Today my friend Emma came over for a girls day! We spent our afternoon chatting, making homemade gourmet marshmallows, tying knots for necklaces, and more chatting. I’ve made marshmallows before, but it ended with powdered sugar all over me and my kitchen, every dish dirtied, and funky shaped sugar blobs. This time I tried a few new things and it went so much more smooth! We didn’t even make as big of a mess as I did last time!

You could buy some marshmallows and skip right to the decorating part, but then you’d miss out on all the sugary fun! You’ll need:

• 4 envelopes unflavored gelatin

• 3 cups granulated sugar

• 11/2 cups light corn syrup

• 11/2 cups water (divided in half)

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

• 11/2 cups confectioner’s sugar

Generously grease a 9×13 dish, line with aluminum foil, and generously grease the foil. You think you’re overdoing it? You’re definitely not.

Put the granulated sugar, corn syrup, salt, 3/4 cup water in a medium saucepan over high heat. Bring it to a boil and boil for 8 minutes.

Meanwhile put the other 3/4 cup of water in the bowl of a stand mixer. Empty the 4 packets of gelatin into the water and let set for 5 minutes.

Once the sugary mixture has boiled for 8 minutes, slowly pour it into the water/gelatin mixture. Using the whisk attachment, whisk on high for 13 minutes. Add vanilla and whisk for 2-3 additional minutes. Empty the marshmallow into the greased dish and let set in the refrigerator for 1.5 hours.

When the time is up, slide the marshmallow onto a baking sheet and remove the foil. This isn’t the tidiest project. Now’s not the time to care about that. Spray a pizza cutter and start cutting the marshmallow into cubes. Fully cover the cubes in confectioner’s sugar so it’s not sticky.

You could stop here if you just wanted plain ole mallows, but why would you do that if you’ve spent all this time on making homemade ones? Melt almond bark in a small saucepan and assemble your toppings. We used: Graham crackers, peppermint, Heath bar, sprinkles, cocoa powder, cinnamon sugar, and Andes mints. We also tried granola and poppy seeds. Don’t use those last two ideas, they weren’t as good.

Get an assembly line set up. Dunk the marshmallow top in melted almond bark, then dip in toppings. When you get them all done, out them in the fridge again so the almond bark can set.

Meet our sweet cast of characters:

After tasting most of the toppings, cocoa powder definitely gets my vote. Emma thought of it and I’m so glad she did. The cocoa powder is unsweetened and bitter, but the marshmallows provide all the sweetness needed. Yum!!

I had a blast spending the afternoon with Emma and I can’t wait til our next girls day! Maybe once our blood sugar levels get back to normal we’ll take on something less sweet.

I have lots of these. Ask my sweet Lovey. We both agree I’m a little weird. But two things have happened in the past few weeks that have made me feel just a little less weird and a little less like an island.

First, its important to know that I started a new job. I don’t think I’ve mentioned that here yet. I’m working with a jam up team of crazy cool people in Fellowship Kids, at our church- Southside Fellowship. I’ve been there for about 2.5 months, so I’m just now getting to that fun point of getting to know people. It’s no longer best behavior and surface questions. I’m getting to the part that includes family backgrounds, current heart issues, and especially day-to-day habits.

Ever since high school, I have always drawn little squares next to my to-do list items. Some people do dots or little hyphens. I draw an entire box. How else would I be able to check it off? Drawing that little check in the little box…. Ahhh- what a sense of accomplishment! Strikeouts? Those are for boring people. I thought I was the only person in the world that did that. I mean who else is going to actually draw an entire box just to put a check mark in it later?… My officemate. I happened to oversee her to-do list one day and went nuts. ‘You draw boxes too??’

Fast forward a few weeks. I go out to lunch with another coworker at Chick-fil-a. We order, get our drinks, and head to the condiment station. We grab our napkins and go for the straws. I was fully expecting to have to give an explanation of why I drink out of a kids bendy straw in the purple wrapper, rather than the adult straw in the red wrapper. Except our hands bumped as they both tried to grab a purple kids bendy straw at the same time.

I’m not sure I’d call it validation, but it’s sure nice to know that you’re not the only person in the world that draws check boxes or uses kids straws. I’m so thankful that God allows us to experience commonalities in life, even if they are trivial. Thank you Jesus for that ‘you do so-and-so? Me too’ moment. Thank you for the reminder that we aren’t alone in this and that you made us to be relational and connected.

The original link to the cardigan project I found is here. How cute is that white cardigan with the flowers and blue trim!! The tutorial she wrote for this project is great and I used it exactly. Maybe for future projects I might try to be brave and make a few changes. But probably not- it worked great!

