Homemade Egg Rolls

 

Yesterday my sister came out with some Egg Roll Wrappers that we used to make homemade cracker/chips with but when she had some extra wrappers we decided to go ahead and make some egg rolls, too. Usually when you think of Egg Rolls you think of grease but we baked these so the end result was a nice, non-greasy egg roll. Here are the ingredients she used: 

 

-Fried hamburger

-Shredded cabbage

-Chopped carrots

-Spices... garlic, salt, pepper, ect.

-Egg roll wrappers

-Olive oil

 

Fry & season the hamburger until done. Add cabbage & carrots and cook until the vegetables are tender. 

 

Put a small amount of the meat mixture onto an egg roll wrapper...

 

Swaddle them up like a baby... :)

 



 

Put them on a pan & brush with Olive oil...

 

 

Bake at 350 for around 7 minutes, flip over and bake for another 5-7 minutes.

 



Enjoy with my Homemade Sweet & Sour Sauce!!

 

~Short

Homemade Sweet & Sour Sauce

Yesterday my sister was here and she set out to make egg rolls. Now, to me, eating egg rolls without sweet & sour sauce is like eating fries without ketchup.  It's just not right. So when I saw that we didn't have any sweet & sour, I set out to make some myself. This is what you will need:

 

6 Tbs brown sugar

1/2 cup ketchup

3 Tbs apple cider vinegar

1/4 cup water

2 tsp corn starch

 

I mixed the brown sugar, ketchup & vinegar together in a pan and then dissolved the corn starch in the water. 

 



Once the ketchup mixture was hot, I slowly added the cornstarch & water. Stirring until thick.  

 

Serve with Homemade Egg Rolls!!

 



 

~Short

Christmas Goodies

Christmas time is sneaking up on us and even though we tend to keep Christmas pretty low key, there are still extra festivities that keep us busy. One thing that I try to do every year is make a few goodies to pass out to a few of our neighbors. This is what we made this year.

 

 

I don't really know the name of these things, they aren't really cookies but they aren't really candy either. The girls decided they should be called Snowflake Crunch because our crackers were shaped like snowflakes. I thought that sounded like a great name. :) Recipes for these are floating all over Pinterest but I got mine off of this blog. They are super easy to make and all you need is 3 or 4 ingredients.

-Ritz crackers

-Peanut butter

-Dipping chocolate

-Marshmallow cream (optional)

 

Start by spreading peanut butter on a cracker and if you use marshmallow cream, spread that on another one and then put then put the two together. Other wise, just put peanut butter on one and then add a top like you see in this picture. 

 

 

The girls had fun putting hats on all of them.

 

 

Here they are, all ready to be dipped in chocolate...

 

 

I don't have a double broiler so I put water in a big pot, put a smaller pot in the water, and then put  the chocolate in the small pot. This melts the chocolate without having to worry about it burning.

 

 

The happy baker...

 

 

  Once the chocolate is melted enough you can start dipping the crackers and then lay them  out on wax paper.

 

 

 

 

And that's it... they are super easy to make!! 

 

 

The girls had fun making them and even more fun eating them!!

 

 

And then we were off to visit some of the neighbors!!

 

 

 

~Short

 

Glory to God on the highest, and on earth peace, good will towards men. Luke 2:14

 

Nativity Scene

I kind of claim Sunday afternoons as craft time around here and today we decided to make a nativity scene. I have been wanting to buy one for the girls to play with but seriously, have yall seen how much nativity scenes cost?? I didn't want to pay much for one which pretty much left me with only one option... making one myself. Here is what we came up with.

 

 

We started by having my husband chop a dowel rod into different size pieces for our people & animals. I made all the people basically the same size, give or take a 1/2 inch or so for variety. Then I sanded down the edges to get them nice and smooth. Holding a crazy girl on your lap while doing this is optional. :)

 

 

I wanted to paint the heads a pretty neutral color so I just used white with a little bit of gold mixed in with it. You could also use brown or maybe even a little black if you didn't have gold.

 

 

I let the girls paint the tops of the pieces, which will end up being the neck/shoulder part of the person. It doesn't matter if the paint gets down further because you will be covering the rest up with felt later.

 

 

After the paint was dry, we added a dab of hot glue...

 

 

And attached a head. I got these balls at Wal-Mart in the craft section. It was a pack of 12 for around 1.50. This was the only thing I didn't have on hand so it was a pretty cheap project.

 

 

Then I let the girls paint the heads...

 

 

We cut out squares of felt big enough to wrap around each body. This one was for an angel so we used white but we used all kinds of colors for the other people.

 

 

I cut out a half circle and cut slits on the front half for the hair. I didn't worry about covering the whole head with hair since they had scarves put on top.

 

 

Here is a piece I cut out for a scarf...

 

 

I didn't take a picture of the wings but then you just hot glue all the pieces on and you have angel!! The other people we made very similar but just changed a few minor details... belts instead of wings, crowns instead of scarves, ect.

