cupcake crafts

At Trina's request I am sharing my secret.

I love cupcakes. They're cute and delicious and individual-sized fun. As I surfed the net for some Christmas craft ideas I came across a few cupcake ornaments. Some I liked, some I didn't, but I ended up coming up with my very own. Behold: cuteness in a cup(cake wrapper).

The best part is they are SUPER EASY to make! All you need is: mini cupcake wrappers (Michael's), styrofoam balls (dollar store), and I had everything else on hand - scissors, seed beads, hot glue, tiny metal rings (left over from jewelry making), and ribbon.

- Use the scissors to hack up half of the ball so it isn't smooth anymore. Experiment with it a bit until you get a texture you like.
- Hot glue into a mini cupcake wrapper. A bit on the bottom and then all the way around. I was worried that my balls were too small, but once I started gluing they were exactly perfect.
- Use more hot glue to add beads, ribbons, and any other decorations. Glue on the metal ring to loop some ribbon through to hang, or just glue the ribbon right on top. Tada!

I'll probably be doing some more experimenting with these during the week - I'm curious what paint will do on the styrofoam, and I want to wander the dollar store and find other things to put on top - little berries or bells or bows. Super cute to put on the tree, attach to presents, and give away to friends while caroling! A sweet Christmas treat that won't go to your waistline.

(The Polly Pockets on the far right were our wedding (cup)cake toppers. Since we got married right after Christmas this was the perfect way to display them!)

Homemade gifts - robes, skirts, dresses, & belts

I posted this on my blog, but figured it would fit into this blog too :) FYI - if you don't know how to make a pillowcase dress, there are TONS of directions and videos on youtube!

I was at Target early this week and saw some pillowcases and towels on clearance. That got the wheels turning in my head and I thought of all these different projects I could do with them for Christmas. If you know me, I cannot sew AT ALL - a straight line is about all I can accomplish. So these were all easy projects - none taking over an hour (which with a 2.5 month old, is important!!). I took me about 4 days to complete all of them....

I made them for Christmas - mostly for Sabrina (my 7 year old daughter)... She has been wanting dresses/skirts - so these came out cute and cheap! She is always wanting me to make her stuff, but unfortunately she was blessed with a mom severely lacking in sewing skills :P These should make her pretty happy and now I have a bunch of stuff ready for Christmas already :)

My FAVORITE thing I made is at the bottom, so make sure to check them out. I was REALLY impressed with myself for making them and coming up with it. I had no pattern, and couldn't find anything on the Internet that matched what I was wanting to make - so I winged it... and they turned out better than I hoped!! I also made 4 hair ties and a headband out of the leftover fabrics :) (didn't take pictures of them)


So these are the pillowcase dresses I made. The pillowcases at Target were REALLY nice (400+ tread count - really soft and silky). For 2 King size purple ones, it was $4.50, and 2 Queen size pink ones were $3.50. I went and bought some pretty sheer/pearl fabric to put over the pillowcases, to try and make it a bit fancier. I thought the fabric I chose was on sale for $2.99, but apparently I picked one that was $8.99! Yikes - I didn't notice until checking out... Luckily, the ladies at JoAnn's gave me a 50% off coupon making it $4.50 - so I decided not to return it...

So total cost for each one: $7.25
Purple one - $2.25 for pillowcase, $4.50 for the outer fabric, and $.50 for elastic at the top. Since this was a King size pillowcase and longer than I needed, I used the extra fabric for the ties and belt.. If I had gotten the right, on sale fabric, the total would have only been $5.75 :P
Pink one - $1.75 for pillowcase, $4.50 for outer fabric, $.50 for elastic, and $.50 for fabric for straps/belt.
There was also enough of the outer fabric for an extra belt (in pink one picture) for either dress

Now I just need to buy her a new pink and a white shirt to wear under them

This is what I did with the other pillowcases (there were 2 in each set). I cut them in half and made skirts. Sabrina has been eying these skirts at Target that have a bunch of tulle on them - they are about $12 :P So these are what I came up with. One pink and one purple have 1 layer of tulle each and the other pink and purple each have 3 layers of tulle.

The purple ones came out to less than $6 for 2 ($3 each!) - $2.25 for the pillowcase, $2.38 for 2yds of tulle, $.50 for elastic, and $.79 for the belting to tie the waist

The pink ones were about $5.50 for the 2 - the same break down as the purple, only the pillowcases were only $1.75..

I think I am going to buy her some black leggings to wear under the pink ones...