I scrounged around in my closet looking for an old shirt I wouldn’t mind throwing away in case I royally screwed up. No luck. I just couldn’t part with my three-quarter or long sleeved shirts. So I stopped by Goodwill while running some other errands and raided the $1 clearance section. For $4, I came home with four future cardigans! I have a ton of remnant fabric in a drawer at home, so I didn’t bother stopping to get coordinating fabric.

First, I cut the shirt straight up the middle in the front.

Measure the line you just cut. Use that measurement plus 1″ for the long ends of your matching trim fabric. In coordinating fabric #1, cut two strips the length (+1″) by 3″. In coordinating fabric #2, cut two strips the length (+1″) by 6″.

Press the short ends of all four strips under 1/2″. For the 3″ pieces, fold in half and press (with the fold going down the length of the strips). For the 6″ pieces, fold the raw edges in to the center, then fold in half down the length of the strips.

Put the raw edges of the 3″ strip between the fold of the 6″ strip and pin onto the freshly cut line of the shirt. Repeat for the other side. Now just top stitch the trim on! I did a top stitch on both edges of the trim so that it wouldn’t get all wonky when it’s in the wash.

I also added a button on both sides, with an elastic loop on the back of one side. Lovey says it makes it look ‘asian’ so I might try something different next time. A ribbon creating an empire waist line would be nice too.

You’ll notice the step by step pictures are of the green cardigan, but my finished product is the light blue one. The green on ended up being a size too small, so it’s up for grabs if you want it!

My new light blue cardigan made its first appearance at church today and I got lots of comments! I’m always nervous about wearing handmade clothes out in public, so maybe that was the encouragement I needed to do it more often! Anyone with me on being nervous about that?

A few weeks ago, I found some square wall plaques with hooks on clearance in the July 4th decorations section of Hobby Lobby. They were only about $1 each, and I figured I could mod podge them to match a room in our house pretty easily.

Fast forward a few weeks and I finally got around to working on them. Thank goodness for Fridays off and time to do all my projects I’ve backlogged in my brain! I started rummaging around for some cute paper to use and I couldn’t find anything I really liked. What I did find in my stash was some really cute fabric remnants and some leftover padding from my DIY Necklace Holder.

First, I removed all the hardware (the hook on the front and the hanger on the back) with my handy dandy girly screwdriver. Then I stretched the padding around the square and stapled it into place on the back. Repeat with the fabric. Then all that’s left is to screw the hardware back in. This is trickier than it sounds because you’ve just covered up your screw holes with padding and fabric. But I got lucky and lined them all up on the first try!Of course I had to take it a step further and decorate with coordinating fabric rosettes. You could leave this part out if you wanted.

I think I’m going to go back to HL and see if I can find anything else similar. Theses would make great gifts on the skinny.

Many of you know that Lovey and I have a half share of a CSA in Spartanburg so we get a huge basket of amazing veggies every Thursday. Sometimes we end up with more than we know what to do with! And I feel REALLY bad throwing it away.

So I decided to get creative and pickle our extras. I made spicy pickled okra and pickled squash, pepper, and onions.

The pickled okra were the easiest. I used this recipe but I’m pretty sure I didn’t have the entire amount of okra called for, but that worked out because I only had one jar to put them in.

The next step is the hardest. Stick the jar in the fridge and wait for a week. Eeesh!! This is more of a test of patience than a test of cooking ability. I’ll have to do a follow up post in a week to tell you the results.

The pickled squash, pepper, and onions were almost as easy, but took quite a bit longer. Once you get all your squash, peppers, and onions all cleaned and chopped, put them in a pot and cover with a TON of salt.

Two hours later, prepare the brine. While the brine is boiling, pour off the salt water produced in the veggie pot. Pour the brine over the veggies and let sit for another two hours. Once that timer goes off, pour it in a jar and process in boiling water for 10 minutes.

I also haven’t opened up this jar to taste either. I’m just too proud that my water bath processing actually worked and the lid popped down and everything! I’ll be saving this jar until later in the winter when there are no summer squash invading my counter space.

Once all this was done, my entire house smelled like a huge pickle. I’m pretty sure I smelled like a pickle too. Maybe making two different kinds of pickles at the same time in the same day was a bad idea…

I found this idea a few months ago on Pinterest. If you don’t know what Pinterest is, you need to leave this blog right now and head over to Pinterest.com to get an account. Your life (and productivity) will be changed. Also, you’ll get idea overload!!!

Here’s my recycled glass jar photo frame and I’m still deciding if I actually like it or if it looks dinky. What do you think? Keep it or no?

I’ve been on a smoothie kick recently. While KEVA smoothies are my absolutely fave, they are also like $5 each. I also like the Yoplait smoothie kits, but those get to be pretty pricey too, especially when you realize that it’s just frozen fruit and frozen yogurt cubes. At Costco, those Yoplait bages have 3 smoothie kits in them and they are $9. Or… you could buy this:

…and make about 10 smoothies for $8 (plus the cost of whatever else you want in there).

