Copycat Shamrock Shakes

Here's a fun fact about me: I love McDonald's Shamrock Shakes.  They are one of my favorite things.  Unfortunately, moving to Japan meant "bye bye, beloved Shamrock Shake" (though it also meant "hello, Sakura McFlurrie", but that is getting off topic).  You can then imagine my joy and excitement this year as Shamrock Shake season rolled in.  The first day that they were available, I drove myself right to one of my local Mickey D's.  After waiting in the drive-through for a while, I finally pulled up to order and, tragedy of tragedies, they didn't have the Shamrock Shake.  I was so sad and ended up buying food that I really didn't want/need but enjoyed none the less since I had already waited so long.  Flash forward several days.  I decided that my local McDonald's should have had enough to get my shake in stock.  But thinking ahead this time, I called before going and low and behold, they didn't have my shake.  So, I called a different McDonald's and they didn't have my shake either.  I finally asked if there was any McDonald's in the area that did carry the Shamrock Shake.  And now I'm sad because all of the McDonald's in my area are owned by the same guy and so they carry the same items and my area apparently doesn't believe in the magic of the Shamrock Shake.

So, after going through the five stages of grief, I finally decided I'd just have to make my own.  I'd done it in the past and so I'd do it again.  And as I was preparing my shake(s), I figured this would be something to share with you all in case someone else out there in the world of the internet has to live their life without the Shamrock Shake (or else is in withdrawals since Shamrock Shake season is over for the year).

The shakes are really easy to make.  They are basically a mint milkshake, but I like to think of them as a mint-chocolate milkshake.  Here are the ingredients you will need: mint chocolate chip ice cream, milk, green food coloring, and whipped cream (you can totally make your own, but I'm all about the simple).

For making one serving, I used 3 scoops of the ice cream, about 1/4 c milk, and four drops of the food coloring.  And make sure you use the liquid food coloring, not the gel.  The gel is great for things like frosting, but it does mix well when added to liquids.  Blend them all together well (using a good blender is important: I love my Ninja blender, but I don't think it's the best for things like smoothies and such because of how the blade moves it doesn't get all the pieces as tiny as I'd like [in the case of this milkshake, it won't get your chocolate chips really small to suck through a regular size straw]; since I was making a single serving today, I used my Nutribullet and it crushed all of the chocolate chips really well.  However, this isn't an endorsement of either, so use what you have and like).  Once, you get them to your desired consistency, pour into your serving cup, add a nice dollop of whipped cream, and enjoy!

Yakisoba (Japanese Fried Noodles)

So, I've been working on a few new blog posts, but last week was Spring Break and we had family in town, so nothing went live.

Anyway, one of my favorite Japanese dishes is Yakisoba, which are fried noodles.  They are Japanese equivalent of cook-out food.  When we'd go to the beach, we'd see the locals using the provided grills to fry their noodles.  No hot dogs and hamburgers for them.

Yakisoba is made with the protein of your choice (I usually go for beef because when I first learned out to make it, that's the meat I used), precooked soba (buckwheat) noodles, and fresh veggies.  There is also a yakisoba sauce used to bring it all together.  And it is often served with pickled ginger on top (I usually skip this because I forget to buy it).

When I lived in Okinawa, I could buy bags of refrigerated soba noodles at my local American grocery store.  Alas, that is not an option here in South Texas.  If you have an Asian grocer in your area, you may be able to find some there.  Again, that isn't an option for me here.  Fortunately, my local grocery store has frozen soba noodles in it's freezer section.  I'll admit, they aren't as good as the ones I'd get in Okinawa, but they do their job.  Don't worry if you can't find soba/yakisoba noodles where you live.  When I first moved here, I couldn't find any, but I really had a craving for yakisoba, so I used some noodle pasta.  You could easily use spaghetti or linguine to make this dish (though the noodles will have a different taste since they aren't made from buckwheat).

