To Grandma with Love

I think between the rain and allergies, my sinuses have decided to just burst into a migraine. But migraine aside... I have a sweet Mother's Day story to get you into the spirit! A few weeks ago, one of my younger cousins had her prom and in preparation for the big day a few of us were going over jewelery options. Her dress being green, my grandma offered one of her necklaces to wear. And so it was that we found out about her favorite necklace....

pay no attention to the DMV mail in the background LOL

She learned she never wears the necklace anymore, her fingers cannot handle the hook clasp, but that she used to wear it all of the time. So whilst driving one cousin back to her house my other cousin (I have a LOT of them, get used to seeing "cousin" lol) has the grand idea of fixing up the necklace with a magnetic clasp for Mother's Day. I added that I was pretty sure I had some stones to replace the ones missing in the necklace.

A conspiracy was born.

the oh-so-elaborate tools...

I had EXACTLY the right amount, how telling is that??

Now it just needs a magnetic clasp

Really hope she loves it :)

So what are YOU doing for your mommy-figure in your life?? 

(i still have to figure out something for my mom so ideas are welcome! ha!)

I know, it's been forever...

i feel like i owe you an explanation, you poor blog, you. mainly it comes down to a combination of being sick and planning a trip (very last minute) and then actually being on that trip. i have been traveling for close to two weeks now seeing family and zero crafting has been involved. Actually...i take that back. Mom and I planned a quilt together! My mom is an amazing quilter and she wanted to make a quilt for me and the hubby. I had material left over from the wedding (as planned) so we just had to find a style. I hate busy designs and prefer to have symbolism involved somehow. I'm not a quilter though so it took a while to come up with something I wasn't all picky about and that would challenge Mom. Mom didn't admit this, but i could tell by her own suggestions she desperately wanted to do something complicated so she could feel some kind of challenge. She's just too stinking good at things, the poor dear. We both seem to be very happy with the choice. Mom's been working on squares all week, it's going to be awesome! Maybe i can sneak some pictures later... hmmmm. Well have a fun week, apart from quilt pictures you probably won't hear from me for a little while longer.  I'm not even home yet. Plus, I have a logo to design, a website to finish, and a murder mystery to write by April! i think i can i think i can...

The Drunken Mermaid Special: Why You Just Never Know

So here's how it happened: My grandma is catholic and still practices eating fish on Fridays. I am still getting a little used to it, but it's getting better (not because I don't like fish but because I always seem to be frantically making some fish dish at 11:30 hoping it will be done in time for her lunch lol i'm not used to the schedule part.) SO...scrambling to come up with something. We have fish sticks but....meh. I know... I do it to myself :) i know. But this is how wonderful recipes are born!

I want to make a soup, she loves soup. Aunt Linda does Clam Chowder, we id that last week, so i want to do tomato based something or other. I look through about 10-20 recipes and see nothing that i have everything for, so i already know i have to wing it, it's just a matter of getting the ratios right. I open up a few cookbooks, find a Mediterranean style fish soup and LOVE the idea. I can't use any kind of meat broth though and we don't seem to have vegetable (note to self...) but that's ok because you can use wine to sub and Grandma likes it. Usually, with fish you use white. I have red. While I know it will be ok, i see that I am making a lot of changes and i am not sure at all how it's going to taste at this point.

So I am going along, throwing things in, very much in a hurry because it needs to boil for 45 min, it's 11:45 and my cousin is taking me to coffee at 12:30. I grab the first measuring cup in the drawer, a small one because they're stacked. A quick glance tells me it's a 1/8 c. I want to put in a cup of wine so I pour in 8 of those, all the while thinking it looked awfully large for a 1/8 c. container.

I use the cup again to measure in some lemon juice a little later... this time I see it. It's not an 8, it's a 3.

Which means I used 2 2/3 c. of Pinot in this soup.

Did you know soup gets foamy when you do that? I do now. It also turns the white fish an interesting maroon color...

Well...waste not want not! I plow ahead. As I was posting about this on FB, I got the idea for the recipe, should it succeed. I love mermaids. It smells amazing and you know what, Grandma LOVED it. She laughed at my story but she said it was in improvement on the soup :) So here it is (mainly for my mom,  who taught me how to cook like this, hehe!)

The Drunken Mermaid Special

2 celery stalks, chopped

1 dice tomato

3 large potatoes, or 9 small, chopped

1/2  large onion or 1 smaller

1  8 oz. can pitted black olives

1 4 oz can of mushrooms

1/3 c. green olives

2 TB capers

1 TB Sea Salt (I have this fish specific one from Hawaii, oh and i wouldn't use this much if using broth since broth tends to be salty but i wasn't)

4 c. water

3 bay leaves

2 2/3 c. red wine

2/3 c. lemon juice

1 TB whole pepper corns

1 tsp basil

1 tsp fennel seeds
3/4 stick butter

3 fillets white fish

1 c. shrimp

Place everything but the seafood in the big ol' pot and get it boiling. Boil for about 25 min and then add the seafood for another 20 min or so, until it is fully cooked, stirring occasionally. Consume the awesomeness.

