Kale Chips - I'm so behind the times

So I'm guessing I'm the only person who hadn't tried making kale chips before.  Now let me explain that I used to work in a deli and we would use kale & parsley to decorate the case.  So I always though of kale as a garnish, not food.  

I kept it simple for my trial run.  Followed some basic instructions - rub with oil, sprinkle with salt & pepper, bake at 350 degrees, flip in between.  

And all in all, the turned out.  However the one thing I would definitely do differently next time would be to cut them into BITE SIZED pieces.  These suckers were hard to eat, and when they get all crispy those little curly edges are like daggers.  Ouch!  And yes, I ate all of that. It was the whole bunch of kale.

I did like them though.  They work well for when you feel the need to mindlessly put things in your face. 

Pet Peeve...followed up with some humor!

Alright, first with the pet peeve - "Pin now, read later"  I don't know about you, but I rarely find I have the time to go back through my pins and read them later, if I didn't already do it when I pinned it (other than for reference - like I'm going to make something or try a recipe)  I try to take the time when I pin them to visit the original site to make sure it's a "good pin" (ie the link goes somewhere, and it's the original site) I do this because I know I will likely never go back to check. 

And isn't everything kinda "pin now, read later"?  If you're not going to come back to it, why are you pinning it?

Anyway, this wasn't to make a whole bunch of people upset, it's just me venting a little because I'm sure I'm not the only one out there. 

I know I'm not the only one because I found these... (no...I did not just go and make them myself!)

This however is a real concern:

Especially because I have a board titled "Corgis" and then "Clothing DIY" It makes me think of this:


(I apologize it's only the audio, couldn't find a good video)

Work Anniversary Cake

This year was my company's 4th anniversary.  It happens to fall on Valentines day, so the girls at the office decided to have a bit of a party/BBQ.

I can't turn down the opportunity to make desserts, so I offered to make a cake!

Since I pinned these cute little discs here, I wanted to make some.

Source: somewhatsimple.com via Jill on Pinterest

I soon discovered that

1) I was too lazy to do the whole sugar disc thing

2) I really didn't want to buy food markers

For the cake, my original idea was to make a stencil of our logo, and then use those spray cans to "paint" it on fondant.  As I read more reviews about the sprays, the less I wanted to use them (apparently the black is extra terrible!)

I did however discover that you can 'paint' fondant with gel colors mixed with a little vodka.  This sounded like a good plan seeing as how

1) I have some gel colors

2) I will use gel colors again

3) Gel colors are cheap

WIN.

So that's what I did.

As to solve my lazy problem...  I was searching for my piping bags, and what do I find?! White candy melts. "Hmmm" she things "these are about the right size and colour..."

I outlined them with a fine paint brush first...

Then I filled them in with colour

The ended up looking pretty good.

Each cupcake had a green liner (should have doubled them up so that they actually looked green!), white buttercream pipped on with a large tip, one candy disc with logo, and a sprinkle of course sugar (BULK BARN!!) for some sparkle!

The cake I just painted with gel colours in a similar fashion!  I did have a printed copy of what I wanted to put on it, and traced it out with a toothpick first.  Luckily my company has a really easy logo!

Painting with gel colours was fun and SUPER easy.  I would most definitely do it again, and recommend it to anyone looking for a new way to get an image on a cake!

ReStore Fun

The other day I went to our local ReStore because I was actually looking for a light fixture for the hallway, but had fun just wandering around.

If you've never been to a Habitat for Humanity ReStore I highly recommend it.  It's a crafter's dream!

This is what I was actually looking for:

A light like this.  Unfortunately these ones were black, and I was hoping for brushed nickel.  I find that at our ReStore, because there's so much construction in our city, often you can find brand new items in boxes that were left over from condo developments, etc.

All of these get me excited for summer...

I want to put those flameless tea lights under them in the garden!

Source: theartofdoingstuff.com via Jill on Pinterest

Look at this little cupboard door

I would want to make him into something like this Flamingo Toes

File cabinets anyone?!

Look at all those fun colours!!

Definitely the place to pick up random tiles for cheap...

I want to do some sort of tiling project for outdoors!

There's also all sorts of paint

I find that my Home Depot doesn't have much for mis-tints, so this place would probably be a better bet for me!

They also have some furniture sometimes.  Check out these pieces screaming for a little love:

Sharpie Mugs

For Christmas I wanted to give the two girls in the accounting/admin department a little something because I really like them, and the three of us are the only females in the office.  I decided to make them custom monogram mugs filled with loose tea from Bulk Barn (quite possibly my favorite place on the planet!)

