Maple Glazed Sweet Potato Crisp

I apologize for this picture. I didn't take the time to snap a picture on Thanksgiving, so this is a picture of the reheated leftovers. It was a beautiful dish fresh out of the oven and an almost perfect copy of a Sweet Tomatoes menu item that I have been enjoying this month. This will be our sweet potato item for the next few Thanksgivings at least. It is soooo good! I just want to post it here for safe keeping since I made it up and I'm afraid I'll forget how I did it.

Maple Glazed Sweet Potato Crisp

 serves 8

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Spray a deep dish pie plate or 8X8 inch baking dish with non stick cooking spray.

filling:
4 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch cubes
2 large apples, peeled, cored and cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1 cup dried cranberries
3 Tablespoons granulated sugar
3 Tablespoons all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup pure maple syrup

topping:
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon salt
6 Tablespoons cold, unsalted butter, cut in small pieces
2/3 cups chopped pecans

Place first six filling ingredients in large bowl and toss to coat evenly with the sugar and flour.
Place filling in prepared baking dish.
Drizzle maple syrup evenly over sweet potato mixture.

Place first 6 topping ingredients in food processor. Pulse until the mixture is crumbly and no large pieces of butter are visible. Pour into small bowl and add pecans. Stir to combine.

Sprinkle topping mixture over sweet potato mixture in baking dish.
Bake 30-40 minutes until bubbly and topping is golden brown. Sweet potatoes should be soft, but not mushy, when pierced with the tip of a sharp knife.
Cool on wire rack for about 20 minutes before serving.

Make a note!

I've had this idea for a memo board/message center thing floating around in my brain for a long time. We finally got it done this week. It turned out exactly how I imagined it. Actually, Roger made a suggestion mid project that made it even better than I imagined.

It's really big. 20 inches wide by 45 inches tall.
We had most of the stuff on hand, it was just a matter of making the time to do it.
We started with a piece of bead board 20in X45 in.
We attached two pieces of 3/4 in X 3/4 in. hemlock along the long sides and then four 18 1/2 inch pieces of the same hemlock to divide the sections.
The inside measurement of the cork board section is 12 inches from top to bottom.
The inside measurement of the steel (for magnets) section is also 12 inches from top to bottom. In hindsight, we should have made that just a 1/8 inch bigger to accommodate the pre-cut 12X18 in. piece of sheet metal that we bought at Home Depot. Ours needed a little extra persuasion to fit into the opening, if you know what I mean.
The inside measurement of the calendar section is what is leftover which is approx. 18 inches from top to bottom.
We used an air nailer to attach the frame to the bead board. Wood glue would work too I'm sure but I don't have the patience to wait for glue to dry once I get going on something.
It was at this point that Roger suggested adding a piece of decorative trim that we had leftover from an old project. Adding this made a great place for pens and note paper to live. We added two 2inch pieces of hemlock to brace that decorative piece which we added after painting.
Hopefully the pictures will help explain that.

This was before we added the small 2 inch pieces.

We caulked all the seams with paintable caulk.

Then I got all the paint supplies out and had Roger start the painting while I cooked dinner. I told him I'd take over when dinner was done. Wouldn't you know it, dinner took so long to make that the painting was done by then! ;)

See the small blocks in that picture? Those will help brace the piece of decorative trim.

We painted the main piece first, and then added the decorative trim and painted it, so that the pockets would be painted on the inside too.

I used E6000 adhesive to glue the sheet metal on.

I used the same adhesive to glue the corks into their section. 

130 of them! It took a small eternity it seemed.

Most of the corks are from a private reserve. And there are a couple dozen others. Some from our summer vacation. :) Don't judge us harshly on our cheap fine taste in wines.

The calendar is hung with a clear plastic hook which I glued to the frame. We can easily change it out for standard 12X15 inch desktop calendars from the office supply store each year.

The magnets are made from the bottle caps from some brand of beer that Roger has been buying lately. Sessions? I think that's it. I thought the Rock, Paper, Scissors graphics were kind of cool.
All we had to buy was two 8 foot pieces of hemlock ($15.xx) and the 12 X 18 inch piece of sheet metal. ($4.xx), both from Home Depot. We had everything else. So our total OOP was about $20.
You can buy unused corks from homebrewing and winemaking supply stores at about $7.xx for 30 of them. We like The Beer Nut in Salt Lake. Or you could ask your wine drinking friends to save some for you. Maybe you know someone who works in a bar or restaurant? OR you could just use actual cork board.
To hang the board, we installed D-ring picture hangers like this onto the back of the memo board and then wall anchors and screws into the sheet rock to hang it on. Plus a strip of Command Strip velcro stuff at the bottom just keep little people from pulling it away from the wall.
If I had to do it again, I'd make the whole thing about a 1/4 inch narrower just so that the corks would fit more snugly into their space. I'd make that space about 1/2 inch shorter from top to bottom for the same reason. But, then again, corks come in varying sizes so it would be hard to say exactly how big to make it unless you could measure your specific corks. As it was, I just spaced them out a little to make up the difference.
There ya go! A pretty place to tame the paper chaos that usually resides at the end of my kitchen counter.
Linking up to a party. It's been a while.

