Coat Tag

About 2 years ago I made a mall mounted, antique/distressed looking coat wrack for our home. After our dog ATE our 5 and 1/2 foot solid wood coat stand (I'm not kidding) we needed a better place to store our coats. Living in a cold climate, have have lots of them, come winter time!

Here is what I made:



Maybe a tutorial on that one sometime. But for now, let me address a problem this coat wrack presents.

It has knobs.

Seems ok. They're cute enough, after all. But none of our coats like to stay on the knobs unless they have hoods or those little hook on the tag that allow you to hang your coat on a knob.

Our coats don't have those things, for the most part. So a lot of the time the coat wrack is home to purses and aprons. How silly is that? I made this useful piece of furniture so that our winter coats could hang, since we don't have a coat closet or even a linen closet to speak of. (One of the few things that makes me ask, "Why did we buy this house?!")

My solution was to alter our coats. I've been meaning to do this for, oh, two years, and I finally got around to it.

Here is my first born's pink pea coat, purchased on winter clearance for her last year.


No tag, no hood.

Here are the needed supplies:

Oh, before I give you the supply list, let me just mention that I am obsessed with hot glue. It's my solution for almost anything. Hot glue if for me what duct tape is for 99% of men.

Now onto the supplies.

• Hot glue gun & glue
• Ribbon (that matches the coat, if you care that much... and I do.)
• Scissors - good fabric scissors

That's all.

Simply take a small length of ribbon (3 inches?), long enough to go around the peg, knob, or hook of your choice, and glue it on.

Take a second length of ribbon (if you want a finished look) and fold the ends in, gluing it along the bottom so it looks like this:


Really ridiculously easy.

Here is my wool pea coat:


And my daughters lighter weight jacket. I went a little more crafty on this one and added not only the finished looking bottom but a little bow. Because I really like my daughter and like to make cute things for her.


So if you have the same problem I was having, I hope this works out for you.

Zucchini Pie

Zucchini is one of those things I can't get enough of in the summer. When I found this recipe I knew I had to try it and so I did... and we eat it regularly. It's easy, fast, has a great flavor, and it makes all the mouths in my house (and some other houses) happy. It is easily doubled and makes for easy sharing if you have to bring a meal to someone for whatever reason.

Compliments of Dinners for a Year.

1 pie crust, unbaked
Dijon mustard
1/4 cup butter
4 cups sliced zucchini
1 cup diced onion
1/2 cup fresh parsley, chopped
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon oregano, dried
1/4 teaspoon garlic salt
2 cups shredded cheese, I used a combination sharp cheddar and mozzarella
2 extra large eggs, beaten

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Line a pie plate with the pie crust and brush with Dijon mustard. Set aside.

Melt butter in a large saute pan and add zucchini and onion. Saute for about 8 minutes. Add the parsley, salt, pepper, oregano and garlic salt. Toss to coat. Should look something like this:


Cool slightly and then add cheese and eggs and mix. Pour into the prepared pie crust and bake for about 25 - 30 minutes. Cool slightly before serving.

Now for Kelly's notes:

If you want to keep it a little simpler, just add a couple shakes of season salt, a pinch of dried oregano, and some dried parsley. It's a different taste, for sure, but it's still very yummy.

Also, you can use a frozen pie crust but there are two issues with that. The first is that sometimes a frozen crust isn't going to cook evenly on the bottom. In this way, you kind of chance it if you use frozen. Second, the come in packages of two and I don't think they keep very long so you'll want to either double the recipe or make another pie. Both good solutions!

Utensil Holder

I recently was given a little gadget that I have fallen in love with. My husband found it at World Market. For all I know the rest of the world may have three of these per person but it was new to me so I thought I'd share it.

I have no idea what it's called because I opened it too quickly to care. I call it the spoon holder but really it holds all manner of cooking utensil.

You see, it clips onto the side of you pan like so:

It keeps your utensil from touching the stove top thereby eliminating messes on your stove top and, in my case, getting other stove top messes on the spatula. Pretty ingenious, eh?

Also, there's never a reason not to wash it because it can go essentially anywhere in your dishwasher with no trouble.


I love it. Just a little something else to make life easier and who couldn't use that?

Wodden Letters

I made these wooden letters for my little girls, each when they were in my belly and one still is. It's a lot of fun to decorate with letters and words and it's even more fun if you decorate the actual letters before you put them up.

