Tea Organizer

In case you didn't know, I'm obsessed with tea. I would drink tea all day long if I could. I can't go to the store without picking up a new flavor. Because of this "addiction" as my father calls it, the cabinets are always a mess with tea boxes jammed in wherever I can fit them. So I decided that I needed a better way to organize them. While at a friend's house, I noticed that she had a small wooden box that held three different varieties of tea. I thought it was a good idea, however, it was a bit small for the amount of tea I like to keep on hand. So I decided to make a similar box, just slightly larger. Here it is...

So, because I probably would have cut off a finger during the construction of this box, I asked my dad if he would help out. He made a basic wooden box out of pine, then sanded it down.

This is the box before I did anything to it.

The inside organizer comes apart easily to allow for different sized tea bags.

After all the hard work was finished, I took care of the staining and polyurethane. I chose a stain called Mediterranean olive that ended up being a nice medium shade of green.

The final product.

All my tea is nicely organized now, and I don't have to dig through a million cabinets to find the one I want.

Reese's Cup Brownies

I started off the day with a quick trip to the monthly market place in town. After seeing all the delicious food that was for sale everywhere I turned, I decided to whip up these super easy and extremely delicious brownies. I saw the recipe in an issue of Cosmopolitan about two years ago, and whenever I need to make a quick and simple dessert, this is usually the one I turn to. I thought I would share the recipe since it would be a perfect summertime treat with a bit of vanilla ice cream on top. There are only a few ingredients, which make this easy enough for anyone to make. I used applesauce instead of eggs, since It is hard to find Ener-G Egg replacer here. I usually use my grandma’s brownie recipe, but today I didn’t feel like spending time making brownies from scratch so I used a box of Duncan Hines Chewy Fudge Brownie mix instead.

Ingredients

                         

Combine brownie mix, egg or egg substitute, water, and oil in a bowl and stir until smooth.

Stir until smooth.

                         

After coating your pan with some non-stick spray, pour a thin layer of the brownie mix into the pan. Please ignore how gross this pan looks. It is clean, I promise, it is just really old. We are remodeling our kitchen so there isn't too many options available right now since everything is boxed up.

Cover with Reese’s cups. I used a 9x9 pan, and the bag of snack size Reese’s has 14 cups in it. As you can see, 14 cups wasn’t quite enough, but it works out fine once cooked. However, if you use anything bigger than a 9x9 pan, I would recommend getting two bags of Reese’s.

Pour the rest of the brownie mix on top of the Reese’s and smooth it out.

Cook according to the instruction on the box, or your recipe if you make your brownies from scratch. If you use applesauce instead of eggs, cook for a few minutes less than the box recommends.

Enjoy!

Dear Readers

Dear Readers,
Since this is my first post, I thought I should give you a little bit of information about myself and my reasons for starting this blog. Blogging is something that I have wanted to do for a while. I feel like I come across a lot of things that other people might be interested in, and that I should stop keeping all these ideas to myself. This blog will mainly focus on recipes, vegetarian of course, clothing/fashion, and DIY projects. Fashion is something that has always interested me, and I love sharing my thoughts about it with the people around me. And I think that making your own clothes can be an interesting and inexpensive way to express yourself. So if I think of any do-it-yourself clothing projects, I will be sure to post those on here. And cooking is something I love to do, even if most of the time I am just cooking for one. So I will try to keep you all updated on any great recipes that I come across. I never thought I would have the time to blog, and seeing as how I'm moving in two weeks, this probably isn't the best time to start. However, I'm really excited about it. I will try and post as much as I can over the next two weeks. But it should pick-up after that.