Here's the Scoop!

Hey Sports Fans! Cheryl Here! I hope you are having a great week. Today I will be wrapping up my painting workshop and headed home. I need to rest up.

In two days Super Bowl XLIV will be kicking off. If you've been hanging around this past year you'll know that the Super Snack Throwdown Super Snack Bowl challenge is on between Kate and Ray. And all this Frito talk makes me want to share a recipe with you. It's a good one.

And since Claudia gives pretty much free reign on my Free For All Friday's- away we go....

Today's recipe is Black Bean Salsa. This is a really tough recipe so pay close attention to each step. I mean it! Pay attention. Your Super Bowl Party is on the line.

First, start with one of these. Open it up and take a drink. Ah!

Unless you're under the age of 21. In that case, open one of these and take a drink.

Here are your ingredients sitting all together. Aren't they pretty. Ooh. Aah.

Let's get started. First up: 2 (15oz) Cans Black Beans - any brand you like. Open them up- drain and rinse.

Throw them in a big bowl.

1 (17oz) Can Whole Kernel Corn - that's what the recipe calls for but my store doesn't have 17oz cans so 15 ounces of corn will be just fine.

Drain the corn. You don't have to rinse it. I just wanted to show you that there is none of the can juice- water? - whatever - in it.
Throw the corn in with the beans. Hey! That kind of looks like the Saint's uniform colors.

The recipe calls for 2 Large Tomatoes but I always use Roma tomatoes because they're so easy to seed.Seed and chop those red beauties up. I wound up only using 3 of these.
Throw them in with the beans and corn.

Next up is 1 Purple Onion. This purple onion was on steroids so I only used half of it. Just gauge for yourself how much onion you want in it.
Chop up the purple onion and throw it in with the beans, the corn, and the tomatoes.

1 Large Avocado is all the recipe calls for but I never know if the large is large enough and I like avocado so I used two mediums. I know I'm making it more difficult for you. Hang in there.
Chop up the avocado and add it to the beans, the corn, the tomato and the purple onion.

You'll only need 1/8 - 1/4 cup of chopped fresh Cilantro but you'll have to buy this whole bushel of cilantro! I'm not angry even though the rest of the cilantro will go bad in my refrigerator because I don't cook.
But go ahead and chop up that cilantro. I just pick off the leaves. No stemmy stems. Bleh! And throw that cilantro in with the beans, the corn, the tomato, the purple onion, and the avocado.

3 to 4 tablespoons of lime juice - 3 tablespoons is 1/4 cup. I measured. These three fresh limes equaled 3 tablespoons.


See.

Pour that fresh lime juice over the beans, the corn, the tomato, the purple onion, oh- you get the picture! Throw it in the bowl. Where's my beer?

Now, pour out 2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar. You got it. Add it to the mix.

1 teaspoon of salt & 1 teaspoon of pepper

That picture didn't turn out Bu you know what to do.

Let's see... all you have to do now is mix it up.

At this point you'll want to chill it for a little bit.

Did I say tough? I meant to say easy!

Okay- but I didn't use the secret ingredient- Frito!

Here you go! Get the Scoops and dive in! I'm going to tell you something. Don't count on any being left over! I have never made this recipe and had any leftover.

Say, "Ah"

So what are doing for the Super Bowl? Hanging with friends? Going to a bar? Making a Super Snack? And most importantly who are you cheering for?

I'll go ahead and tell you have to cheer for the Saints or the two monkey's I'm raising will tie me up and lock me in the closet! Go Saints!!

Signing off until tomorrow...

Come Spin the Wheel of Love

Have you started thinking about your sweetheart? It's time to do a little bit of planning. You have one month from yesterday to think of how to tell your loved ones how you love them. I am not a card maker and there are way more qualified than me to be telling you how to make this card.

Hi Peggy.

But here's the idea. I saw the photographed Menu Wheel on Design*Sponge. And, honestly I didn't think much of it. It was designed for a wedding reception as the menu. Cute but I didn't think I had to make it. Then I saw this design on You Are My Fave where Melanie had taken the above design and transformed it into an invitation to a baby shower. This is where I fell in love. And when I thought I fell in love I thought of Valentine's Day and I've been waiting to share it with you.

