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The Most Amazing Brownies

This past weekend, Drew, my friend Jessica, and I were busy working on a craft project for the wedding. While we were working, I made these brownies for us to snack on. My mom used to make these and it had been so long since I had had them. They are delicious!

The Most Amazing Brownies

ingredients:
-one box fudge brownie mix (including oil & eggs, per package directions)
-1 jar marshmallow creme
-1 cup peanut butter
-1 1/2 cups chocolate chips (I prefer a mix of milk chocolate and semi-sweet, but whatever your preference is)
-1 Tbsp butter
-2 cups crisp rice cereal

directions:
1. Mix up your brownie mix according to the package directions. Bake as directed, using a 9×13 pan.
2. Let cool completely, then spread marshmallow creme on top of brownie layer.
3. In a saucepan, melt butter, peanut butter, and chocolate chips.
4. Add in crisp rice cereal and mix well.
5. Spread chocolate/peanut butter coated cereal on top of marshmallow creme layer.
6. Enjoy! (P.S. The brownies cut nicer if refrigerated until chilled before cutting.)

These really are the perfect mixture of gooey, soft and crunchy! So delicious!

P.S. In completely unrelated to brownie news, our wedding is exactly 2 months away today!!! It is getting so close! I’m so excited! 🙂

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Our Wedding Rings

Wedding rings are literally one of the smallest aspects of a wedding, but really in many ways are one of the largest. After the ceremony is over, the guests have left, the pictures have been taken, the flowers have died and the dress has been hung back in the closet, the rings are the one small daily reminder that you wear with you for the rest of your life as a symbol of your love and the reasons why you tied the knot in the first place.

We have a lot of other things to buy for the wedding, so we are definitely on a budget, but I wanted to make sure whatever rings we picked out were what we liked and were high quality, since they are going to get a lot of daily use. I also wanted them to be special and sentimental as well. I would have loved to have a wedding band with little diamonds all the way around it, but that simply wasn’t in our budget right now. I wanted to try to get both of our wedding bands for under $800.

Since I had already given up on the idea of diamonds around my wedding band, I decided I just wanted a plain, simple, thin white gold band that would match the band on my engagement ring. I originally talked to the lady that made my engagement ring to talk to her about making me a thin, simple band. Then I realized that I already had a ring that looked like a wedding band– my promise ring. Drew gave me my promise ring on my 17th birthday, now nearly 4 years ago. It is engraved on the inside with the words, “Andrew and Caitlin Forever.” I wore it everyday from then on, until the day we got engaged when I replaced it with my engagement ring. It really meant a lot to me, and I was sad for it to just be sitting unused. It didn’t however, look very good with my engagement ring. It was too thick for my tastes and was rounded on the outside, which I didn’t like either.

See what I mean? The thin, delicate look of my engagement ring just didn’t look good with my promise ring. So, I took it to a local jeweler here in New Orleans and had them make it skinnier and more flat on the outside, while still keeping the inscription inside. It turned out a little thicker than my engagement ring band, but still much thinner than before. I think it was as thin as they could go without having to re-engrave the words inside and make them smaller. I love it so much more now that it looks like this:

It is hard to believe that it is the same ring! It looks so much better with my engagement ring and I’m happy that I got to re-use it since it has a lot of sentimental value. I’m so happy that they were able to keep the original inscription without having to re-engrave it as well. Plus, guess how much it cost? $70. Much cheaper than it would have been to buy a new wedding ring!

I was so excited about getting it back and seeing how it turned out. We also ordered Drew’s wedding ring at about the same time. We ended up having it made by the same lady that made my engagement ring, so that they would be more cohesive and because we really liked that lady’s work. We also couldn’t find anything like what we wanted in the jewelry stores we looked in and their prices were much more expensive than what the custom-made lady was going to charge us. Additionally, I wanted to add a little something more sentimental to Drew’s ring as well. Since mine was engraved, I thought about having his ring engraved, but in the end decided that I would prefer to have a little tiny heart etched in the inside of his ring instead, to literally mean that he holds my heart. The lady that made it was happy to add that tiny detail. His ring is 6mm wide, smooth with a satin finish in white gold. Here is how his turned out:

I love how mine turned out to be a mini-version of his:

I love them! Drew’s ring was $725, which was quite a bit cheaper than the $1500-$2500 that we saw for similar rings in the jewelry store that re-did my ring. Plus I love that we both have rings made my the same lady and that she was able to add that tiny heart to it as well. So, our total for both of our wedding rings was $795!! $5 below our original $800 budget! How awesome!

