Pink Chocolate Chip Cookies

Valentine's Day motivated a lot of pins in my household...(check out the Heart Shaped Crayons :) due to the fact that my daughter had her first Valentine's Day party at day care. I signed up to bring cookies and I wanted to bring something yummy and unique.

Pinterest is great for recipes. But as I've learned, they can be a little to schamancy for my taste or baking ability. I searched for a while and settled on these PINK chocolate chip cookies!

Find the pin HERE

I actually found another pin initially but after reading some reviews I found out that they had some issues and they had redone the recipe. Which is the recipe I used. 

I really like this recipe because it was EASY! Sugar cookie mix + powdered sugar + flour + egg whites + red food coloring + butter + chocolate chips. Thats pretty much it! You should really follow the directions and not bake longer than 10 minutes because they will start to brown...which would make them NOT pink :) 

The only thing I would have done is really committed and added some more food coloring. But all in all, they turned out great. Tasty & pink! 

Happy Pinning!
Tiffany

Heart Shaped Crayon Valentines

Color Your Heart Out!

As an elementary school teacher for almost 10 years, I have received A LOT of valentines. I totally understand the convenience of buying the prepackaged valentines in the box. But having received somewhere around 300 of them... I wanted to make unique Valentines for my daughter to take to her daycare exchange.

Now months and months ago, I saw this pin and thought they were so cute! And as luck would have it I came across a heart shaped Wilton pan on clearance at Michaels (one of my happy places) in the fall which I immediately snatched up for $2.50. And then I waited..... :)

February was finally here! It was finally time to make the crayons. I have tubs of crayons in my basement from my aforementioned teaching days so I didn't have to buy any crayons. I know the pin says use old broken crayons....but you are going to need more than a few broken pieces and a variety of colors too. So go buy a pack or 2 of 24 crayons. I had mostly Crayola but I doubt the brand or type matters.

All excited, I started peeling the crayons by hand. BIG MISTAKE. Not only is it annoying, its takes forever and makes a huge mess. So I ran off to the interwebs and found out that you should just use a utility knife and slice down the side...and wahla. That was so easy that I ended up peeling A LOT of crayons.

Now it was time to melt the crayons. When I actually read the pin above it said that she "couldn't imagine how to use a metal pan" since she had a tough time getting the crayons out of the silicone pan she used. GREAT. My clearance pan is METAL. Of course I ran back to Pinterest and found this pin which was perfect! (note the metal pan :)

Heart Shaped Crayons

Now what I also liked about this pin was that she made solid colored crayons as opposed to the mixed up swirly ones. I am a crayon purist apparently and I wanted to make solid colored ones. I followed the directions from blogspot show in the picture above...here is the link. Most important things: 1) spray the pan with cooking spray and 2) freeze them after melting the wax. Here are some pics of my first batch ( I made like 5 batches...I said I peeled A LOT of crayons)

Before Melting

After Melting

Pretty cute!

Once I had all 48 crayons completed I had to figure out how to package them. I went to google and searched for some templates and labels. I pinned the circle template and the labels so I could use them again next year. (Hey I already have the pan....) I bought mini red and white gift bags at..yup...Michaels for 59¢ each. Stuck the crayons on the circles and the labels on the bags. I really loved how cute they were! Each toddler got 3 easy to hold heart shaped crayons to color for Valentines from my daughter...I felt like a good mommy on Valentines Day :) 

Happy Valentines & Happy Pinning!

Tiffany

Crockpot Chicken Tacos

If you can't tell by now, I like to keep it simple. When reviewing the various recipes on Pinterest, I like to save the ones with the fewest ingredients and easiest cooking methods. That brings me back to my slow cooker and the 3 ingredient Crock pot Chicken Tacos fit the bill!

Since I had chicken breasts on hand, I used what I had left, 5 Purdue boneless skinless breasts, and purchased one 16 oz. jar of Pace salsa and a pack of Taco Seasoning. Mix the seasoning with the sauce and pour over the chicken, that's it.

I cooked it on high for 4 hours, shredding the chicken at the 3 hour mark and giving it an hour to soak up all that salsa/taco mix goodness.

Serve with soft or hard tacos, lettuce, cheese, sour cream or anything of your liking and you have a family friendly dinner everyone will enjoy!!

LINK to Recipe 



Happy Pinning! ~ Valarie

Easy Storage Cabinet Update

I have small cabinet in my powder room. Its simple with clean lines so I like that. What I don't like is the clear-ish window panes in the front that make it very easy for everyone to see what I'm storing in there. Sorry boys but yes my feminine products have to be stored somewhere. Anyway when I came across this pin about sprucing up plastic storage drawers with scrapbook paper I immediately thought of this cabinet!

