"R" is for Rubs

I have been home sick for the last couple of days with a head cold that is sapping all of my energy. It's totally aggravating. But it will not stop me from plowing ahead. I will finish the A to Z Challenge!

So far, a good majority of my projects have been presents for little girls, but today it's more of a manly project. Because to be honest, no one is harder to figure out a gift for than my dad...or Collin's dad. Dads are just tough. And no way am I sticking them both with the traditional "Dad gift" of a tie at every birthday, Father's Day or Christmas.

So when it came time to make presents for last Christmas, I did what any self-respecting crafter would do...I hit the boards. The Pinterest boards, that is.

And that's how we wind up with today's project: R is for Rubs. Don't get too excited people...it's just the spice kind. You know, like for meat. Now knock it off. Get your mind out of the gutter.

Summary Sunday: F-K Edition

And week two of the A to Z Challenge comes to a close. As one commenter put it, I'm still "feeling the love". I've actually quite enjoyed the process and even more so, I've enjoyed seeing what everyone else has been up to. The comments have also been fabulous. In fact, a few comments have made me think of new projects or different ways to do the projects I have posted. It's been a very constructive sort of thing.

I'm already looking forward to participating next year. I'll have to sit down and come up with a new group of projects to start working on once this craziness has died down. The A to Z is good motivation for me to finish at least 26 items before next April rolls around. :)

I learned a few things this week:

Chicken Enchilada Pasta

I'm hard at work on photo editing and writing posts in preparation for next week's start of the A to Z Challenge! But I haven't forgotten the blog. So...let me feed you. Well, I guess not feed you, but give you something so you can feed yourself. Close enough.

This chicken enchilada pasta is delicious and pretty easy to make. It's adapted from a recipe over at Pearls, Handcuffs, and Happy Hour that I found a few years ago. It's one of those meals that is particularly good in the spring or the fall, as the temperature starts to shift from cold to warm or warm to cold. It's comfort food.

And as is always the test in my house...the boys love it. That's two thumbs up, right there.

Here's What You'll Need:

2 cans chunk chicken, shredded

2 tbsp. olive oil

1 tsp. garlic powder

1 medium onion, diced

1 red pepper, diced

1-4 oz. can green chilies

1/2 tsp. salt

2 tsp. chili powder

1 tsp. cumin

2-10oz. cans green enchilada sauce

2/3 cups red enchilada sauce

2 cups shredded cheese

1 cup sour cream

Bowtie Pasta

Toppings : Olives, tomatoes, sour cream

Here's What You Do:

Boil your pasta according to the package directions. If you're buying your pasta in bulk, just boil for 10-12 minutes until al dente. Drain and return to the pot.

Heat your olive oil in a skillet over medium high heat. Cook onions 3-5 min until translucent. Add garlic and red pepper. Cook another 3-5 minutes. Add chicken, chilis, cumin, chili powder, salt and sauces.

Simmer the chicken mixture for 8-10 minutes. Add the cheese and stir until the cheese is melted and heated through. Turn the heat to low and add in sour cream. (You don't want to curdle it.) Stir until mixed and heated through.

Pour the chicken and sauce over your pasta and mix well. 

Serve and garnish with olives, tomatoes and sour cream.

Like I said, easy. It's a good meal for a night when you just don't want to put to much effort in, but you want something a little more elegant than ramen. If your family is anything like mine, this will become a pretty quick favorite.

Summary Sunday: Spring Break Edition

It's Spring Break over here. Well...technically for me, it's Spring Break weekend, minorly interrupted by working Monday, and then it's Spring Break. I'll be spending my time off getting pictures and posts prepped for April's A-to-Z Challenge.

I actually did a little work on it yesterday when I discovered that I once again failed and forgot to take pictures of the majority of projects that I made for Christmas presents last year. Crap. Seriously. When will I learn?!? So...I'll now be working on recreating some of those items to have enough pictures for posts. Sometimes I can really be a dunce.

I'm really wrapped up in playing games on my iPad right now, so let's make this quick. I have farming that needs to be done, settlers who need settled, and a logic puzzle that won't solve itself. Yup...also a nerd.

Let's take a short walk down recent memory lane and see what I accomplished this week.

Posts I Posted: It was actually a fairly productive week of posting. I shared my long overdue "Love" blocks that double as my "Lucky" blocks.

I loved them so much that I made a second reversible set for spring and Easter.

I shared my new family cleaning plan (which is working fairly well, but still needs some tweaking and some getting used to). My mother also enjoyed the fact that Darian did a crap job on the vacuuming earlier this week. She thinks it's karma for the crap I pulled vacuuming (or rather, not vacuuming) as a kid.

And I revealed my plan for the A-to-Z Challenge (which is scaring the pants off of me).

Recipes I Tried: It was a good week in the food department as well. I experimented a few times and came up with some good recipes that will be making a debut on the blog later this year. This week I made Buffalo Chicken Macaroni & Cheese, Stuffed Cheese Ranch Burgers, and some Bacon Ranch Garlic Potatoes. We enjoyed all three of them. Yup...didn't destroy anything. Amazing. The boys liked all three recipes and have already requested that they all get made again. Double amazing.

Books I Read: Things were a little slower in the reading zone. I am currently one book behind my Goodreads goal (at 13 out of 64) and reading Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell. I finished up What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty last Sunday night. It was really good and will make it into the bracket for 2014 BOTY. Though I'm not finished with Eleanor & Park yet, I think it will probably make it into the running as well. Oh...and in case you're wondering...yes, there will still be full reviews on the four and five star rated books this year (and maybe some select three stars). May will be one of two months dedicated to reading, so most of them will start debuting then. (That's also when you'll probably start hearing from Darian again. He's been a little quiet on the reading front this year.)

