afternoon tea themed bridal shower

i hosted a bridal shower for my cousin and her wedding was a vintage theme. so i decided to do a vintage tea party for her bridal party. i love hosting and having people over. if i can make it a theme, even better. here are some pictures of the set up. the recipes are mostly from pinterest. 

 vintage bone china place settings with gold plated vintage forks, knives & spoons.

pastel roses in milk glass vases centrepieces & lace tablecloths

mini apple pies with a heart on top from little bit funky

cucumber mint sandwiches from epicurious  

blueberry muffins with a granola topping are my moms recipe 

chicken salad sandwiches on a buttery croissant from mom im hungry

lemon cupcakes with a raspberry buttercream frosting from my baking addiction 

swiss & turkey sandwiches on rye

from drab to FAB!

the pinterest creativity bug bit me! 

ever since i saw the "coffee bar" posts on pinterest i knew i had to have that. i loved the idea and thought i had enough space in my kitchen to do it. and move the coffee machines off the counters and give me more space for when i cook and bake. also since we moved into my grandpas house after we got married, and he moved out, our basement storage room has a few older pieces that are just dying to get a new life!

my hubby and i took on the challenge of refinishing my parents old dresser. this dresser was their first dresser given to them when they got married. (aww sentimental value) 

it has seen nicer days, before we moved into my grandpas house the basement flooded and the water did get onto a few pieces of furniture. does anybody know what that smells like? not pretty, and definitely not something you want in your kitchen. so, we stripped it down. sprayed it down. wiped it down. vacuumed it down, inside and out.

here it is in its naked glory.

it took a little bit longer then expected, for a few reason, 1: i have no idea how to 'properly" strip finish. and 2: i probably did not have the "proper" tools. so i used what i had, sand paper obviously. but to get it down to its bare butt, i had to scrape off the top finish. to do this i found a wood working tool with a sharp flat end and just started scraping. (remember "the claw" chandler had from friends? that was my hands after a few hours of scraping.) i only scraped the top down completely because we wanted to keep the top natural wood.

starting to look amazing!

my hubby taped off the top and spray painted the bottom. he did 3 coats. 

i now realize i forgot to take pictures of the drawers. but i am sure you get the idea :) we took off the oldschool knobs and hinges and filled in the holes in the middle of the big long dresser and my hubby created new holes for the new knobs.

for the knobs, i love my bling, so i knew it had to be crystal knobs, when we refinished our kitchen cabinets we have crystal knobs with silver base on white cabinets. for the black dresser i thought crystal knobs with a gold base would look pretty.  

and in my opinion, its gorgeous! 

here is the finished product :) 

i love it. 

the only thing we are adding is a clear glass top, so that over time the coffee machine's do not ruin the wood top. 

i love the natural wood look.

so happy with the way it turned out. we had my parents over for dinner and they loved seeing it. i love bringing back those memories and glad that my hubby and i could bring their first pieces back to life, for our first pieces too. :)

my very own pinterest inspired "coffee bar" infront of my pinterest inspired curtains also!

i am now inspired to refinish more!!

golden graham smore bars

do you know how difficult it is to find golden graham cereal in canada?? at least thats what i thought. i finally found them at one of the grocery stores in town that i havent been too in so long, right under my nose they were sitting on a shelf. (i was gonna go to the states to snap some up...yikes)

i have been wanting to make these for my hubby, because we keep buying the golden graham bars at costco, and i saw a recipe on pinterest and figured it has got to be cheaper to make them then buy them.

it is. 

sometimes at the richards we cant sleep till 2 am or 3 am. so that seemed like the perfect time (in my head) to make these smore bars. and at that point of sleep depravation, you think everything is funny.

i used the recipe from macaroniandcheesecake.com. we tweaked it a little bit, it was my hubby's idea to put a layer of chocolate on the bottom, because thats how "costco does it". all i had on hand is semi sweet chocolate chips, next time i make it we will use milk chocolate, because we are milk chocolate kind of people.

hubby pressing the bars down.

the final product, YUM!

double caramel cinnamon rolls

theres not much to say about these other then.. yum, yum and did i mention yum??

they have that delicious homemade dough taste mixed in with a caramel sauce  that oozes from the rolls and a homemade icing that melts onto the rolls that create this yummy irresistible cinnamon roll. it is a lengthy process but it is well worth the wait! 

your welcome!

