Quarantine Creations- new from old - Pin Tins

  Since we all have a little more time these days due to the pandemic - one of the projects I got out of the storage closet of tons of "someday" projects is this:  Pin tins!  These can actually be used for anything that you need to store but they work great for safety pins or straight pins.  I have used these little tins in the past to make sewing kits and Reed has used them for survival kits as well.  They work up really quickly and are simple!

                            

The only things you will need are a little tin of some type with a lid (mine are French Vanilla International instant Coffee tin and a  Minister of Tea Tin), a bit of glue - I am using Elmers wood and multipurpose glue, some small thin magnets (business card magnets work great), and some fabric of your choosing.  You can use scrap easily for this - it only takes 2 1/2" x 7" for the coffee tin, and a 5"x5" square for the tea tin.  You can also use cool wrapping paper, kraft paper or even wall paper for this if you want.

For this blog I'm just going to show the Coffee tin part of the project or it will get too long - and you will get the idea from this anyway- regardless of what size you are using!

Start with the magnet and the lid - if your magnet is larger than the flat space inside the top of the lid, trim it with your paper scissors to fit the inside of that flat space.  

Spread some glue on the magnet part (I take the advertising off of the magnets first - just my preference but I think it makes a "cleaner" looking finished product).  I also use a paintbrush sometimes to help control the glue - I'm not a professional gluer and sometimes I have "glob probs"  aka my glue ends up in a glob right where I didn't need it!  Might be just me!?

You can see in the above photo the glue drying inside the lid (between the lid and the magnet).  Set that part aside for now and let it dry completely - it might actually take a few hours but you can still finish the project in one day!

While that glue is drying, pick out your fabric and cut it.  Do measure your tin height and around - just in case they have changed the size of these tins - the ones I am using are about 10 years old I think!  They came from my mother in law after she passed - I think she was saving them for cross stitch thread colors storage?  Not certain but I am happy to have them to use now!

Run or paint a line of glue along the top and bottom edges of the tin and on the side of the tin where your fabric ends will meet.  I used the "seam side" of the tin for this as well but I dont think it matters.  Carefully place the fabric strip on at the seam line and press it into place all the way around the tin.

Once the fabric meets at the seam line again, trim any excess fabric and then glue it down.  I overlapped mine a little on the seam side - if you like you can make the fabric just meet at the edges and glue it like a wallpaper sheet.  

Let all the glue dry really well and add your pins!  These ones will hold straight pins that will travel to retreat with me.  Makes them easy travel and easy to use with the magnet on top!

These make great little gifts as well for door prizes or gift bag items!

If you are using them for emergency kits, put match strikers on the top with wood matches inside with a small first aid kit, sewing kit, fire starter, tweezers, twine, rubber bands, small screw driver, etc. and it makes a great small kit for a glove box, snowmachine boot, or 4 wheeler compartment.  Might save a life even!

Be safe, blessed be, and enjoy the time!

Making due in a Pandemic - it's not 7-UP but it is Tasty!

A long time ago - not in a Galaxy far far away, I got a delicious biscuit recipe.  7-UP biscuits they are called and everyone who has them loves them!  I don't know where the recipe came from even - it could have been on the Bisquick box or a Pinterest.  I almost always have Ginger Ale - because we like Ginger Ale and use it for a lot of stuff - including these biscuits.

This past week though, being as how we are "hunkered down" to ride out the Corona Pandemic- I ran out of GInger Ale and Ginger Ale is not an emergency visit to the store so I had to make do!  We are pretty good at that around here.  I have a small supply of Mikes Hard Lemonade on hand to make "Mikes Hard Lemon Chicken" with (stay tuned for that recipe in another post).  So we substituted the 7-UP or Ginger Ale with Mikes.   

Mikes Hard Lemonade Biscuits

4 C. Bisquick baking mix

1 C sour Cream

1 C Mikes Hard Lemonade (or 7-UP or Ginger Ale)

1 stick of butter melted.

Preheat oven to 350*.  Mix the first 3 ingredients in a bowl and roll out to about 1" thick on a lightly floured surface.  Dough will be a little sticky.  Cut with a biscuit cutter - I sometimes use a small mouth jar lid.  Put the melted butter in the bottom of a 9x13 pan and put the cut biscuits on top of the butter.  Bake for 21 minutes or until tops are golden brown.  If you have more dough than room in your pan, just do up another pan.  The round pan above I used 1/4 C of butter in the bottom.  

The dough absorbs the butter just delightfully and we discovered we like the Mike's biscuits even better.  These make a lot of biscuits and they are great with gravy, honey butter or even stew!  Plan on feeding a crowd when you make them, but the recipe is easy to halve as well.

So don't be afraid to try new things, or to change up a recipe when you are in a bind, short a pinch, or just can't go to the store because of a Corona!

Enjoy and blessed be!

How much is 15 minutes - time enough - the quarantine episode

This pandemic has given us all something we have all longed for for years and years- Time.  We have time at home, and time with each other - even those of us who are working from home, both jobs, and making masks, and starting plants for our garden and the school garden have some time now.

Time that we aren't driving in the car, running here and there on made up excuses for why we need to go there.  Time that we aren't in the stores, looking at things and buying things and putting off spending time on hard things.  Don't get me wrong, there are things that cannot be put off, and I know that shopping and banking and driving does have to be done sometimes.  I know too, that this pandemic has given us some fear, loneliness, angst, anguish, grief and sorrow, but this pandemic has also given us time.

