What are you so scared of? It's just bread.

While I was gone from the blog, my family instituted a new bi-weekly tradition: bread baking.

We go through bread at my house like nobody's business. Blame it on all the sandwiches (I do love me a good sandwich and it appears to run in the family). We buzz through the bread like beavers do trees. So when I was buying 3 loaves every 10 days for the four of us, I realized that it was time to bake my own. I mean, it's not like the bread's going to go bad. We eat enough of it.

Lucky for me, I understand the general principles of bread baking. Yeast, food for the yeast, flour, some other stuff, rise, knead, rise, bake, cool. Not that tough, right? I'm no stranger to bread baking after all.

I grew up baking bread with my grandparents. Once a month they would spend the morning making up a huge batch of dough and then spend the rest of the day making loaves, buns, and a ton of other forms of bread related goodness. I have great memories of that time.

So why have I not done this sooner!?!

Intimidation, friends.

Seriously.

It seemed like a ton of work and time that I didn't think that I had to spare. Plus, I wasn't the one putting the yeast and food for the yeast and other such ingredients together when baking with my grandparents. What if I baked a hideous beast of a loaf? What if my family was so disgusted by this carbohydrated disaster that they refused to eat anything I cooked again!?! Oh, the humanity!!

Then I realized two things:
1) Basic bread is not that hard to make.
2) Who cares if the loaf is gross? I'll just tweak the recipe (or my methods depending on the problem) and try again. My family is forgiving and forgetful. They will eat my food again.

Perfectionism. It's an evil, motherless beast.

Don't listen because it's not true.

Anyhow, so all of this to tell you that I'm going to share my recipe for super easy wheat bread with you today.

It has proven itself worthy of sharing with the masses--at least I haven't had any disasters with it yet. :)

I acquired this recipe from AllRecipes.com and used all but one of the tips from the comments section.

And this is what I have created using it:

Beautiful, delicious loaves of bread

And now for your baking pleasure, here is the easiest freaking wheat bread recipe of all time. I have added some tips that I learned along the way to hopefully help you out a little bit in your baking adventures. If you go to the original recipe, you'll see that I've incorporated a lot from the comments section and of course added my own flare to the text. A girl's got to get creative where she can, you know? :) Here you go!

Easy Wheat Bread

Adapted from AllRecipes.com

Ingredients:

• 3 cups warm water (no warmer than 110 degrees F)
• 2 (1/4 oz) packets active dry yeast
• 1/3 cup honey
• 5 cups white bread flour

• 3 Tbsp butter, melted
• 1/3 cup honey
• 1 Tbsp salt
• 3 1/2 - 5 cups whole wheat flour

• 2 Tbsp butter, melted
  

Equipment Needed: Electric mixer with a big bowl

Directions:

1. Combine warm water, yeast, and 1/3 cup honey in the bowl of your electric mixer. I usually heat up the water in the microwave 1 cup at a time and use an electric thermometer to test the temperature. That seems to give me a little bit more control. If my last cup of water is a little too hot (which happens most of the time) then I dump the honey into the water. This cools the water and makes the honey thinner and easier to get out of the measuring cup. Add 5 cups bread flour and stir with wooden/plastic spoon to combine. Let stand for 30 minutes or at least until it has doubled in size and is big and bubbly.
2. Using your mixing spoon, make a hole in the middle of the big bubbly dough concoction. This will make room for the 3 Tbsp butter, 1/3 cup honey, and salt that you are going to mix in next. Add the ingredients, attach the dough hook to your mixer, and mix away at speed 2. When the new ingredients are combined, stir in 2 cups of the whole wheat flour. To minimize the flour cloud, I usually do this 1/2 cup at a time. Mix until not really sticky--just pulling away from the sides of the bowl but still sticky to the touch. This may take an additional 2-4 cups of whole wheat flour to accomplish. It usually only takes me 2 cups to get there, but one time it took almost 3. It just depends on the flour you are using.
3. Once the dough ball has formed, leave the mixer going on speed 2 and all it to knead the dough for 8-10 minutes or until it is smooth. Dust your counter with a little bit of whole wheat flour and turn the dough out onto the floured surface. Knead by hand for an additional 1-2 minutes. I suppose this step could be optional, but I think the texture of the bread is better when you include this step.
4. Grease a gigantic bowl. Make sure to grease the whole bowl and all the way up the sides. Shape your dough into a ball and place in the greased bowl, turning once to coat the surface of the dough. Cover with plastic wrap or a greased cotton towel and let rise in a slightly-warmer-than-room-temperature place until it has doubled in size. This takes approximately 2 hours. Covering and greasing the dough keeps the crusties off of your dough while it's rising--totally worth it. And if you don't have a naturally occurring slightly-warmer-than-room-temperature place in your house, just turn on the light in your oven because it omits just enough heat to make it the perfect temperature.

Even though it rose too high, it turned out just as delicious so don't worry if yours rises too long, too.
5. Punch down dough and divide into 2 loaves. Place in greased 9 x 5 inch pans (or 4 mini loaf pans, or whatever you are using) and allow to rise until the dough has topped the pans by 1 inch.
6. Bake in an oven that was preheated to 350 degrees (F) for 23-30 minutes. Do not over bake. The bread is done when you knock on it and it sounds hollow and/or a thermometer that is inserted in the middle reads 180-200 degrees (F). I just use the knocking method. Works every time.
7. When done, remove the loaves from the pans immediately to prevent the bottoms from getting moldy and cool on a wire rack. Brush with the remaining 2 Tbsp of butter to prevent the crust from getting hard. Cool completely before storing.

