Welcome Wenesday: HOMEROAD

Weare so excited to get to share Susan with you today! Seriously I love this idea, I have about 100 (ok at least 10 my house is small) that I need one of these. Dont forget to check out Homeroad after you see this awesome post!

Hi, I'm Susan...I write and create at  

homeroad

I'm the mother of 4 girls and I've been married to my husband Jim for 20 years. I'm a full time teacher with one of the world's best jobs. Currently I work in the school library teaching classes to children in the primary grades. It's my job to read to young children every day and teach them about some amazing authors and illustrators. I write about some of my lessons on my other site

Library Lessons

I've always enjoyed crafting and decorating. I like to sew, make jewelry and do projects around the house. I'm always up for learning new things and I enjoy teaching what I know to others. I'm energized by working on my blog, I love creating. My favorite thing to do is thrifting and turning junky finds into something spectacular! Recently I've opened up my Etsy shop:

Homeroad the Store

 Stop by and have a look!

Take a look through my site at homeroad.

I hope you like it and can take away some inspiration from me.

Here is a new post from my site...

Enjoy! 

How to Make a Junk Inspired Memo Board

 ...from (you guessed it) the junk in my garage

and a stash of old barn wood, This piece I believe is cherry.

I divided up the board into 3 spaces.

I painted the center section with chalkboard paint....

The second section I added cork for a bulletin board...

 And the third I left blank for hooks...

 I stenciled on the words "notes" and "keys" and then 

sanded them for a distressed look...

The chalkboard was ready...

I added rusty screws and a canvas floret to the cork...

and hooks for keys....

I hung the whole board from an old chain at the top.

And there my friends is 

another funky memo board!

See the tutorial for my first junky memo board here. 

Susan

Welcome Wenesday: Purple Froggie Clay Stuff

We are so excited to share another guest blogger with you today. Cindy from Purple Froggie Clay stuff is here to share herself and a super yummy recipe with all of you. I must say I totally cheated and had to try this right after she sent it to us! Yummy plus extras for lunch!

Recently I have been selected to be a guest host on Moms Of All Trades which is such a beautiful blog and such wonderful ladies that run it! Thank you very much Kori and Tara for this fantastic opportunity!

I've been asked to say a few things about myself, and that's the most difficult thing for me to do.. I can say loads of things about others, but when it comes to me, I draw a blank most of the time.


So, here goes... I just turned 40 on May 15th, I've been married to a wonderful man for 17 years. Our son will turn 16 this July. We've lived in our house for 15 years and I love it here! 
I create jewelry and sell it in my online shop called Cobalt Moon Jewelry. 


I am a Twilight fanatic! I've read all 4 of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight Saga books, at least 10 times each and the online book that was posted of Edward Cullen's version, at least 15 times! My parents and sister are my best friends and I rely on them quite a bit for moral support. 


That's about all I can think of, I don't want to bore y'all any more.. lol


So, here's what I've decided to share with y'all :


I ran across this yummy recipe that I have made several times for my family. It can feed a small army! 

It's called Mojito Chicken found on Food.com

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons lime zest
• 1/4 cup lime juice
• 1/4 cup orange juice
• 2 tablespoons fresh mint, chopped
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 6 chicken breasts, skinned and boneless
• 2 limes, cut in wedges
• 6 mint sprigs
• 4 cups cooked rice

Directions (Prep time 15 min. Total time 40 min.)

1.     Combine lime zest, lime juice, orange juice, honey, garlic, cumin, chopped mint, olive oil, and salt in a small bowl.

2.     Transfer one half of mixture into a covered container and refrigerate.

3.     Transfer the remaining the remainder of the mixture into a gallon size Zip Lock bag and add the chicken.

4.     Squeeze out the air from bag and seal.

5.     Let chicken marinade for at least 2 hours, or over night.

6.     Cook rice according to package directions, set a side

7.     Preheat skillet

8.     Remove the chicken from the bag and discard excess marinade.

9.     Place chicken in skillet and cook for 20-30 minutes, turning occasionally.

10. While chicken is cooking, pour reserved marinade into a small saucepan and bring to boil.

11. Transfer cooked chicken to a cutting board and cut into cubes transfer chicken to platter and spoon hot marinade on top.

12. Garnish with lime wedges and a sprig of mint and serve.

Thank you to Kori and Tara for inviting me to guest host with y'all!!

