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.