Monday, March 26, 2012

Spring Wreath with Felt Flowers

I love crafting and I love shopping and I am also quite addicted to Facebook. A few months ago, I came across Mindy Mae's Market. There are always 5 items are listed  on their site and every morning at 9 am a new item bumps off an old one. They also have lots of cool games on their Facebook page. At first, I bought craft supplies from their site and now I have been buying stuff on their FB page when they do "I'll Take It!" sales. I buy things so often they already have my email address memorized. One of the things I bought was jute ribbon....that was a few months ago. I finally got around to buying a styrofoam wreath last week and I decided it was time for a spring wreath.  I didn't want to do my usual fake flowers and birds. After perusing Pinterest and blogs, I finally decided on making my own felt flowers. Felt was super cheap at Micheal's and I got 5 sheets of 9x12 felt. Over the course of a few evenings I could be found cutting up, rolling, and gluing felt to make flowers. Of course, I forgot how long the jute was, so I was afraid to cut it. It took me forever to roll up and cover the wreath.  I think I might have enough for a smaller wreath.


If you are looking for a DIY for Felt Flowers, go over to Craftsncoffee where the fabulous Jamielyn from I Heart Naptime guest posted a yarn wreath with felt flower tutorial.

I first started off with just 6 large flowers and 3 small flowers. When I asked my husband how it looked he said, "Don't you think it looks a bit naked?" Argh! Naked wreath....no good. I was trying to be minimalistic. It about a week to get back to the dining room/craft table to finish it off.
I think it is pretty good for a first time try.
Here it is on the door:
Yes, I have a HUGE door!

Here it is close up:
I dolled it up with one of those sparkly butterfly clippies from Micheal's.

I linked this over at :

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Turning This Into That: $50 Gift Card Giveaway

I love Mindy Mae's Market! Turning This into That is having a $50 gift card giveaway and if I win, I will probably either put the money towards a Cameo or just buy more stuff from their shop :)

Turning This Into That: $50 Gift Card Giveaway: Who doesn't love free money?  I know we love it.. and I know we love being able to give it to others! So... that is exactly what we'll do! ...

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Weekend Cooking

We spent a quiet Saturday evening at home and I had plans to take pictures and blog about dinner. Sometimes things don't turn out the way you planned. A fell asleep in the car on the way home from picking up our meat shipment and was quite cranky afterwards and demanded that I make "grandma's soup" (a Romanian soup with farina dumplings). This was in the middle of me making blood orange beurre blanc, searing scallops and keeping an eye on fries in the oven. So I made her soup but I used organic chicken broth from Trader Joe's and then made the dumplings. I had to forgo the step by step pictures due to lack of time. All the cooking made us hungry.

We wanted to do kind of a surf and turf dinner. We have had blood oranges and jumbo scallops in the freezer for a while. It is kind of a tradition to make blood orange beurre blanc this time of year. This French butter sauce is made with a reduction of an acid, such as citrus juice, vinegar, or wine, shallots and cold butter. I first learned how to make it when I went to culinary school and it really isn't that hard to make. I used this lovely recipe for Orange Beurre Blanc from Simply Recipes and I just substituted blood oranges for the oranges. I think everything turned out quite lovely. We made a small salad and had a glass of Chateau St Jean Sonoma County Chardonnay with it.



Jason grilled a Top Sirloin that we got from The Forager's. They are an on-line Farmer's Market of sorts that serves Northern California. We get our grass fed, pasture raised meat from them. We usually get their Mixed Meat package which is about 20lbs of meat. They meet you at a specific location once a month and the meat is frozen. We have had some great cuts of beef, lamb, pork, sausage, bacon and this time we got a duck.

I made a Chimichurri to go with the steak. Chimichurri is an Argentinean sauce used for grilled meat. It is made with parsley, garlic, olive oil, oregano, chili flakes and white or red vinegar. I again went to my go to recipe place...Simply Recipes. You can find the recipe here. I had made the sauce a few hours before we grilled the meat. We love having the flavors meld together. We had it with some organic purple and green kale from Farmer's Market and garlic fries from Trader Joe's. We drank it with a 2002 Dry Creek Valley Cabernet Sauvignon from Passalacqua Winery and a 2003 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon from St. Supery.



Today I am working on Pie Pops for dessert since we are going to dinner at a friend's house.



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