How to out smart my 4 year old: Kale Chips edition

My son Sean is a food dodging ninja. He pretty much wont eat anything not shaped like a dinosaur or nugget. He finds the most inventive excuses combined with oscar-worthy overreactions to side step every healthy food option I toss his way. Just to keep me on my toes he will randomly have cravings for a veggie but those are so far and few between they're hardly worth mentioning.

Kale is one of the most nutritionally dense foods you can eat so naturally it should be nearly impossible to get Sean to eat it right? UNTIL TODAY!!! I have defeated him! (Cue the silent victory dance behind his back so he doesn't see me and stop eating them out of spite). These Kale Chips are awesome, easy and super diverse. I went to the farmers market today and found kale for 1 dollar per bunch. QUITE the deal! My mom has been making her version of these for a while and they turn out good… but not quite as good as mine. (Sorry mom).

Ok, so you've gotten a great deal on kale from your local farmers market (shop local!), whats next? First, rinse it and pat it dry with a paper towel. Then, cut the kale into smallish pieces (see second picture below) with your kitchen shears and spread them out on a sheet pan. (Knives work too for cutting, the shears are just faster).

Next grab this bad boy:

It's a Misto Olive Oil Sprayer and it's the best invention ever. Yes, ever. I picked mine up at Bed Bath and Beyond for about 20 bucks but I promise, it's worth it. Just add the olive oil, pump and spray! This is a great way to coat the kale without saturating it. Toss the kale after spraying, re-spread it on the pan and spray again. The kale will be coated but not drippy.

You'll also need your spices (I used salt, garlic powder, lemon pepper, and onion powder). All together you only need about a teaspoon of seasoning so put a pinch to a sprinkle of each in a small bowl, toss 'em and you're good to go!  

Sprinkle the seasoning evenly over the kale and spray one last time just to set in the seasonings so they don't fall off onto the pan. Kale is great for really picking up the flavors of the spices so don't go crazy. A teaspoon is really probably more than enough. Finally I like to add some parmesan (which I shouldn't even have to say as it's pretty much a necessity with every recipe.) and BAM! Pop em in the oven.

Bake at 300 degrees for 20 mins tossing once halfway through and you'll come out with this:

Well, not exactly this, there will be more, the boys got to the plate before I could snap the picture but you get the idea. They should be nice and crispy and kind of disintegrate in your mouth (mmmmmmm). If they are at all limp, bake an extra 2 mins.

They're delish so don't be afraid. Look, if this kid will eat it you should too :)

So try em out, use your favorite spice mixture and let us hear it, I'm always looking for new ones to try out. As always, Happy Crafting!

Turning a Brown Thumb Green: The Beginners Herb Garden.

I love fresh herbs but to be honest, if it doesn't have water run to it, I can kill a plant faster than I can plant it. That being said, I can commit to one potted plant in my house. That's it. One. And I don't know about you but I can't cook with one herb forever, it's boring. 

So, here was the solution my mom came up with. 

It's simplicity is it's genius! One pot, 5 herbs. The beauty of this is that even the gardening-challenged can do it (successfully!) and keep it alive! 

First, take a strawberry pot (available at any home and gardening store or Walmart and Target around the spring time)  and fill it with potting soil. 

Choose your favorite herbs. Around this time of year you can find pretty much any herb you've ever heard of and more (In the picture above I have chocolate mint and onion chive, don't be afraid to experiment!)  

For the herbs that will be in the four smaller openings of the pot break off a small portion of the plant and push it into the opening as far as you can so that the roots are in the soil. 

 

Finally, plant the main herb in the top of the pot and water, water, water. 

What to do with the leftover plants from the four little sections? Make another! Give it to mom for Mother's Day or to a friend as a housewarming or just-because gift. 

That's it! It won't take all day gardening to have fresh herbs in your kitchen, this project won't take more than 15 minutes. And come on, what else can you do in 15 minutes? 

Oh, and a bonus tip; when you have fresh herbs but no recipe to use them in, chop them up and put a tablespoon in each cup of an ice cube tray. Fill it the rest of the way up with water and they will keep for months. Just thaw them out when you're ready to use them! 

