recipe: perfect crispy potatoes

Okay, here's the deal. If you want amazing potatoes, you've got to do a little more than just throwing them in the oven. Don't get me wrong, while in a time crunch, the latter will do just fine and taste great. But if you want perfect crispy buttery amazing goodness, you've just got to take it a little further. Now this recipe has very few ingredients because we want the potatoes to taste like potatoes. After you master this recipe, it's fun add different herbs and seasoning. But this is the basic recipe and these potatoes will go with ANYTHING. ANY time of day. 

Perfect Crispy Potatoes

Ingredients:

- 8 medium potatoes, peeled and diced

- 1/4 cup melted butter

- 1/4 cup canola oil

- Salt

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425.

2. Put your potatoes in a pot and cover with water. Add a little salt.

3. Bring pot to a boil then reduce heat to medium for about 15 minutes.

4. Drain potatoes.

5. Put the potatoes back in the pot and swish/toss them around a bit. This will make the edges more rounded and soft. This is necessary for extra crispy-ness.

6. Mix the oil and butter and toss into the potatoes.

7. Lay the potatoes out on a baking dish in one layer.

8. Sprinkle salt on top and bake in the oven for 50 minutes. Turn the potatoes a couple times in between.

9. Serve!

xo, Savannah

Recipe adapted from here.

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diy: personalized stamp

I know you hear me saying this ALL the time BUT, we have had the supplies for this project for a while and just got around to actually using the supplies. We had bought two different types of carve-able stamps and had no idea what we were going to use them for. We just knew we wanted to make stamps. Then the need came up for an "Oh So Pretty" tag for some merchandise. So we took that opportunity to use these supplies! It's super easy, it just requires a little patience.

You will need a stamp, this is a Speedball Speedy Carve, a carving tool, a brayer and some block printing ink. You will also need a pencil and a thing permanent marker.

Sketch the design to want on paper with a pencil. Just draw it the normal way you would, no need to make it backwards.

Put the design face down and rub the back of the paper. Make sure cover the whole area, you're trying to get the pencil to rub off on the stamp.

Should look something like this! And note that it is now backwards on the stamp, as it should be.

Go over the pencil with a permanent marker.

Start carving all the space the isn't written on. This is the more tedious part.

Be patient and soon you'll make it!

I just used an xacto knife to cut the stamp down to size.

Then you just use the stamp as you would. You could put it on an ink pad but we used printing ink a brayer to apply the ink. I'm thinking about mounting the stamp on some wood to keep it more sturdy. And I have another idea for this stamp so stay tuned!

xo, Savannah

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299 no-sew ways to alter a t-shirt

I know, this may seem a little crazy... Who would sit around and think of 299 ways to alter a t-shirt? It actually wasn't like that. It was more like, I want to do a post about all the ways you can alter a t-shirt and then I got overwhelmed because I kept thinking of so many different things you can do. So I decided to make a little graphic showing all the ways I though of. I'm sure I've forgotten something but this is specifically about not having to sew. All you have to do is cut and in some cases, tie. If you add sewing in, that is a whole new ball game and that's just too much for one post. There are 5 categories: neck, sleeves, bottom, back and side. Just pick one way in each category and get to cutting! I must also note that in the category of "side" there is also an option to do nothing, making it 3 choices instead of the 2 in the picture. You can also play around with using baggy shirts or fitted shirts. Oh, and if you are wondering "Why 299 and not 300?" The last one would be choosing "original" in each category and you'd end up with the exact shirt you started with... un-altered. So, there's that. Now, I'm going to show you two ways I've recently altered a shirt.

You will need:

- t-shirt(s)

- scissors

To make a crop tank, make these cuts. Cut the sleeves off right next to seam. Start cutting the neck by the seam and then go into a more deep scoop-like shape. Stretch out the edges where you just cut by grabbing either side and pulling. This makes the edges look less choppy!

And then you have a nice little crop tank!

This shirt is a bigger shirt so I'm doing muscle sleeves and a fringe bottom. The bottom of the sleeve is low enough so I started cutting there and then cut diagonally to where my shoulder would be. I also cut off the trim at the bottom so there wouldn't be any weird edges on my fringe.

Start cutting fringe. I wanted smaller fringe, which takes FOREVER.

After you've cut your fringe, pull each piece to stretch it out and make it look less like you just cut it.

I LOVE this design. Got this guy at Goodwill, it was brand new AAAANNNDDD it's glow in the dark.....what?!? That could be weird or awesome, we will see! If you don't have any old t-shirts, just buy some and you can put your own designs on it. Anyway... hope this is helpful! And may you never have a plain boring t-shirt again!

xo, Savannah

**This post contains affiliate links.

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