Straight Stitches

Monday, April 16, 2012

AWOL

Heather April 16, 2012 1 Comments

I can't believe how long it's been since I posted anything up.

I feel a little bad because I do have stuff to share. It's just been hard to motivate myself. Well motivate myself crafty wise. I've been trying to focus on me and the other journeys we're on.

So anyways I wanted to share the yarn orbs I made along with where my dining room stands right now.

There are tons of yarn orb tutorials out there so I'm not going to share the how-I-did-it's. My problem is now what to do with them. I've wanted them hit I did not give much thought to what to do with them after I made them. Oh well. Not a bad problem to have.

I've also added some new color to the walls but I do t think it's the color in going to go with. I think I'd like to go a hair darker. The color up there is "Weekend in the Country" it's a color by valspar. I think I'd like to try "City Chic". Its a smudge darker but also with some purple in it, which I think will play well off of the browns, reds, and yellows that will be going in the room.

I'd also like to update the ceiling of the dining room. I want to go with a darker color up there. I really like the color "Shoe Polish" by valspar. It's exactly what you think it is. A nice ruddy brown and since my dining room has 10 foot ceilings the dark color will have no problem being above our heads. I also want to beef up the moulding on the ceiling.

Well that's all I have for right now. Tomorrow I'll share a lampshade redo that I'm really loving.

Linking up to:

Friday, April 13, 2012

I Don't Mean To Brag...

Dana April 13, 2012 0 Comments

I'm jumping right in! Last week I ended Friday's post by mentioning that my other success from last week was GF shrimp Alfredo. Say what?! No foolin'. I'm actually sad I didn't take pictures because it turned out beautifully. Of course, this can absolutely be done with regular pasta and regular flour in just the same way, so conversions are easy-peasy. Here's what I did.

First, I started with the Great White Pasta Sauce. Since that was before we had to cut gluten out, here's my slightly revised version of the recipe:

Great White Sauce

3 tbsp butter
1 tbsp regular or GF AP flour (If you're using GF AP flour, I'd recommend just a little less than a tsp of cornstarch to help thicken it if necessary)
1 1/2 to 2 cups milk (depending on how thick you like it--I used 2 cups)
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
1 large pinch of salt

Make a roux out of the butter and flour. Add the milk, cheese and salt, mix well, and let thicken. You can add a little starchy cooking water at the end if that's your style too. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.

So that's your sauce recipe. For those of you that don't have to eat GF, I found out recently that the longer you let the flour and butter cook, the less thickening power it has, so keep that in mind. You probably only need to cook your roux for a minute or two.

The next step in my process was the pasta. Now, you can use whatever pasta suits your fancy. I think angel hair is pretty traditional with this dish, but Mike doesn't like angel hair--he thinks it's a sissy pasta :-)--so I got fresh, GF linguine from the refrigerated section instead. I don't usually spring for fresh pasta, but this was a big deal. Of course, you never want to overcook any pasta get mushy, but GF pasta is a fickle thing. I used to always cook my semolina and durum pasta just past al dente because Mike didn't like the bite of it. You cannot do this with GF pasta! There's a fine line between done and mush with GF pasta, so I generally cook it about two minutes under the package directions, taste it, and then test again every minute or minute and a half after that. Then, I pull it out at al dente (a little before if I have a more liquidous sauce, as with Alfredo) and let drain.

Finally, there was the shrimp. There are some foods that I don't like to dress up too much, and shrimp is one of them. A little Old Bay seasoning (seafood seasoning will do if you can't get Old Bay) over the little darlings and then into the hot sauce to cook for just a few minutes until they turn pink. Remember, you're not going to pulling them out of the sauce, so it's heat will continue to cook them. You don't want to overdo it.

Mix everything together and call it a day! Mike was so happy about this dish, and I was, if you will remember, on cloud nine. Challenge accepted and subsequently blown out of the water!

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Spring Break

Heather April 10, 2012 0 Comments

Today was a wonderful day!

School was back in session!!!!!!!!!! I know I was more excited about this fact than Devlin was. In fact, he told me this morning that he didn't want to go to school. Too bad!!!!!

This Momma needs a return to normalcy and that includes my big guy going back to school, so I can then head off to the gym with the small fry and I can get some me time.

Being as it was spring break last week, not much got done. I still haven't taken pictures of what I have gotten done, and well, at least that gives me stuff to post about tomorrow.

Today, I'll share some pictures from Easter and spring break.