c is for carrots

Internet woes

2010-10-14T11:44:00.001-05:00

I keep having lots of problems getting pictures to load into blogger lately. My internet is... well to put it nicely... it's not good. And that is putting it VERY nicely lol. I have some things that I'd like to post but waiting an hour or more for one picture to make it's way onto here is just a little too long for me to wait. I'll keep trying, but that's what's happening right now, and why the posts stopped for a bit. Hopefully I can get something up here soon...

:( no peach jelly

2010-09-07T16:05:00.002-05:00

I was saving up all my vine peaches and the couple left over peaches we got in July to make some jelly with. It was going good, tasting delicious, and I strained it and put it back on the burner for one last boil to thicken it up. Took the dogs outside and checked the mail, and by the time I got back in the house it was burnt beyond saving :(

I'm totally bummed over it, it was the whole harvest of vine peaches. Now I'll have to wait until next year. I'm trying to convince myself to sew something to cheer myself up. I got some new fabric and this nifty little thing this last weekend.

SideWinder bobbin winder

Tony convinced me to get it because Hancock Fabrics had it on sale during their Labor Day sale. I had been eyeing it before, and I'm glad that he talked me into it. It's a pretty handy little thing, I went ahead and loaded up all but one of my bobbins with the new thread I got (was running out of most colors for awhile). It's really quick and easy to use, definitely happy with it.

Hooray! and Yum!

2010-09-03T09:47:00.003-05:00

So I got so frustrated with the serger that I asked on the knitting and sewing forum on craigslist for advice. And the advice that the nice people who gave me very quick responses got it working! The problem was that there are actually small disks in the tension knobs that you have to literally pull the thread into, not like with a regular sewing machine where you just kind of guide it into the tension, this is like you're flossing its teeth, lol. So I gave it another go and now it's working beautifully. I'm so happy, and I was so excited the night that it started working that I whipped up this little purse just using the serger :)

Now we just need to move so the serger and the sewing machine can sit side by side and I can swap from one to the other as needed, instead of having to put one on the floor while I use the other :P It's not that big of a pain, but it would make things easier to not have to do that.

So in other news, I made these this morning:

They are chocolate cupcakes, and partway through baking I stuck a peanut butter cup in the middle of each one. Then I made delicious peanut butter frosting that I found over at Joy the Baker's site. She did a post about these cupcakes here I just used the frosting recipe, I used my own chocolate cake recipe instead (mostly because I was being lazy and didn't feel like writing down 2 recipes). Next time I think I will try out her chocolate cake recipe for them because mine stuck to the cupcake wrapper. I'm not sure why, but I'm having that happen a lot to me lately, anyone know what causes that?

Just a warning, if you like peanut butter, that frosting is so freakin delicious that you will want to just eat it all by itself. I had a couple spoonfuls left over from piping it on them, and I'll admit it.... i totally just ate the rest on it's own. It's awful, but true. It's that yummy. Now I'm wishing that I had followed Joy's picture suggestions for the frosting though... it is very very sweet and with how much I piled on I'm having a tough time convincing myself that I can handle a second lol!

ugh

2010-08-25T15:45:00.003-05:00

Wow, so if I could write a letter to the people who decided what gets to be packaged up with a serger as your accessories I would probably tell them this:

Dear serger packaging department (or whoever does this):

Whoever decided that the little threader thing should be optional has obviously NEVER used a serger in their entire life. It should be something that comes standard, or there should at the very least be a huge warning label on the side of the box screaming at you telling you that you will probably want to go pick up this threader thing before you leave the store.

Thank you,
Monica

Anyways!! Here is what happened to me- I go through every single page of the direction booklet. It has great illustrations of exactly how everything works. Cool! I pull my serger up and try out each little thing that it does. Then we get to the threading part. Wow, 4 threads is a lot, breathe. Wait, they already threaded the machine with tiny bits of thread so you can tie your thread onto it and pull it through.... but what happens when I need to change threads or use up a spool, then I'm not going to know how to do it without a leader thread. So I decide that I will take them out and learn it. I start and am threading one of the lower threads... then in the directions all it says is to use my threader (optional) to put the thread through this tiny hole that is like under the presser foot. It's so far under there that I physically cannot get to it with my fingers, it's ridiculous. By this time at night the fabric store is closed. Super. I go through all the stuff I have trying to find wire that is thin enough so when I double it over it can still fit through this teeny tiny hole. I have none. Then I realize that I have twist ties, and they have very very skinny wire (yes, I have a small collection of twist ties, they're very useful, don't judge lol). I manage to get the wire out with the help of 2 sets of pliers, fold it in half, YAY it fits through the thing I need it to! Then one more hole after that one and it's threaded! Then by comparison the rest of the thread is so easy to wind around how it needs to.

Done! It's threaded and ready to go! Then I fiddle with the 4 crazy tension knobs for about an hour testing and comparing to the pictures in the booklet and re-adjusting and so on. Time for bed.

The next day- Awesome! I am ready to use my serger for something real! I get out fabric and cut it and was going to attempt to make a purse and then all of a sudden it isn't working right anymore. I take a closer look and somehow the thread has magically made its way out of one of the teeny tiny holes I was talking about that's so hard to thread. There is no gap, there is no way for thread to get out of that hole without the thread breaking... but it didn't break... what?! So I give up trying to figure it out and just re-thread it. Then I find out that I have to also re-thread the other bottom thread... ok.... I start to sew again... and just like that it's out again! WTF I take the thread out and re-thread all 4 this time. It's out again! I could not figure it out and called it a night.

I have since then begun to figure it out a little, but it's so difficult to re-thread without this little threaded tool thing that I only do it once and then switch back to the regular machine. So the whole story here is that you will NEED this threader thing that they claim is optional. It is sooooo not optional. Whoever decided it was must have had crazy long skinny needle-like fingernails or something.

