It's generally a bad thing to hear me say, "I'm not really sure how this is going to turn out". Usually when I cook, I have a pretty good idea of what I'm going for. Not tonight. I'm not going to drag this out: I failed today. I made some garlic lentils the other day and wasn't very impressed with them, so, stealing an idea from Aarti Sequeira, I thought I would try to fry up some lentil patties to put on buns. Here's photographic proof of the travesty that was tonight's dinner.


Good thing Mike's out of town; I don't need any criticism besides my own today. They didn't turn out bad, but they didn't turn out great either. Well, at least I can say I tried. Better than just straight binning all the lentils without making an attempt. Dust yourself off and try again next week...

So I know I said I'd post about the dress I made, but I'm not.

Change of plans! Veering right! Crazy broad behind the wheel here. :)

Ok - so I'm in a random sort of mood today, but I wanted to share my outfit today.

I don't know if it all works, but I'm branching out, and I'm proud of myself for it - so I am sharing it all with you guys.

Although I will tell you that I need to do the following before the next photo session -

1. Clean the lens
2. Check the batteries
3. Find a tripod or something suitable to use as one

Ok so those are the three things I need to remember, so let me share my outfit today :) 
 Yay for being pretty! I'm rocking the gypsy look today. What do you guys think? Did I pull it off?

 I know this picture is not the clearest (see point 1 above), but check out those earrings?!?!?! LOVE!

And here's me getting annoyed at the camera. Figured I'd throw in a random face one :)

Well I hope you guys enjoyed today! I'll be back next week with more clothes, because today I'm also going to be finishing up another dress for me :)

Have a great day guys!

So lets have a show of hands - How many of you have children?

A lot of you?

How many of you feel like that when your children are teenagers you're going to have to get three jobs, and hire a professional grocery shopper, because they will eat you out of house and home?!

I do!

Devlin has been on a growth spurt, and its lasted for about a month or more. He's got growing pains. His back hurts, or his joints hurt. So the Tylenol comes out, and then there's feeding the ravenous boy.

Devlin has always {ALWAYS} had an appetite, even as a newborn. Suffice to say  - The boy can eat, a lot.

Which is why the recipe I made for Father's Day (and the week before) is  perfect for a small boy on a growth spurt.

What recipe is this? Well let me finally share it. :-)

{source}

Individual French Toast Stratas
from the Rachel Ray Magazine

Grocery Stuff:
6 Eggs
1-1/2 cups Half & Half
6 Tbsp Maple Syrup
1-1/2 Tsp Vanilla
1 Tsp Ground Cinnamon
Large Pinch of Salt
4 Cups Cubed (Country Bread - I used sandwich bread the first time, but then baked up some homemade wheat bread for the 2nd round. They both worked just fine.
2 Tbsp Butter, melted
2 Tbsp Sugar

Cooking Stuff:

1. Whisk the eggs, half & half, maple syrup, vanilla, cinnamon and salt together. 
2. Combine the cubed bread and butter, and divide among 12 muffin cups. 
3. Pour the egg mixture over the bread (I used a ladle to minimize the impending mess), and let sit while you preheat the oven to 350 degrees (this is very important!)
4. Sprinkle sugar over the 12 muffin cups
5. Bake for 20 minutes, and let cool on rack.
6. Serve with more syrup and fresh berries. 

This dish is so good, and simple. Not to mention the kids eat it up. The first time we made this, Devlin had 3 of them, and he was finally full. The 2nd time he had 2, plus a croissant and 2 bowls of berries. He was harder to fill up the 2nd time round.

Well I hope that you guys enjoyed today's {belated} post. I promise tomorrow to show off the dress I made a couple of weeks ago.

See you guys then!

I know I said I was going to share recipes today, but there was something missing.

Motivation.

I did find this though!

I'm glad I don't have an easy job now, but I do wish robots would clean my house. :)

Hopefully I'll be back to rights tomorrow. TTFN!

Did you do something nice for the Dad's in your life?

I did.

Not to toot my own horn, but the hubs made out pretty durn well this year. :)

Sears was having a sale. I've been wanting to get him a propane grill for FOREVER - I went to Sears.

Can you guess what happened next?

Yep, I bought that grill, and then had Mom deliver it home for me - cause it wouldn't fit in my car.

Steve was very happy, and I am super excited about all the yummy food he will be making us.

But since I gave him his gift days early, I didn't want Sunday to come without some fanfare, so I pulled out the cookbook, invited my folks and sister over for a Dad's day brunch.