Once a day, I scoop out about a cup and a half of fruit, peel a frozen banana, throw it all in the blender with about a cup of soy milk and a scoop of vanilla protein powder so it keeps me full. YUM.

This morning, I decided to follow a serious blog trend, and eat my smoothie out of a bowl. And I’m here to report that- shocking- it tastes the same as drinking it out of a cup. I guess the plus of the bowl is that I’m aware of how much smoothie I’m actually eating, rather than just slurping it up. I probably won’t even finish my bowl this morning! That’s a lot of smoothie I’ve been drinking. I’m freezing the second half for later today

Happy Sunday y’all!

Yesterday, my sweet (not-so) baby sister graduated from college! Happy Graduation, Haley!!! My sweet aunt Leslie had a great grad party at her house and we had so much fun. She served lots of yummy food, including a pizza dip that I’m sure just fell straight from heaven. There was a platter of the biggest chicken fingers I’ve ever seen in my life. Leslie packed us up some of the leftovers in a to-go bag when we headed out. So I got to thinking… surely there’s something cool I can make with leftover chicken fingers.

Lovey suggested chicken salad, and because he’s a pretty smart fella, I stole his idea. While he was jamming out on the drumset during the third service at church, I came home and whipped up chicken salad made from leftover chicken fingers. At first it started innocently- you know, chop up the chicken, add some mayo. But then I spied the hot sauce and ranch dressing hanging out in the fridge door. So then what started as a plain ole chicken salad, turned into buffaloed chicken salad! And it was DELICIOUS!

We took this concoction, along with some celery and veggie straws (try them, SO good), on a sunny Sunday afternoon picnic in Greer City park. We had a blast. For the record, I won the cornhole tie-breaker! (as always)

Buffalo Chicken Salad from Leftover Chicken Fingers

Ingredients

• 4 outrageously huge chicken fingers, or probably about 6 regular sized ones
• 1/2 c. mayo (if you use something other than Duke’s, don’t blame me for the outcome)
• Ranch dressing
• Hot sauce

First, give your chicken fingers a rough chop. Mine wouldn’t fit in my food processor without this step, but you could skip it if you’ve got a huge processor. Chop the chicken to whatever size you’d like in the food processor.

Put the chopped chicken into a mixing bowl, and add the mayo. Also add in the ranch dressing and hot sauce to taste. I probably added about 2 tablespoons ranch dressing and 1/4 c. hot sauce. You could add more or less depending on how spicy or ranchy you want it.

Mix it all together.

Eat it on bread, celery, or right off the spoon. Or, take it on a picnic!

I told you I was wrapping everything in sight in yarn, remember? I’ve done 4 headbands and 8 bracelets. I found some $0.99 cardboard letters at Hobby Lobby and decided to yarn wrap them as a surprise for the couples in our community group!

First, I yarn wrapped the letters themselves. Just make a tiny spot of glue at the bottom, and go for it. I also did the edges so that there was no side left plain.

Then I picked out coordinating fabric and do-dads to decorate the letters with. I tried to match each initial with the couple that would receive it. Brown with red for the Yoders because they just got fabulous red furniture! Purple and coral for the Sheehans because they are so fun and their house is full of fun prints and colors. The Snows get yellow with brown and green because they always have cute ‘natural’ looking decor! And a teal T for us. I have no idea why I chose teal or where on earth I’ll end up putting this because it doesn’t really match anything. Maybe it’ll end up in our orange bathroom.

Then I started decorating. I made some yo-yos, some rosettes, some circles. I used some sequins and buttons. Pretty much whatever I had on hand that got close enough to the glue gun ended up on the letters!

By the time this post gets published, everyone will have already received their surprise! I hope they like them!!

We have an old hand-me-down bench on our front porch that was a drab color of red(ish) and was mostly collecting a lot of pollen and spider webs. We put a little orange spray paint on it, and it already looks like we spent tons on something new! We spent $8 on 2 cans of spray paint, and $20 on cushions at Garden Ridge (Dad, let me translate: Junk Ridge).

Final Product:

We actually bought 3 cans of spray paint, so of course I went rummaging through the house for other things I could paint! We had originally planned to paint this large vase green for when we re-do the living room, but today it got an orange makeover. I justified this by reminding myself I could always spray paint it green later!

This orange coincidentally matches a canvas art project we are working on for our bedroom, so instead of hanging out (currently not matching anything) in our living room, we moved it to the bedroom and I think it found a new permanent home! Here’s a sneak peak of the canvas art. I’ll put up a full tutorial when we get it all complete!

Happy Sunday!