How 'Bout Them Pies? (Part II)

Remember how yesterday, I showed you my beef and mushroom pot pies and promised you MORE? Whelpers... Here it is.  Beginning with a pie crust tutorial (and ending with the pie crust tutorial... read until the end, please...):

Yes... I used the food processor (the 2nd time around...). Put your ingredients in the food processor, beginning with the dry. Process the dry ingredients and SAVE YOURSELF the sifting time! (Tip of the day... hey!)

 Add COLD butter (everything tastes better with butter, ya know...) and a tiny bit of margarine (TY, Martha Stewart!) and process until it resembles peas. Not MUSHED peas, but firm looking little peas, popped right out of the pods...

See? I can see the peas in there... just pretend peas are white for minute, would you?

You should be able to press it together (between your fingers) and have it stick fairly well together.

Then... drop by drop, put in the water, processing BRIEFLY. It should roughly form a ball. A ball of dough. (Duh...)

 

[Sorry don't know what happened to the rest of the pictures of the dough-making, but I can't find them anywhere anymore.]

 

Now... take it out and wrap it super duper tight in plastic wrap and refrigerate it. For about an hour. If it's longer, that's fine, too.  As long as it's tightly wrapped, it should be fine.

 

Remove from the fridge and let stand for about 10 minutes or so before rolling. Woohoo! You did it! (I did, too!) Roll out just like I did in the first post about all of this... (CLICK HERE TO SEE!)

I'll give you part 3 tomorrow... with the actual pics of the turkey pot pie. Please be patient. I'm barely making it post today as it is. The losing-the-picture-thingy totally set me off and on a frenzied rampage. I finally had to realize you all weren't gonna die without them...

But here's a couple of notes...

• If at all possible, do it with a food processor. Not a mixer. Not by hand. It makes something extremely temperamental to create so super duper easy, that anyone can do it!
• Take it from the experts. If Martha wrote a great recipe. She's pretty dang sure it'll work, and that goes for Julia, too! (They're my friends... I know them well, or at least the books they've written.)
• Be sure to use ICE COLD WATER. I cannot tell you how important this is. Unless... you like a chewy glue-type crust. And glue is hard to roll.
• and that goes for the butter and margarine, too. COLD, COLD, COLD.
• When it says BRIEFLY. That's exactly what that means. Be brief. (I pulsed it, just so I wouldn't overdo it.
• If you're using purchased dough... that's fine, too. Ease is bliss. However, I just want to alert you... the purchased doughs are usually not vegetarian friendly (and in my case, intestine-friendly). I did not know until AFTER I'd eaten the beef pot pies that the pre-packaged dough contained lard. Don't get me wrong. LOVE the flavor. My body, however, hates it and tells me. Ick. Enough said.
• Either type of dough you use, flour your board fairly well, and keep flouring it. The books that say "lightly" are NOT very expertly. Martha and Julia tell us to turn the pastry continually to prevent sticking. I'm gonna go with that after scraping and wasting pie dough off my board.
• If you have access to a marble board, by all means... USE IT!!! I would if I could, but I can't, so I won't.
• If the box of a pan says "recipes included", don't waste your time looking for a pamphlet of recipes and then calling the company. If it says it's in there it probably is... Tear apart the box to find the recipes written in light gray on the inside of the box. This way, you don't sound silly to the person on the other line.

Crap-ola! Did I forget to give you the actual ingredients? No way...

Alrighty then. Straight from Martha's The Martha Stewart Cookbook: Collected Recipes for Everyday.

2 cups all-purpose (this is what I used, as Martha told me to...)
1/2 teaspoon salt
12 Tablespoons butter [1 1/2 sticks] (Martha says unsalted, but... uh... I didn't have any and they came out just fine and dandy.)
3 Tablespoons margarine (Martha says "or chilled vegetable shortening". I used Imperial Margarine.)
1/4 cup ice water

Simply follow the directions listed above, including the notes.

And... I'll see you tomorrow! Ready for some turkey...?

Time Goes By... Mother's Day (Paper Hoarders DT)

Wow! I had a whole lot of stuff I was going to write/complain about, but um... got here (to Blogger) and saw there are a whole heck of a lot of changes, and that just ADDS to my crappy week. Ick!

So... let's just go with the DT challenge. We had our choice of Mother's Day or Spring. I had this BRILLIANT idea. Katy Perry was just ringing through my mind with her "Firework" song... as Marissa had a talent show (see her video at end...)today and one of the kids was singing that, so yes... it got stuck in my head... like for THREE weeks (all through the practices...) and so, I thought I'd do "Mommy, You're a Firework!" But...

My Gypsy broke. It won't connect to the computer (for an update) or to the Cricut. Neither device recognizes the Gypsy as being recognized. So sad. [Short Story: HSN is supposed to call me back with info on where to ship it. Have they called? NO!, but hopefully, they will soon...]