My thrifted stuff put to use.

I think I'm broken.
I wanted to say this was an "after". Done. But then I started putting things together and taking pictures and before I knew it, I had a new list of projects in my head to make it even better. gah! No wonder I never get anything done. Maybe there is no "done". Maybe "done" is just an illusion to keep me doing things.
Anyway, remember my thrift store goodies from a few weeks ago? I put most of them to good use right away.
Most of these...

plus a couple of cheap-o flower vases, got a coat of spray paint and became top 'o the cabinets decor.
I go back and forth on whether or not I ever want stuff on top of the cabinets. On one hand, I hate that it collects dust. Especially kitchen (greasy) dust. Blech! But on the other hand, I think it looks so empty and blah up there without anything. So, we were here for a year without anything up there and now we have stuff up there. Who knows, I might decide to take it all down in another year. But for now, I like it.

That rectangular platter is new. I felt like I needed something white-ish as a back drop to the colorful stuff and I couldn't find any DIY ideas that I liked. So I ordered this platter from JCPenney with a coupon deal. I paid about $15 for it out of pocket. And about $15 total for ALL the other stuff for this project. In the end, I call that a frugal solution.
The jute wrapped bottle is an old pickle jar.
The bird was purchased from Tai Pan Trading a few months ago. Our realtor gave us a gift card at closing when we sold the old house and one of the things I bought with it was that little bird for our front porch table. I brought him in for the winter. He seems happy there. :)
The fruit plaques on the wall are from the old house. I forgot all about them till I started digging around for stuff for other projects. So they went up as part of this project as well.

I don't love the skinny purple vases. But I really felt like there needed to be a third something on each of those cabinets. So I grabbed some cheap-o clear glass vases and spray painted them.
I'm keeping my eyes open for other options (something shorter and maybe square) but these will do for now.
I like the colorful thing we have going on in here now with the plate wall and these new additions.

What do you think? Colorful, fruit sort of theme. But not like a tacky granny. Right?
(Please pay no attention to the fingerprints and counter top flotsam in that picture. Thanks!)
And the stack of picture frames from that thrift store trip?

I spray painted all the non silver ones and finished the gallery wall in the family room. Finally. Almost a year later. And now it looks like this...

I filled the empty frames with scrapbook paper that coordinates with the family room, until I get photos to put in them.
Now I just need to get the dresser that goes below these frames painted.
You can see a high tech mock up of the dresser in it's future home here.
But my friend Sharon has given me new motivation to get it done soon. Spray paint! You know I love me some spray paint. :)
New ideas:
~Spray paint the knife block in one of the colors of the cabinet stuff.
~I might spray paint that orange-y red tea pot. I like the darker red better.
~Add lights above the cabinets. There is an outlet inside the cabinet above the microwave. The other set of cabinets will be more tricky. But I think we could do it pretty easily. It will involve cutting holes in the cabinets, which was too scary to think about when we first moved in. But not so scary now.

In case I haven't rambled on enough...here is where I got the inspiration for the top of the cabinets stuff.
We went to the Parade of Homes in our area last August. And decor-wise, my very favorite house was actually one by our builder. Here are a few pics. See if you can guess why I loved the decor so much. :)

 PURPLE!!! LOOOOOVE!

 See the big chunky stuff on top of the cabinets? Love it!

 Look closely at the picture below. I thought this was GENIUS! They filled the tops of the cabinets with big pebbles. It matched the backsplash in the kitchen. But you could use something else.
When we were house hunting I noticed that in some open floor plans you can see the tops of the cabinets as you go up stairs. And it bugged me. Not pretty. I think this is a great solution!
They had some kind of foam or something below the pebbles. Probably because just filling it with pebbles would be a heavy load for the cabinets.
If we had ended up with a floor plan like that, I definitely would have done something like this to hide the exposed cabinet tops from view.

Can't get enough purple!

P.S. As I was writing this post, I received a phone call from Heather. She and David made an offer on their first home and the offer was accepted. They are under contract! Hooray for them! 

I'm so proud of them for all they have accomplished in the past few years.

Maybe they'll let me spray paint some stuff for their house. ;)

42 Down

I kind of forgot all about my birthday until 2 or 3 days before.
It was a low key (but just as awesome as last year) birthday for me yesterday.
There's nothing like a handmade card to start a birthday off right. Emily helped Jaxon make this one for me. She wrote the words on a different piece of paper and he copied them onto the card and added illustrations. All in purple of course. He's always very mindful of my favorite color. :)

Roger took me out for a lunch date. And Emily babysat as her gift to me. :)

We had lunch at Sweet Tomatoes where my meal was free because it was my birthday. I've been kind of obsessed with Sweet Tomatoes lately because I can make good Weight Watcher's choices so easily there. And they give you a coupon to come back in the next few days every time you go! They're like crack dealers luring you back for more.

