Tag: Dollar Tree DIY

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March Comes In Like a Lion and Goes Out Like a Lamb……….Maybe

Recipes

Crockpot Chicken Dinner

This is one of my toss it all together, taste test along the way, and have dinner recipes. All ingredients are “approximate”.

3 skinless chicken breasts

1 can cream of chicken soup

1 cup of white rice

2 cups of frozen mixed vegetables

Water and chicken broth (1 part water to 2 parts chicken broth) enough to cover all ingredients.

Salt and pepper to taste.

I cooked on low for 5 hours

It was delicious and made its own gravy. I ate it just like it was but you could put it over biscuits or potatoes, whatever sounds good to you.

Crockpot Vegetable Soup

4 cups vegetable broth

1 bag of mixed cauliflower and broccoli

1 small bag of mini carrots

1 russet potatoe cut up

1 T. garlic minced

1 onion diced

1 small can of stewed tomatoes, not drained

1 can of tomato paste

2 stalks of celery diced

1 bay leaf

salt, pepper, Italian seasoning to taste

I put everything in the pot and cooked on low overnight. I adjusted the seasoning by added a little more of each and it was lunch! It is always better to start with a little seasoning and then add a little at a time. Once you put it in, you can’t get it out again! LOL

Bacon Wrapped Crackers (peartreekitchen.com)

  • 54 buttery crackers , like club crackers, about 1 ½ sleeves
  • 16 ounces thinly sliced bacon , cut into thirds
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar
  • Take bacon out of the refrigerator and allow to soften slightly.
  • Preheat oven to 275 degrees F.
  • Prepare a baking sheet with sides by lining with non-stick foil or parchment paper. Spray foil or parchment with baking spray.
  • Cut bacon slices into three pieces if using regular bacon, or cut slices in half if using center cut bacon.
  • Wrap one bacon piece around one cracker. Repeat with all crackers.
  • Lay on the baking sheet with seam side down. These can be placed close together, but not touching. Repeat with all crackers.
  • Sprinkle the top of each wrapped cracker with brown sugar. Do not use too much or it will run off and create a hard caramel layer. Repeat with all crackers.
  • Place into preheated oven and cook for 30 to 45 minutes. Longer may be required for crisper bacon.
  • Remove from oven and allow to cool for a few minutes.
  • Move to serving tray and enjoy!

Praline Candied Bacon (giftofhospitality.com)

I have not made this but looked up the recipe after I had it at a local restaurant, Music For Your Mouth. It is amazing! This is not their recipe but I am sure it is similar. I am buying bacon today!

INGREDIENTS  

  • 1 lb thick cut bacon
  • ½ cup brown sugar
  • 2 tablespoons maple syrup
  • 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
  • ½ cup very finely chopped pecans INSTRUCTIONS 
  • Preheat oven to 400°F.
  • Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil and top with a wire rack. Lay the bacon in a single layer on the wire rack (it can touch slightly but not overlap).
  • In a small bowl, stir together the brown sugar, maple syrup, and Dijon mustard. Use a pastry brush to brush the half the brown sugar mixture over the bacon.
  • Bake the bacon for 20–25 minutes, or until the bacon is mostly cooked through.
  • Remove from the oven and flip the bacon onto the other side. Brush the bacon with the remaining brown sugar mixture. and sprinkle the chopped pecans over the top, pressing gently with a spatula to adhere if necessary.
  • Return to the oven and cook until the bacon is very crisp, about 5–10 more minutes.
  • Remove from the oven and let cool slightly. Serve immediately.

Hacks

*I am cleaning pennies for a 50th anniversary gift and this works great. Just put the pennies in a dish and cover with any citrus juice like lemon and add salt. Allow to sit for 15- 20 minutes and then scrub with an old toothbrush to get off all the gunk! Dry with a soft cloth. This works with any coin.

*When reheating leftovers, create an empty circle in the middle of the food. This empty space will help the food heat up more evenly.

*Taking something apart to fix it? Take a photo before you start. This will give you a visual reference when putting it back together.

*Ever get a ring stuck on your finger? Spray some Windex around the area. It will slide right off.

*When making any toasty sandwich like BLTs, place two slices of bread together in a single toaster slot. This way, the bread gets toasty on the outside, but stays soft and chewy on the inside.

*Need a quick measurement but don’t have a ruler? Use a dollar bill. It is 6 1/8 inches long. You can get a rough length measurement that way.

* There’s a trick to keeping your refrigerator clean. Line the shelves with plastic wrap, waxed paper, etc. When there are spills just replace the liner.

*You can take the crumbs left in the bottom of a chip bag and save them in a jar. Just puree them in a blender and they can be used as a coating for fish or chicken.

*Don’t have an apple corer? You can use a winged corkscrew instead. This works great! Try it with baked apples.

*Amazon return bag trick, what you say is this? My hairdresser sharedn this with me. Thanks, Kim! Just watch, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG5M9S56LDM

Craft Cache

It’s been a bit of a crafty time. I either have to give more away or get a bigger house!

