Where Have I Been

Alright, this is just wrong!  I have lived here most of my life and I just found the International Bakery!  It is in a part of town called Little Mexico but the drive is well worth experiencing this little gem of a place! I was so excited when I found it, I neglected to take pictures.  So I found some online (photo credits are below the pictures).

Photo by Captain Napkin

How did this little excursion start?  Well have you seen the I-Hop commercial for the Brioche French Toast?  Well I have, which lead me to have lunch there with my oldest daughter one day and I tried the Banana Foster French Toast... YUMMY. Which got me to thinking, you know I really enjoy Brioche bread.  I've never seen any at my local grocery store but there has to be a bakery that sells the bread.  So I Googled... which lead me to this little bakery.  The only thing I could really find was a simple Facebook page and some reader comments on Yelp so I decided to go in search of this bakery - Plus I remembered a good friend of mine talking about this place one night after volleyball, (Yes this the way my mind works)! Now first off I didn't find a whole loaf of Brioche bread but what I did find was absolutely incredible.

If you are like me I get a little nervous about going to places I have never been before and even a little more nervous when it is in an area that I don't frequent.  I am a creature of habit, and I find comfort in my habits.  Now normally in this situation I would bring someone along with me but the husband was at work, as well as my sister and most of my friends.  So if I wanted to explore this place today I had to go alone, so I did and I was fine!  As I opened my car door I immediately could smell the aroma of the bakery, cinnamon, recently baked cake, frosting... mmmmm. 

From reading the reviews on Yelp I knew that I would need to grab a tray and some tongs and walk around selecting goodies!  I never expected what I found behind that door!

Photo by Captain Napkin

One very long row of pastry cabinets!  Every cabinet had a different kind of pastry and I was seriously trying hard to contain my excitement.  Then I saw the prices and I couldn't believe it, ALMOST everything was $0.50 and a few $1.00 items! Some were even 3 for $1.00.  Honestly, trying hard to contain myself at this point!



Photo by Captain Napkin

 Racks upon racks of fresh baked doughnuts, bread and bakery cases full of yummy goodness.  Oh and a little café too! Just amazing!

Photo by Captain Napkin

I had to show to the photo above because while I didn't get a whole loaf of Brioche Bread... yeah I know you see it.  See the long piece of bread that looks like it is pound cake on the left?  Well it isn't pound cake it is a thick slice of brioche bread with butter and sprinkled with very fine sugar.  NO it didn't make it home, it didn't even make it to 42nd and Q!

Photo by ME!

This is what actually made it home along with two croissants and a small loaf of bread!  I spent a total of $9.00!  I can't wait until dessert time this evening! 

Chili & Cornbread Waffles

YES! Cornbread Waffles!  I love Chili and Cornbread, who doesn't?  During the colder months we have it at least once a week for dinner.  The kids and husband get a little tired of the same old Chili and Cornbread routine.  So I was looking for a way to make it just a little bit more fun for them.  I had read somewhere that you could use chocolate cake mix and make chocolate waffles so I figured why not give it a try.  I just mixed up the cornbread mix like normal and poured it on the waffle iron!  PERFECT!

 

It was such a big hit my kids had three helpings!

Saving My Drink!

We all know it... we should drink more water!  I have a couple of requirements for my water.  First it must be as cold as possible (thank goodness for my ice maker) and second it must taste like anything BUT water!  I try to stay away from bottled flavor water because just as soon as I found one I liked... yep stories start to surface that they aren't good for you.  Most have added sugar, preservatives, etc.  So I turned to flavoring my water with fruit, herbs and veggies.  Sounds like a good alternative, right?  Well for me I found that time was an issue.  I have tried the Flat Belly Diet and I knew I liked, what they call "Sassy Water", I just call it yummy!  Which involves water, cucumber, lemon, mint and fresh ginger root.  My issue was that I would forget to make it or didn't have time to make it or I'd make it and then not drink the whole thing.  OR the other would happen and I would have the ingredients and before I would get to making it, my mint would go bad or my cucumbers would get soft... just not appetizing things to put in your water to drink... NOPE!

Then I remembered a post at Organic Gardening about saving fresh herbs from the farmers market!  I spend a small fortune on them and I get really frustrated when they go bad due to my lack of use or timeliness!  Now I had an idea... why can't I freeze my flavored water ingredients?

