Blueberry White Chocolate Chip Cookies

On Memorial Day, some friends threw a small barbeque. We enjoyed a lovely spread, including grilled kabobs, fresh veggies with hummus and watermelon. For dessert someone brought blueberry white chocolate chip cookies. They were store bought cookies so I wasn't all that excited. Call me a cookie snob but we all know that homemade cookies > store bought. Except I tried one and I was AMAZED! So now I want to make the store bought cookies into homemade cookies, but I put it on the back burner. Who has time to experiment? But my friend and fellow blogger, Ashton at Something Swanky, inspired me. She is so talented at finding inspiration and making a recipe her own. So I decided to try it! I found a recipe on We Are Not Martha for Blueberry, Lemon and White Chocolate Chunk Cookies. I adapted it to fit what I was looking for.

1.5 sticks unsalted butter, softened
1 cup  brown sugar
1 egg, room temperature
2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup nice white chocolate chips (they make all the difference!)
1/2 cup dried blueberries
1 cup fresh blueberries, washed and dried

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a large bowl, cream butter and brown sugar together with a hand or stand mixer. Then, add the egg and vanilla. Mix the flour, salt, and baking powder in a separate bowl. Slowly add small amounts of the dry mixture and mix with electric mixer until fully incorporated with the wet mixture. Next, add in the white chocolate chips and dried blueberry in nice and gently. Then gently mix the fresh blueberries. Scoop the cookies in 1 inch balls and put them on a  greased cookie sheet about 1-2 inches apart. Cook for about 13-15 minutes or until the edges are golden brown. Allow to cool on racks. 

ENJOY!

Pick your own berry syrup

Last week, my family and I went berry picking at McBride's Briar Patch. We'd never been there before, and we were really impressed: they had buckets for you to use, ropes to tie them around your waist, little metal buckets for the kids, and bags and boxes to carry your berries home. The owner was so nice: he showed us how and where to pick and knew everything about the berries.

My 4-year-old was our best picker! She filled her entire bucket all by herself. All together, we picked 3 pounds of raspberries and 1/2 a pound of blackberries. The owner told us that since it was so hot, we should be sure to put our berries to use that day.

So that night, Ryan and I got to work turning our berries into berry syrup with this recipe from PickYourOwn.org (you can also find local PYO farms here!).

First, rinse and mash the berries. Then boil the mash.

Now strain the boiled mash (discard the pulp). You can strain it again through cheesecloth, but we found this actually pretty difficult because the cheesecloth clogged. If you have a good way to do this in volume, you might be able to let it sit overnight to get very clear juice. We settled for not-so-clear juice.

Next, add the sugar. You'll want to use right around one and a half times the amount of juice. So if you end up with 3 cups of juice, you'll use a little more or less than 4.5 cups of sugar.

The raspberry juice is still waiting, but I went ahead and made the blackberry syrup.

Bring the sugar and juice to a boil, and boil for one minute.

You can pour the juice into jars for canning, or directly into containers to keep in the fridge if you want to use it right away.

My blackberry syrup was really good, especially considering how tart the berries were. However, after a couple days in the fridge, it was almost as thick as jam! I microwaved it a little to help it flow better.

What's your favorite kind of berry?

Modern Accent Pillows

A great resource for fabric for pillows are discontinued sample pieces. Many home fashion fabric stores sell these for just a few dollars each. A few years ago, I was looking EVERYWHERE to find fabric to make pillows for my living room. I finally found a few samples that would work great. The only problem was that the flowers were not centered on the fabric. So, I got creative and made two abstract designs:

As you can see, I cut the fabric into blocks with the two floral patterns centered in a block. Then I switched up the blocks and sewed them together. I actually made a matching piping to create a more finished look.

So... look in the sample bin and think out of the box when you are designing your own pillows.

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Jasmine's boyfriend drove cross country to surprise her today, so we'll excuse her from posting.

World's Cheapest and Fastest Cheesecake

I found that Jell-o makes a cheesecake flavored pudding (am I just late on this one?). I got it with a coupon so I think it was $0.25 and all of the other things were supplies I had on hand.

The World's Cheapest and Fastest Cheesecake

Crust:

8 graham crackers (crushed0

1/4 cup melted butter

1/4 cup sugar

Filling:

Jell-o Cheesecake Pudding

1 3/4 cup milk 

Crushing the crackers took the longest out of the whole process. I put half in a plastic bag and smacked them thoroughly with my rolling pin and then did the other half. I combined all the crust ingredients and pushed them into a pie plate. I combined the filling ingredients and whisked for 2 minutes (per the box instructions). I poured the filling in and carefully covered the plate with plastic wrap. It said wait about an hour. It was delicious and stood up quite nicely. 

Total time: 5 minutes prep. 1 hour in the fridge

Total cost: <$1.00

Updated: Jaime's Land of Misfit Projects

Last September I shared with you about my land of misfit projects; projects I may have started or purchased supplies for but not completed. I have happy news to report:

If you were around last November, you saw this chair get a make over!

The chair belongs to my craft table, which I set up shortly after my first post, before I even redid the chair!

I cleaned up the typewriter with WD 40 and a toothbrush. It cleaned up really nicely! I used it as part of the decor in my Valentine's party. I still need to find a home for it at my house, though.

 

The vintage sheet. Sigh. it was so pretty, right? Well I tried to make some PJ pants out of it. And....they were a LITTLE on the tight side. I'm thinking about adding a strip of fabric down the sides to make them work. 

The gray fabric was used in my jewelry organizer, bow brooch and scarves I made for Christmas gifts. I still have a ton left!

I decided to donate the pumpkin. I just hated that stupid line down the center and didn't want to store it anymore.

 

XL orange shirt became this scarf!

Overall, I'm really happy that the population of the last year's Land of Misfit Projects is dwindling! We may have some new residents moving in though...

More kitchen makeovers!

So my husband went out of town for a couple days last week with our church youth group, and I took advantage of that time to add something else to our recent kitchen ceiling makeover: new cabinets!

I used Rustoleum Cabinet Transformations, and I was really excited by the initial results. I loved that the grain is supposed to show through with oak cabinets.

But now that I see them up close, I'm not quite as thrilled.

Yeeeah, I wasn't so much going for the "antiquey" look as my cousin generously described it.

Did I mention my husband was out of town? And I have three kids 6 and under? Yeeeah. I'm insane.

My kids spent a bunch of time in front of the TV while I was working on these (don't worry, we also hit the splash pad, the dentist and the store, so they weren't totally neglected). I really did work around the clock: the first night I was up until 3 AM, the second night I was up until 2, then woke up before 6 to put the final coat of protective cover on.

I got two doors up before DH got home, but was too discouraged & exhausted to finish at that point. When he got home, he helped tighten the hinge screws and hang the other 15 doors. It was a lot easier with his help!

I also bought new handles, which w love (but then found cheaper at Home Depot. CURSES), and spray painted the old hinges (probably should have just sprung for new ones).

The approximate numbers:
Cabinet kit: $75
Miscellaneous supplies (drop cloth, brushes, spray paint, etc): $35
New hardware: $100 (for all 50 cabinets)
Time from start to finish: ~48 hrs

I'll try another coat of the "bond coat" for touch up, but right now I kind of feel like this:



My tips? Paint in a VERY well lit area and paint THOROUGHLY.