I will share tomorrow what we ate, because right now I'm going to show off the pretty cards that I made.

I did a google search for the sayings, they're not my own, but I still think they're cute.

Have I mentioned lately how much I love my Silhouette? The tie shape and the grill are both from their online store. Love.

Here's a close up of each card.
Hey look, my printer is running out of ink! Terrific! Oh well, I still ran with it. :)
The font I used on this card is one of my favorites. Its called Fulton Marker Light. I love the grunginess of it.

So tomorrow I will share the main event of the Dad's day brunch, but I hope you guys enjoyed my small creations today :)

I find refuge in cooking. Maybe you're the same way. It's a balm for when I've had a bad week at work, bad week at home, whatever. Unfortunately, it's very hard to cook when my kitchen is in shambles. The caulking is about a third of the way done, so everything is still either stacked up in my bedroom or slowly taking over my island. That's when I bring out my little helpers. No, not the puppies, small kitchen appliances!

The first little helper is my electric kettle. This wonderful gift from my friend Jennifer is probably the most commonly used item in my kitchen. I use it literally everyday, mostly to make tea. Big surprise. :-) Here's the recipe it helped me with.

Lavender Lemonade
2-1/2 cup water
1 cup sugar
1 Tbsp dried lavender flowers
2-1/2 cup cold water
1 cup lemon juice
Ice cubes

In a large saucepan, bring water and sugar to a boil. Remove from the heat; add lavender. Cover and let stand for 1 hour.

Strain, discarding lavender. Stir in cold water and lemon juice. Serve over ice. Yield: 6 servings.

Editor's Note: Look for dried lavender flowers in spice shops. If using lavender from the garden, make sure it hasn’t been treated with chemicals.

I think you can see where I'm going with this. I was very pleasantly surprised to find out just how fast sugar dissolves in boiling water from an electric kettle. It was pretty much instantaneous, which meant that I could steep the lavender pretty much immediately as well.

I made this for my Tastefully Simple party that Heather came down for last week. It's very refreshing, perfect for summer, and smells like heaven. Then again, I'm very partial to lavender. By "very partial" I of course mean "would deck my entire house in it if Mike would let me". I fully recommend serving this as a refresher at your next pool party or other summer party.

What about some proper food, though? No worries. That's where my food processor comes in. Now, I didn't make the entire recipe below, just the sauce, sans the nuts. Mike requested no nuts.

Ricotta Ravioli With Spinach Pesto
2 cup fresh ricotta
1 cup toasted hazelnuts, chopped, divided
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 lemon, zested and juiced
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
1 (12 oz) pkg wonton wrappers
1 egg white, lightly beaten
4 cup spinach, loosely packed
1 clove garlic
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/2 cup olive oil
Special equipment: Food processor

In a small bowl, mix together ricotta, 1/4 cup hazelnuts, nutmeg, lemon zest, and salt and pepper to taste. Lay several wonton wrappers on a work surface. Scoop a generous tablespoon of the ricotta filling into the center of each wrapper, and brush outside edges with egg white. Lay another wonton wrapper on top of each, and press firmly with fingertips to press out air and seal ravioli. Transfer ravioli to a parchment-lined baking sheet. Repeat with remaining wonton wrappers and filling, making 18 to 20 ravioli total. Cover baking sheet with a damp paper towel and transfer to refrigerator to set up, about 30 minutes.

To make the spinach pesto:

In a food processor, combine remaining 3/4 cup hazelnuts, lemon juice, spinach, garlic, parmesan, olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste and puree until smooth.

Fill a large pot with water, salt liberally, and bring to a boil. Cook ravioli in three batches, until they are cooked and float to the top, about 2 to 3 minutes. Strain and transfer to serving bowls with a dollop of spinach pesto.

I can't speak for the ravioli part of this recipe, as I made angel hair pasta instead. Two to three minutes in boiling water. You can see my logic, I'm sure. The pesto sauce, however, is lovely. It's very light and bright and healthy to boot. Plus, it's so green! No, really, my pasta was all green after being tossed in it. The one drawback: Lots of little bits of spinach stuck all over your teeth afterwards. Still, very yummy.

I haven't even touched on the slow cooker, blender, stand mixer, or microwave. Fear not, friends, for even when you kitchen is in shambles, dinner is just a small appliance away.

