Sharing the Love with some Feathered Friends

Is it just us folks with small kids that seem to drag out every holiday and celebrate for days or weeks ahead of time to milk every ounce of fun out of it?  I don't remember being so "holiday themed" crazy before becoming a mommy.  So much so that the Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years events with two little wild men seemed to wear me out and leave me a bit uninspired after prepping and decorating every square inch of our little space we call home.  But alas, I digress, and I am back to my old tricks with a fun family craft that's both green, and good for your hungry feathered friends. 

It's easy.  It can be SO VERY MESSY!  Do as I say and not as I do, it's for your own good, trust me.  If at all possible I'd put these Valentine Bird Feeders together outside, and far away from the reach of helping husbands who are bound to knock the teeny tiny seeds all over your kitchen and breakfast area.  If you can keep your toddlers from eating all of the bird seed than it's a fun Valentine's Day themed craft to do that won't take much time and my two and a half year old seemed thrilled to do.  Of course, he loves the little birdies in our yard.  They are his friends, so he was super excited when I stole this idea from one of his Highlights magazines as a fun thing for us to share, and to add a little decoration outside.  He informed me tonight that we were also to make one for his favorite golfing buddy Mr. Bill, so if you see him, don't spill the bird seed, it's a surprise. 

His plan is a good one; these sweet little bird feeders would make cute do-it-yourself gifts and they are inexpensive and will hopefully bring more birds by our windows during play time.

What do you need? 

• card board
• Crisco
• bird seed
• ribbon
• hole punch

We used part of an old cardboard diaper box and luckily had a ton of Crisco on hand.  An adult should cut out heart shapes from the card board and hole punch where you'll want to tie your ribbon.  Spread a LOT of Crisco onto your cardboard heart and sprinkle on bird seed.  Don't be shy with the Crisco because that is what holds the seeds on.  And don't be surprised if little hands smear Crisco all over the place!!!  Flip it over and coat the other side with Crisco and then seeds, tie them up with a ribbon and your done.  See, easy.  Messy.  Which equals big fun with the kiddos. 

 If you try this and find a way to make the ribbons less messy, please share it with me in the comments section.  This was our first try at these bird feeder hearts and my son truly loved it but I would like to find a way to make them cuter, especially if we are going to be handing them out as gifts.  If you like this idea, please, share the love with your friends, feathered or not.

Quick Tip Tuesday: A Cure for Over-cooked Meat

Being huge Iron Chef fans in our house we took our horribly, no good, very bad beef from our New Year's Eve dinner that went awry and used it as an opportunity to try something new.  Have you ever seen beef get re-hydrated on any of those cooking shows?  It's really pretty cool, and also pretty easy.  It's also your only chance to salvage meat that has just been smoked to a crisp...okay, not your only chance, I've also heard you can make it into a stroganoff but that was not a part of our plan. 

When we refused to throw out our terrible dinner from the night before we thought that we could fix it like they always seem to do with weird secret ingredients on Chopped or Iron Chef.  It already stunk, so we couldn't really do any more damage.  My memories of those episodes were spotty so I tried to find it online first,  but when google wasn't answering our questions, I just tried what I thought would help and it ended up being much better than we thought.  My husband was sad that I didn't try to make more but the rest of the left overs were too hard to cut and I don't think they would have turned out as well. 

You can salvage a piece of dry beef just by throwing it into the oven for a few minutes.  If meat is left over and been refrigerated it's easier to slice.  Slice it thin and add it to a casserole dish with beef broth, cover it with tin foil and heat on a low setting about 300ish until it's warmed up.  I added in garlic and onion seasoning because I wanted to see if I could help the flavor of our mess, and would have loved to have used a beef and onion broth to make an au jus, but we didn't have any so I used what we had on hand and it turned out pretty tasty, if I do say so myself.  It's not going to be the juiciest thing you've ever eaten but it will certainly work in a pinch.

Here is a link to the only site I could find that talked about fixing this meat dilemma, they also shared a few other good ideas that might help you the next time you are wondering what to do with that kitchen nightmare you've just created.

It's a New Year! Re-Purposing with Purpose

Happy New Year Folks!  I hope your celebrations were joyful and fun.  With a new year I feel like it's time to clean house and start anew on the home front too.  Do you ever feel that way?  Early Spring Cleaning of sorts?  Just to get our boys Christmas stuff in the house we had to re-organize our second floor (thanks Santa Pops!) and once you get started it's sometimes hard to stop.  As I am rifling through everything and putting stuff in the store, donate, or re-use pile, I thought it would be a great time to share some ideas with you.  I have a few re purposing ideas for the kitchen, home office, and playroom that I plan to talk about this week and would love if you shared your ideas as well. 



Have you ever seen these glass beverage containers?  They are gorgeous and look so pretty sitting out when entertaining, even water and fruit look prettier in a giant glass vase.  Unfortunately for us ours have never seemed to work without leaking.  It starts out as just a little drip of liquid which then turns into a huge mess when you are trying to entertain.  Both of the urns we have were gifts that we love so there was no way that we were willing to toss them. 

When the holidays rolled around and we couldn't find anything significant enough to be the center piece for our kitchen island one of our vases was the perfect fix, which thrilled me to no end and my husband too because he was tired of me making him swap stuff out for me to say "mmm no, too small", or "too big", or "too ugly".  Using the vase in this way was an easy fix, the spout just pops right off.  It's obviously not air tight but that doesn't matter for decorative purposes and because it was so low, you didn't even notice that there was a small hole on the bottom unless you were looking for it.

With a cheerio loving 9 month old on our hands, it's become pretty obvious what our other beverage urn is going to become.  We don't even need to make any modifications to it.  It's air tight with a seal around the top and it's sturdy with a giant opening for pouring stuff in and taking stuff out, perfect for counter top storage and much more attractive than a cheerios box.  And I must say, I am so tired of seeing the Cheerios box on my counter!  This is a great gift, that now that we've figured it out, will keep on giving (us storage options) for years to come.  Hooray!