Time to get out those boxes of old pictures and go through them - scan the good ones onto the computer, laugh about the bad ones or the ones with the heads cut off, and the ones you cant figure out what they are maybe can go now, and make room for new pictures of "how I spent my Pandemic", or what I did during my "school pandemic".

Time to start that craft project - and maybe finish it, I know I am not the only one who has a lot of UFO's aka UnFinished Objects!  From the garden to the greenhouse and the shed, the kitchen, the office, the list goes on and on - not even counting the quilts I have started and yet to finish.

Time to start that garden - even if it is a few containers full of flowers or veg - green things make people happy!

Time to learn those computer apps that we didn't have time to dive into and use before - Facetime with your loved ones - host a Zoom meeting with them, connect and conversate.  Its not a hug from your loved ones but you will use these programs again.

New Cabbage Salad I tried - we like it - recipe will be posted soon!

Time to make those recipes that we set aside and say "Ill make that someday - for a special occasion!"  Make today that day - today is special!  You have survived another day of quarantine!  Make up your menu's for a week or two! I use the glass menu board shown below., and I make menu's at least a week ahead of time - most of the time two weeks ahead.  That way I don't have to go to the store often - which right now is perfect - every two weeks!  I make a grocery list as I do the menu's so its on the list.  If I know I won't make it to the store soon I make sure to have my first few menu items be things I know I have on hand.  Makes life a little easier and no one goes hungry.

Time to read those books that have been sitting, waiting for the Time to be right - to dive into another world and live vicariously through someone else's words.  Maybe to escape this world for a bit, maybe to learn something new, or maybe to learn about our people by what they are reading.

Time to learn about your loved ones - really listen to them when they tell you things, even hard things - because, as we are learning, we can do hard things.  And there will be HARD things with this Corona Virus Pandemic.  Very Hard things.  Things that we don't want to think about, talk about, or see and things that make us change the course of our lives.  We can do hard things, yes we can.  Just begin.

If we try though - there will be joyful things as well.  Memories made with people who love us.  Gas is cheap so when things opens up a little, maybe a road trip would be possible to a camping spot that has been wanting to be seen.  A picnic to see the swans in a nearly still frozen lake or river.  A trek on a new trail to somewhere, or nowhere.  Together - apart - taking time.

Be Well and Blessed Be.

Broken Oven Blues

So THIS happened!!!  Yes - that is an oven that has been on fire that you are looking at!  The ends of that broken coil thingy go so hot that they flared up in the middle and broke and then burned bright like welding torches in me oven!

No!  I did not get pictures of the torch like flames going on in the oven  - I now wish that I had because a LOT of people and especially Reedo asked about it and how cool that must have looked!  It would have looked cool maybe if it wasn't trying to set my house on FIRE!

And I was too busy trying to help Chad put it out to stop and take pictures.  In the end he used a wet dish towel that is now a rag - with lots of holes burned in it!  We had to shut off the breaker to the oven - it had some kind of a short it seems.  Off did NOT mean OFF!

As you may know from earlier posts - we have a home warranty that covers appliances and the oven is definitely covered.  I loved this oven!  It has been said before during the multitude of times that Denali Appliance had worked on it that I will probably have to face that I will need a new oven soon.  My oven was at least 25 years old - we think - it was in the house when we bought it and that was 15 years ago!

I am not a fan of getting new necessarily if the good one that I know how to use can be fixed - I dont see the need!   Plus I hate to shop - especially for appliances - but alas - oven on fire equals new oven - no fix option.  Baking soothes me most of the time, shopping does not!  I actually didn't have to do a lot of shopping either because the home warranty place sends me model numbers of the items that match the replacement of mine so this was easy peasy!   

Here is the cookie dough that I was fixing to bake when the thing caught on fire!  This was pre-Corona luckily, so the replacement wasn't so tedious as it might have been otherwise.  The cookie dough went in the freezer, and I went about picking out a new stove!

In the meantime....  luckily I won a cupcake baker at a dollar auction about 10 years ago and I yarded it out and started making some muffins - my best breakfast food!  Carrot muffins and Morning Glory Muffins, and Peachy Poppy Seed Muffin (see Pinterest for recipes on those).

So here it is with the little cups ready to bake! 12 minutes later - Muffins - which I forgot to take pictures of!  They were delightful though!

Ta Daaaahhhhh!!  Here is the beautiful new oven!  Delivered and installed while I was at work!  I got the one that has the "convection bake" or just plain "bake" options and it has 5 burners including one warming one - for that gravy that needs to wait for the biscuits for a few minutes.  It also has two burners of the 5 that can be small or large burners depending on which way you turn the switch!

Here she is with all the packing tape and wrapping off of it.  Isn't it beautiful?

Why did I wait so long?

Inside the oven - lots of levels and racks!  So  a little note on convection cooking - you have to make the recipe at 25* less bake temperature than regular baking.  What I forgot was that we already ran the old oven on 25* less bake temperature because it always ran a little hot - one of its quirks..

So remember the cookie dough waiting to go in the oven?

Batch on the left is convection bake and batch on the right is regular bake - same temperature - just too low on the convection bake ?  We think.  I am slowly getting the hang of the convection thing - it is faster and bakes more evenly, but sometimes I like to roll "old school" and  just bake the treats!  

Happy oven - Happy Life?  Perhaps.

Blessed and Baking Be!

Stay safe and stay well!