Aldi find of the week: Resealable glass bottles

I went to aldi last week to pick up a few things and was surprised at what I saw. I was almost done shopping and decided to make another quick round around the store. I was surprised to find lemonade in these darling glass Resealable bottles. To make matters even better, they were tall too (almost the size of a wine bottle). Here is a picture of them.

They are stylish, large, and reusable! I love it! I have been playing around with a few recipes and make my own alcoholic drinks (for me and my family of course) and have been buying bottles at craft stores and thrift and discount stores when I found them. These bottles are only 2.49 each, I paid 3.99 for my bottles from Michael's. I made sure to pick up a couple of them. The next time I make some amaretto I will post a recipe for you guys. It is great in cookies :) I almost forgot, here is a picture of the lid. I love this lid design so much and for drinks, it is mush nicer to bottle them in something like this. There's something about a mason jar that just screams, moonshine! Haha!

Raspberry vinegar

I use raspberry vinegar is just about everything. Is is so good! I go through many bottles of it. One day it dawned on me that I can make my own at home for a fraction of the cost. I looked online at a few recipes and decided to try a more simpler one. My recipe simply includes raspberries (fresh or frozen, I use fresh), distiller white vinegar and a little bit of sugar :) 

I start by washing the raspberries and picking through them. If you find any with mold on them, discard them. After this I fill a quart sized mason jar with the raspberries.

After this, fill the jar up to the rim with white vinegar. This is how full I filled mine.

Let the mixture sit in a cool, dark place for at least two weeks. I let mine sit for a little over a month. After the vinegar develops more, it will become a dark red color. Taste test after two weeks and let sit out longer if you want. After I got to my one month mark, I discarded the raspberries and dissolved 1 tsp. of sugar in the jar for added sweetness. Enjoy! This vinegar is delicious in salads (combine with oil to make a lovely dressing). I use this in place of recipes that call for vinegar for an added sweetness.

After one day:

When the vinegar is all ready, add to a decorative bottle. You may add some ribbon and give as a gift! :) 

Challenge accepted

Challenge Accepted

Silk Tie Easter eggs

We forgot to mention, or take tutorial pictures on our Easter eggs. Maybe next year :) Anyways, we made "Silk Tie" Easter eggs this year and were pretty happy with the results. Here are a few pictures from that weekend.

We only made one dozen of these, we weren't sure how they would turn out and didn't want to waste them all if it didn't work.

This one was my favorite (I was tied *pun intended* between this one and the blue and red one shown above). We will definitely be doing this again next year. Next time I will hopefully post photos of the process (if I remember)! 

Easter: The Aftermath

All I'm going to say :) 

Easter time: Crazy times

Everyone had a blast! Unfortunately I failed to get a photo of our full buffet of Easter food (darn it! Next year). The kids all had a wonderful time finding Easter eggs, playing outside with silly string and chalk and of course, trying the treats. Here are some pictures from Sunday.

Everyone loved climbing all over our trees. They had so much fun.

Here is the picture of our family (my boyfriend's) on Easter, I am the one sitting down in the chair on the right. We all had a great time. As the kids played outside, we talked and had half our brain cells die off from hearing some Cartoon Network show on in the other room. Seriously, what happened to that channel?! Lol! 

Brunch was a success, as you can tell from the photos above. They all had a great time :) 

Easter treats: Cinnamon roll casserole

Love cinnamon rolls? Then you are going to love this dish! It has the great taste of cinnamon rolls that you love in a whole new form!

You will start with two packages of cinnamon rolls, icing reserved. We used the regular glazed one but I am sure that you can try any of the other flavors (orange, cream cheese, Carmel, etc.) First off, preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Once you have your dough out of the tube (the tubes that no matter how muh I prepare myself for, I always end up scaring myself with) and set the icing aside into the fridge. You will then start by cutting each cinnamon roll into 6 pieces.

For an example of how to cut it, here is what I started with.

Start by making a clean cut straight down the middle.

