At Home My Way

We have a fixer-upper house that we have been working on.  The bannister railing and some of the other trim and cabinets look HORRIBLE.  I wasn't sure what to do with them other than replace or try to paint them and neither of those sounded very easy or affordable. Enter:  Pinterest and all of the helpful hints, ideas, and inspiration we all get there! When I saw this pinned on Pinterest, my thought was, "Surely not!  It couldn't be that easy,cheap and seriously work that well!"  I am here to tell you that this solution is all of those things.  I mixed up my oil (canola) and vinegar (apple cider) and wa-la!  Beautiful!  Now... having said that the scratches are physically still there but when you see the railing and the trim pieces I applied this treatment too, the color is right on!  As with any treatment for wood, I would try this in a small, not so visible area just as a tester but this works.  I will forever use this on m...

My husband always questions why I have lots of little bags of stale bread and buns in my freezer.  I try to convey to him that there are actually things I MAKE out of that stale bread, like homemade croutons, stuffing, french toast, and this delicious Applesauce Bread Pudding, but I'm not sure he believes me.  Sometimes I think he questions whether or not I am a food hoarder, LOL, but he's wrong (of course).  He IS right that I don't want to waste food or throw anything away that I can turn into something delicious.  Probably the hoarders of the world and I do have that in common.  Last night I decided to use up some of those stale buns and make one of my favorite desserts ever.  It's been my experience that you either LIKE bread pudding or you DON'T.  I LOVE IT!  My sister-in-law first started making this for my father-in-law.  She most often made Pumpkin Bread Pudding, but her original recipe was for Applesauce Bread Pudding with...

My family loves those cheesecakes that are no-bake and come as a boxed mix.  We make them normally in the summer when I don't want to heat up the house.  A few weeks ago, back before Rocky, Blizzard #2, 2013 , we had some terrific weather,  weather that was perfect for BBQ hamburgers and no-bake cheesecake.  Mmm... I can just remember now how wonderful it was to sit out on our porch in the swing, smelling that delicious aroma of BBQ as the sun set and enjoying a 75 degree evening.  Missouri is crazy like that.  One week we get 76 degrees in February and the next we can have 26 inches of snow on the ground.  No kidding! I am always on the hunt for something I can make AT HOME MY WAY that will satisfy a family favorite that we typically get from the store or in a box.  One of my favorite resources for homemade everything is Finding Joy in My Kitchen .  Sno-White offers recipes on her blog that are easy to make and dependably scrump...

We woke up to another amazing amount of snow this morning.  We knew it was coming, but... wow!  Twice in six days we got snows totaling 10+ inches each.  Thursday it was Storm "Q" and this morning (Tuesday), "Rocky" came to visit!  This snow is so beautiful because there is so MUCH out there!  It's not even very cold so you can really walk around and just breathe it all in!   Everything in our area is pretty much closed, thankfully, so we are home today enjoying a much appreciated day off from work. While Doug went out to shovel, I put on a pot of coffee and started some breakfast.  This morning I made bacon and our favorite homemade biscuits .  My favorite way to make bacon is to bake it on a broiler pan.  There is no mess, no smoke, no burned spots on the bacon, and no burned ME from popping grease.  It turns out perfect every single time.  You also can pretty much cram it all on ...

This weekend my daughter, Rebecca, wanted to make something "different" to go with our BBQ.  Hey!  If someone wants to cook for me, and I don't have to leave my house?  Bring it on! Rebecca tried this super delicious recipe.  It was wonderful!!  Her dad is very, very picky.  In fact, we made a plain baked potato for him just in case he didn't like it.  But like it?  He did!  He loved it.  He raced home after work on Monday, to gobble down the leftovers. We halved this recipe.  We also varied from the original recipe in that we used instant mashed potatoes.  We made them using water and milk as called for on the box, and omitted the milk from the recipe here.  We also only made half of this recipe since there were only three of us eating.  Half of this recipe would easily feed a family of four, unless you want leftovers and it's so delicious that you might want to make the whole shabang!  You are going to ...

My menu plan for the week is pretty simple.  We ate lots of leftovers last week so I plan to include lots of the items I had planned to use last week for this week's meals. Breakfasts :  Leftover Cinnamon Buns (these are BEYOND delicious so I am posting the recipe today); Yogurt w/ fruit and Perfect Granola Homemade Biscuits Toast w/Homemade Peach Preserves Lunches : Salad with Homemade Ranch Dressing & crusty bread Peanut Butter & Homemade Jelly sandwiches Pizza Hot Pockets Suppers : Ham Steak w/ pinto beans and rice (from the freezer) Taco Tuesday with cheese beans, nachos Chicken & Homemade Noodles Homemade Pizza Spaghetti Sauce NOW... WITHOUT FURTHER ADIEU... the cinnamon buns! They were beyond wonderful!  I was in awe of the beautiful pastry sitting on my plate.  They were as beautiful as any I had ever seen "under glass" in fancy bakeries!  And delicious?  YUM!  I could go on and on... B...

Tonight is homemade pizza night at our house.  I normally like to have some pizza dough in the refrigerator for Friday nights and Saturday lunches.  I know that one of those meals will definitely be pizza.  The most affordable way to eat pizza is AT HOME MY WAY!  The recipe for the dough for making pizza and Homemade Pizza Pockets is "here" and "here" .  (Remember that you can make lots of things using this dough, like Homemade English Muffins , a pizza bread , or even just some simple crusty bread to go with soup.) Sometimes, by the end of the weekend, we've eaten all the pizza we want and there's just a little dabble of dough left, like this: What to do with such a small amount of dough?  Make Homemade Pizza Pockets for the freezer, of course!  You can tailor them to have just the fillings you prefer and later in the week, you will be so glad you have some homemade goodness in your freezer for lunches on the run!    I'...