Refashioned Salad

I love to make salads. I make some of the oddest salad concoctions, but they usually taste yummy! The only down side to salads is they only last a short period of time before they begin to wilt and get a little less appetizing.

 This concoction has: 

• lettuce
• carrots
• cabbage
• mandarin oranges
• cheese
• buffalo chicken
• sunflower seeds
• ginger vinaigrette 

My favorite thing to do with slightly aged salads is to put it in a wrap! I just warm the wrap a little bit, put the salad in, add a light bit of dressing, fold it up, and ta dahhh!

It is complimented well with some fruit and something crunchy to make a whole meal!

*Joy of the Day: Getting the key to my new house!

Jelly Biscuits

This recipe is a childhood favorite of mine! I love them because they are not intensely sweet like a cookie, but, like they're called, more of a biscuit with the sweetness in the jelly. Hope you enjoy!

Makes 18 Biscuits

•       2 cups flour
•       4 teaspoons baking powder
•       2 tablespoons sugar
•       ½ teaspoon salt
•       ½ cup shortening
•       ¾ cup milk
•       ½ cup jam/jelly (you don't actually have to measure this out, but can just spoon it into the center of the biscuits)

Sift together flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt into mixing bowl. Add shortening and use a pastry cutter or fork to blend into a coarse meal. Add milk and blend with fork till the mixture becomes a soft dough ball. Prepare the rolling area with flour. Knead dough 12 times, and then roll dough out to ¼ inch thick. Use larger cookie cutter to cut circles, move half to cookie sheet about 1 inch apart.  Cut smaller circle in remaining circles (I like to make hearts!), put these rings on top of circles on cookie sheet. Put a teaspoon or so of jelly in the middle. Bake at 425 degrees for 12-15 minutes.

*Joy of the Day: Having a friend call me because she missed my voice!

No Bake Peanut Butter Cookies

  One of my favorite culinary combinations is peanut butter and chocolate. These cookies are pretty easy to make, need relatively few ingredients, and taste delicious!

•           2 cups sugar
•         ½ cup milk
•        ½ cup butter or margarine (1 stick)
•        1 teaspoon vanilla
•        1 cup peanut butter
•       3 cups dry oatmeal

Put sugar, milk and butter into saucepan and stir over medium heat. Bring to boil for one minute stirring constantly. Add the vanilla, peanut butter and oatmeal, and combine thoroughly. Let cool about 10 minutes then spoon onto wax paper. 

If you want to make the chocolate drizzle I melted about a 1/2 cup of chocolate chips in the microwave (make sure you watch them so they don't burn, burnt chocolate is a crime!). Then I spooned it into a little ziplock baggie and cut the tip off to imitate an icing bag!

*Joy of the day: Getting to work on a friend's t-shirt quilt this weekend, finally feels like summer!

Pumpkin Cupcake-Muffins with a "Sarah Twist"

            Dorm living is not very conducive to my cooking impulses! But I had seen this recipe once that only had two ingredients and looked delicious, so I gave it a try. Pumpkin cupcake-muffins! But with my very own twist, of course!

            The original recipe said to take a cake mix and just add a can of pumpkin to it instead of the eggs, water, and oil then bake to get perfect pumpkin cupcakes. So here are the super easy pumpkin cupcake-muffins with a “Sarah twist.”

Ingredients:

• Cake mix (I used yellow, but chocolate or spice cake would work well too!)
• 15 oz. can pumpkin puree (not the pumpkin pie filling!)
• “Sarah Twist”
• Plain oatmeal
• Chocolate chips
• (Next time I want to try adding dried fruit, like cranberries!)
• Cupcake liners

1. Dump the cake mix and the pumpkin into a bowl and mix all together. It starts off really dry but becomes a thicker, wet consistency.
2. Add the chocolate chips and oatmeal to taste (sorry there’s no measurements, in a dorm measuring cups are a luxury!)
3. Spoon the mixture into the cupcake liners and bake according to the box directions for cupcakes.                                                                    
4. Allow to cool and serve!
5. (If you are feeling fancy and want to complement the pumpkin, I would suggest a cream cheese frosting applied when the cupcake-muffins are cooled completely!)

And that it is for really easy and simple pumpkin cupcake-muffins, in this case, with a “Sarah twist!” My mistakes were only having a "6 cupcake" muffin tin, so it took 80 minutes to bake all of them... oops! And only having my camera phone to take the pictures, so I apologize if the raw and the cooked cupcakes look the same! I hope your cooking endeavors are ever joyful!

*Joy of the day: Giving away all of the cupcake-muffins to friends, I love giving little gifts!

A Week of Crafts

As promised here are all of the projects that I did over my spring break along with the links of where I found the tutorials!

Sunday: I covered a mason jar with scrapbook paper! I took glue and added water to it to create a thinner paste that would allow for the paper to bend to the jar (about a 1:3 ratio of water to glue, just add enough water to glue before it turns runny). Like a modge podge! Afterwards I painted the entire jar with the paste to make sure none of it would fall off.

Monday: I've had my Bible since middle school and it's starting to fall apart so I recovered it! I used hot glue to glue down the base brown fabric, then made another hair pin flower to cover up the closure that was already there. Anyone who knows me knows that I usually have something in my hair; a bow, a flower, a clip or something! So I made some hair pins inspired by some that a friend had made. To make the flowers I tied a knot at the end of the fabric, then twisted the fabric and glued it in a circular motion around the knot. To make them thicker I twisted it less and built it up more instead of out! The bows were squares with a strip of fabric glued together in the middle to pinch it.

Tuesday: I woke up in a baking mood. Since I live in a dorm I can't really cook or bake while I'm at school because it's not convenient or sanitary! I had found a recipe for double chocolate raspberry cupcakes and they looked too good to pass up! However I should have fully read the directions first to realize that they weren't going to be simple to make, but they were oh-so worth it! I also found the cutest blog and made a lace infinity scarf from her tutorial!

Wednesday: On pinterest I had found these wristlets which were simply adorable, so I made two of course! My mom tells me I'm ridiculous and I am completely aware, but I'm okay with that. That day my roommate texted me and asked if I knew how to make these shirts she had seen, or if I could figure it out. So at about 8pm we started our project, and it was super simple! Now we have matching roomie shirts!

Thursday: Skirt day! I finished a skirt from when my friend Brittany came home with me. We were able to finish hers while we were home but got rather confused so we only had enough time for one! While the tutorial took some editing and adjusting to get it to fit, I think it turned out well. I also made another skirt, and this one is completely opposite from the yellow folded mini skirt! It's a lace ruffle skirt to help make those certain dresses a tad bit longer, and my favorite part, a little bit spinnier!

Friday: I decided to be creative today and make my own skirt. Inspired by the folded mini skirt I wanted to do something similar but easier, so I designed my own and it was a blast! This is all you get to see for now and I will have tutorial for you soon!

Saturday: A friend of mine asked me to make a dress for her, for her rehearsal dinner for her wedding in June! So I put that together Saturday, minus a couple of details so that it can be fitted to her later. While this is not her, and her fabric is slightly different here is what the pattern looks like!


And these were my spring break crafts! A week of crafts and a week of bliss. I've missed creating things, and I think I certainly got my fill to last me a while.

*Joy of the day: church and brunch with a lovely friend with a dear heart!