Take Two

Happy Tuesday to you! The past few days I've been battling a cold. I hate summer colds, they are the worst! I think its almost gone and I'm feeling better so I thought I'd share with you my second attempt at making caramel popcorn. After my first attempt I was determined to try it again. Although my oops turned out to be really tasty, I wanted to make what I intended to the first time! If at first you don't succeed, try, try again! Right?

So once again I popped my popcorn, poured it into a big bowl and made sure all the un-popped kernels were out. After that I started on the caramel part.

ingredients:

1 1/4 cup sugar

2 tbs. water

1/4 cup light corn syrup

1/2 tsp. salt

3 tbs. butter

And lucky you, I remembered to take pictures while I was making it.  : )

I cooked it just a little bit over medium heat. Swishing it around every once in a while. This time I didn't chicken out,  I let it get to a beautiful golden color. After that I removed it from the heat, stirred in the butter and poured it over the popcorn. And this time I added peanuts. I spread it out on a baking sheet and let cool a bit before I broke it up and put it in the bowl. It turned out great! 

 

 Let me tell you, this tasted just like Crunch n' Munch. Soo good!! Our oldest is having a last day of school camp out party tomorrow (yeah I know, they get out late up North) and I'll be making a couple batches for them to munch on. I am really happy that I tried it again and was told I need to make it ALL the time. Even Mr. CC who's not a big fan of popcorn requested I make it often. It's that good! 

Partying at:
Funky Junk Interiors

Candy Popcorn and Popcorn Balls

Hey All! Hope you had a lovely Friday night. We had a nice night here. And I should add, it was rather tasty too.  : ) Yesterday I took an afternoon break on the couch with a cup of tea and the Food Network. I was watching Ricardo and Friends and he was making all kinds of crunchy snack foods, but the one that really caught my eye and my taste buds was caramel popcorn. So I had to make a trip to Safeway for some popcorn, I'm talking about the kernel kind, not microwave.

After dinner I got to work popping the popcorn. Of course I was soo excited I didn't actually take any pics of the cooking process, so you'll just have to imagine it. Sorry! For the popcorn I used a giant heavy bottomed 8 qt. pot. First I added about 1/4 cup canola oil, 3 kernels, covered with the lid and turned the stove on to just past medium. (On my stove it's on 7.) After all 3 kernels popped then I added 1/2 cup kernels and covered again. Once it started popping I shook the pot back and fourth on the burner, like you would do with Jiffy-Pop. You know it's done when there's hardly any popping sounds. Then I poured the popcorn into a large bowl, making sure the un-popped kernels didn't get in with the rest.

Now came cooking the caramel. The ingredients are:

1 1/4 cup sugar

2 tbs. water

1/4 cup light corn syrup

1/2 tsp. salt

3 tbs. butter

I put the first four ingredients into a heave bottomed saucepan over medium high heat. Then I waited for it to get all bubbly. Once it did I gently swished it around in the pot. I let it gently boil for maybe 10 minutes, swishing occasionally, until it started turning a light caramel color. This is where my original idea of caramel popcorn turned into candy popcorn. I was soo worried the sugar would burn I took it off the heat at the first hint of any color and stirred in the butter. Then I poured it over the popcorn and mixed. I made 9 popcorn balls and a just broke up the rest to make candy popcorn. 

So although I intended to make caramel corn there were no complaints when I set these on the coffee table. It was soo good! The girls, Mr. CC and I gobbled it down. I'll be making this again and next time I think I'll add a couple drops of food coloring. Bet the kids would love some pink or purple popcorn.  : )  Today I may try the caramel corn again. If I do I'll definitely be sure to take pictures while I'm making it! 

Give this popcorn a try. It's great for movie night!! Happy Saturday.  

OMG!

So tonight while I was perusing Pinterest I stumbled across this beauty... jalapeno popper grilled cheese sandwich! Yes, you read it right. Have a look at its gooey goodness.   : )

via Becky Bakes

Are you drooling? Because I am. I have to make this! It's kind of silly to be doing a blog post about a sandwich, but look at it! And I love sourdough and jalapeno poppers and this combines them both. Wow! So tell me, am I crazy to be going gaga over a sandwich?? Maybe it's been a long day...

