Tag: sprinkle

Recipes

Homemade Apple Chips

Jessica Smith

Apple Chips 6

Two recipes in a row?! You are gonna be so shocked when I’m sharing a third tomorrow 🙂

Today’s recipe is for a super healthy snack: Apple Chips!

I found a recipe on Pinterest from Maggie at Vittles and Bits and just had to try it out. I tweaked mine just a bit and now am a total addict. Just what I need, one more thing to be addicted to!

I grabbed some Golden Delicious apples from the store for my chips (Maggie used Red Delicious) and set them aside to be sliced.

Then, I lined three baking sheets with parchment paper. This probably goes without saying, but since I am not a total foodie I had no idea there was a difference between wax paper and parchment paper. Rookie move. I ended up destroying a baking pan because of that, so make sure you have the right kind of paper.

Spray your parchment paper lightly with cooking spray.

Apple Chips 1

Start to slice your apples. I used three for this batch. Slice them as thinly as you can and lay them on the parchment paper. I cut some of mine in slices, others in circles going straight through the core. Either way works, just make sure there aren’t any seeds.

If you have a dog, make sure no seeds fall onto the floor. They aren’t good for dogs (or anyone, really). Just sayin’.

Once your baking sheets are covered in the thin slices, I sprinkled a mixture of Splenda and cinnamon on them. You can bake them without either, with just cinnamon, with just Splenda, with sugar… blah blah blah, you get the idea. Use your imagination. On one of my baking sheets I lightly drizzled honey on the apples — it added a really nice flavor. Next time I make them, I want to sprinkle nutmeg on top. Yum!

Apple Chips 2

Now, time to bake! I set my oven to 215 F and put those suckers in for 2.5 hours. They take a while to dry out all the way, but they make your house smell amazing the whole time. Totally worth the wait.

Apple Chips 3

When you take them out, your super thin slices will be extra crispy. Some of your thicker slices might not be all of the way dry. I found that if you put them into a container they finish drying out. Or, you can eat them that way, too. Still delicious.

Apple Chips 5

Now your chips are done. Eat to your heart’s content. It is fruit after all 🙂

Apple Chips 7

Thanks for the inspiration, Maggie!

Home Improvement

A few updates on the house

Jessica Smith

I finally remembered my camera AND the memory card! So, as promised, here are some updates on our house!!

Kitchen Cabinet Hardware

I mentioned earlier in the week that we added handles to our kitchen cabinets. Look at how nice they look! Glen had a great way for installing the handles on the same spot on each cabinet. He took a piece of cardboard and cut it into an “L” shape. He then pressed the handle into the cardboard to make an indent where the holes needed to be drilled. You drill holes in your cardboard and line up your cardboard stencil the same way on each cabinet, and voila! Perfectly spaced cabinet handles! It was a neat trick that will certainly come in handy in the future.

Before:

After:

Ahhhh, so much better. Now we can actually figure out which way the cabinets open, which is especially nice since the Fannie Mae people installed some of them opening the wrong way. Oh well! Problem solved.

Basement Renovation

Now, on to the basement. I showed you a picture yesterday of the entire basement torn out. Glen finished that yesterday while Brian and I were at work. It looks huge!

The debris seems to be never-ending. Check out all of the bricks from our rounded fireplace hearth. This will be fun to remove.

Our fireplace looks a little sad now with no hearth, mantel or molding. But I know it will look so much better when this whole reno is complete. I’m going to pick out a granite hearth after work today. We are getting a black hearth will sparkly, gold flecks in it.

Glen also started ripping up the carpet in the room. Look at the lovely flooring we had underneath!

But wait, there’s more!

We have three different types of flooring in one space. I think we should leave it like that, except that we already bought new flooring last night. We also bought recessed lighting kits for my craft room, the family room and our kitchen. I can’t wait for all of the light!

Paint

So I have a confession to make. I picked out paint last night, and I’m already concerned that I picked a bad color. I bought a can of Valspar Sprinkle for my craft room and two cans of Olympic Caruso for our bedroom… I am second guessing myself though. Bad news bears.

Valspar Sprinkle - Craft Room
Olympic Caruso paint – Bedroom

So what do you think? My craft room has no windows, so I think the bright blue will be OK. But I’m less sure about the Caruso color for our bedroom. And we bought two cans… ugh. Silly hubby, I told him we should buy the $2.50 samples!

A secret room?

My last update is that we discovered we have a secret room in our house! Well, sort of. When we looked at our house we noticed a little cubby underneath our stairs that I joked was Brian’s timeout room. Well, it turns out this mini cubby is another long storage area! Glen found a hidden light in the cubby yesterday, and I was incredibly excited!

Once you get past the stair cubby, you can stand up back there (just be careful of the nails poking through at the ceiling from the floor above). Of course, I had to test it out.

Bahaha. I love our secret room! It’s so sneaky :p And the pink carpet is just oh so nice.

Tonight, Dad and the hubby are planning on dragging all of the debris out to the  car port so Brian can load up a U-Haul tomorrow and take it to the dump. Meanwhile, I’ll be taping and spackling so I can paint this weekend. AND!!!! Tomorrow we get our fence. So excited to have a large cage for our crazy beast of a dog.