Idea Queen Tips & News

There are very few box dinners that make sense to me. Maybe it’s just because I’m the kind of cook that doesn’t really have a problem duplicating recipes. Who knows. I do know that Mac and Cheese out of a box doesn’t make sense in the least. It’s such an easy recipe to duplicate!

The idea behind this homemade mac and cheese recipe is to make it the way YOU want to make it. There are no measurements to follow. There’s no quantity to large or small. Just gather up the “supplies” below and get started.

What You’ll Need:

- Pasta
- Velveeta Cheese
- Butter
- Milk
- Salt & Pepper to taste

Start by cooking your pasta. Boil it, drain it, and put it back in the pot. Keep your burner on low so there’s some heat in there to melt the cheese. Next add chunks of cheese, and a little bit of milk. Add a tablespoon or two of butter. Then add more cheese and milk until it’s “the cheesiest” or whatever your family likes the best. Use the salt & pepper to taste.

Yeah, that’s it! Really! Plus it was no more work than it would have been had you used a box. Granted it uses a whole 4 ingredients where as the box is all you need (for the good stuff anyway - the powdered stuff you still have to add the milk and butter!). But really it isn’t that much more work. Who doesn’t keep milk and butter in the house at all times?

Now if you have a better homemade mac and cheese recipe, I’m all ears. I know other people have different ways of making it. So if you make yours different, let us know!

Christmas is sneaking up on us fast, and it’s about time we start thinking of Christmas gifts. We’ve given a few ideas already for homemade Christmas gift ideas, but we’ve yet to mention gift baskets. The great thing about gift baskets is you can fill them with whatever you want, and make them completely personal.

On Idea Queen there is a page set up specifically for homemade Christmas gift basket ideas. You’ll find suggestions for what to include, as well as a few specific basket ideas. One of them is listed below.

Homemade Christmas Gift Basket

Fill a decorative Christmas box or tin with:
assorted home-baked cookies
assorted chocolates
Christmas ornaments (better if you made them yourself)
pre-recorded Christmas music
tuck in some candy canes or foil wrapped chocolate Santas for a finishing touch

Enjoy!

Ok so technically it’s still fall. Not winter. But it’s starting to get colder, and the holiday season is sneaking up on us. So I decided it was time for a change. While I absolutely LOVED the last theme, the falling leaves just weren’t working anymore.

There’s a few layout differences between the new theme and the old, so forgive me if things look a bit “weird”. Hopefully it won’t be too much of a pain, and you won’t notice much. It really is just what I wanted though, and only took 2 hours to find. Can we say picky?

Let me know what you think of the new winter theme!

This section we actually planned at least a year or two ago, but never found the time. Well finally it’s up and you can go check it out!

You can find several ideas for kids rooms, including decorating ideas, bedding suggestions, crafts for kids rooms, theme ideas, and more. This section will hopefully be growing a little more in the near future (as in less than a year this time!), and we will be accepting new suggestions for it as well.

So if you have an idea for kids rooms, please be sure to submit them!

Have I mentioned before that I’m a simple cook? Beef tips isn’t something I keep on hand. It’s one of those things I only get if I’m planning to cook something in particular. So when I was looking for beef stroganoff recipes and coming across ones that didn’t use ground hamburger, I was getting a little frustrated.

A few weeks ago I had bought a box of hamburger helper (beef stroganoff). Totally not like me to make something out of a box, but it sounded good. Hamburger helper I’ve never used, and honestly I don’t think I’ve ever had beef stroganoff either. It was so easy, I just knew it wouldn’t be hard for me to duplicate or find a recipe for.

Anyway, after searching and coming up empty handed I decided to come up with my own recipe. I was a bit nervous and tried to duplicate the instructions from that box, adding a few “fresh” ingredients that had been in powder form the last time I made it. It came out absolutely PERFECT, and the kids LOVED it! It may not be an exact beef stroganoff recipe from others you’ve had, but it’s still very good (and VERY easy). So here’s the recipe…….

Beef Stroganoff Made with Ground Beef

1 lb hamburger
1 8oz package egg noodles, uncooked
1 cup sour cream
1 1/2 cup water
1/2 cup milk (I used vanilla soy milk, but I’m sure regular milk would be fine)
1 tsp chives
Garlic Salt to taste
Pepper to taste

Cook hamburger, then add the rest of the ingredients. Cook over med high heat. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover and let simmer for 10 minutes. Let cool and eat!

I’m all for hamburger recipes that don’t use more than one pan and take less than an hour! Plus of course I always have hamburger on hand, so I can see this is going to be one of our favorites.

It’s about that time of year - time to start thinking of who is getting what gift, and how we plan to afford it all. Early last year we put a page for inexpensive Christmas gift ideas. Today it was revised a bit and a few more suggestions added.

This year we plan to make quite a bit of the Christmas gifts, but I also plan to do a little shopping online too. Trips to the mall? Forget it! It’s no longer “fun” in my opinion.