* *If you'd like to try this too, visit Becky Bakes for the recipe.   : )

From a Paper Towel to a Butterfly

* I don't know what's up with this post, but it's experiencing technical difficulties. There are big gaps in between the pictures and text. I've tried to edit and repost twice and it's still doing it. I'm hoping it'll correct itself.  Sorry!  : ) *

Happy Monday! Last week I came across the cutest kids craft while I was browsing Pinterest. If you still haven't joined Pinterest do it right after you finish reading this post! Anyhoo, as soon as I saw this

cutesy little craft I thought, I must do this! Thanks to Make It & Love It for the great idea!

Here's how you make them. 

1. Fill as many bowls as you like with a bit of water and add a few drops of food coloring.

We did one red (pink), one yellow, one green and one purple. 

2. Fold paper towels into to small squares. 

3. Dip each corner into whatever colors you like. 

4. Squeeze excess water into sink and lay out to dry. 

Once the paper towels have dried you'll need pipe cleaners for the body and antenna. Take two pieces if you used choose-a-size like I did, or one for regular size, then gather in the middle and wrap a pipe cleaner around and curl the ends for the antennas. It's that easy!

Here's how they turned out.  

Of course Ms. A, loving all things butterfly, had to have them in her window immediately.

This was a great craft to do with the kids. Ms. A is 5 and her friend, who's close to 3, both had lots of fun making them, and were both able to do the dipping themselves. We'll definitely do this again. Next time though I'd encourage them to just dip a tiny bit of the corner into the dye so it makes more of a polka dot effect than all over color. Give this a try. Your kids will love it!

Linking to:
Young House Love - Pinterest Challenge
Bower Power - Pinterest Challenge

Cuties Make a Cake

Hey All! Hope you had a great Sunday. Ours was pretty quite and relaxing. Mr. CC had to work, so most of the day it was just me and Ms. A. We did have a little walk to Safeway to pick up some steaks to bbq for Father's Day dinner. It was windy, but pretty nice and NOT raining! This afternoon we baked a cake for dessert. Boy did it smell good while it was baking. Love that smell. I wish someone made a candle that smelled like that, but didn't make you sick after 5 minutes. 

So here's what we were working with. 

Gotta love Betty!!

I will have you know I never make cake from scratch, unless it's Pineapple Upside Down cake, then yes I do. Mmm! I figure Betty does it best so why mess with it. Plus I LOVE me some rainbow bit cake, it's my all time favortie! Oh and a little tip, I always add milk instead of water to the mix. It make the cake crazy moist. Try it.  : )

Ms. A gettin' her mix on. 

And of course you have to do the taste test. 

After we mixed and poured it into the pan we baked it for about 35 mins. That's when it really started to smell good! The cake cooled for a couple hours and then it was on to the cream cheese frosting. LOVE! I was originally going to make a two tier cake, but I only had 1 cup of powdered sugar and can you believe Safeway was all out of powdered sugar? What, really Safeway?! So I opted for a bundt cake because I didn't need to put frosting in between the layers. The cream cheese frosting is really easy; 1/4 c. butter, about 1 cup of cream cheese, 1/2 tsp vanilla and 1 cup of powdered sugar. Mix the butter, cream cheese and vanilla together then shift in the sugar, a half at a time. And voila, delicious frosting!

Ms. A mixing the butter, cream cheese and vanilla. 

Ms. E adding the sugar. 

Mmm!! I could eat that whole bowl. Really! No, not really.    : )

Once the frosting was done I spread it on the cake and let the girls decorate. After all, it was for Father's Day. I think they did a great job. Ms. E sprinkled on the purple sugar and Ms. A put on the rainbow sprinkles and little stars.

Doesn't that frosting look soo good? 

There you have it, a simple and sweet Father's Day treat. Haha, I really didn't mean to rhyme! But it really was. And let me tell ya, it was soo yummy. Actually I think I hear it calling me from the fridge. : )

So how about you and your kids, make anything special today? 

