Anthro or industrial? magnet board

Seems like these days, a lot of our pictures never make it off the computer.  They remain on the disk drive, cell phone, blogs, Facebook, Instagram, wherever.   So make sure you're backing up your computer or at least the My Pictures folder (or wherever you're storing yours)!

My daughters needed some place to display the Zapps pictures from the events they attended.   A nice big bulletin board or something like that to also add some decoration or interest to the almost bare walls of the house would be great!

I thought those cabinet doors from the Habitat Restore would be perfect for a magnet board for pictures.   There's not a lot of pictures of my DIY here, but hopefully you get the "picture" :).

Just give them a coat of primer first thing. 

Then I painted on the color that I want the trim to be.  The color gray is so popular now and I thought the college crowd would like it.  This is called Elephant Gray. 

Sheet metal can be found at Lowe's in a 2'x3' piece for less than $10.  I took it to a local sheet metal shop and they cut it to the sizes I needed.  The cuts were crisp with no crinkles or bends, nice!

The one on the right has the primer/trim painted.  The one on the left has the metal inside the frame, attached with Gorilla glue.

I sanded the edges of the frame to give them a distressed look.  With the gray color from the trim and the gray/silver sheet metal, it kind of has an industrial look which I wasn't crazy about. 

Adding a few smiling faces using some pretty magnets should perk these right up!

.
Unfortunately, when I'm visiting Tuscaloosa, I can never remember to take a picture of them hanging on the wall!

This year my neices have moved to T-town and I had one more cabinet door with sheet metal to fit.  So I finished it as a little house warming gift for them.

After the primer, I spray painted it with "cherry red".  Whoa, was it bright!   Now, I wasn't going for a "crimson" color here.   I'm sure if I wanted crimson, all I have to do is look on the shelves for that color.  And if crimson is not one of the color choices, they're definitely missing out on some sales!  This color was just too bright.

So I started trying to tone it down a bit and washed on some of the elephant gray. 

I took a damp cloth and dipped it in the gray paint and rubbed it on.   I kept dipping and rubbing and letting it dry until I was satisfied that it wasn't too "cherry".

For the magnets, I used some gems from Michael's.  Not the irredescent ones, they need to be clear.  Using Modge Podge, I attached decorative paper or scrapbook paper to the flat side of the gem.

I got a tip from one of my crafty friends about using an old magazine as a work surface for glue projects.  This works great if the project is smaller than the magazine page size.   When you're done, you just tear off that page and have a clean page to work on.

This works great for glue stick projects such as cardmaking or scrapbooking.  When using a glue stick, the glue WILL get off the card and then the card ends up sticking to the work surface.  So you constantly need a "clean" surface.  With a magazine as a work surface, you just flip to the next page to continue with the card or scrapbook project.

Anyway, that was my crafty tip for the day!  

Glue magnet discs to the back of the gems once the paper has dried.

The magnets are ready to go!

Now ready to hang on the wall, here's the cherry-gray-distressed version. 

Hopefully, it has a little more "Anthropologie" look than industrial!

Now just add pictures! 

Sharing at:

PW Steakhouse Pizza

This Sweet As Pie Cooking Club selection for August seemed like a lot of steps for some reason, but boy was it worth it in the end!!

At some point in life if you don't already wear glasses, you will have a pair of readers in every room on every table and on every countertop.  I should have put mine on because I read 1/4 cup of water instead of 3/4 cup to go with the yeast!

I realized that I had an issue when the dough was REALLY dry.  I added in more warm water so we'll see how it goes.  Off it goes into the sunroom where things sit to get warm (or to take a nap).

I chose the skirt steak.  Another first since I've never cooked with this cut of meat before.

LOTS of onions, yum!

Saute them in oil and balsamic vinegar.

Enter that homemade marinara that I shared the other day!  It's probably a little thinner than that in the jar but it didn't make any difference.

The pizza pan doesn't get used very often since I rarely fix pizza at home.   I like this pan though because it has the air holes in the bottom that make the crust nice and "crusty".

Oops!  The down side is that I pushed on the dough and it ended up...well...on the down side!  Oh well, this pizza will just have little crusty nubs on the bottom.

I do like lots of cheese on my pizza.

Pink and red steak is ok, but no red juice thank you.  Here it needed a couple more minutes on the grill.

This pizza has so much flavor going on.  A very tasty variation to our typical steak or pizza dinner. 

The Pioneer Woman said the "dudes" in your life will love it and mine did!

Many tomatoes = marinara

My father's garden always has a row of tomatoes.  I don't know how many plants, 20 maybe 30.  I always have a bucket full of them available as long as they are growing.  So I'm always looking to do something with them! 

One of the food blogs I follow is Southern Bite where I saw this simple recipe for marinara.  Pin that!  It calls for big cans of tomatoes.  I wanted to substitute those big cans of tomatoes for fresh tomatoes.

I plopped them in the food processor, peeling included.

Keep processing them until there's about the same amount of fresh tomatoes as canned.

Now on the stove, onions smell so good!

Add the chopped garlic.  Mmm, smellin' even better!

Following the recipe, let it simmer.

I'm wondering how well it will freeze because there's a few cups of marinara there.  More than I will use right away.

I see some Pioneer Woman Steakhouse Pizza in my future and I have the perfect marinara for it now!