I knew I needed some ice cube trays so I headed to the stores to find some that would work.  I knew I wanted something that was big enough to fit the ingredients in but small enough so that it would melt quickly and give my water that flavoring that I love!  I went to Big Lots and found these trays for $2 a piece.  The bottoms are a rubber material and my thought was that it would be easier so pop them out once they were frozen.  Now $4 may seem like a lot for ice cube trays but I figured that I would earn my money back by simply not purchasing 4 drinks from the gas station.  Have I mentioned that I stop at one every morning?

I grabbed my ingredients lemon, cucumber, and mint. I cut each one small enough to fit into he trays and I started to fill them up. Once they were full I added water and slid them into the freezer.  The anticipation was almost too much to handle but thankfully I made it through!

While I was waiting I stressed about the ingredients being too delicate to handle the freezing process and what if it didn't turn out the way I had envisioned.  UGH the agony of it all, to keep my mind off of it I started cleaning.  Which if you know me... you know it isn't something I like to do, do often enough or find any sort of satisfaction from doing.  Nope that is why I have a husband and kids!

Finally these little babies where frozen and ready to be used.  I was pretty pleased that the ingredients appear to have made it through the freezing process but I still didn't know if the drink would taste the same.  The only way to figure that out was to actually make myself a drink! I popped those beauties out of the ice cube tray and into a bowl.  Then I added them to my water bottle (which I got a home goods for $4), filled it with water and waited a few minutes. Sip 1... mmmm I could taste every single ingredient... FABULOUS!

When I first did this little experiment I just plopped the ice cubes in the bottom which is fine for the cucumbers and lemon but the mint ended up coming up the straw periodically.  UHM not my intention.  I found filling the bottom with a little ice then the flavor cubes and more ice keeps the ingredients in the middle of the bottle.  I've also found that my husband likes to use some of my flavor ice cubes in his water... so I make extra lemon ice for him and that way we all end up drinking more water!

Easter Tree for Pennies!

Well I am in full Easter decorating mode... I found this Egg Topiary Tree on Pinterest.  So I decided to head to the Dollar Tree and find my supplies! Now from the tutorial above I expected the cone and eggs to be much bigger but they were fairly small.

The cone is 6 15/16 x 2 15/16 and the eggs are about an inch to an inch and a half in size.  While they had all different types of grass, I picked up paper grass.  First I opened the eggs and cut off the ribbon.  I used almost 4 bags of eggs I had three left over.  I simply started at the bottom applied a little hot glue and adhered it to the tree.

I put all of the eggs on first and then I went back and added grass to fill in the holes.

I also found some eggs on a stick!  These were also $1.00 a package and I purchased 2 packages.  I also found some glasses that had this cool indent on it that are oval... kind of looked like eggs to me! Anyway they were $1.00 ask well.  The only altering I did was I cut the sticks a little bit so that some were tall, some were short and some were in between.

$11.00 later, I've got some pretty nice little decorations!

LOST DOG

LOST DOG

HAVE YOU SEEN ME?

 

 

I snuck out of the house on Friday, March 15^th around 5:30pm. 168th & Blondo area.

My name is Griffin, I have a thyroid condition and need medication!

I am very smart, and am shy around people I don’t know. 

Please contact my owners:

Email lostdog912@gmail.com

I am happy to report that Griffin has been returned to us safe and sound!

Organizing on the CHEAP!

Right now my cabinets are looking like a mess.  One reason is that I used to have a pantry and cabinet space abound but now... I have a much smaller kitchen and no pantry unless you count the lazy susan cabinet... which I don't.  So I needed to find a way to organize some of the items that I purchase in bulk.  I seriously need to avoid things like this:

 

I mean seriously who wants to see a bunch of that in their cabinets? So off to Dollar Tree I went.  From a previous project that I did with my Girl Scout Troop, I knew they had these fantastic containers that would do the trick!  I purchased 22 of them for $22.00 and went home and got to work!

At some point I think I will make some pretty labels but for now I just need to organize this mess that I have going on in my cabinets.  So with a Sharpie in hand I stared to label my containers and little by little got some organizing done.  I am fortunate that I can get two of these in one row and in some cabinets I can stack them two high.  Here is what I've accomplished so far!

Not bad for $22.00 and a couple of hours of my time!  My kitchen will be organized in no time!

 

 



Unpacking and Whatnot

Recently we moved from a 2200 square foot house to an 1800 square foot house.  Now you wouldn't think 400 square feet is a lot of room but I say it is a TON of room and I am having a bit of difficulty finding my sensible organization skill!  Right now I have approximately 20 boxes in my garage that haven't been unpacked!  I can't even think about looking at them until I find/create ways to put things in their place. 