If you are interested in looking at work by the lady that made our rings, you can see her work in her Etsy store, here, or on her website, here. She is really nice, does amazing work, and her prices are pretty reasonable for custom handmade jewelry compared to a chain jewelry store. (My engagement ring was actually appraised at several hundred dollars more than what we paid for it!) If you like my engagement ring, there is one that she has for sale that is almost identical, here.

*******

I haven’t shared much else about wedding planning lately, but since some people are really interested in my planning process, here is what else we’ve gotten done in the last couple months:

-We completed our wedding registries at Target, Macy’s, Dillard’s and our hometown Durham’s Hardware Store
-We sent out our Save-the-Dates
-We booked our honeymoon!! We did this in mid-December. We are flying into Boston, Massachusetts and spending a few days there, heading on up to Portsmouth, New Hampshire for a few days, and then heading on up to Portland, Maine for a few days! We can’t wait to see this area of the country (I’ve been when I was a baby and my parents have been several times and always talk about how beautiful it is!), and we have cute little Bed and Breakfasts reserved to stay in and can’t wait for sailboat rides, seeing lighthouses, art museums, Drew’s brewery tours, and relaxing and enjoying our first week of marriage!
-I picked up my wedding dress
-I bought my wedding shoes
-I ordered and picked up my veil
-We booked the DJ for the wedding ceremony and reception
-We picked out the men’s tuxes.
-We met with the caterer to discuss the reception menu.
-We talked to the florist.
-We booked our cake baker.
-We reserved a bed and breakfast for our wedding night.
-We, of course, ordered our wedding rings!

We still have lots to do, but it is nice that most of the big things are out of the way. We just have to get the bridesmaids dresses done (my mom is making them), design/print/mail the invitations, get all the small little decor/favors/table decorations, etc… bought/made/completed and about a million more things, but at least we are down to the fun decorative to-do items! I can’t believe the wedding is just over 2 months away!!

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Self Portrait, 3 Color Reduction Woodcut

Last year, I shared my adventures in my beginning painting class, so I thought I would share with you a project I recently completed in my beginning printmaking class.

This project was a 3 color reduction woodcut. This means that we took a block of wood and carved out of the wood what we wanted to stay a certain color when we printed. Then we printed that for the first color, then carved more out, printed again, and carved out our final color then printed once more. Once you carve something out of the wood, there is no putting it back in, so it is a delicate process. Hence the name “reduction” and that fact that you are removing wood from the block and printing each time, you also have to remember that you have to do your white highlights and lighter colors first and then add your darker colors on top. Is any of this making sense? It is one of those “you have to see it to understand projects” so let’s look at some pictures.

These photos were taken with my phone while I was in the printing studio, so sorry for the not-so-great quality and shifts in colors. But you can still see that I did three different color schemes of three colors each for each of my prints. For the first layer, I carved out everything I wanted to remain white, and then I printed my first color on. Then I carved out everything I wanted to stay the first color and then printed on my second color. Then I carved out everything I wanted to remain my second color and then printed my last color.

Since there is no going back once you take part of the wood away and to allow for printing errors, I made a lot of prints to make sure I had enough for an edition of 3 in the end. I ended up with 10 or 12 of each in the end. Better safe than sorry though! That is a lot of pictures of my face!

I did all the printing by hand (no running through the press) by inking up my block, making sure my registration on my paper and my wood matched up and putting pressure on the paper for the ink to kiss off.

After all were printed and dry, I trimmed off the edges and was left with these beauties:

It is kind-of hard to see the true colors in these photos, but my color combinations were chartreuse – teal – navy, coral pink – orange – plum, and grey – hot pink – black. I think they really turned out neat!

I definitely enjoyed the woodcut process, although it definitely was a lot of work carving out the wood and printing all those copies by hand. I would definitely like to try it again though!

I know this might be an ambitious project for any readers out there without a lot of art experience, but you could easily do a similar project to make your own wood stamps for crafting projects. Just take a piece of wood, draw out your lines for your design, then pick up some wood cutting tools at your local art supply store and carve out your design. If you have good tools, it isn’t actually as hard to carve out the wood as you would think. Then you have a homemade stamp that you can use unlimited times without wearing out. This would be great if you needed a certain design for some kind of wedding or event project that you wouldn’t be able to find a pre-made stamp for somewhere else!