After lunch we went to see Crazy Stupid Love at the dollar theater. I'm a cheap date!

Really cute movie. I loved it.

We celebrated my birthday with the rest of the family during our regular weekly family dinner.The kids planned everything this week. So I didn't have to do anything except be here.
First up though I HAD to get a picture of Dexter on the kitchen scale. He lost a lot of weight right after he was born and struggled to regain it during his first month. But the problem seems to be solved now and he's finally above his birth weight. I just wanted a pic to document how we've been checking his weight each week at family dinners. Soon he'll be too big for the limit of my scale.

141 ounces.

Dennis and Christy were here.

I didn't get pictures of everyone else but Kayleigh, Richard, Dexter, Crystal, Heather, Tukker, Maveryk, Oliver, Emily and Jaxon were here too. And Roger and I of course.

We just enjoyed a yummy dinner that the girls prepared and visited.

 Upside down Dex.

Heather's family gave me a new dress for my birthday. Love it!

Dennis and Christy gave me a gift card that I am pretty sure I am going to use to buy myself some brown boots. I love my black ones so much, now I need brown.
I also received flowers and some lovely scented handmade soaps too.
I also had dozens of happy birthday wishes from Facebook friends and one anonymous text message late last night. Hmm....
I'm a lucky lady and it was a fabulous birthday.

An "after" among the "befores".

Roger was out of town on business all last week.
When he is away I like to paint stuff and put holes in the walls. :)
This time I did a sweet little surprise for him in our bedroom.
I bought a couple of chairs off of KSL last month. The fabric is all wrong for our room. But they are Ethan Allen chairs. Sturdy and comfy. So they will get slip covers. (What color though? I can't decide.)
Anyway, I felt like we needed something on the wall above our chairs so I decided to do a gallery wall there.
The subject is US.
I love how it turned out. He says he does too.

The antique mirror and our monograms are from the makeover I did in our old master bedroom.
The smaller frames are spray painted thrift store frames with wedding photos, a few lines from our wedding vows, places we've spent time together (Subway Art style) and a piece of scrapbook paper with one line from "our song".
The big "Est. 1998" (the year we were married) sign I made using the tutorial found here. I mostly stumble my way through all things computer related but this tutorial really helped me make good use of a program I didn't even know I had before last week.

So the gallery wall is the "after" part of the post.
The "before" part is the chairs that need slipcovers. Seriously. What color? I don't want white. Yellow tones would disappear into the wall. Brown tones might disappear into the carpet but we're sort of leaning that way anyway. Maybe a print with purples but that's tricky. Roger doesn't seem to like prints. Hmm...
The hope chest needs to be refinished or painted. I love it and it means a lot to me, so it's staying in the room. But the color needs to change.
The lamp is really too small but it was a gift to me from Roger's mom and I really love it, so it stays too.
It's sitting on a half finished project - a hat box that was previously covered in a Christmas-y print. It just needs another coat of spray paint and some kind of other fluffy embellishment. Maybe a fabric flower or something.
The bedroom is finally starting to feel cozy. It's such a big room. This is not a complaint. I'm just not used to dealing with so much space. Especially in a bedroom. And the super high vaulted ceilings made it feel kind of cavernous.
But it's definitely coming together now.
If you have any ideas for me on those befores, PLEASE leave them in the comments. :)

Costumed Cuties!

We had our usual Halloween festivities around here. We got started a little late because someone *cough*me*cough* messed up on the time on the Facebook Event page. oops!
I absolutely love the way Facebook keeps me in daily contact with the family and in touch with all the little things that go on with them. you know, the little things you might forget all about by the time the weekly family dinner rolls around? So much fun. Anyway, it's great except when you post the wrong start time for the family function. :P
But they all got here and we had lots of fun together.

Emily as Elmo

Jaxon FINALLY agreed to actually wear a costume! In fact, we bought it a couple weeks ago and he's worn it for short periods of time every day since then.

I helped in his classroom and then they had a little parade around the school.

Bride Caydance and Pirate Athena

 Storm Trooper Dallas

 Kenzie surprised us and came home for Halloween! Hooray!

She couldn't stay away from the chili and the cute babies.

She's still here today and we've been enjoying just hanging out together.

Kenzie and Dexter

 Heather and Oliver

 The whole box of crayons!

Heather, David, Tukker, Maveryk and Oliver

 Jaxon's not a very scary vampire is he?

He sure loves these new babies.

Crystal, Derek and baby Nash

(YAY!!!! I got to name another grandbaby!)