And so... after years of working on my Gypsy, I had to re-train myself on the Cricut machine, itself. I'm sure I could have used Cricut Craftroom, or Design Studio... but there are no computers in my craft room or near it, and the Cricut isn't on Wifi, so... ('cause gee... I wouldn't need a computer if my Gypsy was working...) Whew! It's tough. To have to make cuts on the .25 inch marks. To not be able to mix, match, weld, etc. Wow, to not be able to flip things and manipulate them to WHERE I WANT THEM ON THE FRIGGIN' MAT... um yeah... you get the picture. It was really REALLY REALLY difficult for me. You can't teach an old dog to go BACK to their old ways, once they've already advanced... but I plunged on.

So anyway, back to this brilliant idea. My intention was to have the words cut out and welded on the front of the card, with cut fireworks in the background. Did not happen. The blade was tearing the paper at the smaller size, and didn't cut through at the too big size; I couldn't cut it at the just-right size, as well... you know... (see above short story)...

So I gave up. (on that part).

I ended up finding some awesome firework paper in my scraps, cut it to fit the front of the card, wrote it out myself (yes, that's my printing, folks!) in embossing ink, sprinkled cutesy puffy purple embossing powder, and heated the sucker up. Blooop! Up it puffed. But... it wasn't enough... so...

I did firework-y lines all over in the fireworks areas and then used rainbow sprinkles (who knew they weren't just for cupcakes anymore!) embossing powder on THAT and heated it up. Now I was all sparkly and fresh on the front, but dull and not even related to Mother's Day on the inside.

I was able to cut (success!!!) a phrase from Graphically Speaking that wasn't too small, wasn't too big, wasn't just right, but, was about as good as it was going to get... So I took it. And... if you remember my post from LAST month (yes... it's been that long, folks...) you'll remember I am completely fascinated with my new Martha Stewart fraying scissors. (They'll be new to me for a long time, so just get used to it!) So, I cut out a bunch of colors, and they didn't quite fit the way I thought they would. I couldn't get them to flip and flop the way I wanted, so I just used them in the background, slapped a black oval (to symbolize the night sky... ready for fireworks), and put in my "HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY". Whew.

Now if that ain't a heart-attack and a half!

There's a lot more to my last couple of weeks, including LOTS of bad-hair days, but we won't get into that just now. Suffice it to say, that... Well... I'm still here. You're still here, and life is just a little busy and complicated at the moment. I'm hoping it smooths out in a couple of weeks (when summer gets here!). Cheerio! (and if you'd like to see the rest of the ladies' challenges and JOIN IN, feel free, and visit Ms. Tanya's blogaroo... don't forget to leave some love for us. happy comments and praises [even just a smidge] are what makes our worlds go 'round!)

and here's Marissa's brilliant Magician act... kids are so cute! (btw... please don't mind the background noise [i was having horrible mommy-moments] or the idiotic recording... still learning the new phone... helpful hints and how-to's are welcome! thx!)

Paper Hoarders Design Team Challenge: Boni's Butterflies

So... I've been awarded another stint with the Paper Hoarders Design Team. Woohoo! And today's challenge is Boni's Butterflies... you see... Boni is a fabulous artist. She does all kind of neat-o stuff and is especially fabulous with all things steampunk. (You can see her work HERE! You'll see what I mean!) Well, anyway... Boni thought she'd be really cute and "assign" a challenge as a surprise to our head honcho. The challenge? Butterflies and joy.  What is more joyful than a butterfly, flying freely through the blue sky on a clear Spring day? I don't know... but I tried!

Here we have it... a butterfly done with Hannah Montana (on the Cricut, of course... because I have no other type of cutter 'cept my two hands and scissors...). The butterfly is custom cut in bright orange, then in textured yellow (a little bit smaller), and yellow-ish-orange vellum (ya'll know how much I love vellum, right?). I cut the wings off the body (didn't have a cut for just the wings...) for both the yellow and the vellum, but with the vellum, left a larger lip to apply adhesive and fold under the yellow wings. The yellow wings are inked with Persimmon (from Ranger's Distress Inks). The vellum... adhered with my ATG just where it touches the body, then folded under the yellow wings (to appear to float and to fly).

Then we add the glitter... Stickles in a bright orange and sunkist yellow around the wings, and a dark brown Studio G glitter glue for the body and antennae (I don't like it as much, it's not as smooth-going...).

So... I wanted the card to stand, but not be "on" something. Voila! In steps the 1/2-card! The 1/2-card is done in a vibrant lime green, textured cardstock (Colorbok), which I frayed with my new Martha Stewart shears. LOVE THESE and was so glad I finally had a chance to use them! Now... I'll admit, maybe I should have frayed the green up a bit higher... but, I was trying to maintain stability on the card. (I did/do want it to stay standing!).

