Cuteness Overload - Recipe for Raspberry Pie In A Jar

I had never made a pie before.

Lots of cupcakes.

Lots of cookies.

Lots of cakes.

But a pie?

Never.

I saw this from Shauna (man, inspiration is everywhere!) and totally died.

Must make. Now.

So I did!

Ladies and gents...

Pie. In a jar.

Here's what you'll need:

4 half-pint mason jars

For the crust:

2 C Flour
11 T Butter - real butter
1/4 t Salt
4-5 T ice water

For the fruit filling:

4 C prepared fruit
up to 1/2 C Sugar
3 T Flour
2 T Butter

 Put the flour and salt in a bowl.

The cut up your insane amount of butter (COLD - straight from the fridge)

into little butter chunks and add them to your flour & salt mixture.

Mix it all together and break up the butter chunks into super small butter chunks.

 Add ice water a tablespoon at a time and mix .

Eventually just grab it all with your hands and knead a bit.

 Your dough should look like this.

 In another bowl, take your washed and prepared fruit (I used raspberries), sugar,

flour, and butter and mix it all together until it is a mushy, mashy, gooey mound of

yumminess.

I added a splash of vanilla to this mixture as well.

 Okay, so your dough is prepared and hanging out in a bowl.

And your fruit filling is prepared and hanging out in another bowl.

Take some of your dough and roll out on the counter.

(Don't want a counter full of flour? Just sandwich the dough between 2 pieces of wax paper and roll.)

Take a lid from one of your jars and cut 4 circles.

This is for the pie tops.

Set those aside for now.

 Take the rest of your dough and press it into the jars.

You don't need to roll the dough for this out.

Just press with your fingers.

Make sure to get the dough all the way up the sides of the jar.

 Fill them up!!

A-Yum.

Once you've filled the jars with the filling, stick a little pat of butter on top of the fruit.

Now place your precut toppers onto the top of the jars and

press against the sides with your fingers or a fork to seal them.

Make sure you have a vent or a hole cut into the topper!

Have fun with a little cookie cutter.

Cuteness overload.

 When your crazy jars of goodness are ready to go in the oven,

sprinkle some melted butter and sugar on top.

OMG.

Then bake at 375 for 45 minutes.

 Hooooooly cats.

This was so good.

So so good.

 And the best part?

You can prepare these puppies ahead of time and freeze them for when you are ready!

WHAT?!

Just stick the lids on them and pop 'em in the freezer.

When you are ready for them, just take them out of the freezer and bake at 375 for

50-60 minutes instead of 45.

Check out this link.

I love this site and for this particular recipe, it gives lots of other ideas as well!

Hello crumb topping and mini lattice work.

I die.

Oh happy day!

Bedtime

These pictures make my heart just melt.

This is what bedtime looks like to me each night.

Happy Friday!

A Happy Little Project

I recently got inspired by Shauna at Cake and Cotton.

I fell in love with this idea of making fun drinking glasses for Griffin from jars!

Here's what you'll need:

 The red and white checked lid didn't come with the jars but 

at $2 for a pack of 12, the cuteness was worth it.

 Okay, it was really really hard to punch a hole in the lid but it was so worth it!

 How. Awesome. Is. THIS?!

This little project made me so happy.

I may just like this more than Griffin!

 It made me so happy, I went outside under a little shady tree and just sat for a sec.

I sat with my cool drink and a happy book.

It was good.

So good.

Happy Thursday!

Summer!

Okay, okay so the days have just slipped through my little fingers and

I let the ball drop on announcing the winner of the

Bandana Apron!!

So here goes...

LORI!!

Congrats, Lori!

I'll have that in the mail for you soon!

:)

Summer is in full swing around here.

The days are HOT but the evenings have been breezy and warm.

Still humid. Still sticky.

But nice.

***********************

I used to read to Griffin a lot when he was a baby.

But we got to a point where he would yell and yell.

"NO NO NO NO!!"

He didn't want us to read to him.

That made me very sad.

But, as things do, that phase passed and he loves us to read to him again.

His current favorite is David Shannon.

Can't go wrong with him.

And look!

What a big boy.

Fingers crossed that this next phase of potty training is swift and painless.

He had an accident tonight and declared he didn't like underwear.

Bottom lip all pouted out and everything.

We'll get through it.

We've also been in the back yard a lot this month playing with the hose.
Our back yard is quite small.

And it's shared with 3 other condos that make up our building.

But no one is ever out there so we've been taking advantage of having it all to ourselves.

I made our summer list!

YAY!

Inspired by Meg at Whatever.

I see moms making summer lists because their Littles are home from school and that means more

family time.

Since we just have a 2 year old here, the days are pretty much the same.

I'm hoping that this list will change that.

I'm going to make one for every season.

So we have something to look forward to!

Here is what is on our summer list:

make s'mores, roast hot dogs at the fire pit, craft weekends, library, watch fireworks,

vintage shoot of the kids, bake a rainbow cake, make homemade ice cream,

make new crayons from broken ones, go hiking, catch fireflies, go on bike rides,

play in the sprinkler, make sidewalk chalk paint, explore St. Louis architecture,

movie nights, picnic, Steak n Shake happy hour, zoo, & Mommy and Daddy time

And there's room for plenty more!

Do you have a summer list?

You should make one!

It will make you seriously happy.

I promise.

Happy Wednesday!

Resentment, Bills, and an Attitude of Gratitude - DIY

Matt and I bought this tiny house knowing that we didn't want to live in it for very long.

Sound silly?

That's a whole 'nuther blog post.

Anywho, that mentality has kept us living like renters.

