Homemade Pie Crust by Big Sis

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We weren't raised in a home with a mom that cooked a lot... it's okay mom! Funny though that we both enjoy experimenting with new recipes and trying things out. I have really enjoyed, since becoming a stay at home mom, making our foods from scratch. However, in all this time making pie crust from scratch is not something I dared to try. I have had more than one person tell me on more than one occasion that pie crust is very difficult.... I dare to say it is not! 

Google really is my best friend. I have a cabinet full of cookbooks, but I always go to google when wanting a recipe. This time it was not different. For some reason I went with the first recipe that popped up and man.. it was great. It was so easy and yummy. You can find the recipe that I used here. 

So, as the directions stated I had to cut my butter in small cubes and freeze them. I had never new that would make a difference. But it did. It was very interesting to me to find out that one of the secrets to getting flaky pie crust is to have really, really cold butter. So because of this they recommended freezing, which I did! 

Of course I had my very own helper in the kitchen. He loves to cook with his Mommy. I was busy with my food processor when I hear "Mommy, Look at Me"... he is just too precious. 

What you see below is me mixing the flour, butter, and water in my food processor. It was so neat to me how the small amount of water pulled the butter and flour together and created a crust. You have to really watch it because too little water won't give it the consistency it needs and too much water makes it much too tough... and you do not want that. I am so happy to have my food processor. It is so helpful when I need to bake! This was a wonderful gift from my in-laws a few Christmas' ago ... and it attaches to my Bosch... EVEN BETTER 

Then I had to make disks with the dough, after dividing them into two. You can still see the butter pieces and that is OKAY! Remember, the butter is what helps your pie crust to be flakey.. so if you like flakey... this is your pie crust recipe to use. 

A close up of the dough in the shape of a disk showing you that you can see the butter pieces! 

Now you want to wrap your disks and put them in the fridge for at least an hour... 

The picture below is so pretty to me. Once I pulled my disks out I was able to shape it how I needed it and put it in the pie dish. I was SHOCKED at how easy it was to manage the dough. I expected it to be hard and falling apart... not the case. It was the perfect consistency. 

Do you have a great pie crust recipe that is relatively easy that you love? We would love for you to share it with us... and we would love to try it. 

Please share. 

Check out our Linky Parties page to see where all we are linking this up! 

-Big Sis

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OLYMPICS 2012!

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The 2012 OLYMPICS OPENING CEREMONY IS TONIGHT!! 

I hope everyone is just as excited as we are! 

My husband and I will be attending an Olympics party tonight with some new friends and we are going with some Olympic Spirit!! (Rooting on America of course :-) 

Anyways, basically I am going to bombard you with photos of what I made for us to wear! It is pretty simple, I made these shirts using red solo cups and paint.  It took me probably a total of 30 minutes, it was a quick and easy project. 

Then using a headband, hot glue, and tulle I made a cute Olympic headband! 

So enjoy our photos! 

Oh, and meet my Hott Husband Meguell, and our dogs, Bella & Stella. 

( I like rhyming/matching things...all of my kids names will probably rhyme or at least start with the same letter hahaha) 

HAPPY OLYMPIC DAY FROM THE SUELL FAMILY TO YOURS! 

-Little Sis

Meet Meguell Suell

24 year old husband to me

Daddy to 2 Dalmatian dogs (they are seen below)

Future Daddy to many a children :-) 

Spiritual Father to many college students

Wonderful leader of our home, and in our college ministry

Hard worker-does everything to excellence

Stud athlete--fun to do adventurous stuff with

Loves good food

Fav. color--who knows!? 

Hates wearing the color Green

Best friend to me...Brittany Suell

Meet Bella (left) & Stella (right)

Bella is almost 4 years old

Stella is almost 8 months old

Bella is Stella's mom

Stella is Bella's puppy of nine

Bella has one blue eye and one brown

Stella has brown eyes

Bella is a great dog, behaves really well and knows a lot of tricks

Stella knows how to sit and lay, and is learning a lot, but can be crazy b/c she's a puppy

Bella is an extremely soft furred dog

Stella is sweet and fun

Dogs to Meguell & Brittany Suell

Check out our Linky Parties page to see where all we are linking this up!  Pin It

Featured July Sponsor-Finding my way in Texas

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Today we want to send a shout out to our featured lovely of the month! Jennifer Salter from Finding My Way in Texas.  Jennifer sponsors Natural-Nesters, and is so fun to work with.  She is a fellow Texan, and so inspiring!! She is good at everything she does, and definitely a blogger we look up to! 

We hope that you will take some time to get to know our sweet friend, and take a visit to see her blog, and show her a little Natural-Nesters lovin'!