Hopefully I will be getting my threader soon and can start cranking out some cool stuff. I really want to, I just can't face threading that thing over and over again. I've got to figure this out first (and get a stupid threader!).

YAY

2010-08-17T14:23:00.002-05:00

So I got my serger finally last night from Hancock. I ordered it way back at the end of June (it feels like longer lol) when they had a sale on them but ran out of stock. For those that know what kinds are which, I got a Juno by Janome (3434D). I've used them before when I used to work at Hancock, and from the experience I've had with them, Janome is a really great brand, and as we all know brands can and do matter when it comes to sewing machines.

I went through the whole book and learned the names of the parts and how to change cutting knives and which needles do what and all that good stuff. Now if my sinuses would give me a break and stop making me sneeze 50 times a second I might get to sew something with it!

I'm sure there will be pics to come of things that I've made using it, I have a small list of projects that have been piling up waiting for it! lol

Frustrated

2010-08-12T12:57:00.006-05:00

Ok. So I was trying and getting into the crafty spirit again. I'm really trying to keep up with it, and it's not that I haven't been doing anything, but I had a craft-crash of sorts. First I need to vent a little and then I'll show the lame picture of something I made and what I'm working on.

I was going along full steam ahead and feeling quite crafty and creative and being productive. Then Tony got a call from a friend saying that this friends mom was renting out a small one bedroom house and we should go see it. Awesome! We don't even have to make calls or look up reviews to see if the people renting this are good or anything cos Tony knows them! We got excited and made an appointment to go see it.

We meet up at the house with this lady to see it, we're walking through and like it and tell her we'd like to go ahead with the background check and whatnot to start the process. So then we go outside and she's explaining that the other house that's on the property is rented by 2 college girls that are nice and usually the tenants take turns mowing the lawn. Then she turns straight to Tony and says "Maybe they'll make you cookies if you mow the whole yard though!" And there I am standing there like (Ummm hello? His fiance standing >right here<) I'm sure they're very nice girls, but seriously college girls are NOT going to be making cookies for my fiance. Then to top it off when Tony asks her if I should fill out a separate form for the background check and credit check and all that or just add my info next to his she says "Oh, well IF you two get married we'll work out the paperwork." Um... "IF?" I'm confused... very very confused at exactly who she thought I was or what my relationship is with Tony. Oh and when we give her the paper for just his background check she says "Ok, we'll get this started, but there is someone in line ahead of you." Wtf? She never said that when we were setting up an appointment to see it, so now we just spent one of Tony's few days off wasting our time to get all excited over getting our own place and you decided not to tell us that someone else already put in for the place? Just wow.

So now a week and a half later (I know for a fact that those background checks only take 2 days tops) she still hadn't called to tell us if we were getting the place. So I finally call today and no, she already gave it to the other person "Because I had to be fair since she saw it first." Then she got all nervous going on about how her son knows of some other place nearby or something. I ended the conversation with: "Well, thank you SO much for calling us back to let us know." She was just like "um, yeah... have a good day..." and I said "you too" back in that really awful obviously sarcastic way that you do to people that you don't really mean it but are being painfully polite so they'll know you don't really mean it.

I mean come on, who does that? Basically we were her "back up" in case this lady bailed and decided she didn't want it or just in case her background check didn't clear. You don't go getting people's hopes up that they can have a nice place at a great price when it's someone that you know personally. Then to top it off not even call them to tell them it's taken. Seriously, that was just plain awful of her and I hope that she knows it.

SOOO anyways. Here's a bunch of yarn that my mom sent me recently. Now I have so much yarn it's getting a little crazy lol. But in mom's defense I did say that she could send more (who is going to say "no I don't want more yarn?? pssh, you'd be crazy). I started trying out this: lengthwise knitted scarf which is what you see on the right. I know it does not look like a scarf right now. Actually, it may end up not being a scarf or it may end up being a stripey pieced scarf, I don't really know yet, I just wanted to try it.

The other thing you see in the picture is a pincushion that I made from here: star pincushion tutorial. The only thing I don't like about it is that for some reason it's like my needles are being sucked into it. Like I won't even use them for a day and they're jammed so far in I almost need tweezers or pliers to get them out, it's weird I don't know why it's doing this. Other than that I love it. It's big enough that I have free room so I can attempt to use it instead of putting a needle in my pants leg or in the bed (I am so bad about doing this and then jab myself or lose the needles and I'm trying really hard to break this habit) and I like how it's kind of sectioned so I can organize the needles by type.

There were a lot of people in the comments for that tutorial saying that it didn't come out right, and when I was putting mine together I see where they went wrong with theirs. It's when you put the top piece onto the bottom that you have to be careful of how you position it. If you line up the top and bottom shapes you will get the wrong shape, you want the top and bottom to be off centered of each other. I pinned mine first to make sure of how it was going to end up. Next time that I make one I'll be sure to take pictures of that step in particular and show what I mean better (I hope).

I've also been working on refinishing a wooden rocking chair. It was Tony's grandfather's chair and we picked it up a month or two ago. I've been working hard at getting the incredibly thick white paint off of it so we can stain it. Seriously I don't know who painted it last but omg this paint is like cement. First I tried to sand it off by hand, yeah took me all of 10 minutes to figure out this was not happening. Then his dad gave me the little electric sander... took me about 4 hours just to sand the arms of the chair. So then we battled and got paint stripper and used the power washer to get off as much paint as possible- WIN! lol. Now I'm doing some light sanding by hand to get the last tiny bits of paint off and prep it for stain. Its been quite a challenge but I think it's going to be really nice when it's done.