Once this is done, cut diagonally (not perfect but okay). 

Now make one more cut going the opposite direction and they you have it ! Sure, mine may not be absolutely perfect but hey, it works! Now that this is done, repeat with remaining pieces of cinnamon roll dough and set into a greased 3 quart baking dish.

I used this adorable threshold pan that I picked up at target! :) 

Here are your remaining ingredients. Eggs, heavy cream, cinnamon and vanilla extract. 

Start by cracking the eggs into the bowl and pouring in the heavy cream.

Add the remaining ingredients (cinnamon and vanilla) and whisk vigorously until the mixture is well combined. After you are down with this step, it should look like this:

Now pour this over your chunks of cinnamon roll dough. 

After this, add some maple syrup. We found it best to use pure maple syrup (the good stuff!) rather than imitation syrups.

Pour it over the cinnnon roll mixture and pop it in the over for 25 minutes. Pods are your house will start to smell pretty amazing by now and you will know that your dish is done! Take it out of the oven and uncover it's beauty and let it cool for 10 minutes.

After that long 10 minutes have passed, you may then take out your icing that you had set aside and reheat each container with the metal lids OFF in the microwave for 15 seconds. The icing should pour just fine and you may drizzle them over your cinnamon rolls. If all of the icing does not come out, it's okay! Scoop it out with your fingers and treat yourself for all of your hard work (you deserve it! I know I did!). After the icing is drizzled on, pour a tiny bit of maple syrup over the top of it for a little extra decadence and let sit for a little bit to allow icing to harden. Sprinkle on some chopped pecans if you like, we chose not to. You may now slice and enjoy (Or dig in, literally like my boyfriend)!

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons of melted butter or baking spray
• 2 cans (12.4 oz each) refrigerated cinnamon rolls with icing (icing reserved)
• 4 eggs
• ½ cup heavy whipping cream
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1 cup chopped Pecans
• ¼ cup maple syrup + 1 teaspoon

Easter treats: Bunny Krispies

Easter Rice Krispie treats

Here are your basic ingredients, minus the butter. As you can see I added some mini Cadbury eggs for the center of our treats. I used mill chocolate but feel free to use dark the chocolate ones!

Start by melting some butter in a large saucepan on medium heat.

Once the butter is melted, pour in the entire bag of the mini marshmallows and stir until the mixture is melted. 

Once melted, turn of tee heat and add the rice cereal and stir until combine. 

Scoop the mixture into plastic Easter eggs (You know, those ones you keep finding weeks after Easter is over) and pop a chocolate egg in the middle. Add some of the mixture into the other half of the plastic eggs and press them firmly together and set into an egg holder (a fancy ceramic one or a cardboard egg carton) and set in the fridge to set up. Once they have been sitting in the fridge for a little bit (5-15 minutes), take out and pop them out of the plastic eggs and decorate (if you like, or serve as they are).

To decorate, we rolled each one in some sprinkles (blue, pink and green).

Ingredients:

4 tbsp. butter

1 10 oz bag of mini marshmallows

6 cups of rice cereal 

Plastic Easter eggs

Mink chocolate Easter eggs (I the mini used Cadbury ones).

Various sprinkles (optional)

Easter treats: Peanut butter butterscotch bars

Ingredients 

1 bag of butterscotch chips

1 cup of creamy peanut butter 

4 cups of rice cereal

Directions:

Measure out some peanut butter and pour the butterscotch chips and the peanut butter into a sauce pan and set to medium head. Stir until the mixture is completely melted. Once melted, remove from heat and pour the rice cereal into the pan and stir to combine. Once completely coated, transfer to a greased cake pan and set in the fridge to let it set up. Once completely cooled, cut into squares and cover. 

Easter!

We are getting ready for Easter! Here is a sample of our small place setting that I have planned out. It will probably change later on, but here is an example! We will be having a yogurt bar, deviled eggs (of course!), a nice cinnamon roll casserole and some peanut butter butterscotch bars. We will post recipes later on.