Straight Stitches

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Crayon Monograms

Heather May 15, 2012 0 Comments

So last Friday was the last day of teacher appreciation week and Dev and I made his teachers some crayon monograms.

Now these have been done and done and done but I'm still going to share the ones that Dev and I made.

First I glued the crayons to some matte black poster board and then put it in a simple unfinished frame from the dollar store. Kind of makes it look like a chalk board, don't you think?

Tuesday, May 08, 2012

Roses for his Teachers

Heather May 08, 2012 1 Comments

It's been awhile since I've shown up here hasn't it? I apologize for my absence, but he reality is still that I haven't crafted anything. At least until last night/this morning and the night before.

Yesterday kicked off teacher appreciation week at Dev's school and today was bring in flowers for your teacher.

Since I'm trying to save money at every turn, I decided to see what I had around the house that would work.

Enter coffee filters.

I actually tried this project a couple of months back, but never completed it so when we started this project Sunday night (nothing like teaching your kids about time management) I figured it would be quite simple to get it done. The instructions can be found {HERE} on Ms. Martha's site.

I'm so silly. I should know that nothing ever goes as planned, but despite my mishap the flowers got done and look lovely.

I would say a few things about them though.
1) Make sure that your floral wire is secured tightly with the tape and maybe even add a drop of with glue to the first set of petals so that the stem doesn't pull out while you're working with the flower.
2) This is probably a no-brainier, but don't use pen to trace your petals on the coffee filter. I couldn't find a pencil so I used a pen and that's why I have nice blue tinged petals in the purple rose.
3) Martha uses nice water colors. I used crayola watercolors. They're not as intense as what Ms. Martha got but I like them nonetheless.
4) If your stem does come out of the flower after you've painted it, like mine did, I just folded the tip of the tape back towards the flower and taped that up like a boutonniere. Worked just fine.

I'll be sharing another teacher appreciation gift later this week!

Friday, May 04, 2012

I Did That!

Dana May 04, 2012 5 Comments

Want to hear a sad story? I tried making Mike a cheesecake a few weeks ago, and it was awful! There were so many things I did wrong. The end result was a gross lump of white that splooged out everywhere. Terrible, just terrible.

Want to hear a happy story? I tried again, smarter this time, and succeeded! The recipe I used both times was Alton Brown's Sour Cream Cheesecake...with a few differences.

Okay, so the biggest thing I failed on was the crust last time. I don't know what got into me, but I severely over complicated the crust last time and ended up with this funky pie-ish crust. Again, awful. This time I kept it simple and followed the recipe, except I used a bag of GF gingersnaps in place of graham crackers. Flavor maximization!

I used a glass to get the crust all flat, but I used all of the crust mix because...well...I can't be bothered to crust up the sides. This turned out to be a good choice because Mike actually wanted more crust when he actually ate the cheesecake.

Okay, here's the big deviation I took from AB's recipe. Yeah, it kind of (see: completely) negate's calling it Sour Cream Cheesecake, but that's what makes it mine...and healthy. Greek yogurt is really healthy, though it's a big...tangy...to put it lightly. Even still, it's a great replacement food. Here check out the chart.

Image thanks to Pinterest, the best place on the web. Next I'm going to try replacing the filling with all Greek yogurt. :D

Okay, so once the filling was in the pan, I skipped the water bath. I have a springform pan for cheesecake, and it is not watertight! My last cheesecake got all waterlogged and gross, so I just skipped that altogether, but I did use parchment paper because I didn't want to risk the cake sticking to the inside. Next time, though, I think I'll butter the sides of the pan and be really careful because, as you'll see, the parchment paper did a good job, but left my edges looking a little funky.

Post-moment of truth: It's not splooging out! It's keeping its shape! This was so exciting for me. I've never made a cheesecake before, and I totally kicked butt at it. Whaaaaaaat?!