Grilled Cheese Throw Down!

Tonight the Girls Team had two very special guests join them for Make It Happen Monday - the Boys Team! My brother is home this week for Spring Break, and for those of you who don't know, this guy makes a MEAN grilled cheese sandwich. So to celebrate having every member of the family home, we invited my brother and dad to join us as we hosted a Grilled Cheese Throw Down in the kitchen. The only rule: use cheese and bread and put a new touch on an old classic! 


Corey will explain the method behind his grilling madness:


A quick disclaimer: I agreed to do this so-called "Grilled Cheese Challenge" strictly so everyone would call me by my well-deserved nickname, "Grilled Cheese Master." I enjoyed it so much, I would request everyone to call me by this name the next time you see me. Thank you. My idea of a grilled cheese sandwich is simple. Two slices of bread. One slice of cheddar cheese. However, tonight I was posed with the challenge of being creative. Since my creative side isn't my strong-suit, I decided to go BOLD.

My creation was a grilled cheese with bacon on an entire loaf of French bread. Yes, an entire loaf.

"What is that? A giant bone? A giant toy? Who are these people around me? Actually, I don't care what it is or who they are. I want that. I WANT THAT!!!" 

-Lola Pomicpic

 The bacon cooking. Really something that I thought would make my dish over-the-top awesome, but was much more of a disappointment because it didn't add the flavor I was looking for.

 Pre-Oven. I wanted to make sure the bacon stuck, so I buried it in cheese. None of these pictures give the size of my sandwich justice. IT WAS A WHOLE LOAF OF BREAD.

 The product before the folding. The cheese didn't so much harden as it did solidify, making it less of a grilled cheese sandwich and more of....cheesey bread? With bacon on it? 

Instead of attacking the entire thing, I cut off a small piece and planned on eating the monstrosity piece by piece. This is the only piece I ate. 

Out of a whole loaf of bread.

Ah. The classic. I will make this for anyone. Anytime. Bring a pan. Maybe some cheese. I'll supply the bread. -CRP

Now let's head outside to the backyard and see what my dad whipped up:

Thanks ladies for letting me participate in your Make It Happen Monday adventure. Tonight we were to make our own variation of a grilled cheese sandwich. I reached deep into my culinary library to come up with my concoction. I wanted to combine my favorite meal of all time with the required cheese and bread ingredient but tofu and beef over rice with cheese and bread sounded gross. So I went with plan "B". The following is my journey into the grilled cheese world.

First, my ingredients. I started with a small slice of salmon that I knew would fit on two sandwiches but not overpower the other ingredients. Avocado and Mozzarella cheese with some juice from a fresh lemon finished off the contents of the meal. Of course, I had bread too, because a sandwich is not a sandwich without bread.

Since the kitchen was going to be crowded with all the other chefs  in there using the other appliances, I decided to use the BBQ as my choice of a cooking tool. I placed the salmon on the grill and covered it with freshly squeezed lemon juice.

While the fish was cooking, I sliced both the avocado and mozzarella cheese into small thin pieces so that they would fit nicely onto the sandwich with the salmon.

I buttered my bread slices and placed the avocado and cheese onto a plate and made my way out to the backyard where it was nice and quiet and not crowded. I placed the bread on the grill followed by a piece of salmon centered in the middle of the bread. I then put two slices of cheese and a generous portion of avocado on top of the fish. I put the second piece of buttered bread on top to complete the sandwich.

After grilling both pieces of bread until the outside was a golden brown, I took them off the grill and plated them. I made two sandwiches so I could share with the other members of the family.

This is the finished product. I thought it tasted pretty good. It was a fun meal to cook.

Let's check in with my mom and see how her food truck inspired sandwich turned out: 

For a long time if someone asked me "Do you want a grilled cheese sandwich?" I would say "What? Fat on bread? No thanks!" That changed when Corey became a grilled cheese prodigy around the age of 10. Watching him perfect his sandwich, helped me to appreciate what went into making the perfect grilled cheese sandwich! 

So for my contribution to this throw down (not a competition), I decided to try and replicate a delicious grilled cheese sandwich that I had enjoyed at a popular local food truck. That sandwich had apples, honey, almonds and cheese. I couldn't remember what cheese they used. I think it was Havarti and Brie? I can't remember but it was good!

Here are the ingredients I decided to go with, whole wheat bread, honey, Gouda cheese, and a granny smith apple. I caramelized some onions and included just a little bit of chopped walnuts.

Here I am slicing the apples really thin :)

I just put a little bit of honey on the inside of the bread. Then I layered the onions, cheese, apples, cheese, and sprinkled the walnuts on before adding the top slice of bread. This took a bit longer than I anticipated, so my bread turned out darker than I would have liked. I was a little disappointed. I know from watching the master, that the trick is to get your pan nice and hot, and then turn down the heat right before you put the bread on the grill! 

My plated sandwich. 

Even though the bread was darker than I like, this sandwich was delicious! I would definitely make it again. 

And lastly, my spin on grilled cheese:

For my grilled cheese sandwich, I melted pepper jack cheese with bacon and avocado on sourdough bread. Not too risky, but different nonetheless! 

