Style File 4/30/11

 It's another beautiful Friday in VA Beach! Despite the storms that rolled through last night, it is absolutely beautiful today. Not a cloud in the sky, light breeze, 75 degrees. But I'll stop gloating now, haha. But it's been warm all week so I thought I would bust out the sandals. I don't have a whole lot to say about this outfit, so I'll just tell you what I did with my Friday!

 Today I didn't have anything in particular to do. My day started off at about 6:30, I checked out the Royal Wedding (which was beautiful!! Kate was spectacular looking!) and then went for my run. I got in 6 miles. It's the farthest I've run! Yay!

 Then I went grocery shopping. Yay food! I forgot my list at home, but I managed to not forget anything. I was pleased.

 And later I'll go to the library. I have a hold to pick up and so does Brad. :)

 Then maybe take the dog for a walk?

I do love these sandals. They're my favorite.


Sweater- Old Navy
Shirt- Old Navy
White Tank- Target
Shorts- Thrifted; American Eagle
Shoes- JC Penney
Necklace- Gift from my Grandma (she has good taste in make up and jewelry. It's awesome).
Sunglasses- Target

Scrappy Wednesday 4//27/11

This is a page from Australia, the first of the AMOS trip pictures. Basically, we went on a mini-mission trip within our trip out to the bush. The first couple of days on the trip, we went into public schools in very rural towns. These schools were primarily not Aboriginal. The latter half of our trip we were in an Aboriginal community. In general I don't have a lot of pictures of the students either at Mueller College (the church we partnered with) or from this trip because of the laws in Australia requiring extensive permissions from the parents to take pictures of children. As such, I'm relying on journaling to tell those stories.

Anyway, I like how this one turned out. I made the green and pink grid thing from ripping strips of paper using my Creative Memories ripping tool. The ovals were cut using the Creative Memories cutting system. The lettering and fancy circle shapes were cut using my cricut. Here is a close up of one of those circles, I thought they were pretty awesome.

What's for Dinner? 4/25/11

 Ok, so I don't actually recommend eating just bread for dinner, but it's good to eat none the less. As some of you may know, I don't actually buy bread anymore. I make it myself; but I have a bread maker, so it's not so difficult. Here's what I normally do to make it. It's heavily adapted from the pastor's wife of the church I grew up in. She makes wonderful bread, so here are my little tweaks. Enjoy:

Ingredients:
1 cup warm water
4 tbsp milk
4tbsp oil
4 tbsp sugar
1 and 1/2 tsp bread machine yeast
1 cup white flour
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp vital wheat gluten

  It's important that you put in the ingredients in the bread pan in the order the manufacturer suggests. Mine says to put the liquids in first, so that's what I do. Start with some warm water.

 Add the 4 table spoons  milk.

 And the 4 table spoons oil.

 And the 4 tablespoons sugar (noticing a pattern here?)

 Now for the yeast. Add 1 and 1/2 teaspoons to the pan. It's important that you keep the salt and the yeast from touching each other in this process. So I always put the yeast in as the first dry ingredient and then put the salt in as the last ingredient.

 The yeast will start to spread out and look like it's melting. That's good; it's how it works correctly. But this is why it's important to use warm water to make sure the yeast rises properly.

 You can use any combination of whole wheat and all purpose flour. Use one cup all purpose to keep the bread light enough to make sandwiches out of. If I use all whole wheat, it's extremely dense bread and not so good for using it for sandwiches and such.

 If you notice, I don't use full cups of the whole wheat. Whole Wheat flour sucks up the moisture. Honestly, this is kind of a guessing game as to how much you should reduce. A good rule of thumb is to reduce by a quarter cup, but sometimes the dough is too dry anyway. If it is too dry add a couple tablespoons of water during while the machine is kneading the dough. Sometimes I have to add flour because the dough is too wet. A lot of it depends on how dry or humid it is outside.

 Now add your 1 teaspoon of salt.

 and lastly, the vital wheat gluten. Bake it on the whole wheat setting if you are using more than 50% whole wheat flour. My particular machine kneads and bakes it for 3:40 minutes.

Finished!! :)

Style File 4/23/11

 I have been on a quest to replace my wardrobe. I am officially down past my goal of weight loss (some of that is an accidental result of increasing my distance on my runs) so that means everything that was in my closet hangs on me all awkward like. Don't get me wrong, this is a good problem to have, but not when spring is arriving and I have events I need to wear dresses to! So I have purchased a couple inexpensive dresses and will probably get some of my favorites from my closet altered down. Anyway, I bought this outfit at Target, for the most part. I had a 20% off coupon for one Merona purchase (the dress) and the belt and shoes were on the clearance rack.

