If I Dream It...

I've never been a fan of tomatoes - granted I've always been a picky eater. I've been working on trying new things and have noticed my taste buds have certainly changed over the years. I've always liked pizza and ketchup... but I've never been a fan of spaghetti sauce, tomato soup, or tomatoes. I've still not branched to the spaghetti sauce or tomatoes, but recently I got brave enough to try tomato soup. So many pictures out there looked yummy so it was worth a shot :) But just in case, I added tortellini to it too so that if I hated the soup, I'd be able to fish them out and still have something ready to eat and I wouldn't have to cook a whole new meal. I don't know that the flavors are typical of tomato soup or not, but what I got was yummy. My husband, who likes tomatoes, has never liked tomato soup - and he liked it too... so I think it's safe to say it's not the normal tomato soup, but it's still tomatoes and it's yummy... wh

On a cold day nothing is as welcomed as a comforting warm drink. Generally hot cocoa on a snowy day comes to mind. Sometimes coffee or tea... and when fall comes we start thinking of ciders. With the wind starting to chill and the holidays approaching, I started to think of warm drinks. Ones I could easily make in the crock-pot and ones that would be nice and quick to fix a craving. Here are three warm drinks I've fallen in love with already: Peach Apricot Cider (spiked), CranCherry Apple Cider, and Warm Lemonade. So if your looking for something warm and comforting this winter - this one's for you :) Warm Lemonade: 1     Cup        Hot Water 1     Tbl         Honey 1     Tbl         Lemon Juice 1                   Cinnamon Stick Mix water, honey and lemon juice together - stirring with cinnamon stick. Allow cinnamon stick to stay in glass through up to 5 glasses (depending on how quickly you drink each cup). If you wanted to let the cinnamon stick flavor all cup

I did these with "monsters in the dark" in mind... though they look like the little guys from the goo game too. They're simple and fun for Halloween :) You start by painting your nails black. I like to do at least two coats to get them good and dark. Then I took white nail polish and placed two dots on each nail - side by side. Some touching, some spaced - it's completely up to you. Then I took a toothpick and dipped it into the black. With the toothpick I placed little dots inside the white dots... and there you have it - eyes staring back at you through the dark :) Once dry, top with a clear coat and you're good to go.

I love breakfast food - but I rarely take the time to eat it. I've been working on getting better at that during the week. And today, I took the time to put something together. I thought they were pretty filling - I could only eat one. But the good news is they reheat well - so they're also good to make over the weekend and have a grab-and-go breakfast during the week. The only difference is the yolk is more likely to be fully cooked or at least mostly cooked when you reheat it. I also tried two drinks - one I prepped the day before, but both super simple and yummy! I woke up early today and had been thinking of options for breakfast. I wanted something different, but not something that was too much work as I had a lot to do already. I came up with a few yummy thoughts, but unfortunately, as I thought of each and got up to look for the ingredients I wanted, I was disappointed to find out that I was missing at least one thing. So I kept thinking... and it hit me - breakfast

I don't know about you, but I love fun - unique nails... something pretty that looks professionally done. But I don't usually like the price attached to it, so I can't justify it very often. So, this means I have to get crafty with trying to do it on my own. I know they make all sorts of things you can buy to make doing your own nails easier... all the fancy things. But I also don't want to pay for all that and end up with a drawer full of nail stuff... I already have one full of polish colors :) Anyway, I wanted something like a french tip - but with a little bit of color and something simple. And what I ended up with - was something I liked so much that I actually did it for my wedding nails. And so I splurged on a pedicure instead of my nails since I liked these so much :) All you'll need is some tape - your main tip color, your highlight color, and a light over coat.  Here's my step by step explanation - sorry for the poor pictures, when I di

Fall is quickly approaching and the crock-pot has been on my brain... hence the back to back crock-pot recipes :) It's my best friend and for some reason it always gets more use as it gets colder :) I'm always looking for new recipes to try and the thought of waking up for breakfast is just as nice as the thought of coming home to dinner. I've never braved breakfast before though. I have found a few that said they could be done overnight, but they recommended less time so it didn't get mushy... so really, it may not be the best overnight breakfast.. However, after seeing several crock-pot oatmeal/porridge recipes I figured it was high time I tried it. I didn't brave the overnight version - I didn't even make the full one (just in case I didn't like it, I didn't want to be stuck with 4 - 5 more servings)... plus it gave the excuse to use the mini crock-pot I got last year that I've never used yet. It's a dip one that came with the bigger one

