PB Inspired Moss Basket

The Decoupaged Easter Eggs I shared the other day, needed a home.  I knew that I'd be using them on my Spring/Easter mantel, but I didn't want to just set them on the mantel.  They needed a proper nest.  I had a bunch of moss leftover from my Pottery Barn Inspired Moss Monogram, and I went back to the Pottery Barn catalog for some inspiration.  This fantastic basket is $89 in the catalog.

I looked around for an appropriate basket to mossify.  Here's one from a previous Easter.  The basket shape isn't the same, but I love that it's big swooping handle is a similar shape.

I grabbed some more of that dollar store reindeer moss,

and started up my glue gun.  I glued clumps of moss on, and filled in with random bits.

After completely covering the basket and handle, I filled the basket with some spanish moss, also from the dollar store.  And here she is on my mantel(excuse the dust) with the eggs nested inside.  I'm still futzing around with my mantel arrangement, but expect more pics to come.

This entire project, including the eggs, cost about $3 in moss(2 bags of reindeer moss & 1 bag of spanish moss,) although I have tons of the spanish moss left. 

Thanks for popping in and crafting with me.  I'm linking this up to House of Hepworth's Hook Up,  Just a Girl's Show & Share Day, and Decor to Adore's Spring Linky Party.

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Fruit Spread Pastries

I love making desserts with puff pastry, because they're so easy to put together, and always impress.  I made Mango-Passion Fruit Pastries the other day for my Poker Party Buffet spread.

Here's how you make them.  I start by beating together 4 oz(1/2 brick) of cream cheese with 1/4 cup honey.

Here it is all combined.  You can skip this step if you happen to have some mascarpone in your frig, just use that.

I cut off about 1/5 of my GF Puff Pastry recipe for this.

Beat on it with your rolling pin, then roll it out to a roughly 10"x16" rectangle.

Trim off the edges.

Using your pizza cutter, cut into 15 squares.

Spread a rounded teaspoon of the cream cheese mixture across each square.

Add a teaspoon of fruit spread on top.  I had a jar of mango-passionfruit preserves on hand.

Dot opposing corners with eggwash.

Pull up on the corners and press together.

Fold the corners over and crimp them together.  After they're all assembled place in the frig to chill for 20 minutes.

Bake in a preheated 400 oven for 20 minutes.

If I'm making more than one variety of fruit pastry, I like them to be different shapes.  This way no one is surprised when two similar colored jams are used - like tart cherry, and raspberry.  For my raspberry pastries, follow the steps from above ending with adding the fruit spread on top.

Using a paring knife, cut diagonally in from the corners of the squares.

Pull a corner up, brush with egg wash, skip a section and pull the next corner up, continue around.

This will create a pinwheel.(Sorry about the blurriness of these last pics, I think I got some flour on the lens.)  These also are chilled before baking.

Thanks for popping in and baking with me.  I'm linking this up to Simply Sugar and Gluten-Free's Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays,  Gluten-Free Homemaker's Gluten-Free Wednesdays, and Little Big Ranch's Foodie Friday.

Decoupaged Easter Eggs

I love Easter eggs. Decorating them with the kids each year just before Easter is always fun. I also like how they look sprinkled around the house as decor. I decided to decoupage a few for my mantel this year.

I started with your basic plastic Easter eggs. Our house has a million of these, but you can buy them from the dollar store.  You can tape around the center if yours don't fit properly, but the decoupaged paper will hold them, too.

I had some world map tissue paper leftover from some other project.

I tore it into small chunks, and decoupaged it onto the eggs. The gold standard for decoupage mediums is Mod Podge, but if you don't have any watered down white glue will work in a pinch. Don't worry about the ridges and bubbles, smooth them out as best you can with your paint brush, they flatten out a bit as they dry.

I also used some sheet music. I used a page from the back of the intermediate book, that I was fairly certain WD would never play.

Since this was new sheet music vs vintage, it was entirely too bright of a white next to the muddied down colors of the map tissue papered eggs.  I grabbed some acrylic paint in Espresso Bean,

watered it down,

and brushed it onto the sheet music covered eggs,

then blotted at them with a paper towel. You can see the contrast with the bright white.

This entire project cost me nothing, because I had all of the stuff on hand.  These will be going on the mantel with another Pottery Barn inspired moss project.

Thanks for popping in and crafting with me.  I'm linking these up to Between Naps on the Porch's Metamorphosis Monday, and A Soft Place to Land's Map Party.