six ingredients+no baking=happy ashley

Ok, so I must start this with something that will make everyone go "awww" while trying not to laugh:

That is my child, attempting to cover her look of shame with her pretty blonde hair, which contains a wad of gum that had gotten stuck. She has had gum before, but this time, for some reason, she had difficulty keeping it in her mouth. Luckily, it was easily removed by taking two vegetable oil dabbed cotton balls and rubbing them together on either side of the gum, starting above the wad and working down to the tips of her hair. No hair cut needed, just a quick bath to wash out the oil.

On a related ooey-gooey note, Thursday nights are different in our house now, as Corey is taking a night class and is gone from 5-almost 9pm. While I miss having him and his antics at the dinner table, the opportunity to have girl's night is always appreciated. Tonight's adventure consisted of cheesy chicken and rice casserole (which I will post in a separate blog), Nick Jr., and a shared craving for something sweet. My initial thought was to bake cookies (classic mother/daughter activity), but we had no eggs and only half a stick of butter. This left me with the option of finding something else to do, or taking a 3 year old to Walmart in the rain. Needless to say, my desire to stay dry and cranky child-free won.

I Googled a few recipes for no bake desserts, and the only thing for which I had all of the ingredients were no-bake chocolate peanut butter squares. Due to the limited amount of butter, and in the interest of not making the bars too sweet, I had to cut the recipe down severely. Fortunately for me, the portion that it yielded was perfect for an 8x8 pan.

I started with 1/8 cup of light brown sugar and 1 cup confectioner's sugar, and added 1/4 cup of butter (Kristen was my little helper on this one):

After blending it together slightly, I added just over a cup of creamy peanut butter (I actually like the Walmart version for this recipe because it's not as greasy and is not oversweetened).

I love my standing mixer, because it works while I take pictures of it working.

After the ingredients were blended, I plopped the peanut buttery blob into a very lightly greased 8x8 and had Kristen pat it down (the texture on this is awesome; no sticky fingers, just slightly greasy from handling the blob). 

Now onto melting the chocolate chips. I used Ghiradelli milk chocolate chips because I love the taste. I would like to take this time to say that I am not the proud owner of a double boiler. I've gotten used to melting my chocolate this way over the years, and have no desire to fill up my cabinets with more pots. Anyway, I melted the chips that I had (about half a bag) and spread them over the peanut butter. After washing out my pot, I realized that these sweet treats deserved better than one lousy spread of chocolate. I took a half-bag of Ghiradelli white chocolate chips and melted them down (as best as I could; they do not melt as easily as the milk chocolate).

I then made an attempt at creating a marbled effect on the milk chocolate:

It is not the prettiest thing in the world, but I've learned that the best tasting things sometimes aren't the most aesthetically appealing.

Refrigerate for one hour. I didn't cut them all into squares to prevent the peanut butter from drying out. I instead just cut to serve, plopped on the floor with my offspring, and worked on a Tinkerbell puzzle, for the third time today. :)

 

First post- Door wall art!

SO, apparently there's an important football game on tonight...zzzzzz.

I've never considered myself to be a "blogger", mostly because I've always thought that blogs are just another way for people to complain about their 923485431 problems, without the constraints of text limits from Facebook or Twitter. However, upon discovering Pinterest, I realized that many people actually write USEFUL blogs. Blogs that glorify things I love, like making yummy food, turning old junk into functional pieces, and coming up with new distractions (er, I mean activities) for hyperactive children. I thought to myself, "I have a Bachelor's in English. I love writing. I love telling people about stuff that I make. I can blog the Internet's ears off". Anyway, I took this moment of lost control of the remote to create a blog. It will be filled with semi-nifty tidbits, borrowed ideas, and the occasional window to my family's life. With that, here's my first little DIY-ish thing. Since today was boring football day, I decided to do something that I've been planning for a week now.

We, like most of you, have a TV stand. Last week, it looked like this:

After several hours of labor and several trials of paint, it now looks like this:

(PS-If you're looking for high quality photos, you will not find them in this blog. I use my iPhone for everything, including pictures. They are not professional quality by any means.)

Anywho, as I'm sure you have noticed, the refinished stand is lacking in doors. I took off the knobs and saved them, certain that I would use them for something. Today, I found that something.

This is one of the doors. Note how the lack of a knob leaves a perfect place for a nail, and how the design looks suspiciously like a picture frame.

I found some great black fabric in the remnants section of Walmart. I got a 44" by 22" piece for $1.82. It's got a beautiful modern floral pattern with tiny holes where the blooms would be. It would have been lovely for curtains if I had a sufficient amount, but I obviously did not. Those little holes screamed at me, "Fill me with color!" and I could not deny them. I took my door and painted the center a bright, vibrant red:

I then took my fabric, laid it over the door, and cut out a section.

See how the red pops through?

I put Elmer's glue on the edge of the inside of the door and glued the fabric in place, being careful to keep the fabric tight to prevent wrinkles. After the glue dried, I trimmed down the excess fabric with a knife. I gave the same treatment to my other door. The finished product looks like this:

Now to just find a place to hang them...guess who has a chore to do after the game is over! :)