Spontaneous Moment #47: Home Sweet Home Artwork

My fiance and I recently moved into a new place and wanted some new wall art to help spruce up our place.

I didn't want to just go out and buy an expensive painting or artwork, but rather have something that is more meaningful.

Here's where Pinterest comes into place. I turned to the website where I'm a loyal pinner and started searching for ideas. I kept seeing these pins for places that people have called home. The only problem is whenever you go to the actual link, the website says, "Sorry, the page you were looking for in this blog does not exist."

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

I decided I wanted to create a canvas of every state that my fiance or I had lived in. 

I'm going to figure this out myself. So let the crafting begin.

Tools:
Canvas
Paint colors of your choice
Contact paper
Scissors
Paintbrush

I only bought four primary colors (red, blue, yellow and black) and then mixed them together to create other colors.  I find it cheaper that way.

Instructions:

I drew the state on contact paper and then cut it out and stuck it onto the canvas. Some of the paintings were going to be multi-colored so I went ahead and painted the canvas before placing the contact paper on top. Smooth out your contact paper on the edges to make sure there are no air bubbles.

I pressed a book on top of the contact paper for an hour. This will keep your paper pressed down during the painting process. You don't want any paint to be able to slip underneath the contact paper and ruin your masterpiece!

Now it's time to paint around the contact paper. Let it dry and repeat twice so that your final product has three coats of paint on it.

Painting Washington, DC

 I didn't paint the entire canvas. Just the area that would cover the contact paper. I then painted my border.

Painting West Virginia

Add your top coat. It's important that you add three coats of paint otherwise you might see the color underneath.

Let it sit for a day before peeling off your contact paper. I made the mistake of peeling off my contact paper and some wet paint got into my state outline. I had to repaint and fix my mistake.

 How they turned out after drying.

 Finally hanging up and bringing light to that white wall.

 

Our respective home states hang over our sides of the bed.

Spontaneous Moment #46: Cat Mat

As much as I love my cat, she can be a huge slob when eating her food. It's as if one of her extra curricular activities includes competitive eating. So instead of constantly having to lay down paper towels and vacuuming, I'd make a nice little place mat for her.

Speaking of my precious angel... she has also been a little terror to my yoga mat. I'm embarrassed to carry it outside of the house. She has five different scratching posts and toys sprawled around the house and yet she finds my yoga mat to be the best cat scratcher. 

So why not re-purpose my yoga mat? Two birds, one stone. Right?

My workout gear

My cat's masterpiece

My poor yoga mat

Look at the little rascal get at it

Get away from my yoga mat!

Well let's get too it. Times ticking. The yoga mat isn't getting any use just sitting there. So let's use it in some other form.

CAT PLACE MAT

Materials:

• Old yoga mat (or use cabinet liners)
• Scissors
• Xacto Knife
• Tape

Instructions:

Print off an image of the fork and knife. Cut them out place them how you'd like them to look.

Roll out your yoga mat or whatever material you'd like to use to create your place mat. Designate what are you would like to cut out.

 Place where you want to place your utensils. Make sure all the silverware is even.

 Take the tape and carefully place it under the utensils so they stay on nice and tight.

 Thankfully there were lines on my mat so I was able to cut it evenly, but make sure you measure before you cut out your place mat.

Clearly my cat is a fan already and I'm not even done.

 Grab your Xacto knife and start tracing around the utensils.

This is how it should start to look:

The final product:

 Time to put this bad boy to use:

Spontaneous Moment #45: White Bean Chicken Chili

 I'm recently engaged and wanting to feel better about my body before the wedding. Part of my New Years resolution is to eat clean. Let me tell you, after making this recipe, clean eating never tasted so good!

It's freezing outside and that means it's soup and chili season. So in order to get in the spirit of clean eating while staying warm, I cooked up some white bean chicken chili.

 WHITE BEAN CHICKEN CHILI

Ingredients:

• 6 cups chicken broth
• 4 cups cooked shredded chicken 
• 1 bag of dried white beans
• 2 cups salsa verde
• 1/4 cup chopped green onions
• 2 tsp. ground cumin 
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/4 pepper
• Toppings: diced avocado, fresh cilantro, and lime wedges.

Instructions:

Soak beans in water over night.

Pour beans into a crock pot. Toss in chicken broth, salsa verde, green onions, cumin, garlic and  pepper. Stir together and cook on low for 6 hours.

After six hours, put shredded chicken in the pot, stir, and cook for an additional 30 minutes.

Serve with diced avocado, cilantro, lime juice, and add some pepper on top.

Adapted from Gimme Some Oven.

Spontaneous Moment #44: Portion Control Pie

Have you ever been served a giant slice of pumpkin pie and thought "I'll just take a few bites. I won't finish it." The next thing you know, you look down at your plate and the entire pie is gone.

That's me. I get served a slice that feels like it's 1/4 of the pie and I always lick my plate clean. So here's a simple pie recipe that will feed your dessert appetite, but won't eat up your calorie count.

PORTION CONTROL PUMPKIN PIE

Ingredients:

• 1 15oz can of pumpkin (I use Libby's 100% pure Pumpkin)
• 1 12oz can of evaporated milk (I use Nestle Carnation)
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp pumpkin pie spice (ground cinnamon, ground ginger, ground nutmeg, allspice, & ground clove)
• 3/4 cup sugar (or substitute it for 5 packets of Truvia)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 boxes of ready made pie crust (I use Pillsbury Pie Crust)
• Biscuit cutters (I use Sur La Table stainless steel cutters)

Directions:

 Preheat your oven to 350.

Take your cupcake pan and spray it with Pam.

Unroll your pie crust and use your biscuit cutter to cut your crust. I use the largest cutter. Press pie crust into cupcake pan.

Unroll the pie crust.

Cut your pie crust and place in cupcake pan.

Combine all your dry ingredients. Beat your eggs and then mix them in with the pumpkin in a bowl. Add the dry ingredients and evaporated milk. Mix well.

How it should look once everything's combined.

Fill pie crusts to almost full.

Bake for 35-40 minutes. To make sure they're done, poke a fork in the center of one of your pies. It should come out clean if it's done.

I like to top mine with with some frozen yogurt or a little fat free whipped cream.

Spontaneous Moment #43: Cork up your Life!

I have a small obsession with corks. I collect tons and tons of wine corks. I have multiple vases around my place just full of them. So instead of letting them slowly fill my entire apartment, I've started to put them to good use.

WINE CHARMS

Materials:

• cork
• knife
• paint (I used red, yellow, black & blue)
• stamps (I used cheese, glass, grape & wine bottle stamps)
• ink pad (I used an ink wheel that offered yellow, purple, red, black, blue & red)
• Screw Eyes Pins
• Hoops charms

Instructions:

Cut your corks like you'd be slicing a hot dog.

Also slice a few in half.

Paint your corks and let them dry.

Press really hard when you stamp your cork! Try not to get too much excess ink on your stamp otherwise it will get on the cork (as seen on a few of mine below)

Once your stamp is completely dry, tightly hold your cork and screw your screw eye into the top of your cork. The reason I wait until after I stamp is because you can always make your stamp look right if you accidentally stamp it the wrong way.

Hook in your hoop and you're good to go!

 

I also made these holiday charms:

 

You can also make cork coasters:

You just need the same corks and cork roll (you can buy at any hardware store).