Projects I Worked On/Finished: Well...I finished the blocks and the cleaning plan mentioned above. I've also been doing some serious photo organization and editing for the upcoming April posts. Other than that, not much has happened. This week will get a little crazy though. I have at least two projects that will need to get made during the week to allow for photos for posts within the first week of the A-to-Z Challenge. I also have my awesome nephew turning one in just a couple of weeks, so his birthday present will be in the works. My brother will be turning 31 this week, but he's not getting a project. (Though I did contemplate making him a shirt using last week's Pinterest Pin of the Week.) Sorry, Tyler. You're out of luck until Christmas. (Don't worry...he still gets a gift, just not a homemade project.)

Favorite Pinterest Pin: Hmm...it's a tough one this week. Most of my pins were actually items pinned to my Bucket List this week (in preparation for a project in the fall). But...there were a few things that I found outside of that mess. I actually ended up with two that I can't choose between, so I'm going to go ahead and declare a tie and share both of them.

The first one is a photo only, so there will be some deconstructing and redesigning when I decide to make it myself. It's these cute little felt owls (that I will probably be turning into larger sized pillows).

My second favorite pin was this license plate map done by Angela over at blue i style. She makes some cute stuff. You need to go check her out!

And...that's a wrap! Now I can get back to those very important iPad apps.

Have a great Spring Break! I'll be checking in during the week amidst the crafting and photo editing. (I've made a promise to myself that I will get out of bed every day by 9:30. We'll see how that goes.)

Shrimp and Pesto Pizza with Goat Cheese

Some days our best laid plans just don't work out. Today is one of those days. This was not the originally planned post, but it was a draft that I had started. Since I'm feeling a little under the weather today, building a full post is not in the cards. That just means that one of the February planned posts will get pushed to another date. Gotta roll with the punches some times.

So I actually made this recipe last summer. I honestly don't remember where I found it since I was pulling recipes from the internet, out of random cookbooks, and from a whole host of magazines at the time. It's not too shabby. In fact, the recipe is pretty simple to eat and the pizza was pretty tasty, but we all agreed that there will need to be changes for the next go round. 

You see, I braved it with the goat cheese. Turns out, none of us are really big fans. It's just a little too sour for our liking. So next time I think we'll switch to all mozzarella. I think I'll probably add some tomato and spinach in the mix as well just to deepen the flavor profile. You know I can't just leave a recipe alone. They're always being reinvented around here.

Up for trying it yourself?

The ingredients are pretty simple...

Pizza dough mix (I used a box of Jiffy Pizza Dough Mix)
1/2 lb. shrimp (thawed, peeled, and deveined; no tail)
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. Italian seasoning
1 tbsp. olive oil
1/4-1/2 c. pesto sauce
8-12 oz. shredded mozzarella
6 oz. goat cheese

And so are the directions...

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Prepare dough according to mix. Coat a 14-18" pizza pan with nonstick spray. Roll out the dough to the desired size and place on the pan. Cook crust for 2-3 minutes.

In a small bowl, mix together garlic powder and Italian seasoning. Coat shrimp in seasoning. Heat oil in skillet on medium. Saute seasoned shrimp for about 30 seconds on each side.

Spread pesto on dough. Add shrimp and mozzarella. Spoon on goat cheese. Bake for 20-25 minutes at 400 degrees until the cheese starts to brown at the edges.

Can't get much easier than that.

Summary Sunday: Hands on Fire Edition

As I type this, my hands are on fire. Yup. Continuously burning. Why? Because I'm an awesome wife, that's why. Collin's neck has been bugging him so I spent about 30 minutes rubbing his neck with BioFreeze. The tingly warmness refuses to go away...even after a solid 30 second hand wash with soap. So that'll make this just a little more interesting tonight.

How did your week go? Mine was very odd. Work was pretty slow, so I spent a lot of time at home when I normally would've been gone. You'd think that would work out to me accomplishing a lot of stuff...but really not so much. Mostly I got to sleep in a couple of times, hung out with the dog, and did some laundry. Oh...and I worked on a project that took about a bajillion layers of clear coat and mod podge to finish.

Did you celebrate Valentine's Day? We did...kind of. And then we celebrated it again today...kind of. On Valentine's Day night (that sounds totally awkward) Collin made the executive decision to take the family out to dinner. So we went and had some all-you-can-eat sushi using some Christmas money we had left over. Today we went for some yummy brunch using yet another gift card (I love gift cards) and then managed to remember to open our Valentine's Day card from my parents (Coldstone gift card...score!). All in all, not bad. It was nice to hang out with the boys a few times this week.

We also had parent-teacher conferences this week. Darian's grades look good, but (no big surprise here) he's having issues talking in class. Same story every year. The kid just doesn't know when to keep it shut. One of these days he'll figure it out.

What else did I do this week?

Posts I Posted : To be honest, I'm actually a little behind on posts. I still managed to get three of them completed this week, but I expanded my original plan for our love story and that wound up putting me a few posts back. Oh well, all in good time.

©Broken H Photography

I did finally post some pictures from our wedding and talked about how I set up our wedding canopy.

©Broken H Photography

After that, I finally finished my Valentine's Day project. We now officially have at least one piece of Valentine's Day decor.