Melanie thought her invitations were too homemade looking but I think they are adorable. Now, she said to email her if you were thinking of making them for tips but I didn't do that. And, I didn't follow the instructions at Design*Sponge either.

I just gathered my materials and went for it. So gather some supplies. I had Valentine's Day paper, poster board, little cardboard hearts, scissors, some heart, heart brads, glue, a compass or something to draw circles.

I drew a circle using the compass. My pink paper was thin so I glued it to poster board for more support.

For the second sheet of paper I just eyeballed how big I wanted it to be in reference to my first circle. I wanted to leave about a quarter of an inch on the edge of the large circle so I could write the beginnings of a message there. I used the cardboard heart below as my arrow.

I tried using two hearts as the shape for my window but I didn't like the way it looked so I just cut a regular window. Then cut one last smaller circle and a heart. Centering the hearts proved to be a bit of a challenge but I'm not one of those perfectionist people so I just assembled it as close as I could get it. The cardboard heart on the side points to the beginning of the message.

The second part of the message will show through the window you cut. Now both Design*Sponge and Melanie printed out their messages and glued them to the wheel. But, I like the homemade charm of it and just wrote the messages in marker.

So on the edge below I wrote, "You make me happy when..."

The second part of the message is revealed in the window...

Assembling the front part of the wheel to back part with the brad was also a little difficult and mine spins a little caddywampus but that's okay. It made me laugh.

So, what will you be telling your sweetie this Valentine's Day?

And, you've seen three versions of the wheel card... a menu, an invitation and a Valentine's Day card... what other great ideas can you share with us?

Signing off until tomorrow...

Pucker Up

Is it too early to talk about Christmas decorations? I mean, all the retail stores started putting their stuff out before Halloween so, do you hold a firm position that you will not think about Christmas decorations until after Thanksgiving?

If that's the case then you can gather up your supplies and make this after you've stuffed your faces with turkey and fought the Black Friday crowds. Oh, I do hope you will open your hearts to today's crafty project because I have been waiting and waiting to share it with you and I can't wait anymore!

You may or may not know this about me but I'm a blog addict. There I said it. I'm not trying to recover from it. I embrace it. And, I steal all of their great ideas. (Insert evil laugh here.)

Okay, not really steal because I am giving them credit. And they put it out there for us, right?

Brief background. This past summer I saw a Pomander Ball on a design blog. There was more than one and they were so beautiful. I googled "How to make a pomander ball" and watched a video. I was in love but really, I don't have a reason to make a Pomander Ball with real flowers on my budget. Pfft!

Then, the wonderful folks at Once Wed shared a tutorial on this Pomander Ball and my dream was alive once more! This I can do. And it won't die. And while there's is beautiful all in brown, I really wanted to see it as mistletoe so I can chase my boys around with it and kiss there sweet little faces. Or, maybe you're just one of those lucky types that will just be able to stand under it whenever you want your sweety to kiss you.

Let's get ready to pucker up, shall we?

Gather your items:
5" Styrofoam ball
roughly 7 yards of seam binding (or ribbon or fabric)
roughly 4 pages of 12"x12" of card stock paper (I used two different colors. The light green was a glitter page. The dark green was just a regular textured page.)
A flower punch
Straight pins with the round heads on them. I lost count but I used somewhere between 140 - 150.
A ribbon
Scissors

Punch about 70 flowers from each of your card stock colors. Just consider it a little arm workout. Set them aside.

Take your Styrofoam ball and your binding and start wrapping around the ball. Secure it with a pin. It's a bit tricky at first. You have to figure out a criss-cross pattern but it will probably be easy for you.

I left a little seam binding at the top but wished later I had left one fluid piece that you use to hang the ball with. Just pin it in place.

Now the fun part. Take a flower of the dark green paper and a flower from the glitter paper and thread them on to the straight pin.

Then stick that into the Styrofoam ball. As instructed I started in the middle and made a line around the ball but I think if I do it again I might start at the bottom and work my way up so the bottom is really full.

I placed my flowers pretty close together. I wanted it to be full. I may have used more than 140 flowers. I lost count.

Once I got the ball full of the flowers, I adjusted the flowers so that the petals were offset and stuck a second pin to keep them from moving. This is where we go astray from Once Wed's design. Mistletoe has lots of white berry's. I added three large pins in some flowers and 2 large and one small in others. Willy nilly, all random like.

