Home-made Peanut Butter Dog Treats

These home-made peanut butter dog treats are super easy, cute and your puppy will love them!  I found the recipe on all-natural-dog-treat.com, but I changed some of the measurements.

Here's what you need:

2 cups flour

1/2 cup peanut butter

1/2 cup water

2 tbs oil

Preheat oven to 350 F.  Combine all ingredients.  Kneed dough into a ball, then roll out to about 1/4 inch thickness.  I used a small (1 inch) bone shaped cookie cutter to cut out the treats.  Made about 40.  I placed them on a silicone baking mat, put them in the oven, and baked them for 20 minutes.  I let them cool, and gave 2 to each of my sweet puppies.  They loved them!

My sweeties.

Inside-out Cheesecake

I'm always looking for new dessert ideas, and I love ones that look more complicated than they were.  Again, on pinterest.com I found a perfect example of this.  Cheesecake filled raspberries, which I lovingly call "inside-out cheesecake".  I had the perfect opportunity to make these too.  Dan and I, with friends, got lawn tickets to the Cleveland Orchestra's 4th of July concert at the Blossom Center in Cuyahoga Falls.  That meant a picnic, YAY! And of course a red white and blue dessert.  

So, what you need for this dessert:

- Raspberries and/or blueberries

- Cheesecake (pre-made or your own- a recipe that doesn't have raw egg)

- Graham crackers

- Frosting bags (ziplocks would probably work too)

First you wash the raspberries, crush up the graham crackers, and fill your frosting bag with the cheesecake (I used Philadelphia's pre-made stuff simply because I can't get enough of the stuff).

Then, you put the froster nozzle in the raspberry and fill it up...

'Til it's just a little over the top.

Then you dunk them in the graham cracker crumbs.

AND THAT'S IT!

So simple, so yummy.

They're great, because you get the satisfaction and taste of the cheesecake, but you're getting so many less calories, and full raspberries.

Next, for the raspberries.

I put as much cheesecake in top as I could.

Dunked, and done!

One of the easiest, yummiest, most impressive desserts I've made or seen.  Let me know what you think, and believe me, you won't regret making these!

Pinterest Inspired II

So, my sweet, loving, considerate husband used up all my glue gun glue last time, I finally got to finish my Pinterest Day.  Here are the (not to toot my own horn, but- toot-toot!) ADORABLE new creations I have sitting on my dresser, because I keep wanting to look at them

The first thing is this pin cushion/sewing kit.  I saw it at pinterest.com, and followed the pin to www.momtastic.com, where I found instructions.  Like the blog says, this calls for: 

- 1 mason jar (any size will do, depends on how much you need it to fit)

- any piece of fabric, preferably one you don't mind looking at from time to time

- Glue gun (and glue!!!)

- Stuffing

- Stuff to fill it with it

Trace a large enough circle to comfortably glue around inner lid.  Cut out.  Start gluing to lid, leaving an open space, fill with stuffing, finish gluing.  Then, put glue on the inside of the outer lid, put inner lid in, and put pressure on it until dry.  (Now, here is where mine didn't quite work.  If I got it nice and poofy, once I had it glued in, it would screw back on the jar.  So, it's not as poofy as I'd like, but I'm still happy with it.  I made one for my mom, and instead of the inner lid I used the same sized cardboard  circle, and it got a little poofier, but I still had the same problem.  It closes, but not as snug as I'd like.)  I added a circle of fabric to the inside to give it a finished look (honestly, because I knew my mom would show her quilting friends, and you do NOT want to get criticisms from those ladies!).  Then, I filled it with thread, small scissors, extra needles, safety pins and that nifty thing that helps you thread.  I also stuck some pins and needles in it.  

Ta-Da!!!

