Tasty Tuesday/Meatloaf Muffins

Sound appetizing?  Well it's super easy and quite tasty!  Of course I found this on Pinterest here

Ingredients:
1lb ground meat
1/3 C breadcrumbs or oatmeal (we use oatmeal)
1/3 C Parmesan cheese
1 or 2 Eggs (we used 1 but 2 probably would have helped
1 (8 oz) can tomato sauce (or 1/4 C ketchup)
1/2 tspn garlic powder
Salt and Pepper
Several shakes of Worstenchester sauce
A couple of handfuls of whatever veggies you may want to include.  We only used onions but you can use peppers, carrots, onions....etc.

Preheat to 350 degrees. 

Mix ingredients in a bowl. Sorry for the dark picture

 Ball up mix and put into muffin tin...original post I found said 8-10 muffins but we ended up with 12.  Top w/ tomato sauce or ketchup.
Bake 30-35 minutes.

I failed to get a picture of the done meatloaf in the muffin tin but here is what was left after we pigged out!


(Calorie content per muffin is 110!)

I really liked this, it was so easy and they were good.  I did use the tomato sauce but next time will be useing ketchup as the tomato sauce I believe took over the taste of the meatloaf muffins.  I think the ketchup will definitely fix that but even with the tomato sauce they were tasty!  Plus how fun....meatloaf muffins!!!


Inspired by Tasty Tuesday

Gregory's 2nd Birthday Shirt

Here is the last of many birthday gifts I've made for Gregory's upcoming 2nd birthday!  Finally done with gifts and now I have to move on to decorations!

So last year I had no idea how to do an Applique so I paid $18 for a 1st birthday shirt for Gregory that had a "1" appliqued on the shirt along with his name embroidered on the shirt.  Of course I still don't do embroidery but thanks to blogland I've realized that appliques are doable and once I actually did one I realized it was actually quite easy!  So this year I decided to save some birthday funds and make his 2nd birthday shirt myself and I'm quite happy with it!

I bought this t-shirt at Walmart for $3.88...it has a pocket but thanks to a blog I had come across all you have to do is use a seam ripper and you can get rid of that pocket quite quickly!

Looks like there was never a pocket there!

I then used a stencil to cut a G out of some black fabric and then as seen here I took an embroidery needle and some embroidery thread and then sewn a white line down the center of the G to make it look like a road.

Maybe I should mention that Gregory's birthday theme is all things with wheels...cars, trucks, motorcycles..... Gregory loves them all!  (colors are black, blue and bright green)

Thanks to my stepmom I decided to applique our last name on the back of Gregory's birthday shirt.

A closer picture...no the appliques are not perfect but I'm proud of it!

Here is the front of the shirt. I appliqued the G onto the shirt after I sewed the road down the middle. I then Applqued the 2 in the corner....G squared!....I then Appliqued our last name on the back of the shirt and then sewed two little car buttons I found at Walmart for just under $2. I think it's pretty cute and more importantly I think Gregory is going to love it!



Inspired by Gregory's 2nd Birthday Party!

Sunburst Mirror

    I am so excited to share this project with you.  I've been a very busy girl lately and have been feeling super productive.  Of course mainly I have been focusing on Gregory's birthday gifts and now preparing to start working on the decorations and party favors....honeing in on crunch time over here!  All the while as mentioned before we have started painting in our home..... forget Spring cleaning we are just jumping around everywhere in productivity!  Along with the projects that I feel are of priority I have had projects that nag me constantly so I must fit them in as well! :-)  This is one of those projects!  I actually saw this when I first started blogging a couple of months ago in the blog What The Graham?.  I imediately started collecting stir sticks and after a lot of other projects I finally got all the stir sticks needed and got to work!

I got the mirror (it's upside down in the picture sorry!) at Michaels for around $7...I used it to trace a circle onto a diaper box b/c the card board is sturdier than some.

I used my Xacto knife to cut out that circle.

I then traced a smaller circle on it so I would be able to make sure my stir sticks were all evenly placed

I laid out my stir sticks so that I made sure I had enough to go all the way around twice

Sorry I don't have a picture of this but I cut half of my stir sticks down about 3 inches so the top layer would be shorter than the bottom layer.

I painted my stir sticks black....if you have been following me for any time you know that my room is black and white so of course they are black!

