Cooking? Eh.... you could call it that I guess.

Alright, so recently I made home made pirogi ( pasta with mashed potatoes wrapped inside) and it was an adventure! They turned out really good! Warning though... it KILLS your arms. I was able to have a bread maker mix most of the ingredients together well enough, however... rolling it out is the single most intense arm work out I have ever experienced. Seriously girls, want a buff guy? Forget weights! Just get your man rolling out pasta every day and he'll be a muscular beast in no time! Anyway, back to the main point! 

The pirogi turned out pretty well(though if you look up how to make them, remember... roll them really thin, and then a little more after that.) and everyone seemed to like the extra seasonings(cheese, garlic salt and Italian seasoning) that I added to the  potato filling too. So I froze most of them and saved them for a later dinner and decided what sounded REALLY good was mozzarella and spinach stuffed chicken with the pirogi and a cream sauce. And the meal I created was good... ish.

 The problem that I encountered was more a matter of my own big head and... I'll say it... laziness. You see... I had some ways to cook the chicken that included spinach chicken and cheese, however I knew WHAT I wanted and HOW I wanted to get that effect.... so I improvised... Ugh. Just for your information, unless you KNOW what you are doing... cooking and improvising can be very very dangerous. 

I took the boneless chicken breasts, sliced them into thinner portions, then made the mozzarella spinach mixture(it was supposed to be feta, but surprisingly this wasnt the part that blew up in my face! It worked good!) and then in a frying pan I fried some garlic and diced onion in olive oil and butter. Once it was browned, I set it aside to cool and started rolling the chicken with the mixture... which is where my problems started. 

Apparently if you are rolling chicken around something and cooking it, it's better to tenderize the chicken first (or FLATTEN IT WITH A MEAT HAMMER LIKE THOR OF THE KITCHEN ) the chicken first. Hehe. Who knew? ... Ok, ok, so honestly I figured it'd work better but I was in a hurry and I figured "Hey, it can't be SO hard" .....  Yah. When I say that people, you better buckle up cause it's about to get CRAZY difficult. So after stuffing the first piece of chicken like a Christmas turkey with the cheese mixture I tried to fold it over and seal it with toothpicks... needless to say, it didn't work. By the time I got to the last one I had actually managed to fold the piece chicken with a smaller amount of the mixture and use only TWO toothpicks... but the first four out of eight somewhat resembled hedgehogs.

So after that I put the garlic and onion oil on to heat and tossed the chicken in... putting the top on. Those of you who actually KNOW how to fry chicken please dont laugh. I didn't think that it would retain ALL the moisture and end up with so much liquid in the pan that it was basically boiling the chicken. Thankfully my mom pointed that out and, after taking the top off of the fry pan, the chicken began to fry... finally! It was only a short time after that it was ready for eating.

So the end result was really tasty, but truthfully very dry. It had been cooking for almost an hour because of the whole "boil" thing so my first advice is to say ... DONT COVER FRIED CHICKEN WHEN YOU ARE FRYING IT!... It doesn't work. The garlic and onion fried in oil actually made the chicken really tasty, even without breading, so I give that thumbs up! However... if you are going to stuff the chicken... either use much, MUCH bigger pieces or pound that baby into a taco, because the ones that I did stuff satisfactorily full of the mixture lost most of the cheese when cooking cause it wouldn't close and they were really nerve wracking to eat because there were so many toothpicks in them. The ones that I managed to make "proper" barely had anything in them and might as well have been plain fried chicken. 

Other than that I made a cream cheese sauce that was super easy and only required melting cream cheese in a pan with butter and adding milk and a little garlic. The sauce was actually DELICIOUS on chicken, however the pirogi I felt could have used something a little more savory and less cream cheesy.  I do plan on making fried chicken with that sauce again, however next time I make pirogi, I'd like to try marinara sauce and maybe let them sit out and warm up before frying them so they are a little softer. My family said they enjoyed the meal though and my younger siblings loved the pirogi and chicken! Not an easy meal by any means, however family friendly and if you have either the know how or an experienced cook to give you pointers, it's definitely recommended!
http://greek.food.com/recipe/spinach-and-feta-stuffed-chicken-49414

(what it was supposed to look like. Hehe.) 

Sharpies in all their glory!

Sharpies are awesome. You can use them for tons of artsy things, and my favorite thing to use them for is to draw on my jeans! Now, those of you out there that are like my mom see that sentence and cringe. Do not worry though! I only draw on jeans when they are old and already have that artist look... which is basically final stage of a well used life. 

