How to Etch Glass!

We're etching glass tonight!  

Email pictures of your etching work to hallmpictures@gmail.com if you want me to add it to the blog as examples!! :)

Here's instructions in case you want to do more etching later! :)
I will say that small, detailed images are difficult.... :)

You need:

Contact Paper

Clear Glass

Armor Etch etching cream

cheap paintbrush

something to trace (image, monogram)

sharpie

masking tape

rubber gloves

X-Acto knife

Step 1

Tape a piece of contact paper (still on the paper backing) over the image or letter you are tracing.

Step 2

Trace the image with a sharpie.  I find it helpful to fill in all of the areas that you want to be frosted so you know what to cut out later.  Place the sticker on the glass where you want the image to be.

Step 3

Can you see the lines where I cut around the image with an X-Acto knife?

That's what you should do! Trace around the image/letter.

Step 4

Start peeling away the contact paper to uncover the part of the glass that you want to be etched (or frosted).

Step 5

Looking at the glass now, everything that is uncovered will be etched and everything covered will stay as it is.

Step 6

Wear gloves for this part!!  Start painting the ArmorEtch onto the contact paper.  Make sure to cover the areas you want etched.

Step 7

Let sit for 5-10 minutes

Step 8

Rinse in the sink (still wearing your gloves).  Remove all the contact paper and your glass is done!

Family Photos is Updated...and it's SOOOO quiet right now!

The Family Photos Page is updated with pictures from our Thanksgiving dinner Wednesday night!
We had turkey (thick sliced from the deli, heated in the oven with gravy! Great way to make turkey without cooking for 5 and a half days!), macaroni and cheese, rolls, cranberry sauce (berry and jelly), sweet potato casserole, broccoli salad from the Wal-Mart deli, green beans, creamed white corn, stuffing, pecan pie, and apple pie!  It was a lot of fun!

Now, everyone has left for Thanksgiving break...and it is so quiet in this building!  I think the oddest thing is walking through the second floor lobby and not seeing at least one person watching tv or studying!!  I hope you all have a great break! Get lots of rest before Finals and be careful traveling this week! :)

~wendy

Us after our first volleyball game :)

This week's update!

Last Thursday a bunch of the Hall M Ladies got dressed up to hand out candy to the Faculty and Staff's children who come around to the lobbies.

Meet a majorette from our rival school, the Morton Salt girl, Jelly Belly jelly beans, The First Lady/Future President, and the Blue M&M :)

And we decorated our lobby! (You can kinda see some of the spider webs in the background!)

 

It was so much fun! :)

Tonight we worked on our banner for Homecoming and it looks great!! :)

Our skit is going to be dancing to MC Hammer's song...

Can you tell that Aubie is wearing MC Hammer's gold pants? :)

Basically, our skit was inspired by this video on Julia's blog (Lettuce Right):

Hammer Time Mob Dance

What's been going on in Hall M these days?

Last week we celebrated Breast Cancer Awareness Month by having a "Think Pink" party!
We ate all sorts of pink snacks and had information about breast cancer available to read.
One of the snacks we had was Yoplait yogurt. We're saving the lids to send in to help raise money for breast cancer research! Here's a collage of pictures from the night! (Check the "Pictures" tab to see all the pictures.)

Later in the week we had October Family Dinner!

The girls made mashed potatoes, green beans, toast, rice, and veggie stew.  Everything disappeared pretty quickly! :) We had a "how to make oreo balls" lesson after dinner!

PINK PARTY!!!

Soooo pink party=SUCCESS!

We had cupcakes, oreo balls, Hawaiian Punch, and Yoplait Yogurt!
We also made awesome bracelets and buttons!

The best part....well if you insist on know was DRESSING IN PINK!!! :)

Chicken & Corn Casserole (AKA WendyJulia Casserole according to JKL)

This casserole was inspired by a casserole Adam's mom has made in the past and it's always good!

One of the girls in my building wanted to try a casserole using the ingredients in the fridge, so this was the result!