Another item that may be difficult to find is your yakisoba sauce.  This is a much easier fix.  I found some on Amazon and had it shipped straight to my house.  If, however, that isn't your thing, you could easily substitute soy sauce.  Just know that yakisoba sauce has a thicker consistency than soy sauce.  In fact, my husband and oldest daughter like their noodles saucier than I make them (they really shouldn't be that saucy), so they always add soy sauce to their servings before eating.

Step 1: Prepare your meat and veggies.  I usually just buy stir fry meat from the grocery store because it means I don't have to cut up my meat myself.  However, if you aren't lazy like me, you'll need to cut your meat into strips or bite size pieces.  Cut your onion into thin strips.  For the rest of my veggies, I prefer to use carrots and cabbage.  Again, showing my laziness, I buy a small bag of julienned carrots.  If choosing carrots, you'll need to cut them into very thin strips.  For the cabbage, I only use a 1/4th to a 1/2 of the head.  You won't need to cut it into super thin pieces.  Occasionally, I'll just buy a bag of cabbage prepared for coleslaw because it is once again already prepped for you, however, I like my cabbage to be larger, so I usually don't do this.  If you choose to use different veggies, make sure they are cut into thin pieces because they aren't going to cook for very long.

Step 2: Heat oil in a large frying pan (I will often use a dutch oven instead because the depth of the pot makes it easier to blend the noodles and sauce in at the end).  Don't worry if you don't have sesame oil, vegetable oil will work fine.  The sesame oil will give it a slightly different taste and smell but the end results will be very similar.  Sauté your meat and onion in the pan until your onion is becoming translucent and meat is almost completely cooked through (as we add the other ingredients, the meat will continue to cook, so if it is already fully cooked at this point, it will get tough).

Step 3: Add the remainder of your vegetables and stir to combine.

Step 4: Add noodles and stir well (if you use the frozen noodles like me, let them thaw first).

Step 5: Stir in your yakisoba sauce until all of the noodles are evenly coated.

Step 6: Enjoy as is and/or with pickled ginger and added soy sauce.

Yakisoba (Japanese Fried Noodles)

Serves: 6-8 Ingredients: 2 tsp sesame oil 1 lb lean meat, cut into bite-size pieces or strips 1 medium onion, cut into thin strips 2 medium carrots, thinly sliced         or 1/2 - 3/4 small package of julienned carrots 1/4 - 1/2 head of cabbage, cut into strips 2 pkgs Soba Noodles (thawed, if using frozen) 1/3 C Yakisoba Sauce Optional toppings: pickled ginger, soy sauce Directions: 1. Prepare your meat and veggies.  2. Heat oil in a large frying pan or dutch oven.   Sauté your meat and onion in the pan until your onion is becoming translucent and meat is almost completely cooked through. 3. Add the remainder of your vegetables and stir to combine. 4. Add noodles and stir well. 5. Stir in your yakisoba sauce until all of the noodles are evenly coated. 6. Enjoy as is and/or with pickled ginger and added soy sauce.

*This is my very first printable recipe, just click above to print (and please forgive my photography; I'm just getting back into blogging and photography is not my forte).

Back in the Saddle

Hello Bloggerverse.

Long time no see!

The last few years have been a crazy whirl wind.  As in 2 and 1/2 years ago, my husband and I packed up our four kids and the majority of our stuff and moved them all across the ocean to Japan.  We spent our two years in Japan site-seeing and learning as much as we could about the local culture.  It was a great adventure, but it wasn't the most conducive life-style to creating and blogging.  However, I did learn several fun things that I may just share with you as we go along.

When I first started this blog, it was as a way to advertise my sewing creations (mainly car seat canopies), hence the name ("seamed" is intentionally spelled that way, in reference to sewing seams).  It progressed to recipes and other crafts.  I hope that it continues to evolve.  I still plan on posting creations, tutorials, and recipes here.  I'm not sure yet if my sisters will also jump back in the saddle of blogging with me; we'll just have to wait and see.