Howdy! I’m Jennifer, the creative mind behind my blog, Finding My Way in Texas, and my shop, LoneStar Lovlies! Over on Finding My Way in Texas, you can read about my new life in Texas, crazy crafting adventures, some DIY projects, the odd recipe and every once in a while I might just photo bomb ya with new puppy pictures :) I love meeting new friends and I hope that you'll drop by and say hi!

TOP 3 Viewed Blog Posts:

Ruffle Clutch 

Wool Eater Baby Blanket  

Easy Peasy Magnets

She will be having a 30 days of giveaways to celebrate her birthday and blogiversary! Starting August 1st--So definitely stay tuned to see all of the wonderful giveaways she will be having and join in on the celebration!

She also has an awesome online store where she sells some of her wonderful creations, called Lonestar Lovlies! And right now she is giving our readers 25% off their entire order by using promo code JULY2012! So go check out some of her great stuff and get a discount.  Plus her Lacelicious clutches have FREE Shipping happening right now!

Here's some cute stuff from her store!!

Super cute necklace! Pearls and owls, it couldn't get much better than this! 

She sells all sorts of coffee cozies at her store! This one is just one of my fun favs! 

And don't even get me started on how much I LOVE this! Lace is definitely a huge FAV of mine.  I need to head over myself to pick one of these up! 

FOLLOW: 

Facebook--Twitter--Pinterest--Store

IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN SPONSORING NATURAL-NESTERS NEXT MONTH BE SURE TO CHECK OUT OUR SPONSOR PAGE! 

We love our sponsors, and each one gets special treatment.  Including as much advertisement as they ask for, special highlighting posts, shoutouts through facebook and twitter, involvement in blog parties, guest posts, and giveaways, and more! 

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Homemade Chicken Pot Pie

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Who doesn't LOVE Chicken Pot Pie? I remember as a kid how we would always have frozen pot pies and how I loved them. I was always SO very sad at how long they took to cook, but man, I loved these things. I never thought to make my own until we lived in Japan. One of our friends there made a killer homemade chicken pot pie... and I loved it. I loved it so much that she brought us one when our son was born to the hospital with his initials. 

Isn't that so creative and precious. Needless to say, the whole thing was eaten. It is just so creamy and sooo yummy. I love to make chicken pot pies and freeze them. Also, when I am going to make a meal for a family at church or something I always go to the pot pie. It is semi-quick and I know how yummy it is. And the fact that it is so different from the normals of lasagna or spaghetti. I love making it. Just recently, when making the ones below, I actually made THREE of them at one time! They were all so yummy. 

Normally I use the deep dish, frozen pie crusts in the dessert section of your local grocery store. I used them for two of the ones that I last made and then I ventured out to make my own pie crust. This is the one that we kept. Making pie crust has always, ALWAYS intimidated me. But it was not bad at all. I was shocked at how well it turned out and how yummy it was. Now I wish that the two pot pies that I gave away had my homemade crust on it too. In a blog post to come, I will tell you all about making my homemade pie crust. 

It may not be the prettiest thing in the world.. but I still made it myself! SO EXCITING!!! I have a lot of practice to do with my pie crust, but man how it added to the flavor of the chicken pot pie. I wish I could take the credit for my chicken pot pie, but I can't. I honestly have not gotten away from this recipe... and I am glad. Because it is just too great for me to mess up. I will share where I get it from at the end. 

But look at that pure delicious-ness. The thing that takes the longest in this whole process is cutting my carrots, celery, and onions. The awesome thing is if you don't like those veggies, you will probably not even know they are there because they are cut so small and cooked with everything else. If you don't like them, I would dare you to go ahead and add them... and see if you taste them!! 

My next goal is to make personal chicken pot pies and to freeze them. Trying to figure out how to exactly do that though... without breaking them coming out of the individual baking dishes.. tips?

You can find the AWESOME Chicken Pot Pie Recipe that I use right HERE! I hope you will try it out and let me know what you think... 

Check out our Linky Parties page to see where all we are linking this up! 

-Big Sis

*Don't forget to go enter our GIVEAWAY for some AWESOME Coconut Oil*

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Cinnamon-Swirl Wheat Bread

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So....in my recent post, Garage Sale Saturday I showed you all the wonderful $2.50 bread maker that I bought.  So after cleaning it up, I finally had time to get in the kitchen and make some bread....and if you don't know, bread with yeast takes A LONG TIME to make!! Because of all the rising it has to do :-) 

Anyways, I love all things cinnamon, so I wanted to do a cinnamon wheat bread.  So I found a good looking recipe and got to work. Halfway through the rising process, I realized that I couldn't actually use my bread maker ha ha.  Because inside the bread maker it has a stirrer thing, (don't know all the official words).  And since I was making a cinnamon swirl bread, which meant I had to flatten it out and roll it up, if the machine stirred it, it would mess up the roll.  