Books I Read : Try as I may, I just cannot get on top of that darned book goal. I finished two books since the last Summary Sunday and I'm still two books behind. How does that work? Drat.

Insurgent by Veronica Roth was a clear win and The Rescue by Nicholas Sparks was disappointing.

I'm currently reading the last of the Divergent trilogy...Allegiant. So far, so good. It promises to be a quick read.

Recipes I Tried : This week I lucked upon a good find in my Facebook feed, BuzzFeed's 19 Delicious Spaghetti Dinners. We tried not one, but two of these puppies this week.

The first one was the Spaghetti with Bacon, Pecorino, and Fried Egg. You can never go wrong with bacon. I substituted some Gruyere and Parmesan for the Pecorino, but otherwise followed the recipe. It was flipping delicious you guys. Horrible for you, but ridiculously good. The boys agreed. We will be having that one again for sure.

The second recipe was the Spaghetti with Olive, Capers, and Roasted Red Peppers. This one I modified pretty heavily. (I also failed to take a picture.) Neither Collin nor I are a big fan of capers, so those were eliminated before I even started. And I like meat in my meals, so I added in some chicken. Once that was done, it still tasted a little plain. So...I tossed in some Parmesan, pepper, onion powder and about a half cup of leftover tomato sauce from last week. Oh, I also pretty much tripled the amount of olives since Collin is a big ol' olive fan. That's how we roll around here. That pepped it up a little bit and it wasn't bad, but not as good as the bacon pasta earlier in the week. Poor recipe. Totally overshadowed by the power of bacon.

Two new recipes in one week. Amazing. Don't expect that to happen again any time soon.

Projects I Worked On/Finished : That Valentine's Day project nearly killed me. It's probably a good thing work was slow or I never would've been able to finish it on time. But...it turned out cute and I like it. Collin even complemented it. That was nice.

Favorite Pin I Pinned : So I pinned a lot of stuff this week. I cleaned out my email inbox yesterday and that led me into a bunch of suggested pins and boards. It got a little out of hand. But I found a good pile of new recipes and a few good project ideas, so not too shabby.

It actually took me a little bit of time to figure out which one was my favorite this week. Amazingly, this week it isn't a food post. It's this lovely gem from BoBella on Tumblr via Bridgette Raes.

I have plans to clean out my closet this year...we'll see if I can follow this plan. I will admit that a good chunk of the stuff that should go in the "toss it" pile will actually probably end up as fabric scraps to be used on another project. I suppose that part won't be nearly as bad as the stuff I keep because "it would fit if I just lost a little bit of weight". That's always the case, isn't it?

Summary Sunday: Cancelled Cable Edition

While everyone else is watching the Superbowl today, we are lounging around the house. Collin is in playing SimCity and I'm surfing the internet and watching Netflix. Why aren't we watching the game? Well...we have no TV at our house. Traditional TV that is. We have cancelled our cable in a bid to save some cash. We decided that we weren't really watching it and throwing $100 a month at something we weren't using just seemed ridiculous. It's just our latest decision to try and tighten the budget at our house. And honestly, it seems to be working out pretty well. We've been cable free for two weeks now without incident. Of course, that's mostly because I'm a huge fan of Netflix. We also have PlayOn and are considering adding Hulu Plus to our lineup. Exchanging the $100 TV bill for a $15 one...not too shabby. Even better? We're not missing out on anything with today's game thanks to three main things:

1. We aren't big on professional football around here. It's just not our speed. We aren't football haters, we actually like college ball quite a bit (as is evidenced by our having season tickets for Boise State for the last two years). We just aren't big on the pompousness and the money grubbing that seems to be the primary fuel for the games. There are good players and there are good games, but it's just not the same. Oh...and for those of you wondering, yes - we will still be rooting for Boise State next year even though Coach Pete has moved up to Washington. And no, we aren't bitter at his move.

2. The power of the interwebs. We typically only watch the Superbowl for the commercials. Yes, we're that family. But this year has let us watch the ads without watching the game. They are all over the internet. I know that some are angry that they were released early, but it works out well for us. Do I think that it will diminish the number of people watching the game and make those spots less valuable in years to come? Yes and no. I think the number of people watching will reduce, but only slightly. Even though a lot of people just watch for the commercials, I still think that there are a lot of them who watch the game as a part of popular culture whether they like football or not. And of course there will always be thousands of die hard fans who watch the game because it's the game. Because of the sheer number of watchers who will continue to watch regardless of commercial leakage on the internet, I think that they will continue to be very coveted spots. Worry not, advertisers.

3. This is really subsection 2 of number two, but social media has kept us in the loop in a way that cable alone could not. We have updates from the news outlets and our friends. We have the banter of Seahawks fans and Broncos fans. It's like one big digital party.

So...that's our Sunday. It's probably different from yours, but I like it just the same.

And how about the rest of my week?

Posts I Posted: This last week, I cleaned up my scrapbook room and have been reveling in the ability to see my desk tops. I had full intentions to do some more cleaning of the house today, but laying around doing nothing has been way more appealing and so, I have succumbed to the laziness. I am enjoying my sloth.

Before I completely crapped out, I put together a list of things we want to attack around the house to get things revamped and redecorated before the year is out. My next step with that is to organize it into a priority list and then start checking things off one by one. It will be nice. There are a couple of projects in the list that I am particularly excited for.

I reviewed the month yesterday for the blog and have jumped forward into the theme for February. I'll have a project up at the end of this week. Good times.

