Festive Corn Casserole

Good afternoon! I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. It was a beautiful day in Alabama, I hope your weather was as great as ours.

I tried a few new recipes this year that I would love to share with you. The first is a festive corn casserole that I actually made for the first time for Thanksgiving last year. I got this one from my former boss who brought it for an office pot luck. You see, I don't eat many (ok, any) veggies so the fact that I LOVED this corn casserole is a miracle and definitely worth posting.

The origional recipe is from Cooking Light so it isn't even bad for you! The origional artical can be found on MyRecipe.com but I have also included it here with my edits (in red).

Corn Fritter Casserole, Photo: Randy Mayor, Melanie J. Clarke Ingredients 3 tablespoons butter, softened 3 large egg whites 1 (8-ounce) block fat-free cream cheese, softened 1/2 cup finely chopped onion (I put mine in the food processor) 1/2 cup finely chopped red bell pepper (again in the food processor) 1 (15 1/4-ounce) can whole-kernel corn, drained  1 (14 3/4-ounce) can cream-style corn  1 (8 1/2-ounce) package corn muffin mix (such as Jiffy) 1/4 teaspoon black pepper 1/2 cup Cheddar Cheese (shredded) Cooking spray Preparation Preheat oven to 375°. Combine first 3 (and shredded cheese) ingredients in a large bowl, stirring with a whisk until smooth. Stir in onion, bell pepper, whole-kernel corn, and cream-style corn; mix well. Add muffin mix and black pepper, stirring until well combined. Pour into an 11 x 7-inch baking dish coated with cooking spray. Bake at 375° for 50 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Billy Strynkowski, Cooking Light  SEPTEMBER 2004    

Christmas Decor Inspiration

It's almost that time of year again. Time to pull out the Christmas deocrations and finally get to some of the pintrest projects I've been waiting a year to try.

I am an advid follower of the rule that Christmas decorations are not to be put up before Thanksgiving. One holiday at a time people!

Eventhough I refuse to switch over to the dark side, I have started planning what projects I want to take on this year to add to my Christmas decor.
Here are a few Pintrest Projects that I hope to tackle this Christmas:

Ho Ho Ho Sign

 

Candy Cane Yarn Wreath

Christmas Card Wreath

 

 

Burlap Christmas Pillows

 

Pandora Stackable Rings - New Bling

I'm super excited to share with you the pandora ring I got to add to my collection.

Disclaimer - I am NOT a style writer. I am doing good to match each day. If you came here looking for a style blog you are going to be very disappointed. (you may want to check out my friend Megan's style blog though)

I already had the silver twist and I immediately fell in love with the Black Rutilite ring. Since the silver twist has a little bit of patina/antiqueing/?? in it so I thought it needed another band that would pull the look together. I just love stackables because they are so versitale.

 

Here's what they look like on.

If you love them as much as I do, here's where you can find them:

 

PANDORA Ring - Sterling Silver & Black Rutilite Bubbles Large

PANDORA Ring - Sterling Silver Twist

PANDORA Ring - Sterling Silver Heart

DIY Rustic Wooden Sign

In case you missed it in my previous post, my dear friend Nikki got married this weekend. I wanted to make something special for her new home as she begins a new life with a new last name.

I had been admiring the vintage wooden signs that you see everywhere online. Here's a little secret about me.... I'm just crazy enough to believe I can do anything I set my mind to, so I decided to make one myself. It was actually super easy. Here's how I did it: (Warning: This post is very picture heavy, stay with me :)  )



First I cut a 1"x 6" board to my desired length. For this one, I made it just a little shorter than the width of a door or window frame.

I used white wood from Lowes. It's pretty inexpensive and easy to work with. If you can get your hands on some old barn wood that would look better. There aren't a lot of old barns in Rocket City - Huntsville, AL, I'll have to go digging around in my hometown of Holly Pond for that.




Next, I put a coat of stain on the wood
so that it wouldn't look so "new" when I distressed it.

 Then I gave it a light coating of spray paint. I let it dry and then used my mouse sander to rough up the paint job a little. I paid special attention to the ends and the edges. I wanted to see some of the wood through the paint.

 Lettering. This was the hardest part. I have terrible handwriting. I blame it on being left handed. I picked a nice block font and printed off her name in a large font and then lined it up on my board. I used a pen to trace the outline of the letter onto the board. Be sure to press down pretty hard so the pen will leave an indention on the wood underneath.




Next I took a sharpie paint pen and went over the outlines. Be sure to use a paint pen and not a regular sharpie. A regular sharpie will have that weird purple metallic look from the side. It also doesn't sand as well.


Once I had my outlines traced, I filled in the letters with a small paintbrush and some acrylic craft paint.