I started glueing the bottom layer of stir sticks useing a hot glue gun

Then started glueing down the top layer of shorter stir sticks

I glued down the mirror

Okay...be careful it is flimsy...but it's just going to be hanging on my wall...I don't plan to do a lot of moving around with it.  My husband suggested useing his nailer to nail each stir stick down to a wooden plaque but I didn't feel like waiting until I could get to the store to do that.  This works for me...but if you want it to be more sturdy you may want to do something like that.  What I did to help was flip it over and shoot hot glue into every crevice for some extra hold.

To hang I simply took a piece of ribbon and hot glued it to the cardboard but to make sure it stayed I shot a couple of staples through and then topped it with hot glue again.....It definitely did the job!

Here we have it....I LOVE it!  The basket as created here and the sunburst fill this space wonderfully.... It was blank for 4 years....how awful is that!?  I had many ideas in the past but never "did" anything about it....I'm in love with this and my stepmom came over this evening and her exact words were "I love your sunburst....maybe I could make one?"  The pictures do not give it justice!  I realise there is a lot of room for improvement and I plan to use the basket and the headboard surface to decorate for special occasions.

Oh I almost forgot the BEST part!  I paid about $7 for the mirror at Michaels, I got the stir sticks at Home Depot for free...a few here and a few there...., I already had the black paint which I've used on several projects and will be continuing to use, I just cut a circle out of an empty diaper box from Gregory's diapers, I already had the hot glue gun and glue, the little ribbon on the back was scraps from another project....Yeah...add that up!  $7!!!!


Inspired by What The Graham?

Tasty Tuesday/Apologies

Can you believe I did not get in the kitchen and pull out any wonderful recipes!?  Sorry guys, I've been really busy just trying to do day to day things.  I have tons of projects I've been working on plus we have started painting.  Excited???  Well I'm not really, at least not with the actual doing part, I'm not much into painting.  We got the kitchen all painted up this past weekend and it does look so much better but I just lack the patience and the skill to be a great painter.  I plan to conquer the hallway this coming weekend and then we are going to attack the living room the next weekend as a duo and maybe recruit some help from family as well....it's not a tiny space!  The colors we have chosen are nuetral...yep I'm totally boring!  The only reason I'm painting my walls now is because after 4 years of dealing w/ contruction grade matte paint we just HAVE to do something about it in the main living spaces.....but a lot due to the fact that we are getting rid of the horrible berber carpet in our living room and hallway so painting the walls in the living room and hallway just made sense and then realized...well the kitchen is right there so might want to paint it too!  I think when it's all said and done I'll be really happy we did it but boy am I not thrilled about having to do it....not to mention all the birthday planning that is in process right now, less than a month away now and during all this painting I'm going to be in hyper birthday planning mode.  I have another gift to share with you that I've completed....now all gifts are done.  Next will be the planning and making the decorations for the actual event.  So I do apologize that Tasty Tuesday is being sacrificed this week....I do have something planned for next Tuesday though so I'm not going to totally abandon it.  Although I must admit I'm starting to grow weary with this series....I'm so awful.  I'm going to try to get over this hump but fore warning it may become something to where I post food as I get to it and stick to more of my crafty projects b/c there are plenty of those to go around!!!



Inspired by Tasty Tuesday

Gregory's Birthday/Name Quilted Blanket

Another birthday gift for my precious Gregory!  I'm still working on the final gift but I have this one to share.  It was a time consuming gift but my favorite I think!  I shared with you here the quilt I made for Gregory for his first birthday.  This year I had not planned to make a quilt for Gregory but a comforter to be a part of his bedroom suit I've been working on.  Well the bedroom suit is complete....here I will share Gregory's quilt....yes that is right...I ended up making another quilt that is also Mickey Mouse but very different too!

Here is my blanket all laid out.  The back is white, there is a layer of fusible batting (reason for the iron!) and the top fabric is my Mickey Mouse fabric!  I ran the iron over my fabrics as instructed to get all my layers to stick together.

I folded around the quilt to create clean edges on my blanket and pinned them into place.

Sewed all around to hold the finished edges!

I made stencils for Gregory's name.....this is where this became a pretty big project!

I made a graph on the back of the blanket so I knew how much room I had for each letter

This is the front of the finished project

Here is the back...do you see it?  There are some missing pictures but I made stencils of Gregory's first and middle names since they both have seven characters is was perfect.  I traced the letters into each square as shown a few pictures up and then I followed the traced lines on my sewing machine.  In the end...I sewed Gregory's name into this blanket.  I think it turned out great....it was really hard to get a picture of this since I used white thread but this is how I mean't for it to look.  I hope Gregory will love it and keep it always!

Inspired by Gregory's Birthday