But I still stand by the fact that the best part of my week has been seeing the sun. I love where I live, but January is always interesting for us. We always manage to get an inversion before the winter is up that socks us into a pit of gray. After nearly three weeks, the sky cracked open and the sun came out once again. It was very much a welcome sight.

Books I Read: I'm still two books behind on my Goodreads challenge goal, but I did finish a book this week. I read Daddy's Little Girl by Mary Higgins Clark. It didn't do as well as her books usually do, but it wasn't a dud. I gave it 3.5 stars. Next up, I'm reading Divergent by Veronica Roth. I've been waiting to read this series for quite a while, so I'm excited to get it rolling.

Projects I Worked On/Finished: I haven't finished anything this week, but I've been working on a couple of things.

I'm working on a craft project for Valentine's Day that should be finished by the end of the week.

I'm doing some planning on the remodel for the crop (soon to be sewing) room.

I like this idea for a revamp to my baker's rack:

Source

 And I like the idea of a wall length cubby system for the rest of the organizational space.

Source

*** Now...a short PSA about being a responsible Pinterest pinner. If you follow either one of those links, you'll notice they both send you to Pinterest pins. I don't like that. I am really big on making sure to give credit where credit is due. But...if you click on those pins, you'll also notice that one of the links is broken and the other one takes you to a homepage rather than a post. This irks me. This is what I call irresponsible pinning. I have somewhat perpetuated the problem by repinning things that weren't linked properly the first time, but when I post an original pin I always make sure to pin properly. Please pin responsibly. Give credit where credit is due. I can tell you that the second picture is one from Becky Higgins' personal scrapbook room. I know this because I've watched several of her videos where she is hanging out in this particular room. But I know nothing about the person who came up with the organizational idea for that first photo. That is annoying to me.

So how do you pin responsibly? When you find a pin you like, follow the link to check its authenticity. When you find something you want to pin, make sure you are pinning the original, not a post that is a link to the original. Make sure you pin the specific post, not the blog homepage. And be helpful. If a link is broken or goes to the wrong location, note that in your pin. Help future pinners and help the people whose ideas you are sharing. There you go. PSA over. Continue on. ***

Recipes I Tried: Ya...this week went crazy fast. I'm trying to think back on it and it's all a blur. We didn't do anything fancy for dinners this week. There were a lot of leftovers, Collin cooked a pork chop dinner on family night (Tuesday), and Darian made soup for us on his night (Thursday). We've been working to try and spread the responsibilities and to teach Darian how to do more and more on his own. It's been nice to lighten my load, but it doesn't make for much in new stuff here on the blog.

This Week's Favorite Pin: I did a lot of Valentine's Day project pinning this week, but my favorite pin isn't even a craft one. My favorite is these Boston Cream Pie Crepes from girl. Inspired. How yummy do these look??!?!

Source

I'm excited to try them out.


And...that's it for now. Enjoy the game if you're watching, and if not...enjoy your Sunday night.

How do you celebrate Superbowl Sunday?

It's Time for a Plan...

I've had a couple of down days from crafting and it's been kind of nice to just regroup. But...it's time to get back to work and get this blog back on track. In order to help me do that, I've decided that I need to get a little more organized and come up with a 2014 plan for EPJ.  New year, new EPJ!

First up...it's time for a new logo!

I needed something simpler and brighter. It seems to have more pep.

And now for other changes.

Last year, I didn't post nearly as much as I really wanted to. I let all the other little things that happen in day to day life get overwhelming and then spent a lot of time spinning in circles. My biggest obstacle to getting things up on the blog was often my photos. Typically one of two things happened with craft photos. A lot of the time I had photos of projects taken, but I had so many different things on the camera waiting to be uploaded to the computer and edited that I never got any of them ready to go. Other times, I'd get so caught up in the projects themselves that I forgot to take pictures along the way. When it came to recipes, I'd often be cooking after the sun went down, resulting in no natural light and photos that looked less appealing than I wanted them to. So...new plan.

Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be editing all of the project photos I have stored and will start placing them into the blog as drafts. This will get them off of the camera and out of editing as well as help me figure out which projects need new photos and which crafts were made without photo documentation. For my food posts, I'll be focusing on making recipes for the blog on weekend days. This way I can start earlier in the day and take advantage of the light when it's available.

In 2014, I'll be pushing myself to get back into crafting...especially scrapbooking, which has fallen by the wayside over the last year. I'll be playing catch up so my scrapbook pages won't always be super current, but the memories will be getting put together - which is what counts.

I'm going to start out by aiming for 3 posts per week, including one Summary Sunday post each week (I've missed those). During the week, I'll be mixing it up a little. So what should you expect?

Books :  2014 Book of the Year is already underway! I have set a goal of 64 books for the year. I'll be posting reviews of books rating 4 or 5 stars and will occasionally give updates on where I am in the BOTY process. Darian will also be sharing occasional posts with reviews of his 4 and 5 star rated books. I'll be taking part in a couple of read-a-thons to keep myself working towards my BOTY reading goal.

Crafts : I have a bunch of projects to share from the past couple of years and I have some others in the planning stages that I'll be working on as the months go by. My Pinterest boards are bursting with things I want to try. I'll be sharing at least two finished crafts each month. I'll also be working on getting finished projects together to finally post things up on my Etsy shop. I've been stalling long enough. It's time to get some finished product out there.

Food : After a short hiatus, I'm getting back on the meal planning wagon. I'm going to be redesigning my meal planning process as well as sharing some great recipes, including both new and old favorites. I'm going to be working on our family cookbook throughout the year and hope to have some progress to show as the year continues.

