Author Archives: Georgina

Stuffed Green Peppers

Posted on by

8

My first food post! ♥

I made stuffed green peppers. The recipe I adapted it from was for 8-10 peppers, and as it is just me and Jake I cut it in half for 4-5 so we could each have one and then another one for leftovers sometime. Well there was actually way too much stuffing for just 4 peppers…this recipe is definitely enough for about 6 peppers. (depending slightly on pepper size obviously).

Here is what ingredients you will need:

– Peppers(*helpful tip is to make sure that they are stable enough on the bottom to ‘sit up’ on their own so you don’t have spilling peppers! 🙂

– Small/medium onion

– Can of DICED tomatoes(yes the picture is of stewed tomatoes, thats what the recipe called for, but I had to spend time cutting them into smaller pieces and so next time I’ll be using diced)

– 1 can of corn

– 1 pound of ground beef

– 1 cup of rice

-Chili powder, and I threw in some chipotle powder too

– Ketchup

– Cheese to sprinkle on top

What do do:

  • Cook your rice and set aside.  * Look at the bottom of this post for a rice cooking tutorial 🙂
  • Cut the tops off of your peppers and clean. Set aside
  • Chop your onion and the tops of the peppers into a small dice
  • Bring a large pot of water to a boil and boil the peppers for 3-4 minutes until they softened a little bit (as pictured)

  • Take them out and run under cold water for a second or two and then set aside.
  • Turn on oven to 350 degrees
  • Start browning beef, once brown add the onions and pepper pieces until soft
  • Add corn, tomatoes, 1 -2 tsps of chili powder/ chipotle powder or whatever seasoning you choose.
  • Add ketchup, about 5 tablespoons-more or less- just to get a ‘stewier’ consistency
  • Mix in your rice and stir entire mixture together
Here is what my pepper stuffing looked like after I was done:

  • Pack each pepper tightly with the stuffing and place in a tin foil lined baking dish
  • Sprinkle the tops with cheese
  • Bake for 10-15 minutes (I finished with a broil to get a pretty brown color 🙂 )
Here is the finished product:

VOILA! I served this with some biscuits I had left over from another recipe- but would be good with a salad too!
Hope you enjoy &  please share with me if you adapt and experiment with this and come up with your own tasty creations!
xoxo
-G
Rice tutorial:
White rice is a 2:1 ratio and brown rice is 1.5:1, so two cups of water for every one cup of white rice and 1.5 cups of water for every cup of brown rice. 
-I always rinse my rice before I cook it- particularly for white rice. Usually 5-10 rinses or until the water is no longer cloudy. 
-Combine the correct amounts of rice and water in a saucepan(you can add a little bit of oil (canola,veggie,olive or whatever you choose)) bring to a boil with the lid OFF.
-A soon as the water starts to boil, turn the burner to low and place the lid on the pot
-Simmer the rice for 17-20 minutes and ta-da! super simple. 
*for brown rice after the 20 minutes is up I remove the pot from the burner but continue to let the rice sit for another 15 minutes before I serve- not sure why but it always turns out better when I do 🙂 
easy peasy!

Paint Chip Calendar

Posted on by

2

Hi!

So I have seen these quite a bit around the internet- both Pinterest and just poking around the web. The brilliant idea of a paint chip calendar. You take an old frame(or new one if you would like- but I love re and up cycling! 🙂 ) and some paint chips(paint card samples or whatever they are called! OK, you don’t buy the paint cards but you acquire them however you do. I went to a hardware store and picked out colors in the same family and just took them(Green of course!). That’s what you’re suppose to do right?! I mean truthfully I did feel a little sheepish taking 20-ish paint chip cards but I think it’s the norm. Anyyyyway- you could choose any colors you like- be it random or all the same or same color family etc… Cut them into squares and put in the frame and use a dry erase marker to write on the glass the dates and days and month and you’re done! Basically that plus scissors and tape are the only materials you need.

Materials:

  • Old frame with glass intact
  • Large sheet of paper to cover background of frame
  • Various assortment of sample paint cards
  • Ruler
  • Scissors
  • Tape

So what I did was:

– Took out the picture originally in the frame and cleaned the glass and such

– Traced the glass size on my large piece of paper and cut that out

– I measured how large my paint cubes could be to be able to fit row of 7 by columns of 5 turned out to be about 1.7′ x 1.7′

– Then I just went to town cutting those squares from the paint samples till I had a few in each color

– Then: (this is the only part that took awhile because I’m anal) but you evenly space and tape down the squares to the backdrop paper leaving enough spacing at the top to write the month and the days of the week

– Insert it all in the frame and BAM! you’re done! You have a gorgeous DIY month-to-month reusable calendar

Here is how mine turned out! (sorry the picture is not good at all but you get the idea!)

Since this picture I've found a marker that writes darker- Happy!

Thats it! Hope you enjoyed. Thanks for looking!

xo

-G

Painted Vases

Posted on by

2

Hi Again!

So here is another craft project that I recently completed(once more apologize for no tutorial pics or anything as I did this project a couple of weeks ago). I originally saw this idea HERE.

This project actually took a little bit of time because I had the hardest time finding the enamel paint (actually the surface conditioner)that the original idea blogger had used. After some research I determined any enamel or paint designed for glass would work. I found my ‘vases’ (one of them is actually a glass) at Goodwill and the smallest one I got at the dollar store. The paint I ended up using was Martha Stewart Craft paint which I found at Michael’s Craft store and pictured here:

Martha Stewart craft paint with a satin finish. I did not use this color but wanted to show what the bottle looked like.

