Banana Nut Bread

Here's a recipe from a family friend that I love to use when I don't eat all the bananas I've bought before they have ripened too much. It's really simple and very delicious.
Here's what you need:



1/2 cup butter (1 stick)

1 1/2 cup sugar

2 eggs

4 mashed bananas (I used 3 large ones)*also it's best when bananas have browned a bit

4 Tbs buttermilk

1 1/2 cup sifted flour

1 tsp baking soda

2 tsp vanilla

1 cup nuts (pecans or walnuts)

First you'll need to preheat your oven to 300 degrees.

Next mash your bananas with a large spoon. They should look like this:

(yummy, right?)



Now mix all ingredients together and bake in a loaf pan for about 40 minutes. If you use 2 smaller loaf pans then bake it for 25-30 minutes.





Remove from oven and with a fork, punch several holes in the bread.
Now for the part that makes it so mouthwatering....the topping!


Here's what you need:


2 Tbs butter

1/3 cup brown sugar

3 to 4 Tbs milk



Combine ingredients in small saucepan and bring to a boil. Pour over warm bread.



ENJOY!

Trash into Treasure

So my first real post I'm going to share Cory & my latest project. This past Saturday I enticed Cory (with a Burger King breakfast) to wake up early and go to some yard/estate sales with me to find a project to do. We drove around to a few places and scoped it out from the car. We were looking for furniture and most yard sales were capitalizing on old clothes and nick knacks. We also noticed that some of the estate sales were in houses that looked pretty rough on the outside so we definitely judged the book by the cover and figured if the outside looked that shabby, the stuff inside probably wasn't much better. We finally found an estate sale that had a pretty well kept house. We decided to go inside to look around. As we walked up the pathway there were some decent pieces of furniture so I was even more hopeful that we would find something. Well, the "don't judge a book by the cover"thing is right. As soon as we walked in the house reeked of moth balls and smoke. The house wasn't totally disgusting but it was definitely lived in. We walked around and noticed a little side table that had some books piled on top of it as we were going into the bedroom. The price tag said it was $5 so I kept it in the back of my mind. As we were wondering around the smelly bedroom Cory said, "Maybe we could get if for $4". I was excited to see that he was thinking about the table too. We walked back to the table's location and one of the people running the sale came over to us and started getting the books off the top of the table so we could get a good look. That's when we discovered an awful water spot on the top of the table. She said she would take $2 for it so Cory & I shrugged our shoulders and said, "Sure, we'll take it". She probably would've just given it to us for 50 cents but we're not good at bargaining. As we took our new table to the car we brainstormed on how we could "pretty it up". We also noticed that the horrible smell of the house was buried in our project.

Here's a few pictures of the table when we got home:

The top looked pretty rough.

Here's the top after some sanding. We had to fill the cracks with wood filler.

Luckily the front panel of the drawer was only held on to the rest of the drawer with a few staples, so we just popped it off.

Before:

After:

After some sanding, cleaning and painting many coats of primer/paint (to cover up the rather nasty smell) we were done.

Here's the finished product! We added some "feet" to it as well.

Here's a close-up of the super classy new pull we put on the drawer.

Project expenses
Table: $2
Paint: $4.47
Wooden feet & hardware for it: aprox $12
Pull: $3.97
Sandpaper: $4.47
Wood filler:$2.97 (which we realized we already had at home)

We had wood glue (to fix part of the drawer), paint brushes, and the tools on hand already, so the total cost of our table was about $33.85. Not too bad. :)

Third Time's the Charm?

So, this is take 3 on starting a blog. I started one when I first got married (2 years ago) and that lasted about two weeks. Then later my husband and I tried it again and it lasted about 1 month. Here's hoping that this blog continues longer than the others. I am starting this blog to share about craft projects, some recipes, and a little about my life. My husband, Cory, will also post some things on here from time to time. I guess that's it for now. I hope you have a dandy day! :)