Scrapbooking : I've kind of let scrapbooking fall by the wayside over the last year and I've decided that it's time for a revival of sorts. I'll be reorganizing my scrapbook room and then getting back to it, so I should have some finished pages to show for it. I'll be sharing both traditional scrapbook pages and completed pages for Project Life.


I've enjoyed doing some theme posting in the past, so I've decided to implement a focus for each month. Alongside the topics listed above, I'll be focusing on one item during each month and will have at least one post each week spotlighting that particular theme. Here's what's coming up...


January : Well...the month's not over yet! January has been a lot about regrouping for me and it's about new plans and resolutions for a lot of others, so the remainder of January will be focusing on organization. Among the things in store, I'll be getting my blog planner ready, updating my meal plan, reorganizing the scrapbook room, making plans for my family recipe book, and drawing up the plans for the redecoration of my sewing/craft room. Organizing and planning is bound to run over into February, but I'll get a big jump start before month's end.

February : February is the month of love. My parents will be celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary and Collin and I will be celebrating our first Valentine's Day as a married couple. I'll be sharing some of my favorite memories of my parents and my family, our engagement and wedding photos, our love story - including the story of our wedding day, and some of the DIY crafts I completed for our wedding.

March : March is all things spring. It will be time for spring break and spring cleaning. I'll be undertaking the sewing/craft room reorganization and tackle some other house projects to share. I'll also be doing some spring themed crafts to help balance out our holiday decor stash and keep it all from being just Halloween and Christmas.

April : April is the A-to-Z Challenge. It's "26 posts on 26 days of April, with Sundays off for good behavior". I'll still be posting Summary Sundays during the month, but the rest of the days will be posts themed by sequential letters of the alphabet. It could get a little crazy.

May : May is the first of two book months. Bout-of-Books 10 Read-a-Thon runs from May 12th to May 18th. I'll be doing some serious reading, posting some book reviews, undertaking reading challenges, and seeing if I can keep up with my 2014 BOTY goals. I'll do my best to get Darian involved since he seemed to have a good time with it last year.

June : June is my Pinterest challenge month. I'll be picking projects from my Pinterest boards and actually accomplishing them! Recipes made for the blog and books read for reviews will come from things I've pinned.

July : In July, it's time for vacation! We'll be talking all things travel. I'll be sharing some favorite family vacation memories and showing you how I organize my vacation memorabilia, as well as posting some complete vacation scrapbooking from over the years.

August : August is reading month number 2! The month will be filled with book reviews and updates on my 2014 BOTY goals. Bout-of-Books 11 Read-a-Thon runs from August 18th to August 24th. It's back to reading for a solid week with daily updates and challenges.

September : September is all about scrapbooking. It's time to hit the books...scrapbooks, that is. I'll be sharing how I organize my supplies and photos, what products I like best, where I like to shop for my scrap stash, and of course showing off some scrapbook pages (including Project Life). I'll be working a lot on mini-albums during the year and hope to have a couple to share.

October : If you've been around the blog long enough, you know that October is our favorite month of the year around here. I'll be posting our Halloween Pumpkin Project plans, sharing pumpkin carving progress and debuting the final results on Halloween night.

November : It's time for NaNoWriMo. November is National Novel Writing Month. I'll be working on writing something every day and showcasing a few tidbits here and there on the blog. I'll also be starting the 2014 Christmas Present Project Countdown and checking off those presents as I finish.

December : I'll be crafting up a storm in preparation for Christmas, but there will still be blogging! It will be time for some year end wrap up posts, including how things went for my goals this year and how the bracket is looking for the 2014 Book of the Year. I'll be sharing some ideas for the following year as well as keeping up with the Christmas Present Project Countdown.


Well...that should be enough to keep me busy! I may be adding a few challenges to the schedule here and there to keep things interesting, but it's good to have some goals set out. I'm looking to a fun and productive 2014 here at Erratic Project Junkie. I hope you'll join me!

Caprese Chicken

It's supposedly summertime (though it's a bit chilly here today), so I figured it was time to break out a recipe that has been sitting in the drafts for a while. It's a good summertime, dinner on the patio sort of meal...and one that Collin was very happy to see.

(Excuse my crummy food photos...apparently I tried to do all of this with my phone camera. Genius.)

In order to come up with this one, I modified a recipe from The Pioneer Woman (who I'm sure many of you are familiar with). Instead of her bruschetta chicken, I made some slight modifications and added a pile of cheese to make it into caprese chicken. Collin is a huge fan of caprese salad, so I knew that would probably make this recipe a hit.

What You'll Need :

4 chicken breasts, sliced in half
1 tbsp. olive oil
5 cloves garlic, minced
2 pt. red grape tomatoes, halved lengthwise
1 tbsp. balsamic vinegar
16 basil leaves, chiffonade
Salt & pepper, to taste
8 oz. mozzarella

Heat your oil over medium high in a large skillet. Add garlic and fry lightly for one minute. It should be golden brown. Watch the heat of your pan closely, as you really don't want to burn this stuff. It gets ugly if you do.

Pour your browned garlic into a mixing bowl and allow it to cool slightly.

Once cooled, add the tomatoes, vinegar, basil, salt & pepper. I had to actually look up chiffonade. Didn't have the slightest clue. Ya...apparently it just means to cut it into strips. So there you go. Cut your basil into strips and chuck it into the bowl. Toss your mixture around enough to fully coat the tomatoes, then cover and refrigerate for 1-2 hours. This way the tomatoes will marinate and suck up all that yummy balsamic taste. Tada! Bruschetta.

