Be Mine

I seem to have damask on the brain these days.  I can't steer away from it!  Remember those pink-ish LOVE letters that were under my wreath?  They looked like this. . .

Well I got a black and white paper stack at Michael's last week and gave those babies an update.

I just can't help it!  I also had some leftover blocks from doing all of those countdown blocks and put some to good use.

These are my holiday blocks.  I painted the blocks black and just covered one side of each block with paper.  I used some glitter thickers for the letters.  My plan is to have each side of the blocks be a different holiday or season.  You know, Happy Easter or whatever.  I just don't trust myself right now to not use black, white and red for each season! 

Edible Playdough

I really love having Ivy help me cook and bake.  She is really getting into the whole thing!

She's come a long way over the last year in her cookie making skills!  And her hat and apron fit a bit better too.

She kind of plays with the dough like playdough and just cuts it up and then squishes it around.

 The only problem is she has a thing for eating the dough which is ok if there isn't eggs, but what doesn't have eggs in it?.  She always sneaks a taste (or 10) and says MMM thats gooood.  Then I tell her she can't eat anyore and we need to bake it first.

 When we were making cookies on Sundays she attempted to be sneaky she grabbed a handful and went and ate it on the couch! 

The little tricker!

So yesterday we made some edible playdough!  The plan is to pull this out when baking so she can play and eat and not get sick.  I found the recipe on Our Best Bites(a personal fave!) in their kids week recipes.   Just watch out its pretty yummy and you'll find yourself sneaking bites too!

EDIBLE PLAYDOUGH

1 cup smooth peanut butter

2 cups of powdered sugar

1/2 cup honey

Just mix it all together in your mixer and let your kids go to town! 

Hangin' Tough- the home stretch!

 This is it!  We are heading in to the last week of the Eating from the Pantry challenge.  Are you going to hate me if I say that ultimately it wasn't that hard?  I think the biggest key is being totally committed to it.  It also made my life a little bit easier not going to the store all the time.  The biggest change is instead of saying "I feel like having this tonight", and then going to the store to get what you want I had to have the mind set of " Lets see what we can come up with tonight."  It also helped to brainstorm a list ahead of time of dinners to make.  And granted the fact that there are only three of us helped A LOT!  We almost always have leftovers so that is lunches for Darin, and Ivy and I don't need anything fancy. 

I went to the store on Saturday and we got some apples, a couple of grapefruit, yogurt and a bunch of bananas.  Bringing my total for the month up to $33.42.  We are gonna reach our goal!  I am going to need to get milk and eggs in a couple days- and probably more bananas, they don't last very long around here- but that certainly won't break the budget.  I have a turkey in the oven for tonight so my meals this week are pretty much centered around leftovers.  We'll be having turkey with rolls out of the freezer and baked peaches, turkey pot pie, paninis, twice baked potatoes and zucchini bread french toast.  Yum, I'm excited about this weeks dinners.  Lets just hope nothing happens to the turkey!

New twist on an old fave

Have you ever had toasted peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? Am I the last one to hear about this? They are so yummy and you should most definitely try it.  Just make a regular peanut butter and jelly (or jam-my favorite is blueberry ginger) and toast it.  Duh!  But seriously good.

Have you seen these felt heart wreaths from Amy at the Idea Room?  Yeah, me too.  A couple of friends and I were going to get together and make them but we waited too long to get to Joann's and the heart wreaths were all gone.  No big deal we decided to make circle wreaths instead, then we could use them for other holidays.  Then I started cutting out circles to get a head start.  I quickly realized that there was NO way we would be able to cut out as many circles as we needed and even start on these things in one morning.  So we decided to go for squares.  Cutting goes a lot faster when you can use a rotary cutter!

 Here's how it turned out.  Its super cute! I put it on Ivy's shelf in her room.  Our house has seemed so bare without the Christmas decorations and her shelf needed something- and its a little thick to put on a wreath hanger.

This is it close up.  It has more of a flower or petal effect then the circles.  But I also had all of those circles cut out and didn't want them to go to waste. 

I didn't have another styrofoam wreath so I took this wreath I had gotten at Goodwill and wrapped it with twine.

That gave me something to put the pins in to.  I then proceeded to fold all my circles and pin them in.  (You can check out the tutorial at the Idea Room for a visual).

It gets more of a ruffled look. Just for the record I like the circles/ruffly look better but I HATED cutting them out.  I hung it on a mirror with a strip of black polka dot fabric.

I don't have much in the way of Valentine's decoration I'm just not a huge fan but I picked up some black and white papers to redo these letters with.  And thats about it for V-day decor.  I've got a few ideas I just need to do them!

FREE scrapbooking fonts!

I just found the cutest site that has some super fun and free fonts!  I think they turn people's handwriting in to fonts and then share.  How cool is that!  And you can't beat free.   Now I just have to figure out how to use them on this thing. Check it out at Kevin and Amanda!

