Painted Flag Mason Jars

Ever have a crafting day where nothing goes right? Well I certainly do and this project falls under that category... good grief I struggled! I'd seen this mason jar project numerous places and thought it was cute - and then my sister mentioned she saw it and was hoping I would make them for her. Sure thing sissy, I'm always happy to have a purpose for crafting haha.

It started out fine, if you count going down to the basement to get 3 pint jars from storage and knocking over an entire shelf of plastic containers fine. And that was just the beginning. I couldn't find navy paint at 2 different craft stores so figured I'd just make my own by adding black to some brighter blue. That actually worked, but still - why can't I just buy navy paint? So 2 jars get painted white and one navy; there was something wrong with my white craft paint and it ended up going on uneven and gooey. I tried to speed up the drying process by hitting it with the hair dryer but it just looked bad - fortunately I used regular old acrylic craft paint so it was easy to wash off the jars and start again with fresh white paint and the second time I painted them went better. I ended up painting all 3 jars with a second coat. After thoroughly dry I taped off the areas where I wanted to paint the red stripes using washi tape as recommended - I read that blue painters tape would pull the paint off the jar. Guess what, washi tape pulls the paint off too...ugh. 

I couldn't get the tape to stick tightly around the curved edge of the
top of ball jar, so I used a fat rubber band as a guide

this is what the jar looked like after removing the washi tape...a little messy!
I touched up the area where the red went into the white and where it peeled
the paint off with a small brush.

I used a tip I saw online to make the star stamp and hot glued a couple foam stars to the end of a wine cork, yes - that worked! Great idea I will def use again. Then dip the stamp in white paint and stamp over the navy, except the jar is round so I had to press the edges of the star onto the jar - you won't get nice crisp star edges doing that but I decided the rustic handmade look is what I was going for and not try to make them so perfect. 

glue foam stars to a wine cork to
make the stamp

One site I found with directions said when they were completely decorated and dry she lightly sanded them in places to make them look distressed, I know why she did that - cuz they don't look so good and you want to rough them up a bit to help with the illusion that you meant for them to look beat up!

after I lightly sanded them to give them a "distressed" look.
Actually I was distressed more than the jars!! 

After sanding I sprayed them with clear shiny sealer so they will hopefully last forever and I don't have to remake them for her! I'm not saying this isn't a cute or worthwhile project - once completed I actually really like them, but let's just say that after having everything go wrong I'm not going to be making another set!

once dry, I took them outside and sprayed with a clear sealer

2021 update: my sis still brings this out every year, she put silverware in them a couple weeks ago for Memorial day and they still look great. It's making me rethink making another set - enough time has gone by that I'm willing to try again LOL!! 

Asparagus Strawberry Salad

This is a simple delish salad that my nieces make - asparagus, strawberries, and poppy seed dressing, it's only 3 ingredients and is the perfect summer salad. 

As usual I don't have amounts, just wing it! Cut up asparagus in bite- sized pieces and blanch for a couple of minutes (you don't want it mushy! It should still be a little crunchy). After it's cool put it in a bowl with some chopped strawberries then mix in poppy seed dressing. That's it and it's really really good - it sounds a little weird I know, but it's good!  Promise :)

Glitter Balloons

I posted yesterday about Paige's graduation and the circle garland I made to decorate her station. Here's the glitter balloons that I made to go above the paper topper across the stop of the mirror - easy and cute!

Blow up a balloon to whatever size you want. Squeeze Elmers glue where you want the glitter to stick, then brush it around evenly. Sprinkle on coarse chunky glitter and hang it up to dry.

I used clothespins attached to bamboo skewers to hold the bottom of the balloon and then stuck the end of the stick into pegboard that I have up in my craft room. Not fancy haha but it worked. Do whatcha gotta do to make it work :)

Paper Circle Garland

My niece Paige is graduating from cosmetology school tonight and asked me to help decorate her station for her last day. Hello, of course I'll help - happily! Her colors are black, gold, and cream - she didn't care what we did as long as it's "creative and cool", and doesn't involve tissue paper - apparently that's what everyone does which makes it not creative and cool.

I got the idea for circle garland on Pinterest, some for purchase and some homemade - of course I'm going to make it (!) - it'll be cute to drape over her mirror. Initially I planned to hot glue the cut out circles to some black and white bakers twine I have, but then I saw someone sewed the circles together and I wanted to try that - don't think I've sewn on paper before...

The hardest part of this project was cutting out the circles - and that wasn't hard, just time consuming. I have a circle rotary cutter and that was helpful, you could do them by hand but that's gonna take even longer of course. I cut out 21 small 1 inch circles from 3 different cardstock papers (black, shiny gold, and cream), for a total of 63, 6 2" circles (total 18), and 3 3" circles. Then I figured out the pattern I wanted which ended up being one 2" circle then 3 small circles, interspersing the largest circle every now and then, and started sewing - between every circle I continued to sew for a second so there is a little space between the circles.