When your tomatoes are ready, season your chicken breasts with salt & pepper. I sliced my chicken into cutlets to allow for quicker cooking and a more manageable size as apparently these chickens were serious body builders.

Grill the seasoned chicken on medium heat 3-4 minutes on each side, turning once. Top with 1 oz. slice of mozzarella while hot. Spoon your lovely bruschetta and balsamic on top. Doesn't get much easier than that!

Homemade Vanilla Extract

So I am mildly in love with my sense of smell. How's that for an interesting line to lead off a blog post? Seriously though, I may have an addiction. I love having Scentsy warmers running all over my house, I love smelling the air after a rain storm, and mostly...I love the smell of my house after baking. It just makes everything feel so warm and cozy.

Most of the time, I find that this is due to my gratuitous use of vanilla. Mmm...vanilla. I typically buy the imitation stuff at around 99 cents a bottle, but it just seems a little weak. The "real" stuff is crazy expensive and I can never justify shelling out a fistful of cash for an itty bitty bottle. So you can imagine my delirious happiness when I discovered that I can make my very own vanilla for just a little more than I pay for the imitation stuff.

Yup, you betcha. Baking awesomeness.

As with the homemade vanilla sugar body scrub, the homemade vanilla extract is relatively inexpensive and easy to make. Thank goodness. I love uncomplicated projects.

Here's what you'll need:

- Glass bottles (I picked these cutesies up at Cost Plus - they're actually oil and vinegar dispensers)
- Vanilla beans
- Vodka
- Scissors (preferably kitchen shears)
- 30 days (Don't worry...this isn't like Amish Friendship Bread. It doesn't need any attention.)

The glass bottles and the scissors were easy. I got the bottles when I grabbed the jars for the scrub. I already owned a pair of kitchen shears.

The vanilla beans were a little tricky. I know next to nothing about vanilla beans. Madagascar, Tahitian, Mexican, Bourbon, Tonga...are you kidding me with this? To help myself out, I found an awesome online site for buying these beauties. Beanilla.com Yup. Super helpful. They have descriptions for each type of bean to help you pick your poison. I wound up choosing Tahitian beans (Grade B) and bought a 25 bean package for $17.50.

As for the vodka, you can select more or less any kind that isn't going to overwhelm the flavor. I'd stay away from the uber budget brands, but I got my bottle of Svedka for relatively cheap. I think it was right around $10.

Take each bean and cut it widthwise to open the pod, then cut each pod in half lengthwise so that you have 4 little pieces.

Use about 1 piece per ounce in your jar. My little oil dispensers were a little over 9 oz. each and I didn't fill them all the way up. I wound up using 8 pieces per jar (i.e. 2 beans each).

Once the beans are in the jar, fill up to the desired level with the vodka and seal the top.

Allow the mixture to sit for about 30 days before use. This will allow the vodka to leach out enough of the vanilla from the beans and give you the full bodied vanilla flavor.

And that's it. Voila! I used up about 8 oz. of vodka and 2 beans for each jar. The jars themselves cost me about $1.50 each (though if you're making it for yourself, these could obviously be reused). Based on what each item cost me, this works out to about $6 per bottle. Reusing the bottle results in an actual vanilla price of $4.50 per 8 oz. bottle.

I purchased my last vanilla extract (imitation of course) from the store for $0.99 for a 4 oz. bottle. The 1 oz. pure vanilla extract bottle was on "sale" at that time for $6. Six dollars?!?!? Are you kidding me? That would make my awesome little 8 oz. bottles worth over $50 each!! Holy crap. Obviously you'll pay a little more to make real thing, but you're still not paying the ridiculous store price. And you get the good stuff.

It's worth it. Trust me.

*** Bonus information for you (thank Erin). Costco sells their pure vanilla extract for $7 for a 16 oz. bottle. Some reviews state that it contains sugar and is thus not pure vanilla extract, but it also gets high marks for flavor and quality by multiple users. So...if you don't want to wait the 30 days, you're set.

Pinterest Anger

This isn't a real post...it's just a venting of my outrage.

I have discovered something extremely annoying over the last week. A few of the recipes that I have pinned to Pinterest have disappeared. These are recipes that I verified as legitimate before pinning and even a couple that I have already completed.

Nothing is more frustrating than planning a meal only to discover that I have no idea how to make it.

So...I have been forced to alter the way I pin and the way I blog. From now on, I'll be jotting down my Pinterest recipes on index cards as I go and any recipes reproduced by me will be listed in full on the blog. Prior to this I tried to give each blogger full credit for their recipe posts...but if you're going to yank it away from me by turning your previously public blog to private....well, then you've lost that privilege. What a cruel thing to do when people just like your food.

I will still be giving credit where credit is due, but since I can't ensure that the links will always be active, I'll be laying it all out for all to see. It's only fair to share deliciousness with the rest of the world.

Caprese Grilled Cheese with Balsamic Basil Mayo

Fall is certainly here. We have that nice, crisp air and we spent our afternoon at a football game. Not to mention that there is a definite countdown on for Halloween. (That last one makes me both excited and nervous.)

When it comes to fall weather, there are two meals that stick out as staples around our house: soups and grilled cheese. Since I'm always up for trying something new (or even just experimenting with something tried and true) and because I know how much Collin loves caprese salad, I knew I had to try this Caprese Grilled Cheese with Balsamic Basil Mayo when I happened upon it.

It's relatively simple to make and doesn't require much in the way of ingredients.