Belts - Sabrina has been asking for belts.. Why? I have no idea, but they are like $8-10 in the store, so I have yet to get her any. So when I was buying the stuff for the dresses/skirts, I found belting - I didn't even know they sold this (I told you NO sewing skills - I have no idea what they sell :P). So I bought some - apparently enough to make 6. and they were super EASY to make and way cheap! I ended up making 2 more, because Jonathan saw I was making them and said he wanted one too - so I went and bought some black belting and made him 2 :)

Cost: $2.05 a piece - belting was $1.99 a yard, I used .75 of a yard for each belt, plus had a 40% off coupon for the belting. The hardware was $2.29 and was enough for 2 belts (so $1.15 each belt).

These are my favorite things I made. The kids have been asking for robes - mainly because Oliver got one as a gift and they think it is pretty cool. At the store they are at least $20, so I refused to get them their own. Well, when I saw the SUPER SOFT and FLUFFY towels on clearance at Target, I thought I could make them some. I could not find a pattern or anything online that matched what I wanted. So I figured it out myself and I am quite excited I was able to do it and they turned out so well!

So each towel was on clearance for $3.50. I bought 3 to complete the project (if you only wanted to make one, use one towel and one hand towel). S0 each robe used 1.5 towels coming to a total of $5.25 per robe (and they are REALLY soft, fluffy, and nice towels!).

Here is how I made them - in case anyone is interested - Super easy, cheap, and a cute gift:

Fold the towel in half and then half again; cut at an angle, thus making a circle in the middle of the towel (for the head)
Unfold the towel and fold it in half lengthwise and cut one side the towel to the hole (making the front opening of the robe)
Fold about a half an inch around the edges you just cut and sew around it (to make a nice edge and help with the fraying)
Take a hand towel (or if like me, cut a hand towel size piece from a bigger towel) and sew it to the head hole you made.
Then sew along the top of the hand towel (on the inside), making it into a hood
On the open sides, mine were about 30 inches long (each side). Make sure you turn inside out. I cut in about 4-5 inches with 10 inches at the top for the sleeves and 20 at the bottom. I sewed the bottom 20 inches together (4-5 inches from the edge), creating the side. I then just sewed the the bottom of the sleeves together to make them into sleeves (make sure to do this on the inside).

And you're done! Turn right side out and you've got a robe. I sewed on pockets because I had extra towel leftover and made belts out of the extra towel.
They are really cute and as you can see really easy! I know my kids are going to be so excited about them!

another cookbook referral

We received this cookbook - Jacques Pepin's Kitchen: Encore With Claudine - for Christmas from Beth, who apparently found it at a used booksale or something like that. It's set up by menu - a main dish, a couple of sides, and a dessert. We had never heard of this chef but Adam was getting tired of menu planning for the grocery shopping so he decided to work his way through the book.

Success!

There have been a couple of things that we didn't really like - the cold cucumber and mint soup being the one that immediately comes to mind. But other than that, it's been great! We've been introduced to some interesting food combinations - tonight's dinner was zucchini mashed into a mashed potato gratin dish topped with poached cod and a basil sauce. The side was steamed leeks with bread crumbs over them, with garlic and Swiss cheese in the breading. It was really good!

And there's something else - until this week, neither of us had ever had leeks. Or turnips or parsnips. And now we have. Our kids won't go near most of this stuff but we're not pushing them hard on what they eat - they eat tons of fruit, vegetables, and sandwiches and very few treats so they're fine. They don't need to develop an adult palate overnight - some of these dishes have a pretty complex taste.

We're not even halfway through the book yet but like I said, everything (with just a couple of exceptions) has been surprisingly good - even combinations that sound a little weird. So I thought I'd pass on the book referral.

binge and PURGE

13 years from when I graduated from high school to when I met Adam - the entire decade of my 20s plus a little extra. I cannot believe how many pictures I shot, and printed, and put in albums in those 13 years. I have 14 albums (I think), not including the hundreds of pictures in binder photo sleeves from my mission. I apparently saved Every. Single. Picture. that I took in those 13 years, including ones that are very dark, very distant and you can barely see the faces in them, out of focus ... you name it, it's in there. I'm dumbfounded at the amount of money all of this represents - 6 bucks for a roll of film, $8-12 for developing (depending on if I used 1-hour printing) ... and that was just for 24 shots. I have thousands of pictures.

And now I'm going to throw an awful lot of them in the recycle bin.

I recently found the Small Notebook blog, which I love. And it had these two posts this past week about dealing with a plethora of pictures, both digital and print.

Essential Tool to Organize Your Digital Photos
What to do with Boxes of Photos

And those posts got me brave enough to crack open the boxes that have been sitting under the stairs since my parents were here in May. One album from 1999-2000 was dated for a 9-month span and had over 500 pictures in it. Just that ONE album!!! Having the band Colors come to Oregon was really fun and a key moment in my life because it affected how I thought about myself ... but I don't need 50 pictures of that weekend. Really, I don't. A dozen will be just fine.