Now, we are trying to sell and we haven't had a single person take a gander in 6 months.

SIX MONTHS!

What has developed is resentment.

I don't like that at all.

This past weekend we came to the conclusion that we need to stop living like we are

going to move soon.

I know that may sound backwards when we are trying to sell our house but here's the reasoning.

We work hard for this house.

We work hard to maintain it.

But we just sort of keep up with the daily messes.

The walls are in need of painting.

The siding needs power washing.

The trim on the doors need replacing.

Etc.

You get the idea.

We need to put love back into our home.

Basically, while we are waiting for our something better to come along,

we should love where we are right now.

Attitude of Gratitude.

So, we are in the beginning stages of making a list of all the big and small things

that we need or want to tackle around the house.

All those things we never dove into as homeowners because we wanted to keep this place

"move in ready".

I've mentioned many many times before that we have a very small house.

It is 1080 square ft.

No basement.

No garage.

We've chosen function over style many many times for convenience sake and our style

has gone to the dogs because of it.

But we are going to work to change that.

I'm going to start to post some of the progress.

We hope that this will pull us out of this resentment rut we are in.

***********************

First up...

A tiny bedroom project.

THE MONTHLY BUDGET.

Years ago we found this awesome calendar that had a huge envelope for each month to hold the bills.

 Matt and I are both "out of sight, out of mind" people so the bills need to be readily available for

us to view every day.

This is our system.

Functional?

Yes.

Ugly?

Y.E.S.

Just hanging there right in the middle of the old #2 pencil colored walls of our bedroom.

 We knew the system worked for us, we just needed to change it up a bit.

(For those of you who are wondering, I write down what needs to be paid on what day along with the amount. Matt is the bill payer. When he pays the bills, he puts a check mark. I track the account and I put the second check mark down when the bill comes out of the account.)

 Look how far it stood off the wall!

12 months worth of bills.

 Enter Target.

Total score.

 Plus a frame I already had around the house.

 And voila!

Same system, different style.

The monthly calender is just paper printed off the Internet and placed in the frame.

I put the glass of the frame behind the paper so I can still write down all that needs to be paid and when

and we can still check items off.

And there are pockets for 2 months. Current month and the next.

After those months are over with, the bills get filed away.

And look! We no longer have an enormous accordion sticking out of our wall!

Yippee!

And the cherry on top?

I popped on over to the Etsy shop of my favorite Organizing Guru, Jen.

I purchased a blank monthly calendar that I can use over and over each month.

Just print out and fill in.

(The calendar that you see in the frame right now is not from Jen. It's just something I found online to fill in for the picture. I will be getting mine from Jen soon and I'm so psyched!)

:)

Frame: Free. Had it around the house.

2 Pocket Organizer from Target: $14. (A splurge but it was too perfect to pass up.)

Printable Monthly Calendar: $3.

For a total of $17, I was able to ensure that we keep with the same bill paying system that always worked

for us but just make it look a little better.

Happy Tuesday!

The I-Don't-Care-If-It-Gets-Dirty Apron - A Giveaway!!

I have a small collection of aprons.

Love them.

But my problem is this:

I don't want to actually wear my aprons because I don't want to get them dirty.

Weird?

Sure.

But still.

I wanted to make myself a "get dirty but don't really care" apron.

I found a great tutorial online to make a bandana apron!

 Perfect.

Here are the supplies you'll need:

1) Bandana

2) Wide ribbon (heavy weight)

3) Heat and Bond strips

4) Iron

 First, cut a strip of Heat and Bond to the length of your bandana.

Then take one side of the casing off and put the side without the casing on your bandana.

Iron the Heat and Bond strip against the side with the paper casing.

 Then cut your ribbon the length you'll need to tie around your waist and into a bow

(or, in my case, a knot).

Take the other side of the casing off your Heat and Bond strip and place ribbon on the strip.

Flip the whole thing over so that you aren't ironing directly on your ribbon.

Iron your bandana with the ribbon on the other side to fuse the bandana to the ribbon.

 Voila!

Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

(Sorry about the photo quality.)

I loved the apron so much I made two!

One for me (the black one)

AND ONE FOR ONE OF YOU!!

Isn't the yellow so sunny and cheery?!

Here's how you can win this super simple and sunny apron:

1) "Follow" my blog.

2) Leave a comment on this post. What will you be doing this Memorial Day Weekend?

I will choose one person at random on 6/3/11.

Happy Saturday!

Gratefulness

Joplin, MO has been weighing heavy on my

heart and mind this week.

My In-Laws live there and what they've told me over the phone

seems like a movie.

How can that be real?

My Sister-In-Law didn't see it coming.

I don't think many did.

She and her family were in Wal-Mart shopping one minute

and the next minute there was daylight, wind, and rain in her face.

I saw a picture of the Wal-Mart.

The next time I talked to her I told her I loved her.  

 Here in St. Charles we've been having crazy weather as well but no tornado sirens until today.

Mainly just really blustery, warm afternoons.

Like, Piglet blustery.

The kind where you can feel the energy in the air.

 About an hour before a storm the other afternoon, Matt, Griffin, and I went outside.

I layed in the grass for the first time since I was little.

I watched the clouds.

I watched Griffin run and run with the wind in his hair.

Matt spun Griffin in circles.

So grateful for our home and just being together.

It was a special hour.

So free.

So full of laughter.

So full of love.

I think we can have more of those times if we just played more.

Not worry about shooting the wolf closest to the door.

Not solving our and every one else's problems.

Just break out of the daily routine.

For an hour.

And just run and spin.

And watch the clouds.