 I love this dress. It's very comfortable and I think it will be pretty versatile. I can dress it up or down depending on the event. I can wear almost any of my shoes with it. I could wear it to work if I so chose. I think the first public appearance it's going to make is going to be on Sunday morning at Church. I always like to wear a nice spring outfit on Easter Sunday.

 The dress had a tie belt that matches it (made of the same fabric) and I like it ok, but I felt I wanted to jazz it up a little bit more. I found this belt on the clearance rack for 9 dollars, so I picked it up. I think I'll find this belt to be a great addition to my wardrobe; especially since I own very very few belts as it is.

 I already had the necklace (and I'm sure you've seen it before). It was my granmda's. She has good taste.

 I used the tie that came with the dress as a headband. I'll probably wear it as it was intended every so often but I like to have options!

 These shoes... I wasn't really intending to buy shoes. But they were the only pair there. And they were on sale for 5.76. They were an online item that had been brought back. They're *technically* a little big... but I love them anyway. I've been on the look out for some shoes I could rock in the evening if I wanted. And you can wear silver shoes with virtually anything.

Up close so you can see the polka dots. I love polka dots. I've mentioned that recently though. :)

At Target, I also bought some of that Jergen's Natural Glow moisturizer for both my face and the rest of me. I do not tan at all. I really don't think I'm really capable of it. I generally turn red (burn. No bueno) and then turn white again. Nor do I want skin cancer. So I thought I might give this glow a go. In theory it won't turn me orange and it will gradually build up to some sort of "Natural Glow", I suppose. I'll have to let you know how it goes. If it goes badly, anyone have any cures for bad self tanner?

Scrappy Wednesday 4/20/11

 More pages of my Australia trip! These feature the Gold Coast beaches. I kept them fairly simple, but I liked the result. I also made the pages look very different, even though they're from the same event. But I'm ok with it.

I cut the flowers with my cricut. On this second page I used a sticker maker my mom scored at a garage sale for me. It made adhering the flower and letters so much easier. I think I am in love with my sticker maker. Also, I apologize for the weird lighting in the second one. I was lazy and figured it would be good enough. I really enjoy these pages. I really like the look of the blue torn strips on the green background. I used a creative memories tearing tool to get the edges to look decent. I am awful at tearing in straight lines, so it helps me a lot.

Do you ever have pages where you just think "I don't care what anyone else thinks, I really love these pages"? That's how I feel about my green page. Haha.

How are your creative projects coming?

What's for Dinner? 4/18/11

Sorry there was no style file this week... My Grandparents came to visit me, and I spent most of friday at Colonial Williamsburg with them, so I didn't get a chance to do a shoot. Oh well, I'll make it up  next week! :) '

Lasagna is what's for dinner. I promise it's very yummy! Here is a "healthier" version that I make.

What you'll need:

Whole Wheat lasagna noodles
Extra lean ground beef, or ground turkey
1 egg
Italian type spices that strike your fancy
Fat Free Ricotta Cheese
Reduced fat Mozzarella Cheese
Spaghetti Sauce

First the prep work:
Boil the lasagna noodles according to package instructions. I think I cooked ten noodles. Also, brown the beef (or turkey). While you have all that going, crack the egg in a small bowl and add the ricotta. Mix it all together.

 In the ricotta mixture, add your spices. I used thyme, onion powder, garlic, parsley, and black pepper. The key is to keep adding and mixing until you can smell it.

 This is the sauce I used. I wasn't sure if I was going to need one or two jars, so I got two, just in case. I only ended up using one. In the bottom of a casserole dish (mine is 9 by 9) pour some sauce in. Use just enough to cover the bottom.

 On top of that, lay three of the noodles in the bottom of them.

 Spread some of the ricotta mixture on top of the noodles.

 Put half of the meat on the ricotta and top with some sauce.

 Top the sauce with cheese. Reapeat these layers as you see fit. (I think on top of the cheese I did noodles, ricotta, meat, sauce, noodles, ricotta, sauce, top with cheese)

Mine was a total of three complete layers, I believe. I topped it with mozzarella cheese and covered it with foil and baked it the next day for dinner. To bake it, I keep it covered and bake it for about two hours on 375.

Enjoy!

Scrappy Wednesday 4/13/11

Underwater World is an aquarium on the Gold Coast in Mooloolooba. Yes, that's really the name of the city. We also went to some beaches on this mini-trip, but those pictures are for next week.

I thought since they were aquarium pictures, that I would use a background that was reminiscent of Bubbles. Then I decided to stick with the circle theme and make my pictures float around in little bubbles. Maybe that's cheesy, but that was my line of thinking. The lettering was done on the Cricut. The little circles the lettering is in were done with a circle punch. The big circles were done with the creative memories cutting system. Journaling, again, is summarized from blog posts (which you can still go check out!)