Frickin' Fabulous Friday Soup

I decided that's what I am calling it, since it was Friday and I was in a good mood and the soup was fabulous. What can I say, I am not that good with names (Lord, help my children). Things have been pretty stressful, personal family stuff with my brother is happening and its heartbreaking, but Friday was a day of accomplishment and I felt a little lighter inside. So...I was all for celebrating with some tasty goodness. I miss my mom's 15 bean soup, however, being in a winging it mode I didn't HAVE the 15 bean soup, so I did what I could to simulate. Mom also always put sausage in hers but I only had ground beef....I know this is sounding less and less like her recipe right? But it was the inspiration. And it is a nummy soup! So, here you go, Ma, I think you'll like this one too! (BTW I used a crockpot)

Frickin' Fabulous Friday Soup
Dump the following into a crockpot:

• 1/3 Bottle of Red Wine
• 1 can Beef Broth
• 1 can Kidney Beans
• 1 can Black Beans
• 1 can White Northern Beans
• 1 can Stewed Tomatoes
• 3 Celery sticks, chopped
• 2 cups baby Carrots
• 1 chopped Ortega Chili
• 1/4 c. chopped, fresh Cilantro
• 3 shakes of Fennel Seed
• 3 shakes of Cumin Seed
• 2 shakes of Chopped Bay Leaf
• 1 shake Coriander
• 3 shakes of Sea Salt

Take 1 1/2 lbs of ground beef and brown in a pan with dried garlic and dried onion, drain the fat, and add to the rest of the ingredients in the crock pot. Cook on High for 4-6 hours or Low for 8-10.  

*I added some Franks Red Hot to my bowl, to taste, and that made it just perfect rounding out the flavors of the broth very nicely.

(This has enough protein in it with all the beans you could probably have it stand alone in a vegetarian version too, just change the broth, nix the beef, and maybe add some garbonzos or something....I dunno, my sister-in-law is better at that sort of thing, you can ask her over at So Many Veggies So Little Time. I'm just a noob.)

Adventures in Moving

The hubby and I just moved from the central coast to lovely eastern Oregon/ western Idaho. Ugh. It took EIGHTEEN AND A HALF HOURS but you know what made it bearable? The Heroes of Olympus, Book One: The Lost Hero. It's like 500 pages long and we about went hoarse reading it for that long but so far its pretty fun. Thanks to my sister-in-law for that awesome idea, otherwise we might have been a Donner party sequel or something! 

Part of our transition across such a distance includes staying with my cousin and her friend until we figure out where we wanna park ourselves long term. Our "rent" is to cook tasty meals and you know I am all for tasty meals. So on Wednesday night, in honor of the snow day, we made stew. Total win. However,  I don't think I will post the recipe because if you know anything about stew you know it's just a bunch of whatever thrown together. Just make it chunky pieces. This is what makes it stew. If the pieces are small then it's soup. Just ask my mom. 

I wonder if my mom knows that I include her in so many of my blogs.... think I'll start tagging her...

Anyway

Tonight, my cousin and I made Loaded Baked Potato soup, which was actually a recipe from Pampered Chef. I made one change though and I thought I would mention it because....'tis the season for left over mashed potatoes. Which we had. So I added them to the soup and it made for more creamy awesome! Yay! so... that's my cooking tip of the week. I know it's not much but...I just moved from one state to another and I don't really care :P HA! In fact, you might have to continue to suffer for an unknown period of time considering ALL of my crafting supplies are in storage right now. Fortunately, my cousin is going to show me how to use her looming stuff so I don't think I will go completely crazy :) yet.....mwahahahahaha

Fabric Wedding Flowers

This was another wedding craft that came about with the wedding. I actually got a LOT of great reviews on them, I cannot tell you how many guests told me that they couldn't even tell they were fabric! That was so cool :) So if you are looking to save some money on flowers or just love that vintage handmade look, I recommend it. 

Now, surprisingly, though I found pictures of the roses the way I wanted them I could not for the life of me find a tutorial for them. SO me and Ma improvised. Are you seeing a trend here? Yeah, she's pretty awesome for just giving things a go, we can make a good team most of the time. 

These are the pictures we started out with. I thought I got these off etsy but I gave it another look and I can't find them for sale on there anywhere. So I completely apologize in advance for not being able to give the original creators their proper attribution. I am going to keep looking though, hopefully I can find them again. They are just amazing though, right? And mine didn't quite come out as good but they still looked awesome. *UPDATE! I found them! see it might take a few months but I am as good as my word: http://www.etsy.com/shop/allencompanyinc. Looks like they don't care them any longer though. Sad :(

Fabric Shopping  was probably my favorite part, I spent HOURS looking at all the yellow fabric. I actually did a good amount of shopping on Etsy. I went all out with mixing up the shades of yellow and the textures of the fabric. 

For the stems I used the bamboo sticks they sell at craft stores as fillers for vases. We wanted something wide enough to attach the base of the flower head to it. Plus it has a nice light green tint to it, which went well with the blue and yellow shades of the wedding.

When the fabric came in, mom went to work making it into strips. She then folded the strips in half , did a sort of triangle fold and started winding from the middle. She then hand stitched the base to keep it all in place. She used screws to help keep the flower heads attached to the stems and quite a bit of glue. She is all about the hot glue but I am not a fan. I found this fabric glue that was just as amazing yet didn't give me six thumb blisters in one day and I was hooked. (Still trying to convert Ma though...)

Here is the end result: 

All the roses bunched together

The Bridesmaid Bouquets

Bridal Bouquet