Dressing up the bathroom with rustic charm

I am a huge lover of the rustic, farmhouse look that is all the rage these days. My entire home has touches of it and I love love it! One of my favorite places to shop for these items is a great little secret that I am hesitant to share because they sell out quickly as it is but I am not one to keep little gems to myself. Decorsteals.com is my FAVORITE shopping site for rustic anything. I have gotten quite a few treasures and am in love with them all!!  The prices are usually pretty reasonable with a few exceptions but even the higher priced stuff is just too cute sometimes to pass up! Here are a few of my faves!! The top pic is a little beauty I picked up for my newly remodeled kitchen and the burlap bags on the bottom shelf I also purchased from decorsteals. I use them to hold potatoes, onions and apples. The cart now holds all of my cookbooks on the 2nd shelf and the top shelf gives a place of honor to my much-loved kitchen aid stand mixer.  The second pic is a deal that happens to be available today, a little steel drawer set that houses all of my makeup and brushes in the bathroom. It keeps them neat and tidy and looks amazing. The 3rd picture is a set of 2 mason jars lids with chicken wire that I purchased a few weeks ago. One of them is being used on a vintage mason jar in my bathroom as a toothbrush holder and this one I made into a tissue holder. I painted the mason jar with grey chalk paint, distressed it a bit and used the lid. I had a hard time getting the tissues to come out without ripping them so the hubby took wire cutters to it and opened it up enough that now it’s not a problem. I have many more items I have purchased and will be posting the pics as soon as I made the difficult decisions as to where I want to put them 🙂

 

 

Pinterest Recipe: Pass or Fail??

All of us have seen these amazing recipes, DIY and craft projects on Pinterest and have either been very intimidated by them or made them only to fail miserably. Often with the recipes mostly, I think it is errors on the posters part that causes these recipe epic fails. Ingredients are either left out or the wrong amounts listed, directions are unclear etc. I have even came across pins from very reputable blogs that I believe have intentionally sabotaged recipes etc so that they look superior. These bloggers are well-known for their recipes and crafts so to have as many “mistakes” in ingredients or directions as I have found does not lead one to believe they are accidents.

I have decided to put some of these recipes and DIY projects to the test over the coming months just to see how easy or difficult they are or if they are even attemptable by the instructions given. I am someone who loves to cook and knows my way around a kitchen and a recipe and even create my own recipes as well as upcycling furniture and decor pieces and I would never mislead someone on how to do a project or a recipe so I will give you my honest attempts and opinions on them.

Recently I came across this recipe for Ham and Swiss slider sandwiches that was popping up time and time again. I cannot even count how many times its been repinned or even various people putting their new spins on it. I decided to pick one of the recipes and try it myself. I will post the original recipe that I chose and my updated version of the recipe. I didn’t have the dried mustard on hand so I used yellow mustard and just adjusted the amount. I used polish ham instead of the ham suggested.I also did not use the poppy seeds. If you have to do any kind of drug testing for a new employment, a current job or anything else, stay away from the poppy seeds as they have been known to show up as opiates.  I have to say I don’t know about the original pinned recipe but  it is DELISH and was a huge hit in this house. It is a very easy recipe to make, one pan and a bowl is all you need and very simple ingredients so it’s perfect for hectic days where you just don’t feel like cooking a huge meal. The original recipe called for these sliders to marinate overnight in the fridge, I let mine marinate for just 2 hours in the fridge and they were perfect. The sweetness of the Hawaiian bread and the brown sugar in the marinade is awesome sauce!!! If you don’t like sweet then this recipe is probably not for you. It reminds me of a honey glazed ham taste and that’s huge in our house and I even make my own glaze recipe for that too.

Here is the original recipe I found on Pinterest:

Lucy’s Ham Sandwiches

Ingredients

1 stick butter

1 tbs dry mustard

1 tbs Worcestershire

2 tbs brown sugar

1 tbs poppy seeds ( optional)

small Hawaiian buns

deli ham

swiss cheese slices

Bring butter, mustard, Worcestershire, brown sugar and poppy seeds to a boil in a sauce pan whisk well and set aside.

