Collage a la Claire

As many of you already know, the school year is coming to a close, which means this blog will probably be slowing down.... a lot. I want to try to keep posting whenever I try new recipes and crafts, but I'm not making any promises!

Ninth grade has been full of some pretty great memories. A few weeks ago, Clara, Julia, Cali, Dani, Evie, and I had this little "photo shoot" thing at Cali's house. We ended up taking around four hundred pictures that were all either super cute or really funny, which pretty much sums up our friendship. I've loved looking back at these pictures and it hasn't even been that long since we took them. I can only imagine how awesome it will be to have them to look at in a few years!

On another note (kind of.... there's as reason I'm telling you this), I just got a new bed and decided that I wanted to redo my room. There isn't really much in there right now, though. It's pretty much just my bed and my nightstand and the walls are orange. My room seems to always be last on the list of "to-do's" as far as decorating the house goes. Seriously, we've lived in this house for almost three years now. You'd think we would have gotten everything together by now. The good thing about having an empty room is that there's not that much to change! My bed spread doesn't match my new bed very well and I'm tired of the orange, so it's time for a room makeover.

Because I'm redoing my room, I wanted to make something that would spice up the blank walls a little bit after I paint them. My bed is a really dark gray color and a bunch of the pictures we took at Cali's were in black and white, so it will match perfectly! That's how I decided to make this little collage of pictures to hang on my wall somewhere to remind me of how much fun my friends and I had that day.


Below is how I made it.

Materials:
wooden board
pictures
Mod Podge
foam brush
scissors
buttons
hot glue gun

First, I took a wooden board that I already had from when I made the magazine wall art. I painted it with a few coats of white paint in order to make it match better and let it dry while I printed pictures.

When I printed the pictures, I used photo paper for a more clean look. However, while I was printing, our stupid printer spazzed out and just stopped. Man, I hate that thing. I tried it again the next day and it still didn't work. We ended up emailing the pictures to Staples, where they printed them for us. Phew!

After the paint on the board was dry (mine definitely was because it sat for like two whole days), I traced a piece of fabric that I had left over from my pocket sweatshirt so it would fit and I slathered some Mod Podge on the board so it would stay on. At first I didn't like it because you couldn't see the pattern, but once it dried, it looked a lot better.

Then, I cut my pictures out, arranged them, cut them again because they didn't fit, arranged them again, cut them again, arranged them, and so on. I think you get the point. When you have a smaller board and a lot of pictures, it takes some time to get everything to fit.

Once I found an arrangement I liked, I put a little bit of Mod Podge on the back of each picture and then put a coat over the entire collage to hold everything down in place.

While waiting for that to dry, I fired up the hot glue gun and played around with some buttons. Without the buttons, it was pretty plain and I thought they added a cute touch! So, after the Mod Podge dried, I glued some buttons on.

I still had an extra picture that I didn't use on the front because it looked funny with the others, so I decided to glue it on the back and write our names. It gave it a more personal touch and will help me remember the girls' names if I look back at it in twenty years or something. I have a feeling I will lose it or forget it by then, but I'll be prepared if I ever do. :)

To finish things off, I added a final coat of Mod Podge on both the front and the back!

Thank you all for a great year of blogging! I've had a blast trying new recipes and crafts to share on here. I hoped you stay tuned just in case I happen to keep posting!

XOXO,

Claire

One Healthy CHICK

As you can tell by all but one (the tacos) of my food posts, I LOVE SWEETS. Well, for the next ten days, I will not be eating any. For my Leadership class, we're going on this detox diet thing created by Dr. Mark Hyman to promote healthy eating amongst teens. Apparently, we're the first class to do it in the whole country, so I guess that's pretty cool. What's not cool is that I'm not supposed to eat any dairy, gluten, or sugar for ten days. Technically, we aren't required to participate, but I need to start eating healthier anyway, so I thought this would be a great start!

While shopping at Whole Foods for an after-school snack a few weeks ago, my mom and I discovered some pretty yummy food there. The best part was, it was already prepared for us. We literally took out our forks and started eating as soon as we got in the car. We tried one of their pasta salads and chicken salad and they were delicious! Since then, we have been shopping there even more and found other things to try as well, like quinoa salads. I could probably eat this food for the rest of my life. I love it!