After it has completely dried, I took my mouse sander and LIGHTLY sanded over the lettering. It is very important that you make sure the paint is completely dry, if not, you will smear the whole thing and have to start over. (not that I know from experience *cough*)




Finally, I added two picture hanging brackets on the back. Be sure you measure so that they are equally spaced from the ends. (Unless you want to play a joke on the person you are giving it to, it would  make it ridiculously hard to hang straight)

TA DA!  Here is the finished product. I didn't hang it on my wall for a photo because I would have had to make two holes in the wall, but you get the idea.

 

 



If you decide to make your own, be sure to link up with me! I'd love to see it!

Thanks for stopping by!!

~Amanda

Sips and Strokes with Some Pretty Cool Folks

Ok, ok, I know today's title is pretty cheesy. I really couldn't resist. This week has been super crazy. I wanted to post earlier this week but couldn't find time to sit in front of the computer long enough to type out a blog.

My friend Nikki is one of my favorite people. We go way back. She's one of those friends that knows way too much about you but loves you just the same. :) Here is a pic of us at my wedding last year.

 

This week I was able to make it down to Cullman for her bachlorette party. We did a painting class at the Candle Garden, which is like Sips and Strokes. It was so much fun! In addition to celebrating all the wonderful things going on in Nikki's life, it was also really great to see my old roommates, Sara and Amy.

 

 

Here's what we painted!

Roll Tide!!

 

Amy working hard on her painting.

Nikki and her sister, Allison

 The whole group.

 Can you tell we had a great time?? It's pretty cool how all the paintings turned out to be different.

At some point this week I will post the present I gave Nikki with a tutorial.

 

Have a great week!

 

~Amanda

 

 

DIY Framed Bathroom Mirror

I am slowly trying to redo our guest bath with easy, inexpensive DIY upgrades. The guest bath is VERY small so it's a good place to try out projects on a small scale before I start to tackle our master bath (shhhh don't tell hubby I plan on tackling the master bath next.) All of our mirrors are the basic builder slap some glass up mirrors and definitely leave much to be desired.

As you can see, the whole bathroom is builder basic, but one project at a time.

What you will need:

Baseboard trim - amount to fit perimeter of the mirror

Liquid nails

Sharp knife

Caulk

Wet rag

Miter saw

Cost= $20

To frame this mirror, I purchased a 12' piece of baseboards from Lowes. I thought this would be an easy "run in and grab it" purchase but man was I wrong! There are so many options! I went with a thicker trim that is made of pressed board and was already painted white. I originally wanted real wood but the nice Lowes lady talked me out of it. Because I don't have any space between the mirror and the wall in the corner, I couldn't screw the boards into the wall. Real wood would have been to heavy for liquid nails. You could also do this project with the super light boards made from foam and use a silicone if you wanted something a little more temporary, but I didn't like the look of the foam boards, plus hey, this mirror really couldn't get much worse.

I had the nice lady cut the board in half for me so it would fit in my car. My mirror measured 42" tall and 27" wide. From each 6' board I was able to get one vertical piece and one horizontal piece.

My father-in-law was nice enough to cut my trim for me with his miter saw. This is a very important step because the angles need to be exactly 45 degrees or your mirror won't line up.

A few tips we picked up along the way:

• Always measure on the thick side of the board. This will be your outside perimeter of the mirror and will need to match up with the with of your glass.
• Always cut the boards face up. We didn't figure this out until the end but cutting them face down instead of moving the saw blade back and forth will cause the boards to be a little uneven. This is due to the rounded edges on the moulding. If you are using a flat piece of trim instead of the decorative type like I used, this shouldn't make a difference

Once your boards are all cut, lay them out to make sure they fit together. Otis thought they looked pretty good.

Once you're pretty confident that your corners match up, it's time to start gluing them to the glass. If your mirror is held up by brackets, you will need to use a sharp knife to whittle away a small spot for your brackets to fit. If you skip this step then your boards won't sit flush with your glass and your corners won't line up correctly. I forgot to take a picture of this step but basically I held the board up to the mirror, marked where the brackets were with a pencil, and whittled away at the backside until the wood sat flat on the glass. 

Now you are ready to glue the trim to the mirror. I started with the bottom board, then the two sides, and finally the top board. Squeeze a moderate amount of liquid nails on the back, making sure not to get too close to the edge where the mirror will be. I got a little close in a few places and you can see it in the reflection if you look real hard.

Liquid nails sets pretty quickly so make sure all your boards are lined up correctly and then tape them in place to secure them until the glue dries completely. I used packing tape and it worked just fine.

Once the glue is dried, peel off the tape and you're almost done!

The last thing you want to do is take some paintable caulk and go over the seams on the corners. Smooth it in any cracks with your finger and then wipe off the excess with a damp rag. This will hide any imperfections with your boards lining up.



Once the caulk dries, you can paint your frame any color you want. I decided to leave mine white to match the rest of the trim in the room.

I love the way this project turned out. You could easily do this project in an afternoon, if you're not painting the boards you could even do it in less than an hour.

This is definitely an upgrade from the plain sheet mirror. I can't wait to get some more work done in this bathroom!

~Amanda