Cut buns in half and layer the bottoms of the buns across a glass 9×13 pan touching each other. place on the ham and swiss and put tops of rolls on. Pour the sauce evenly over the sandwiches and place in the fridge overnight. Preheat oven to 325 bake for 10 in covered and 10 uncovered.

 

Now here is my version of the recipe!!

 

Ham and swiss Hawaiian sliders

 

Ingredients

1 stick butter

1 tbs yellow mustard

1 tbs Worcestershire

1 tbs and 1 tsp brown sugar ( i used splenda)

small Hawaiian rolls

polish deli ham’

40 calorie slice sargento swiss cheese

 

In a sauce pan heat butter, worcestershire, brown sugar in a med sauce pan over med heat. whisk so it does not burn. bring to a boil and set aside.

slice rolls in half and line a 9×13 glass baking dish with the bottoms. add the ham and swiss and the tops of the rolls. pour the mixture evenly over the top and place in fridge for 2 hours to marinate. place the dish on the counter to let warm back up to room temp before placing in oven as glass can break at extreme temp changes. bake at 325 for 15 minutes uncovered. serve hot.   Next I will try some variations on this recipe liking adding fresh, grated ginger, maybe some pineapple juice and garlic powder too!! Who knows I may even grill up a pineapple ring and add it to the sandwich 🙂

 

Whether you make the original recipe or my version or both, come back and leave us a comment telling us what you thought and how they turned out!!

 

 

Have you joined Ebates yet? If not you are missing out on free money back just for shopping online!!!

 

Have you joined ebates yet? If you haven’t you are missing out on free money back just for your shopping online!! If you are going to shop online, you might as well get some money back!! With holiday shopping upon us, think of how much you could get back!! I do not do black friday and I definitely do not do shopping on Thanksgiving, that’s a topic better left alone for me cause I have very strong feelings about people shopping on Thanksgiving and therefore telling companies they should be open , making their employees work on a holiday that is all about being with family, ok getting off that subject…

Ebates is free to sign up for, easy to do, and very secure!! When you sign up you automatically get a $10 gift card to a store of your choice. Here’s how it works. When you go online to shop, and Cyber Monday will be here quick and is my favorite shopping day, go to ebates first. Type the store you want to shop at in the search box. Now not every store on the cyber planet is on the site but 98% of where we usually shop is. Once the link for the store of your choice pops up, simply click on the link and it will redirect you to that site. That’s it, sooooo easy!!

Once you go to the link you simply shop for what you were going to shop for anyway. Complete your purchase and in 24 hours or less, your rebate on ebates will show in your account. WOO HOO money back for shopping. How banging cool is that? Once you have at least $10 in your account you can opt to cash out. You can choose from paypal cash that is sent right to your paypal account where you can conveniently use it to shop some more and earn even more cash back 🙂 , opt for a check through the mail or choose a gift card to the store of your choice. I like the gift card option because then you can turn around and use those gift cards for holiday gifts!!  BONUS!!! The hardest part of the whole process is remembering to go to ebates first before you start shopping. I have missed out on cash back by forgetting to go there and just going to the store and shopping then once I hit the complete transaction button, it pops in my head, SHoot, I forgot to go to ebates, DUH! I have done this a couple of times and it kills me that I lost out on money back. SO now I have put ebates on my favorites on my toolbar so I don’t forget ever again!!

Why give up free money back just for shopping?  Most of us do a large portion of our shopping online these days and it’s nice to get a little savings back!! Ebates also offers coupon codes on their site too! When you type in the store of your choice, if there are any codes available they will pop up with the link to shop. If there are none available you can always open a new window and use Savings.com or retailmenot,com for coupon codes for even more savings. SAvings.com is my favorite site for coupon codes!