Pinterest Project – Pallet Garden

The long awaited second Pinterest Project is finally here! Let me tell ya, this one is a doozy. Plus it wasn’t because I’ve been lazy that this took so long to post, this has been a very dragged out project that unfortunately sent Mr. H to the doctors and ended with stitches and x-rays! I have been wanting a garden ever since we moved in here and had a yard, but it’s always been one of those things that we plan on doing & it just never happens. I did all my research and emailed Mr. H and finally a couple weekends ago we set out to make this pallet garden. We already had about 4 pallets in our backyard thanks to having pellets delivered in the winter for heat so that wasn’t an issue. Unfortunately the pallets had seen better days and were very hard to take apart. We used 2 pallets and cut them into 3 pieces each, Mr. H was trying to pry the boards off the pallets when the hammer head shattered and actually shot into his chest. He didn’t think anything of it at the time and just bandaged himself up and continued to work. Fast forward to a couple days later & he can actually feel the hammer piece inside of him. Sure enough the hammer was still inside his chest so they ended up cutting him open to try and take the piece out. Long story short, the hammer piece is still in there and will forever stay. We finally finished the garden last night & I can finally post this amazing garden creation!

You will have 6 pieces of pallet in total after cutting them, nail 2 pieces together to make the front and back of the garden. Using one piece for the ends nail the edges together creating your pallet garden. We also used rope to quarter off each plant, I wanted to start off small and only plant a couple things since I haven’t had much luck in the past with plants. Our garden has been doing amazing, but we have a visitor who apparently decided everything looked very tasty and started digging everything up. I managed to save almost everything and in turn we put this netting around the whole garden along with some lights on the edges & one inside.

I was inspired to make this garden by looking at Crafting Creatures post about their garden, although I didn’t do everything exactly the same & we also just eyeballed everything.

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In the Kitchen – Blow Pop Martini

Oh my goodness how has so much time passed since my last post! I apologize for the lack of posts, but for us summer is the craziest time of year which I’m sure is true for others as well. A couple weeks ago it was my sisters birthday and instead of going out and spending ridiculous amounts of money we decided to throw a Casino Royale themed bash at my house which turned out awesome. We all dressed up and we set up the bar & poker table in my dining room, my sister even made candy sushi! My contribution to the party was a blow pop martini because my sister LOVES candy (as if you couldn’t tell from the candy sushi). I found the recipe for the drink through Pinterest of course, Taste for Adventure. I was a little worried that this would taste too sweet for me, but this drink was seriously amazing! Also after a little playing around and tweaking the recipe just a little me and my sister came up with a whole new flavor!

In the Kitchen – Banana Cupcakes

I will admit with the holiday weekend I have been very lazy in regards to the blog, I apologize! But I do have a new recipe that has been a hit with the taste testers! Mr. H has been eating at least one of these cupcakes every morning. Now I don’t think it’s a great breakfast food, but there’s no arguing with Mr. H. This weeks inspiration came from Annie Eats, which I found of course through Pinterest. I changed her recipe just a little bit & since I was being lazy this week I did not make the caramel frosting that she uses, although some day I may attempt it, I just used the whipped cream topping I used for the Pink Lemonade Pie.

In the Kitchen – Pink Lemonade Pie

Oh my gosh you guys, Mr. H picked a good one this week! This weeks In the Kitchen is a Pink Lemonade Pie which I found on Prepared Pantry, through Pinterest of course. The cool thing about this website is that they have all different variations of this recipe so you can really create something that everyone will love. Now I think I would like this better if it had a waffle cone crust instead of graham crackers, but everyone else loved it so I guess I’ll just leave it alone. Is it weird that I usually don’t eat what I bake? I usually have a taste of course, but otherwise I don’t really eat anything I bake. I rely on all my taste tasters, so big thanks to everyone willing to try my creations! Now without further ado..

In the Kitchen – Ruby Tuesday’s Pasta Salad

Better late then never right?! Sorry, but life got a little hectic this weekend with work & I wasn’t able to post this till just now!

