by UnknownMami on February 20, 2012
I am a fan of a certain fast-food breakfast sandwich and have been known to recreate it at home. Inspired by a pin on Pinterest that was pinned from a post on Macheesmo, I decided to make a few and freeze them so that Unknown Papi could grab one on the mornings that he leaves the house before the sun is up.
Making these egg, sausage, and cheese breakfast sandwiches makes them healthier than the ones you can buy at a certain fast-food chain. Give them a try.
Ingredients:
- 6 eggs
- 6 whole grain English muffins
- 6 pre-cooked frozen sausage patties (I used vegetarian sausage patties)
- 6 slices of cheese of your choice
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°.
- Crack eggs into a lightly oiled muffin tin and salt if desired. I put the muffin tin in a water bath so that the eggs would cook evenly, but you don’t have to if you don’t mind browning. Cook the eggs for about 15-20.
- While the eggs are cooking, place your sliced English Muffins and frozen pre-cooked sausage on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake for 10 minutes to toast and brown. Remove bread and sausage from oven and place sliced cheese on top of sausage.
- Once everything is out of the oven, assemble the individual sandwiches.
- Once they’ve cooled, wrap them in plastic wrap or whatever you like, and freeze them.
- Unwrap and reheat in oven, toaster-oven, or microwave.
Do you have any quick breakfast ideas that I can steal?
by UnknownMami on February 13, 2012
Why would anyone want to make their own laundry soap, when commercial detergents are so convenient and readily available? I’ll give you 3 reasons:
- It’s less expensive.
- It’s eco-friendly (less packaging, no harsh chemicals).
- It’s easy (I chose to make the powdered version because it’s the easiest)!
If you’d like to try making your own all you need is:
- Borax
- Arm & Hammer Washing Soda (not to be mistaken with baking soda)
- A bar of soap (I used Fels-Naptha, but you can use Ivory, Zote, or any other kind of bar soap that you like). I easily found Borax and soap at my local store, but I could not find the washing soda so I had to order it online.
Once you have all of your ingredients, you need to grate the bar of soap. I grated the entire bar and ended up with about two cups of grated soap.
Mix equal parts Borax,Washing Soda, and grated soap (in my case it was 2 cups of each). If you need some extra cleaning power, you can increase the amount of Borax for a little boost.
Once you have thoroughly mixed the ingredients, pour them into an airtight container and add a scoop about the size of a tablespoon for measuring. I got a plain white container at IKEA and I stenciled the word “SOAP” onto it using a Sharpie marker and I had an old scoop that we used for coffee grounds that I threw into the container.
Use 1 tablespoon per load or 2 tablespoons for heavily soiled items. That’s it!
Notes: This detergent is very low in suds which means you can use it HE front-load washers.
I’ve been using the detergent for a week now and I’m quite happy with it. I don’t notice a difference in the cleanliness of my clothes in comparison to store bought detergent. I have been using 2 tablespoons per load regardless of how soiled the items are because I can’t believe it takes so little to clean a whole load, but I have no reason to believe that 1 tablespoon wouldn’t be enough for a non-heavily soiled load.
by UnknownMami on January 19, 2012
There are broken bits of crayons littering every corner of my home. Until they make unbreakable crayons or my kids get beyond the age of coloring, I’m sure there will continue to be an abundance of broken bits of crayons. Fortunately, those broken bits can be made whole again in a few easy steps.
1. Preheat oven to 250° and have a silicone baking tray at the ready.
2. Remove all paper wrappings from broken bits of crayons.
3. Place broken bits of crayon in silicone mold. I chose star-shaped molds because I thought the points of the stars would be useful for coloring, but you can use any shape you like.
4. Fill the mold with crayon pieces (you can separate the pieces by hue or just mix them up like we did) then place the silicone tray in the oven for about 20-25 minutes.
5. Once the crayons melt and turn “soupy”, remove them from the oven and let them cool. We put them in the fridge to speed up the process.
6. When cool the crayons will come out of the mold easily and you will be left with
a lovely constellation of colors. These multicolored ones change color as you draw…trippy dude.
by UnknownMami on May 30, 2011
Inspiration is where you find it and since I’m online a lot, I often find inspiration online. I recently got my first DSLR camera and as you can imagine I am pretty excited about it. I’m learning slowly and figuring out what kind of accessories I want and need. Right off the bat, I knew I wanted a camera bag, but not a boring black camera bag. Life is too short for boring and I like bags too much to settle for something un-cute. I went searching online and found this one by Built*, which I bought.
And don’t get me wrong, I really like the bag. It’s cute, but it doesn’t look like a bag I would use if I wasn’t carrying a camera. It looks a bit more like a cute lunch cooler.
As luck would have it I went to visit The Blue Ridge Gal and learned about Kelly Moore and Epiphanie bags which are beyond cute, but a tad expensive. Not to worry she also provided me with a link to oh, sweetlee me and that is when inspiration struck! You see this creative blogger made herself a lovely camera bag with a cute purse and the padding of a boring black camera bag that she had laying around. Well, if there is one thing I can do, it is to copy a good idea.
I didn’t have any camera bag padding laying around so I went online and googled, “camera bag dividers” and found this kit* on Amazon.
Basically it is padding that you can cut-to-fit with scissors and it comes with Velcro strips. It’s pretty idiot proof except that this idiot didn’t order enough of it. When I got it, I decided I still wanted more padding in the bag to cushion my camera, so I looked around the house and found a diaper changing pad that I wasn’t using.
I figure if it is good enough to cushion my baby’s tush, then it’s good enough to cushion my camera. Then all I needed was a bag. Bags I have aplenty. I pulled one out that sort of looks like an old-school camera bag and lined it with the diaper changing pad and then put in the dividers. I don’t have much camera gear right now so I can use half of the bag for my wallet and necessities. The bag also has a built in slot for my phone.
And this is what it looks like when all is said and done.
I love it! It was easy and inexpensive to make, I think it’s cute, and when I get tired if it I can put the padding in another bag.