Preheat oven to 375*.  Put 2 cans Cream of Chicken and 2 cups of milk into a mixing bowl.
Add a bag or two of frozen corn (depending on how much corn you want!)
Boil 2 chicken breasts (or use 2 cans of cooked chicken). Cut up and add to the mixture.
Cook 2-3 cups of rice and add to the mixture.  Pour into two (1.5 qt) casserole dishes (this makes quite a bit!)
Cover with crumbled crackers and shredded cheese.  Bake about 20-25 minutes or until the mixture is bubbly around the edges. (If the casserole has more rice, it won't be very bubbly...so pull it out when the cheese is good and melted!)

A casserole tends to look like a casserole....hahahah, but here it is!!! :)

Banana Cupcakes with Chocolate Chips and Peanut Butter Buttercream Icing

How's that for a title? :) :)

Emily and I got a little creative last night.  Once again, we had some bananas that needed eaten (maybe we should start eating more bananas?? :) ) And we wanted to make something we've never made before.  Here's the result! :)

DE*LI*CIOUS

Funny story how we came up with this recipe.  We decided to make banana cupcakes and then realized we had no eggs.  We looked up egg subsitutes and found out that one banana is a sub for one egg. Perfect!  Our cake mix called for 3 eggs and we had 3 bananas.

Banana Cupcakes

Using a Golden Yellow Cake mix (we used Betty Crocker), follow the instructions but leave out the eggs and add in three smushed bananas instead!  It's that easy! :)

Yummy Batter...that's safe to eat because it's egg-free!!!!

Peanut Butter Buttercream Icing

(Basically buttercream icing plus 2 cups of peanut butter minus the vanilla extract.)

4 cups confectioner's sugar

1/4 cup milk

1 stick of butter (softened)

2 cups peanut butter

Mix it all up! If it's a little too thick, add in a splash of milk.  If it's a little too thin, add a little more confectioner's sugar.  The humidity tends to have an effect on whether you need to add one, the other, or neither.

And here's where the chocolate chips come in!

You can either drop the chips onto the cupcakes before they cook, or wait and drop them on right after they come out of the oven.  They'll melt a little and you can spread them on the top of the cupcakes.

And Ice them when they're cool! :)

We found out it's easier to ice them after you take them out of the pan...otherwise you get a lot of icing on your hands when you try to get them out of the pan!

Banana Fritters

One of my residents and I both had some bananas that needed to be gotten rid of...so we looked up some interesting recipes for bananas while we watched the game tonight.  We loved the idea of Banana Icing, Banana Sorbet, and Banana Apple cupcakes...but we settled on Banana Fritters! :)

We found the recipe at allrecipes.com Here's a link and a screenprint! :) (Click the image to make it bigger).
We wound up using the good parts from four very ripe bananas rather than the two bananas it suggested.

And of course...pictures! :)

How cute sitting in pretty chocolate...

These were the funny looking ones while they were frying, but still yummy. :)

YUMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We got a little photo crazy waiting on the rest to fry...

And when the oil got a little low...we made a Funnel Cake!!!!! :)

Beth showing off her fritter arranging skills! :)

Wonderful.

How pretty. :)

Relatively Unique

Honey Nut Chicken

One of my residents had been talking about how wonderful this recipe was that her mom found on the Food Network website.  It's delicious! :)  Honey Nut Chicken with Barbecued Succotash from Rachael Ray. Yum. :)  I'm not going to rewrite the recipe here because it's very well written at the original website.  The only thing we changed was that we didn't include the hot sauce.  Instead of the Montreal Seasoning by McCormick that the recipe recommended, we used the Israeli Spice Rub from Rachael Ray's website.  My grandmother had mixed up some of this a while back and it's really good! :)  For the barbecued succotash, we used a yellow onion instead of a red onion and left out the red bell pepper.