So anyway, if you need some ideas for inexpensive Christmas gifts to make or buy, you might want to make a stop at Idea Queen. Be sure to send in your own ideas if you have them!

With Christmas right around the corner, we decided it was about time to add to our Kids Gift Ideas page. Just added is an entire page dedicated to classic board games and where to find them.

While it seems like a rather short list, it’s actually the best places to buy board games online. The top three that had the absolute best selection of classic games as well as new board games. We also threw in a link to another store that has a lot of classic toys and dolls you might like. Worth checking out!

I spent the day playing with my bread machine, because it is my most favorite of all kitchen appliances. If you don’t have a bread machine, I highly suggest you go out and get one.

I make lots of different things in my bread machine. It makes it a whole lot easier to be a whole lot more healthy. Do make note that I use distilled water, organic sugar, unbleached flour, organic eggs, and sea salt with almost all recipes. You really can use whatever you’d like, but for health reasons we use all “natural” forms of the ingredients.

To start the day, I needed to make white bread for sandwiches. I had a slight accident with the last loaf and we were out. So I finally got around to making another one. It went in first because it was the most needed, plus I was able to move on to the next recipe while I let the oven preheat and then the bread bake. Our “perfect white bread” recipe I posted on the blog the other day, so check if out if you need it.

Next I had to make rolls. Well, actually, buns. Same diff really. The recipe is for rolls, but I’m using them as buns for our tenderlions tonight. This particular recipe was given to me by my friend, and it’s AWESOME. They’ve been dubbed “Tabi’s Awesome Rolls”. Not a clue where she got it, but they are my favorite. See recipe below….

Tabi’s Awesome Rolls
1 cup warm milk
1/2 cup butter - softened
2 eggs
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup sugar
4 cups flour
2 1/4 tsp yeast

Add all ingredients in order to the bread machine, and set on dough. Shape into rolls and set on pan. Allow to rise an additional 30-45 mins. Bake at 350* until golden brown.

After I pulled the rolls out of the machine and set them out to rise, I started in on the next “project” - Jalapeno Cheese Bread. So it wasn’t part of lunch or supper, but it did sound good. Possibly will be some sort of after supper snack. Or maybe even lunch or supper tomorrow. Who knows, but it WILL get eaten.

The jalapeno bread isn’t a dough - the whole thing is made in the bread machine. Which is probably best because it comes out absolutely perfect. It’s an gooey kind of bread because of the sour cream and cheese. The recipe for it is as follows……

Jalapeno Cheese Bread
3/4 cup Sour Cream
1/8 cup Water
1 Egg
3 cups Flour
1 1/2 teaspoons Salt
1/4 teaspoon Baking Soda
1 cup Sharp Cheddar Cheese (I use shredded, although grated works too)
3 tablespoons Fresh Jalapeno (I used frozen last, but it was from my garden)

Add all the ingredients into the bread machine in order. Set on regular cycle, light crust. Spicy, but not TOO spicy that the kids can’t have a slice or two of it.

If you need some bread machine recipes (the kind that are baked right in the bread machine), be sure to pick up a copy of Great Bread Machine Recipes. You’ll find tons to keep you busy!

So there’s my day of baking, although I don’t feel like I really did much of anything. There’s really not many dishes either. See why I love my bread machine so much?

The other day we posted a short list of toys not made in China here on the blog. We’re adding to the list again, and even put up a new page on Idea Queen to keep track of them all. You can now find the full list of American toys within our “Kids Gift Ideas” section.

Here’s another store who feature American made toys:

Back To Basics

Not all of their toys are made in the US or Europe, but this link will take you to a full list of toys that ARE. It makes it very easy to shop, that’s for sure!

Here’s an interesting idea for a homemade Christmas gift - lip gloss! If you have beeswax, there are a lot of different recipes for lip gloss out there. We have quite a few on Idea Queen, which we’ll share here.

Basic Beeswax Lip Gloss
1/2 ounce beeswax beads, refined
4 ounces sweet almond oil
2 teaspoons essential oil or food flavoring oil

Put the 4 ounces of sweet almond oil in measuring cup, add beeswax beads and melt in microwave. Stir with spoon, and when cooled a bit, add essential or flavoring oil. Pour into jars or containers.

Honey Lip Balm
2 tsp. olive oil
1/2 tsp. beeswax
1/2 tsp. cocoa butter
1/2 tsp. honey
3 drops essential oil
1 vitamin E capsule

Measure oil, beeswax and cocoa butter into a glass or enamel pan. Melt over low heat. A hotplate works well and reduces the risk of overheating the oils.
Stir the mixture often until the wax is melted. Remove from heat and stir in the honey and essential oil. Pinch open the vitamin E capsule and squeeze the contents into the mixture. Stir well. Pour the mixture into containers.
See more lip gloss recipes at Idea Queen. Have fun!