With that I think I'm done for this time. Trying to get myself back into creating, just kinda hit a wall with being so frustrated and disappointed with not getting this place and let myself fall into a rut. I'm hoping that this new yarn and the chair project finally wrapping up will get me going again.

crazy kitty and gardening

2010-08-02T20:41:00.005-05:00

So this last weekend I worked on this crazy little pointy kitty guy:

This is where I found the pattern for him: pointy kitty pattern from this great site: wee wonderfuls site

I had a lot of fun poking around that site, there's lots of fun things to check out and great pics :)
I embroidered him a funny little mouth that I think fits him well, and had a couple great buttons for his eyes. Then after I attached the eyes I went over the thread with some green embroidery thread for that green cat eye effect, lol. And you can't really see it in the pictures, but I gave him little whiskers using some glittery thread that was 3-ply and seemed to fray exactly how cats' whiskers would look.

I also just finished those blue pillows that he's sitting on lol. Not that they're that much of a project but we needed them. King sized pillows do not work well on a futon bed :P

Other happenings this weekend included a couple quick garden pics. Here's the biggest watermelon!

I had to put a styrofoam plate behind it because it started growing so close to the fence that the fence was cutting into its skin. My mom gave me the idea to put something flat and sturdy to stop the fence from touching it and this is what I came up with. I just used some yarn to attach it to the fence. If I had to guess I would say it's probably a little over 5 pounds now. And for those wondering it is the Crimson Sweet variety. This is my first time growing watermelons and I'm getting quite excited for it to be ready!

And I had a surprise the other morning, one of the morning glories that I thought probably didn't make it produced a flower! :D yay! I'm hoping that it keeps going and makes a few more before the season is out.

That's it for now, I'm currently trying to scrounge up some more fabric for the zig zag quilt and probably going to be churning out a couple stuffed animals this week. I'm also trying to get some things stocked up to hopefully be selling on etsy soon!

the amish puzzle ball

2010-07-29T16:19:00.006-05:00

So I was looking around for pincushion patterns today. I recently was playing around with traditional biscornu patterns that I found here: Biscornu Basics

I liked those so I thought I'd try some other things and made my way to a flickr group that does a pincushion swap. There were a lot of really cute pictures to look through there, and then from one of those pages someone linked up this: Amish Puzzle Ball Pincushion

I scrolled down to see the finished product and knew immediately that I just had to make one (who am I kidding I'll probably have a whole army of those rolling around in a few days lol). Then I started reading and omg 36 of these little pieces to make it, phew!! (And as a side note it used roughly a 12" by 12" piece of fabric to cut all the pieces from)

I got to tracing and cutting, which I think took the longest part. Then I went ahead and stitched the little "footballs" as I kept calling them, together on the machine. Somehow I'm sure the Amish wouldn't have liked how much thread scraps were left over from doing this on the machine, but I'm also pretty sure that it would've taken me nearly a week to do this all by hand with how angry my shoulder would've been at me for doing that much hand sewing all at once.

Here's all my little "footballs" sewn together and ready to be flipped and stuffed:

And here they are all flipped, stuffed, and stitched up. Just that was more than enough hand sewing for me for one day!

Then I sewed them together at the points so I was down to 4 little football circles, lol.

Then they all got sewn together at the points! All done!

And I included that last one to give reference of it's size. It's pretty small, and my first pattern that I made I went by what the tutorial said, 2 inches tall by 1 inch wide at the middle. Well that seemed quite tiny and I knew that since I was going to do this one by machine, and how I am with leaving pretty big seam allowances that I made it a tiny big bigger. I would say I added about a 1/4 inch all the way around, and it still came out pretty small. I'd love to make my second one like they did in the tutorial with a different fabric for the inside pieces, it looks great. I'm also thinking of adding some buttons or beads to the joints of this one, I really like the look of it on the tutorial. And I could see this being a fun kids or baby toy if I used upholstery thread. Not that I think it isn't sturdy, but I know how kids like to yank at stuff, lol.

Next time I'll keep a better eye on how long it took me, but all in all it didn't take very long at all. I would consider it a good full afternoon project once you get the hang of it down. If you were doing it all by hand... probably a good weekend project. And like I noted on the top, the tutorial didn't specify how much fabric, but I measured after I drew out all the pieces and it was about a 12 inch by 12 inch square that it all took up for this size.

baby blocks

2010-07-27T18:17:00.005-05:00

So I made these last weekend that we're going to give to Tony's cousin who is having a baby girl very soon. They took nearly an entire day and my shoulder was pretty upset at me, but I was feeling pretty inspired to do them so I wanted to get them done while I was feeling it. I think they came out really great, and I'm probably going to make more.

I included just this one closeup because the others came out a little blurry and I didn't feel like taking more pics at the time. I'm either going to make little booties to match or a blankie.

So now I'm trying to figure out what I could do on boy themed blocks instead of the flowers. So far all I can think of is maybe a shooting star. Like I could put trails instead of the vine and put a star for the flower. That's all I came up with so far though.

Now I've been working on this: zig zag quilt I've never actually completed a quilt that I've started yet. But this seems pretty easy and I'm breezing through it right now, already 3 rows in and I just started it today. I'm using mostly old fabric that I've never known what to do with and some clothing that Tony and I don't plan on wearing again but that we like too much to throw out. So far it's blues, greens, black, and white, and I think one grey. I'm going to need to find a few more pieces to finish it though, and I'll definitely need to get something to cover the back... or... if I can manage to wrestle the black silky sheet away from the ferrets I could use that. But who knows, they've had it for quite a while now.

Something cute and a second (or third?) try at this

2010-07-26T10:38:00.004-05:00

So I know I've just stopped all together on this blogging thing a few times now.... but I thought I'd give it another go. Sorry in advance if anyone gets interested and I suddenly just stop posting again, I had good intentions when I started this all but I guess my heart just hasn't been that into blogging as I thought I might be.