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Spring Planting

One of the first things that I did after we moved into our apartment last summer was plant the window box outside the kitchen window. I grew flowers and herbs in it all summer and then took the herbs out and moved them inside during the winter. Although, it never actually got all that cold here this winter, they possibly could have survived out there all year long. Anyway, I still have my basil growing in a small planter on the breakfast table in the kitchen, so I decided for now just to plant some colorful flowers in my window box this spring. We are thinking about adding another window box to the other kitchen window to put herbs in.

It has been warm here in New Orleans for a while now and today seemed like the perfect day to do a little planting. I just wish we had more of a yard to actually be able to plant more things! We’ve thought about building a raised garden bed in the front yard of our apartment to grow vegetables in, but aren’t sure if we want to spend the money building it for our temporary housing here. We might though. I’ll keep you posted if we do. For now, flowers will have to suffice.

Marigolds, Vinca, Petunias, and Dahlias. So colorful and pretty! Oh and how cute is my little watering can?! I picked that little guy up from the value aisle at Target the other day for $2.50. It is the perfect size for watering the window box and the other indoor plants I have. I love spring! 🙂

Any of you doing any planting lately? Enjoying the warmer weather?

Oh and in case you noticed, that is just paint all over my hands. I was mural painting this morning!

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Baby Jackson

I’ve been spending my Spring Break partially in my hometown running wedding errands and partially at my sister’s home in Nashville, welcoming my new baby nephew!! Baby Jackson was born on March 14, 2012 at 1:27 am. He weighed 8 pounds, 15 ounces and measured 22 inches long. Older sisters Evie and Georgiana are very excited and enthralled with their baby brother! Isn’t he just so sweet?!

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Strawberry Freezer Jam

***Thank you all for your kind thoughts and prayers for my hometown last week after the tornado they went through. Please continue to keep them in your hearts as they mourn those lost and as they pick up the pieces to re-build their homes and lives.***

While doing our grocery shopping last week, we spotted a good deal on a flat of strawberries.

Lately I’d been craving some homemade strawberry jam, so I figured what better an opportunity to make some. Growing up, my mom always had a container of strawberry freezer jam in the fridge and several more in the freezer. It’s just so delicious!

The main difference between freezer jam and your regular canned jam, is that freezer jam is much quicker and easier without all the specificity of the canning process and the jam tastes much more like fresh strawberries than with regular canned jam (which tastes more like cooked strawberries). Although, of course, since it isn’t canned and pressure sealed, it must be stored in the fridge or freezer.

It is super simple to make. Just pick up a box of fruit pectin at the grocery store (in the canning aisle) that looks like this:

Inside, you will find a whole little booklet with recipes for every kind of jam or jelly you could think of.

Regardless of which kind you choose to make, you will need containers for your jam. My mom always used small plastic containers, but I don’t like how plastic can crack after its been in the freezer for a while, so I got glass jelly jars (make sure they say freezer safe).

I ended up making two batches since I had so many strawberries (although now I have enough jam to last me the rest of my life) and in my experience, one batch of strawberry jam will fill twelve, 4 oz jelly jars and one 8 oz jelly jar, or if you use all 8 oz jars, it will fill six with a tiny bit leftover. And yes, that does mean that I now have twelve small jars of jam and 7 bigger jars of jam. If you live in the New Orleans area and are fresh out of jam, no worries, I will gladly give you some.

Anyway, here is how you make it:

Strawberry Freezer Jam

2 pt. strawberries, crushed (equal to 2 cups)
4 cups sugar
1 box fruit pectin
3/4 cup water

1. Wash and rinse containers. Make sure you have tight fitting lids.

2. Discard strawberry stems. Crush strawberries, either using a potato masher or a food processor (do not puree!), you want small chunks of fruit.

3. Measure fruit into large bowl. Stir in sugar and mix well. (exact amounts! substitutions will result in set failures) Let strawberry/sugar mixture sit for 10 minutes.

4. Stir pectin and water in small saucepan. Bring to a boil on high heat, stirring constantly. Boil 1 minute, continuing to stir constantly. Remove from heat.

5. Stir pectin mixture into fruit/sugar mixture. Stir constantly until sugar is completely dissolved and no longer grainy, about 3 minutes.