Drawing with sharpies on my old jeans is just plain fun though. I LOVE drawing, and sprucing up my beloved jeans (or shorts) is a way of having a project and expressing myself at the same time. Now be forewarned... if you give your friends sharpies and allow them free reign of drawing on your jeans, you'll find that they have circled your knee(in hot pink sharpie) and written " TICKLISH SPOT IS HERE" for all the world to use against you. Nevertheless, I love all the comments I get when I wear my "creative" jeans, even if it's from old ladies who share my moms view on drawing on jeans... disdain. 

So, my first pair was simply what I call my "doodle" jeans. I actually only drew about four small little doodles on it and left the rest for other people to fill in. The cool part of it is that it holds so many memories! I have signatures, a fat unicorn, and even a cactus with a hat on those jeans! I love that every time I wear those jeans I can think about who drew that when or how and where. 

The one problem I have with my doodle jeans is that the sharpie sorta... fades.. not really fast, but after about four or five washes red turns pink, and most of the lighter colors are turning back to light blue. So when I decided to get artistic with my four year old jean shorts last night, I was worried that would happen again. With doodle jeans it's not a big deal cause it just makes room for new doodles, gets rid of the tempting tickle spots, and you can always just go over your favorites again with the same colors and it'll last longer. 

The reason I was bothered about my jean shorts doing this though, is because the drawing I'm doing on them is allot more complex and well... cool. So I decided I need to at least try this thing I heard about putting freshly sharpie-ed jeans in the drier before washing them to set the ink. Once I was finished with the drawing the comic book character (deadpool) on my jean shorts I put them in the drier under 'extra dry'. 

So far the red sharpie just bled a little down on the cuff of the shorts and it smells even stronger of sharpie than it did before. This does not exactly inspire confidence though. I do not really want a pink deadpool. Not that I have anything against a female deadpool, however I'm not a huge fan of the color pink. 

So I decided against washing them just yet and washing them with any other clothes when I do wash them. Instead I'm going to put them in the drier once more and try washing them after that. I was hoping to do something else on the other side of the jeans, however I don't have any other colors other than red and black at the moment, so I'm going to wait till I see how this works and go purchase a plethora of colors if, indeed, the jean washes well. FINGERS CROSSED EVERYONE! I will be updating you on if this works or not and perhaps my next sharpie adventure, which I am even now plotting. Bwahahaha! Ya'll have a nice day and remember.... DON'T WASH BESHARPIE-ED JEANS WITH YOUR FAVORITE WHITE TOP. 

Reworking and ORGANISING!

         HEY! So, it's been a couple days since I got to do anything I consider creative, and the reason being... well, ugly truth... my room was a MESS. Like... you know those clean people who say, "Oh, my room was such a mess" and it ends up the "mess" is actually like... folded clothes sitting on the dresser waiting to be put away and maybe a candy bar wrapper or two sitting near the candy bowl. Yah, I'm not one of those people, so when I say mess, I mean dresser top filled with clothes that are clean, but I'm just too lazy to put away, 3 or more purses(un-purged from their old receipts, half my endless stock of notebooks, pens I have been missing for ages, and the occasional granola bar wrapper or squished cracker), sizable piles of (still in use) craft items in haphazard groups on the floor, and, of course, jewelry scattered in hopeless clumps of torture and pain.
This was the state of my room... So I cleaned it! (Here's where you cheer with joy)  Now before you go judging me as a junk-aholic, please know that I always want my room clean. I just really don't have much space (it happens when you have to share your room with a younger sibling addicted to picture frames and teddy bears) and I have a sad lack of inspiration when it comes to organising. Well... till I found pintrest!(See? told you I was obsessed) as I browse the DIY(do it yourself) page, I occasionally come across absolutely genius ideas which I LOVE. I came across one such idea which also inspired me to be a little more organised!

YAY! It worked BEAUTIFULLY! I took a picture frame(just the frame and not the picture glass or back of it), some heavier lace(curtain lace), picture hooks and small nails. So to make it, I cut out the proper amount, used a hot glue gun to stick it to the back, nailed the picture frame hooks onto the front, and hung it up in my room. TADA! Jewelry holder! Super easy, and really nice cause I have all of my jewelry easy to see and no longer in hopeless tangles and messes!

So now my room is clean! Yay! But other than being clean I'm starting to get it organised so that it is easier to keep it clean. I have a few other things I am looking into working out to organize in my room, and now that things have slowed down after the weekend, I'm hoping to have time to work on my projects. Which include A. Remodeling a white dress to have a lace up back and perhaps some extra designs, B. turning a men's button up shirt into an adorable skirt, and some other odds and ends from pintrest I wanted to try.
If you have any other organisational tips or fun projects that you have tried and enjoyed, please do share! I love new ideas, and I'd super appreciate it. See ya'll next time!