Sourdough bread, avocado, pepper jack cheese and bacon.

Plate of ingredients waiting for the pan to heat up.

Grilling! Eventually, when my sandwich was too big to flip, I placed a plate on top while I was grilling to weight it down and flatten the sandwich...

Plated pepper jack grilled cheese by Casey!

And finally, it was time to eat! We cut each sandwich into quarters so everyone could sample each other's creations. Tater tots rounded out the classic meal :) It was fun to see what everyone came up with in creating their sandwich. They were all so different and all delicious!

Thanks to the Boys Team for joining us this week with creativity and enthusiasm! It was fun to invite all members of the family to Make It Happen with us this week :)

Revamped Napkins

After the fun we had making our place mats, the Girls Team decided to stay in theme and create our own napkin designs this week. My mom had about 20 white cotton napkins lying around, so we planned to revamp them by painting them using stencil designs. After a trip to Michaels, we came home with all-surface paint, stencil templates and stencil brushes. My mom loves pine cones and found the perfect sized pine cone stencil. I had hoped for a fleur-de-lis stencil, but had no luck, so I decided to create my own chevron stripe stencil out of poster board once we were back home.

After covering the kitchen table with a plastic table cloth from the dollar store, we were ready to paint! I tried to use the stencil brushes for my chevron pattern, but I think my oversized stencil required too much paint so the stencil brush wasn't really doing anything except for stretching out my fabric. Hmm. I hadn't planned on this NOT working! Luckily, my mom saved the day with a foam sponge brush. (In case you can't tell from past projects, this is quickly becoming my favorite craft supply. We've used it for so many projects!) As I sponged my napkins, I was quickly becoming impatient. I was flying through my paint, and had only purchased one bottle because I knew that when using a stencil brush, minimal paint was necessary. I was going to have to figure out a new game plan to salvage my napkin night! 

Meanwhile, over on the other side of the table, my mom was cruising along with her stenciling like she had done this before. Oh wait, she has! Let's have our pro demonstrate how it's done:

Because she had finished her four napkins in the time it took me to paint two of mine (and probably to avoid my grumbling), my mom went to the laundry room to rummage through our random craft supplies. Suddenly, she was back with a fleur-de-lis stencil that we didn't even know we had! My night was saved :) After finishing two napkins in the chevron pattern, and going through 3/4 of my paint, I was happy to create two, simple fleur-de-lis napkins.

In about 30 minutes, my mom created four pine cone napkins, and in about 1 and 1/2 hours, I created two chevron striped napkins and two fleur-de-lis napkins. Here are our final products drying:

Once the napkins had dried overnight, the Girls Team was very happy with how the stenciled designs turned out. According to Martha Stewart her paint is washing machine safe, but we still need to test that part out. My chevron napkins weren't quite what I was expecting. I ended up using so much paint on them that they dried very stiff. I imagine that if you tried to use them as a napkin, they'd work much like an exfoliator, blurg.

But! The Girls Team's creative minds are running trying to find something else to use them for so they don't go to waste. Maybe we will sew them together to make a bag? Or use them as environmentally friendly wrapping paper? What would you use them for dear readers? If you have any ideas, post them in the comments below!

Adding the stencil designs to the napkins was a great way to spruce up some plain napkins we had sitting around the house. Because we were recycling the napkins we already owned, this project was very budget friendly. All we purchased was the paint, brushes and stencil templates for about $15 total. Now that we have the supplies, the Girls Team wants to stencil some stationary in the near future to personalize our note cards!

Place Mat Party!

This Monday, the Girls Team decided to sew place mats to brush up on our sewing skills! It had been a while since my mom worked on a sewing project, and I was starting from square one!


First, we chose our fabric - 2 1/2 yards of decorator's fabric for the top piece, and 2 1/2 yards of cotton fabric for the backing. Adding to the excitement of selecting our fabric was the fact that we were able to use coupons at Joann's and get the prices down a bit. After washing and ironing the fabric, we were ready to cut!

The amount of fabric we purchased was for 8 place mats. So we cut 16 (21 in. by 13 in.) rectangles, 8 in the decorator's fabric, and 8 in our backing fabric. The Girls Team forgot how much math was involved with sewing, so the cutting step took a bit longer than we had planned. 

After cutting our fabric, it was time to pin! The place mats need to be sewn inside out, so we pinned the backing fabric onto the front side of the top fabric. 

Let the sewing begin! The Girls Team is lucky enough to have two sewing machines, so we could each work at our own pace without holding the other team member back. 

The seam ripper made quite a few appearances :)

After sewing three sides together, we left a 3 in. open space on the fourth side. This is where we would flip the place mat so it was no longer inside out. At first I was having a hard time with this because I was nervous I would accidentally rip the seams out...

But my mom taught me to be more aggressive with the fabric and to use a chopstick to help poke out all of the corners. Clever! 

The next step to this project was to sew the 3 in. opening closed by hand. There are no pictures of this process because we were busy sewing, and I was busy becoming frustrated. Did I mention I am a novice sewer? My other Girls Team member helped me out and hand sewed some of my place mats. Teamwork! 