Anywho-

Here's this cute little fabric dollhouse I made as a present for one of our friends whose baby just turned 1 (Not sure what happened with the pics, I gotta figure out what photo editing tools this laptop has).

The little birthday girl liked it a lot, and was pulling out the little stuffed animals and checking them out right away. And a lot of the female adults who also sew a little seemed even more interested, lol. They passed it around and asked questions about it and one even took many pictures from all angles!

I checked out a tutorial that I found here: fabric doll house tutorial link She has quite a few fun little things that I might be giving a try in the near future. Then I did some google searching for fabric dollhouses and looked at some flickr groups dedicated to them to get some inspiration on what I might want to put for details and such.

But when we went to get the fabric the place we went to didn't have plastic canvas (which I still think is very weird to not have a crafting basic like that), so I got some of that really heavy Pellon interfacing, the iron on kind. Come to think of it I never tested if it's the double sided or not. My plans changed part way through the house and I didn't iron it at all, I just sewed the fabric onto it. But they make a kind that's one sided interfacing and another that's 2 sided. It's great stuff that you can make a lot with. I made a purse with it: chinese food box purse which was always a hit, and I'm thinking I might make another as it's time for another purse. And I don't think I have a picture of them, but you can make great fabric bowls with them too.

Well, it's just about time for the ferrets to have their soup so I think I'll get going. I'll have some pictures (hopefully better ones than the house) of some really really cute baby blocks I made this last weekend. I'm quite proud of them they're so very adorable lol.

Easy Recipes - Oven Fried Chicken

2009-03-27T16:28:00.008-05:00

Well recently I was talking to my brother about cooking. He's just starting to really cook for himself and said that he keeps finding himself cooking the same things over and over again and wanted to try something new, but his cooking skills are still very beginner and a lot of recipes sound too hard. When I thought about it, most recipes aren't really that difficult, sometimes they just aren't worded in a way that beginner cooks can really understand.

So since I've been posting a lot of recipes anyways, I've decided to spend some time putting up some recipes that are written out in a way that anyone can feel confident making them. If you are a more advanced cook you can still enjoy these recipes, and I'll include a short version for those that want it at the end. Enjoy! :)

For our first recipe I decided to post Oven Fried Chicken. Craig asked for some easy chicken recipes, so the first few will probably be chicken related. Also, they will probably all feature the boneless, skinless chicken breasts since they're very versatile and easy to use. But feel free to substitute for other cuts of chicken. Bone-in chicken works great too, just be sure to adjust your cooking times (it will take longer since they're thicker) and to check that they're done before serving. So here we go!

Oven fried chicken

My mom gave me this recipe, and I especially love it because while I like fried chicken, I hate frying. Plus this leaves you plenty of time and oven burner space to make up mashed potatoes, stuffing or any other sides you want with it. This recipe is very flexible and you can change the spices to your taste, if you're feeling adventurous go for a more complex combination, or go simple if you aren't sure. Don't be afraid to experiment with it, you really can't go wrong!

(For 2 people I typically use 2 pieces of chicken)

chicken
flour
1 egg
milk or water
butter, about 1/2 a stick
oil, like vegetable oil or olive oil
spices

2 bowls
1 baking pan like a cake pan, something deep and wide enough to lay the chicken in

While your chicken is thawing you can make up the coatings for it. (To thaw it I put it in a bowl or plate and microwave on defrost for 5 mins, flip them over and put them in on defrost for 2-5 mins more, depending on how thawed they seem after the first 5)

Get 2 bowls and put about 1 cup of flour in one, you might need more if your pieces of chicken are large, add another 1/2 cup or so if they're big. You can always mix up more later, so don't worry.
You can add things to the flour like salt, pepper, other spices like oregano, chili powder, parsley are good too, really anything you like. If you have breadcrumbs, oatmeal (the plain kind), crackers that you can crush up, you can mix those into the flour too. Even things like cereal can be good on it. But if you don't have anything you can just put flour, salt and pepper and it's good like that too.

This batch I added some Ranch Seasoning to the flour mixture, it's really good and has a nice mix of flavors that are great for chicken already put together for you. A note when adding pre-mixed seasoning like this: always check the ingredients on them before adding salt to your food. Some pre-mixed seasonings have a lot of salt already in them and if you add your own salt it will be way too salty. You can always let people add their own salt at the table later on.

Now crack your egg into the second bowl and add a little milk or water to it, not a lot, just some like if you were making up eggs to cook or french toast batter. Beat the egg mixture with a whisk or fork. If you have hot sauce you can put a little in, it's pretty good with it and doesn't make it too spicy, but adds a nice flavor. You can also put spices in the egg batter if you want.
Get your baking pan out and the butter. Cut up your butter into small pieces or slices and put it in the bottom of the pan, you want to spread it out so it's not touching and kind of layers the bottom so your chicken won't stick.

Now's a good time to set your oven temperature at about 375*

Get your thawed chicken out and slice each piece in half the long way. If they're really big pieces you can cut them into thirds. Think of like the size of chicken strips, you want it like that.

Set up your counter so you can easily work with your chicken strips. I set mine up so the baking pan is on the left, then my two bowls one in front of the other, then my chicken on the other side. It makes it easier to work with your chicken if you set up everything before so you aren't jumbling it around with gross raw chicken hands lol.

Take one of your chicken strips and dip it in your flour mixture (only work with one strip at a time so it doesn't get too messy). Make sure it's coated on all sides.

Then dip it in your egg mixture. It might seem like the flour all came off, but that's ok. The flour helps the egg to stick to the chicken.

Now dip your chicken back in the flour and make sure it's completely coated. Now lay it flat in your pan, right on top of the butter pieces. Keep doing this with all the strips, try to make sure they aren't touching when you put them in the pan.