Guest Blogger: Simple Sweetness

We are so excited to have our first Guest Blogger today. When we saw Leslie's post about her Pb & J mini cupcakes both of our mouths dropped. We are so happy to share Leslie and her blog Simple Sweetness with you today:

Thank you to Mom's of all Trades for letting me share my recipe and blog today!

Hi Everyone!  My name is Leslie and my blog is called Simple Sweetness.

I'm 28, married to the wonderful Marc, work in customer service, had gastric banding surgery in 2009 (lost 90lbs so far, yay!), go to school for Medical Billing & Coding, love all things Disney, read A LOT, I'm on my 23rd book of 2011 and of course I love to be crafty. 

Simple Sweetness is my attempt at keeping life simple & sweet.  I'm sure that was pretty obvious but just in case.  LOL.  Simple Sweetness is about about my home life, which means cooking, decorating, home improvement projects and just about any craft project I come across that appeals to me.  I'm not very confident in the kitchen but lately I have been cooking up a storm, at least for me. I'm going to share my very yummy Peanut Butter & Jelly Mini Cupcakes.  I'm quite proud of them, I came up with the idea for my husband's 30th Birthday party next month. 

Peanut Butter & Jelly Mini Cupcakes.

Of course you can make full size cupcakes with this recipe too.

Supplies:

*Yellow or White Cake Mix & Ingredients to Make Mix

*Vanilla Frosting

For the 5 dozen Mini Cupcakes I made, I used almost 2 cans of Vanilla Frosting

*Creamy Peanut Butter

*Jelly

*Filling Tip

*Decorating Tip

*Mini Cupcake Liners

Not everything is pictured here, sorry!

I first made the cake mix and lined my mini cupcake pan.  Then popped the pan in the oven.  I followed the box directions for oven temp and cooking time. 

FYI: Because I made mini cupcakes, they took less than the 20 minutes for full size cupcakes.  Just keep an eye on yours while they bake.

 I used my new Dessert Decorator Plus for filling and frosting the cupcakes.
I bought mine for $14.99 at Michael's.  Well worth the $15 because it had a filling tip and the decorating tips.  Plus you just wash out the tube, no messy frosting bags, no frosting coming out the bottom.

Filled with Grape Jelly. 

While I was baking and waiting for the cupcakes to cool, I mixed my Peanut Butter Frosting.

I took the lazy easy way out.  I just used vanilla frosting and mixed peanut butter into it.  There are tons of from scratch peanut butter frosting recipes on the internet so google that if you want to do it homemade. 

If you go the method I used, melt your peanut butter in the microwave for 15 seconds.  I had to do mine another 10 seconds, just be careful because you can burn the peanut butter.

I mixed in about 1 tablespoon of peanut butter at time until I got the right flavor.  Don't worry about doing too much or too little, mix in until you have the peanut butter flavor you want.

I did about 3 tablespoons to 1 can of Vanilla Frosting.

 Filling the cupcakes were super easy with my dessert decorater.  I let the cupcakes cool for about 5 to 10 minutes.  These being mini cupcakes, they cooled down super fast.  With larger cupcakes you might have to wait a bit longer.

  The directions said to insert the fill tip about 1 inch but as there were mini cupcakes, I didn't quite go down that far.  These were the first ones I filled and about halfway through I learned that if I pulled the plunger back a bit before I removed the tip from the cupcake then it wouldn't leave the bubble of jelly at the top you see in the picture below.  The ones with no jelly on top have not been filled yet. 

 The bummer about having only one Dessert Decorater tube is that I had to wait for all 5 batches of cupcakes to cook, cool and fill with jelly before I could switch over to my Peanut Butter Frosting.

I'm not a great froster so I tried to do a smooth "bubble" or "dot" of frosting.  To do this, hold your tube at a 90 degree angle in the center of your cupcake and frost until you have the size frosting you desire.  I think if I had backed off the tube a little before removing I wouldn't have had such a wispy tail on the end of the cupcakes.

Ta Da!  Peanut Butter & Jelly Cupcakes.

They are just like they sound, a sweet peanut butter & jelly sandwich in cupcake form. 

Delicious!

I hope you have enjoyed reading about my cupcakes and thanks again to Mom's of all Trades for sharing their blog with me!

Leslie from Simple Sweetness.