Now these flower pins are just too cute.  I made matching ones for Bella (our puppy) and I for our family pictures, and then just went a little crazy.  They are so fun to make.  This blogger has really good instructions on how to make them www.gomakeme.com.  It took a little trial and error, but I figured out, that you put them on there in a staggered way, and the way of folding them wasn't explained that well (or I'm dense- either of which is totally possible).  So, here's what you need:

- 6 x 2 1/2 inch circles of fabric (I've been making mine just a little bigger, I like the size a little better)

- 2 x 1 1/4 inch circles of felt

- Beads/buttons

- Safety pin

- Needle and thread

So, you take the fabric circles, fold them in half, then push in the sides, to where it (kinda) resembles a flat 8.  Then sew (or hot glue gun) the "petals" on one felt circle in a staggering manner.  Basically, the next petal starts in the middle of the next one.  Then add beads, sew a safety pin on the other piece of felt, and sew the two pieces of felt together.

Once you get the hang of these you'll be wanting to add these to everything.  Even the Eiffel Tower could do with a little decorating.

Now, I have wanted to learn to make rosettes for a long time, but for some reason it has always felt a little daunting.  Not today!  www.craftaholicsanonymous.net has a great tutorial on them.  Again, like the earlier flowers, you're going to want to add them to everything.  What you'll need:

- Strip of fabric (honestly, any size will do, but the blog recommends 3" x 22")

- Hot glue gun

- Scissors

- Beads (the blog doesn't mention these, but I thought it added a nice touch)

So, you start off by making a knot at one end of the strip of fabric, then you start rolling and gluing the fabric onto itself, twisting it each time, then when you get to the end, tuck the last bit under and glue.  Then I put a little hot glue on top, and dipped it in beads.

I made 3 complementary ones, and glued them together.  I love how they turned out!  Not to find an outfit to match it.

So, happy pinning, experimenting and crafting.  Let me know if you've tried any pinterest ideas and how they turned out!

ps: I'm sorry if the instructions aren't too detailed, the original blogs really are very helpful, and if you go to them, they'll be very helpful.

"Wine Cork" Cork Board

Dan and I love and miss Europe, so to make ourselves feel a little closer to "home", our bathroom is French themed, and we're making our kitchen more and more Italian themed.  Wine is a huge part of Italian cuisine, and we're always looking for a place to pin important things, and Dan has a wonderful wife who pins amazing ideas on pinterest... so we found this very creative idea to reuse old wine corks. Dan's Aunt and Uncle enjoy a nice wine, and so they've been collecting corks for us, and mom cooks with wine sometimes, so she's been setting aside some Hungarian corks for us.  

We found an old frame at a neighbor's garage sale, and got some ply wood from our pastor and a glue gun.  First Dan nailed the ply wood to the back of the frame, placed all the corks in the pattern he wanted, then picked them up one at a time, and glued them to the back.  He also nailed two frame hooks on the back.  And there you have it!  I love it, and think it looks great!  Can't wait to hang it up.

Thanks to Bella, the right bottom corner is a little more "worn" than originally. :)

So, here's what you need:

One frame

1 piece of ply wood, sized to fit the back

Different kinds of wine corks

Hot glue/glue gun

Frame hooks

Have fun creating, let me know your crafting turns out!

Pinterest Inspired

So, I'm sure most of you have heard about/use pinterest.  Lots of people complain that though it makes you feel artistic, crafty and creative, all you're doing is sitting at a computer looking at pictures.  While that sums up a lot of it, I actually have used some recipes I found on there, as well as some general household tips, and over the weekend I (we) finally made a couple of the items on my "DIY Ideas" board.  My husband and I had ourselves a Pinterest day!  I'll be posting his creation in another post.  My main item was a jewelry display.  I have a lot, and I mean A LOT of jewelry, and am always looking for ways to store/display it.  Also, with the addition of a poppy to our family, I need them to be in a place she can't get to them.  So, I saw this idea on thelook.today.msnbc.msn.com that I liked a lot.  This lady used drift wood, which I liked the look of, but didn't know where I was going to get from.  And she used... knobs.  I LOVE KNOBS!!!  There's a whole isle dedicated to them at most Hobby Lobbies, and I have a really hard time deciding where to start shopping; there, or in the scrappbooking section.  My mom bought me my knobs on vacation together.  If you're a garage saler, I'm sure you can find fun ones that way.  But, I got mine at Hobby Lobby.  Their price ranged from anywhere between $3.99 to $5.99.  So, I got 5 that complemented each other (I went with grays, whites and blacks, so it would go with any room's color scheme)

