I'm a Guest Artist - Stencil Girl - Porcelain Owl Plates

The lovely team at Stencil Girl Talk have featured me again as a guest artist. Head over to their blog for get a closer look at this fun project:

I'm a Guest Artist - Whisker Graphics - Love Treats

The lovely team at Whisker Graphics have featured me again (insert happy dance) on their blog. Hop on over to their blog for some Valentine inspiration.

Salvaged - Vintage Clothes Hangers

Things have been a bit crazy in my neck of the woods. My youngest has had two rounds of the flu in less than a month and there's just a lot going on (to say the least)... I've got a lot of ideas and projects in the works, but the next few weeks I'll be doing some quick and easy blog posts. I'm hoping you will still find them full of inspiration!

Today I'm sharing a few pictures of a cool way to re purpose old wooden clothes hangers. I found these ones at my local thrift store for 50 cents each. I thought about painting or embellishing them (I may eventually do that down the track) but decided to leave them as is for now.

Paired with some of my favorite black & white (printed at home) photographs that I took of my son when he was a wee one, this idea is by far the cheapest thing on my walls. You can hang these up with thumb tacks like I did, or even with a nail or decorative hook.

With the cost of the printing, paper and the 50 cent hangers, this project totals less than $2. Not bad at all!

Recipe Post - Cranberry Walnut Feta Salad

I thought I would share one of my favorite fall/autumn salad recipes. I make this year round but the cranberries give it a bit of an autumn kick... It's so, so easy.

                      

Chop up one head of romaine lettuce and wash and drain:

Add 1 cup of crushed walnuts (I don't crush them up too fine).

And 1 cup of dried cranberries:

1 cup of crumbled feta cheese:

1 - 2 pears (depending on the size) and cut the pears into cubes:

Place the chopped pears in a bowl of water and add about 3 tablespoons of lemon juice and submerge them for about five minutes. This prevents the pears from turning brown:

3 rashes of turkey bacon, cooked nice and crispy and then cut up and crumbled:

For the salad dressing mix everything up in a jar or container. I used 1/4 cup of virgin olive oil, 1/4 cup of apple cider vinegar, 2 tablespoons of agave and a pinch of salt & pepper:

And that's all there is to it! You can add add chicken if you like, and you can even substitute the pears for apples. This is certainly a favorite of mine, and its a great side salad for the holidays.

Valentine's Day Heart Crayons for the Kids

I've made these heart crayons a number of times and they're still a favorite craft of my daughter. Plus they're a great way to use up old crayons and obviously cute to give to class friends on Valentines Day. I think they're adorable as is, but if you're feeling more ambitious and have more time then you can also easily turn them into magnets.

The most time consuming part of this craft is taking the paper off the crayons. The cheaper the crayons - the harder the paper is to get off. I used a knife to make a slit down the side of the crayon, and then just peeled it off. However, this can really easily result in cutting a finger so please be careful and absolutely don't let a child do that part. You have to be really, really careful (I can't stress that enough)... I used a small steak knife because that was the smallest one I had on hand.

Next you want to break the crayons up into tiny pieces. You don't necessarily have to sort the crayons into colors, but we did. I've found that if you melt too many colors together, the hearts can end up looking muddy. So this time around I sorted them by color (actually my little 8 year old helper did that part).

Then we filled the heart cups with fun color palettes. I used the silicone heart cups by Wilton, which I purchased at a Michael's store a few years back.

Place the heart cups on a baking sheet and bake them at 225 degrees Fahrenheit for approx 12-15 minutes. Allow them to cool for an hour before popping them out of the silicone cups. This is how they will look after they have cooled and you take them out of the silicone cups:

I love how the colors really pop. We even used all those brown crayons together and they made very cool "earthy" colored hearts (you can see one on the top right in the picture above). My favorite crayon is the pink, gray and white. My daughters favorite is the red, yellow and pink:

I thought packaging the crayons on library cards would be a good idea since these are for school friends.

So I stamped the date "Feb 14th 2015" into the date section, using an American Crafts roller stamp. Then I had my daughter hand write the names of her class mates onto the cards. You can either attach the crayons with a glue dot, or use twine to secure them to the cards.

These are a little time consuming and lets face it, its easier and faster to buy something at the store. But my daughter seriously loves making these and they're obviously a better alternative to candy...

Recipe Post - Greek Salad Obsession

In addition to crafts and home decor inspired blog posts, I'm going to post the occasional recipe... I've been trying a lot of new recipes recently and very closely watching what I eat. Losing weight these past few years has not been easy. Between really fun post partum body changes, extreme stress going through a pretty major crisis, and and lets see... more stress, its been really tough. However, Im excited that since my heaviest weight that I reached, Ive lost 15 pounds. It was 20 but I just got back from a cruise and anyone thats been on a cruise - you know what Im talking about. Yikes. Ive got a long way to go to reach my goal but I'm on the right track.

I've always liked Greek salads but lately I have really, REALLY like them. I tend to get hooked on a recipe and then exhaust it. I need to learn to just make it in moderation and not make it every few days until I'm tired of it. I did that for a while with this recipe...

What I like about this Greek Salad is that I found that the few times I didn't have vinegar or lemon juice on hand it was still tasty. A lot of recipes Greek salad recipes out there call for different portions of the veggies, but this is simply what I have found works for me. I'm not a huge fan of cucumber so I don't like it to overpower my salads... So here it goes:

Chopped Greek Salad

• 5 roma tomato's
• 1 large cucumber
• 1/2 large purple onion
• 1 medium red pepper
• 1 cup pitted kalamata olives (sliced in half)
• 1 small container (4oz) of crumbled feta
• 1 teaspoon of oregano or Italian herbs
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon of white vinegar
• 1 tablespoon of lemon juice

Chop everything into cubes, except for the onions. Cut the onions into rings if you like or smaller quartered rings like mine.

A generous teaspoon of your favorite Italian herbs, or Oregano, or even Basil if you have run out of the others...

And after that just add the oil and lemon juice and vinegar (I figured pictures of all three were unnecessary - you get the idea).

The great thing about this recipe is if you divide it into approximately 6 servings, its just 233 calories per serving. I'm going to do a post sometime soon on calorie counting, and how to make it easier if you like to cook from scratch. Enjoy!