Glittered Easter Eggs

Happy Easter MIHM readers! This week the Girls Team was feeling festive and went back to our roots to create a unique Easter centerpiece for my kitchen table. We grabbed our favorite craft supply, decoupage, and were on our way tackling Martha Stewart's Glittered Eggs.

I'll let Martha  Stewart give you the strict directions if you are choosing to follow along at home. Her Glittered Egg How-To was very easy to follow (unlike some of her craft instructions!). All we needed for this project were some fresh eggs, decoupage, glitter and a foam brush.

Once we had gathered all of our supplies, it was time for the hard part - blowing out the eggs. Because my Girls Team partner thinks eggs are the most disgusting food on the planet, my dad helped me with this part. (In her defense, this step in the process was really gross, and I love eggs!)

First we used a nail to poke a small hole in both ends of the egg. This was challenging because too much pressure on the nail would cause the egg to crack or break. After doing this, we opened up a paper clip to poke around inside the egg, breaking up the yolk. This makes it easier to blow the yolk out of the egg (apparently).

 

Once both of the holes are made, we used a small straw to blow into one hole. If you're doing this correctly, the yolk will come out of the hole at the bottom of the egg and the egg will be totally empty inside. This part was so hard! It wasn't as quick and easy as Martha made it sound, and if you applied too much pressure the egg would crack or slip out of your hands and break. 

 

We planned to clean out six eggs, but by the second one I was feeling light headed. My dad helped me so I could take a few minutes to breathe between each egg. (Who knew MIHM was hazardous to your health?!) With his help, it took about 30 minutes to finish this step.

 

 

When the yolk was cleaned out, the egg shell was fully intact but sticky and gross. We ran our egg shells under warm water, and let the water run through both holes to clean out the inside.

 

 

After rinsing, we baked our eggs at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Baking them will dry them out and is the final step before applying and glue or craft product onto the shells. Martha doesn't mention this; my mom found this tip online.

 

After the eggs were baked and ready,

we applied a coat of decoupage.

 

 

Using coffee filters, we set our glitter out on the table. Covering the eggs completely took some time and a few layers of the decoupage/glitter step. We rolled our eggs in glitter, dumped glitter over them and even tried shaking them with glitter in ziploc bags.

 

 

Once our eggs were sufficiently sparkly,

we let them dry overnight for 24 hours.

 

 

The next night once the eggs were dry, I carefully placed them in a glass vase my mom bought for them and added it to my kitchen table. Don't they look great?! I'm actually surprised at how much I love these eggs. I'm not a huge glitter or sequins person, but I think these are so fun. Flashy, but classy. :)

 

 

Even though Martha's website has a long list of decorating options for blown out eggs, the Girls Team won't be trying this craft technique again. It was kind of disgusting. But, this project turned out great and was really fun once we started decorating. Also, these egg shells won't go bad, so I can use them for years to come.

 

We also dyed hard boiled eggs on Monday night and I can't wait to eat them. Happy Easter everyone! See you next week. :)

Baked Potato Throw Down!

Guys! Remember last year when my brother came home for Spring Break and the Boys Team joined us for a super fun and tasty Grilled Cheese Throw Down?! Well, he’s back again for break and we’ve invited the Boys Team to another MIHM Throw Down. This time, with some St. Patrick's Day spirit and Irish luck, we’re throwin’ down some baked potatoes!

The rules to this Throw Down are simple: provide your own creative toppings for a baked potato and make enough to share. Although some of us were trying to keep our ideas a secret, by the time everyone was running around the kitchen preparing their potatoes, we all knew what our taste buds were in store for. Everyone did such a great job creating unique topping ideas so let’s get right to it.

First up, and talking a big game, we have my dad. You might remember that he added salmon to his grilled cheese sandwich last year, which was unexpected but surprisingly delicious. This time around, he brought back his signature fish. My dad hollowed out his baked potato and filled it it with barbequed salmon, tomatoes, lettuce, and a lemon dressing. His potato was pretty tasty, and he didn’t stop reminding us that it was the best one on the table. :)

 

Next, my mom presented her baked potato. She made a baked sweet potato, topped with homemade black bean chili, sour cream, cheese and cilantro. You can’t go wrong with chili and cheese. We really liked the variety of the sweet potato (since the rest of us used normal potatoes) and she gets bonus points for making her chili topping from scratch!

 

 

My brother is always thinking outside of the box! His potato was a one-of-a-kind take on another favorite food of his – the cheeseburger. After grilling mini turkey burgers, he added tomato, lettuce, cheese, ketchup and the turkey burger to the potato. To eat his creation, we had to assemble the potato like a burger, with the baked potato replacing the bun. The whole family loved his burger because it was delicious, fun to eat and like eating a burger and fries at the same time!  

 

And lastly, I served up a baked potato with butter and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. The carb overload was well worth it as this potato was savory and scrumptious. I didn’t exert the extra effort to make the macaroni and cheese from scratch, but I think the Kraft version added a bit of nostalgia since we gobbled that up as kids.

