Toasted Italian Beef Sandwiches

Here is a great recipe I have found and tried from All Recipes. This is one of my husbands favorite sandwiches. I like making it because it is super easy and tastes really good!

Author: Theresa M.print recipe

Toasted Italian Beef Sandwiches

INGREDIENTS:

• 3 cups beef broth
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• 1 teaspoon onion salt
• 1 teaspoon dried parsley
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 (.7 ounce) packages dry Italian-style salad dressing mix
• 1 (5 pound) chuck roast
• 1 package Mozzarella Cheese Slices
• 1 package of Sub Buns

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Combine water with salt, ground black pepper, oregano, basil, onion salt, parsley, garlic powder, bay leaf, and salad dressing mix in a saucepan. Stir well, and bring to a boil.
2. Place roast in slow cooker, and pour salad dressing mixture over the meat.
3. Cover, and cook on Low for 8 hours. Take out of pot and shred, then return and cook additional to 1-2 hours. When done, remove bay leaf, and shred meat with a fork.
4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Fill sub buns with meat mixture. Top with mozzarella cheese. Bake until buns are toasted and cheese is melted, about 5 minutes. Serve.

http://www.theresasmixednuts.com/2012/01/toasted-italian-beef-sandwiches.html

Created using The Recipes Generator

*You can also fill with your choice of toppings. Sauteed mushrooms, roasted peppers, and onions also make excellent fillers.

No School, Old School Craft Day

The girls didn't have school on Monday. I like to get the girls involved in crafts on no school days. This keeps them entertained for a while and helps me encourage creativity in their lives.

Mariah had a science fair project to work on at a friends house, so I had to think up something to do with Allison. Something fun, but not so great that Mariah would feel like she missed out on participating. I started thinking about crafts I enjoyed doing as a kid. My mom never had much money to buy fancy materials for us to work with, so we had to come up with ideas on our own. I remembered spending hours cutting out cool things from mom's used magazines and making collages. Also, we would go out and find odd shaped leaves and iron them between sheets of wax paper.

I gathered up a few old magazines and Allison set off to work on her collage.

Since it's winter and all of our leaves are dried up and dead, we used red and purple crayon shavings to melt between the wax paper. Allison ended up cutting them into heart shapes, decorated them with stickers, and will pass those out to her grandparents and cousins for homemade Valentine cards.

I forgot how much fun it could be to work with everyday basic items. I am going to incorporate those kinds of projects into our crafting activities more often!

Restaurant Style Hot Wings

Want your guests to rave about your party spread more than the big game? These hot wings will do the trick! We serve these hot wings at every Super Bowl Party, and they are a HUGE hit. My father-in-law swears these taste just like wings you get at the bar, and I am hounded for the recipe each time I serve them. They are so simple to make, and I'm sure that once you serve them, they will be a requested staple at every shindig you host thereafter. I'm not a huge fan of eating leftovers cold, but these are fantastic the next day. I also find that even with the cayenne pepper and paprika added to the chicken, my kids will eat these if I don't put sauce on theirs.

 

Author: Theresa M.print recipe

Hot Wings

INGREDIENTS:

• oil for deep frying
• 1/2 cup butter *real butter, not a spread*
• 1/2 cup Franks hot sauce (you can use another brand, but I think Franks is what makes these wings so good)
• 1 tsp ground black pepper
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 20 chicken wings

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Heat oil in a deep fryer to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). The oil should be just enough to cover wings entirely. Combine the butter, hot sauce, pepper and garlic powder in a small saucepan over low heat. Stir together and heat until butter is melted and mixture is well blended. Remove from heat and reserve for serving.
2. In a small bowl, mix together the flour, paprika, cayenne pepper and salt. Place chicken wings in a large ziptop bag. Pour flour mixture over the wings, seal bag, and shake until all the pieces are coated with the mixture. Refrigerate for 60 to 90 minutes.
3. Fry coated wings in hot oil for 10 to 15 minutes, or until wings begin to turn golden brown. Remove from heat, place wings in serving bowl, add hot sauce mixture and stir together. Serve

