Name: Blueberry Hand Pies Recipe
Yield: 8 people
Ingredients: 1 cup blueberries (can be fresh or frozen); 1/8 cup white sugar (plus a little extra for sprinkling); 2 tbsp water; 1 tsp cornstarch; 2 round pre-made pie crusts; 1 egg

Beach Fun and Finds

September 27, 2018 by Jessica 3 Comments

This summer has been one for the books! We took a lot of time during this transition to enjoy our new surroundings and that meant quite a few beach trips. The girls really enjoyed going so we were inspired to go at least once a week. While they enjoyed playing in the sand and water, my favorite part was looking around for sea glass and interesting shells and such. I have just always loved the “hunt.” Whether it is thrifting, looking for crystals in the mountains, or looking for sea glass on the beach….. I really enjoy it.

This above shell was from our very first beach trip this summer. Not too much, but it got me (and even my husband and daughters) into making the hunt a part of our beach time.

Of course, I mainly look for sea glass as I have ideas for it, but I also think it’s fun to find interesting textures and colors. Even broken down things can be beautiful when you can see them that way. In the above picture, the pretty blue chunky piece was actually gifted to me as I was searching the beach. A passerby asked if I was looking for sea glass and I said yes and he gifted me the gorgeous piece. Made my day 🙂

Another day we were all excited to see all kinds of sea sponges that had washed up on the shore. The girls really thought it was neat and my oldest found this empty horse crab shell to put her finds in.

Now my husband has found the most unique pieces so far….pottery!!!! Both pieces shown in the pics. I couldn’t believe it! ha! The one who wasn’t even really looking for anything finds the cool stuff, right?

One time I found some driftwood pieces and when I got home I looked at them and felt like they all looked like types of animals! I quickly took pics of them on a white background and drew over it using an app on my ipad. This would be so fun to do for a kid to draw over, or even an adult like me!

Sometimes things wash up that are unfamiliar too. Like this creature above. We looked it up and believe it to be a blue button jellyfish. I think the hurricane pushed them up this way as it seems they are usually down in the Florida area. But they sure were pretty! It looked almost like jewelry. Nature is just the prettiest.

Now it’s time to start embracing fall. Usually I’m chomping at the bit to buy a porch full of pumpkins and decorate in all things fall, but not this year. Maybe it’s because there’s so much on our plates with working on buying a new home, getting girls adjusted to school, and all the other good stuff that happens this time of year. I still plan on taking some walks on the beach to see what I find even when the weather gets cooler though. I can’t wait until I have some time to sit down and create with some of these finds. Does anyone else enjoy combing the beach? -jess

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Barn Quilt Garden Flag Tutorial

September 13, 2018 by Jessica Leave a Comment

Have you ever seen a barn quilt? If you have not, it’s a large piece of wood that’s painted to look like a quilt or a quilt block and placed on the side of a barn. I first noticed them on a trip to Tennessee a few years ago. I thought they were so beautiful and recently I wanted to replicate it in someway. I have no barn but I have seen people create these for indoor wall art on a smaller scale. I kept thinking about ideas though. Then I thought how pretty it would be as a garden flag. I wasn’t sure how it would turn out, but I am happy to say it turned out so good! They look so pretty sitting among the plants or even on a mailbox. Though they are heavier than a fabric garden flag, the metal flag holders are stable enough to hold them. Read on for the tutorial.