 

 

And that's a look at our "less then 5.00" nativity scene!!

 

Cardinal Banner

Ok, this may just be the quickest craft ever... I got this idea out of Family Fun magazine & I am pretty sure that if you would go to their website they would have a printable template you could use to make a banner. I just cut the pieces out myself, made a pile of birds, a pile of wings, buttons, beaks, ect. and the girls assembled them while I hot glued them together and then on to a piece of ribbon. I don't have many Christmas decorations so this was a quick, easy way to add to my collection.

 

Here is the bird bodies, wings & eyes. I made a variety of wings for the girls but it would be fine to make them all the same.

 

Here are the beaks. They wanted some with opened beaks & some with closed.

 

 

And here is the finished product, glued on to  a piece of ribbon.

 

 Also, you can see that we added a little cottage for our woodland animals. I got an old book, covered the cover with felt & then just cut out door, windows, ect. The girls had fun picking out what colors to make things. The trickiest part was getting the smoke to stand up but you can see on the picture below that I used a couple toothpicks to help me out.

 

 



~Short

Winter Woodland Animals...

Today I was looking through a Family Fun magazine while rocking the little man to sleep and came across a cute picture of some little forest animals. All I had to say to the girls was `lets craft` and they were on a mission to round up scissors, glue, felt, ect. Here is a peek at what we did...

 

First, I dug out my stash of toilet paper rolls that I have been stuffing with dryer lint to use for fire starters next time we go camping. The girls were eager to clean them out... they will pick woodland creatures over fire starters any day. :)

I cut a square of felt out and wrapped it around a tp roll.

 

They had fun running the tube of glue... if I would be doing them myself I would use hot glue since it dries so much faster but this worked well with the girls.

 

Then, I tucked the back side in to cover the hole up and also to give me a point to work with and make ears out of it. Then I just pulled and cut until I got the look I wanted. I also cut out little pieces for the face, tail, feet, ect. I didn't take pictures of those steps because they are very easy to just look off of the finished project and cut them out.

 

Putting some glue on the back for a tail.

.Once we finished the fox, we did a raccoon. Everything was pretty much the same except for different color felt. Here we glued stripes on to the tail.

 

Cut the excess off...

 

And here we have it, a fox and a coon. 

Her face says it all... Hopefully more to come in the next few days. :)

~Short

Kitchen Makeover

                                               

This summer our stove top quit working which pushed us into a complete kitchen makeover, something we had been wanting to get done ever since we bought our house nearly 8 years ago. We had re-done most of the other rooms in our house but the kitchen looked like a huge project to us. So huge that we preferred using it the way it was instead of tackling it. But, since we were always `just about` to do it, I didn't ever want to waste my time painting because I knew that when we re-did it, there would be some remodeling involved that would mess up any painting I did. So... for nearly 8 years we left it like it was. Then this summer our stove top stopped working. Our stove was on the counter and you can see the oven here on this picture up in the cabinet. Since it was so much cheaper to buy a one piece stove/oven we knew our remodeling time had come...

I wasn't totally fair with the Before picture since I took it when the kitchen was messy but it really wasn't pretty even if it was clean. :) 

 

One of the first things we did was take  the oven from out of the cabinet, cut the cabinets off right above where the oven had been, plus, cut the back half of that cabinet off so that it would sit flush with the others. You can tell how far the cabinet used to stick out by looking at the paint on the ceiling. It was amazing how much just getting that cabinet/oven out of there opened up the kitchen!!

If you look closely, you can tell where the stove piece had been. It was right beside the new stove & on this picture we had already taken it out and put in a piece of plywood.

 

The girls thought it was so fun when I put them on the counter with a bunch of Sharpies and told them to get creative. :) 

 

We put up plastic over the big doorway between the kitchen & our den to keep the dust confined to the kitchen & then we sanded everything down.(When I say we I actually mean my dear husband) Bless his heart, he even  put sheet rock mud on the walls and sanded them back down so now you cant tell we have paneling in there.

 

Here we had the ceiling painted, the walls, the inside of the cabinets & were working

on the outside of the cabinets.

 

And here we are... cabinet doors painted & back on, new counter top, a little wall built for beside the stove (the first stove we got didn't work right so when we took it back, we exchanged it for a black one) And then I made some curtains for the window & painted the clock. 

 I got my inspiration for my colors while vacationing in Honduras. Down there all the buildings are either clay brown or concrete gray. So the walls are clay brown & the cabinets are concrete gray. And then they have signs painted all over their stores so I painted a 7-up sign on the wall.... I am not quite done with it yet.

The clock...

 

And a closer up of the sign...

 

 

 

 

So there you have it... Before 

 And After!!

Here you can see a little bit what the clock looked like before it was painted. You can also see where he cut the valence above the sink into an arch. Also, on either side of the sink there were 5 little drawers that he took out and made into cabinets. The one is actually a pull out garbage can now, which I love!! :)

 

~Short