Our senior pastor makes things out of wood, so I got a piece of distressed looking wood from him.  Then, for extra display space, I got ceiling hooks and frame hooks at ACE (the helpful place).  I measured out where the holes should be, then drilled the holes (with some help from the hubby), and voila...!

So, just to recap, here's what you need:

1 Piece of wood

5 (or however many) knobs

Ceiling (or cup) hooks

Frame hooks

Drill 

So, have fun pinning as well as creating, and let me know if you have any suggestions, or pinterest inspired crafts you think I should try out!

Ready To POP

One of the ladies at our church is having a baby in June, and so we wanted to throw her a baby shower.  I love planning events, so even though I'd never even been to a baby shower- let alone hosted one, I decided this was something I wanted to do.

We went with the theme "Ready to POP".  This left for a lot of creativity when it came to the food.  We had cake pops, pop corn cake, pink pop and poppable cucumber sandwiches.

A sweet friend of mine gave me the chocolate melter from babycakes.  While it did a good job keeping the chocolate warm, I had to actually melt the chocolate in the microwave.  But I very much appreciated it.

I bought marked down Easter sprinkles from Aldi- perfect baby shower colors

Pink vanilla flavored Candy Wafers from  Hobby Lobby.

Mmmmmm

Baby colors sprinkles

I used strawberry Pilsberry cake mix.  If you would like to see my post on making cake pops, please visit cake-obsession-continues-cake-pops.html.

THEN, through pinterest I found this recipe for pop corn cake.  It's made just like a rice crispy bar.  I also found these new dark chocolate raspberry (pink) M&Ms, pretzels and Market Pantry microwave pop corn.

First, you pop 2 bags of pop corn,  then you add 2 cups of M&Ms and  1 1/2 cup broken pretzels.

Then I melted one (10.5 oz) bag of mini marshmallows with 1 cup of butter.

It said to wait a minute or two, so it wouldn't melt the chocolate, which I did, but it still melted. :(  So maybe wait a little more.  Then poor over dry ingredients, stir together, and press into bunts pan.

Let sit for an hour, take out and... VOILA!!!

M-m-m!!!

And these are the yummy strawberry cake pops.

How cute is that!? :)

St. Paddy's Day!!!

So, I know I'm pretty late with this one, and it will be of no use to anyone, but these cupcakes did turn out pretty awesome, so I'll post'em anyways.

The little bit of Irish in me (and we know we all have some somewhere) loves this holiday!  I always struggle with finding something in my wardrobe that's green, but when it comes to coming up with a festive green dessert for a youth party, I'm your girl.

I love lemon cupcakes, so I knew I wanted those, and how well does lime go with lemon?  So, I embarked on a mission to make a (non-fake-tasting) lime frosting.  I used a cream cheese frosting base (sorry), and then I added REAL lime juice.  (Lime flavored anything is like cherry for me- if it's fake, I just can't stomach it).  It wasn't green enough, so I added some green food coloring.  Awesome!  It's green!  I wasn't getting the punch of flavor I wanted, but my frosting was getting runny, so I started adding lime zest- talk about a good idea!  Yumm!

So, I frosted my cupcakes, topped them off with some more zest and... voila!

Taking a dorky "I need to add this to my blog" picture.

We tried for everything green for this youth St. Patrick's Day party.  A local pizza shop even added green to the pizza sauce- the kids would touch the stuff, but I loved it!  We also had green taco dip (mmmmm) and green chip cookies- oh yeah!!!