Supplies:

Wood Cut in a Square Shape (I used a 1″ x 12″ x 4′ piece of whitewood and was able to cut four pieces out of it…. If you are not familiar with buying wood, note that they aren’t usually the width it says it is. For instance, it says this was 12″ wide but it’s really 11.25″, which means I had to cut them every 11.25″ instead of 12″)
Optional: Wood Stain
Paint (I used acrylic craft paint and chalk paint. I recommend the chalk paint as it goes on thicker. I only had to do two layers of paint with the chalk paint versus many more of acrylic to get the coverage I wanted.)
Small Angled Paint Brushes
2 Screw Eyes (I used the #12 x 1-3/16 in size)
2 S Hooks (the ones that are closed and look more like an 8…. I used size 1-5/8 in)
Optional: Black Spray Paint (I used Rust-Oleum Flat Protective Enamel in Black)
Outdoor Sealant (I used Minwax Spar Urethane Indoor/Outdoor Clear Semi-Gloss)
Print out of desired quilt square (Make sure it’s a square and in the size that you are making. I made mine so they were slightly under 11.25″)
Pen or Pencil
Chalk
Pliers
Other supplies: Cup with water for cleaning paint brushes/Paper Towels for clean up/Something to protect surface where you are painting

1. Find a Quilt Square that you would like to paint. I just went on Pinterest and searched “quilt square” to find images. The simpler patterns are the easiest to paint. That pineapple one took a lot longer than the others. Save the image you want and resize it to the size of your wood. The images I found had some space on the edges so when I cut it out the paper was the same size of the wood but the image was smaller.

2. Stain the wood if desired and let it dry before the next steps. I used Minwax Dark Walnut.

3. Flip the print over and use chalk to go over all of the lines of the image.

4. Flip back over and place on top of wood. Use a pen to go over all of the lines. Press down hard but not too hard that you go through the paper or make huge dents in the wood.

When you remove the paper you will be able to see the chalk lines.

5. Paint in areas with desired colors. I found that using angled brushes make for a much easier painting job. Trust me 🙂 If you can, grab a few sizes so you can find the size you like best.

6. Flip over and repeat steps 3-5 on the other side, making sure to have the pattern and colors all the same way as the first side. Then when it’s up, it looks like the same on both sides, unless of course you want to do two different things on each side.

Note: You might find you will need to do more than one coat of paint for good coverage. I discovered I liked using chalk paint better because it had better coverage and I didn’t have to do more than two coats.

Tip: I found that I could flip the wood and place on it on these painters’ tripods after the first coat so I could start painting on the second side while I waited for the first side to dry.

7. When the paint is all dry, wipe off any extra chalk with a wet paper towel. Then you will need to add two or more coats of an outdoor sealant. You can do more coats if you want, but I think two will be sufficient. If you keep these outside often, you will probably want to reapply every few months or so. This will help protect it from the outdoor elements.

8. Spray paint the metal screw eyes and s hooks if you like. I wanted them to be black so it blended it with the black flag hook we already had.

9. When those are dry, hand twist the screw eyes into the wood. I went in two inches from each side for placement.

10. Use pliers to slightly open one end of the S hooks. This makes it easy to place the flag on but it’s still closed enough that the flag won’t fall off.

11. Place the closed ends of two S hooks on the garden flag holder. Then put the S hooks through the screw eyes and slide flag into desired placement. Make sure to bring it inside if the weather is going to be bad (ex: hurricane, snow, windy, etc).

I took the above pictures so you can kind of see how it looks with each side looking the same. The colors really pop! This is such a fun project for a craft night or to make for gifts. You can pick seasonal or holiday colors to make it festive. Please make sure to share if you make one! Share on instagram and tag me and use #happytogetherbyjess so we can all see them or share on the facebook page 🙂 Happy crafting! -jess

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Church Student Room Makeover : Before and After

September 11, 2018 by Jessica Leave a Comment

If you can’t tell, I helped out with quite a few projects at our church in Louisiana. One of the bigger ones was helping spruce up the student room. This building used to be an old Kroger, so that’s where the industrial vibe comes from. Over the years there have been lots and lots of improvements (so thankful for all who helped do that!), like painting the floors, getting a new ac unit in there, etc., but it was time to take it up yet another notch to better serve the needs of the children/youth that use this room.

I yet again failed with getting the best before and after pics, but I do have some! The above picture is the before of the main countertop area. This is usually where food is set up for events and things like that.