Anyway, last summer, we packed back up most of our stuff and our four kids and moved back to the United States, ending up in south Texas (this is a whole new experience for us).  My husband and I spent about a week house hunting with no luck, so we ended up signing a contract to build a new house in a brand new community.  A month ago, our house was finally finished and we got the keys.  Three weeks ago, our household goods that had crossed the Pacific Ocean and had been sitting in storage arrived.  And just this weekend, our stuff that had been in storage since before our move to Japan was delivered.  For the first time in 2 and 1/2 years, we have all of our stuff again under one roof.  It is so exciting to finally be able to settle down and know that we won't have to pick up and move again in two years.

I have lots of ideas for our brand spanking new house and I'm excited to share them with you.  To help with said sharing, I set up an Instagram account to go along with this blog.  If you want to follow us (assuming it's an us and not just me situation), our IG username is: itseamedgoodtome.  I look forward to interacting with you all again.

And in closing, I thought I'd leave you with a picture from my dreamy Japanese life.  This is a picture of Elephant Rock in Okinawa:

Monster Truck Valentine

My boy is all about those trucks, bout those trucks. He's trouble. (hehe) He didn't want to do a box of valentine's from the dollar store. Instead he wanted to give everyone a toy. There are 16 kids in his class. We found monster trucks in packs of 4. I designed his cards and I love the way they turned out.

Bought 4 packs of these trucks. $4 total for 16 trucks.

Here is my print out. I started with a rectangle shape on the paper so I knew where to cut. I found a simple clipart image of a road.

I opened an empty box of cereal. I used a large glue stick and traced the rectangle on the reverse side of the paper and added plenty of glue within the rectangle as well. I wanted to be sure the edges would lay flat when it was cut out. Turning the paper over I pressed it to the picture side of the cereal box.

I smoothed the paper out making sure any bubbles or wrinkles were eliminated from the card. Using my heavy duty scissors I cut it out on the rectangle lines.

Using a thick needle and waxy thread I sewed through the road.

I threaded it through the underside of the truck and back through the road before knotting it tightly. 

With the truck attached my boy just needs to sign his name in the white space at the bottom. 

 Happy Valentine's Day!

Independence Day Decor

Well it's about that time! Time for parades, BBQ's, and FiReWoRkS! Yes, it's almost the 4th of July! So I thought I would write this post before the actual holiday, so you can make these crafts for this year. I am cutting it kind of close, but hey, it's better than most of my other posts where I show you what and how I made my decorations after the fact. So here you go.

First up is my tulle wreath. Click HERE for the link on where I found the idea. I love this wreath so I just copied it rather than doing something different.

You'll need tulle (I purchased 2 yds. of blue and 3 yds. each of red and white), a foam wreath, scissors, ribbon (that matches), wooden stars, mod podge, glitter, a sponge brush, and hot glue gun.

First, cut strips and strips and more strips of your tulle. This is my least favorite part but necessary. Then I grabbed 3 strips of one color and put them together then fold in half. This is the tricky part, not because it's hard to do but just hard to describe. So just follow the directions from the link above. I used the same tying technique. It's like a loop knot where you put the tulle around the wreath and slip the loose ends of the tulle through the middle of the tulle loop and pull tight. Here's what it looks like.

I like the look of this loop knot better than just a regular knot. Anyway, I did a quarter of the wreath in all blue tulle. Then I did the rest in red and white stripes (I did three red, then three white and repeated until I hit the other side of the blue tulle).

When you're done with the tulle it's time for the stars. Paint your wooden stars white.

After the paint dries, put a layer of mod podge on the star and then place in the glitter, coating the whole star. Let dry.

Next, start hot gluing the stars to your wreath. I glued them to the blue tulle and started by gluing one in the middle and then one on each side.

Then I glued the ribbon on (I should have done it like the one I linked to, by gluing the ribbon first and then tying the tulle around it to cover it up). I just folded the ribbon in half, glued the two ends together, and then glued the ends to the wreath where the blue and red tulle meet.

