Craft Room Tour and Asian Noodle Salad

Wednesday, September 3, 2008, by Leigh Anne

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This summer while I was at Girl’s Camp I made friends with some wonderful ladies, the ladies I taught with and the “Camp Craft Ladies”. While at camp I discovered that several of these new friends were rumored to have pretty amazing craft rooms.

A craft room is something that I have always dreamed of - a place that I could have all of my stuff in one place and I could make as big a mess as I wanted and not have to clean it up because we had to eat at the table or someone had to sleep in that room!

Because I now have two empty bedrooms at my house I decided that this fall was the time - I was going to make myself a craft room. (Sorry boys!)

Before I began my Craft Room Project I wanted to see what these other ladies had done - so I arranged a craft room tour and luncheon several weeks ago.

I’ll share with you what I served for lunch but first I wanted to show you a few pictures of the great craft rooms we toured.

The first stop on our tour was Karen’s house. Karen is a stamper and has every stamp and tool imaginable! Karen even had a fun little craft for all of us to do while we were there.

One of the great ideas I got from Karen was this fun way to store my ribbon.

She uses clear plastic shoe boxes and leaves the tails of all the ribbons hanging out between the lid and the box. You can just pull out the ribbon you want. Love it!

Our next stop was Michelle’s where she showed us her darling Mary Engelbreit craft room!

Not only is her craft room functional, it’s cute too! I especially liked the red hutch she had rescued from her sister who was going to get rid of it. Michelle painted it red and “Mary Engelbreited” it!

Our next stop was to Heather’s amazing craft room - it is to die for!!

Not only does she win the prize for the most stuff - all of her stuff has a place of it’s own! Not only was it organized but it looked organized with all of her matching green boxes!

All of these ladies inspired me and I can’t wait to get started on my own Craft Room Project!

Speaking of inspiration, the salad I made for our craft room tour lunch was inspiring because it was so pretty! The recipe came from one of my favorite blogs - Pioneer Woman. Her recipes are always yummy and her step by step pictures incredible. You must check her out if you haven’t already.

I decided our luncheon was the perfect opportunity to try her Asian Noodle Salad.

There is a lot of chopping involved with this recipe but it is worth the effort. As I finished my chopping the colors of all the vegetables were so pretty together I just had to take a picture of them!

Be sure and check out Pioneer Woman’s site for her step by step pictures and directions.

This recipe makes a TON so be sure and have a lot of mouths to feed. The six of us hardly ate half of it so I packaged up the rest and took it to the neighbors. I followed her directions except I decided to add some chicken to it too.

I served it on my bright green platter and it looked great - and tasted great too!

Asian Noodle Salad
adapted from Jamie Oliver

SALAD INGREDIENTS:

1 packages linguine noodles, cooked, rinsed, and cooled

1/2 to 1 head sliced Napa cabbage
1/2 to 1 head sliced purple cabbage
1/2 to 1 bag baby spinach
1 red bell pepper, sliced thin
1 yellow bell pepper, sliced thin
1 orange bell pepper, sliced thin (if available)
1 small bag bean sprouts (also called “mung bean sprouts”)
3 sliced scallions
3 peeled, sliced cucumbers

LOTS of chopped cilantro—up to one bunch
1 can whole cashews, lightly toasted in skillet

DRESSING:

Juice of 1 lime
8 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons sesame oil
6 tablespoons soy sauce
1/3 cup brown sugar
3 tablespoons fresh ginger, chopped
2 cloves chopped garlic
2 hot peppers or jalapenos, chopped
More chopped cilantro—LOTS

Mix together salad ingredients. Whisk together dressing ingredients and pour over salad. Mix with tongs or hands and serve on platter.
*Dressing keeps up to three days before serving, WITHOUT cilantro

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