Leslie's Breadsticks (made pizza dough)

I am always on the look out for a quick, simple but still yummy recipe for just about anything. I will try any recipe once. When it comes to Bread dough I have a hard time because I generally don't think about making bread for a meal far enough in advance to let it rise once let alone twice.
My good friend Leslie shared her breadstick recipe with me but I needed pizza dough so I used it for that and I think it is one of my favorites so far. Forgive the photo I'm not the best at pictures it looked SO ymmy in real life! On mine I used half a tub of the New philly cooking cream (the original flavor) I added at least 1/4 cup of minced garlic and Italian seasoning to it. Sorry I tend to not measure. (There is an Italian cooking cream that I'm sure would work well but I had the original on hand.) Then I topped it with thinly sliced tomatoes, chopped fresh basil, sliced sweet onion and an Italian blend of Cheese. (I think the blend was mozzarella, smoked Gouda, and parmesan. (I wish that I would have put more Basil it seemed like a lot but the flavor was not as strong as I would have liked. I also think some cooked chicken would have been fabulous on it.)
As a warning this dough recipe makes a LOT of dough. I made a HUGE round pizza pan and a half a cookie sheet worth of pizza, and that wasn't rolling it super thin. I'm going to try to half it next time.
Here is the awesome recipe with anything in () is what I did. (The bread sticks are super yummy too!)

1 1/2 Cup Very Warm Water
1 Tbsp Yeast
1/2 Tbsp Salt
1 Tbsp Sugar
4 Cups of flour


Dissolve yeast in water. (I usually sprinkle in a little of the sugar my mom always told me it helps the yeast.)
Mix all other ingredients together and then add the yeast mixture.
Kneed until smooth. (Super easy in your kitchen aid, I do not have one and used my hands and it turned out fine.)
Let sit 5 minutes. (Yes only 5 minutes no an hour YAY!)
At this point you either start pulling pieces off and rolling them into bread sticks OR you roll out your pizza dough (The dough should be elastic-y, I was amazed how perfect this dough felt for the first time making it. )

Breadsticks: Roll into breadsticks place on cooking sheet spread with butter garlic mixture Bake at 425 degrees for about 10 minutes. bruch with garlic butter mixture sprinkle with cheese and enjoy!

Butter Garlic spread for breadsticks: (Leslie said this is WAY too much butter I think she uses a 1/2 cup of butter instead. You can play around with the topping to make it the way you like it.)
1 cup of butter
3 tbs Johny's Garlic spread


Pizza: Bake at 425 degrees for 10 to 15 minutes (It depend on your pan and your oven and how soft or cripsy you like your pizza. I actually liked how the cookies sheet baked the crust better than the dark pizza pan I have. Or you could try a pizza stone!)

Do I ever start and then FINISH a project?

So I'm sure many of you are asking if I ever Finish the projects I start. To prove to you that I do I wanted to post one of the MANY projects that I have been working on. This one I actually completed. (Well mostly I'm still considering tweaking a few things on it but if you know me you know that I'm ALWAYS "tweaking" everything to find the best most efficient effective way method etc.)
As mentioned in previous posts I LOVE hand-me-downs. Not just clothes but really anything. So I was given a sweater that was super soft and in great shape but not so much something I wanted to wear (I'm really in the mood to wear summer clothes right now so if mother nature would like to make me happy and get rid of the rain I would appreciate it!)
The sectional couch we bought, 3 years ago, came with two pillows. Although the pillows were ok they did not reflect my style at all, so I always planned to recover them.
Here is the said shirt and pillow before.
And here they are after (They are in the middle):
Awesome right? I made it an envelope pillow cover so that it is easy to remove and wash (a must when you have kids!) I love it SO much more than the original pillow and it cost me $0 so YAY! The only problem is now I love the texture and light color of it so much I don't really like my other pillows any more hahahaah! Maybe I will cover them sometime but I have sworn off taking on more projects until I cross a few off I have already started.
One down 200+ projects to go!

Slowly but surely

As mentioned in the last blog I really can't focus on one project at a time. It is HORRIBLE and drives me crazy but my brain just won't stop! Which results in many projects taking a LONG time to finish because I spend a little time on each here and there. I will try to work on that and FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS!
One project I started that is still in the works is turning these very LOVED scrubs (donated by a friend THANK YOU!) into some scrubs for my little man. Does he need scrubs...NOOOOOOOOOOOO But I couldn't bring myself to throw these babies out when I knew I could make some little scrubs out of them. AND I am using and expanding on my sewing knowledge so this is helping me in the long run! (And there is no pressure of them being perfect the wearer is two he really doesn't care. :)) To be honest they are actually harder then they look. I decided to try to copy the adult version exactly which means they are double sided so NO seams should be seen. To those that have sewing talent this may sound simple but I had no idea what I was doing so I ripped apart one of the seams on the original scrubs and to the best of my ability tried to mimic it. Lets just say I come away with much more appreciation to whoever makes Scrubs.
I used an old worn our pair of PJ pants as a pattern and cut out two pieces trying to use the sections least worn out.Then you need to pin them together but you don't line up the edges exactly you need to have one edge about 1/4 inch back from the first one. It is hard to show this in a pic so I put a pencil showing you the edge of one side.
You then sew up the side. Then you need to turn the longer edge over once and then again pin it and sew it. (You will be sewing through the leg not on the side like you usually do a seam.)

As this point I was so involved I totally forgot to take any more pictures hahaha! Sorry.
Basically you do the same idea with all the seam. I'm sure there is a better tutorial on this somewhere as mine did not turn out even close to perfect but it was fun to try. I still need to get the waste band in. I'm going to put an elastic waistband but I haven't had the chance to measure little man yet. Once I do I will post the final product on the pants. (we will see if I get around to making the scrub top.)

Recently I had a good friend give me her bag of "Donation clothes" (I LOVE people that want to donate stuff so I can try to be creative with it!) She told me that I could use it for material or whatever.....Well I maybe should have told her that I LOVE LOVE LOVE anything with a Hood. So when I got home and looked through the bag and found 4 awesome shirts with Hoods on them (they were seriously in better condition then the clothes in my closet hahaha) I could not help but use them in my wardrobe. (I asked her is she would mind if I did first.) I did a little bit of tweaking on them but I totally forgot to take before and after photos but I'm in love! As for the other sweaters I have ideas for them and will hopefully be working on them soon.
I have also been working on other projects as proof here is my garage:
You have seen the little night stand in a previous post. Poor girl was pretty hammered up but like I mentioned she is PURE wood so I'm stripping and sanding her down.
The black poles....Well I will tell you more about them in the next post.
The chair is one of two (there is a blue one in the background that I was taking apart) that Mikey was given with a small table. The table is an espresso finish which we love. The two chairs were red and blue but the paint was coming off and every time they got tipped over the paint would come off on the wall, curtain, plastic toy or whatever else it hit so I decided they needed to be redone.

Oh and Little man has slept in his big boy bed two nights in a row! YAY! The hubs didn't want me to put a rail to keep him from falling so we put the crib mattress on the floor but he hasn't fallen out once. He does try to break his neck by body leaping from his big boy bed onto the crib mattress so I'm thinking I'm going to just do away with the mattress on the floor all together and hope he stays in his bed.