Tuesday morning - my first morning back from TN with the kids, found me outside with the boys. While they created more chalk masterpieces on the driveway, I decided that my geraniums needed some water. So I pull them down.

For those of you who have 'liked' Straight Stitches on facebook, then you know what is about to come. I apologize for the redundancy of this post, but figured that I should at least bring everyone up to speed. :)

As I am watering my geraniums, I notice that one of them as a lot of grass and crap in it. So I take a closer look.

Here's what I found.
Do you see it?

Let's take a closer look...

Yep, there are three little eggs in my hanging basket.

And crap! I've just watered them. See the water in the nest? Well I gently tip the basket this way and that to get all the water out without moving the eggs. And I did a durn good job of it too. :)

Then I can't remember which side of the porch the basket came from. Crap!

I go in the house and hollar up to Steve, who was still sleeping, and he grumpily tells me that it was down at the far side of the porch.

So I quickly put the basket back at the end of the porch and spend like the next day praying that the Momma bird comes back to take care of her babies, because I will feel like total crap if she doesn't.

So now Dev and I have a science project. Momma bird did come back. Dev startled her yesterday while coming back inside yesterday from playing, and he said she flew out of the basket. We had to go outside and take a look at her. I didn't think to bring the camera, but after doing some google searches.

We think our new neighbors are house finches, and when I played the bird song, yep, definitely what we have outside.

So now I have a new problem. How do I water my flowers now?

So over the next two weeks we're on baby bird watching duty. I know the nest and the eggs were not in the flowers last week, before I left on my trip, so it gives us a pretty good timeline and hopefully in about two weeks we'll have a trio of new baby birds. :)

See you guys later!
Heather

We got a late start - 10:30 to be exact.
And decided to take a  road trip that was 12 hours long.

Maybe not our best thought since it was 11 when we got home, but we saw some terrific things along the way.

View Directions to Nashville, TN in a larger map

Sometimes we say silly things. Sometimes I we say things like, "My back splash is going to be so much easier to do than Heather's". After all, Heather used all natural stone. I read about her epic adventure in back splashing. How bad could mine be? Bad. It turned out so well, though! Let us begin.

We start with a workspace. My kitchen floor was the best place to do this. I laid down a towel so that the hammer would have a place to drive into. If I had just tried to break the tiles on the floor, the floor would give resistance, pushing back against the hammer blow. The towel lets the force of the hammer continue down and down and through the tile.

*You may wonder how I know these things. Believe it or not, I actually did something similar with mirrors in high school for an art project.

Make sure to use a plastic bag to contain your pieces. Otherwise slivers and chips will fly everywhere. Porcelain tile doesn't shatter or anything, but you will get the occasional bit of shrapnel. You'll also have to change bags when the current one gets too many holes sliced into it. Yes, porcelain edges are very sharp...as we all found out.

Ready to strike! I generally hit in the center once and then hit each of the resulting pieces in the center as well.

Tadaa! A bin full of pieces! This was about two boxes of tiles, which turned out to be more than I needed, so we were actually able to return the third. Don't open anything unless you're certain you're going to use it. Oh, and for any one who is curious, we used tiles from a company called Castle Stone.


Ah, my kitchen walls, our blank slate. We taped off the areas where the back splash would end. This also kept the grout from getting where it didn't need to be.

This is my listello, the border for the back splash. Isn't it gorgeous? I love the colors!

Here's the labor and the love part. The placement of all the broken tiles was done freehand. That means we had to search through all those countless pieces for something that would fit. It's actually really impressive that we finished as fast as we did. By "we" I mean "Heather and Mum". They really did about 90% of all the work while my husband was laid up with tooth pain and had to be taken on a fruitless trip to the ER.

If I didn't already know Heather and Mum loved me, this proved it. They were so patient and generous all weekend through all the unexpected difficulties. I am very thankful for both of them. :-)

Here's Heather mixing up the grout. She did me a great service by going out and getting a better grout color for. I had originally chosen a color called Pearl Grey, but that was really a bit too dark. Heather found (don't ask me how, it's a talent of hers) a different color called Smoke Grey, which was perfect!

Here's the grout all done. Didn't I tell you Heather found the perfect grout color? :-)

Here's the finished product, or as finished as it is so far. I have to caulk tonight, but it's all done otherwise. I hope you like!

Finally, if you ever have any back splashing questions, Heather is a great source for information. She knows what she's doing. Big, huge, endless thanks to these two great ladies in my life for everything this weekend. I love you both!