Easy, Scrumptious Mac N Cheese Recipe

Hey there everyone!

Since prime camping season is officially over, I've decided to start getting ready for next season by finding out what recipes we need to try out.  One thing I've always been a huge fan is macaroni and cheese.  Noodle, cheese... what's not to love?

If anyone is from Michigan and they've been to the Clarkston Union or The Union Woodshop, they've been spoiled by the mac n cheese gods from above!! They have hands down, the BEST macaroni and cheese ever.  After searching online, I've found many recipes that replicate theirs and have made it several times at home.  The only downside is that it requires a lot of preparation and many steps, so trying to do this while at camp, wouldn't be easy.  That's why I've decided to make my own recipe from all ones I've seen online to make one that's not only similar, but WAY easier!  So without further ado, here's the recipe for my Easy, Scrumptious Mac N Cheese that can be made at camp!

Easy, Scrumptious Mac N Cheese

Ingredients:
1 box of noodles (your choice, I like elbow or shell)
2 cups of shredded cheese (I used 1 cup of mild cheddar, 1/2 cup of mozzarella, 1/2 cup of 
   colby jack just to mix it up!)
1 - 1 1/2 cup of heavy cream (depending on how thick/thin you want it)
1/4 cup of diced onion
3 tbsp butter
Approx 1/2 tsp of Red Robin seasoning (I swear, this stuff is perfect for everything)
Approx 1/2 tsp of black pepper
Approx 1/2 tsp salt (give or take)
Approx 1/4 tsp garlic powder
Approx 1/4 tsp nutmeg

Directions:
1. Bring a pot of water to a boil for the noodles, put in when ready and cook for directed time.
2. Meanwhile, saute onions with 1 tbsp of butter.
3. Once noodles are done, drain and return to pot.  Add 2 tbsp of butter and sauteed onions.
4. Stir in your desired amount of heavy cream, cheeses and seasonings and mix thoroughly!
5. Transfer mac n cheese to a crock pot and cook on high for 45 minutes to and hour, stirring frequently and voila! Easy, yummy mac n cheese!  At home, instead of the crock pot, I put my mac n cheese in a casserole dish and baked at 375 degrees for 20 minutes and it turned out great that way too! You can also do it this way if you're lucky enough to have an oven in your camper! :)


I hope you all enjoy this recipe, there will be more to come as I find them over this long winter we are about to endure yet again in the Midwest!  See you all next time!

Update and upcoming trip to Silver Lake State Park!

Sorry we've been a little MIA for the past couple of weeks, it's been pretty hectic over here with all the changes going on. 

So, so far this summer, we didn't get to go out as much as we would have liked to, but we're making the best of it.  In late June, we traveled to Boyne City to stay at Young State Park (which we highly recommend!).  It's nestled between beautiful Lake Charlevoix and Lake Michigan.  Our campsite was great, the bathrooms were clean, and overall, had a fantastic time! 

Our next trip is coming up in two weekends.  We're off to visit Silver Lake State Park in Mears, Michigan!  This is the first time we will have been there and are really looking forward to it.  The only other place we've been to in that area is Ludington State Park and that was an incredible park as well.  I can honestly say, there hasn't been a park in Michigan that we haven't had a great time at.  We love our state :) 

What's so special about this trip is that we finally get to take our pop up out for the first time!! I am beyond excited.  All of our hard work and renovations will finally get to be used,  and probably only to find out what other renovations we want done for next time haha.  But it will be an awesome adventure, that's for sure.  We have also recently bought a set a kayaks that we took out to Port Austin a couple of weeks ago.  What a blast that was. We took a picnic and made a 4 mile round trip out on the Broken Rocks trail.  We stopped on one of them and had our lunch while looking over the water and it was amazing.  There are so many trails to explore over there; we are for sure going to see Turnip Rock next time.  It's been called one of the best sites to see in Michigan!

Back to our camping trip....
It's about three and half hours from where we live, so not too bad of a hike.  On this trip, we are also doing a charter fishing trip for the first time on Lake Michigan.  A friend of ours has a family member who owns a charter company is taking us out for a day.  We're hoping to catch some lake trout and possibly salmon.  But regardless, the experience will be fun! 

Has anyone ever been in this area? Is there something we cannot miss while we're out there? Please, let us know!  Also, I'm always on the lookout for some new camping recipes! If anyone has any, I'd love to hear them, we like pretty much anything over here :)

Talk soon!

Repainting The Cabinetry

Finally! The repainting of the cabinets!

Let me tell ya, it was hard work.  Painting in a small space with little ventilation was a challenge in itself, not to mention trying to salvage the floor too!  We ended up not being able to completely protect the floor, but last night we took Goof Off to it, and it cleaned it up pretty nicely. We plan to eventually replace the flooring, but until then... the linoleum will have to do!

So first, here's a look at the before and after pictures:

We used Rustoleum 2x Ultracover Primer and Behr Premium Plus Ultra Paint & Primer In One in the color Bleached Linen on all of our cabinetry.  We bought one quart and only used about 3/4 of it, even with 2 coats! The accentual color on the vents are a Rustoleum American Accents in the color Taupe. All of the  hardware was purchased from Home Depot, as well as all of the other painting supplies. 