6. Pour into prepared containers, leaving 1/2 of space at the top for expansion during freezing. Cover.

7. Let stand at room temperature 24 hours until set.

8. Refrigerate up to 3 weeks or store in freezer for up to 1 year. Thaw in refrigerator.

Enjoy!

P.S. It was great on my almond flour biscuits!

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Tornado

Early this morning, Drew and I were awoken by a call from Drew’s mom telling us that a tornado had run through our hometown of Harrisburg, Illinois. We both immediately started calling everyone we knew, checking to make sure that they were safe, alive, and well. My mom and sisters were asleep and didn’t even know what had happened, and luckily were all okay and the damage was no where near them. My grandpa was fine as well. My grandma lives a block away from the tornado’s path, and luckily was also okay and her home wasn’t damaged. Everyone in Drew’s family was okay, but two of his brothers lived right in the path of the destruction and both of their houses were badly damaged.

This aerial view of part of town shows where the tornado went through. The red boxes are over both of Drew’s brothers houses. They were just out of the tornado’s main path. We are all so lucky that they are alive and well.

As the day progressed, we learned more about the disaster. The tornado was an EF4, which is the second strongest tornado on the Fujita scale. Winds were supposedly up to 170 miles an hour. The tornado went through right before 5 am, only minutes from when the tornado sirens went off. Many people were still asleep in their homes and weren’t aware of what was going on. The structural damage from all the pictures I’ve seen and accounts from people is horrific. It tore through homes, businesses, shopping centers, and even through part of the hospital. Over 30o homes were damaged.

There have been hundreds of injuries and 6 confirmed deaths. I knew one girl that died today. She was only a year older than me and we went to high school together. One of my best friends was really close friends with her. I was on several church trips with her as well. She was incredibly sweet, a nurse, a strong Christian, and a little kids Sunday school teacher. The tornado ripped right through her apartment. I can’t believe such a sweet soul was taken today, but I know she is in a much better place.

Hearing of her death, hearing of friends and family who lost their homes, and seeing the destruction of my tiny hometown all over national news has been pretty unreal and emotional. It is hard to be so far away during times like these. I so wish I could be there right now to help out. I’m proud of my town for grouping together in times of need and being selfless, giving, and full of kindness and willing to help everyone else out. Times like these really put the important things in life into perspective.

I pray for strength for all the hurting families and those that have lots of work ahead of them to re-build their homes and businesses. I also give praise for all those that are alive and well and am so happy that the damage wasn’t even worse.

I ask for your thoughts and prayers for my hometown and all that it has lost today.

Photo from Harrisburg’s Daily Register

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Low Carb Gluten Free Biscuits

If you have read my last few posts, then you know that Drew and I gave up carbs for Lent. Almost all foods have a few grams of carbohydrates in them at least, so it is impossible to completely give up carbs, but we are trying to stay away from the biggies — flour, oats, cereals, pastas, potatoes, etc. The last few days have been pretty hard, I won’t lie. I now realize that I might be slightly addicted to carbohydrate-rich foods. This diet is easier to handle when we cook completely at home, but it is really hard when eating out. It is hard to tell the waitress that you can’t have all the carbs that come with your meal (that you will be paying for anyway!). Try eating Chinese food with no rice!

Anyway, after a few days of fighting off carbs, I got smart. Why not try some virtually carb-free substitutions for the foods we love? After a little internet research, I’ve found tons of recipes for low carb breads, biscuits, pizza crusts, etc. These 40 days of Lent might not be so bad after all.

For breakfast this morning, I tried a recipe I found for low carb gluten free biscuits and they turned out delicious! They are slightly different that your typical flour biscuit. They have a more similar texture, density, and slight taste to cornbread. Although a little bit fluffier than cornbread. They are also more like drop biscuits.

Behold:

One regular flour biscuit has roughly 28 grams of carbohydrates. Want to know how many these low carb biscuits here have? 2.5 grams per biscuit! Those are some serious carb savings!

Here is how you make them:

Low Carb Gluten Free Biscuits
original recipe from here.

Makes four biscuits.

