Friday, January 27, 2012

Asian Lettuce Wraps

Here is a recipe I've been working on for a *long time* girls, so I hope you give it a try! After many trials & tweaks I think it's ready to share.

Asian Lettuce Wraps
Asian Lettuce Wraps

Have you ever eaten or made lettuce wraps before? I've had them a few times & they are tasty but always end up dripping sauce down my arm. And if you make them at home it is no fun trying to pry apart the leaves of Iceburg lettuce into usable pieces - it tears so easily! (our grocery store doesn't carry any fancy alternatives)

I decided to take a few aspects from different recipes we'd tried to try to create the perfect wrap - taking the healthy fillers from one, the tasty sauce from another, and the idea for using Romaine from a third. After adding a few extra tweaks to get rid of the drippy-ness, we have a winner!

Monday, January 23, 2012

Winter 8x10s

I switched out the decorations in our 8x10 frames pretty close to Christmas, so I wanted to do something that could easily work for 'winter' decorations afterward. Here they are before Christmas ~

Winger 8x10s, 1

The center column uses my "Christmas" ambigram & a drawing I did a few years ago. After Christmas I switched the center column with more snowflakes ~

Winger 8x10s, 2

I actually used 3 colors of blue paper for the backgrounds (the four corners are a different shade) but you can not tell at all in person. I blame our dim lighting!

I always enjoy making paper snowflakes for Christmas & they look even prettier framed! Here you can find my tutorial for cutting snowflakes from a few years ago. It's been very popular!

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Late, late...

No time like the middle of January to post Christmas foods, right? Ah well, I think I've given up on punctuality for now. Usually I have a lull in orders right after the holiday but not this year! Not a bad thing, just busy.

Spaghetti Casserole

We cooked one meal while we were staying over at Justin's parents' this Christmas & decided to try out a new recipe ~ a spaghetti casserole with cream cheese & topped with french onions! It was really delicious, we even made it again this week. (We did ditch the green bell peppers, but that was just my preference & they would work well if you like them.) You must try it!

Jello Glass Blocks, 1

We also brought a dessert we'd whipped up at home ~ some Jell-o with a fun stained glass, mosaic kind of look. I got the idea from my favorite food blog here & used some pretty Christmas colors.

Jello Glass Blocks, 2

They really did turn out just like the pictures & were pretty easy to make, but I don't know... they just didn't have that 'ooh' factor I was hoping for? I can't really explain why. A block by itself was rather pretty, but I couldn't figure out how to arrange a jiggly tower nicely on a platter. And I was expecting more of a cream-sicle taste from the addition of the sweetened condensed milk, but it really just tasted like straight Jell-o. I'm not sure that I would make it again, but it was fun to try.

Jello Glass Blocks, 3