Tried it? We want to see it! Send a picture or leave a comment and tell us how it went!     

Upcycle Old Garage Sale Art

For my first spring edition blog I’d like to start off with some thing near and dear to my heart… GARAGE SALES!!! Yep, It's that time of year everyone! As much as I love garage sales I have to be honest, one of my favorite things about garage sales is looking at all the random stuff and trying my hardest to imagine what on earth the inside of peoples homes must look like to  have gone along with some of the pictures laid out on the driveway. (I.E. a watercolor beach scene or a ship on stormy seas…) Where do you put that sort of thing? Well, I guess that’s why they’re always starring in your local yard sale. In the spirit of spring, I decided to rescue a few of these pictures from the dump and try and repurpose them into a modern DIY work of art.

 There are two main sections of this project, the picture itself, and the paper flowers that are attached last. For the first part you’ll need:

A framed picture without the glass

Scissors

A pencil

A sheet of cardstock

A mop style paintbrush (you can use any brush you prefer but I’ve found this one to be really great for getting an even thin coat of paint.)

A paper plate (plastic or Styrofoam are best for mixing paint without absorbing it)

Acrylic paints (any color you choose, I chose to go with shades of gray)

Scotch tape

A thin tip sharpie (not shown here but totally needed if you’ll be incorporating words into your art.)

For the Second part (the paper flowers) You’ll need:

Pages from a newspaper or old textbook (I didn’t have any newspaper so that old textbook I couldn’t sell back had to go! Old takeout menus or phone book pages would work also, just start cutting up any unimportant paper you’d otherwise throw out)

The paintbrush from the first part of the project

The paper plate from above (cleaned of any other paint colors)

A couple buttons in colors that coordinate with the colors you used in the first part of the project

Acrylic paint (also in colors that match the buttons)

A hot glue gun

Scissors

The first real step in this project is to decide what pattern you’re going to go with. I decided on a flower and blank spaces where I would write out the lyrics to a song I love. You can do literally anything you want which makes what you’ll come out with so much more awesome (you crafty crafter you!).  Draw out your design and cut it out, the more pieces you have making up the picture the better. (Draw rectangles of various sizes if you’ll be using words.)  

Learn from my mistakes: No matter what design you choose, draw and cut the pieces you’ll be painting over a little less than a half inch larger than you actually want them to be. I know it sounds like a lot but trust me, the paint smears about an eighth to a quarter inch under the cardstock pieces once you start painting. This will make the relief pieces of the picture you’ll see smaller than you want them to be unless you compensate for this in the beginning. (Frustration number 2 of the day)   

Ok, so if you’re working with a picture with glass, remove it, if the picture isn’t stapled into the frame, remove the frame also to make painting easier on yourself. Unfortunately, this picture was stapled to the frame and when I tried to remove the staples it was tearing pieces out of the matting… (Frustration number one of the day) If your picture was as cheaply made as mine, just leave the frame on but use Frog Tape (aka a painters best friend that is FAR superior to all other painting tapes) to make sure you don’t get the acrylic where you don’t want it.

Take smallish pieces of the scotch tape and roll it sticky side out into tubes and stick them to your cut out pieces (as seen above). Place each piece and keep in mind that the paint WILL bleed under the pieces a good bit (The bleed gives a cool textured/imperfect look. If you don’t want that, I would suggest cutting frog tape to line each piece of your cut out to get a really clean line.)

Ok so once you’ve gotten to this point you’re ready for the fun part. Painting!! Mix your colors on your paper plate doing the darkest shade first, it will be your base color that will cover the entire painting surface. Use your brush to LIGHTLY cover the sections of cut out first. You will be doing 2-3 coats so I really cant emphasize the LIGHTLY part too much. You’ll see streaks through your paint, which is just fine!

 This is how mine looked as I started, see how you can actually see the streaks of the cream at the edges of the cutouts? That’s just fine, (possibly even a little too thick but hey, can’t go back right?) Just go with it! Finish your base color over the rest of the painting and add a good amount of white to your base color mixture for it to be noticeably different when painted over the base. Use this second shade to add a little dimension and accent the places you want people to look the most.

