Tasty Tease

If there is something that you need to know about Mark and I, it is that we LOVE food. We like to cook new things at home, we like to explore new restaurants, and we love being with friends while eating.

The reason this is called a tasty tease is because I wanted to share my delicious dinner with you that I had this evening.

Tortellini with a tomato red sauce

This was sooo delicious I just had to share. I did not make the tortellini this time. I have made them before, and if fact while Mama (my Italian grandma) says it isn't worth it to make your own pasta, I think making tortellini and ravioli is a good reason. These however have been purchased from the store. I like to get the ones in the refrigerator section. Now the tease part is the sauce. This is our special family recipe. The interesting part is that while Mama has given each member the recipe they all differ slightly. This is the one she gave my family. I am not prepared at this time to release the recipe, but I do want to offer a little advice. It is ALWAYS ALWAYS better to make fresh sauce and well worth the effort. Mine takes 2 hours to simmer in order to allow all the flavors to really meld together. I know this is a lot of work, so I have a solutions so you can still have fresh sauce without having to make it every time. I like to make a large batch and then freeze it. 

Pasta sauce ready to be frozen.

I like to break it up into smaller amounts, so I could make anything from 1 to 4 servings without unfreezing extra sauce. 

I hope this inspires you make your own fresh sauce.

Wreaths in the making...

Lately crafting has become something that takes up a bunch of my time. I am not sure if it is the advent of pintrest.com (Boy do I wish that was around when I was planning my wedding.) or if I have just started to meet people that have a really creative side. Either way crafting seems to be something I am doing a lot of these days and last Saturday was no exception.

Recently I have met a new friend named Alex. She is so much fun and we have so much in common, so it made sense that when we found out each other liked to craft that we would have a craft day. And that is just what we did! We decided to make a wreath. Well at first..... So we went to Micheal's to get supplies. While there the ideas just exploded on us. What started out as one wreath became two. Frankly, I am just happy that we ended up leaving with just the small amount of supplies that we did. It is dangerous to group shop.

Here is what we made: (I took these pictures off her blog lunde-land.blogspot.com.)

Alex set up all our paints and made a wonderful spot for us to start out day crafting.

First we made a Valentine's wreath. This one is truly a Julie/Alex creation. We came up with these ideas from scratch.

First we took foam hearts and used Mod Podge to apply a variation of scrapbook paper on them. 

Now this being our first craft day I didn't know this, but evidently Alex has a thing with spray paint. So we made sure to spray paint the base before we started assembly.

 We decided that wrapping a portion of the wreath in ribbon would really add something.

 This is Alex! She is in the middle assembly.

We found these great cardboard hearts and thought they would really add some dimension to this project. We applied some molding past to them for texture. I have been dying to use it and I will say it is for sure something that I will be using again.

And..... Ta Da! Our finished wreaths. They just turned out lovely! Mark thinks they look store bought.

Our next wreath was for spring. This was is inspired by one Alex found online. We started out with all the same supplies but each wreath turned out our own. I think that is really interesting. 

This is Alex's wreath. I really love the spring sign on her.

 

She added texture to these cute little pots then tied them on the wreath.

 This is mine! I just really like the spring colors.

I painted the pots in these great colors that I created. I just really thought they matched the spring feel.

That was the end of our craft day. It got so late there was no other option but to go home. We had a wonderful day getting to know each other and having fun making the wonderful creations.