PS I saw on the Food Network site that you can print the recipes as notecard sizes.  Here's a link to the recipe card size Honey Nut Chicken if you want to put it in a recipe box or a recipe binder ((Julia...that's your cue to hit print when you pick out a box or a binder. :) ))

I Love my Girls!

I feel like I say this all the time...but I love the girls in my building.  This is my fifth year on staff and this year, the community in my building is so much stronger than any other year and it's evident to everyone!  There is almost always someone in the lobby cooking, studying, or just watching YouTube videos waiting on someone to join them!  This is the first year that we've kept the kitchen stocked with a variety of cookware and dishes because everyone uses them!! We also keep dish soap and a dish rag in there because people are washing their dishes when they are done! This may not seem like that novel of an idea, but last year I found myself washing abandoned dishes in the kitchen way too frequently because otherwise, the sink would stay stopped up with food and the dishes would sit in the sink and start to smell up that end of the second floor.  This just isn't the case this year!  Megan told me at the beginning of the year that she prayed for our residents during the summer, before we met them and God has really answered both of our prayers and given us such a great group of residents.  Granted, every single moment may not be peachy, all the good is most definitely out-weighing the bad.    At the end of the year last year, I was sad to see a lot of the "frequent lobby dwellers" move on to apartments, other schools, or to move in with sorority sisters.  I know it's not going to be any different this year!

I said all that to say....Saturday night three of my girls went shopping and came back with supplies to make a rainbow dinosaur cake.  They came and knocked on my door to come watch (I was the photographer) and as other residents came through to warm up their dinner, they started hanging out as well!

Anywho...enough rambling...let's see how much fun they had. :) :)

I know this looks a little staged, everyone circling around the cake...but it wasn't!! :)

And....collages are my new favorite way to upload a bazillion pictures at once...with style! :)

Banana Oatmeal Cookies

I made these tonight/early this morning while a group of us were hanging out in the lobby.  I had some bananas that weren't going to make it through the night....so we did a little cooking.  I found a recipe for banana oatmeal cookies and we tweaked it (I always tend to do that!)

3/4 cup oatmeal

3/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup milk

1 tsp cinnamon

3/4 cup veggie oil

1 egg

1 tsp nutmeg all spice (I was out of nutmeg and the all spice smelled intriguing)

2 small very ripe bananas

1 1/2 cup flour

Preheat oven to 350*F.

Combine ingredients in order listed.  (A hand mixer comes in handy for helping the bananas mush).

Drop by the tablespoonfuls onto an aluminum-foil covered cookie sheet (the best way to cut down on dishes).

Bake 10-15 minutes (11 worked perfect for me with two pans in the oven).

So Yummy....and approved by my residents!!! :)

Relatively Unique

Construction in my "front yard"

This is what I've been hearing while I'm in deep slumber at 6:30 in the morning....construction in my "front yard." And by "front yard" I mean, the parking lot haha.  They've been working on the sewage system or something for the last month, and they're about finished! They're going to move to the other parking lot next week, which means I won't hear it in the morning haha! (And I'm hoping they'll repave that parking lot! It was needing it really bad!!)

Isn't that artsy?? :) I thought so! :) I was trying to capture as many of the trucks there, but the picture was taken during their lunch break...so there wasn't much going on.

Oreo Balls (my sister's specialty)

My sister started making these oreo balls a few Christmas' ago to take to my Grandmother's house.  They are soooo good.  The other day, the other RA in my building made Cake Balls (delicious.) and some residents started talking about how great oreo balls would be one day.  I picked up the hint! We're having them at a floor mingler where we're playing "People Bingo."  We're not using the same board that's in that link, but you get the drift!

So...here's how to make oreo balls :)

1 package of oreos
1 8oz package cream cheese
1 package white almond bar

Put the cream cheese in a bowl and let it start to soften while you make good use of your food processor for the next few minutes.  Put your oreos in your food processor and chop 'em up till they're tiny.  After I finished, I realized it probably would have been a good idea to crush them in a ziploc bag beforehand, but oh well!  Once they're all crumbs, add the oreos to your cream cheese and mix it as well as you can. (I did this pat slowly, adding about 8 or 10 crushed oreos at a time).  You'll get to a point where you just can't mix with a spoon anymore, so push up your sleeves, put on your apron and mix with your hands.