This was my original drawing of proposed changes I turned in. As you can see, I suggested paint changes, adding a “chair rail” and baseboards, a modern bulletin board, new lights, wrap counter in wood, light up word, and a picture backdrop. They had already said they wanted to get rid of the fluorescents around the room and get ceiling lights, so to cover up that recessed space we just added painted wood trim.

These changes were very simple and very cost effective for such a large space. I was inspired by a local Starbucks for the painting scheme. They had high ceilings and had painted the bottom and very top half darker, where as the middle was lighter. It helped break up the large walls so I suggested we do something similar. It really added to the interest of the room and helped the ceiling blend in well. The lighter gray color is Sherwin Williams Icy Avalanche and the Dark Gray is Sherwin Williams Carbonized. And then for the back wall we did a green to add some color to the room.

We left the counter tops on as they were a dark gray laminate and went with the changes we were doing. We took off the galvanized metal and ripped down some plywood to create planks that we nailed on. Then we stained them in Minwax Early American and added two layers of polycrylic to protect them. This is a room where kids/youth will be, so the more durable the better!

The back wall was inspired by a project I had seen another church do that was featured on Pro Church Media. I arranged different pictures/graphics (many from Unsplash) and had them printed by Staples. I simply choose the black and white engineer prints so it cost a little over $50 for all of them. I had nailed this plywood on the wall so if they want to change this up the future the wall behind is still in good shape. I used this adhesive to keep them on. Now, you can probably tell it looks a little wrinkly…. so let’s talk about that. The reason for this is that Louisiana is super humid and this room gets the air turned off when it isn’t in use which causes paper to go crazy. But, when the air is on and it isn’t super humid it straightens back up! This type of project is definitely suited more for a temperature controlled room, but is still doable! And when some of the corners would start to peel a little, I just used a glue stick to tack it back into place.

The light fixture was a fun one to make. We bought pipe and spray painted it black. Then I used 6 plug in cord sets from Ikea to hang on it. There was an outlet on the ceiling for the previous plugged in light, so to save from having new wiring done we just plugged them all in there. And since the cords are dark and the ceiling was dark, it really isn’t noticeable at all. The lightbulbs were a variety of different Vintage style ones from Lowes.

The stage area was the corner on the other side of the room. This side had no lights besides some strung ones on the ceiling. Volunteers came and helped rip off the rest of the sheet rock on the cinder block wall, we spray painted the white pipes black so it would blend in more, that whole back wall was painted green, we re-carpeted a bunch of stages that we had and wrapped them with wood the same way we had done the counter, and added paper chains hanging from hula hoops that had been spray painted black.

When I was taking these pics, we couldn’t figure out how to do all the cool lighting so I don’t have that full effect, but it it makes the paper chains look really cool and adds to the atmosphere. The portable signs were actually non-portable ones that used to be on the main sanctuary stage. I added the supports and wheels and then cut out the word “kids” from wood and put on top of another stained piece of wood. To add a bit more color, I added some party decorations from Target across the top.

The last side to share is this back corner by the entrance. (There is still one more corner, but I sadly won’t be able to be there for the finishing of that area.) The gray paint job continued here and all galvanized metal was taken down. And although it is hard to see, we added this for baseboards. This room gets mopped so it was the most practical (and ultimately cost effective) type to use.

The bulletin board was such a fun easy thing to make! The back wood piece was from Home Depot, a 4’x8′ piece of underlayment, and I used liquid nails and also a nail gun to secure it onto the wall. Then I spray painted this rebar sheet mesh black and used screws to hold it in place. The rounded ends of the screws go over the metal bars and when strategically placed you can’t see them and this thing isn’t going anywhere.

After doing all of those projects, the back wall seemed a little bare, so one of my friend’s took our scrap wood and made these triangle shelves for me. We added some succulents for some greenery. My goal was to add even more down the road, but I wasn’t able to get to that.

Since I didn’t do the greatest on my after photos, I did find this pic from an event where you can see this corner of the room behind all the people lol.