Sooooo ... I'm tackling the photo albums. I should take a picture of the pile of albums before I get too far into this project (I've gone through 2 of them), and then another of how many albums I have left when I get done rearranging everything. And a shot (which I will not print and stick in an album) of the pile of pictures that is getting dumped. So far, I'm just stacking them off to the side for the fun of seeing (and counting - about 250 so far) how many I'm getting rid of. Then I let SM attack them with her little scissors to cut me out of some of the shots to practice her cutting.

I'm doing pretty well at keeping the digital photos under control and I rarely print anything anymore (much to Adam's annoyance - the picture he has in his office of RG is when she was 18 months old and she's 3 now). But whoa. These boxes of albums. Crazy.

To be honest, this purging stems in part from this past spring, when I helped clean the house of an elderly couple when the husband died. The children all live out West in Idaho and Utah, and took the wife to live with one of them. Someone came out here and got their personal paperwork like geneology and journals and things like that, and the rest of the house was just left as is. The family asked someone in the ward to clean it out, dispose of everything, and get it ready to sell. I don't know what all happened with it because Jenna was born a couple of weeks later ... but I cleaned out ONE bathroom with FIVE full-size garbage bags. It was ... indescribable. And not in a good way.

So with my albums, I'm thinking - "What are my kids going to want to see when I'm dead? And what do I really truly want to haul all around the country as we move over the next 20-30 years?" And the answer is - Not nearly this much.

And now I will go through another album.

the dangers of blog-hopping

What started with one little link off a friend's blog ended with hours of blog-hopping and dozens of tabs open with craft ideas. I'm a stay at home wife and not even pregnant yet, but I feel like I'm slacking. Yes, I paint and do artwork, but what about the millions of crafts that moms are supposed to do these days (and then faithfully put them on their picture perfect blog)? There are clothes to be refashioned, furniture to be refinished, and so many ribbons and ruffles to add to everything around the house. I don't own a sewing machine and I've never used (or even seen) Modge Podge. What sort of mother will I be?!

Of course, I did find small manageable projects that I would like to try out like cute little baby hats out of old t-shirts, no sew baby carrier slings, and tutus for my future ballerinas. But then I found the thing that made me think of Trina - I know how you hate boring walls, and the frustration of living in a rental that prevents you from painting. So instead, you can put up fabric wallpaper! (It's even found on one of your home improvement blogs, Trina - Apartment Therapy!) You just use starch and fabric and put it up like wallpaper and it comes right off when you're ready to move (or change your mind) without any damage to the walls!! OR, instead of an entire wall, you can do animals or shapes (or a castle for your princesses?) - since wall clings are all the rage these days. But instead of shelling out for some overpriced, not-exactly-what-you-want piece just make it yourself! Simply use the same method as the wallpaper, only on a much smaller scale, and it won't be nearly as daunting a task. This is something I'd like to try myself at some point, and thought I'd share the love. If any of YOU try it, let us know, and you can give tips and tricks to help us out.

painting tutorial

Do you get to paint your house? If you own it - duh, of course you can do whatever you want to it. Renting, on the other hand ... I went through my entire lease today to find what the rules are about painting walls and there was nothing. So I called the management office and was told, "Probably not." The girl is checking with the head manager but was doubtful.

SAD! Especially after finding a fantastic advice post on the MADE blog earlier today about painting the inside of your house. (It's not just sewing!) So I'll just refer it to you instead:

Home improvement: everything you need to know about painting walls, vertical stripes, paint tools, and a little crown molding

Isn't her daughter's room FANTASTIC? Not the color scheme I would use - I'm required to have pink in my girls' room. But it looks amazing. Can't wait to see Dana's posts on painting furniture and do-it-yourself artwork ... I'm still staring at my computer armoire trying to figure out what I want to do with it, and the kids' dressers haven't been touched yet either. (Cooler weather, I'm waiting on you to haul this stuff outside!)

One thing about not being allowed to paint means that whatever I do in this house, it has to move with me to the next one. That's not so bad. I have one idea for some artwork on our walls. We figure we're going to move around quite a bit, and I think it would be a good collection to start of nature photos from each state (and DC) we live in. What do you think of these to start?

Washington DC: the White House Rose Garden

Maryland: the botanical garden at Wheaton Regional Park

Mississippi: magnolia at the Vicksburg National Military Park

My dad shot the pictures in DC and MS, and I took the one in MD. I'd like to have them fairly large - an 11x14 at the smallest. You can't get that size printed at Walmart, so I need to find an alternate location. And printing on canvas is EXPENSIVE - 40 to 60 bucks at Walmart, and that's just for a normal-sized print. I saw this post a while back on How Does She that tells how to mount pictures on foam-core board, which you can do of any size photo because you cut it yourself.

family room picture displaying

Yep, I think that will do it.

Homemade Granola Bars - very yummy!