Once everything is mixed nicely,  roll the mixture into about 1 inch balls.  (I used a melon scoop to make them about the same size).  Chill them in the refrigerator about one hour.  Just before you take the oreo balls out, melt your delicious almond bar.  Now coat the oreo balls and let them set to harden before eating sampling serving. :)  I think when my sister does this, she rolls them in the bowl with the melted almond bar, but I stuck a toothpick in them and used that to dip them and pull them back out.  I made two batches and came up with 75 oreo balls.  Perfect for the 26 people that came to my activity tonight!!!

Oreos in the food processer

Mixing oreos and cream cheese

yummmmmm

oreo balls minus chocolate

Yummy yummy yummy yummy

Some of the people left when I remembered to get a group picture

Relatively Unique

Week Recap! :)

Ok so sorry my only blog this week was a picture of a cup of coffee...but the first week with residents/week of training doesn't leave much time to do any creative cooking or sewing to blog about.  So let's see...what did I do this week?

Sunday - Rested and relaxed in my apartment with Megan...watching Netflix and periodically checking on the girls who had moved in (although they were all pretty busy for the most part).
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Monday - Training. I got a new book to read too (Three Cups of Tea).  Every incoming student at Auburn (whether they are a Freshman or Transfer student) was assigned to read this book because some of their introductory classes are supposed to incorporate the book into lesson plans.  Since I have a pretty large group of incoming students this year, my boss gave me (and the rest of the staff members) a copy of the book to read.
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Tuesday - Training.  We learned about our new online system for submitting documents and such for work! I like it! :)
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Wednesday - Training.  Listened to some guest speakers who gave us information about on-campus services

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Thursday - Training.  We did a really neat activity called "The Story of Us" where everyone in the group (about seven of us) shared whatever we wanted with everyone about our life story.  We did a lot of laughing, but a good bit of crying too.  I definitely got to know those folks better! :)

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Friday - Training.  We listened to a couple of police officers talk about safety on campus.  We then did an activity called "Behind Closed Doors" where the returning RAs act out scenarios that new RAs may encounter  in their first year and the new RAs get a chance to practice comforting residents, approaching residents, and referring residents.

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Saturday - Check-Ins!!!! :)  We didn't have very many check-in today because almost everyone was here already!! :)  Megan and I also cleaned out our office again and rearranged it so it's more like an "office" and less like a "storage closet."

Saturday night was the most fun I'm sure!!  We cooked up a pasta feast for our girls who didn't have plans tonight and had "Family Game Night."  We had 25 girls come to dinner! It was an absolute blast and everyone seemed like they were having so much fun! When everyone was getting ready to leave they were all swapping phone numbers.  Seeing that makes me smile and remember why I love my job. :)  Not that I forgot, but when you don't have your regular residents for about three months, you really get to missing having girls hanging out in the lobby.

Anywho, now that I've gotten you completely caught up in what's likely my longest blog entry ever, I'll leave you with some pictures from this week. :) (mostly tonight obviously!)

Cupcakes we made last Saturday for check-ins...inspired by M&Ms :)

Maybe not the prettiest way, but for sure the easiest way to cook Marinara and Alfredo sauce to feed 25 people....especially if you're trying to cook noodles and toast for all those people at the same time!!

Side note: The crock-pot on the left was a wedding gift my parents were given when they got married...and the one on the right was a wedding gift Adam and I got when we got married!

Look at all those girls! :) This is 16 of the people who came.  Before the end of the night, we had 25 people!  When 1/4 of your building come to an activity, that's AWESOME! Especially when they don't know each other for the most part! :) :) It just put smiles all over mine and Megan's face! :)