Several years ago in a ceramics class did these bird houses. The base they were on broke but I saved them for future use. I finally found a use! I hot glued them to the bottoms of some small clay pots I had and put some moss around the base. I haven’t decided if I want to to any embellishment to the pots or not. I kind of like the plain look. What do you think?

This banner is Dollar Tree (more accurately, Dollar and a Quarter tree but I am not bitter at all! Grrr) all the way! I started with the plain banner and then added some pastel little bunnies that I painted. I had this adorable plaid pastel ribbon from DT too, so I just added a little bow. It is cute and was super quick to make. Painting the bunnies took the longest and that wasn’t too long at all.

This cute little bookmark is made from a square of scrapbook paper. Watch the video to see how simple it is. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEwl0fvqo18

This adorable carrot was all Dollar Tree too. I started with the wooden carrot cutout from which I removed the jute hanger. I painted the carrot orange, the raised part of the carrot top white and the trim was painted lime green. I then used a dollar tree napkin (that I took the top decorated ply off bottom plain ply) and decoupaged it too the raised carrot top. I used orange burlap ribbon to wind around the carrot, securing it with hot glue. Finally, I added that sweet little bit of carrot ribbon to the top of the carrot. The jute hanger went back on and there you have it!

Isn’t this bunny adorbs?!! 3 of us got together and made these wreaths. The form was a bunny head and ears from DT. First, I wrapped bulky pink yarn that my friend, Shelly, shared with me, around the entire form. You can either tie a knot to anchor the yarn or use hot glue. Next was the black and white check fabric in the center of the ears. I cut two rectangles of the fabric that were slightly larger than the ears and glued them to the back of the ears. After the glue dried I cut the excess fabric off so you couldn’t see it from the front. I fashioned a messy bow using four pieces of ribbon, two black and white check and two pink. The bow was then glued to the wreath slightly of center. The final touch were some flowers in a deeper pink. I took the larger flowers off the stem and hot glued them, centering more toward the left ear. To finish it off, I added some stems of smaller flowers. You can make a jute hanger that will be hidden behind the ears.

The egg wreath form was from, you know where (DT). The rope and embellishments were purchased there as well. I anchored the rope with hot glue and wrapped the entire form with it. The embellishments were added and I made a messy bow from ribbon I had on hand which was glued slightly off center, at the top.

I hope this post finds all of you doing well and that you saw something of interest in it. Share your thoughts, etc, in the comment section and see you next month! Thanks, as always, for reading.

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Don’t Let January Be Dreary

I hope you had a great holiday season! Ours was hectic, as always, but good. Usually, you have family, friends, great food, sparkling decorations and gifts, so how can that be bad?!

Recipes

My first item to share is a dessert charcuterie board I made for a friend’s birthday and not really a recipe. She loves homemade buttercream frosting so I made it with frosting and a lot of little things to dip in it. The picture is worth several words all ending with “yummy”.

Pancake Mix Cookies (wearenotmartha.com)

  • ¾ cup (1 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
  • ½ cup granulated sugar
  • ½ cup packed brown sugar
  • 1 large egg
  • 2 tsp vanilla
  • 2 cups pancake mix
  • 1 cup chocolate chips
  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line two baking sheets with parchment paper or Silpats.
  • In a stand mixer or in a bowl with hand mixer, cream together butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar until light and fluffy, 3-4 minutes.
  • Mix in egg and vanilla until just combined.
  • With the mixer on low, blend in pancake mix until just combined, taking care not to over-mix. Fold in chocolate chips.
  • Place bowl in fridge to let cookie dough chill for about 30 minutes.
  • Scoop about 3 Tbsp cookie dough (I use a #20 cookie scoop) onto prepared cookie sheets, about two inches apart. Cookies will spread a bit.
  • Bake for 10-12 minutes, until cookies are just turning golden around edges. Let cool in pan for a couple minutes before moving to wire racks to cool completely.

I had some confetti pancake mix in my cupboard and hadn’t used it for its real purpose. I knew that there are several ways to make cookies from cake mix. So I searched and found the above recipe to use with my pancake mix. They turned out really well.

Cool Whip Cookies (breadboozebacon.com)

This holiday I kept hearing about cool whip cookies so I decided to try them. I made them in red and in green. The tops really kind of crinkled pretty so they made a nice addition to my cookie board and the kids really seemed to like them.

  • 1 box vanilla cake mix
  • 1 egg lightly beaten
  • 8 ounces Cool Whip
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • Red & green gel food coloring (liquid food color works too)
  • 1 cup powdered sugar
  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a Sil-Pat.
  • In a large mixing bowl, beat together the cake mix, egg, cool whip and vanilla. The dough will be thick and sticky.
  • Divide the dough in half and place one half in a second bowl. Add a couple drops of red food coloring to one bowl and a couple drops of green food coloring to the other bowl. Mix the food coloring into each half of the dough. Add more food coloring as needed until your desired color is reached.
  • Put the powdered sugar into a small bowl.
  • Use a small cookie scoop (or 1 tablespoon measuring spoon) to portion the dough into the bowl of sugar. One scoop at a time, place the dough into the sugar and roll it around until it is completely coated. Place the dough ball onto the prepared baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining dough, leaving 2-inches between each cookie. (Seriously, the cookies spread A LOT.)
  • Bake for 12 to 15 minutes or until the cookies are set. The center of the cookie will still be soft, that’s okay.
  • Remove from the oven and let cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes. Allow to finish cooling on a cookie rack.