And one more spot I totally forgot to take an after picture of! *sigh* The entrance to the room. I took this on a work day when I was putting up the lights. The door was at the end of a long long hallway and not very noticeable. I wanted it to stand out as an important room and hopefully help others who hadn’t been there before spot it more easily. I put wood all around the door which makes it stand out and also is a great place for them to post information parents/students might need to read. Then I designed this sign and Mark of City Sign & Tag Co. made it and installed it for me. This adds a little decor to the wall and makes it very clear where the student room is. Then since the ceiling lights are broken down here, I strung some lights to add some light. I ended up stapling the cord down the baseboard and under the door into the student room where they are easily plugged in.

I am forever thankful and grateful for all the people who came and helped clean out this room, paint, demo, make dump runs, and everything in between. It was a labor of love and I’m so happy that the children and youth now have a room that is even better suited for their events. As with all of my projects, I hope this inspires you to think outside of the box and know that you can create amazing things without having to spend a lot. -jess

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Maddox Home: Living Room and Entryway Makeover

August 29, 2018 by Jessica Leave a Comment

As y’all know, we moved from Louisiana back in May. It was a whirlwind and there was a lot that I wasn’t able to get done before I left. One thing that didn’t happen was to take pictures of my friend’s living room and entryway that I helped her make over. Fortunately she sent me some pics she took so I can finally share some of the projects that we worked on. I have already shared her kitchen makeover (see it here) and am excited to share this part now. If you are on instagram, you can check out #maddoxhomemakeover for some in progress pics I shared on my instagram account.

My friend really loves how Joanna Gaines and the farmhouse look she creates, so we went that type of style. It flows really well with the farmhouse style kitchen which is good since they are open to each other. It is so light and airy now!

Here are the main things we did that you can see compared to the before pics (which are below):

-We painted the walls in the living room Agreeable Gray (SW7029), the faux shiplap in Alabaster (SW 7008), and the foyer walls in Silvermist (SW 7621).

-I created a faux wood beam over the drywall drop down that separated the rooms (not sure what that is technically called?). It was so easy to do and really adds a wow factor! I was inspired by this diy wood beam by Jenna Sue Design Co. The length of the wood we ended up using to create seams where they met were a little large, so I ended up just staining some wood pieces to go over those instead of using metal. I stained them with Minwax Early American which is the same stain used on the vent hood in the kitchen.

-I ripped down some of this thin plywood to create strips to make a faux shiplap wall. Here is a great tutorial on how to do all that. It only took 2 (or maybe 3?) sheets to do this one feature wall and the entryway.

-We rearranged her furniture for better flow and shopped her house for decor. She bought a few things to add, like the big clock (from Hobby Lobby) above the tv and the corner chair (from Marshalls) and foot stool (from Wayfair), but most things were just paired down from what she already had.

-I made a sofa table to go behind her sofa. This gave her a place to add some extra lighting.

-I changed out her ceiling lights for her. She picked out this one for the living room and the foyer light came from Lowes too but I can’t find it online.

-She repainted her tv cabinet with chalk paint for a quick change.

-New curtains and curtain rods were added.

Isn’t it amazing what a difference just those changes make? I forgot to get pics of the foyer before we did that, but I believe it was the same pinkish tan color as the living room. The hooks make it a lot more functional and it’s become a cute drop off zone for their shoes and coats now. My friend still has some projects she wants to do for this space (like get new flooring), but her and her family are absolutely loving the change it made. It feels so peaceful and the amount of light they get is unreal! The colors really help make that more noticeable now too. I hope this inspires you to create and get to working on that to do list 😉 -jess

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Blueberry Hand Pies Recipe

August 22, 2018 by Jessica Leave a Comment

This summer we have found several you-pick farms to go get produce from. One of the first places we went to was a you-pick blueberry field. It was the first time my daughters (and me!) had even done that. We picked a ton of blueberries and then I came back and found some recipes to try and even put together a few things I learned to create this blueberry hand pies recipe. I have made it multiple times, playing around with different aspects until I had it down to exactly what I wanted. I was inspired by this Simple Blueberry Syrup by My Frugal Adventures and love how it is a great filling for these hand pies.

