s okay to laugh.

Going to Taco Bell is a tradition we started back in high school. Life, school and work got in the way of our initial plans, which was to make mojitos as a send off for my trip. We thought TBell was a good and funny substitute. Have I mentioned that I love these kids?

Day 313: Supper with Family

Drove up to visit my brother in Illinois. There is always a good feed put on by my sister in law (SiL).

She made broiled Italian breaded chicken, corn, broccoli and cheese casserole, and portabella mushrooms baked with olive oil, herbs and balsamic vinegar.

It was a good feed.
After we ate, we went to visit the SiL’s neices. They were lumpy and cute. I would post pictures but they aren’t mine.

I kept one of the twin girls entertained by making faces, jigging her on my knee and licking her cheek.
Okay…So I only licked her cheek once. Promise
Katryn (baby) had that creepy deep stare that babies develop as they grow. She freaked me out with her stare but no one else thought my memories were being stolen by the miniature human.
Haha, babies are so weird.