Original Pinterest Pin with Plastic Organizer

Ok pretty easy, right? Buy the paper, cut the paper, glue/modge podge the paper. In my case I did not Modge Podge the paper in. I simply measured 3 identical sized pieces for each window pane and cut them out. Put a small dot of hot glue in each corner and stuck them in. I wanted the ability to take them out if I want since I used scrapbook paper that matched the black/white damask motif I have going in my powder room (well my whole house actually...). So EASY! Once I remembered to buy the paper, which was 59¢ a sheet...It took me literally 5 minutes to measure, cut and glue. Here are the before and after :)

Before

After

Happy Pinning!

Tiffany

Easy Breakfast Solutions

Every week at work, we have Breakfast Club Friday. It's a voluntary thing where someone in the group is responsible for bringing 20 other people breakfast on Friday morning. It ends up that you go about 3 times a year. Not too bad. When I signed up, I had all the intention in the world of being a bagel, fruit & yogurt kind of gal....then came Pinterest.

So this week it was my turn to feed the crowd. I decided to check out my Food For Thought board on Pinterest to see if I had anything that would fit the bill. I came up with these two ideas:

LINK for Eggs

The egg sandwiches could not have been any easier. I did not make and freeze them as the poster did, but I did make 20 people's eggs for their sandwiches in 20 minutes with little to no mess!! Good enough for me! Spray down some muffin tins, crack 2 dozen eggs and bake for 20 minutes. Couldn't have been easier. They came out perfectly and everyone was impressed!

LINK for casserole

THIS...THIS was the hit of today! Who would have thought? I have been complimented all day on this dish and handed out the recipe to half a dozen people. It was very easy and even better, I was able to do all the prep work the night before.

The recipe calls for an 8 inch baking dish. Since I was feeding 20 people, I used my larger rectangle dish. I thought I could easily double all the ingredients but that turned out to be too much!
Here is what I did:
1.5 bags of frozen hash browns
2 cups of shredded cheese
1 whole onion
16 ounce pack of turkey bacon
16 ounces of fat free condensed milk
1.5 eggs 2 tsp of seasoned salt
AND Cooked it 15 minutes longer

Overall, it really was delicious; I went back for seconds as did everyone I spoke to. I will definitely be making this again.

Happy Pinning!

Felt Cookies & Icing

I, along with my best Pinning friend, discovered that Pinterest is fabulous in preparing for Christmas. As you can see in previous posts, we found plenty of holiday decorating ideas on Pinterest! I also found these - Felt Cookies with Frosting.

LINK

I decided these would be a perfect gift for my God Daughter. She is just under 2, loves hanging out with her mom in the kitchen and playing pretend. I waiting months to Pin this after I found it so I could keep it a secret from her mom :)

Overall, I love the outcome of the project. I found all of the materials for this at JoAnn Fabrics and even combined, relatively inexpensive. The original poster used a cute wooden box from Michaels that they painted and decorated. I knew my 2 year old God Daughter would want to carry her box around, take the lid on and off herself, etc. So I opted for a Rubbermaid type box from Target. It’s safe for her little fingers, see through so she knows what’s inside and portable for little hands.

I found the accessories at a local store, I bought a mini rolling pin, mini oven mitt and mini baking sheet.



Entire Finished Product



Cookie Close Up

Obviously, the sewing part of this project took the longest, but I am slow and was distracted watching TV :) I did need a sewing machine to do the outside of the "dough" to clean up the edges and secure the two pieces of felt.

Happy Pinning!

Mini Mason Jar Sewing Kit

When I saw this Pin, I decided to give it a try considering I have lots of these little mason jars in my kitchen (leftover from homemade baby food days). I have a sewing machine and lots of sewing stuff around, but I hate having to dig through it all for a simple project or a quick button fix.

The only thing I bought extra for this project was what I put IN the jar; I bought mini threads of spool in all different colors that would fit well in this jar. Otherwise, I had the jar, fabric, stuffing and hot glue at home already.


Link to POST

I ended up making two of these, one for myself and one for my Pinning partner in crime, Tiffany. The hardest part of this project is getting the fabric glued down flat enough to screw the top back on. I managed to accomplish this for both jars, but the lids do require some pressure when screwing them on each time. Besides that, its handy to have thread and needles available and portable in the house. 



Finished Product!

Happy Pinning! ~ Valarie