So, here's my question: how do you add a liquid to frosting without it becoming runny?  I thought about adding powdered sugar, but I didn't want to take away from the zestiness of the lime.  I'm open to suggestions, please help me out!

Streusel Coffee Cake Muffins

So... I have an awful confession to make.  I bake out of a box.  Let me explain- I don't know how to bake, and I don't want to waste the time and ingredients, when there's a chance that it won't turn out right.  But, when you use a box, it always comes out perfect, and I always have everything I need for it.

Not today.  Dan and I were having friends over (why do we always try new things when people will be there to witness it?), and I have been craving coffee cake REALLY BADLY.  And naturally, they HAD to be individual serving sizes- hence the muffinness. :)

So I went on a search for a yummy coffee cake recipe.  Obviously, I turned to pinterest.com.  If you haven't yet discovered this gem of a website, stop reading this (you won't hurt my feelings), and go request an invite.  NOW!  Okay, so I found this recipe from marthastewart.com.  You can't get much better than Martha.  So this one is at marthastewart.com/coffee-cake-muffins.  Based on the comments, I doubled the cinnamon for the streusel, and I didn't have jumbo muffin pans, so I made regular ones, and baked them for 20 minutes.  It made 15 of them.

So these are them:

  I'm a little partial, but I think mine actually look better than Martha's.  :)

Ingredients

• For The Muffins

  • 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
  • 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 cup sour cream
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
  • 2 large eggs

• For The Streusel Topping

  • 1 cup packed dark-brown sugar
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour, (spooned and leveled)
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 cup (1 stick) chilled unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

Directions

1. Prepare streusel topping: In a medium bowl, stir together brown sugar, flour, and salt. With a pastry blender or two knives, cut in butter until mixture resembles large coarse crumbs; refrigerate until ready to use.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prepare muffins: Place cupcake liners in pan. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and baking soda; set aside.
3. Using a hand-held mixer on medium speed, beat together butter, sour cream, granulated sugar, and vanilla until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until well combined. With mixer on low, beat flour mixture into butter mixture.
4. Divide half the batter among prepared muffin cups. Top with half the streusel mixture, then remaining batter, and top with streusel. Bake 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center of a muffin comes out clean. Cool in pan 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely. 

I was so excited, they came out beautifully!  Very moist, very yummy, the right amount of sweet... perfect!  I think next time I'll top it off with a little more streusel, for that added crunch (I had A LOT of streusel left over).  Very good experience for a first from scratch baking attempt.  Write about them is making me want one.  I think I'll go get one.  Trust me, you want one, go make them! :)

Post-Valentine's Day Sugar High

Valentine's Day is baker and crafter heaven.  At least for me it is.  It's when you get to get away with drawing hearts on things, using glitter paint and bake pink monstrosities. :)

The only baking I really did this season was making cake pops with our wonderful youth group girls.  We're always coming up with new ways to raise funds for our youth group.  We decided to make cake pop "bouquets".  Each of these bouquets consisted of three cake pops.  Red velvet and strawberry cake with chocolate and vanilla candy coating- yumm.

These are our awesome girls.  Those were so scrumptious!

For Valentine's Day my mom sent us a dozen Georgetown Cupcake cupcakes.  They are who we used for our wedding, and they're simply the best!

Because my parents live so far away, and don't get experience these things with us, We set up our camera to take multiple shots, so they could see us opening the box of cupcakes.  I love that my husband supports these kinds of crazy ideas. :)

We love these cupcakes so much!  We were super excited.

We got the Valentine's Day dozen.  They were so amazing!

This is what my night looked like: Cupcakes and Roman Holiday.  Pretty awesome Valentine's Day!

There are not too many words to describe how yummy this Strawberry Lava Fudge one is!

I hope you all had a wonderful Valentine's Day, no matter how or who you spent it with!

Keep the love and cupcakes flowing!