Now I know there are a lot of tutorials for this all over the internet.  I used this one: http://abeautifulmess.typepad.com/my_weblog/2012/06/his-her-sharpie-mug-diy.html 

I decided to do each of their first initials.  I decided to make Gwen's Irish-esque and Monique's French-ish.

Here was my first attempt at Gwen's:

I really didn't like how it was turning out, so here's a trick you might not have known: rubbing alcohol takes permanent marker off of hard surfaces!

Here I just put some on a cotton ball and wiped off the whole design and started over again!

Same thing happened with Monique's mug! lol  Another tip is that you can put rubbing alcohol on a q-tip and use it to clean up parts of your design!

Finished:

 

     

Cheese Platter Goodness

This year for new years was probably one of the best in recent history, and we kept it pretty low key, just me (& Adam), Amy & her hubby Landon, and my sister Leslie & her hubby Tyler.  We had delicious food and drinks and played Cards Against Humanity until 3am!?!?!?

Anyway, Leslie already blogged about our new years in a timely fashion, so check it out here.

I did want to share the cheese platter I made with you though.  I based it off of this Martha Stewart advice that I pinned

Source: everydayfoodblog.marthastewart.com via Jill on Pinterest

So as a serving tray I actually used the brand new pizza stone that we got from Adam's parents for Christmas!

On here we have (starting at the top, and working clockwise) prosciutto, Boursin (delicious & creamy...if you've never had it, I recommend - just do not look at the nutritional information if you'd like to enjoy it!), small bowl of mixed nuts, sundried tomato & herb havarti, chorizo salami, and gouda (possibly smoked gouda, I can't remember) and in the middle a small bowl of olives.

Adam and I were a little ambitious in our shopping and had also gotten some maple candied salmon and baguette which you can see on a plate just behind the meat and cheese platter.

I was also in a pretty tray-ish mood and made a fruit platter, I think I made the dip from a pin... but I can't seem to find it :(

Thanks for checking out our good eats! 

http://todayscreativeblog.net/

Argyle Cake

Who doesn't love argyle?!  One of my friends in university used to have enough argyle sweaters/tees/socks that I figured he could sport argyle every day of the week - and he could!  I may or may not have called him Argyle Kyle from time to time... ;)

Anyway, this post has nothing to do with my friend Kyle.  Although he is pretty cool.  See - argyle tee shirt, even when riding a llama. (Don't ask!)

This is really a post about cake!

I made Amy a cake because I was throwing her a bit of a pinterest party!  Everything we ate came from her pinterest board!!

I also needed to make more cakes to practice for the (at that time) upcoming wedding!

This cake is one of the few I've made from scratch.  I even went so far as to buy cake flour (that I may never use again. lol)

Source: foodiewithfamily.com via Amy on Pinterest

I thought the cake was just okay.  I probably wouldn't make it again.  But for some odd reason, this cake is like soups & chili in the sense that after it sat for a couple of days, it got better.  Weird.

I can't remember if I actually had a reason to choose blue fondant or not.  Covering it in fondant went pretty well, there are only a couple little puckers if you look closely!

Using some leftover chocolate icing I piped on an argyle pattern just for funsies.  If I had really wanted to take a little more time, I would have smoothed out the filled in parts with a hot butterknife.

Now if you're thinking the top looks pretty bare, well....I did write something on it, but it's an inside joke and not really family/blog appropriate, so we'll just leave it at that!

Only a few more cake posts until the big reveal!!!

       

Chalkboard clips

I have been on a bit of a chalkboard paint kick for a while now.  I even have a whole chalkboard pin board.  I wanted to try to bust some stash while I was at it, so I came up with clothes pin chalkboard tags.

I started by painting some clothes pins I had lying around from this photo board project:

 

I then cut pieces of ~2"x3" balsa wood that I had leftover from my zen garden project and sprayed them with chalkboard paint. 

I was debating whether I wanted to make them into picks like this, which was my original idea,

pinterest

But then I also saw that someone had put them on clothes pins.  I liked the clothes pin idea better because I thought I might be able to find more uses for them.

One of my favorite ideas was to use them as lunch clips

This would be perfect if you have a few people in the family brown-baggin' it!

Currently I'm using them to label my craft storage shelves

This was a great stashbusting project that cost me NOTHING and it turned out really cute!