Ooh! Isn't it pretty? Take your ribbon and make a bow. Attach the bow to the top. Just tie it on.

Hang it and stand other until someone gets the hint.

Maybe I need to make a 3" mistletoe ball and whip it out when I see someone cute. That doesn't scream desperation, does it? You could do this for any special occasion you're having. A baby shower with pinks or blues; Reds for Valentine's; Pastels for Easter; Wedding showers in the brides colors.

Okay but wait. Today is your lucky day. They're so easy to make I'm giving this one away. One entry per person. All you have to do to enter is to go to the comment section and tell me this:

Describe your favorite kiss.

All entries should be entered by 8:00 pm CST, Saturday, November 21st. The winner will be announced on Monday.

Snack Throwdown Updates:

We begin voting today for our favorite dish in the Tortilla Challenge. And Katie has the poll up for voting for the next ingredient. And, I trust my HLA team will correct me in the comment section if I'm wrong.

Signing off until tomorrow....

It's F-U-N...

On a stick!!I will admit that when I first thought of sharing this post with you I was excited. I imagined about how cute these little crafties were going to be. And then I started making Fun on a Stick and said to myself- Cheryl, this isn't THAT fun. It's just cut out paper on a stick.

Maggie the Magnificent to the rescue. Dunt-dun-duh! (That doesn't type out so well. Insert your own superhero sound effect.)

I said to her, "I'm doing a post called Fun on a Stick and it's really starting to feel like a stick in the mud." Maggie the Magnificent replies with, "We had a party once and everyone had to bring a food on a stick."

Okay, take the thermometer out because this starting to feel much better now. So, jump on your pogo stick and hop on in because I am officially declaring today FUN FRIDAY ON A STICK!
It all started when I started seeing the mustaches on a stick and these fun pictures of people at a party posing for the camera with their Mustaches on a Stick. It was cute and playful. Kind of like the picture below.

Then I thought that it would be fun if you made a funny mouth and maybe in the spirit of Halloween a Vampire or carved pumpkin mouth.

Or open a Kissing Booth. Give me a lil' smooch, baby!

But wait! Glasses would be fun, too. Cat-eye glasses, Jackie O. glasses or even better Ray glasses.

Don't stop with just one Fun on a stick. Team them up to have even more fun.

Now those are cute and can be made as elaborate or as simple as you want. All you need is a stick. I used skewers because that's what I had on hand. Draw or pull up some clip art to get your designs. I'll admit that printing out the mouths, gluing them to posterboard and cutting them out with scissors was much easier. On the glasses I used Elmer's glue to attach the sticks but on the others I just used plain old Scotch Tape.

Stretch your creative mind and bedazzle, paint or even add yarn to your mustaches. Go ahead- I've got you warmed up. What would you add to your fun on a stick?

But we're not stopping there. Oh no! We're moving to food. Shish kabobs, Corn Dogs, Carmel apples, Cotton Candy- they're all on a stick.

You have foods that are sticks- breadsticks and drumsticks.

Fruit! On a tooth pick or a skewer! Cheese! We don't need no stinking cracker! You can put anything on a skewer and voila! Fun on a stick. Heck, you can even make brownies, cookies and cake balls- all on a what? You got it- a stick! Ooh! Serve sushi and eat with...chopsticks! Somebody stop me!

Don't forget about fun activities! Sparklers aren't just for the Fourth of July, you know. And pinatas! How are you going to break them open? With a stick! Break out that horse on a stick and take a gallop around the room. Stick horse Races! Pick-up-sticks!
This is getting to be very Slap Stick so before you pull out your matchstick and burn me at the stake (which technically is just a big stick) I'm going to leave you with this: Today is also known as Free For All Friday (but I'm lobbying to change it to FUN FRIDAY ON A STICK) so keep going with the stick theme if you want or throw out another word that we can center a party idea around.

All Announcements will be in the comment section because I know we have some Snack Throw Down Stuff going on. Be sure to check out Kate and Lauren's Black Bean recipes. Polls should be up over on the right------>>> Don't forget to vote.

I've got my lipstick on straight with my broomstick in hand and I'm off to save the world so, signing off until tomorrow.