A Quick Way to Give Your Canned or Jarred Salsa a Fresh Taste and Appearance

I'm a papercrafter, DIYer and this is a blog for those things, but a woman has gotta eat too. Yesterday, as I worked on this year's plan for crafting and blogging I decided to throw together a snack, but I didn't want to take a lot of time making salsa with all fresh ingredients and wait for the flavors to meld together and I'm not really a fan of salsa from a jar. 

So I did what my son, The Salsa King (long story), does when we don't have enough fresh ingredients to make salsa from scratch. I grabbed a couple of cans of Diced Tomatoes with Green Chilies from the cabinet and just added some fresh ingredients such as a medium sized onion, a large tomato and an avocado. I also added a little powdered garlic and a tiny bit of Creole, but what you add is up to you and what your family likes. 

That's it! Voila! 

Delicious salsa that has a fresh taste for snacking or to serve with food that only takes a few minutes to make. 

A definite bonus to making salsa using canned diced tomatoes with green chilies is how inexpensive it is, but if you prefer pre-made salsa by the jar, yet want to give it some pizzazz for company, just add some fresh ingredients to that too. Jarred and canned salsas have a lot of salt so another benefit of adding fresh veggies is toning that salt flavor down and then you may choose not to add anymore seasoning at all. Enjoy!

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Window Turned into Built-in Shelf

Hello peeps!
Did you ever have one of those moments when you realized you didn't think ahead enough? My husband's and my big idea was to make another room in our home by enclosing part of the front porch. The room build went great, but then after feeling elated that we had another room I plopped down on the sofa to see a window to no-where. We sure as heck didn't want to have to re-do the wall. What to do?    

   Money was tight after buying wood flooring, a new front door, drywall, a huge window and so forth so we really didn't have the money, energy or patience left to deal with this. Then it hit me. The window trim was still in really good shape and matched the other windows in the room. Uh huh! There wasn't enough floor space for a shelf for family photos and I didn't want to stick more stuff up on the walls. So here it is. Our built-in shelves specifically design for holding photos. I couldn't have asked for a better result. I still have some painting to do and the curtain hardware to remove (should have removed that and staged the area for a photo), but it's mostly done and usable.

Now for the rest of the house. Hmmm.

I used two packs of the wood plank tongue and groove paneling from Home Depot. The entire project only cost $35.00.  

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Christmas Craft: using mismatched earrings

     Don't throw those earrings away when you lose one and if they're special to you, what better way to have them then on display instead of in the back of a jewelry box. I used a lot of sparkly earrings and the light that comes off this little tree is gorgeous. Unfortunately my camera found the sparkle a little overwhelming and faded everything out, but you get the idea. I decided to use burlap in contrast to all the shine, but this might be something you could try doing on a mirror or foiled background if you want to make the most of the sparkle and reflection.

   Give it a shot. I would love to see what you create.