Some December Projects

Here's some fun December projects. Some I'll highlight next month too. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season!!

One of our gifts to friends and neighbors- homemade banana bread, and personalized magnets.

Felt Fishing Game- Turned out so cute! Awesome gift and it was a great tutorial from Just Another Day In Paradise.

Cute crayon rolls made some cute gifts.

Super easy tutorial from Made, these twirl skirts with matching hair bows were a big hit with the girls!

Another tooth fairy pillow.

Turkey Shirt

Here's a great tutorial for an adorable turkey shirt! The applique is so very easy. I finished this the morning of my daughter's Thanksgiving program at school. So cute!

Thankful

Here's a great project to do this week for Thanksgiving! Click HERE for a complete tutorial. I couldn't find chipboard that was big enough without buying a huge sheet and having to cut it all myself. So I opted for wood letters. I love how it turned out and can't wait till Family Night on Monday night when we're going to all put up pictures or words of the things we're thankful for.
Here's up close of the lettering.
I painted the clothes pins a dark brown and put orange and green polka dots on them. This is where we'll clip up our words and pictures. So fun! Thanks crafty chicks for a great idea.

Fight On Weekend!

We had a wonderful weekend in Tucson at the USC game. Of course Jayne needed a new USC skirt for the occasion and we thought her cousin needed a matching one too.

This is the twirly skirt pattern again. It's just so cute!

What a great family trip! Fight On!

I'm Hooked

My son randomly handed me a book off the shelf while we were waiting in line at the library last week. I was surprised to see it was about quilts. At first I thought it was for old ladies. The copy I had was in a special large print text. But I read the back and thought it looked interesting. He was too wrestles to give me anymore time to pick a book for myself so I got it. And now I'm hooked!! I googled the author and found out that I had read the 16th book in the series. It's the Elm Creek Quilt Series by Jennifer Chiaverini.

I ordered the first 7 books in the series so I can start over from the beginning. They all just came in the mail and I'm so excited to get started. Their cute, quick, light hearted reads about the bonds of women, sewing and quilting, and families. There's even some quilt patterns available for quilts that the people in the story make and some recipes. The first 3 books are all put together in what their calling a sampler and the 4-6 books are in another big book all together. I preferred that so I didn't have to have so many individual books coming. Check them out if you want a fun read :-)

Caramel Chocolate Pretzels Tutorial

This is one of my favorite Holiday gifts! When I make for the Holidays I always make the caramel from scratch. It's fabulous, but a LOT of work! I've been asked several times to bring smaller quantities of these pretzels to events, so that's when I do my super easy, kid-friendly version! This one is simple and a very fun activity to let your kids help with. Here's the steps:

Here's your ingredients: Pretzel Rods, a bag of caramels (I get mine from Target, they carry them year round, look on the bottom shelf), and chocolate morsels.
Quantities: I've found 1 bag of caramel coats about 1 bag of pretzel rods (about 30), and takes about 1 lb. of chocolate.

Here's the time consuming part. Unwrap all of the caramels and put in a pot on your stove. Add 2 Tablespoons of water to 1 bag of caramels.

Melt your caramels over medium/low heat until all of the caramels have melted. It should look like this.

I transfer my caramel to a skinnier, taller microwaveable measuring cup for easier dipping. Now dip your pretzel rods into the caramel. After you've dipped and coated it to your liking, put on a cookie sheet that has been sprayed with Pam. It will stick to almost any other surface. As the caramel cools, you can keep putting it into your microwave for 20 second intervals and keep the caramel nice and hot so it will coat the pretzels evenly.

(I was only doing a 1/2 batch for this event so, this is about 1/2 the amount of caramel I would normally have in this container)

Wait until the caramel has completely cooled on your pretzels. Then get your chocolate ready.

Melt your chocolates in the microwave. Start with 1 minute, then do 20 second intervals, stirring after each time, until all of the chocolate is melted. Then start dipping your pretzels into the chocolate. I also added some white chocolate spritzes to add a little decoration to these. But you can do a messy look like these, or use a pastry bag and do even lines across, or I also love rolling them in a mixture of brown sugar and cinnamon.

Once you have dipped in the chocolate, place on wax paper to cool. Do NOT use Pam to coat a surface before putting the chocolate down. The chocolate gets greasy and doesn't dry.

You're all done! My kids love helping me make our easy version and they love eating them! Enjoy!

Time to Switch...

From this....
To This...
I really love these bunting pieces. I'm using this same Thanksgiving themed fabric to make a new little table topper next week. Do you have your Thanksgiving decorations up yet? I only have a few Thanksgiving things. I'm enjoying the nice little break between the Halloween Decorations and the Christmas decorations. But this bunting is too easy not to give it a try! And I've even seen a lot of 'no sew' bunting online.

Bunting How To: Make a template from a cereal box. Mine was 8 inches on each side of triangle and 6 inches across the base. Lay the template on the fabric and outline with pencil. Cut out with your pinking sheers. Sew to the triangles onto 2 inch grosgrain ribbon. (Just one little quick seem down the ribbon). And your done!

A Happy Halloween

We had a wonderful Halloween! Lots of celebrating, lots of parties, lots of family, and lots of candy. So much so that it's taken me all week to get my house put back together. So unfortunately no major crafting this week, only major cleaning. But I'll have 2 fun things this week.

Microwave Caramel Popcorn Tutorial

Growing up, this was our family 'go to' dessert for Monday Family Night's. As I've started my own family, I've made this one of our 'go to' desserts too! You just can't beat a dessert you can make in 5 minutes with limited ingredients, that is scrumptious! We have this year round, but I think it's especially great for fall too!