*Scroll to bottom to get full recipe*
The blueberry hand pies call for simple ingredients: blueberries, white sugar, water, cornstarch, 2 pre-made refrigerated pie crusts, and an egg.

The first thing you do is mix the cornstarch with one of the tbsp. of water.

Then you add that, the blueberries, and sugar to a sauce pan. You cook it on medium high until it is boiling, then you let it boil for 1-2 minutes. After that, you turn it down to low to let it simmer 5-6 minutes, mixing occasionally. Next you let it cool and then stick it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. You want it nice and cold for cooking.

Once the filling is cooled, pull out the refrigerated pie crusts and place on top of each other. Then cut it into eighths. I start by cutting it in half, then fourths, then eights.

Place 8 of the pieces on a parchment paper lined baking pan. (Make sure the pan has short sides in case the sauce leaks.) Then mix one egg with 1 tbsp. of water to create an egg wash. Brush the egg wash onto the edges of each piece.

Pull out the blueberry mixture and add a spoonful to each piece. I personally like this amount (as do many others who have tried these) and it uses up all of the sauce. However, my husband would prefer more filling. The problem I had with that is they seemed to leak a ton more when I really tried to cram a lot in there. So, you can totally double the blueberry mixture so you can add more and then have some leftover if you like.

Then you place the other 8 pieces on top and push down all the edges. You can use a fork to add a pretty pattern on the edge and help secure the layers together. Then brush on the egg wash on top of each piece and sprinkle on a little bit of sugar.

I baked mine for 22 minutes at 375 degrees/F, but I suggest starting to keep an eye on them around the 15 minute mark to make sure they aren’t cooking too fast.

Once they have cooled, they are such a great snack to eat by hand. We have toted these around with us on summer adventures and we have also put them on plates and topped with ice cream and whipped cream. It’s also a great recipe to make and give to others. Be inspired to use local ingredients and share with those around you. Happy baking 🙂

Blueberry Hand Pies Recipe

An easy recipe to create 8 individual blueberry hand pies.

Servings 8 people

Ingredients

1 cup blueberries can be fresh or frozen
1/8 cup white sugar plus a little extra for sprinkling
2 tbsp water
1 tsp cornstarch
2 round pre-made pie crusts
1 egg

Instructions

1. Mix the cornstarch with 1 tbsp of water.
2. Add cornstarch/water mixture, blueberries, and sugar to sauce pan. Cook on medium high until boiling. Let boil 1-2 minutes and then turn down to low for it to simmer for 5-6 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Allow blueberry mixture to cool completely and then chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
4. Once chilled, place some parchment paper onto baking tray with edges. Then turn on oven to 375 degrees/F.
5. While oven is warming up, take out the two refrigerated pie crusts and lay on top of each other. Cut into halves, then into fourths, then into eighths.
6. Place 8 of the the pieces on the parchment paper. Mix one egg with one tbsp. of water. Brush egg wash onto top edges of these 8 pieces.
7. Get blueberry mixture from fridge and add one spoonful to the middle of each piece. Then place the other 8 pieces on top of these and push down the edges all around to seal in the blueberries. Use a fork to add a decorative touch to all the edges.
8. Brush egg wash on top of all 8 hand pies and sprinkle on a little bit of sugar. Place in oven to cook for around 22 minutes. *I suggest keeping an eye on them once at 15 minutes and on until they are light brown as each oven can cook differently.* Allow to cool before handling. Eat by hand or serve with ice cream and/or whipped cream. Yum!

Recipe Notes

If you desire more filling, simply double the blueberry mixture recipe to: 2 cups blueberries, 1/4 cup sugar, 2 tbsp. water, and 2 tsp. cornstarch.I have found that they tend to leak more with the more filling in each one, but some might desire more blueberry/dough ratio.

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