The Best Strawberry Pie Recipe!

Hi all,

I just wanted to share with you this week an old family recipe for strawberry pie.  Mom said the recipe was smuggled out of the old Happy Steak Restaurant years ago.  Originally, the recipe was for 8 pies, but it was calculated down for a 2-pie recipe. 

We've made it for practically every Christmas, Mother's Day, and holiday in between.  Too good not to share with others.  Here is the link to the Strawberry Pie PDF on Google Drive:

 

And if anybody can tell me why it shows up like this, let me know and please give me instruction on how to fix it.  I don't know enough, sometimes.  I'd like to make it easy for everyone to get.  Thanks!

Enjoy!

Bookcase Backing

Hubby and I got a $27 dollar bookcase from Walmart when we moved into our new house.  We have come to the conclusion that we have waaaaay too many books, but we don't care.  With both of us being avid readers (and me a librarian), we have little hope of keeping our books under control.  We recognize that.  But we try to keep organized by purchasing cheap-o bookcases every now and then to hold our book collecting habit. 

Except I don't like the look of cheap-o bookcases.  They look.... cheap.  See here:

 

Pretty boring, right?  The books are beautiful (remember, I'm a librarian, so all books are beautiful to me--but these are especially nice)--but the bookcase still looks cheap.  Because it is. 

 

Sooooo......

 

Lots of bookcase makeovers come across Pinterest and, of course, I had to try something to pretty it up.  I found the wrapping paper at Hobby Lobby--it is of a nice quality, I think.  And it was the perfect design.  I wanted something subtly present.  Yeah, yeah, that's an oxy-moron.  But I'll take an oxymoron anytime as long as it gives me these results: 



I didn't change much--just the wrapping paper to the backside of the bookcase to make it pop.  And I removed a few books and rearranged my knickknacks.  I used scrapbooking adhesive to stick it to the back of the bookcase.  Logically, I should have done this before I put together the bookcase--I think it would have much easier than trying to measure and cut and trim with an exacto knife.  But I didn't have the paper yet and I needed the bookcase ASAP.  Plus, I like a challenge. 

Except not really.  I just purchase 2 more bookcases in white with the intent to do the same thing.  But I'm not even bringing them in from my car until I have the backing paper I want.  :)

Thoughts? 

~Jana Lynn

Finding the right paper flower... to be made from comic books...

So, here we have paper flowers made out of comic book pages and construction paper:

I was tasked to make some paper flower arrangements for a co-worker's bridal shower that involved comic books.  We had a few donated comic books and we ended up making approximately 140 flowers.  It takes one comic book page per flower.  I only had about a week and a half, so I knew I need something that could be created fairly easily on a mass level--I had helpers, don't worry.  We needed something that looked natural, but was still whimsical looking with the comic book paper.  I scoured Pinterest and tried a few different styles at first.

This design was supposed to be a daisy, but it looked very robotic to me.  Not a very natural look:

Then I tried this design.  It is how I usually make tissue paper flowers, a design which always looked gorgeous with tissue paper, so I thought I would try it with the comic book page.  Unfortunately, the comic book paper is way, way too thick for this design.  I ended up ripping a lot of the paper trying to separate the layers.  Just way to hard and time consuming: 

Then I found this little rosette design on Pinterest.  It was exactly the flower I was looking for--easy to make, quick, and natural looking.  And it still looks like a flower: 

The sample on Pinterest was a bouquet of yellow flowers made out of different shades and designs of yellow scrapbook paper. 

Here's how you do it:

Cut a wonky circle, about 6 inches in diameter.  You can make them bigger if you want, but I was limited to 6 inches since that is the width of the comic book pages.  I used a page from "The Tick" comic book.  I would also suggest using the most colorful pages possible and also cutting off any white edges you might have. 

 

 

 

Once you have a slightly misshapen circle, cut a spiral to the center.  Make that cut a little wonky as well, full of bumps and lumps and curves.  It will give texture to your petals.

 

 

Then, roll your spiral in a somewhat tight circle.    

 

 

Wind it all the way to the center piece of the spiral.

 

 

Then the fun part...  Let go of your flower and let it form itself in the palm of your hand.  It will unwind and naturally form a flower shape.  

 

 

Put a big old glob of hot glue on the bottom circle (this was the center of you spiral) and stick your spiraled flower form right in the middle of the glue.  Don't burn yourself.  You can see the dried glue in the center of this pink and yellow one below:

 

 

For the stem, I just used pipe cleaners (a.k.a. chenille sticks) and taped them on.  If I could do it all over again, I would have hot glued the stems on the bottom of the flower.  Some of the buds fall off the stem--scotch tape doesn't hold it on so well.   

 

For the vase display, I painted regular old glass jars that we got for a buck at Michael's with this Martha Stewart frost glass paint.  It turned out really nice.  I think one coat looks really nice.  I tried a second coat on one of the vases, but the paint leaves a rough texture, so when I put on a second coat, it didn't paint on as smooth.  So the one layer was plenty, I think. 

 

It's a nice frosted look:

 

 Then we just decorated with a ribbon and put about 18 flowers in each of these vases.  They turned out so pretty! 

Thoughts?  Suggestions?  Smart remarks? 

Thanks for reading!

-Jana Lynn

Christmas Card Spelling Challenge

Okay--let's get it out at the beginning.  I misspelled the word "Slightly" on this cute card I made.  Chances are you may not have noticed.  I didn't even know until I had shown it to all my coworkers, the ladies who were card making with me, and my mother.  Then I show my husband and he's like, "You misspelled slightly.  But don't worry, honey.  It's still cute."

Do'h!

Anywho, even with the misspelling (which I will fix), I think the card is pretty cute.  I made it a few years back from a Christmas card package of pre-cut foam that I picked up at Target.  Pretty simple, but there would not be enough letters to make multiple of the same card in the kit.  It came with multiple snowmen and an assortment of letters, so there are lots of different ways to change up the design.  All in all, a fun little project, despite my spelling error.

-Jana Lynn