I don’t know ’bout you guys, but I seriously just go to Ruby Tuesdays for their pasta salad at the salad bar! Everytime we go there Mr. H and I sit there trying to decipher the recipe, thankfully we now have Pinterest so I can recreate the pasta at home. I’m sure I could of googled it before and found it, but let’s be honest I’m way to lazy for that! This pasta salad is great for all the parties I’m sure everyone will be going to this summer because you can really add whatever you’d like to it!

Ingredients:

• 1 pound cooked rotini pasta
• 3/4 cup ranch dressing
• 3/4 mayo
• 1/2 teaspoon seasoning salt
• 8 ounces diced ham (I just got a fully cooked ham steak and cut that up)
• 1 cup frozen peas

Directions: 

1. Cook pasta & peas according to packaging
2. Whisk together ranch, mayo and seasoning salt.
3. Pour over rotini
4. Slowly fold ham and peas

I added more ranch to mine just because I don’t think you can taste the mayo on the one at Ruby Tuesday’s, but add whatever you’d like to your taste! Mr. H is loving that this is his lunch for the week! Definitely an A+ recipe that will be made again and again at our house. Follow me on Pinterest & help me decide what I make next In the Kitchen.

 

Side note: Mr. H went through my pinterest earlier in the week & picked Pink Lemonade Pie to be made this week for In the Kitchen, but unfortunately I had to work all weekend and forgot to pick up one of the ingredients I didn’t have so alas Pink Lemonade Pie will be brought to you next week!

Monthly Mani

I never realized how big doing your own nails & doing nail designs was until I got Instagram. For those of you who don’t know what Instagram is, it’s an app that you download on your smartphone and then post pictures that you take with said phone. I follow almost 200 people and out of all those people more than half are probably the most talented girls you’ll ever meet when it comes to nails. Now I’m no pro, but I do like to paint my own nails so I figured I would try one of the manicures I saw someone else post. It’s an ombre nail with a twist:

Now I’ve seen this manicure done quite a few times but the thing that always stopped me was that you need tons of different nail polishes all in the same color spectrum. I love nail polish, but I only have 70 polishes at the moment so that just wasn’t an option. Instead of using different colors what I did was take the main color I painted my nail, Sinful Colors Dream On, and just keep adding a drop of white to it to make the dots a lighter color. I also don’t have a dotting tool so I used toothpicks for my dots. Not to toot my own horn, but I think I did a pretty good job for never having created dots before.

Polishes Used:

1. L’Oreal I Will- as base on all nails
2. Sinful Colors Dream On- painted over white on all nails except for ring finger
3. Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat (putting your top coat on will dull the colors slightly)

If any of you have Instagram feel free to add me, my username is itsmandyj. I don’t post to often just because I feel like I never have a moment to actually take pictures to post! If you like this kind of post and would like to see more of these please leave a comment and let me know! The only way I know what you like to see is by reading your comments!

Pinterest Project – Date Night Jar

Mr. H & I constantly sit in our living room trying to come up with ideas on what to do now that we get to have weekends together. Needless to say we usually end spending all our time THINKING of what to do instead of actually doing anything. There is always plenty of things we talk about doing, but we never actually end up doing them. You know the “oh we should do that sometime” or the “we should try that place out” that never seem to come to be, well I saw a cute project on Pinterest by Life in the Green House that will definitely help us out.

You’ll Need:

• mason jar
• ribbon
• popsicle sticks (I used colored ones, you can get plain ones & paint or spray paint them)
• sharpie
• paper to make tag

I made 52 sticks with all different date ideas that way we would have a date for every weekend of the year, although I must admit I didn’t really think about how we may not be able to do some of the dates during the winter time.

Here are some of the dates I came up with, there are tons of websites dedicated to date ideas  I pulled a lot of my ideas from that:

1. Poker Night (we have a poker table which we’ve used once, so this would be a great way to have fun but for cheap!)
2. Sports event ( we both are huge sports people, I mean hello we grew up in Boston)
3. Homemade pizza & action movie
4. Popcorn & chick flick
5. Car wash (Mr. H details my car for me all the time so I thought it would be nice if we could do it together)
6. Laser tag
7. Bowling
8. Comedy Show
9. Geocaching Adventure (I discovered this while trying to figure out dates & I am so intrigued!)
10. Antiquing/Yardsale

Those are obviously just a few, but as you can see there are dates that both us of want to do & it just never happens. What are some of your date night ideas?!