Ingredients:
1 and 1/2 tablespoons of unsalted organic butter or nonhydrogenated shortening
1 cup plus two tablespoons of finely ground blanched almond flour
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
3/4 teaspoon aluminum-free baking powder
2 egg whites

Preparation:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

1. Cut cold butter or shortening into dry ingredients with a pastry cutter until butter is in pea sized chunks.
2. Chill mixture in fridge 5-10 minutes. The colder your butter is, the fluffier your biscuits will be.
3. Separate egg whites from yolks. Whisk egg whites in a bowl for 20 seconds or until no longer stringy and gloopy. You want them to be slightly foamy.
4. Remove mixture from fridge and whisk in the egg whites. The dough will be extremely runny with chunks of the almond mixture.
5. Pour into well greased muffin cups (edges stick really badly, so make sure they are definitely well greased) and get it in the hot oven before the butter softens.
6. Bake for 12-14 minutes.

They taste great plain, with butter and honey, or with jam. Visit the original recipe here for garlic cheddar, parmesan herb and sweet cinnamon variations.

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Freezing Cookies

So this post might seem relatively obvious. However, this idea never occurred to me until I was in college.

When I was in high school, and I would bake cookies at my house, I would just make whatever the recipe called for, bake them all and put them in a cookie jar for everyone at home to eat. I had a pretty big family (3 sisters, 1 brother, my parents, all the friends that were constantly in and out, etc.), so within the week they would all be eaten.

However, when I moved away to college and I was in Drew’s tiny studio apartment baking cookies for just the two of us, it occurred to be that there was no way that we could eat (or needed to eat) an entire batch of cookies ourselves. I tried cutting recipes in half or into a fourth, but sometimes the math gets really hard with that, especially if the recipe only calls for 1 egg.

Over Christmas break my freshman year of college, I was at my older sister’s house and saw that she just made up her cookie dough and froze it into balls to pop in the oven whenever. What a genius idea! (Although, I’m sure many other people do this as well)

From then on, that is what I do when I get into baking moods. I make the entire batch of dough, then only cook a few cookies for the two of us to eat then. Then I simply freeze the rest in balls that can be baked whenever for freshly baked cookies anytime! (It’s like homemade easy-bake cookie dough!)

It is super simple. Just scoop your cookie dough out into balls onto a cookie sheet. Place them close together, but not touching.

Stick the cookies into the freezer on the sheet for a few hours, or until frozen solid. Once they are frozen, take them out of the freezer, pop them off the cookie sheet and place into a ziploc freezer bag.

Then take a Sharpie and label the bag with the type of cookie and the cooking instructions.

Then you can pop them back into your freezer to pull out and bake whenever you get a sweet craving, have unexpected guests over, etc. It is lovely to be able to have a couple homemade cookies fresh and warm without having to make a mess in the kitchen every time.

As you can see, I have several different kinds in my deep freezer:

The cookies in the demonstration above are Healthy Chocolate Chip Cookies, recipe here.

Which of course are making my mouth water, but unfortunately I can’t eat right now since I gave up carbs for Lent. 🙁

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Happy Mardi Gras & No Carbs for Lent

Happy Mardi Gras, y’all! We’ve had a house full of guests for the last several days and have been running around like crazy showing people around this city, visiting parades, catching beads, etc. It has been a fun Mardi Gras but I’m exhausted from all the busyness!

Today is the last day before Lent starts. I’m not Catholic, so I didn’t grow up giving things up for Lent, but this year Drew and I decided to give up eating carbs for Lent. That means as of tomorrow, no more rice, pasta, grains, cereals, potatoes, baked goods, etc for the next 40 days. My dad has been on a special cancer diet for the last several years that doesn’t allow him to eat carbs, so if he can give them up for life, then we can surely give them up for 40 days. Not that it will be easy. I love me some mashed potatoes, dinner rolls, homemade tortillas, cookies, and pretty much every other carbohydrate-rich food. However, these foods aren’t very good for us, so I’m excited to embark on this healthy journey. (and see if I can do it!)

I’m also still going to my Pilates class twice a week for an hour and I really feel so much better than I did when I started. I am building strength in my abs! I also want to start going to the gym on another day as well to work on more cardio and higher-paced exercises. Last month, Drew also got a gym membership to Tulane’s gym, so he has been going with me when I go to Pilates and he has been forming his own exercise routine.

I’m excited that we are taking more steps to become much more healthy people! Any of you all giving anything up for Lent? Starting a new exercise routine? Working on making your diet healthier? Please share any tips you have! 🙂

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