 

We’re sure baked potatoes have come a long way since our Irish relatives made their way to America, as was reflected on our kitchen table last night! We had quiet the variety to choose from:

 

Because this was a friendly Throw Down, no winner was crowned. We are all winners in our own right for being so different and creative with our toppings! It was a lot of fun to take the simple meal of a baked potato and jazz them up.

 

With the help of the boys team, we enjoyed a great potato feast, some Irish beer and our favorite Irish Coffees for dessert. Happy St. Patrick’s Day from MIHM!

MIHM Memo Board

After seeing a magnetic memo board on Pinterest, my mom and I decided to try to make one ourselves. The materials we needed were a frame, a sheet of metal cut to the frame's size and fabric. Since the memo board will live at my mom's, she choose a very pretty blue and white print.

We tried to match up the lines of the fabric with the metal sheet so the print would be straight. Then we used hot glue to attach the fabric to the back of the metal sheet. Once the fabric was secure, we removed the glass from the frame and replaced it with the metal sheet.

It took about 30 minutes to finish the magnetic memo board. Overall the project was easy and turned out exactly as we envisioned. However, the pattern is crooked towards one side, so my mom plans to adjust that in the next few days. If any of our loyal readers are trying this at home, we recommend not using a symmetrical patterned fabric. It would make the project much easier not having to worry about lining the fabric up straight. 

 

 

MIHM  UPDATE! With help from my dad, my mom was able to straighten out her fabric in the frame. After hanging it on the wall, she also made cute button magnets for her board. Consider this project finished, and the Girls Team happy!

Sunday Funday

Spring is quickly approaching, and even though it hasn’t felt like we really had much of a winter, my plants sure look like winter got the best of them. Remember these cute flower pots the Girls Team planted back in August? Well, this is what they look like now:

 Yikes.

 

The newest addition to the patio is a lemon tree my parents gave me for birthday, back in September. It is awesome and I immediately got 4 lemons from it! But, it was still living in the plastic pot from the store and was looking kind of sad. We’d been meaning to plant it in the cute barrel I was gifted with it, but had yet to get around to that job.

Between the dead flowers and the plastic potted tree, my patio was looking pretty rough. So this weekend, the Girls Team joined forces for “Make It Happen Sunday – Gardening Edition” to spruce up my patio, just in time for spring!

First we tackled the lemon tree. Since we were just transferring this from the plastic pot to a cute barrel pot, this took about 15 minutes.

I filled the barrel half way with dirt.

 

Then we transferred the tree.

We filled the barrel with soil.

 

Once the tree was potted, we made sure it wasn't crooked and watered it a bit. We didn't need to add much water after this because apparently I’ve been overwatering the tree to begin with. Whoops.

Happy in its new home!

Once the lemon tree was settled, we moved on to planting new flowers in the terracotta pots. Some new soil and a trip to Green Acres for flowers were all that was needed for this update. (If you haven’t seen our original post on how to create the pots, click on the link at the top of this for directions.)

 

Fresh flowers, finally!

We rearranged the pots on the rebar, and like before, ended up with one extra pot. We decided to take the larger pot off the tower and plant the leftover flowers in that. I added the remaining flowers and an American flag I saved from 4^th of July, and then put it by the front door to add some color out front. I also scored major points with my roomie who loves a prominently displayed American flag. :)

Bad lighting, but you get the idea.

 

After everything was planted and cleaned up, the Girls Team was really impressed with the new and improved patio. The lemon tree looks fresh and happy, and the flowers are a bright and cheerful touch to the already beautiful view.

My favorite part of the apartment - the natural view!

Oh, and this spaz we call our pet came along to help. The new smells and interesting bushes provided enough entertainment for her while we were gardening, but she ended up guilt-tripping us into walking her through the trails when all the planting was done. Tough life, right? :) Even though it wasn’t as sunny as we had hoped it would be, this week’s Make It Happen project turned into a nice day spent outside with my mom and adorable dog.

 

Honorary Girls Team member. :)

Crocheting for a Cause

Over the past year and a half, Make It Happen Monday has given us the opportunity to create a lot of meaningful gifts for our close friends and family. Now we want to use MIHM to help children in our local community. As we master crocheting, the Girls Team will be making blankets for Project Linus, a national organization that accepts handmade blankets for children in need. Once our blankets are complete, we'll drop them off with Project Linus who will give them out to children in foster care, hospitals or homeless shelters. Check out this video for more information about the local Project Linus chapter.

Before we can start our blankets, I needed to learn how to crochet. Last night, my mom started teaching me and WOW, crocheting is hard! Honestly, as an avid knitter, I thought it would come to me much quicker and easier. It didn't. While I was learning to chain and double crochet about 2 inches of yarn, my mom was cranking out squares for a Grandma's Afghan like it was no big deal. Lucky her! I was starting to get frustrated, but I am trying to see this as a lesson in a new technique...and a lesson in patience.

I can't say I left MIHM last night with much confidence in crocheting, but my mom is a great teacher so I'm sure I'll figure it out soon enough. She even sent me home with some homework: a half-completed crochet square that I need to practice my stiches on. Here's hoping I can graduate to crocheting grandma squares by next week!

I'll be studying this book for a while!

The pattern we're using.

