Valentines Project - Button Heart on Canvas

Decorating For Valentines Day 2015

 
The inspiration piece came from here:

I had all the materials on hand, but I did buy some extra red buttons, because I didn't want to use up all the red ones in my button collection.  Which sounds silly, but if you have an awesome button collection, you know exactly what I mean.  :-)
It would probably be best to paint the canvas white first, but I was using an old canvas and the black covered what was already on there.  :-)
To evenly space the lines, I covered the top with painters tape, then removed every other strip.

Because it is painters tape, it peeled right off without hurting the paint underneath at all.  
It really made this super quick and simple

Then I used a cut out of a heart and outlined it in glue, to form the heart
On the original she used a red burlap heart behind the buttons - but I didn't have red burlap on hand, and I was ok with some of the background peeking through.





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An Index of My Crafting Posts
https://fieldsofhether.blogspot.com/p/crafts.html

Tackle It Tuesday - The Medicine (Make Up) Cabinet

I didn't realize until I was done that I never took a before photo.  Just imagine ALL of this stuff, and a whole bunch more, crammed willy nilly in this cabinet.  It took me way too long to find anything, and I ended up throwing out more than half of what was in here.

 

Some scrapbook paper in the back, and a few minutes thinking about what I actually use and how I use it - and this is  much more functional space.  As I type this, it's been over a week, and it's still neat and nice.  

 


Menu Planning

How I Plan Our Menu

1. Set Basic Themes
  • Monday - Sunday leftovers re-purposed.  (Roast for Sunday dinner becomes beef pot pie, or beef vegetable soup.  Roast chicken or turkey becomes pot pie, or chicken/turkey gravy over waffles, etc).  If there are not leftovers to work with, this usually becomes my chicken day.  Some sort of chicken breast recipe.
  • Tuesday - Taco Night
  • Wednesday  - Crock Pot Night (I'm out of the house a lot on Wednesdays with BSF) & salad.  
  • Thursday - Pasta night.  (In football season, this is so our son has pasta the night before the games.  It became a habit over the years that has stuck even out of football season).  
  • Friday - Pizza Night - which is usually homemade calzones.  I buy provolone, mozzarella, sliced ham & pepperoni all in the same aisle at Sam's club, then bring it home and section it all into "portions" for calzones, and freeze it all.  Because Thursday night is pasta night, I can often set some sauce aside Thursday to dip the calzones in on Friday.
  • Saturday - Soup & Sandwiches.  Saturdays are often so chaotic, I like to have a soup on the stove or in the crock pot all day.  
  • Sunday - We have big traditional Sunday dinners here.  The rotation is usually Roast, roast chicken or turkey, pork loin,  lasagna.  The lasagna is served with salad & garlic bread, everything else is mashed potatoes & a veggie, often stuffing & applesauce too. 

These are not set in stone, and change as needed - it's just the basic template I work from.

2. Create Pinterest Boards For Each Theme
As part of of my electronics decluttering project in February, I am trying to find the best way to store my recipes electronically.  I still haven't come up with a good solution.  But for recipes to try, pinterest usually works great!  I have a board for each theme above, where I pin recipes I might want to try for Pasta night, or taco night, etc.
Pinterest Boards:


3. Create a Menu Calendar in Google Calendar
I've tried a variety of apps, notebooks, and pretty gadgets for menu planning..  but google calendar just works best for me.  It's helpful to see our schedule when planning our menu.  This is what January looked like - 
I uncheck the box beside menu so it doesn't show up on our calendar most of the time - except on the widget on my phone that shows my agenda for the day.  (I have two seperate calendar widgets on my phone, on different screens  One screen is a month view of our calendar that takes up an entire screen.  The other is my "daily" screen that has my agenda, my daily to do list (it resets every morning) and short cuts for our grocery list, to do list, and my husbands to do list.)

4. Set Taco Night & Pizza Night as repeating events on google calendar.
     This just saves me from entering them over and over.  They automatically repeat every week

5. Go through the pantry, open the freezer, fill in meals that use ingredients we have on hand
There's so much food in our freezers, and we need to rebuild our savings, so using what I have is a priority right now.

6. Fill in the blank days, using Pinterest Boards for extra inspiration as needed
This is rarely a needed step, this time of year. I'm more likely to try new recipes in the spring and summer, when more produce is fresh and local.  Winter is more of a "clean out the freezer and pantry" time of year for me - but an occasional new recipe is nice.

7. For meals that need prep ahead, set reminders in google calendar.  
If we're having turkey for Sunday dinner, set a reminder to pull it from the freezer a week ahead, Thursday I pull the calzone ingredients out of the freezer to thaw, etc.  Reminders set in google calendar pop up on my phone screen when scheduled.

8. Add ingredients needed to Out Of Millk
My favorite shopping list app.  I can add items on my phone, or on my computer.  https://www.outofmilk.com/

9. Keep ingredients on hand for some basic meals that can be made in minutes on nights that don't go as planned.
  • Hot sausage & pierogies
  • Jars of Ragu sauce, spaghetti, meatballs & frozen ravioli (quick pasta, or meatball subs)
  • Toasted Cheese & Tomato Soup
  • Sausage or bacon for Breakfast for Dinner

#EmptyShelf 2015

Last year John Acuff started an "empty shelf" at the beginning of the year, then filled it with the books he read throughout the year.  Like many others, I loved the idea, but really only read ebooks... so I tried a digital version, here on my blog.  I didn't keep up with it - but I left the post up thinking sometime this year I might go back and finish it.  

