Recipe of the Week #2- Crock Pot Pork Tenderloin

Here's a recipe we made for Crock Pot Pork Tenderloin (from Gooseberry Patch).
I love Crock Pot recipes- smelling the food cooking all day, then the illusion that I hardly had to do any prep for the meal (although I did; it was just earlier in the day!).

1 pork tenderloin
garlic salt
pepper
1 can each of Golden Mushroom, French Onion, and Cream of Mushroom

Put tenderloin in the Crock Pot. Sprinkle with garlic salt and pepper. Mix the 3 cans of soup together and pour over the meat. Cook all day (4-6 hours) and serve meat with gravy over mashed potatoes or rice.

This tastes good with mashed potatoes and buttered green beans. I love easy meals that taste good, too!

Heart garland

 To create this heart garland, you'll need an old book that you can cut up, a stapler, scissors, ribbon, twine, and a paper trimmer. Cut at least 36 1 inch strips of book text. You'll also need little pieces about 1 inch by 1/4 inch (these will be the tabs that stick out of the hearts to which we'll attach the ribbon).




                                                                     
     

 Take 3 strips together and fold them in half.

 Take a small tab, fold it in half, then stick it open side down into the folded side of the paper strips. Staple together as shown.

Fold each piece down to form 3 hearts.

 Staple at the bottom, Cut off the excess paper at the bottom of the heart below the staple.

Attach ribbon to each heart then attach to twine. I tied a knot around each ribbon so my hearts would stay in place. 

Hang up and admire!

I also made one out of pages from a comic book. It's pretty cute, too!









I linked up with Craft-O-Maniac Monday Link Party and Get Your Craft on Tuesday. Thanks for stopping by!!

Thrifty Thursday #1

Here's what I scored at the thrift stores this week.

Books were only 2 for a quarter. I just can't pass them up when they are that cheap! I got a bag full of the Reader's Digest books with the beautiful covers. I am going to feature projects with books coming up here on the blog.

The other great deal I got is this pack of Brides Bookmarks. They say things like "Like it," "Love it," and "Possibilities." They cost 25 cents. I thought they were a lot like the tabs I have for my Smash album (in photo above) and that's where I plan to use them.

I love searching for treasures in thrift stores. 

Valentine banner

 Here's a simple banner idea using playing cards, a few letters, twine, and some various embellishments.

Since it's Valentine's themed, I chose cards from the hearts suit. Then I decided what word I was going to use and grabbed a handful of red and pink embellishments. My favorite go-to embellishments are buttons, tickets, lace, and flowers.
After placing the letters and embellishing the cards, I punched holes in the corners and placed them on twine. I did add a card to either end with photos of the boys and of Phil and I.

This took about 30 minutes and is very inexpensive to make. (As a matter of fact, I picked up a pack of cards for a quarter at the thrift store the other day.)

This would be cute with a birthday theme, family theme- the possibilties are endless!

I linked this with Get Your Craft On at Glitter, Glue, and Paint, Today's Creative Blog, Sundae Scoop , Your Whim Wednesday and at Brassy Apple.

A Class I'm Taking- and Recommending!

 I am very excited to be signed up for a year long class from Stephanie Ackerman aimed to help me stay focused and be more productive with my scrapbooking. (I do believe you can still sign up for this class- and I highly recommend it!) I did get a late start preparing my binder for the course, but here it is. . . ready. . . finally!:)

I purchased an 8"x9" binder and covered it. Then I cut down file folders for my dividers for each month. For the filler papers, I cut to size several different types of papers:

                  sheet music

                  ledger paper

                  baseball play book

                  old school attendance book

                  French workbook

                  German road map

                  vintage dictionary pages

                                                                                                 handwriting paper

I'm really excited about the eclectic look with the variety of papers. Hopefully they won't be too distracting when stuff is added to them.

This is my January divider. I only took abut 10 minutes to put it together (as she recommended).

This is my first layout. We were supposed to use words to describe ourselves. I had a great time finding word stickers that would work!

I am so looking forward to this year long project. It has already started bringing me out of my creative slump! Thank you Stephanie!

Recipe of the Week #1- Deep Dish Pizza Casserole

One thing I thought I'd try this year is a new recipe every week. This week it was Deep Dish Pizza Casserole. It was good and very filling. The recipe is for an 8"x 8" dish. I didn't think that would be enough for my family, so I doubled it. There was no need to have done that. This recipe is so thick, an 8"x 8" pan would have fed all four of us.

Deep Dish Pizza Casserole

1 lb beef
8 oz can tomato sauce
6 oz can tomato paste
14 oz can pizza crust dough
6 slices mozzarella cheese

Cook meat. Drain. Add sauce and paste. Cook until heated.
Grease an 8"x 8" dish. Press dough on bottom and halfway up the sides. Place 3 pieces of cheese on the dough. Top with the meat mixture. Bake uncovered at 425 x 12 minutes. Top with remaining cheese. Bake another 10 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes.

We all really enjoyed it and decided it would be a "repeat recipe" (code for "Make it again, Mom!).
Note: I added some seasonings to the meat as it cooked- Lawry's Seasoned Salt, garlic salt, pepper, and Italian Seasoning. I mistakenly bought sliced Swiss cheese instead sliced Mozzarella and I used that on the bottom layer. Then I topped it with shredded Mozzarella cheese and shredded Cheddar cheese. I figure you can't go wrong with cheese on pizza! I also cut up a green onion for my husband's piece.

Unfortunately, I cannot remember the source of this recipe.

Month by Month Scrapbooks

Two years ago, I started keeping a month by month scrapbook. I started out by creating an album with 12 layouts. Each layout had the month printed on it and contained a journaling box for which I used to write down what we did for the month. It was basically a list I compiled from our family calendar.

Some months are packed and I have lots of photos which I cropped to make fit or added an extra page to that month.

The first year, it was a smaller album made of a clipboard cut in half. Every other page was a large note card with a 6"x9" envelope for the alternating pages. This gave me room to keep extra mementos from the month (2 months shared an envelope). This was a nice size although all the photos had to be majorly cropped or printed out wallet size.

the cover

the title page

July's layout

The next year I used an album from a kit. This was a somewhat larger format and had room for more and larger photos.

cover August's layout

This type of scrapbooking is very "freeing" as I am able to cover our entire month's activies in 1 layout and our entire year's activities in only 12 layouts. At the end of the month, I just print the photos, grab a few embellishments, use my calendar for documentation.

This past year this was really the only scrapbooking I have done.

Stay posted for photos of this year's album- made from the cover of an encyclopedia!

This post was linked to Get Your Craft On Tuesday on Today's Creative Blog