Have Your Pic Drawn As A Disney Character

Now, this post isn't food or DIY it's a..well...review, I guess. With 3, soon to be 4 kids my husband and I (well, I'm in charge if it all, so I) are doing Christmas on the cheap this year. I'm sure there are plenty of families across the country feeling the economical pinch this year. I'm planning on doing as much DIY for gifts for my kids as I can.

With that being said, when I came across a Pin that is about sending in a picture and having it turned into a Disney Princess I was intrigued! I have an almost 4 year old daughter who is obsessed with anything Princess or Lalaloopsy. So this was right up my alley. I clicked on it to see what it was about and pricing. I assumed it would be semi pricey, given it's custom work, but I thought, why not check it out. I am SO glad I did! The Pin brought me to Fiverr.com.

If you've never heard of Fiverr.com it's a website that people can post "I will do (insert whatever here) for $5" Everything's $5. Now, some stuff is out there. I seen one where a girl will paint her toe nails in any shade you want and take a picture of it. I do not want to know what that's about. But, there are some really cool ones on there..like the custom Princess images!

Here is the original PIN
 

Pretty freaking cool right!?  Well, I was saddened to see that the person who did this one wasn't offering this deal anymore.  BUT there were a few others who were doing this as well.  So, I bit the bullet and found one I liked and sent my daughters picture in and purchased it.  After I did that I was so excited for her to get this custom Princess drawing of herself I figured there HAD to be someone who does this but with boy centered things. 

So I searched Super Heros, there were a few hits, but they were kinda 'ehh'  Then I seen it. Custom Lego Man image!  My oldest son is ALL ABOUT Legos. Seriously. I even took him to the Lego Discovery Center outside of Chicago this past summer and he didn't want to leave.  Anywho.  I jumped on it and purchased a custom Lego image of my son.  It came today and I am so thrilled with it, I can't wait to give it to him for Christmas! 

Here is my son, Kyin & then the Lego Kyin




Now, obviously, it's a Lego man so there isn't all that much detail that actually goes into it. But it's got his glasses and his faux hawk. :)  The link to the person who made this is right HERE

And onto the Princess drawing!  I literally just received this about an hour ago, I had to wait to post this blog post until I got it. Just like the Lego drawing, you send in a picture for reference, but you also get to specify style and colors.  I chose classic Disney Princess and pinks/purples.

So here's the pic of my daughter I sent in and the Princess drawing:

I absolutely LOVE it, and I know she will too!  HERE is the link to the listing if you're interested in getting a Princess drawn of you're little lady! Pin It

Garden Tomato Sauce

I love pasta. Love.  If one day I had to cut carbs out of my diet, I would be a wreak..a healthy portion of my favorite dishes are pasta dishes.  You would think that if I love pasta so much that I would have a good red sauce recipe, right? Well, that wasn't the case-until today.

So, I pinned the garden tomato sauce recipe pin a while ago, mainly because the picture made it look oh so tasty.  Now, seeing how it's November I had to use store bought tomatoes.  Even if it was gardening season, I live in military housing with a tiny backyard that gets NO sun. None.  There was a family that lived across the court yard that grew corn in their back yard our first summer here. I hated them. They got the stink eye every time I went in my super shaded can't even grow grass back yard. Okay, enough about the crap hand of a backyard we were dealt.  This recipe would be even better if I did have a garden though..because I wouldn't have had to buy ANYTHING for it.

Here is the original Pin

See!? Yum Yum!!

Now, I altered the recipe some, not much..but some.

Here is the original recipe from myrecipes.com

Ingredients:
1 onion diced
tablespoon olive oil
1 garlic clove, minced
4 medium size heirloom tomatoes (about 2lbs) cored and chopped
Kosher salt
Fresh ground pepper
1/4 cup red wine
3 tablespoons chopped fresh oregano or marjoram Hot cooked pasta
Garnish: fresh oregano leaves
Now. I don't have red wine. I don't drink it, I don't regularly use it to cook with, so I substituted chicken stock.  I think this is a great recipe to use as a starting place for someone to make their own.  We eat clean (mainly, we do cheat sometimes) so if I can make my own anything, I'm going to attempt it!

Here are my ingredients that I used-
1 onion diced
1 tpsp olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
3 1/2 off the vine tomatoes (they didn't have heirloom at Food Lion when I went, and these suckers were on sale, and fairly large, about the size of beef steak tomatoes), diced
Sea Salt
Pepper
1/4c Chicken stock
1 1/2 tsp Tomato paste
Pinch sugar
Dried oregano, marjoram, and Italian seasoning
Cayenne Pepper
Cooked Pasta
Shredded Mozzarella

Now. The original recipe says to use a dutch oven. I don't have one. BUT I do have my super awesome deep oval shaped Rachel Ray pan.  NOTHING sticks to this beast so it's my go to when dealing with tomatoes/tomato sauce recipes.

Heat oil in pan, and add your onions, let them cook for around 3 or so minutes-basically until they're soft.  Throw in the garlic and stir it up, let that cook for about another minute or so.  Then add your diced tomatoes and mix it all up.  Let that cook until the juices start coming out of the tomatoes.  Around this time the original recipe said to add your pepper and salt to taste, but I don't like adding seasoning until the end, so I'll know what the finished product will taste like, but feel free to season with salt and pepper to taste now if you'd like.  Once the tomatoes start releasing the juices add your chicken stock (or red wine) and stir in the tomato paste.  Let that simmer and thicken up a bit ( it shouldn't take too long).  Now add your pinch or two of sugar, and your seasonings to taste.  Feel free to omit the cayenne, I like my sauce to have a little bit of a bite to it.  Once you have it tasting delicious I let mine simmer on low until my noodles were done.  The mozzarella isn't really needed. but my kids like a sprinkle of cheese on their pasta, and a sprinkle of mozzarella never hurts anything in my opinion. 

Please excuse the poor lighting in my kitchen.

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