We have this shelving unit that we purchased about 7 years ago.  Its original function was a place in our office where I put my scrapbooking supplies.  When I finally got a scrapbook room with cabinets the cubby found a place by the front door where we put all of our shoes, backpacks, mail, projects... well basically a place where we dropped everything when we walked in the door.  It looked terrible!  Eventually, I found a set of lockers at Goodwill that replaced that function and then moved it to our living room.  Where it took on a life of being a place for the kids to stuff their toys when we told them to clean up.  Yeah not what I intended it to be...Anyway in the new place it sits in a little cove off of the front door by the stairs.  I am determined that this will not return to its old junky state and once again it will be used to store my many scrapbooking and craft supplies.

As you can see, it was starting to look a little junky and I've barely unpacked anything and NOTHING in or on the cubby is remotely related to crafts or scrapbooking!  Plus one of the shelves has a pretty noticeable scratch (top middle) so I decided I needed to figure out how to make this thing look organized and not have everything exposed (but most importantly I had to cover that scratch - it was truly bothering me)!

 

I asked my husband what he thought about baskets and he agreed that it would likely give the space a more organized and cohesive look (his only requirement was that it couldn't be wicker - I don't know why but he has something against wicker). Score, the husband agreed!  You know what that means... shopping and a possible craft project YAHOO!  I searched Pinterest and the web and found a couple of good options, but it involved laundry baskets from the dollar store and fabric (fabric would be my arch nemesis) but IF I could pull of this project then it would be a simple and inexpensive fix (yeah right). 

 

So I went to the fabric store to look for patterns that I liked and that I thought would compliment this space.  Story of my life... I've got Champagne tastes on a Beer budget.  I felt the fabric was expensive and I figured I needed at least a half of a yard for each basket.  So before I spent any money I thought I better make sure I could find the laundry baskets... again story of my life... the Dollar Store didn't have any baskets that would fit in the cubby.  I decided to go to the Dollar Tree and no dice. So I went to Garden Ridge.  I knew they had a large assortment of baskets so I felt I surely would find something.  I was right and at $7.99 a piece I felt these were a good buy.

 

The baskets are made out of a seat belt type material and the bottom and top have metal reinforcements.  Nice and sturdy!  The only problem I ran into was that they only had 6 in black.  But I was able to find two more that had silver and black so I ended up buying 8 of them. Now if you were paying attention... I've got 9 slots in my cubby but I figured I would leave the center one open with the two off colored ones (at least it would look like I did it intentionally) on each side! 

I know the pictures don't do it justice but it really transformed the space and it looks much more organized than it did before.

I don't know about anyone else but when I walk into this store I cannot leave until I walk through the home décor, picture, picture frame, clock and mirror section.  Yes my husband hates going into this store with me!  In our old place I did a lot of painting and really didn't have the need or room for a lot of artwork, picture frames etc. because the walls were standard and not big blank canvases like they are in the new place.  So now I have white walls everywhere and I have the need (I mean a deep yearning, burning desire) to fill those walls with color!

Right next to this cubby is a bathroom which has black accessories (I wanted to do something light and bright but the husband insisted and well he doesn't get to make many of the decorating decisions - so I decided to let him have this one)!  Anyway, his mother passed away a couple of years ago and she collected angles.  Now many of them we gave her as gifts and his father graciously allowed us to take a few from her collection.  I wanted somehow to incorporate one of the angels that we got into this bathroom. 

Do you see my problem yet?  All of the bathroom accessories are black, the cabinet is wood and this beautiful, meaningful angel is cream and gold.  What is a girl to do... Well she shops and finds the most amazing deal and knows that her mother-in-law is guiding her to the perfect solution.  Why do I think my mother-in-law is guiding me?  Well, she had all of these little quirky sayings like "You can get glad in the same pants you got mad in", "Take your attitude back to your box" and "Hide and Watch"!  We often had conversations about friends and family responsibility.  She would say that "Friends are the family you would pick" and sometimes you have to do nice things for family even though you don't necessarily like them... this saying Friends know the song in your heart and can sing it to you when you have forgotten the words, instantly reminded me of her and that particular conversation.  I don't know how else to put it without REALLY going into detail, but this just means something to me on a deep personal level.

The frame is black and it has all of these wonderful colors and do you see the red line through the UPC... yep it was on clearance I paid $4.99 for it, SCORE!

 

So here is the bathroom before:

And after:



I kind of think I need a little floral something on each side of the picture or between the picture and the angel but I'm likely going to create that so for now I am calling it good!  I have one more wall in this bathroom that I plan on decorating with something that I make but at least there is a little more color in here now that I can work with! YEAH ME!