Brush your teeth daily

Camera Critters #228

Corn Casserole with Peppers

This Pioneer Woman recipe was just meant to be for The Sweet As Pie Cooking Club. 

Back in the spring, I needed a dish for a potluck.  So I flipped through the PW recipe book and found the Corn Casserole with Peppers recipe.  I did take some photos thinking I would just post it or select it when my turn came around.  And here it is, our August bonus recipe.  I am feeling so ahead of the menu!  Ha ha!

This was the perfect dish for all that corn in the freezer that needed to be used to make room for this summer's corn.

Red peppers are not my favorite, but they're good in this dish.  I removed the seeds from the jalepenos since this dish was for a crowd.  Some may not like it hot!

Whenever I see cream, I think of the Pioneer Woman ... I have never cooked with so much cream until I started following her recipes.

...and plenty of butter too!

The sauce is thinner than I expected.  My sister-in-law makes a similiar dish using cream cheese instead of cream so I guess I was comparing to that. 

It's rich and very good!  I received positive feedback at the potluck, too!

Wednesday @ the Well

I grew up going to church and I didn't always want to go.   It was only when I realized that I needed God's positive influence, that I returned to church.  This was after the long church vacation that some of us take during our twenties!

My daughters grew up going to church and they didn't always want to go either.  I encouraged them to learn, keep an open mind and make a few friends along the way.  So as they left for college, I prayed and encouraged them to find a place to worship.  Do something to keep God in their lives.  God is always here, it's us that moves away.

This summer my daughters wanted my sister and I to come to Tuscaloosa for a visit and see a movie.  And go to worship with them.  Wow, what a sweet blessing to hear that invitation!  We enjoyed our visit and had a lot of fun.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine from high school lost her daughter.   The day I heard about it I couldn't stop thinking about it.  And I think about it often since then. 

I thought I would send a card.  It seemed like it wasn't enough, such a small thing to do.  I felt like the encouraging words on that card would get lost in the tasks my friend had in front of her.  So I intentionally waited and didn't send it right away.

Her daughter was 22 with so much life ahead!   Here I am planning and enjoying being with my daughters while my friend is hopefully starting to heal.  I've never been in her situation.  Only God knows what's ahead.  No matter what, I know I will be needing His positive influence.

I pray for His comfort for my friend and that she knows He is there. 

Now it's time to send that card!

Tomato Jam?

My summers are filled with tomatos!  I will eat them every way I can think of.  Tomato sandwiches, BLTs (of course), caprese salads, salsa, I could go on and on.    I love them!

Usually I'm not into the sauce/ketchup/canning process every summer.  But this year I made a small batch of tomato puree to put in the freezer to use later in chili.  

Then I was inspired when I ran across this post on Wild Oak Designs for tomato ... jam?  I have had homemade ketchup and it's one of those things I'd just as soon not spend the time making it.  But tomato jam had my curiosity up!  So I clicked over to foodinjars to check it out. 

I don't have kitchen scales, so I filled a bag with what I thought was about 5 lbs of tomatos and placed it on my bathroom scales. 

Uh oh, the scales won't measure. 

So I took matters into hand, or rather took the bag into hand and stepped on the scale!  Then put the bag down and stepped on the scale again.  I will spare you those pictures.  Ha ha!

After I wore my fingers out making Cherry Limemade last month I decided to get a citrus juicer.  It works great and gets all the juice.

Add the juice and spices (the spices were the interesting part in this recipe) to the tomatos.

Bring to a boil...

...and stir

...and stir....

...and stir for a long time...for about 2 hours. 

Ugh, something that takes this long better be good.

After it's cooked down, put it into jars and do the boiling water bath thing.  This is another reason I only can every few years!

And then there's the step where I hope the lids seal.  They usually do.

After all that I can't not add a crafty, cutsey label to the lid. 

This jam has a cinnamony, spicy, ketchupy taste.  It goes great with stinky soft cheese on crackers as a appetizer or snack and I look forward to trying it on a burger or turkey sandwich.

Sharing here:

Tasty Tuesday

Purple People Eater Chicken

When food has to cook for a couple of hours, I often turn to the crock pot.  When it's cooking on the stovetop for that long, I tend to not stir it enough or I take the lid off so often it takes way too long to cook! 

This recipe selection from the Sweet As Pie Cooking Club worked great in the crockpot.

This is the first time I've marinated chicken in red wine and a first for preparing a dish with plums.

We don't have plum preserves at the grocery stores in the south.  But we do have plum jam, thanks to the American-owned BAMA products!  I got it at either Piggly Wiggly or Foodland, can't remember which.  I did have one last jar of homemade plum jam but there's no way I'm using that in this dish. 

Fresh plums, yum!   I had forgotten how good they are.

I fast forwarded through the recipe to the Variations section and, of course, had to add the red pepper flakes to the honey soy mixture.

After marinating the chicken in the red wine, I had purple people eater chicken. 

Yeah, kinda weird looking and I kept thinking of the purple people eater song so I just had to look it up!  Ha ha!

Add the plums, garlic and honey soy mixture to the purple chicken.  Bring it to a boil on the stovetop so it's nice and hot.

Put it in the crockpot (I preheated it).

Four or maybe 5 hours later (I forgot to time it), it's falling off the bone.

 I stir-fried some veges to go with it since this dish has an asian taste.

The purple people eater chicken is dark, not very appetizing to look at it, but it's tasty. 

Do add the green onions and fresh plum garnish!