Finagling with Flowers

      Well, I'm a bit of a creative freak. That can be an understatement or an overstatement as the mood hits me, but it is truth! I love love LOVE doing things like sewing, drawing, writing, cooking, and well... basically anything that has to do with being creative at all! Though I'm not particularly amazing at any one of these things, I do have some experience and I like trying new things! I figured I'd start a blog about my escapades with different projects and, hey, if anyone reads it I hope you find it helpful!
       Ok, so this first post is going to be about my attempt at making fabric flowers. ( I wont even describe what happened last time I tried making flowers... lets just say that what was meant to be a pretty paper flower turned into a rather odd shaped pine cone on a stick. *shakes head sadly*) So, these fabric flowers, of which I found some tutorials on pintrest (LOVE the DIY boards there just so you know) looked at first as though they would be a bit of a bust.... the first two I tried.... well.... yah. Messy and not at ALL what I wanted all truth be told. See for yourself!

  As you can see from these pictures, I tried a rosette out of lace and... well though not a complete disaster, I was rather disappointed. Lace is SO HARD to work with while making these flowers. I had to redo the rosette several times and sewing it together was a NIGHTMARE! Now, I am doing this by hand, and I am not particularly experienced in sewing, but the lace flopped, bunched, and bent in all sorts of freaky manners. I ended up using TONS of thread trying to make it work. However, the result was a skewed and rough version of what I was going for. By the time I finished it, I was sorta discouraged with the rosette idea, so I decided to try something else.
   The next one, I can honestly say, is much MUCH worse than the lace rosette. I made the bottom out of a strip of regular fabric which I sewed a line of thread through loosely, pulled together into a circle, and sewed the ends together. That actually worked really nicely... but then I decided to add lace... and it went rather downhill from there. The lace color worked with the bottom layer, however using the same tactic as the bottom piece yielded vastly different results. the lace was, again, difficult to work with, bunching in odd ways and proving difficult to sew together.Once I wrestled it into a semi-workable shape and sewed it onto the bottom piece... I realized I wasn't really sure what to do with it.
      I should have just stopped there till I had a better idea, but me being me, of course I didn't. I pulled out a length of ribbon and decided to use that. After trying a few ways of making it look fancy, I just ended up tying it in a bow and sewing it on top with a button to try to make it look a little better... it didn't. I was frustrated with it, so I ended up sewing it very messily and it turned out looking like Sunday school craft.
    I would have stopped there, dejected and pouting cause my flowers didn't turn out how I wanted them, however I was still in the sewing mood the next evening, so I tried again, and this time it resulted in these!

I loved how these turned out! I even made a headband, as you can see in the pictures above. So the trick about these rosettes, let me tell you, is actually to make sure the fabric is thicker! I took a wide and long strip of fabric, folded it in half, and did the rosette pattern and it turned out wonderful! Sewing them together was still a bit of a challenge at first, I think it's something you just need to get the hang of with practice. They turned out so nicely that I got excited and, as you can see, made allot. Hehe.   Ok, so with the headband, I sewed the flower and buttons to a separate piece of the same fabric as the base, and sewed the buttons on.(which took forever!) It looked a little plain to me, so I added a bit of the  lace that I had, and it worked really well this time! I did, however run into these issues.
     1. For the actual headband part of the headband, I used a fabric that was not very cooperative and I had some difficulties figuring out how to make it to fit on the head while not using stretchy material. Because the weave of the fabric was so loose, it kept coming out before I could hem it, and I was scared to make it into the base for the headband, however I took the fabric from an old curtain, so it was already hemmed and made into a tube. I took this, and cut a length that fit around my head.
     2. Once I had that though, I realized it wasn't stretchy enough to be a headband that would fit well on a head and support the weight of the flower and buttons(which was also a concern for me) at the same time. So after a little thinking I figured out that since it was already in the shape of a tube, I could just run a length of ribbon through the fabric, and sew it together. To get the ribbon through the tube, I attached the ribbon to a long length of thread and ran the needle and thread through the gap and simply pulled the ribbon through it. Worked GREAT! (Note, this would probably work well for those hoodie strings that always seem to be pulled out. I don't know about you, but that drives me crazy!)
I was nervous that the weight of the flower and the buttons would drag the headband down, however it seems to work perfectly fine and the whole thing looks kinda cute!
      Here are links to the tutorials I used to make the flowers in case you want to try them out.
http://pinterest.com/pin/321866704588643535/
http://thedecoratedhouse.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-to-make-fabric-flower-rosette-step.html
http://thedecoratedhouse.blogspot.com/2012/03/how-to-make-fabric-flowers-continued.html

   So thus far that is how my flower experiences have gone. I've always wanted to know how to make them, so it made me very happy when they worked! My newest project is making a skirt out of a man's dress shirt.
http://pinterest.com/pin/321866704588590580/
So far I have only removed the sleeves, but I'll be sure to write how it goes once I finish it. :) Hope you enjoyed this and have a WONDERFUL day!
                                                              Angie