It's a very simple process to make these letters and doesn't take very much time or talent. Here's a list of things you need:

A wooden letter, any size but preferably larger than 6 in.
Patterned craft paper
Mod Podge
A medium sized craft paint brush
A pencil
Scissors
Embellishments that may include:

• Tag board cut outs
• Ribbon
• Buttons
• Stickers
• Craft pens
• Glitter
• Sequins

Hot glue gun with glue OR heavy duty craft glue

The first step, which isn't hard, just difficult to explain, is the hardest part. Begin by laying the wooden letter face down on the back of the paper. Let me clarify: lay your paper down on the table so the side you want glued to the letter is face up. Now put your wooden letter down so that you see the back part that will be touching the wall. (I may have overdone it but it's important to have this right.) With your pencil, trace, as close as possible, the outline of your letter onto the paper.

Remove your letter. Cut out the backwards letter from your piece of paper.

At this point, if you want two papers on the letter trace the letter again in like fashion and cut it out. The second picture (above, the G) was done like this. I actually even did a cute little torn edge on the left hand side but ended up covering it up because it also happened to be right where I wanted the nametag to go. Go figure!

Turn your letter over so that the front is now facing your. Place your paper on, right side up so that you see the pattern on the letter as you want to in the finished product. Make any cutting adjustments needed. Once you have it just the way you want it, brush a good layer of Mod Podge over the wooden letter. Carefully place the paper on top of the Mod Podge, making sure not to wrinkle it or trap very much air. You have some flexibility once it's on there but not much.

At this point, if you are doing two papers (or more, it's your letter!) paint a full coat of Mod Podge over the letter and get your second layer in place. Once the second layer of Mod Podge is dry, do another coat over the entire front of the letter so that any exposed paper is sealed. If you were doing only one paper, after you have put that in place, seal it in with Mod Podge as well.

Once that last coat of Mod Podge has dried, you're ready to decorate. This is the fun part! Do a dry run with all your embellishments. Try moving things about and putting things where you might not imagine. Clumps of things such as stickers and ribbon can compliment each other very well and even if you'd imagine a crowded look, it might end up looking cute.

Now, I haven't done one of these for a boy yet but I would really like to. I have so many cute idea dealing with little sports memorbelia, littler wooden cutouts, and the like. I would love to see one of these done for a little boy.

I hope you have fun making a wooden letter. I've done this a couple times now so I may have left something out. If you have any questions on the process, please let me know!

Sour Cream Banana Bread

Recently my husband committed to some very early morning meetings at church and I immediately started thinking how sad I was for him that he'd be missing out on our Sunday morning breakfasts. But wait, doesn't that mean I will too? How do you cook a big yummy breakfast on Sunday before 8.30 for 1 person while taking care of a 13 month old baby? So, sadness all around, I suppose.

But I did make the immediate connection that he'd need some nourishment on the go in the morning. That's when I found this recipe for banana bread made with sour cream. It is quite possibly the best banana bread I have ever eaten. I think part of that is due to the tangy sour cream but I am certain another reason is how you prepare the pans. Intrigued? Wish to learn more? Ok, I give. Here's the recipe.

This makes 4 loaves so the measurements in the parentheses are to cut it down to two.

1/4 cup (2 T.) white sugar
1 teaspoon (1/2 t.) ground cinnamon
3/4 cup (6 T.) butter
3 cups (1 1/2 c.) white sugar
3 (1 1/2) eggs
6 (3) very ripe bananas, mashed
1 - 16 ounce container (1 cup) sour cream
2 teaspoons (1 t.) vanilla extract
2 teaspoons (1 t.) ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon (1/4 t.) salt
3 teaspoons (1 1/2 t.) baking soda
4 1/2 cups (2 1/4 c.) all-purpose flour
1 cup (1/2 c.) chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees. Grease four 7x3 inch loaf pans. I use Crisco for this but I imagine butter would work well. I wouldn't recommend Pam or another spray because of the next step.

In a small bowl, stir together 1/4 cup white sugar and 1 teaspoon cinnamon. Dust pans liberally with this cinnamon and sugar mixture. In a large bowl (seriously, even if you're doing the 2 loaf version, make it a pretty big bowl. I wish my bowl had been larger), cream butter and 3 cups sugar. Mix in eggs, mashed bananas, sour cream, vanilla and cinnamon. Mix in salt, baking soda and flour. Stir in nuts. Divide into prepared pans. Bake for about 1 hour, until you are able to press lightly on the top of the loaf with no gushy feeling below and when you shake the pan, there's no wiggle.

Allow your loaves to cool on a cooling wrack for a bit and then turn them out onto the wrack to continue to cool.

Notes: You may have noticed that the halved version calls for 1 and 1 half eggs. This can be done by beating the eggs beforehand and then adding about 75% of the mixture. You'll be wasting half an egg but it's better than adding two whole eggs. At least, I think it is.

Also, I have made this with and without nuts. I think people expect nuts in banana bread but even if you don't like nuts, it's still awesome. I'm actually getting a little rumbly in my stomach just thinking about this exquisite moist bread. If you don't like walnuts, substitute pecans. I LOVE pecans but I still went with walnuts and it turned out great.