Favorite Books

My favorite books page is back with a new book I read this month.  It blew me away.  Check it out on the Favorite Books tab =)

What I made this Christmas (WIMTC)

 My hubby made these.  It's his way of man-i-fying the cookie decorating process!

I love making Christmas cookies each year - but I love decorating them even more!  We're trying to not focus on food over the holidays, but it was fun to keep up this tradition (and give away the majority of the cookies!). 

I used a different type of icing this year and liked it a lot.  Instead of buying something store bought I made a glaze-ish icing.  I saw this idea online and decided to run with it using a basic recipe I keep in my head:

1 bag of powdered sugar
some melted butter ( a couple tablespoons)
a splash of vanilla
a tiny dash of salt (so it's no overly sweet)
milk

I beat everything together, adding the milk until it had a slightly runny consistency.  Then I refrigerated it overnight, and set it out for an hour or so the next day before using it.  The goal was for the icing to spread easily using a pastry brush, but not to run everywhere and make the cookies wet.  I liked it a lot and I think it's my new standard cookie icing!

I made a lot of stuff this Christmas.  Gifts, food, projects for our home, etc.  And I actually took a lot of pictures too - but I never had time to put them up.  So I'll slowly start showing them as I get the pictures on to the computer (first I have to find that cord...). 

Simple Homemade Cleaners

Or as we call them around here, Elise's Elixers.

I started making most of the cleaners I use around our home after I read this post from Young House Love a year or two ago.  I'd heard of different recipes people used, but never were they so simple or effective!  Here are my favorites that have become essentials at our house:

Air Freshener - Essential when your bathroom has no windows and a ridiculously loud fan!  But the stuff from stores gives me a wicked headache and not to be gross, but it doesn't always get rid of the smell, just sort of mixes it so you have Apple Cinnamon ______ (insert gross bathroom smell).  This stuff is the opposite.  No headache.  Gets rid of the smell.  No chemicals!  And really inexpensive.  Oh, and no ridiculously loud noise when you spray it - just saying.

All you need is:
A spray bottle
Favorite scented oil (I buy lavender oil at Whole Foods (or on Amazon for even less) and Tea Tree Oil at Trader Joes for super cheap)
Rubbing Alcohol (super cheap at Costco)

The ratio is 2 parts water to 1 part rubbing alcohol.  Add in as many drops of your favorite scented oil as you like.  I do about 30 drops of lavender or tea tree.  I guarantee you will love it!

Oven Cleaner
I tend to get distracted when cooking, which means that my pots and pans boil over a lot and my stove top and the inside of my oven are messy.  I've never seen anything work as well (especially on grease) as this little trick.

Spritz water all over the surface you need to clean.  Sprinkle baking soda liberally on top of the water and allow it to sit for 5 minutes or so (until the water is absorbed and you can see that the baking soda is absorbing the mess).  Scrub with a washcloth and rinse.  It will be shiny, non-greasy, and clean!  This also works well for greasy pans.

Tip: Costco sells HUGE bags of baking soda for $6.  I use it for cleaning all the time and always keep one on hand.

Shower Cleaner
I've tried a bunch of them, but this works better than anything else I've found.

Plain old bleach and water.

I use about 1/2 to 1 cup of bleach in a spray bottle and fill it the rest of the way with water.  I keep it in the shower and any time mold and mildew starts to pop up, I spray it down.  Usually right before my shower so that I can rinse it off a few minutes later.  Sometimes I'll even bring my scrubber (it has a little handle and I only use it for the shower) in to my shower with me and scrub down the walls while I'm in there.  That might be TMI, but it's an easy way to do two things at once - and not worry about getting my clothes messy!

Obviously bleach is not the safest chemical and a lot of people try to avoid it.  I've done that too.  But it's so much more effective than anything else, and it's the active ingredient in most bathroom cleaners anyway.  By buying plain bleach I save a lot of money and my shower gets clean =)

Check out the link above to the YHL post for more ideas.  Here's to inexpensive, easy cleaning!

