Craft night at Courtney's!

My friend Courtney is having her wedding DIY style.  She is making it all... her invitations, her centerpieces and her wedding favors. She had a few impromptu craft nights that I couldn't make it to but I did still get to participate in a little crafting. : ) It wasn't really a "craft night"; pretty much I needed to charge my phone and instead of sitting around doing nothing for an hour, I decided that we should craft.

Our task was the table centerpieces. They are super easy and cheap to make. Courtney estimated they're about $6/centerpiece and we made 20 in a little over an hour. Courtney said she saw some centerpieces with marbles online and knew that's what she wanted. (The rest of the design were her ideas.) But she didn't want to buy vases. So inspiration struck and she used old juice containers. This girl recycles -- no wonder we're friends!

Wedding centerpiece tutorial:
              Materials needed - juice container, ribbon, box cutter, marbles, hot glue, scissors and flowers

This isn't quite all the materials but I LOVE this hot glue gun. It works so well!! I want it!!

1. Cut the top half off the juice bottle, remove the label and clean. The bottom half now should look like a vase.

2. Add marbles. Courtney used about half a bag of decorative marbles per vase. After we finished our project, we decided it might be a good idea to put sand at the bottom of the vase and then add the marbles so it looks a little more filled.

3. While the hot glue gun is heating up, measure and cut the ribbon. Stick the end of the ribbon to the sticky part of the bottle where the label was. Then you won't have to hold it in place as much when you measure. 

4. Put a dab of hot glue in the center of the bottle and glue the flower stem into the bottle.  Hold in place until the glue is dried.

 Courtney bought bouquets of silk flowers and cut them into individual stems. Its a little extra work but it was more cost-efficient than buying individual stems.

5. Glue the ribbon around the bottle.

They look really nice when they're done and you get the satisfaction of knowing that you made them. This doesn't have to be a two person craft but it goes faster if it is. Courtney did the ribbon measuring and held the flowers in place while they dried. And I got to do all of the gluing (mostly because I was in love with her hot glue gun).  

I want to thank Courtney for letting me be a part of her wedding and helping me with this tutorial. 

Wes is making deliciously amazing pot roast.

Ahhh date night <3 Dinner on the patio. With lanterns!! Welcome spring : )

One of the first things that Wes cooked for me was pot roast. (Actually, the first thing he cooked for me was a pork tenderloin but that's not a regular in our recipe rotation so we'll just skip straight to the pot roast.) Not long after we started dating, one of his co-workers gave him some left over pot roast. Seeing as he was a bachelor, she gave him enough to last a week. LOL Since he had so much, Wes was nice enough to share. I've never had homemade pot roast; it was so yummy! Why have I never made this before?!?! After that, we (mostly Wes) felt inspired to make our own pot roast. Wes doesn't cook often, but there are two things he does well. One is chili and the other is pot roast. I'll blog about the chili another time.

We're having it for dinner tonight so I'm here in the kitchen taking pictures and typing as he cooks...
Slow-Cooker Pot Roast Recipe:
INGREDIENTS -                   3 cups vegetable broth      
    2lb of roast                         2 bay leaves (1 leaf for each pound of meat)




1 large potato                     1 pinch of minced garlic
1 cup lentils                        1 dash of parsley, salt and pepper (or however much you'd prefer)
1 cup carrots                      1 packet of soup mix



Disclaimer: Wes prefers mushrooms but he knows my favorite is lentils so he's doing lentils for me. You have to really like lentils to add them in your pot roast. If you aren't a huge lentil fan, I'd say go with mushrooms instead. Since the lentils are in the crock pot all day, they get super mushy and soak up all the broth. And its a crazy gravy-like consistency mess if you try to heat up the left overs. When I studied in Spain, my host mom made this really thick lentil soup and I LOVED it. It was one of the tastiest things that she cooked. So, I'm okay with mushy stewed lentils but they aren't for the faint of heart.

1. Thaw the meat. If you forget to thaw it, defrost the meat by running it under cold water (not hot water). Wes saw Alton Brown do some experiment with defrosting duck shaped ice sculptures    using either running cold water or in the oven and cold water worked better. Poor melted ducks!!
2. Cut up the meat, potatoes and carrots into chunks.

3. Put into the slow cooker in this order - meat, bay leaf, lentils, carrots, parsley, salt, pepper, soup mix, garlic, broth and, then potato. Save the potatoes for last. When they cook, they'll get soft but not mushy because they're left on top. (Some of this I'm quoting directly from Wes.)

4. Cook for 8 hours on low heat. If you only have 6 hours, you should have it on low for a majority of the time and then switch it to high for the last hour.

5. If you aren't going to be at home, no need to check on it. But if you are home, stir the stuff in the crock pot around every 2 hours. After your 8 hours are done, it should look awesome and like this.

So there you have it...my man can cook! : ) I'll ask him to make chili so we can have a blog on that, too. Using other people's recipes makes blogging easier. Maybe, I can bug my mom into getting some of her Chinese food recipes. Mmmmm!