What You'll Need:

8 slices of bread
8 oz. mozzarella, sliced or shredded
2 tomatoes, sliced
1 1/2 tbsp. butter
1/3 c. mayonnaise
1 tbsp. fresh basil, chopped
1 tbsp. balsamic vinegar


What You'll Do:

Preheat a griddle or skillet.

Combine the mayo, basil and balsamic vinegar.

Spread the mayo mixture on the bread. Add a slice of mozzarella and a couple of slices of tomato. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, to taste. Assemble each sandwich.

Butter the outsides of the sandwiches and grill for about 3 minutes on each side.

How much easier could it get?

This post is part of a series. For the other posts, click here.

Tex Mex Calzone

Today was the Boise State vs. Fresno State game. We had a great time, I got sun burnt (but only on the left side of my body), and we won. After the game, we had dinner with the family and I popped over to Patti's to pick up the first batch of pumpkins for this year's Halloween festivities. I'm super excited and I think this year may even be better than last year's pumpkin massacre.

With all of that good fun in my day, I just rolled in the door. I had grand plans for an easy project for tonight, but to be perfectly honest...I'm pooped. But never fear...I have something to share with you.

I've been trying out all sorts of new recipes over the last few months. I managed to force myself into them by building as many as I could into our meal plan. (By the way...we've done fairly well with making the food last. I did lose a few fresh items early on, but we're still rocking it. In fact, what was originally a 4 month meal plan...is going to last even longer! We'll probably be able to go nearly six months before we run out of the planned recipes. We're still going to the store for the perishables, but our food budget is very close to nil. It's nice.)

As with everything new to try, some are hits and some are misses. The Tex Mex Calzone was a freaking huge hit. It was delicious. I was a little intimidated to try it...a calzone just seemed like something that would be rough. I was wrong. It went fairly smoothly and I ended up with a dinner that we will absolutely be having again. Oh...and I have no idea where I found the recipe. It was just one I had scribbled down. So I assume it must have come from a magazine. That's my best guess... Regardless of where it came from, this one is totally worth trying!

Here's What You'll Need:

1 lb. ground beef
1/2 c. onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
3/4 tsp. cumin
1 1/2 tsp. chili powder
1/2 c. green bell pepper, chopped
3/4 c. salsa verde
1 can Pillsbury Grands biscuits
1 c. cheese, shredded
1 egg white, beaten


Here's What You Do:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Adjust your oven rack to the upper third of the oven. This will help the crust of the calzone cook crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside.

Heat a large skillet over medium high heat. Add your ground beef and cook for about 5 minutes, until most of the pink is gone. Add in your onion and garlic and continue to cook for an additional 4-5 minutes until the onions are translucent.

Add in your spices and peppers. Cook for 2 minutes.

Remove mixture from heat and stir in the salsa.

Roll out each biscuit to a triangle approximately 6" at the base. Divide biscuits into pairs. On biscuit one, place 1/2 cup of the meat mixture and top with 2 tbsp. of cheese. Brush egg whites on the borders of the dough. Place biscuit number two over the top and press the edges with a fork or spoon to seal. Make sure you get all the way around nice and snug so your insides don't leak out during cooking.

Place the calzones on a greased cookie sheet. Brush egg whites on the top of each calzone for a crispier crust.

Bake 10-12 minutes until golden brown.

And that's it! You can serve them whole or in halves. They turned out fairly large, so one half would probably be a decent portion for most...though it didn't stop me from eating the whole thing. I'm telling you...YUM!

Oh...and it doesn't hurt that it takes fairly decent pictures. The camera loves Tex Mex Calzone almost as much as I do.

This post is part of a series. For the other posts, click here.

California Style Chicken Cordon Bleu

Today/tonight we attended a wedding...we ended up being out a little later than planned. But...never fear...I have a post for you. It's kind of a craft...it's food craft. We can call it that, right?

This recipe is one of Collin's favorites. We found it when we were on our P90X kick a couple of years ago. (I have to tell you that the thought of us doing that again kind of makes me giggle...I am not the happiest camper when it comes to exercise.) But we did get a few good things out of it...this recipe was one of them. It's pretty simple, fairly inexpensive, and awfully tasty. And so I give you...a lot of ellipses...and...California Style Chicken Cordon Bleu.

What You'll Need:

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut in half
Salt & pepper, to taste
1 tbsp. oil
1 ham steak (8 oz.), cut into 8 portions
2 avocados, sliced
2 tomatoes, sliced
8 oz. Monterrey jack cheese, sliced

What You Do:

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Place chicken in ziplock bag. Pound out to a 1/2-3/4 inch thickness (I call this stress relief). Season with salt and pepper.

Heat oil (we use EVOO - extra virgin olive oil for those of you not familiar with Rachael Ray) in a saute pan. Saute chicken until browned on each side. Place in a lightly greased 9x13" baking dish. In the same saute pan, sear ham until browned. Layer chicken with ham, avocado, tomato and cheese.

Bake 10-15 minutes until chicken reaches 165 degrees and the cheese is bubbly. Serve warm.

See...easy. And yummy. Collin even said so when he saw what I was blogging about. So there you go. Post for the day complete...with 45 minutes to spare.

This post is part of a series. See the rest of the posts here.

31 Days of Creative Crafting : Day 1

I read a lot of blogs out there in the blogosphere. In fact, I might follow too many. I tend to spend a few hours each week just sitting on the couch and enjoying the craftiness and silliness and wisdom of other writers. It makes this whole blogging thing seem like a community.