Practice squares my mom crocheted over the weekend.

Shadow Box Banks

If there's one thing the Girls Team LOVES it's a vacation. Unfortunately vacations aren't cheap. This week we created a fun way to save for trips we hope to take soon. We saw piggy banks made from shadow box frames on Pinterest and figured they'd be a great project to try, and a helpful reminder to save our change!

All you'll need for this project is a shadow box, a printer and photo paper (and some power tools but we'll get to that later). I made a quick trip to Michael's and bought two black 5 x 7 shadow box frames. Luckily I stumbled upon buy one get one free week on all frames so the total cost for this project was $11!

My mom and I printed our images onto photo paper. She chose the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite to represent a stay at an iconic lodge at a National Park of her choice, and I chose a tropical beach photo because I'm saving for a tropical vacation. (Any location, I'm not picky!)

Here's our step-by-step tutorial on how to put together your own shadow box frame bank:

Size your background picture to fit your frame,

then print onto glossy photo paper.

 

Mark the spot on the frame where you want to cut the slot for your money.

 

Ask your very handy dad for help with the power tools.

Thanks dad! :)

 

Up close and personal view of the money slot,

which will fit both coins and dollar bills.

 

Use a paper cutter to cut your picture to size.
In our case, 5 by 7 inches.

 

The shadow box frame should come with a piece of velcro to help attach items. Stick the velcro onto the back of the photo, then attach it to the fabric covered frame backing. Once your photo is attached to the frame backing, secure it to the frame like you would any other photo.

 

Here are our finished shadow box frames. Aren't they awesome?!

First dollar in the bank...vacations here we come!

 

The Girls Team loves our shadow box banks! Not only was this an affordable project, it was also quick and easy. While we worked on the photos, my dad cut the money slots so we were able to complete this project in about 30 minutes. The black frames are simple so they don't stand out against the decor in our homes like DIY projects often do. Unlike many craft ideas on Pinterest, these banks actually look better than the sample ones we saw online. 

 

Plus, this is a project that has some longevity. Since the money slot is already cut, once we take these vacations, we can easily change the photo image to start saving for something else...like another vacation. ;-) When we're ready to take the money out we won't need to break the bank. We'll simply remove the back of the frame, empty it, and refill.

 

We decided that the banks are probably best used for saving coins; adding a few $1 dollar bills quickly covered up the photo. And while covering the photo completely means we're on our way to a great vacation, we want to savor the motivational photos for a while because they are both very pretty!

 

Another successful DIY project from the Girls Team, with help from our resident power tools professional! :)

Mardi Gras King Cake

This week we got together for MIHM on Fat Tuesday and decided to celebrate Mardi Gras with a New Orleans themed night! I knew about King Cake from my trip to NOLA in 2008 and my mom and I thought it would be a great challenge since neither of us had ever made anything like it before. 

After googling a few different recipes, some of which called for the dough to rise for over 12 hours, we chose this recipe which was relatively easy to follow. We used RapidRise yeast to try and cut down on the time we'd have to wait for the dough to rise. We were trying to get this cake baked before the middle of the night! 

Dough ingredients. 

Following the recipe, we combined the butter, milk, vanilla extract, yeast, water, flour and sugar to make the dough. Then we placed the dough onto a floured cutting board, kneading it for 8 minutes until it was smooth and stretchy. This was such an arm/hand workout! 

Working my hand muscles.

After kneading the dough, we set it in an oiled bowl, covered it in plastic wrap and waited two hours for the dough to double in size. Some Downton Abbey DVDs kept us entertained while waiting! 

Pre-rising.

It did take about two hours to rise, and then we rolled out the dough into a 10 by 16 inch rectangle. Then we spread the cinnamon, brown sugar and butter filling onto the dough. 

Not quite a perfect rectangle but it works!

The toughest part was rolling up the dough with the filling and twisting it into a circle. So tough, we don't have a photo. The dough and filling were really thick, so twisting it into a circle was a bit challenging. The cake was probably 4 inches tall after rolling it up like a jelly roll, but the ends were skinner so our cake was not at an even height all the way around. Before baking, we placed a ramekin in the middle to the cake would keep its shape in the oven.

Before baking, we cut slashes 1/2 deep into the top of the dough.

Straight out of the oven and bursting at the seams! 

After cooling the cake for about 20 minutes, we whisked together milk and confectioners sugar for frosting and added yellow, green and purple sprinkles generously on the cake.  

A beautiful king cake made by two California girls! 

Cinnamon filled center, yummmm.

We had a great time making this cake and learned a few new skills along the way. Making the dough from scratch was a new challenge for us, which is what MIHM is all about - challenging ourselves and learning new techniques. Our King Cake tasted like a giant cinnamon role with tougher crust, but we could have baked it for about 5-10 minutes longer. Because our cake was thicker than it should have been, the center of the roll was still a bit doughy. 

The Girls Team loved our King Cake and would encourage all of our readers to try making their own! It took some strong hands and a little patience, but this cake was worth it! I love everything about New Orleans and am proud to say I've tackled this southern tradition with my mom. So from the Girls Team to you, Happy Mardi Gras!