Have you noticed that recipezaar.com changed it's name!! I miss the old site - but I guess I will get used to the new one eventually. The new site is food.com and once you figure out the new sifter tool it is almost as good as recipezaar was :)

My gripping aside I did find this the other day and they are amazing!

http://www.food.com/recipe/no-bake-rice-krispies-peanut-butter-granola-bars-lower-fat-73754

I rarely have corn syrup around so I used honey instead - they were a little too sweet - but of course my kids love them!

I can't wait to try them with corn syrup - honestly they are just as yummy as kudos bars, super versatile, and sooo cheap to make!

homemade pita

I know I said I was expanding this blog beyond just recipes, but we've been having so much fun in the kitchen lately! It hasn't been the greatest for my weight loss efforts, but my taste buds have been quite pleased with the results. This one was good for weight loss and it was tasty - Adam made pita bread and we stuffed it full of small beef strips with cucumber slices, black olives, tomato strips, and feta cheese, and drizzled olive oil over the whole thing.

Doesn't that pita look professionally made? It wasn't. The original recipe is here.

1 1/8 cups warm water
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 1/2 teaspoons white sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast

Place all ingredients in mixing bowl and combine. (We use our food processor.)

Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface. Gently roll and stretch dough into a 12 inch rope. With a sharp knife, divide dough into 8 pieces. Roll each into a smooth ball. With a rolling pin, roll each ball into a 6 to 7 inch circle. Set aside on a lightly floured countertop. cover with a towel. Let pitas rise about 30 minutes until slightly puffy.

Preheat oven to 500 degrees F (260 degrees C). Place 2 or 3 pitas on a wire cake rack. Place cake rack directly on oven rack. Bake pitas 4 to 5 minutes until puffed and tops begin to brown. Remove from oven and immediately place pitas in a sealed brown paper bag or cover them with a damp kitchen towel until soft. Once pitas a softened, either cut in half or split top edge for half or whole pitas. They can be stored in a plastic bag in the refrigerator for several days or in the freezer for 1 or 2 months.

lemon summer pasta

My sister remembered us making this recipe a couple of years ago and last night asked me for it again. We both did some digging and it was originally found here.

8 oz cooked pasta
2 c. asparagus
2 c. summer squash and/or zucchini
2 cloves minced garlic
1 tbs butter
1/2 c. whipping cream
zest of lemon
salt to taste

Sautee veggies and garlic in butter til they reach your preferred tenderness. Remove veggies with slotted spoon, leaving any juices and garlic. Pour in cream and lemon zest. Cook down cream til 1/3 c. (just when it looks thicker). Then combine all ingredients including pasta and enjoy.

When I made this before, I didn't get the proportions of vegetables to cream sauce correct - I wanted more sauce. So pay attention to that when putting it together. Thanks for bringing this up again, Mindy! I really liked it so maybe we'll have it this week too!

a must-read

I've decided that I'm going to take a little jaunt into the realm of "food lit" - books and memoirs about cooking. I was not impressed at all with the book "Julie and Julia," which I read last summer. There was quite a bit about cooking, but mostly, the writer is just really crass and profane ... even when talking about the cooking, actually. I'm hoping that's an anomaly and I've built up a list of other food lit I want to read.

Our local library (amazingly enough) had "Confections of a Closet Master Baker" by Gesine Bullock-Prado, and I read it this past week in about 3 days. (With 3 small children around, that's moving fast for me.) LOVED it. From the first sentence, I was hooked. "I saw the devil at the age of 3 and he gave me chocolate. It changed my life forever." Awesome.

Long story short - she's Sandra Bullock's sister and worked with her in Hollywood. Got sick of LA and when their mom died of cancer, decided to do what she really loved - bake. So she moved to Vermont and opened a bakery. How cool is that? To just up and leave, and try something new. Anyway, so this book is her memoir about doing that, and it includes a number of fantastic-sounding recipes (minus her obsession with coffee - bleh - but we can get around that.)  Some of them are traditional desserts from Germany that sound oh so tasty! And I really like that she talks about desserts as things to be shared, and something to be special rather than inhaled in mass quantities as we gluttonous Americans tend to do.

I posted about the book on Facebook and talked about it with Adam and a couple of friends. Adam picked it up tonight and started reading it. He wasn't even halfway done when he said that he is not going to scan a couple of the recipes for me to keep - he wants to buy it. Done.

Ms. Bullock-Prado also has a blog, which I've added to the "food lovers unite" links in the sidebar. I'm all over trying to make my own English muffins - recipe on the blog, not in the book. I love them just out of the toaster, a little bit of a butter, and very thin slice of cheese that you just let sit until the heat of the muffin softens it. Then eat. Yum. And homemade English muffins? That has all the makings of a breakfast nirvana.