If anyone is an experience bread MAKER user, please let me know if there is a way to get around this.  Instead of trying and risking messing my 3 hour masterpiece up, I decided just to bake it in the oven and I would later come back to the bread maker.  ha 

So, I made the bread and it turned out wonderfully! It tasted like the Cinnamon Swirl Wheat Bread or cinnamon bagels you get from the store! So yummy! and my husband loved it!! 

Anyways, I wanted to share this great recipe with you....and it's easy, but does take a while.  With the mixing, rising, and baking it took over 3 hours!! 

First you mix the dough

Nice ball of dough ready to rise for 1.5 hours. 

I used my Kitchen Aid mixer and it worked great, below with the recipe there are specific instructions on how to use this type of mixture while making this bread! 

Roll it out! 

Nice rectangle of dough, ready for a yummy cinnamon mixture! 

Next time I think I will put chopped pecans in with the cinnamon mixture! 

All rolled up

Dough in the bread pan, ready to rise for another hour! 

Bread all done!

*I didn't take a lot of pictures of the finished product because I didn't have the egg glaze on top, so it wasn't as pretty as it could've been :-) But still tasted wonderful! 

Cinnamon Swirl Wheat Bread Recipe

Makes 1 loaf

1/2 cup warm milk

1/2 cup warm water

1 (1/4th oz) package of yeast

1/2 cup sugar + 1 tbsp

6 Tbsp softened butter (or earth balance buttery spread) divided

1 cup whole wheat flour

2 cups all purpose flour

1.5 Tbsp cinnamon, divided

1 1/4 tsp salt

1 egg + 2 Tbsp warm water

**Instructions**

Combine warm milk, water, yeast, and tsp sugar in a measuring cup and let sit for 10 minutes, until foamy.

While the yeast is resting, combine the flours, 1/3 cup sugar, 3 tbsp softened butter, salt and 1 tbsp cinnamon in a large bowl.  

*If you are using a kitchen aid, use a paddle attachment (as seen above), and start to mix slow. Then, drizzle in the water mixture while the machine is running.  Increase speed to high and mix for about 6-8 minutes until smooth and elastic. 

Spray a large bowl with cooking spray and place dough ball inside.  Cover it with a towel, and let it rise in a warm area for 1.5 hours. 

While dough is rising you can mix together the remaining 3 Tbsp of butter and the extra 1.5 tsp of cinnamon, and the 1 Tbsp of sugar in a small bowl until smooth.  

When the dough has risen to double it's size, roll out with a rolling pin on a floured surface to a long rectangle.  Smear the butter mixture all over the top and roll the dough up tightly. 

Place dough in your greased bread pan, cover with cloth, and let it rise in a warm spot for another hour.  

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Whisk together the egg and warm water then brush all over the loaf. 

Bake for 40 minutes.

ENJOY! 

Don't forget! Stop by our Naturally-Nifty Linky Party #10 and link up your great projects!! It is up until Friday at midnight!! 

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Pallet Swing

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So in the second half of 2011....

my husband and I had two big life changes happen. 

We moved into a new home....

AND

We got introduced to the world of Pinterest! 

Or shall I say I got introduced and soon enough began passing ideas off to my husband!

Well with our new house, we had a small back patio/porch that was empty...so after seeing a wonderful little modern swing on Pinterest, and learning how cheap it could be, I talked him into making it. 

I say I can take some credit since I found the idea, 

but really my husband did absolutely all the work...

even tweeking it some to make the project more fun! 

We decided to make a flat pallet swing for our back porch.  

It was really so cheap, here are all the supplies that we needed: 

1 Pallet

1 Large piece of rope (bought the length we needed from Lowes)

2 Eye Hooks (also from Lowes)

Some stain of your choice, and of course hammer and nails

My husband put it together in one day! It turned out awesome, and since our back porch isn't too big, it's nice because it doesn't take up much room, it just sits in the corner.  

The only thing not that great about it, is that it is really just a one person swing, so if you are wanting something for you and your spouse to sit on, you should go a different route.  But if you are looking for a simple, cute, and comfy swing to read on or enjoy the weather on, this is great! 

And to make it personal and fun, my husband decided to make the parts of the swing that hang on the outside of the ropes little flower boxes.  This was his own idea and it turned out really great. At first I wasn't sure about it, but I really love it! (sorry I don't have a photo with the pretty flowers in it for you)

Anyways, let me know if you have tried this, or if you end up trying it! 

Also, don't forget to head over to our Naturally-Nifty Linky Party and link up your great stuff! The party will be open until Friday at midnight. 

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