Simple Meaningful Art

I framed this "To Do" list last spring to write on with dry-erase markers, but quickly realized it was easier to write my to dos on the giant mirror that hung on the wall nearby (ala YHL).  So after months of not using it, I was ready to make a change.

I've been reading this awesome book by John Piper and came across a quote that I loved and wanted to hang on my wall as a constant reminder.

So I grabbed my favorite book of scrapbook paper (which I've used to make a baby book and tons of stationary)...

...and got to work.

The first step involved cutting out a piece of scrap paper with the right dimensions for the frame, folding it into 4 equal sections, and practicing spacing my words out evenly.

It took a few tries, which is why you can see pencil and marker on my practice sheet.  Next I cut out a properly sized piece of scrap book paper, and carefully wrote the quote down.

And here's the final product!

I love the way it constantly points me toward eternal things.  I don't want to waste my short life on things that will not last into eternity.

Penn State Scandal

I'm a Penn State alum.  My dad's a professor at Penn State and I grew up all of my life in State College, PA.  And while I don't "bleed Blue and White" like a lot of alumni, PSU is definitely near and dear to my heart.  It's where I grew up, it shaped a lot of who I am, it's where I met my husband, where God called me into ministry, and where I began to really fall in love with Jesus.

So the recent scandal involving Sandusky was hard to take emotionally.  I've watched a lot of news clips and read a lot of articles from different papers, but none of them helped as much as the script from a message given at Penn State by the director of Cru.  Here's the link for you to check it out - I highly recommend that you do.

Baking Bread

I recently learned how to bake bread... actually using yeast... from scratch.  I'd been intimidated by this for years but always wanted to try!  And let me encourage you - it is MUCH easier than I ever imagined!  You don't have to be Martha Stewart or Paula Dean to be successful =)

Deliah's Pumpkin Nut swirled bread

I would highly recommend any of these bread baking tutorials.  They give simple step by step directions, and best of all they show awesome, inspiring pictures!

Here are some pictures of me making Dana from MADE's Braided Bread (with cinnamon sugar):

MADE Braided Bread

Dana's lovelier bread

Deliah Creates Best Bread Ever

Pumpkin nut swirl - yum!!

The PioneerWoman

Pioneer Woman does them right.  Soooo yummy!

I've made these cinnamon rolls a few times for various events and everyone loves them!  I don't have any pictures of the ones I've made... they didn't last long enough to take a picture!  I did change the icing recipe a bit, leaving out the maple and adding vanilla just because of my personal preferences.  They are even easier to make than the breads above because you don't have to knead the dough at all!

Current Project - FINISHED!

Remember when I told you about my current project?  Well I finally made some progress!  I quickly realized that I needed a way to add material to the shirt to make it wider- but I wanted to retain as much of the original look as I could.  Here's what I started with:

Digging through my stash of thrift shirts, I found another one that is too tight and decided to use it for my additional fabric.

 First I seam ripped the neckline off of the front of the shirt all the way to the shoulder seams.  Then I cut the front of the shirt (not including neckline) down the middle.

Then I measured the length of the front panels of the shirt, top to bottom.

And I ironed a portion of the eggplant colored shirt (I had previously seam-ripped it apart) flat.  I don't have an ironing board so I just fold a towel up and put it on our table that has ceramic tiles.  As long as the iron doesn't pass over the wood edges everything is fine!

Next I used some simple geometry to mark out the triangular shaped piece of eggplant fabric that I would place in my newly opened section of the shirt.

And cut it out.

And pinned it into the shirt!

 

Then I sewed it in using a straight stitch and added a piece of the purple fabric to the collar.

Then I finished by sewing the collar back onto the shirt.

So... it did add some width to the shirt and gave me more breathing room.  However, I'm afraid it looks like a black shirt with a purple tie.  I don't think it looks too bad when it's on, but it's definitely not an amazing refashion.