For 2015 I'm starting again -  I'll stick to just text links without pics for those books that were not my favorites, that might make it simpler.  

5 Stars - Books I Recommend to Everyone 
    
  
These are all books I couldn't put down - but The Nightingale, The Good Girl, & Wonder have been my favorites so far in 2015.  They are 3 very different books - The Nightingale is historical fiction, about two sisters during WWII in France, and how they survived the war.  Wonder is a young adults novel that is simply a GOOD read.  The Good Girl is a thriller - it's everything The Girl On The Train is hyped up to be, but was not.
4 Stars - Good reads, solid favorites
The Magicians Lie - by Greer McAllister  (Described as Water For Elephants meets the Night Magician - it was very good.)
The Julian Chapter - RJ Palacio(Almost good enough to be a stand alone book without the Wonder book - this was VERY good.)
In The Blood  - Lisa Unger ( A good thriller.  one of those that I didn't love, it even annoyed me at times, but I could not put down)
A Memory Of Violets -Hazel Gaynor  ( More historical fiction, this one about the flower girls of London. VERY good)
Private Vegas - James Patterson (one of the Patterson Series that I enjoy)
Confessions Of A Prayer Slacker - Diane Moody 
Queen Of Hearts - Rhys Bowen (Royal Spyness #8) (One of my favorite series - a cozy mystery)
No Biz Like Showbiz (Lexi Carmichael Mystery #4)
No Test for the Wicked (Lexi Carmichael Mystery #5)by Julie Moffett
A Wedding On Ladybug Farm by Donna Ball  (Charming Series - one of my favorites)
Before Amen - Max Lucado (A great quick read on prayer)


3 Stars - A Good Read, I liked it but not enough to really recommend it
Kissing In Action (Lexi Graves Mysteries #7) by Camilla Chafer
Gator Bait (Miss Fortune Mystery, #5) by Jana Deleon
Landline by Rainbow Rowell
Detoxing from Church (Some great sound bites, but not really a good book)

2 Stars - I didn't necessarily hate it, but I was severely disappointed.  (These usually end up being series books that I keep reading, even though they really aren't good anymore)

Throw in the Trowel (A Flower Shop Mystery #15) by Kate Collins
Double Fudge Brownie Murder by Joanne Fluke 
The Best Yes by Lysa Teukherst
Dress Shop Of Dreams - Menna Van Prag (not a horrible book - just not something I enjoyed. )
Angelas Ashes by Frank McCourt

1 Star - Ugh.  Yuck.  
Mercy Snow by Tiffany Baker
The Girl On The Train  by Paula Hawkins (I hated Gone Girl too.  For this type of book done WELL, try The Good Girl by Mary Kubica)


Haluska

We first had this at a street festival, when the kids were little - and since then I have seen it served a football game concession stands.  It's so simple to make, and it's really a cheap meal - I usually serve it with hot sausage sandwiches. I do not usually make it look purple, but last night I used purple cabbage and a purple onion, and voila - it's purple.  :-)  Purple is not my favorite color for anything but food.  Purple potatoes, purple string beans, purple tomatoes, purple carrots..  there is something about growing purple food that makes me happy.


This is a typical Haluska Recipe:
1 stick of butter (some websites even say "margarine".  Run from those sites.  )
1 16 oz bag of egg noodles
1/2 an onion, sliced thin
1 small head of cabbage, sliced thin
Salt & pepper to taste
Cook the egg pasta, drain and set aside
Melt the butter in a large skillet or pan, large enough to hold the chopped cabbage.
Saute the cabbage and the onion in the butter until glossy and tender.
 Add salt and pepper.
 Cover and let the cabbage mixture simmer over low heat for about 15 minutes.
Mix the pasta and the cabbage & onion together
Serve - optional, serve with sour cream

How I Make Haluska
1 16 ounce bag egg noodles
1 sweet onion sliced thin
cabbage sliced thin
1 to 1 1/2 cups of butter
chicken broth (maybe a cup?  I just mix a little Tones Chicken base with some water.  Tones is $4.28 a tub at Sam's club, and I use both the beef & chicken a LOT around here)
Salt & Pepper
Put water for the pasta on to boil, slice the onion thin
Put a stick of butter in a skillet to melt on low heat
Start slicing the cabbage
Add the pasta to the water once it is boiling, cook it
Add the onion to the skillet with the butter
Keep slicing cabbage.  I used about 3/4 of a small head of cabbage this time.  Fill the skillet to heaping - it will cook down.
once the onion is cooked, add the cabbage on top of the onion, then add more butter.
Saute for a bit
Add some chicken broth - 1/ a cup or so to start, then put the lid on the skillet and let it cook on a low heat
Drain the noodles
Once the cabbage mixture has cooked down to "clear and translucent", toss with the noodles.
Note - purple cabbage doesn't become quite clear and translucent.  Just cook the cabbage until it is obviously cooked and not crunchy.
Then sometimes I add more melted butter.