Your hands will probably get all clumpy and stuff from dipping the chicken back and forth, and that's ok, lol. It comes off easier if you use the dish sponge to scrub your hands. You can try using forks or only using one hand for wet and one for the dry ingredients, but you'll probably still get a lot on your hands, it happens.

Now that all your chicken is in the pan, pour some oil in so it comes up to the bottom of the strips. You don't need to to completely cover it, but you want enough so that it will fry the chicken. If it isn't going around the chicken, you can tilt the pan to spread it around more. You can't really go wrong with how much oil you use, just make sure it at least covers the bottom part and isn't so much that it goes way up on it.

Put it in the oven and let it bake for about 15-20 minutes. It should start to look a little brown, but not too dark yet. Flip each piece over, using tongs or forks, be very careful because the oil is very hot. Let them cook again for another 10-15 minutes, they should look nice and crispy and golden brown just like fried chicken strips. When they're done you can put them on paper towels to drain, but there shouldn't be too much oil left on them anyways, so I usually just plate them up and enjoy!

Oven Fried Chicken

(The short version)

chicken
flour
1 egg
milk or water
butter, about 1/2 a stick
oil
spices

Preheat oven to 375*

Mix flour, spices (salt, pepper, oregano, chili powder), and any other toppings you may want. Bread crumbs, crushed crackers, oatmeal and even cereal taste great, experiment with different combinations.
Mix egg and milk or water in another bowl, add spices or hot sauce, whatever you think would compliment your flour mixture well.
Cut up and layer butter in your baking pan to lay chicken on.
Slice chicken into strips and dip into flour mixture, then egg mixture, then back into flour mixture.
Layer chicken in pan and pour in oil until it comes just up to the chicken.

Bake at 375* for 15-20 mins, and then flip, bake another 10-15 minutes, chicken should be golden brown.
Drain on paper towels, or place directly on plates and enjoy!

Much too soon for snow!

2008-11-07T10:22:00.001-06:00

I woke up this morning, opened the living room blinds and this is what I see....

This is just crazy. All I can say is I hope it's all gonna melt today also, lol.

yummy breakfast!

2008-09-15T08:55:00.005-05:00

My mom saw this on a Paula Deen cooking show, we can't even remember what it's called, but it's probably one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten for breakfast.

Yummy Paula Deen Breakfast-

12 Frozen white dough rolls (they're just dinner rolls in the frozen section)
1 package *cook & serve* (not instant) butterscotch pudding mix
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 stick of butter, melted
chopped pecans, optional

Place frozen rolls in a bundt pan or similar large baking pan (make sure it has high sides).
Sprinkle pecans, pudding mix, and brown sugar over frozen rolls.
Pour melted butter over it all, cover with plastic wrap and let rise overnight (or at least 10 hours).

Next morning: remove plastic wrap and bake @ 350* F for about 1/2 hour.

I half it when I make it since I'm only making it for two people. A dozen of these would be way too tempting to eat them all, haha! It works out just fine halved too, I just guess when the package of pudding mix is half way, but you could measure it too. I use a loaf pan to make mine in, but when you're making a full batch you really want like a bundt pan or a casserole dish, something that's deep enough for the dough to rise.

Here they are when you first mix everything together (I know it isn't pretty lol).

This is the next morning, after they've risen, and before baking.

And here they are after baking about to be devoured :D

I'm not sure what it is about that butterscotch pudding mix, but it makes such a delicious sauce for these. My mom said that she tried it with a vanilla pudding mix one time, but it just isn't as good as this. I've also used margarine when I've run out of butter but I must have this. It still works fine but doesn't blend into the sauce quite as well as the butter does, you end up having to stir it around quite a bit after you get the rolls out of the pan to get it to mix. It still tastes the same though ^_^

Birthday Cake!

2008-05-12T21:44:00.003-05:00

Here it is:

It is half chocolate cake, half yellow cake. I mixed some purple food dye into part of the yellow cake mix. Then I put strawberry frosting on it, and melted some white chocolate chips, which I also dyed purple, and swirled that on top of the frosting. As weird as it sounds, it's actually really yummy, lol.

what i did over x-mas break.

2008-02-02T10:18:00.000-06:00

First we went to go visit my parents in MA, I find it really funny that the winter there is much worse than here, but everyone still seems to think it's the other way around no matter what I say. The last few days that we were there there was a good amount of snow-fall, which was perfect for snowman building!

Here's my mom and I working on the garden-gnome snowman!

And here's Tony with the finished garden-gnome snowman :D

It was a lot of fun, we brought our Wii and had a great time playing the sports games on that with everyone. We even got my mom playing, who isn't big on video games. I'll probably have a recipe up soon again, my mom made this awesome thing that she saw on Paula Dean's show. We have no idea what the name of it is, but omg it's delicious. It's a breakfast food that you will want all the time it's so amazing.

After x-mas at my parents, we then went to Tony's parents in TX, so we got a couple weeks to warm up really good before coming back to cold MN, lol.

Here's a couple of my fav pics that I took while we were there:

We had a lot of fun visiting everyone, although I am glad to be back with the ferrets, I did miss them a lot. And Minou had finally put on her winter coat and weight while we were away, so we came back to this big belly, lol!

peanut butter cookies for when you don't have eggs

2007-09-25T19:59:00.000-05:00

So http://www.allrecipes.com/ is easily one of my fave sites ever to use. I think I've mentioned them before, they just have nearly anything you'd want to cook or bake in tons of variations. Tonight I wanted to make cookies but I had no eggs. So I went on a search for egg-less cookies. And peanut butter cookies are always wonderful, so I decided to try these. I also chose this recipe because people had reviewed that they scaled to down and it works just fine still. I was able to scale it down to make only 6 cookies. I like this cos then I don't have 2 dozen cookies sitting there wanting me to eat them.