*double caramel cinnamon rolls recipe is adapted  from "land o lakes" recipe book

*cinnamon roll icing recipe is adapted from a recipe on allrecipes.com

easy chicken enchiladas

so i finally got around to defrosting that chicken.. 

(btw sobeys had skinless boneless chicken breast - 5 pack, buy 1 get one free, thats a $20 savings!! i will be looking out for those deals more often! free chicken? that never happens, anyways...)

so this recipe i found on allrecipes, you can find it here. 

it is very easy to make, fairly quick to make and the only suggestions i have is to not add the water in the recipe because it just makes it very well watery....

also, i just cut up the chicken into cubes and cooked it that way. 

this recipe makes well over the 8 servings it says. i was able to fill two 9x13 glass pans with 7 wraps each. (thats 14 wraps all together)  and i was also not being stingy on how much filling went into each wrap, they all got a very generous amount of enchilada filling. i needed two jars of taco sauce to cover both pans of enchiladas. 

so what you will need is: 

- 4 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves 

(i used 5 skinless boneless chicken breasts)

- 1 onion

- 2 cups sour cream

- 1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

- 1 tablespoon dried parsley

- 1/2 tablespoon dried oregano

- 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

-1/2 teaspoon salt (i left the salt out)

- 1 (15 ounce) can tomato sauce 

(hubby bought crushed tomatoes, worked just the same)

- 1 tablespoon chilli powder

-1/3 green bell pepper 

(left this out to, just because we dont care for green pepper..)

- 1 clove garlic, minced

- 8 (10 inch) flour tortillas

(i used 14 (10 inch) flour tortillas)

- 1 (12 ounce) jar taco sauce

(i used two)

- 3/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese

(we use marbled cheese) 

1. preheat oven to 350 F

2. in a medium, non stick skillet over medium heat cook cubed chicken until no longer pink and juices run clear. drain excess fat. add the onion, sour cream, marble cheese, parsley, oregano and ground black pepper. heat until cheese melts... 

(mix until you want to grab a spoon and eat it, thats how you know its ready...)

...stir  in crushed tomatoes, chilli powder, and garlic. 

3. roll even amounts of the mixture in the tortillas. arrange in a 9x13 inch baking dish. cover with taco sauce and 3/4 cup cheddar cheese. bake uncovered in the preheated oven 20 minutes. cool 10 minutes before serving.

this is my little set up i got going to prepare the enchiladas

ENJOY!

chocolate chip muffins

i always love to make these, for a few reasons that im sure are very obvious; 

they are my nanas recipe,

they are delicious

&

a not so obvious reason, 

me and my hubby moved into my nana and grandpas house when we got married. so when im making these delicious muffins im also making them with the few memories i have of my nana and im using her vintage pyrex bowls, measuring spoons, and muffin tin. its like my little time spent with my nana, if only in thought, its time well spent...

thank you nana 

last minute pasta

so last night i was supposed to make my family my awesome chicken enchiladas that i talked up all week, but someone (okay...me, i chalk it up to mommy brain, mommy brain is my new excuse for pregnancy brain.) so i forgot to take the chicken out of the freezer to thaw out.. so after some debate of what to do for dinner, we went through the pantry, fridge and freezer and came up with what else.. pasta!! 

so i know i made a lot of pasta...

 this makes 10-12 servings depending on how much you consider a serving... its no secret we have some extra love on us, and we like to have at least 2 helpings at dinner. i also like to always have enough for leftovers for my hubby to take to work or in this case a nice saturday lunch :) 

this whole recipe takes about 30 minutes.

first cut up your bacon throw it in a nice big pan, which seems like a lot but once it cooks down it seems like not enough. then your gonna wanna get that pasta going. 

this is the kind of pasta i used. again, you can use fettuccine noodles, you can really play with this recipe.

then you warm up your little green peas. and this can be whatever you prefer, i usually use brocoli but we had peas, so peas it was.

lightly wash your mushrooms. isn't this picture pretty? i love the reflection of the mushrooms off the colander. 

so now your gonna spoon the bacon onto a plate with paper towels like so, and see what i mean. it cooks down a lot. so no judging the amount of bacon used.

then you added your mushrooms to the bacon pan.. saute.

then get yourself a nice serving bowl or in my case i used big blue. my awesome le creuset that my momma bought me. get your noodles in there, then toppings, then sauce and 

mix, mix, mix!

im pretty sure you know what to do from here... 

ENJOY!