Priming took about an hour and we used almost 4 cans.  We decided to go with the spray primer, and it ended up working out great.  Each coat of paint took about 2 hours, but we allowed a good 12 hours of trying between them.  Through trial and error, brushing on the paint gave a better coverage and look rather than rolling.  Rolling might be okay for one of the coats, but definitely not both... unless you want to end up doing 4 or 5 coats! At least that's what we experienced.


Price Breakdown:
One quart of paint- $16.34
Four cans of primer @ $2.97 each- $11.88
Hardware (includes 4 handles, 3 latches and 1 hinge) @ $1.98 each- $15.84
Paint brushes (had our own)- $0.00
Vent paint (had our own)- $0.00

Subtotal: $ 44.06
Tax: $2.64

Final cost: $ 46.70

Very reasonable! We are so happy with the results :)  I'll be sure to include in the next post about the decor and how I plan to add more storage to our PUP! 

Thanks for reading!!  Let us know of any suggestions or ideas in the comments below.

A good, hard cleaning

So after getting a little carried away and starting the renovations on the inside of our camper, we didn't think twice about the outside!  Let's just say, that in it's 27 years of life, it's never had a bath.  The roof was completely covered in almost three decades of dirt and it needed some work. 

After cleaning half of the roof, we remembered we didn't take a before picture.  So here's showing a half cleaned, half dirty pop up... which actually worked out better so you can see how much of a difference it was!

And then after about 2 hours of scrubbing... we got this!

Tada! We just used regular car washing soap and a sponge, also a bristled brush for the roof top and that 27 years of dirt is gone! It's amazing what a little soap, water and elbow grease can do!

Dinette Cushion Upholstery

Hey guys,

So today, we decided to start off the renovation by redoing the upholstery on the dinette cushions.  We started with the seat cushions first, tomorrow will we do the back cushions.  As for the design, we decided on a light, neutral muslin fabric on the bottom seat and are going with a pretty green and blue chevron pattern for the back part!  I'm really excited to see how this turns out!  I was a little hesitant about using muslin, but turned out loving it in the end.  

Here's how we did it:


Before:

Here's the original pattern of the cushion... yuck!

 Here are the original cushions on the dinette benches.

This is the batting we used underneath the muslin, it was pretty cheap at Walmart, about $5.97 for a full size, which allowed us to double it and be a perfect match for the two seat cushions.

First we cut the muslin to fold around the existing cushion.

Then we put a piece of cut plywood on the bottom of the cushion for
support and to staple the fabric to.

The product after the batting was stapled.

Side view of the plywood, cushion and batting on top.

We then stapled the fabric around the same way as the batting, starting from
the middle and working our way to the ends.  Also, don't worry about it not looking 100%
polished and wrapped perfectly, no one will see this side anyway :P

The finished product! It was super easy and turned out fabulous!

From the side, loved the pleating :)

All done! We really loved how it turned out.

The cushions turned out great, now on to do the back cushions. Will post pictures of them tomorrow... but here's a sneak preview of what the pattern will look like ;)  Have a great night!


UPDATE (6/20/14):
Here are the final back cushions. They were done the same way the bottom cushions were!

Now, let's look at the price breakdown:
Chevron fabric, 2 yrds @ $9.99/yrd = $19.98
Muslin fabric, 5 yrds @ $1.97/yrd = $9.85
Batting, 2 pkgs @ $5.97/each = $11.94
Plywood, 1 board @ $19.49/each = $19.49
Staples, had on hand at home = $0.00
Subtotal = $61.26
Sales tax = $3.68

Total price = $64.94


Not too bad for redoing 4 pieces of cushion! I'm very happy to have spent that and have the outcome that we received.

Let me know what you guys think! I'm always open for suggestions on future projects as well :)

Our Starting Point

So, here is what we're dealing with:

 Old, ugly faux oak wood everything.

Outdated appliances (the mini fridge is missing in this photo because we took it out to clean it) and certainly lack of storage space!

 Outdated, outdated, outdated! But what do you expect for a 27 year old camper?

 The dinette space, for which the cushions, mattress and table are out for cleaning as well.

 

 Old, stained, linoleum flooring.

 

Sloppy electrical work and handyman's work at it's best...... not.

UPDATE:

This is the basic layout of our pop up. Pretty simple. We do have both the mini fridge
and the furnace, but no carry out stove and only has a cabinet. No porta-potti for us!
(Photo found via Google on http://www.travelbytwo.com/camper/)

So this is where we're starting at.  We've got a long way to go and the end result will be more than worth it! We really love camping and are extremely excited to have a camper to call our own!  We also will be sharing the budget and costs on this blog to see how much this remodel will truly cost. Fingers crossed we can do it on a relatively low budget! We hope to paint the cabinets, redo the flooring, fix up the cushions, mattresses and curtains, and much more.  I mean, it will be our home away from home!

-Jessica

Welcome To Our Blog!

Welcome!  

Thanks for checking out our blog! My boyfriend Nick and I have recently just purchased a 1987 Jayco J-Series 806 pop up camper that we are remodeling to make our own.  We're really excited to have our first camper and to fix it up together.  I thought it would be a good idea to post our progress of renovation for everyone as inspiration because, lately, I've been obsessed with all of them online and it's a great way to figure out what you want for your camper.  Anyway, there will be many posts about what we're doing and how we are doing it to see what works and what doesn't.  Stay tuned! :)

-Jessica