I tend to write my recipes out very simply. I put c. for cups, t. (lowercase) for teaspoons, and T. (uppercase) for tablespoons. I find this saves me lots of time writing and saves room on my recipe cards. I'm also known to write b.s. or b.p. for baking soda and baking powder but I'll save that for some other time, lol. Lots of people have been confused when they look at my recipes, so I thought I'd share. Also for cookies I don't say mix blah blah with blah first... :P I learned a lot about cookie making at the Blue-Bird Acres Farm Market's bakery from all the wonderful ladies that worked there (sadly it's closed now). And the Cookie-Queen, Vicky always told me to just dump in all the ingredients and mix. Which is what I do. It works and I don't care what anyone says about that.

Without further blah blahs, here is my new found fave recipe:

Peanut Butter Cookies (without eggs)

1/4 c. shortening

1/4 c. peanut butter

1/4 c. white sugar

1/4 c. brown sugar

2 T. milk

1/2 c. + 2 t. flour

1/4 t. baking powder

1/2 t. baking soda

pinch of salt

bake @ 375 degrees F. about 10-12 minutes. Don't let them cook too long, if they've turned dark brown, chances are good they're already burnt.

Some notes on the recipe:

This last time I made it I was also out of white sugar, so I doubled the brown sugar and it still comes out wonderful. I also added some peanut butter-chocolate swirled chocolate chips which were yummies :D Just try to wait until they cool down a bit before taking them off the pan... I know it's hard. This last time I was very impatient and had put a foil liner in the pan when I made them. I picked up just the foil liner, with the cookies on top, and laid the whole thing in the freezer for like 2 mins, lol. They were actually still warm in the middle, but had cooled enough to pick them up. Enjoy!!!

yes i'm working on it

2007-07-18T11:10:00.001-05:00

well, i had some issues with where i was storing my photots online for things like my banners and icons for my pages. kinda ran out of room, lol. so i'm working on re-sizing everything and getting it back to "normal" (hahaha) and then i might start posting randomness again. maybe.

Look it! Look it! i made it pretty ^_^

2007-02-25T22:17:00.000-06:00

yay, so i was bored and decided to play around with the look of my blog page. took me awhile since i really don't know what i'm doing with the html code at all. so i just change something that i think might be what i want to change and then preview and see if it's what i wanted. which takes longer than it should, but it works out in the end. so enjoy the pretty carrot-y goodness!

omg so cute

2006-12-16T19:42:00.000-06:00

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Cream-Cheese-Penguins/Detail.aspx?lnkid=990
i don't even like olives, but if i had to make an appetizer for something i'd make these cos they're so freakin cute. they made them with cream cheese, olives and carrots! the link at the top is where the recipe is from.

seasonal candies

2006-11-09T16:21:00.001-06:00

since i've ignored things for so long...here's a post. i'll also be putting up pics of my new winter coat in the fashion section. enjoy!

so i've decided that seasonal candy is definitely the best. candy corn, peeps, thin mints, candy canes, if you know my family- cannonballs. and now there's a new one that i've decided i love. candy cane hershey kisses. yay!

http://www.hersheygifts.com/prdSell.aspx?Name=KissesCandyCaneTin_4872(Hershey)

yes i know i'm weird

2006-03-25T09:20:00.000-06:00

saw these on another site and thought that they were kinda cute, yes i know i'm weird and a geek, it's fun :P
i'm not really sure if they'll work though pasted into here, i think i was supposed to put them in my sidebar or something...we'll see. i wanted to get poor squeaky fixed before i added more stuff to it, he keeps getting bumped to the bottom of the page. and since i don't actually know html i just keep kind of messing with what i thought were the width and height of the box he's in but aparently they're not.

ugly muffins

2006-03-11T14:16:00.000-06:00

well i finally used the flower pot muffin things that my parents got me for xmas. they're little tiny terracotta pots that you bake muffins in, kind of like the big ones you can bake bread in, just smaller. the only thing is that they're really cute when they're in the pots but not soo cute when you take them out. i think they kind of look like weird ice cream cones or something. they still taste like muffins, they just look funny. oh well, it was a lot of fun though.

CoH screen shots cos i still haven't taken any pictures of other things

2005-11-28T21:23:00.000-06:00

oh well, you get to see more CoH :P

my fire gal's fire sword and fire aura :) yay!

and a few of the cool lightning aura! rock oooonnnn!!!!!!!!!

my ice tanker

and her snow aura (it looks cooler when it's animated, cos it's constantly snowing)

and fire and ice tanks with auras and swords! wOOt!

i know, i know

2005-11-07T00:55:00.000-06:00

i know i said i'd take pics of the new place, and of the town and whatnot, but the fact is that when it comes to taking pictures i'm either a) lazy, b) i've forgotten the camera again, or c) i don't feel like looking like one of those weird leaf-watcher people, they're just insane. someday i will eventually get around to it, really.

but anyways, time for some City of Heroes screen shots! yay!!!

my tanker all glowing green, she's a mutant! :D

yay! capes! finally! capes rock!

Oooo! i found a ghost ship!

sitting on the horns of a really cool statue

almost forgot!