Rosettes & a Dollar Store Pillow

A while back my little girl, Ms. A, and I were at the Dollarama. She came across this rather ugly (in my opinion) pillow that she just had to have. After it being on her bed since before Valentine's, she was finally ready for  me to pretty it up. She likes everything on her bed to match and this wasn't. So I got out the matching fabric to her comforter and got to work.

the before

I started by tracing around the heart, leaving about 1/2 inch boarder. Then I folded the fabric in half and cut out the heart. Tada! Two hearts. After that I ironed the material and got to the sewing part.

Once I was done with the machine part of the sewing, I had to stitch the rest together. You can see where I did on the left side. I'm not soo good at that! After it was done I thought it looked at little blah still. So I decided to try something I've been wanting to do for a while now, rosettes! They're soo cute!! For those I cut 2 inch wide strips of material and began hot gluing.

Start at the center and work your way around while you're twisting the material. Make sure to tack it down with a little dot of glue every now and then. After a few times around you'll have something that looks like this. 

Continue twisting and wrapping. If you run out of material and want to keep going, just grab another strip and start were the last one ended. Once you've achieved the size you want wrap the last bit behind and glue. Then carefully trim any excess fabric from around it.

Make as many as you want. Then you could either hot glue them to your pillow like I did, or you could put a large dollop of glue on the back and hold a small safety pin in it until it dries. Now you have a pin you can put where ever you want! A couple months ago I made another pillow for Ms. A's bed and made a different kind of flower that pins on. You'll see.  : )

There's the other pillow (on the left) I made with a different kind of flower.  Cute huh?!?

This flower was just as easy to make. It does involve A LOT more cutting though! Maybe I'll do a post how to make that one too. Let me know if you'd like one.

So how do you like my pillows? I'm really pleased with how the rosettes turned out. They've been on my list for a while now and that won't be last time I make them.  : )  Hmm..... where else could I put some?

Linking to:

Fabric, Bows & More, The Picket Fence, The Shabby Nest
Somewhat Simple, Delightful Order, Patches of Pink
Be Different Act Normal, Along For The Ride,
French Country Cottage, A Beach Cottage,
The Lettered Cottage

Earring Hanger

Good Friday to you! I'm happy because today is kinda like my Saturday. I just work Monday - Thursday and I love it. So today I'm sharing a little diy project I did a month or so ago and I just got around to taking pictures of it this morning. I know, I should be more on it when I do these things. Obviously there won't be any before picture, only the after. You'll like it though. I promise. 

The whole reason I thought of doing this project was because I've had two jewellery parties in the last year and have accumulated A LOT of it. I have somewhere to hang my necklaces, but now nowhere to hang my earrings and it was driving me nuts. So I dug out an old black frame that had been sitting in my hall closet for a while and started hot gluing. First I cut some thin wire to the perfect length I'd need. Then I just hot glued it to the back. I actually didn't even measure to make sure it was even, I just eye-balled it. After that I took it outside and gave it a few coats of Krylon's silver spray paint and that was it. I know, really hard! So here it it, minus a couple pairs of earrings. Oh, and that's not even all my earrings. This just holds the ones with hooks! Yeah, I probably have to many.

Look at that "diamond" at the top sparkle! lol

Now here's a couple pictures of the back. Just like my sunburst mirror, she isn't pretty from the behind. 

I think pretty good spacing for eye-balling it.  ; )

And there you have it, my new earring holder. Sorry my pictures aren't the greatest. I try. haha Have you made anything like this? If so, pass on the link and I'll take a look! Have yourself a fantastic Friday!!

Linking to:

Presenting...

Hi All. Do you notice anything different? My brand new header!! Isn't she purty? I love it! Let me know what you think. I think it looks much better than the old one. I was so excited to get it done and make a new button, but of course photobucket happens to be down right now. So I decided to write a quick post to show off my new header. That's all for now. Hope you're having a wonderful day!

swoon