Note: I ended up pulling the ribbon back and cutting some off because when you looked at it face on, you could see the ribbon coming around from underneath and I didn't like the way it looked. So just glue in the middle of the wreath rather than gluing it all the way to the front again. I hope that makes sense. But to avoid this issue, just glue the ribbon on first before you add the tulle.

Trim the tulle all the way around the wreath so they're all the same length, and tada!

Okay, my second craft. Super easy. Buy wooden letters from the craft store. I bought a "U", "S", and "A" well, because it's the 4th of July.

So you'll need wooden letters, red and blue paint, mod podge, and sponge brushes. I painted the "U" red (I know, for us BYU fans, this is an abomination but I didn't even realize what I'd done until after I painted it and my husband pointed it out). I painted the "A" blue and then after a few coats and the letters were dry, I mod podge the two letters to make them shine and seal the paint. I left the "S" white, how it came, and you're done.

And my last craft, are the fire crackers! Click HERE for my inspiration.

You'll need tubes (I used a paper towel roll, Pringles containers, and a baby cracker container), patriotic paper, stickers (letters, stars, etc.), ribbon, silver pipe cleaners, and tape (double sided is the best so you can't see all the tape but I ran out so I just used regular). Tubes with lids are easier too because then you have somewhere to stick the pipe cleaners.

So first, you'll wrap the tubes with paper and then tape closed. Replace lid.

Then using stickers and ribbon, decorate each tube to your heart's content.

Last, I wrapped the pipe cleaners around my fingers to curl them and then pulled the curl out, so it's not too tight. Then I poked a hole in each lid and put 3 pipe cleaners in each lid. For the paper towel roll, I just taped the pipe cleaners to the inside of the roll.

And voila. Your very own fire crackers!

And here is my finished mantle.

The banner and circle fans I bought at Dollar Tree. Click HERE for my subway art. I printed one off for each holiday.

Happy Independence Day and GOD BLESS AMERICA!!

Teacher Appreciation Gifts 2014

This week* has been Teacher Appreciation Week in our school district.  As such, I wanted to make something fun for my kids teachers, and I wanted to actually make it.  I think that homemade gifts are so much fun and a little more meaningful.  And considering that I really slacked off the last two years (two years ago we were preparing to move and last year I was in the midst of morning sickness), I really wanted to make them.  However, as previously mentioned (see this post), I don't have a lot of time.  So, I went to good ol' Pinterest to get some great ideas.  I found two that I really liked, so I let my daughters decide which ones they wanted.  Of course, they each picked a different one.  But that was okay with me because I really did want to make them both, and they were both such easy things that it wasn't going to be a hassle.  Here they are:

Dum Dum Bouquet

My second daughter wanted me to make Dum Dum Bouquets for her teachers (her real teacher is out on maternity leave, so she has a long term sub; we made one for each of them).  They were easy to make and only used a few items.  You can the inspiration for them here.

You will need:

• Flower Pot
• Styrofoam Ball (I used a 5 in)
• 1 1/2 1-lb Bags of Dum Dums (the original instructions called for one bag, but I found that 1 1-lb bag wasn't enough; I used about half a bag to finish it.  Since I made two bouquets, three bags was the perfect amount. leaving a few for my kids to eat)

Here is everything you need:

1. Place your Styrofoam ball in the flower pot.

2. Starting on the top, stab the sucker sticks into the Styrofoam.  Tip: Make sure you place them going straight down so that the sticks don't block each other later on.

3.  Working from the center, keep adding the suckers close together so you don't see the green (Don't try to do each side at a time; I tried this and it caused the ball and suckers to fall over from the weight).

4.  You will eventually run out of space and then it will look like a cute bouquet.

5. Now you need a cute saying to go with your bouquet.  I used Paint.net and made 2.5-in circles with read "Thank you for helping me GROW this year, so I won't be a DUM-DUM."