I don't know about you, but I love my crock-pot! The ease of tossing things together, walking away, and coming back to some yummy food is wonderful! I honestly have yet to make something that hasn't come out good from the crock-pot! It's not always as pretty, but is sure is tasty! I was recently looking through a blog where a gal used her crock-pot every day for a whole year! I found lots of yummy ideas on her site, but the one that I just couldn't wait to try was salmon. Fish - from the crock-pot? This was unheard of for me... would it really taste good? Would it dry out? It was certainly worth a shot! She had done Salmon 5 different ways - with green beans  in January,  sweet and spicy  in March, lemon and dill in May,  Jamaican  in July, and cedar planked in December. I must admit, I still want to try the cedar plank as that sounds interesting to me. However, my inspiration for this one came from the sweet and spicy and the Jamaican one. They were both wrapped

So I had heard about these yummy little things years ago. My hair dresser mentioned them and I made them first thing. They were dipped in almond bark and super yummy! I had always just rolled them into balls and dipped them, but when we were asked to bring game day treats... and I was trying to think of something a little different than the usual - I thought why not reshape them into little footballs and dunk them into chocolate instead. Draw little white laces and make them into extra rich, yummy footballs truffles? Plus, it was an excuse for me to use the food processor again :) These really could be made into any shape you can and decorated however you want. But since I did little footballs, that's what I'll tell you about... and then you can take it from there and let your imagination run with it :) These are super easy - essentially 3 ingredients, but by adding the laces I made them 4. And these 3... ok 4... ingredient little wonders will be a huge hit! Oreo Ga

I must admit, I have a sweet tooth! But I'm trying to cut back on the amount of sugar I have - eating mostly natural sugars or only small sweet treats. A bite or two here or there won't be that bad and it helps take care of that sugar craving when fruits just won't cut it.... right? Well that's my theory :) So I raided my freezer and pantry the other day and decided on a Cheerio treat - a little almond bark, butterscotch chips, and agave made a wonderfully sweet coating for the Cheerios. The gooey stickiness of them reminded me of making Rice Crispy Treats... but I didn't want to have to put them in a pan, cut them, and be sure they didn't stick to the pan... so instead I just made little piles of them on some wax paper to make them quickly grabbable when it's time for a sweet treat. It was messy, but they'll be the perfect snack size - just a few bites each. They were so good and plenty sweet enough to give me my fix. Plus, they were quick and e

When looking at card boxes for my wedding I was amazed at how expensive the ones I liked were! I was also surprised by all the DIY directions out there. And since DIY was so much less, I figured if nothing else, it was worth a shot... and if I totally hated it, I still had time to buy one. I had seen some great ones done with scrapbook paper and some lovely ones with fabric. So after surfing the net and finding great ideas I tried to take the things I liked from my favorites and tried to pull in our wedding colors. The main color was royal purple but we had wanted some blue mixed in too. Instead of just adding white and blue ribbon for accents, I decided to try to make blue one of the main colors. For awhile I was iffy about this choice, but all in all - I think it worked well. And it definitely served it's purpose. Sadly, I did not take pictures of the process for this so I am simply going to link the directions I read and used as my guide. I added an extra tier and flipped th

When trying to figure out what centerpieces we wanted, we did a lot of searching online and had found many beautiful centerpieces made from wine bottles and we loved the idea... so we set to saving bottles, asking our friends for bottles, and even asking a restaurant for bottles. Thing was, with our colors we didn't think the brown or green bottles would look that great... this left only clear and blue (the harder ones to collect). In all honesty - taking off all the labels was the most work. We tried it a bunch of different ways, but found that soaking then in hot water with dish soap helped the most - and then for anything that was left over we used an anti-adhesive creme (from the auto store).  Then we had to figure out what we wanted to do with them - we tried three different things and honestly ended up going with the easiest - but we truly thought it looked nicer. We started with the most complicated and cut the bottles to use them over candles. We got a cutter tha