I felt like 2 colors was still a little flat so I added a few streaks of white to really make it pop. Finally… the reveal!  Take off the pieces while the paint is still wet. If you wait until the paint dries it will glue the cutout pieces to the picture and they’ll tear when you take them off leaving behind pieces of paper… not what you want.

As you can see, this was my first run at this sort of thing and I didn’t take the advice given above; I cut the pieces the exact size of the amount of the picture I wanted to see through the paint and the color smudged so you don’t get as much of the relief as I would have liked, especially in the spaces I left for the words. But again, can’t take it back so go with it! My last step for this part of the project was to take a THIN sharpie and write out the lyrics in the open spaces (go over the words 2-3 times letting the ink dry in between. I did some in cursive and some in regular print. Then leave it alone for a good hour. If it still looks too light, go over it one more time, sharpie really soaks in and takes forever to dry.

If you were able to remove your frame, lucky you! Just spray paint it with whatever color you choose, spray your picture with a matte spray varnish (Mod Podge is an awesome option available at Walmart for like 3 dollars) reassemble and BAM! YOU’RE AN ARTIST! If not, find a piece of paper the size of your opening and cover your work in order to spray paint your frame, then remove the paper and spray varnish the whole shebang! DONE!

If you’re like me and looking for a little something more, go ahead and continue on with the last little sub-project of making the paper and button flowers.   

Take one of the pages and paint it your accent color. Wait for it to dry, (it will crinkle a little which is great!) then cut out 2 circles with about an inch and a half difference in the diameters. Scallop some of the edges, make some of the petals more square or just leave them as circles but crinkle the edges, it’s really up to you what look you like… have fun with it!  Repeat these steps with the unpainted page.

Hot glue the pieces together alternating colored and uncolored and finish with the button then glue the whole thing to the picture wherever seems right!

Note that you never put the glass back on if you’re adding paper flowers, if you’re not, you can put the glass back in the frame.  Don’t throw that glass away! Ill find something for you to do with it soon…

Did you try it?? Send me a picture I’d love to see what you came up with and any feedback or tips you may have!

Thanks and happy crafting!

Nicole 

Adventures in DIY

Hey Everyone! 

First, thanks for joining me on this. I want to take this first opportunity to explain a little what I'm trying to do here. To put it simply, as a society we've gotten dumb and cowardly. WAIT! Don't leave! This isn't some political or societal statement, it's a fact. As our culture has gotten more technologically advanced, we've gotten in the nasty little habit of paying for things we used to be taught to do as we grew up. Things like sewing, painting your house, or planting a garden are skills that were once learned as commonly as reading, writing, or math and are now skills we simply don't have time for (or feel unqualified to try). Even things that should be fun like creating (or altering) items or recipes we've gotten so used to just buying seems scarier than that boogey man made out of bug filled potato sacks from the Nightmare Before Christmas. Don't lie, that guy still freaks you out.  

Well I say fooey on that! I want to learn those things and they say the best way to really learn something is to teach it so that's what this blog is about. I want to encourage people to try to do things themselves when they would usually go to a store or call a professional. In order to restore some of our long lost knowledge and gumption, I will be researching by every means necessary on how to do anything I can think of. 

Scratch that, anything we can think of. 

Take a look at my work, if you see something you like and would like to buy it, great, I love creating things that people feel connected to. If you have something in mind but you don't see it on my site yet, even better! Email me and we'll design it together. If you see something on my site or on another site you'd like to learn how to do, OK, now you're really getting into the spirit of this! That's the best! I want your ideas, inspirations and vague inclinations so that I can help put a little more umph back into the phrase "common sense".Let's make that mean something again. 

Don't be scared, we'll do it together. If it doesn't work the first time, do what I do and break something then try again! It's therapeutic, trust me. But it all starts with an idea, nothing's to small so hit that little comment button and put it out there! 

Thanks, and wish me luck!