The sewing of the garland didn't take long at all and look how great this turned out! I'm going to be making these often now in different colors - and will be on the lookout for pre-cut paper circles!

To finish her station we put up the shiny gold paper across the top and used black letter stickers to put her name on it, then attached black balloons that I decorated by brushing on glue and sprinkling with chunky gold glitter. I'll show you how I did the balloons and what the final project looks like tomorrow after I take pictures tonight!

my mock up of the plan for her station 

Square Foot Container Garden and Pallet Update

Remember when I said that it's ok to use old seeds but you are supposed to proof them first to see if they'll sprout but I wasn't spending time doing that? Well here's what happens if the seeds won't sprout - nothing, that's what haha! Oh well, so I wasted a couple weeks. I bought fresh cilantro and parsley seeds, they should sprout shortly now. The rest of the pallet garden is filling in nicely.

replanted the bottom with fresh parsley
and cilantro seeds. 

My square foot container garden (click here for the original post) is booming - it's obviously loving the hot weather we've been having. Look at how much it's grown in less than 3 weeks! I'm going to get a salad out of here very soon, yay! Now if I can just keep the squirrel out of it, he's been digging (and eating the wild bird seed) and generally being a nuisance - Sarge has been quite helpful chasing him off. Unfortunately he thinks he's supposed to chase the birds away from the feeder too...um, thanks Sarge.

And here's how the tomato garden is doing after only a week. Click here to see how it looked last week when I planted it! I'm so excited :)

Mini Cheesecakes

So remember when I made raspberry and blueberry topping for my niece's boyfriends birthday to serve over cheesecake (click here for that post - the topping is so good)? Yeah, well sure enough I forgot to take it with me that night so we ate the cheesecake plain. Actually I bummed some bottled raspberry sauce from the waitress at the restaurant we went too...duh. My bad. Now I have all this topping and wondering what to do with it! I decided to make mini cheesecakes and top with the sauce - and they turned out really good. Whew...I'm glad I could use it so I would stop eating it by the spoonful every time I opened the fridge.

I found a basic recipe that sounded good online at allrecipes (click here for the recipe), the only thing I changed is the crust. Instead of vanilla wafers I made a graham cracker version - in the food processor I ground up graham crackers (note: I used 1 sleeve which held 9 crackers and ended up with exactly one cup - wonder if they package them this way on purpose?), added 4 tablespoons of melted unsalted butter, 4 tablespoons of sugar, and a small pinch of coarse salt and mix well. This made about twice as much as I needed so maybe half the ingredients if you make them.

Put about a teaspoon of the crumb mixture into the bottom of mini cupcake pan (note: I used paper liners which made transporting and clean up so much easier), press gently. Then continue with the recipe.


After they were cooled I removed a little bit from the top using a small spoon, just enough to make a little well in the top of each cheesecake. Spoon some topping into the well and slightly covering the top - too much topping and it'll run off after you remove the paper, not the end of the world certainly but it makes them a little messy. Hmmm, but then you get to lick your fingers... so maybe you do want to add more topping... haha!

• original recipe (see above for the different crust I made)

• 1 (12 oz.) package vanilla wafers
• 2 (8 oz.) packages cream cheese
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 t. vanilla
• 1 (21 oz.) can cherry pie filling

1. Preheat oven to 350'. Line miniature muffin tins with miniature paper liners. 

2. Crush the vanilla wafers, and place 1/2 t. into each paper cup.

3. In a mixing bowl, beat cream cheese, sugar, eggs and vanilla until light and fluffy. Fill each miniature muffin liner with this mixture, almost to the top. 

4. Bake for 15 minutes. Cool. Top with a teaspoonful of cherry pie filling.

Roasted Garbanzo Beans

I roast just about everything - asparagus, green beans, broccoli, carrots, cherry tomatoes (click here to see that post, so good)...you name it I've probably tried to roast it. One thing I really love to roast is canned garbanzo beans - have you tried them? Great to add to a salad (it's especially good in my almost Greek salad, click here for that recipe), serve as a side dish with chicken or pork, or eat plain as a snack - they get crunchy and remind me of popcorn. They really remind me of popcorn if you turn up the oven too high and they start exploding and popping in the oven! For real, be careful opening the oven door if you hear them start popping - they'll fly around just like air-popped popcorn!

Rinse well and drain a can of garbanzo beans. Spread out in a single layer on a baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with coarse salt. Put in the oven 350'-400' (I usually start high and if they start popping I turn the oven down) and let them roast until they are done to your liking. Sometimes I just do them for a few minutes so they are hot but not too crunchy, other times I leave them in longer...and sometimes I forget they're in there and they get really really crunchy and those are good too! Just experiment to see how you prefer them - they taste much different after roasting them.