So...as I was reading my collection of posts from last week, I happened upon a challenge. Turns out that there are hundreds of bloggers joining up for 31 days of blogging. They blog every day and link up to one another to share their posts. Brilliant! I think it's a good challenge for me...particularly because I feel like I've been heavily distracted recently and I haven't managed to get much done. Perhaps this will be the fire that I need to motivate me to finish up the bajillion projects I've started and not finished.

This is my goal...31 posts to create new crafts. There won't necessarily be 31 separate crafts...obviously I haven't provided you one with this post...but there will be pieces and parts that will eventually lead up to some finished projects. That excites me.

I'll be adding links to the rest of the posts as they come along...simply scroll to the bottom of this post for the links.

The primary focus of the projects for the first little bit may be Halloween and fall decorations. I haven't decided exactly what I'm going to work on yet, but I do need to bust out my decorations and get ready for my favorite holiday of the year. The pumpkin display is currently being brainstormed and I think that the theme has been finalized. Once I know for sure...I'll be sure to let you know. For those of you who have no idea what in the world I'm talking about...we decorate quite extensively for Halloween. Here's what we produced last year. (I'm quite proud of it by the way...)

So hang in there with me over the next 31 days and hopefully we'll see some good come out of forcing myself to get down to business.

Day 2 : Pumpkin Project Plan
Day 3 : 160 Date Night Ideas
Day 4 : Date Night Idea Box
Day 5 : Using the Mail Merge function in Publisher to make a set of cards
Day 6 : California Style Chicken Cordon Bleu
Day 7 : Happy Halloween Mantle Banner
Day 8  : Repeat Performance - Bottlecap Coasters
Day 9 : Family Monogram Board
Day 10 : Spooky Halloween Bottles
Day 11 : Halloween Newspaper Wreath
Day 12 : Halloween Rag Wreath
Day 13 : Tex Mex Calzone
Day 14 : Simple Stone Spiders
Day 15 : Make Your Own "Bat Mobile"
Day 16 : It's Pumpkin Prepping Time!
Day 17 : Trick AND Treat Buckets
Day 18 : Pumpkin Spiders
Day 19 : Painted Pumpkin Bats
Day 20 : Caprese Grilled Cheese with Balsamic Basil Mayo
Day 21 : Sunday Smorgasbord - Preview for the Remainder of 2012
Day 22 : Distressed Happy Halloween Placard
Day 23 : Trick or Treat Blocks
Day 24 : Pumpkin Preview 1 - Starting the Prep Work
Day 25 : Pumpkin Preview 2 - A Plethora of Painting
Day 26 : Pumpkin Preview 3 - Gettin' Handsy
Day 27 : Pumpkin Preview 4 - I Hate Your Guts
Day 28 : Carving Extravaganza
Day 29 : Pumpkin Preview #5 - Continuation of the Carving
Day 30 : Halloween Eve Preview
Day 31 : Happy Halloween!!!

Watermelon Gelato

Doesn't that just look like summer? It kind of makes me sad that it's almost over...kind of. I love fall. It's my favorite time of year. But I digress...

Patti has a crazy garden as usual this year and shared one of her watermelons with me. I couldn't just let it be eaten as boring watermelon slices, so I decided to try something new and make myself some watermelon gelato. It just sounded so good and creamy with the sweet of watermelon.

Now...we may have a lot of things in our kitchen, but we don't have an ice cream maker. That made this process a little more fun. You can certainly make this with an ice cream maker, but for those of you who are disadvantaged like me...fret not. It's still a possibility.

Now...granted...I may have used a gelato recipe, but I failed to compensate for the amount of water content in watermelon. So...it's more like a granita. You can see the grains pretty clearly in the close up pictures. Still delicious, but not quite the texture I had in mind. Maybe next time. I still consider it a success since it's very much edible and only my first attempt.

Even though it is perfectly yummy, I still couldn't help messing with it. I busted out some chocolate fudge syrup and drizzled it over the top. Oh...my...yum. I won't eat it without the chocolate now. Seriously. It's yummy.

So...if you have the hankering to try a little of this craziness at your house...

Here's what you'll need:

3-4 cups cubed/seeded watermelon
2 cups milk
1 + 1/2 cups heavy cream, divided
4 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar

Here's what you do:

1. Beat egg yolks and sugar in a large bowl until it becomes light and frothy.

2. Mix the milk and 1 cup of cream in a medium saucepan. Heat over low to medium heat until small bubbles begin to form around the edges.

3. Slowly add the warmed milk into the egg and sugar mixture, whisking constantly.

4. Return the mixture to the saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon. Continue to heat until the mixture thickens slightly and leaves a film on the back of the spoon.

5. Strain the mixture. (FYI...the strained out pieces can be refrigerated and eaten as a custard. Yum again.) Cover the mixture and chill for a minimum of four hours.

6. Blend the watermelon in a mixer until even and smooth. Add the custard mixture to the watermelon mixture and blend on low until combined.

7. Pour until a mixing bowl, cover and place in freezer. Remove from freezer every 1-2 hours and mix to break up forming ice.

8. After about 8 hours, add the remaining cream. Beat with a wooden spoon until consistent. (Using a hand mixer or blender will be too aggressive and can make the mixture more grainy.)

9. Serve with or without chocolate syrup (if you leave out the chocolate you're crazy). Store in freezer in covered container. Additional servings may require allowing the gelato/granita to thaw slightly before serving.

Mmm...chocolaty, fruity goodness...