Heading in to week three

The Eating from the Pantry Challenge is still going strong around here.  Darin even said he hasn't noticed a difference.  If anything he probably likes it better since I am more likely to cook rice.   I tried the Fried Rice from the BHG cookbook (you know the one with the red checks) and it is definitely a keeper.  I had some thawed out pork roast left from the Green Chili I made so I cooked that up with it to make it a meal in one.  That cookbook is quickly becoming my favorite and I'm not entirely sure why I haven't turned to it more often.  We also got invited to peoples house for dinner twice so that was two less meals I had to make.  Yay!  Tonight I am excited to try out the Bisquick chicken tenders and we are going to have some sweet potato fries and applesauce.  Here's some other stuff I'm thinking about having this week...
-Enchiladas (and a quesadilla for Ivy)
-Twice Baked Potatoes
-Salmon and Rice
-Breakfast for dinner
-And pulling a turkey out of the freezer that I stocked up on during the holidays.
We are on our last box of cereal so we have been having some fun breakfasts also.  I made English Muffin Bread for toast and blueberry muffins.  I stocked the freezer with blueberries this summer.  There is an awesome organic blueberry farm a few miles down the road that is U-Pick.  It was one of our favorite things to do.  I think they probably should have weighed Ivy before and after though.  I'm sure she ate about a pound of blueberries every time we went!  The only thing we'll have to get this week is bananas and maybe some more grapefruit.

Just One More Scarf

Make it and love it has SO many fabulous ideas and she is so kind to share them with everyone.  Well she posted a couple of scarves and I of course made some!  Her first one is a gathered scarf.  I took the idea and came up with this.  I used a different material for the gathered section and added a ruffle at the bottom.  The main part of the scarf is black flannel, and I have to say that flannel is probably my scarf material preference for coziness.   But I think 6 inches is as wide as I like especially if you double it up.  I also made Ashley's knit scarf with my leftover teal knit material.  I wish I would have made the strips longer and ruffled them for a little bit more punch but oh well.  Sorry no pictures of that one! 

Odyssea Market Skirt

I think MoMo for Moda has put out some of my most favorite fabric ever.  I am hoarding my Wonderland fabric and I'm hoping the rumors are true that it is going to be re-released this spring. I have been selling a few skirts at Greenies and we sold out!  So I pulled out my Odyssea (another great line by MoMo) fabric to make a skirt. 

 I think this is the prettiest thing I have made.  That plum color is one of my favorites and I like how it pulls out all of the darker colors in the print.

The plum fabric is really soft almost like a sueded satin or something.  I'm not exactly sure what it is since I got it out of the remnant bin.  I also did a scalloped stitch on the hemline.  I'd say its a size small or medium and if you really like it you can go buy it at Greenies! ;0)

Scarf Roundup

Here are some of the scarfs I've been making from all the FABULOUS tutorials out there.  It all started with the Joy's Hope scarf along.  I showed you which fabric I was going to use but never put the finished product on here!

They turned out really cute.  I mixed it up and did a few skinny ones and a couple that were wider(by putting two together instead of folding in half.)  I even made one that was a cross between the Joys Hope scarf along and the Honor student scarf! 

My Honor Student Scarf Along is my favorite.  It was the most time consuming but I LOVE it.  I used Amy Butler's (my first Amy Butler fabric I have actually bought by the way) LOVE fabric.  Its scrappy and I love the colors and it is the perfect size of scarf I think.  I also love that it isn't just a wintery scarf but can be used in the spring and fall.  You can find all the instructions for this one at Cookie Mondays.

My bunchy scarf was by far the easiest and it is the one Darin likes the best.  I think it took me all of 10 minutes to make this one.  I spent more time trying to decide on a color at the fabric store!  Hope Studios was kind enough to share her tutorial on making these here!

Last we have the ruffle scarf.  It was the winner on SYTYC (as in so you think you're crafty) a few weeks ago.  V & Co came up with this fun flannel scarf and even though you can't get the tutorial anymore you can go here to get the PDF pattern!  I think if I make this again I would make it a little narrower, but it is still one of my faves! 

So there you go.  Its not too late to make a fun scarf for the winter.  Its sunny and a balmy 50 degrees today, but I know its just a trick.  I'll keep my scarves around. 

And they are great for keeping 2 year olds entertained at church

Eating from the Pantry week 2

I need to take some pictures of the stuff I have been making lately so I can post them on here so for now I'm just gonna update how my pantry challenge is going.  So far so good!  I've decided I am going to be more creative at the beginning so that I can fall back on easy stuff at the end.  I went to the store tonight to stock up on fruit for my little fruit face.  Its a good thing we have all those canned peaches and pears.  Instead of making sure Ivy eats enough servings of fruit I have to make sure she doesn't eat too much! Anyways.  The only thing that didn't happen was having ravioli on Friday since we were at the Greenies art show.  But I'm not complaining since I can just add it to my back up meals. A couple new meals I'm gonna try this week are Fried Rice from the Betty Crocker cookbook (I'm going to add pork too) and those chicken tenders on the bisquick box.  I think the biggest challenge is going to be when we run out of cereal for breakfast!

Eating from the Pantry Challenge

I've been working on a game for our Food Storage Enrichment this week and have got some interesting ideas and recipes and while I was searching the internet for recipes I cam across the Eat from the Pantry Challenge on Money Saving Mom.  Since I've had food storage and pantry food on the brain and hadn't been to the store yet this month I decided to go for it!  Luckily I had been to Costco before I left for Oregon so we have milk in the freezer and all that.  It will also remind me to use all of that stuff I worked so hard to can and freeze in the summer! My goal is to only buy a little dairy (milk, eggs, cheese) and fruits and veggies and to only spend $40 this month!  Yikes but it should be doable with just the 3 of us.  Here is what we are eating this week...
Monday-Chipotle Chocolate Chili leftovers
Tuesday-Pizza rolls, edamame
Wednesday- Ham,rolls, mashed potatoes and corn(from this summer)
Thursday- Breakfast sandwiches with leftover ham, bisquits and egg
Friday- Brown Butter and Basalmic Ravioli. garlic bread and salad
Saturday- Fish and sweet potato fries
Sunday- Green Chili