Crockpot Cabbage Soup

I looked at a lot of recipes for cabbage soup, both in a crockpot and on the stove. In the end I kind of took the ingredients from each that I liked and cooked them all on low overnight. It came out great.

small bag of baby carrots or 2 large carrots cut up in chunks 1 small cabbage cut in about 1 to 2 inch chunks 2 cloves of garlic 1 medium white onion chopped 2 stalks of celery chopped 1 large can of stewed diced tomatoes 1 qt. vegetable broth 1/2 t. thyme 1/2 t. sage 1 bay leaf salt and pepper to taste

Grilled Cheese with ……………………………….wait for it…………………..pickles?!!

I had never heard of it before but saw it on a restaurant menu and started wanting to make it. I have now tried it with both dill and sweet pickles. Both are good. You can use pickle slices or I have found the stackers version of pickles to be easy to work with for this sandwich. I drain the pickles and then pat them with a clean paper towel to take some of the liquid away. My personal favorite bread to eat it with is rye but any kind will work. Let me know if you try this.

Hacking Away

*I love my Crockpot and even though I try hard not to let the inside under the liner get dirty it does, somehow, get these brown drips and drizzles on it. You can clean this very easy with a small glass bowl of ammonia sitting in the bottom of the crockpot without the liner in it. Just put the lid on and let it sit overnight. The fumes from the ammonia will make the drips and drizzles easy to wipe off in the morning.

*Have you ever needed sweetened condensed milk for a recipe and not had any on hand? You can make your own. Just combine 3/4 cup powdered milk, 3/4 cup sugar and 1/2 cup hot water and blend until smooth. This equals one can of condensed sweetened milk.

*Ever have a smelly sink drain in the kitchen or bathroom? Hydrogen peroxide poured down the drain will get it odor free.

*Do your shoes smell? Put them in a ziplock bag in the freezer overnight. The cold temperature will kill the bacteria making the odor.

*Ever needed softened butter for a recipe and used the microwave only to have it start melting and not just soften? Me! Multiple times. Put boiling hot water in a microwave safe glass. Then dump the water out and turn the glass upside down over the stick of butter (which is sitting on its end). You have perfectly softened butter in a few minutes!

Craft Projects

I used my Cricut to create letters and a design for a Buffalo Bills sign for my door. I actually made two.

In my basement was a 6″ X 1″ board which measured 6 feet. I cut it in half and sanded it. After wiping it off with a damp, lint free cloth, and letting it dry I painted each 3 foot piece white. After painting, I lightly sanded again so the vinyl would have a smooth surface to adher to.

On my Cricut I cut 6″ high letters, H, M, and E. I made sure sure they were 6″ high and 4″to 5″ wide so that they would fit nicely on the board. Online I had purchased 12 different Buffalo Bills designs for $1.99. I brought one of the designs into my Cricut design space and used that for the O. For all items I used permanent vinyl.

The final step was to measure the placement of each item to be put onto the sign. I used chalk to mark my measurements because I could easily wipe it off when no longer needed. I measured 3″ down from the top and placed the H. From the bottom of the H I measured 2″ down and placed the Bills symbol and repeated that process with 2″ between each one which left 3″ at the bottom of the sign. When all the vinyl was on the sign I used my hands to smooth out and make sure the vinyl was attached securely.

Christmas Tree

You know how I love the Dollar Tree stores! Here is a very cheap and easy little piece of Christmas decor.

I bought a wooden Christmas tree form and two of the self adhesive wall tiles you can buy at DT (well, $1.25T). I removed the jute loop from the tree.I placed the two tiles on the tree form in a way in which looked nice and covered the complete piece. Once, I was happy with that I turned the tree over on a cutting board and using an Exacto knife trimmed off the excess. I used the tip of the knife to go through the tile where the hole for hanging was at the top of the tree and then put the jute back through the hole and tied it again. Viola!

Another Cricut Project

I was going a little crazy with my Cricut this Christmas and although everyone my not have one I think these things could be done in other mediums. For instance, rather than use the Cricut for the following project you could paint the letters on the bottles and bake them in the oven to make them permanent. Directions for this method can be found online.

Anyway, I cut out letter spelling “hands” and “dishes”. I happend to use silver permanent vinyl. I made one set with white ceramic pump bottles and one set with black ceramic pump bottles. The bottles I purchased from Walmart for $4.97 each.

I measured down the bottles about 2″ and placed the letters on each bottle. Then I filled them with hand soap and dish soap and they made nice little gifts for not much money at all.

Next month will be here fast and I am already working on some projects for Valentine’s Day. Please leave a comment and let me know if you tried anything in this post or share one of your ideas with me and other readers. See you soon!

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