My school lunches are usually a sandwich with a bunch of little sides things like chips, fruit, and a cookie. For the detox, I had to come up with new ideas for lunches. I really wanted the chicken salad, but it's a little expensive and goes by so fast, so my mom and I decided to find the recipe and make our own!

Here is how we did it.

Sonoma Chicken Salad

Photo and Recipe via Whole Foods

For the DRESSING, you will need: 
1 cup mayonaise
4 tsp apple cider vinegar
5 tsp honey
2 tsp poppy seeds
salt & pepper to taste

For the SALAD, you will need:
2 lbs boneless chicken breast
3/4 cup pecan pieces, toasted
2 cups red seedless grapes, halved
3 stalks celery, thinly sliced


* We had to half the recipe because we didn't have enough chicken. There will usually be more. *

Start by preheating your oven to 375ºF. Place the chicken breasts in one layer in a baking dish filled with 1/2 cup of water. Cover the dish with foil and bake for twenty-five minutes or once the chicken is completely cooked through. Remove the chicken breasts from the dish and let them cool at room temperature. This should take around ten minutes. Cover the chicken again and refrigerate it to keep it cool. I'm sorry I didn't get pictures of this step. I was at soccer while my parents made the chicken.

While that's cooling, you can make the dressing. Combine mayonaise, vinegar, honey, poppy seeds, salt and pepper. My mom was making this with me and forgot we were halving the recipe. We added double the poppy seeds that should have have been put in. Oops! It's a good thing poppy seeds don't really taste like anything.

Chop up the chicken breasts into bite-sized pieces. Mix the chicken, nuts, grapes and celery in with the dressing. Keep mixing until the dressing completely coats everything. We chose to not add nuts because I tend to eat around them. :)

Make sure you keep it cool because it tastes better that way and enjoy!

Stunning Salad Spinner Art

Do you remember those Spin Art things that everyone used to have when they were little? Hopefully you do because they were so much fun! Seriously, all you had to do was drop paint from little bottles onto a spinning piece of paper and WA LA, you have a cool piece of art!

You actually don't even need to buy the kit to make these. You can use things that you may have around the house already (I did!). Cool huh? Of course, I found this idea on Brit+Co. It seems like a TON of my posts are inspired by this blog.

These past few days have gone by SO SLOW. I've gone to soccer everyday except Tuesday (surprise!), helped coach a volleyball camp, ran for a Sophomore Rep for a club for next year, prepared a speech for Leadership, taken the SAGE test in English, gathered all of my community service hours..... the list just keeps going. UGH! I feel like I'm going to explode! How much stuff can you pile on a fifteen-year-old? After such a pooey week, I really needed a simple, fast, fun craft to do. This was perfect! Plus, it brought back some memories. How can you beat that?

Salad Spinner Art

You will need:

a salad spinner

acrylic paint in various colors

paper

something to keep your workspace clean

(I thought a paintbrush might be useful, but I didn't need it.)

First, cover your workspace and prepare a spot to put your finished pieces while they dry.

Next, take your paper and place it in the salad spinner. I would recommend using thicker paper, like poster board or card stock, to prevent them from wrinkling when they're dry. I used extra envelopes we had from old Christmas cards. It can be whatever shape  or color you want!

Squirt or paint different colors of paint onto the paper. Make sure it is pretty thick, or it won't really work. I found that squirting it in circles made the paint cover better, which looked cooler.

Put the lid of the salad spinner on and spin. I probably waited ten seconds or so before stopping it (by pressing the button) and opening the lid. 

If you like the result, you're done. However, if you don't like it, there is a way to change it. You can always put more paint on, or put white and almost start over again. I wouldn't keep trying after two or three times, though, because there will be a lot of paint, which will take long to dry and it might wrinkle more.

I was really happy with this craft! It was super fun and only took me about twenty minutes, tops. I would say my favorites are the purple one and the blue, orange and pink one. My least favorites are the pink and black one and the pink and green one. My mom told me to do pink and green, so it's her fault that it turned out ugly. :)

I hope you have fun with it too!

Here are some pictures of the ones I made: 

This one was pretty good for my first one.

I added a lot of white on this one, but i like it!

Water stuff came out of one of these bottles.
That's why the middle was so weird.

I really like this one!

This one is my favorite out of all of them!

Good camerawork Claire... 

Eh...

This is my other favorite!

Blurry and ugly... oh well.

It left a pretty colorful mess inside the spinner!