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In the Kitchen-PuppyCakes

This weekend at my job we had an open house and I was in charge of making cupcakes that visitors could have for free. For those of you who don’t know I work at animal hospital & of course I couldn’t just put out plain ol’ cupcakes, baking is in my blood and someday I will open my own bakery! This weeks In the Kitchen is inspired by a pin I found on Pinterest. It didn’t have any source or any instructions so I winged it all, but I have to say it came out pretty darned good!

Ingredients:

• any kind of cupcake you’d like. Since I was making so many & didn’t have much time I used a box mix
• chocolate frosting
• smarties (eyes)
• Nutter Butters (ears)
• Nilla Wafers
• Junior Mints (nose)
• Black gel frosting, you could also use an edible marker for this

Directions:

1. Bake cupcakes & let cool
2. Frost with chocolate frosting
3. Split Nutter Butter cookie in two and use as ears
4. Place Smarties & Nilla Wafer as eyes & nose
5. Put some frosting on back of Junior Mint and add to top of Nilla Wafer
6. Dot eyes with black gel & draw mouth on wafer

These cupcakes are super easy to make & would be great to make with kids! There wasn’t a single cupcake left at the end of the event and kids were coming up to me telling me they were the best cupcakes in the entire world. Also if you receive the Derry Newspaper keep an eye out as the cupcakes and a puppy should be featured!

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In the Kitchen-Baked Sweet & Sour Chicken

The husband & I are on a strict & tight budget which means we don’t get to go out to eat as much as we used to. Mr. H recently made a comment saying he was surprised we hadn’t caved yet and gotten chinese, which got me REALLY craving it of course. I had seen a recipe on Pinterest for sweet & sour chicken & decided to give it a try. This weeks recipe comes from Life as a Lofthouse.

Ingredients:

Chicken coating:

• 4 boneless chicken breasts
• salt & pepper
• 1 cup cornstarch
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1/4 cup canola oil (I used vegetable oil because thats all I had)

Sweet & Sour Sauce:

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 4 tbs ketchup
• 1/2 cup vinegar
• 1 tbs soy sauce
• 1 tsp garlic salt

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 325 degrees
2. Rinse chicken breasts and then cut into cubes (this was my favorite part)
3. Season chicken with salt & pepper (I did this very sparingly)
4. Dip chicken into cornstarch & make sure covered well
5. Then dip chicken into eggs
6. In a large skillet heat oil & cook chicken until browned but not fully cooked through
7. Place chicken in greased cooking dish
8. Mix sweet & sour sauce in bowl & pour evenly over chicken
9. Bake for one hour turning chicken every 15 minutes

Now Mr. H ate the chicken along with some fried rice that I made, but I must admit that I did not eat this. The smell of the sweet & sour sauce was just too much for me & Mr. H did say that he thinks there was too much vinegar in it. The comments at the Lofthouse have people raving about it, so maybe I screwed something up? All I know is that I’m still craving chinese!

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Free e-books!

2 years ago my wonderful husband got me a kindle for my birthday because I LOVE to read. Literally I could read a book a day and still not be satisfied. Unfortunately my bank account would not allow for me to buy 7 books a week, let alone 7 books a month. I had gone to my local library (yes they still exist, shocking I know) and they could loan books out on e-readers, but of course not kindle. There were plenty of discount books on Amazon & even some free books, but just not the type of book I was interested in reading. Well fast forward 2 years and now my state has a whole e-book collection that you can check out for 14 days. Ever since my discovery of this I have been reading like a mad woman. You can check out my latest reads by going to my Goodreads account.

So if you live in New Hampshire and have a library card at your local library you can get e-books straight to your kindle for 14 days! New Hampshire Downloadable Books

Most libraries in Massachusetts also seem to use the OverDrive system that is used for New Hampshire, by going to your local libraries website you can find out if they offer free e-books (most do).