2005-10-12T11:53:00.000-05:00

i almost forgot to take a pic of the huggie bears!

they were really easy to make too, i think they maybe took 45 mins. the hardest part was turning those incredibly long arms, they're almost over a foot long, and only an inch wide. but because of the ridiculously long arms they look a little silly if they're not hugging each other. kinda like bears with monkey arms or something. but they are really cute, i might make some more for people for christmas. so if you really really like them, let me know! ;) you just might be getting one for x-mas! :D i can't wait to get the rest of my stuff back, i'll try to remember to post pics of the rest of it. the fabric bowls are really nice.

some nice City of Heroes screenshots

2005-10-11T15:43:00.000-05:00

ok so i finally found where it saves the screen shots! yay!

my main character, Morgraine, hanging out on my favorite statue in Atlas Park.

me and someone from my Super Group, Fei, sitting on a really tall building in Skyway City. this was just before i got up to get a drink of water and came to see that my character got pushed off and almost died. yay :D

more screen shots to come i'm sure, this game is so awesome!

the jacket (drumroll please)

2005-10-08T10:25:00.000-05:00

ok so here it is, i guess it came out alright, i'm not terribly happy with it though. definitely not the best work i've ever done, i didn't really have my heart into doing it i guess. oh well at least it's finished and ironed and all that good stuff. i guess it does look good in this picture though. i'm just too picky maybe.

ahh! only one week left!

2005-10-08T07:51:00.000-05:00

great, so there's only one week left until the move, and there's so much left to pack! :O not that i'm that surprised that not much is packed, but i guess it would've been nice if i had thought ahead and packed some stuff already. oh well. still haven't figured out how to pack up my plants :/ cos they take up too much room not to stack up somehow.

on a good note, the horrible jacket (i was making a blazer jacket for a display for work) is finally done. i hope to never see it again in my life, lol. kidding, it does look ok tho, but i'm never making another one again. ever. besides the fact that the pattern was awful, and some of the pieces didn't seem like they were really the right size, there were like a hundred pieces to put together. and this is exactly why i like to make my own patterns. i would never make a jacket quite that crazy. i'll try to take a pic of it to put up. i'm sure my mom would appreaciate it, since the jacket it for her. Ooo! since that's done i can go pack up the sewing machine and all it's stuff. hooray! and then the desk can be taken apart too. awesome. well now i'm gonna go and do that. yay!

lots of things again

2005-10-03T09:59:00.000-05:00

well i haven't posted in forever, so there's lots of stuff that's going on. i'm going to be moving in a couple of weeks, the new place is nice and they have a garden! (it's funny that that's what i'm most excited about) i still don't have a job up there yet, which is a little scary, but i'm sure things will all work out. if i ever stop being lazy i'll put up a few pics that we took of the place, although maybe i'll wait until we move in, cos the guy who's stuff was there before is still there, which was weird. anywho, pics soon.

i'm very sad to report that Hermo, the betta fishee, got sick and didn't make it. i think it was a combination of stress and the temperature spiking too high that got him sick, and i didn't realize he was soon enough. :'( we all miss Hermo a lot.

i'm all done at work now, although i still have a project to finish :P i really shouldn't of agreed to make this jacket and dress, it's a little too much. i was wicked tired, and was trying to finish the jacket, and i messed up the collar so badly that i have to make a while new collar. grrrr.... other than that i have like a bagillion projects that i should get back really soon. i got the huggie bears back already, i'll take a pic of them and post it next time. they're adorable.

oh, and i got City of Heroes. good game. it's on online massive multiplayer. i'll have to take some more screen shots and put up a few. you get to customize your super hero, powers and all and go fight crime! team up with your super hero buddies, and kick butt together! it's a great game.

so i guess that's about it for now, hopefully i'll remember to post a little less sporadically. just haven't been remembering things like this lately. oh well. bbye!

ohmygod insanity

2005-09-10T19:58:00.000-05:00

ok, this has been easily, the longest day ever. work was horrible. i was working with possibly the two slowest people on the face of the earth all day long (well, 9:30am - 6:30pm). so when it gets busy, not only am i ringing up people, but i'm also running to the fabric table to cut for people too. so i started paying attention to how many people i was cutting for and ringing compared to how many they were. i would cut fabric for two customers, and then ring out 4 in the time it took them to cut the same amount of fabric for one. i just couldn't believe it. so i counted again, and yeah, for every 4 people i rang out, 2 were those that i cut for. arg. hopefully i won't be stuck with them ever again all day. i guess it wouldn't be so bad if they actually were capable of doing things at a normal pace, or didn't need things explained 50 times before they got it (ok, so 50 times is a little unfair, but 5 times is still too many to explain where a certain sign goes). and i like these people, they're nice, but man do i not enjoy working with them. like the 40% off coupons, they're not supposed to just be given away. people have to sign up to use them, and they can only use one, once. but nooo. they were letting people use 2 or 3 of them, as long as they rung them up separate. i guess there's really no way to track it, but you could get into a bit of trouble for allowing people to do that i bet. companies do not like giving stuff away.

yeah, so then i get back to the apartment. and my brother and his girlfriend were coming over tonight for dinner. so i was supposed to have a nice meatloaf cooking in the crock pot. but i guess the little tester button popped before, and i don't use that outlet a lot, so i forgot to check. so no meatlof, cos it didn't cook. raw hamburg sitting there since 9 this morning, yum! so we ordered a pizza. oh well. guess that's just how today's going. hopefully it'll get better, really soon. like now.

on a plus note, things are getting cleaned up and starting to get packed away over here. so hopefully it won't be as bad as i'm expecting when we go to move. i gotta start calling places figuring things out. ahh! too many things to do!

hermo, the well traveled fishiee

2005-09-04T14:35:00.000-05:00

well recently Jenn-A and Matthew moved to CA, and i have adopted Hermo, a betta fish, for the time being. he's probably traveled more than i ever will, and he's just a tiny fish. he started out in CA when Jenn was out there on an internship. he came back to MA where he traveled back and forth from Worchester and Springfield while Jenn was at school. then he lived in Springfield for quite a while. and he might make another few moves yet. when Jenn-A comes back to visit, or when i go out there to visit (whichever happens first) Hermo will most likely go back to CA. well enough of all this, here's Hermo!