Put 1 cube of butter (1/2 cup)
1/2 C. Brown Sugar
1/4 C. Light Karo Syrup
in a microwaveable proof bowl.

Put the ingredients in the microwave for 3 minutes.
While it's cooking pop your popcorn (or cook it before in the microwave) and put in a bowl with a lid. The popcorn needs to be plain, ie. limited or no butter. So if you do use microwaveable popcorn buy the non-buttered plain kind. You can use as much or as little popcorn as you want, but I like about 1 1/2 bags of popcorn, or 1 scoop of the popcorn popper popcorn.
Take the caramel out of the microwave, add a 1/8 tsp of Baking Soda and give a quick stir, then put back into the microwave and cook for 30 seconds.
Pour the caramel all over the popcorn, put on the lid and shake (and dance, as my kids like). The caramel will coat the popcorn just perfectly!
You can shape the popcorn into balls. You need to do this while it's still kinda hot. Or you can pour the popcorn onto a greased cookie sheet and let cool. Break up the popcorn into pieces a little and enjoy!

Home Improvement- Laundry Drapes

My really good friend Aprilanne called me to ask my opinion about some drapes for her laundry room shelves. This room is also the entrance to the back of the house and garage, so people walk through it frequently. She was so tired of looking at all the stuff on her shelves, that she really wanted something to hide it. I told her I'd love to make her some drapes to cover it! Our only slight problem, is that I live in Orange County and she lives in LA. And we wouldn't be getting together for a while due to our schedules, so we did our project entirely via mail and email!

She took the measurements of what she wanted and mailed me her fabulous fabric choice. I made them and sent them off. I just love how these pictures turned out and I can't wait to see it in person. This particular shelf has a round bar below the shelving and she wanted some ties from the curtains to the bar just to anchor them down better. I made the ties detachable since she's only renting and will hopefully be able to use these again should she move.

Much better, wouldn't you say!

DRAPE TIPS: Drapes are very easy because it's mostly just hemming the edges. Besides hemming the edges you make a basic casing along the top for the rod to go in. I also did an extra row of stitching about 1/2 way in between the line of the casing and the edge. This made the top ruffle up and also makes it so you don't see a gap from the top of the curtain to the top of the shelf. This is how most commercial drapes come and gives you more options.

Awesome Gift

Here's a gift I got from my mom for my birthday and I love it! This would make a great holiday gift as well. She used her Silhouette SD to cut the vinyl and found the perfect plastic containers at Smart and Final! Thanks again Mom!

Best Cinnamon Rolls Ever....

I haven't had a lot of cravings this pregnancy, but last week I was really craving cinnamon rolls. I've tried and made a lot of recipes for cinnamon rolls and this is by far my favorite! I took them to a family party last weekend and they were a huge hit! I'll definitely be making these again soon. But this time I'll probably eat most of the pan myself :-)

Here's the link to the very wonderful food blog I follow regularly- Stirring it Up With Pam.

Halloween Spiders Craft

I saw this cute easy craft over at one of my new favorite blogs, Eighteen 25. They did a month of Halloween craft ideas. These were super easy, super cute, and a great project to do with my 5 year old this weekend. Try it, here's the link to the tutorial!

Witch Skirt

Jayne wants to be a witch for Halloween. I had this old cape from my mom in black and orange so we went with that color theme. I finally finished the skirt last night. I've never done this type of skirt. I got the instructions from this youtube video. I wanted to finish it early in case it didn't pan out and I'd have to made something else. But, I LOVE it! And so does my little witch.

AbraKadabra!

Debbie's Baby Shower

I got to help host another baby shower this past week! I was in charge of decorations with another friend and we had fun! They don't know if it's a boy or girl so we went with generic colors. We picked black and white polka dots with aqua and yellow accents. I think it turned out so cute!

The Pennant: I was super excited to find an online tutorial with the dimensions of the fabric pennant pieces. It's 6 inches x 8 inches. I made a template out of a cereal box and used that to trace. Used pinking sheers to cute all the way around and attached it to no fray ribbon. It was a super easy project and really added a lot. I'm going to do again for some fall decor.
I made the baby lettering with my silhouette and hand dyed the onsies. I used an online tutorial for making stripes on a onsie but tweaked it so it wasn't straight. I made it more tie dyed looking and edgy. Ruffling and a bow was added to the girl version! I love these and might make some more for the shop. Also I painted the wooden clothespin in black and white dots to match our theme.
The decorations all turned out wonderful and lots of people brought amazing goodies. These pictures where from before the food really started to arrive.
The party favors turned out so cute. I just got the candy and the bags with ribbon. My friend Melinda made these adorable tags to go on each! They turned out so cute!
My friend Debbie with all the girls who planned it. Funny this is 4 of us are pregnant and 2 just had their baby (2 weeks ago and 4 months ago). It's in the air!

Some recent projects....

I have been crafting... just not blogging much. But as we get back into the school routine, I should get better. Here's some fun projects from the last few weeks...

Tote Bag for School:

Lots and Lots of Soccer Team Hair Bows:
Lots and Lots of Church Chair Covers:
I couldn't have gotten this project done without my mom. They turned out awesome. Thanks for saving me from my craft rut!!

(There's a plastic pocket to slide the class name into each one. Turned out so perfect and so functional for year to year)

A New Tooth Fairy Pillow:
Need to get this posted in my shop! I have some new girl ones and non-gender specific ones coming too!