Pets, Paint, and the Inspiration Station

Candy and I took a class last night at our local "Painting with a Twist".  I've never been but I know that usually everyone in class paints the same picture and there is wine if you want it - but this was different ... it was "pet edition"; so we had to send in a photo of our pet for them to sketch out for us and then everyone painted their own different canvas. Let's be clear here - I am not a painter. I would love to be. It's pretty much the one crafty/artistic thing that I would love to be able to do (insert mental image here of woman standing at an easel, paint pallet in hand, gazing out at the sea or whatever - I so want to be that woman...) but just don't have it. Enter Candy telling me about this fun spin on traditional Painting with a Twist (and the promise of wine while painting) and I'm in. All day long I'm in. 

Here's the photo of Sarge that I submitted for them to sketch on the canvas I was going to paint - our neighbor Kim in CA took it and it's one of my favorites. So hard to get a detailed picture of an all black dog with dark brown eyes!

I honestly went into this thinking there is no way I'm going to be able to paint a picture that actually looks like Sarge. Or even looks like a dog for that matter. So I wasn't worried at all - whatever happens happens. 

this is just for the background! oh no...

But then I got there and started hearing the instructions and had an immediate stressful "oh no what was I thinking" moment... no way this is going to turn out good. The very first thing was choosing and painting a background. Candy wisely chose solid black and was given one color - black - on her paper plate...I picked a turqoise-y color and was told I'd have to mix it, for real they gave me 5 colors to blend together until I got the background color I wanted. Uhhhh....

it's like paint by numbers...without the numbers...

I didn't take a lot of pictures because I was concentrating and so overwhelmed - here is the pencil sketch I started with, which is very similar to a paint-by-number except no one tells you what color to paint. I got a different paper plate full of the colors I would need: white, black, blue, brown, cinnamon. I wish I would have taken a picture of the plate by the time I was done - it was a solid mass of blended together colors, a total mess (as were my hands, paint was everywhere!).

nope, she's not worried at all...!

Candy, as usual, had this project completely under control and wasn't stressed out in the least. I'm gonna need to learn some things from her about not being such a control freak and just having fun. She kept trying to be encouraging - "oh you are doing really good" - but I told her to "shut up, stop trying to make me feel better". I don't think she'll ever let me forget I told her to just shut up already :)

well at least it looks like a Scottie...whew! 

3 hours later. If you told me I could actually finish this project in 3 hours I wouldn't have believed you - but look! It almost, sorta, kinda, looks like Sarge. Or at least looks like a dog anyway...

Sarge and Buddy

Final thought: their beverage/wine counter is called the 'inspiration station'. We have a "beverage center" at home (ha, we have a tiny fridge with drinks in it and a cabinet full of glasses around it that has the very grand title of "beverage center") that is now forever going to be known as the Inspiration Station. It's perfect and makes me laugh!

Greek Inspired Salad

This is my spin on a Greek salad, it's so good and fresh I want to share it. Simple and delicious.

Ingredients:

• cucumbers
• cherry tomatoes, halved
• avocado, cut into bite-sized pieces
• feta cheese, crumbled
• spinach, roughly chopped
• olive oil, white vinegar, coarse salt and pepper

note: like my exact measurements? It all depends on how big you want to make your salad! I do about equal parts sliced cukes and halved cherry tomatoes.

Peel, remove a bunch of the seeds,and slice a couple cucumbers. I really like to use the little baby ones - you can skip peeling and seeding with those, but this time Dave went to the store for me and bought pickling cucumbers which worked just fine.

Put the veggies in a large bowl. Drizzle with olive oil, splash with vinegar, season to taste. Once again I don't measure, just add how much you want! Add feta and toss.

I've been making this salad often as a side to grilled chicken or steak, it's also really good with grilled tuna or shrimp. A great summer salad.

Whiskey Sour "Lite"

I found this recipe for whiskey sours made with Crystal Light so it saves some calories - that counts for my new healthier category, right? HA! Not sure about that...

I really like these, but I'll warn you that they are really sour. Everyone else who tried them didn't enjoy how sour they are but I like sweet/tart so they are fine with me. The recipe calls for 3/4 cup of lemon juice, next time I will start with less and add more to taste. My mouth is watering and doing that puckering thing and I'm wincing just thinking about the sourness haha - love it!

I found the recipe on Kraftrecipes website, click here to see the full article.

Mix 1/3 cup water with 1 packet (the one that makes 2 quarts, not individual packet) of Crystal Light lemonade until it's dissolved. Stir in 1.5 cups whiskey and 3/4 cups (or less!) lemon juice. Serve over ice, garnish with maraschino cherries if desired. Makes 8 servings, 110 calories each.