6. Cut your note out, attach it to cutesy scrapbook paper and a craft stick, and then push it into your bouquet.  Voila!  You have a fun and easy teacher appreciation git.

Gift Cups

My oldest daughter wanted to make the gift cups for her teachers (she has her regular teacher, plus her advanced math teacher) and my second daughter wanted to make one for her speech teacher, so we made three of these.  They are even easier than the Dum Dum Bouquets.  You can see the post that I stole the idea from here.

You will need:

• Reusable lidded cup w/straw
• Individual serving size drink mix packages
• Ribbon
• Printed Quotes (from linked website)

Everything you need:

1.  Place the drink mix packets in the cup.

2.  This is the hard part: screw the lid back on.

3.  Use the ribbon to tie the printed tag around the cup....Annnnnnnddddd you're done!

These were two simple and cute gifts that we did out our house this year to show our teachers how much we appreciate them.

*This post was started last week, but once again life got in the way and I'm only now finishing it.  Sorry if your Teacher Appreciation Week has already come and gone.  You can always pin this to use next year!

Easter, Easter I've Been Thinking

The Monday before Easter, we decorated eggs. We went a different route this year and I think it will be a few years before we try this again because it is a little messy especially with a 3 year old. You will need hard boiled eggs (obviously), glitter, glue dots, and a permanent marker.

First stick a glue dot onto an egg.

Then place the egg/glue dot into glitter.

Then using more glue dots, glitter, and a marker, create awesome looking eggs.

Can you tell she had fun?

Next, I decided to make baskets for my girls this year and I love how these turned out. I call them tutu baskets.

You will need: baskets (I got mine at Dollar Tree), scissors, and tulle (I bought 2 yards each of 6 different colors). And really that amount came out perfectly. I actually went back and bought more thinking I wasn't going to have enough but now I'm stuck with a lot of tulle that can't be returned. Oh well, I'm sure I can find some other project I can use the tulle for.

So first things first. I folded the tulle in half so that I could cut more strips at a time. And now you cut strips and strips of tulle. Mine were about an inch thick though it doesn't matter if they are all cut the same size because you can't tell. All that tulle hides lots of mistakes, which is nice. Anyway, the cutting was my least favorite part, but probably because I cut it on my carpet so I had a hard time seeing all the layers to make sure I cut through them all. Oh and I only used 3 colors per basket, so I had a purple basket and a pink basket at the end.

So as you know, all material including tulle comes folded in half already. So once you have your strips cut you're going to want to cut along the fold so that each strip now becomes 2 strips.

Then find the middle of the strip and fold in half and thread the fold through the basket but don't pull it all the way through.

Open the strip in the middle creating a hole and pull the two ends of the strip through the hole, essentially creating a knot.

Pull until the tulle lays flat around the basket's edge.

Keep doing this all around the basket alternating your 3 different colors.

And now you're done and you can enjoy your new baskets.  Go find some eggs!

Next up are my place settings for Easter dinner. I took on the feast this year so my aunt could have a break. She does dinner every Sunday/holiday so I think she really deserved it. Anyway, I wanted to make it look fun so I made a craft. You will need: mini flower pots, moss, mini eggs, and a glue gun. The eggs and pots I found at Dollar Tree.  The moss is at any craft store.

Place some moss in the pots and then glue the eggs to the moss. Done!

Last, sticking with my egg theme from the place settings above, are my cupcakes for Easter dinner. Click HERE for my inspiration. Mine definitely did not come out as cute as my inspiration because I didn't have the right frosting tip or cute little flowers but I still like how they came out. I just used a box cake mix and made regular cupcakes. I dyed vanilla frosting brown (if you're wondering why I didn't just buy chocolate frosting, I didn't want it to be too chocolatey, you know chocolate cake with chocolate frosting is just too much for some people), frosted the cupcakes, and then placed some Cadbury Mini Eggs on top. Delicious!