Now, the pics kinda suck still... still learning the iPhone, and nobody seems to have any tips to hand out to me... so, until then, you're going to get the learning in progress. And yes... that is a cubbie... My craftroom in in shambles right now, and I can't seem to find the time to clean it up. So, since I was out of room everywhere, I simply emptied a cubbie that only had empty notebooks, and voila! a light box arose from debris of craftroom... hmm... a new type of Phoenix? We'll see. Hopefully, I'll get some time this weekend to fix it all up again.

Oh and a yeah... the Stickles were taking forever to dry, so... it'll look a lot better (less folding on the wings and more fluttering) when it's dry. So just ignore that for now.

And now, without further ado, if you'd like to join our challenge and/or see what everyone else on the DT did, please go and visit Tanya's blog, where you'll find lots of fabulous ladies showing us what they've got! and... thanks for stopping by!!!!

Jingle Belles: The Holly, the Ivy and the Missing Card!

Yeah, I know... I'm posting at the most absolute last minute again. But hey! At least I did it. AND! I did the missing JB08 Sketch card, because well... I'm just not that organized that I lost it and had to do it all over again. So there!

JB13 is something having to do with foliage, and I did 3 cards. 2 of them were... meh. Uh, nah... and so I began again.

I punched the branches out of green, added some stickles and ribbon, a little ink and VOILA! Simple and deckin' the halls, still! I probably could've made the wreath a little fuller, but... uh... the adhesive was already covered. Oh well. (I am not posting the fuss-ups today, because I forgot to take pics of them and am TOTALLY running out of time!)

JB08? Yeah, well... I used the same Martha Stewart branch punch, but in white, flowed it into a half-circle added cutesy bluesy prints, some ribbon, bling and more stickles. Done.

can you tell i l-o-v-e blue?

And now caught up!

You can join in the fun, too, ya know... Check out what others did at Jingle Belles and play with some cards, too! Another challenge will be posted on Friday. (Maybe next week I'll actually get everything done earlier.  Ya never know!!!)

Another Project! Bath Snowballs via Martha Stewart

As I sit here, surrounded by swirling Christmas lights, a sparkling tree, and Alvin & the Chipmunks in the background, I am reminded that Christmas is only 19 days away! YIKES!!!!

There are even less days available for those packages that need to be mailed... And yes, I have (once again) procrastinated in that area. Although, I did start my shopping last year and began making things, too. Only... I got a little burnt out, and I'm now behind again. But... I will catch up, and with the help of Martha Stewart Living, I'm going to do it!

These easy bath balls (made from Epsom salts) should make an easy task (and fun) for gifts. I think I will keep them in salt form for some and layer the salts in a clear glass (or plastic) jar and tie it with a pretty bow... perhaps a little greenery...

Easy and inexpensive enough, the recipe and instructions can be found here. Just remember... even a beginner can do this!

Be prepared, though, as they do take a couple of days for drying.

Anyway, it should give me some more time to watch and enjoy my tree, the seasonal movies, the lights, the fire, etc... Maybe I'll even take a bath with the salts myself... Take me away... Toodles for now! lisa

The Latest on Walmart Crafts!

So, walking into my local Walmart today, the fabric department is still there and dwindling. They still have quite a bit of stuff. Their dept. manager saw me and came rushing over. She was spilling with excitement. They latest update is... the ARE NOT getting rid of their fabrics. Apparently, it has been put on hold, yet again, and several stores are keeping theirs. One whole wall of where the fabric used to be is now USC stuff... go figure (nobody would think to look there!). Lots of other items have been pushed out, however... most of your really inexpensive things...

... to make way for Martha Stewart Crafts. Ugh. I like some of her stuff, but her colors (in scrapbooking) seem to me to be just too bland. I personally don't care if my "ecru" and "egg shell blue" have uppity names. Just coordinate it, brighten it up, and give it to us. There are still die-hard MS fans out there. Good for you. However, her stuff seems to be a little pricey for the looks of it.

Walmart is still clearancing out their Disney Cricut Cartridges. For the 5th month, they are still $49.00. I guess everybody's idea of "Clearance" is different. I would've thought they would've lowered the prices by now, especially since certain craft stores have sales of them for $39.99.

Also regarding Cricut in the Walmart stores, our local store has finished putting in their Cricut section. When they started selling the Expression, it was a much lower price than it is now. Hey! At least they have it. And a little fyi... their mats are only $7.67 and $12.67 for the 12" and 24" (respectively). Their tool kit is also only $18.88. That's a good deal. Michael's and Joanne's have it for $24.99 each and their 12" mat for $9.99.

Besides the MS line, they brought in Recycled and K&Co - cute stuff!

Let's see how long this lasts... Toodles for now! lisa