Monthly Archives: May 2012

Dessert Bar & Party Planning

May 23, 2012   Fashion, Food, Minnesota Activities, Shopping
Macy and I had our Thirty-One purse/bag party last night. It was awesome and we honestly love their products so much! But we also love throwing little parties for our girlfriends and family… We bake up a storm, throw together drinks, and put on a big display. It’s a passion. We’re a pair of party planners I guess! But we love it.

As for the Thirty-One bags, seriously, check them out because there is a bag for any activity that us Minnesotans do! Going to the cabin, visiting friends, crafting, shopping, all that fun stuff! When we get our bags I will post a photo of them! They’re customized too! Loves it.
Anyways here is a few photos of the evening and our party dessert bar!
Of course, since Macy and I are still trying to be health conscious, we had to add in fruit kabobs. Delicious! And beautiful. We put in strawberries, pineapple, and peaches. Colorful and yummy, yes please!
Also included in the buffet, we had (from bottom to top) pound cake with Macy’s new rhubarb sauce, strawberry cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, brownies (with and without powdered sugar) and of course the kabobs.
What is a party without punch, coffee and tea?
The show was a hit, and everyone had fun so we have labeled it a success! :)
Now, onto the next one I suppose! Hehe
Hearts,
Ruby

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Making Homemade Wine

May 23, 2012   Crafts, Dining, Food
So I meant to post a while back when the hubs and I finally bottled our wine. I told you we were making our own wine, right? Anyway, it was a really fun process and I think we will be doing it again. We ended up choosing a sweet red wine for our first batch and it made 30 bottles! Yowza, we got gifts for a while ;) ;

I wanted to share the pics because it was pretty cool!

Here are the bottles before we corked them. ;

Here is the hubby filling them up with the siphon.
And apparently i dont have as many pics as i thought! Lol and I don’t have any pics of them corked and labeled yet but I will get those! ;

So much fun, but we have to wait about three months until we an taste it… Hope it was worth it!
Hearts, ;
Ruby
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Rhubarb Love – Follow up to Pinterest Inspires

May 21, 2012   Family, Food

Alright ladies, as promised, I am filling you all in on how things went with the mound of rhubarb I got from the garden! So was it another one for the ‘Pinterest Success’ record books?? I am happy to say, YES!!! I didn’t know this before but I am in LOVE with rhubarb! Also, did you know it is a vegetable?!?! I didn’t either.

So, remember this bag…?

http://realhousewivesofmn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/blog-image3.jpg

This is what it looks like now…

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The first thing I did was make a rhubarb sauce (I figured I’d start out easy). I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I got some great guidance from Recipetips.com. Much to my delight, I tasted it and it was amazing!!!! Then I took a little break and enjoyed it over some greek yogurt ;)

Then it was back to work. The next thing I made was rhubarb crumble. This was a little more difficult…but in the grand scheme of things, super easy! Somehow, I still managed to read the directions wrong and made it upside down, with the crumble on the bottom instead of on the top. Lucky for me, it still tastes the same!!! YUUUUMMMMMMM!!!! I might add a little powdered sugar to the top to make it look a little more appealing though! I got my recipe from The Putman Place.

In fact, this mission was such a great success that I am going to dare to make a rhubarb pie for an upcoming BBQ we are having at our house. I have to find some way to use the other 3/4 of the rhubarb plant, right???

Love, M

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Pinterest Inspires

May 20, 2012   Crafts, Fitness, Food, Home

What was life even like before Pinterest?!?! It is hard to believe the website is so new – although I do still remember tearing out pages of magazines and storing them in a little file folder. I inevitably forgot all about the folder until the next time I found a great idea in a magazine. And there the ideas sat. Never to be enacted. Then…the wonderful world of Pinterest came to life, as did the amazing, inspiring ideas posted on nicely organized boards.