So while I was shopping for the paint, I had picked out the color “Pool” (number 32014) sort of a aqua-marine/turquoise color and was contemplating doing the vases all the same color as the original blogger had. BUT then I saw the color “Love Bird” (#32051) and fell in love with it. It is a gorgeous corally-red. But then I thought it would be weird to have two one  color and an odd man out so I opted for a third color of “Arrowhead”(#32080) which is a basic grey. Now the paint says that after you paint your item (metal,glass,fabric) you need to let it ‘cure'(*still not really sure what that really means) for 21 days. what?!? Maybe if it was for something you were going to eat off of or something like that- but my vases are only for decoration so I knew I’d be fine once they were dry to the touch.

Soooo- to prep my vases I used good ole Goo-Gone to remove the stickers then washed them with warm soapy water and dried, then cleaned the inside of them with rubbing alcohol just so the surface was extra clean and the paint would get great contact. Then the painting began! Sort of messy with the tall one reaching in to the bottom and getting it all over my hands but the others went great. and here is the finished product!

I love painting the inside so that they are still high gloss and gorgeous on the outside!

They were dry within 2 days. & Sorry that pics is a little cluttered/ not great. But they turned out gorgeous I think. I just had the thought of doing another something of this fashion but doing different shades of green. (green is my all time favorite color and most everything I do or choose is green)ha!

Not a lot of direction or detail but it really wasn’t hard at all! Let me know if you have questions at all!

Thanks for reading!

xo

-G

Lace Infinity Scarf/First Sewing Project

Posted on by

1

Hi all!

As I’ve stated before- I just recently graduated from college(December 16th to be exact). As my college graduation present, the only thing I wanted was a sewing machine. I’d been doing mini projects with just a needle and thread since I was 12 years old, but it’s tedious and to be honest mostly all I did were fixes/touch ups or minor alterations on clothes. Also fix little tears, broken straps or missing buttons on friends clothes who would have otherwise thrown them away!!

Side note: It still amazes me how no one, and I mean no one my age, or in my group of friends at least, can even do as much as that! I was always hailed as being “Suzy Homemaker” in my group of friends and my sewing “capabilities” were one of the reasons thought honestly they are nothing to brag about. but moving on!

So my wonderful Mom and Dad got me a Janome 8050. It’s a really cool machine with tons (50) of built in stitches and an easy to read and use screen; and even though it comes with the foot pedal I have come to know and absolutely love the Start/Stop button! Admittedly at first I had NO idea how to use it. I had used my moms very old machine in the past but she always threaded the bobbin and set everything up for me. So I needed some assistance to say the least. After a hour and a half long private session on all of the basics I was ready to take on a project. But what?!?! (I still have relatively no idea how to read a pattern-so that was out of the question) I had seen a lace infinity scarf on Pinterest and remember just loving it and at the time i thought well how easy to simply sew two pieces of fabric together.(Later come to find it’s a little more difficult than that- but not much!)

SO here is my inspiration for the project!

http://sweet-verbena.blogspot.com/2011/10/single-loop-lace-infinity-scarf.html  (Katy has a lot of other great tutorials on her blog too- check them out!)

and I apologize in advance for the next couple of my posts not having step-by-step/tutorial pictures or directions. I’ve made this scarf and a few other projects before I knew I was creating a blog. But here is a pic of my finished Scarf:

A little dark- but the underlay is light green satin-y material with the overlay of black lace.

I will try to take another picture of it soon so you can get a better idea.But I’m just to excited about my blog I wanted to get another post up asap!

Hope you enjoyed

xoxo

-G

Welcome to eat.laugh.craft!

Posted on by

5

Hi all! 

So this is my first blog post. I am still trying to figure out how to format this blog to my liking- and I thought I was somewhat technologically sufficient in the world and this blogging process has proven me wrong. So if you notice tons o’ changes, that’s why!

I guess I’ll start by telling a little bit about me. I am 22 years old, I live in Wisconsin and I love it. I recently graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh with a BBA in HR and emphasis in Legal Studies. I’m currently job searching- but to no avail. In the meantime I work two part time jobs at Bath and Body Works and also nanny for a family. I watch adorable twin boys who are roughly 17 months old and the family just recently had a new baby girl. I am 15 days away from moving into my first ‘big girl’ apartment with my long time boyfriend Jake. We are college sweethearts, if you will, and have been dating for almost 5 years! (whoa! sometimes it doesn’t feel like that long at all!) Words cannot describe how much I love him, and also how freakishly excited I am to have a place to call our own and to let my inner homemaker shine! 🙂

Image

Here we are at Jakes sister's wedding last June.

My ultimate goal for this blog is to share my random day to day activities of cooking, crafts(most of which come from where else but Pinterest) and some fun adventures. I hope to inspire you to do something fun with your family or loved ones! Cooking is a passion of mine and I want to show people that it doesn’t have to be a ‘chore’- how to cook good food that is good for you (ok don’t get me wrong you’ll see plenty gooey-chocolate desserts and lots of cheese, I’m from Wisconsin after all 🙂 , but it’s better for you than eating fast-food or out all the time) thats what I want to share! And I’ve always had a knack for crafts and DIY also which has only been propelled within the last year with my discovery of Pinterest, so I figure why not share those things too?!?

Stay tuned- and thanks for reading!

xoxo

-G