Philly Cheesesteak Stuffed Bell Pepper

Ingredients:

3 lg Bell Peppers
12 slices of Provolone Cheese
1/2 lb of thinly sliced Roast Beef
5 sliced Mushrooms (fresh)
1 Onion
2 cloves of Garlic minced
2 Tbs of Butter
Salt and Pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Slice peppers in half lengthwise, remove ribs and seeds.

 

Slice onions and mushrooms. Saute over medium heat with butter, olive oil, minced garlic and a little salt and pepper. Saute until onions and mushroom are nice and caramelized. About 25-30 minutes.

 

Slice roast beef into thin strips and add to the onion/mushroom mixture. Allow to cook 5-10 minutes

 

 

 

 

 

 

Line the inside of each pepper with a slice of provolone cheese.

Fill each pepper with meat mixture until they are nearly overflowing. Add in some of the butter mixture into each pepper to keep the roast beef juicy.

Top each pepper with another slice of provolone cheese.

Bake for 15-20 minutes until the cheese on top is golden brown.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Serve with a side of rice.  I made broccoli & cheddar rice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shoe Organizer

My shoes have been driving me CRAZY!  I had no organization whatsoever.  I usually kept a laundry basket in my closet where i threw all my shoes.  It was such a pain to have to go sorting through my basket to find the matching shoe.  My room ended up messy with shoes through all around the floor :(

SO MY SOLUTION......my youngest daughter had this little bookcase in her room that wasn't really a necessity so I decided to borrow it...he he he

It was already white so that was perfect to match my other furniture in my room (i'm into the white phase right now!)  So i moved the adjustable shelves to give me some height for my shoes and I went out looking for some bins to neatly and decorately store my shoes.  I seen quite a few nice looking white bins, but man oh man! they were about $13 each!! Oh heck no! 

So I went the cheap route.  I purchased some shipping boxes from Staples and knew I could definitely work with this.

Supplies:

2 Shipping boxes (sizes vary on your size of bookcase)
White Duck Tape
Decorative Ribbon

First seal up the bottom of the box

Now get your Duck Tape and start taping up the entire box

Take out your hot glue gun and glue some ribbon around your box.  i made a bow to add to the box.

And there you have it. Decorative shoe boxes that cost about $4 each, plus i have left over Duck Tape to maybe use on another project. Im thinking of making some smaller square boxes to fill in the empty space on the shelves.

I know most women have a ton of shoes but I decided to use this set up for all my sandals and flats because these are the ones im most likely to be reaching for and these are the ones that have caused me many headaches and messy rooms.

Banana Split Cake

Summer time desserts are my favorite!  They are usually so refreshing and best of all they don't require the OVEN!! 

We were having a get together and I was in charge of the dessert (yay) I love dessert.  So looked around the internet for something easy and with a good presentation.  I'm all about a good presentation :)  So I decided on this Banana Split Cake.  I have never tried this kind of recipe, but hey what can go wrong with fruit and lots of whip cream.....yummmm (now i'm tempted for a slice). OK now onto the recipe I don't have much more time until the get-together.

Ingredients

CRUST:

• 2 cups graham cracker crumbs
• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 1/4 cup sugar

FILLING:

• 1/2 cup butter, softened (next time i'll try cream cheese instead of butter)
• 2 cups confectioners' sugar
• 1 tablespoon milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3 large firm bananas, cut into 1/4-inch slices
• 2 cans (8 ounces each) crushed pineapple, drained
• 2 quarts fresh strawberries, sliced

TOPPING:                                                                               Prep Time: 1:45

• 2 cups heavy whipping cream
• 1/4 cup confectioners' sugar
• 1-1/2 cups chopped walnuts
• Chocolate syrup

Directions

Combine the crumbs, butter and sugar; press into an ungreased 13-in. x 9-in. dish. Chill for 1 hour.

In a bowl, cream butter, confectioners' sugar, milk and vanilla. Spread over crust; chill for 30 minutes. 

Layer with bananas, pineapple and strawberries. In a small bowl, beat cream until soft peaks form. Add confectioners' sugar; beat until stiff peaks form. Spread over fruit.

 Sprinkle with nuts, top with more strawberries and drizzle with chocolate syrup. Chill until serving. Yield: 12-15 servings.

NOTE:  I had to add more ingredients than what was called out for.  Such as the graham cracker mixture, and the whip cream topping.  You can add extra if needed.

Family loved it!! I would definitely recommend!!

$5 Savings Plan

I'm like most people and can't save!  So when I came across this $5 savings plan I thought hey what's $5 gonna hurt!  So I went down to Marshalls to find a nice decorative jar that would be big enough to accumulate my 5's, clear so I can see my progress and with a small opening so I do not have easy access to just grab a couple of 5's when I am in between pay checks. So I found the perfect jar for me and I got to work on saving my $5's.