Naturally, I am not a very crafty person. I don’t think I am all that creative either. This is part of the reason I love Pinterest so much! Not only does it list creative things to do, but it also links to instructions on how to do/make these things! I’ve tried several things in the past couple months – some have been great successes, some have been great failures ;)

First, I will list some of my failures:

Yarn wrapped wreath – I got the wreath half wrapped and it was already so disfigured that the garbage seemed to be the best location for it.

No-bake cookie dough dip – The first time I served this was during my daughter’s first birthday party. Mistake. While it wasn’t totally disgusting, it wasn’t great. And definitely not party worthy. The main ingredient is chickpeas. Not-so-good.

Pan lid storage rack - For this one, I searched and searched for the perfect size wire magazine rack to put in my pan cupboard to neatly store the lids. It was going to be beautifully, perfectly organized. Not exactly. The rack didn’t quite fit in the cupboard… I had to turn it sideways to be able to fit it in. Then the lids just rolled off. Luckily it works great for holding my magazines :)

My Pinterest Successes:

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No-Bake Energy bites

A little note about this one, if you try it, I would recommend grinding the flax seed first. The texture is a little funky if you don’t. Also, flax seed packs a lot of fiber…consider yourself warned!

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Super Fat Flushing Water

Mint + Grapefruit (Note: Adds bitterness to the water, but very good for you!) + Orange (Or Tangerine)+ Cucumber

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Twine wrapped Monogram

This isn’t fully finished, but I can just tell it’s going to be a success :) I’m planning on putting it above my bed – Cute!!! (In case you are wondering why the yarn and twine are in a tangled mess, my dogs thought it would be fun to unravel them and drag them around the house…nice, right?)

And… planned for tomorrow, I need to skim Pinterest for how to use a whole gallon bag full of rhubarb from my garden!!! I’ll let you all know how it turns out!

Hopefully I can add this to my Pinterest success! I’d love to hear about your Pinterest Wins/losses! What was a great idea? What is something we shouldn’t bother trying?

Love, M

P.S. More Pinterest ideas trial and error coming soon!

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Cheerios Gets a New Look! {Review & Giveaway!}

May 17, 2012   Deals, Family, Food, Freebies, Shopping

I was happily surprised when I received a sample of the Cheerios in the mail the other day. Obviously Cheerios and I go way back, back to my youth. But they’ve changed a little bit on me.

No, not the taste. They still taste amazing! But the box has switched it up a bit. Now when you purchase them at a bulk store (like Costco, Sam’s Club, BJ’s) you’ll get your cheerios with TWO big boxes packaged together. The new “2 box Cheerios” contains two individual boxes, which is made to make it easier to store and easier to pour.

I personally enjoyed the new 2 box system, it was definitely easy to store. Poured just as easy as ever! But they did have some extra perks too. They include:

  • Decreasing the amount of air in the bags, so that they can fit 10% more cereal than before, and it uses less packaging.
  • While each box contains more cereal, packaging is reduced by over 200,000 pounds, saving 1,000 trees and taking 130 Cheerios trucks off the road which ultimately decreases CO2 emissions.

Want to see what I mean? Check it out:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAMfnOBxbVc]

If you want more info on all this, you can check out the Cheerios website, and be sure to check out their Facebook page.

WIN SOME CHEERIOS!

And it gets better!! Do you want to win some of these delicious Cheerios packs? You can! We will be choosing TWO winners to win TWO of these 2 box Cheerios! (That makes FOUR boxes of Cheerios per winner!) Isn’t that awesome!? We think so!! So here’s how you enter… And don’t forget to leave a NEW entry for each action you take for multiple entries to let us know that you completed them!

  1. Follow us on Twitter: @MNHousewives
  2. Send a tweet saying: “The @MNHousewives are giving away a big stash of @Cheerios via #MyBlogSpark! I entered here: http://bit.ly/JUGz39″
  3. Become our fan on Facebook! http://www.facebook.com/RealHousewivesofMN
  4. Leave a comment on how you would use your 2 new boxes of Cheerios.

The contest will end May 24th, 2012 at 7:00pm! Be sure to enter by then!

Disclosure: Cheerios® cereal, information, and giveaway have been provided by General Mills through MyBlogSpark.

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