To store the bread, I wrap it in plastic wrap and then put it in a plastic sealable bag (or 2 if the loaf is too big to fit in 1 bag). The longest that the loaves have lasted is 10 days at my house, but in that time ours have never gotten moldy. I've frozen a loaf, thawed it out, and we've eaten on it for a week with no mold in sight. Test it out. Let me know if yours molds on you and in what conditions and I'll do the same.

 
WARNING: You're going to start looking for all sorts of ways to eat this bread. It's that good.

Also, this bread makes picture perfect grilled cheese sandwiches. See?

 Now that I've shared what I made in my free time, I'd love to see what you have been up to. Any projects to share? :)

What do you do when you have a sick kiddo?

Why, you stay home and decorate your boring DVD case with colorful hearts, of course!

Thank you, Katie Sokoler from Color Me Katie, for the fabulous idea! Anyone that needs a pick me up should head over to her blog and flickr photostream. This woman is the epitome of happiness and her work shows it. She has so many fantastic ideas and reminds us to stop and notice the colorful world around us.

Here is our rendition of her colorful hearts.

We started with this:

A boring white cabinet next to a boring white wall.

So I cut out some hearts for our poor, boring cabinet.

We wanted to make sure we only picked the best, most fun hearts of the bunch.

So I had my sick kiddo test them out.

Once we found the best and most fun of the hearts, we stuck them to the cabinet.

There. That's much better.

The Curious George pillowcase

Pillowcases are cool.

Just ask my daughter.

The only thing cooler than a pillowcase?

A Curious George pillowcase. That’s what.

I realized that my daughter’s bed was still sporting the good old navy blue store bought pillowcase that I gave her when she moved to her toddler bed over a year and a half ago. This will not do, my friends!

So, I recently took on the project of making her a pillowcase of her very own. Preschooler style.

I think it looks nice with her Tinkerbell bed and rainbow star blanket, don’t you agree?

Okay, let’s be real for just a sec here. There are so many different patterns going on in that picture that it’s just a huge eye sore. But you know what?

My daughter doesn’t care. So I don't either.

Pillowcase tutorial, you ask? Sure, I’ll write one!

I’ll even make sure it was made in my free time! :)

Curtains, Anyone?

Our front room has been needing curtains since...oh, I don't know...we moved in.

And there really wasn't much of an excuse after my mother, in an effort to get me to make some curtains, bought some very nice fabric while in Hawaii about 4 years ago. It has dragons and bamboo--quite nice indeed.

If you have ever seen our living room, then you know that this design fits right in

But the timing couldn't have been worse. Despite the beautiful fabric, my sewing machine and I were going through a battle to end all battles. Some things were said (by me), some needles were broken (by the machine), tension issues arose (machine again), I got angry and put it in storage. It was time to take a break from sewing for awhile.

Well, since I finally dug my sewing machine out of hibernation (after almost 3 years!) this month, I thought that I had better make good on the promise to my husband to make those curtains.

Sorry for the plants in the way, but that is where they live

And I did.

Isn't that red accent on them nice? Oh yes, I agree. I didn't mean to do that, but I made a dumb move and did some needless sewing.

Now, I could have ripped stitches, but let's be honest here. I hate ripping stitches. Especially ones made by sewing machines. So I opted for another option: Add a color coordinating border!

The original plan was to have the border go around the whole outside, but I like it better just in the middle. And since I'm the creator, that is how it stays!

Since these were such a long time coming, my husband even watched the kids so I could hammer these out. Normally crafting must wait until after the munchkins have gone to bed, but not this day. This day I got to live the dream while making...curtains? Oh well, it was still nice.

With the mistake and all, this project took me about 5 hours. I'd say the mistake took at least an hour and a half of that time. Yes, I know, costly mistake. The bulk of the rest of the time was spent pinning and ironing.

This is not labor intensive work. There is a whole lot of ironing, pinning, and straight seam sewing going on when making curtains.

One tip that I would like to pass on:
My mother gave me this tip the first time I made curtains and it has saved me a ton of frustration.

Wait to sew the bottom of your curtains until after you hang them for the first time.

Then pin the bottom of the curtains while they are still hanging. That way you can be sure that the finished bottom looks straight when they are hung up. You would be surprised how many windows there are out there that aren't perfectly straight and square. Save yourself some seam ripping and do this extra step.

I made these in my free time (with a little bit of child care help). Imagine all the things you could do in yours!

Needless to say...

HAPPY ST PATRICK'S DAY!!

I just got done making a few things. Interestingly enough, none of them are green.

Wait! One of the projects has a teal interior...there's green in teal so there you go.


This is a needle book. For those of you that don't know about them, it's a place that you store your needles when not using them.

I was inspired by this post over at Craft Blog. Of course I had to make it my style with a little bit different finished look and I didn't have any buttons so I had to make ties, but it was still my inspiration!

Well, I've been needing a needle book for some time and I refuse to buy it if I can make it. That tends to mean that I go without things for awhile, but it's how I roll. So we have tons of those little wheels-o-needles all over the house because I can never find a needle when I need one.

Well I will have that problem no more! This brightly colored needle book should fix us right up.


It's made from a printed quilter's fabric (outside) and some teal felt (inside). I added an extra layer of each fabric in the middle to give it a little bit more cushion and to help the teal not to show through on the outside of the book. (There was probably an easier way to do that, but this was my method.) I wanted the extra cushion because I'm clumsy and stick my fingers all the time. I figure making it thicker than two layers of fabric will help save me from a few extra pin pricks to the fingers. That would be really nice.

It was a fun little project that took about 45 minutes to an hour to make.

I made it in my free time! Really people, if I can do this, then imagine what you can do in your free time.