Any time I had a $5 bill in my possession I immediately stowed it away into my wallet.  Now here is where it gets tricky!  You personally need to decide if you will stow away all $5 bills that you come in contact with that day or one $5 bill.  Because when you break a $20 bill you could possibly end up with (3) $5 bills.  It's totally up to you! I did a little of both depending how needy I was of money.

At the end of the night before bedtime I would get my 5's out of my wallet and deposit them into the jar.  Luckily I had the help of my Fiance!  His strategy was that if at the end of the day he had any 5's in his wallet he would hand them over to our jar.  He did not purposely save the 5's throughout the day :(  but good thing is that he usually contributed about $30-$40 a week.

Over a period of 3 months our little jar became pretty stuffed.  We really didn't have a goal on which we were saving for, but we did have a Vegas trip coming up really soon.  We figured that it would be a good time to see what we had saved and spend it in Vegas.

With me not wanting to break the jar, I grabbed a hanger and started pulling the money out.  Looking at the jar we each took a guess on how much money was in there.  He guessed $250 and I was hoping for more than $300.  There was a total of (89) $5 bills! That makes $445!! VEGAS BABY!!

We were both surprised and excited that with little effort in saving it sure went a long way!  I have started the savings again in hopes of extra cash for Christmas, or maybe a nice birthday trip in January. (we both have January birthdays)

If you have started this same plan, I would love to see what you have saved or maybe what goals you have set.  Have Fun and enjoy the benefits!!

Framed Art

My sister had boughten me this frame for my birthday and I wasn't quite sure which picture to put in it.  So after a couple month's of not doing anything with it, I decided to just put some art into it :)

Right now I am obsessed with white! But I wanted something to stand out without adding color.  So silver it is!!

I went down to Michael's to grab some silver sequins.  I bought a small package of them and some crazy glue.

I printed out a heart shape template using Microsoft Word.  Decided on the size that would fit neatly into my frame and printed it out.

Started super gluing my sequins onto the heart outline and then filled it all in with lots and lots of sequins!!

Center up your sequins heart into your frame and PRESTO instant beauty!!

Photobooth Strip Tutorial

So today I came across these cute photobooth Strips on the Internet, I thought, "hey, cute and look easy to do!" With all the different types of social media sites and all the kinds of pictures we capture from day to day, why not do something with these pictures rather then keep them locked up on your phone or computer.  These can be done with any photo that you may have access to on your computer. (Sorry I used my phone's camera to record this tutorial, the quality does not look that clear)

So these strips can be done with just about any photo editing program that you may have, such as Photoshop.  I unfortunately do not have Photoshop, but I do have Scrapbook Factory Deluxe that I had purchased a few years ago from Target.

Create a folder on your computer's desktop so you can conveniently add the pictures that you will be using for your project and it will be more accessible when it's time to add your pictures to your frames.

Open up your photo editing program and create a page or template with the size of 1.5" by 6"

Now add one of the pictures that you had stored in the desktop folder.  You will definitely need to resize to fit into the template.  Repeat with the rest of the pictures.  I find that you can do between 4 or 5 pictures on one strip.  If you look at my finished products I did one set with 4 pictures and one set with 5 pictures.  Use your own judgment on this one.  Don't forget to leave a thin border between photos. On this particular one, I did these photos in black/white. NOTE: If your planning on doing more than one strip at a time copy the whole template and paste onto a separate new file. Copy and paste each strip onto the "New file" so you can print all at one time without wasting photo paper.

Once all your photos are aligned and you are satsified with their position, save the project as a PDF.  I find it very useful to adjust the DPI when saving, the higher the better! (See below) This will help reduce blurry pictures.

Now go to your saved PDF document and print! These can be printed on photo paper or magnetic sheets.  I went with magnetic sheets so i can place on the fridge. 

THERE YOU HAVE IT! QUICK AND EASY PHOTOBOOTH STRIPS.....GET CREATIVE!

Family Tree

This year for Father's Day I wanted to do something personal and meaningful.  My dad has been into Ancestry.com for a few years now, so I figured a framed family tree would be a great gift.  I didn't want to do a complete family tree just our immediately family.

I have a version of  Scrapbook Factory Deluxe on my computer so I decided to play around with it.

I used my parents names as the trunk of the tree and the bigger branches are me and my siblings.  the smaller branches represent our kids and the tiny little branch represents my great nephew. 

Scrapbook Factory has a lot of fonts and pictures so i decided to add a few leaves. 

I added the Family Name, established date is the year of my parents marriage, and a cute little quote that I came across on the Internet.

The size of my tree was 12 X 12.  I printed it out on plain white scrapbook paper and framed it.

My dad was very much impressed with our little family tree.  I recommend saving the template on your computer to add new members of the family :)

HERE IS MY FINISHED TREE!