My mom ironed her place mats before sewing the 3 in. opening closed which I think I would do next time. My place mats were a little more "fluffy" that hers, and I liked how flat and formal hers turned out in comparison. 

To make the place mats appear more finished, we sewed around the edges (3/4 in.) of our mats. Before I started this finishing seam, I ironed my place mats, but like I said, I think this step would have been more effective if I had ironed one step earlier. So, let's have my mom demonstrate this:

Three nights later, we had 16 finished place mats! Quality takes some time, so we can't always completely Make It Happen on Monday nights alone :)

My finished place mat:

My mom's finished place mat: 

Both Girls Team members really enjoyed this project. My mom has far more sewing experience than I do (her portfolio includes most of my awesome childhood Halloween costumes) so this was a great project for her to guide me through the basics, as she simultaneously brushed up her skills. 

If we were to make these place mats again, we would also use decorator's fabric for the backing. The thinner fabrics were a little tougher to keep in line and sew, and since we plan to wash these mats after using them, the decorator's fabric seems like it would hold up a bit better after frequent washing.

I like to think a MIHM project is successful if, after finishing it, I want to make the craft again in the future. And this week's projects fits that criteria for success! I would make these place mats again as gifts, and now that I have the basics covered, I am interested in branching out and seeing what else I can sew. My mom and I have some ideas up our sleeves, so stay tuned for more sewing projects from the Girls Team! 

P.S. Happy St. Patrick's Day! We're celebrating by snacking on special Irish Bread :)

Glitter Champagne Glasses

Sorry for the late post this week! This project required a few more steps than could be completed in one Monday night! I made Glitter Champagne Glasses after seeing these online. Normally, I don’t have very flashy style or taste, but something about the glitter flutes caught my eye and I knew I had to make these immediately!

First, I used this project as a great excuse to go to IKEA where I picked up 6 champagne flutes for $1.98 each.

I purchased the Martha Stewart Glitter Paint at Michael's for $9.99, borrowed blue painters tape from my dad and, because I did not want to purchase the $10 pack of Martha Stewart brand sponges, used make-up sponges I've had sitting around for a while. I also scrounged up some rubbing alcohol from the laundry room. Points for being resourceful and budget friendly!

Non-toxic glitter glue.

The less glamorous supplies.

To prep the champage glasses, I washed them and then cleaned the area I planned to paint with the rubbing alcohol. I decided I would make a set of glasses for my college friend's birthday in May, and a set for myself :) I also wanted to make a set for a friend who is a very proud alumni and enthusiatic sports fan of the University of Missouri. Just in time for March Madness celebrations! 

I taped off the areas of the glasses that I didn't want to paint, and on this one below, added the letters that would end up spelling out the school's infamous chant of "M-I-Z" then "Z-O-U."

Next, I began sponge painting the glitter onto the glasses. The first coat of glitter paint was a little hard to work with. There was a very fine line between actually adding the paint with the sponge, and then accidentally wiping it off. If I applied glitter to an area that had already been painted, it seemed to pull up the undried glitter from the glass. This is where my not-so-developed patience levels had to kick in! I ended up waiting an hour between coats so that the glitter glue could be applied thickly and evenly on the glasses.

At about 9:30 p.m., my 3rd coat of paint was just about dry, but I was out of crafting energy! (If I would have known I would have to do three coats to get my desired glitter effects, I would have started the first coat on Sunday. Just a tip if you plan to try this at home.) I let the glasses sit like this overnight to make sure everything was dry and secure:

The next night after work, I made sure the paint was dry and pulled the blue tape and sticker letters off. Then to cure the paint, I "fired" the glasses in the oven for 30 minutes at 350 degrees. The most important thing when curing the glasses is to put them in the oven when it is completely cool, letting the oven and glasses heat up together. Otherwise, the glasses will crack if they are placed in a pre-heated oven. Also, no glitter paint can touch ANYTHING (the oven, the pan, each other, you get the idea!) so I placed the glasses upside down to be sure:

After my glasses spent 30 minutes in the oven, I left them in there overnight on Tuesday to cool down completely. Then on Wednesday morning, I was finally able to say that my glittered champagne glasses were DONE! :)

Pink glasses for a very girly friend of mine...

Orange glitter for me so I can toast to the

Giants 2012 World Series win in style ;)

This year, Mizzou Basketball is ranked 5th heading into March Madness. Don't want to jinx anything, but I think my University of Missouri friend will be celebrating a few tournament wins with some bubbly champagne in these fabulous, Mizzou Pride glasses!

Overall, I really love the way my glasses turned out. After curing them in the oven, they are now dishwasher safe (although I plan to handwash anyway) and the Martha Stewart glitter paint is non-toxic...phew! My patience was tested a bit when glittering the glasses and waiting for coats to dry, so if I make these again, I will plan ahead for a two day project and start the base coat earlier. Now that I have the glitter paint on hand, I can make future sets of champagne glasses as gifts for under $5. And, this was the perfect budget friendly project to add a little sparkle to my barware collection!

Thanks to my fellow Girls Team member for taking the pictures with my iPhone :)