brainsssssssssss

2005-08-31T07:01:00.000-05:00

ugh, i feel like it's deja vu with work. it's like i picked up where i left off 5 years ago and it isn't good. i should've known that my manager being all buddy-buddy with me was just to lure me into a false sense of liking working there. ohhh yeah. i guess it's not all bad, but the hours are sucking, and i'm being piled with projects. and normally i wouldn't mind so much, cos projects mean free stuff, but i've got a few other things to do lately. that's why after the costume and the dress i'm not doing any more projects. but now i've kinda agreed to do an earring making class. which i feel a little weird about considering that they just hired a beading teacher and she's doing a braclet class soon, and i know she can make earrings. i guess it shouldn't be all that bad. i'm definitely only doing one.
time to go, more insanity for today! and a picture of muffins that i made just for you <3 they're banana. (and yes i forgot how many the recipe was going to make...so there's a mountain of them)

spam has grown to the most vile point ever

2005-08-18T22:28:00.000-05:00

so i haven't been getting much spam lately in my emails, which is good. i've been careful to not put my email on anything, and took it out of my blog and such. but lately the evil spam gods created something far worse than normal. i've gotten two emails so far that say that some distant realtive of mine has recently died in a car accident, (and somehow they found out my real last name, which is strange cos i almost always fill out all of my forms with my name as Nica Ha :D) and that their company is worth 9.2mil or something and that it's now mine. those are just horrible horrible spams to send out. and now the most recent, i actually got spam in my comments on my blog! bah! now i've got to fix that. not cool. bad spam people, bad! boooooo!

hooray for pictures!

2005-07-06T18:33:00.000-05:00

yay! they made Blogger a million times better! now i don't have to go find a bunch of places to upload pics to! (cos you can upload pics straight to blogger now!)

so in honor of that i decided to put this pic up of the columbine that finally bloomed at my parents. i started it from seed 3 years ago, and it just kept growing the leaves until this year!

now i've got to go through all the pics i've taken lately and name them so i can upload them and write more often! yay!

problems with pics

2005-06-24T15:21:00.000-05:00

ok, i've been having issues with the place i've been uploading my pics to. i'll fix them asap, sorry.

the fortune cookies are made! aka my fingers are melting!

2005-06-19T12:30:00.000-05:00

ooooohhh man. well. i actually did make the fortune cookies.
here's what the first one looked like before cooking:

and after cooking:

then i made more:

and now they're all done:

this one i think is the best looking:

so now i'm taking a short break from cooking and cleaning because my fingers are so burnt. the recipie that suggested using cotton gloves when folding them wasn't joking around, i really would've liked to have those cotton gloves, and i'm sure my hands would've liked them too. so tomorrow we'll see how they taste. if they don't taste good, at least they're pretty! *<8D

too hot to handle

2005-06-17T10:36:00.000-05:00

ugh, the hot weather seems to have stopped, finally. ok, so i guess it wasn't that hot, but since i'm on the second floor, it was much hotter. i got an air conditioner (for free), but it doesn't seem to be working that well (i'm thinking that's why it was free). so i think i'm still going to play with it for a while and see if it'll work better.
other than that there's not much happening. will be picking up nate from the airport on the 30th, and this monday i'll be making dinner for my dad for father's day. general chicken, fried rice, and fortune cookies if i get the gall to actually make them. it doesn't sound too hard, but we'll see. i'll try to post on sunday, since that's when i'll be attempting to make them, if they came out ok or not.
i absolutely love http://allrecipes.com/ they have every recipe you could ever want, and there's usually a million versions of it. so you can go through and find one that sounds best. so we'll see how everything goes, i'm going to go try to think of fortunes now. maybe the internet can help me a little with them if i can't come up with anything clever. ;)

making chicken goodness

2005-06-07T12:12:00.000-05:00

so a few days ago i made general (insert whichever you know: chings, tso, chow) chicken! it was really yummy. here's what it looked like after i fried it:

then i made the sauce and put the chilies in so when it was ready to eat it looked like this:

much yummyness ensued. this is where i got the recipe from if you'd like to try it! http://chicken.allrecipes.com/az/GeneralTsaosChicken.asp :D

the best laid plans...

2005-06-01T16:26:00.000-05:00

oy. so it began the other day when i was all excited cos one of my huge hermits come out of molt. yay! but then i noticed he had mites on him. >:( so instead of washing dishes and showering and cleaning up the apartment, since people were coming over the next 2 days in a row, i spent my morning bathing a very angry crab and cleaning a tank. yippee.
today, i wanted to catch up on dishes from when people came over. i was feeling crafty and was going to start a sewing project first. i went to oil the joint on a pair of fabric scissors that was sticking, and i sliced my finger open. and not just a regular cut that i can put a band-aid on, i had to tape my finger to close the cut so it would stop gushing blood. so that's just great. now i have to wash dishes and get nice soapy water in a cut. :E grrr....
hopefully this funness will stop and i can get on with everything that i wanted to. maybe i should just stop planning what i want to do and just do it instead of thinking about it.

teh pup

2005-05-27T17:08:00.000-05:00

and as per request of the beano-doggy, here is a picture of the puppy-do herself, Mable!

cleaning :P

2005-05-20T17:49:00.000-05:00

yeah, so i've gotta get going to clean soon, but that's all that's happening right now. there's just too much stuff that doesn't need to be here, so yeah. yay! clean apartment time!

pics!

2005-05-18T16:37:00.000-05:00

louie eyes
Originally uploaded by nicaha.

this is my cat!

new blog *<|:D

2005-05-18T14:17:00.000-05:00

so, this is it. and i was trying to be fun and create a nice profile, and i thought it would be fun to make a wishlist (and probably put lots of crazy stuff on it). but that was foiled, since google apparently hates me and every password i put in for my froogle account it told me it was an often used password, and then the computer froze. so screw you froogle!- for now anyways. someday i might have an interesting blog- but not today. sorry