http://www.theresasmixednuts.com/2012/01/chicken-hot-wings.html

Created using The Recipes Generator

Colored Sand

We were at Hobby Lobby the other day, and my girls wanted some of those plastic sand containers. You know the ones that are shaped like hearts and bears that you fill with different colored sand. Those were pretty inexpensive, but when I saw how much the sand was to fill them with, I about choked. I was certain we could probably dye our own, so I set off to Lowe's and grabbed a 50lb bag of play sand for $3, came home, and tried my hand at coloring my own.

What you need:

Play sand. I like the bags Lowe's carries. It is very soft and fine. Home Depot's seem very rough and gritty.
Food Coloring
Water
bowls


Directions:

Fill bowl with desired amount of sand.
Fill bowl with just enough water to cover the sand. Apply several drops of food coloring in the shade of your choosing. Apply more drops if you wish for a darker color.
Let sand sit for several hours. You can also stir the sand every once in a while to ensure the coloring is being evenly distributed.
Dump the sand onto a flat surface (I used an old cookie sheet) to dry. This could take a while, so if you are in a hurry, you can dry out sand in the oven. Heat oven to 250 degrees and put sand in with the oven door opened until it is dry.

All of this was made for a LOT less than you can purchase the colored sand for in the stores. The 50lb bag was only $3 and that will get you a lot of sand to color and play with!

Childhood Nostalgia

My husband and I were watching tv the other night and something in a commercial reminded me of that 80’s cartoon, Poochie. I turned to my husband and asked if he ever watched that show as a kid.

“What’s a poochie?” was his response.

“What do you mean, “What’s a poochie?” She was only the most awesome, pink dog in the world! What about the Popples? Don’t you remember them?”

Blank stare.

“Huggabunch? Jem? Gummi Bears? Did you live under a rock as a kid?”

At this point he is standing so he can leave. He knows the conversation is one sided from here on out, and he is not about to listen to the ramblings of his 80’s obsessed wife. Now I am sitting alone, feeling all nostalgic and missing my childhood. I miss Saturday morning cartoons. I also miss Pogo Balls, She-Ra, Pound Puppies, and ALF. Sleeping under sheet forts, catching lightning bugs, climbing my neighbors big pine tree, and Mr. Bubbles Baths. I miss going to the store and hoping mom would let me get a candy bar when we were done, riding a bike with no hands, not thinking twice about taking a bite out of the snow, and seeing my friends every day at school.

Then I start thinking about my girls. What are they going to remember most about their childhood? Am I doing all I can to create lasting memories for them? Will their husbands look at them like they have two heads when they say “Your mom didn’t make you wear silly holiday headbands, drag you to every kiddie movie in the theater, or dump glitter all over your room and pretend it was from the Tooth Fairy?” I sure hope so.

Recycling Magnet Picture Frame

Every year we get these huge magnets from the recycling company with our pick up dates on them. I hate tossing them at the end of each year knowing there is a perfectly good use for those magnetic pieces! My fridge is usually overrun with pictures of my kids, nieces and nephews, so this year we decided to make a little picture frame craft with one of our favorite photos of my twin nephews. Not only is it decorative, it also eliminates the need for those ugly advertising magnets I know we all have up on our refridgerators. Win-Win!


What you need:

1 Recycling Magnet
Decorative Ribbon
Decorative pieces (I just used some old metal butterfly jewelry pieces we had leftover from another craft)
Elmer's glue
Hot glue
1 Photo

Directions:

Glue the photo to the center of the front of the magnet with the Elmer's Glue. Once that is dry, lay the ribbon along the edge of the photo and snip where necessary. Hot glue the ribbon to the calendar (not the photo). Repeat this process on all 4 sides. Glue your decorative pieces anywhere you like along the ribbon. I used the corners because it hid the ribbon seams. Once everything is dry, snip the excess magnet off and voila! You've got a beautiful, custom, and useful photo magnet!