Time To Get Crafty! - Cardboard Box Car

When I first started this blog as well as when I first joined Pinterest, I was soooo inspired to become a crafter. Well, after a few novice-level crafts, I soon realized that I will leave that to the more artistcally-gifted group of DIY-ers. I left the crafter's group with my head held high....figuratively speaking of course. I'll occasionally venture back into it....but only for a occasional holiday, school project or maybe a birthday. My 'craftiness' will have to stay dedicated to the kitchen.

Fortunately, the wonderful thing about kids (under 4-5 perhaps) is that the crafts that you do for them are absolutely amazing in their eyes. Hmmm now that I say that, I should probably change what I said in the first paragraph and do tons of crafts this year while they appreciate it and can't notice all of the blatant spots of imperfection. This, this I will do.

Anyway, at my sons' parents day out school, there are different thematic days to get parents involved. One of those days is 'Drive-In Movie Day' where parents (along with your child as long as they like to help and not tear ish up --like my youngest) decorate cars made from cardboard boxes, wagons or laundry baskets. I'm not going to lie, last year was our first year in the program and we didn't participate. Poor Drew didn't have a 'car.' It could've been due to pure laziness or not knowing what to expect, but after seeing some really decked out cardboard boxes, I knew that we had to participate this year. Plus, I couldn't send TWO boys with no 'car.' If we're apart of the same parents day out program next year, we'll have to step it up a notch, especially since this was done in one night.

My boys are still obsessed with Disney Pixar's Cars characters. We used to have about 13 different cars (gifted from their GG) from the Cars 1 and Cars 2 movies, but my youngest with through a phase of being enamored with our trashcan and would secretly dig in and throw away different items.
How do I know? I would either catch him near the trash after the fact, look through it and recover said items OR I would put two and two together after days of searching for lost items.
As of today, we only have 7. Thanks Reid.
And, we used to have 3 different advanced-level sippy cups. Now, we only have 2. Thanks Reid.
We are preeeettttyyyy sure that he trashed them. Secretly of course. If I would have caught him at the end of the act, I would have certainly recovered them. Each Cars-themed car is about $3.50 or $4 and that cup was $4 or $5 for a package of 2. We're not buying anymore cups because he's moving to straw cups only next and we're not buying anymore Cars-themed cars until they're on a much better sale. I mean, you can get a package of 10 Hot Wheelz cars for the same price of just 2 Cars-themed car. I'm just explaining the reason of our frugality.

Soooo, out of the 7 Cars-themed cars, my oldest loves Lightning McQueen and my youngest loves to carry around Finn McMissile. So that's what my husband and I made.

And they still love it.

If you'd like to make one of these for your kid, girl-themed or boy-themed, go here for easy instructions. What we did varied from these instructions but it gave us a good starting point. Oh and paint was $0.57 at Walmart. I bought 2 bottles per color but only ended up doing 1 coat instead of the 2 coats needed, so I had paint left over. The 4 bottles were definitely enough for 2 coats for each box.

Next time, I'll actually let them paint with me.

Birthday Cake Cake Cake Cake Cake Cake

...." and its not even their birthday."

Lego blocks themed cake- vanilla flavored and chocolate cupcakes.

I've been meaning to do a post on my boys birthday cake and cupcakes that I made for their birthday party. Their birthdays are 2 weeks apart so we are able to have joint parties, woo hoo!
Its not like they really understand what's going on anyway....which is why I'm totally going to use this cake/party theme again! And by that time, I hope to improve my skills.

I really did a lot of research via google and pinterest when I decided to go with this theme. Of course its easier to buy a pre-made cake but this was a tad cheaper to me. There were lots of creative cakes, cookies and cake pops decorated like legos or like the yellow lego 'men' but I needed to go with something much more elementary......skills-wise.

I watched a Betty Crocker youtube tutorial on how to go about making this cake.....and then did it my way.

Seeing that I was going to have to freeze the cake to get the icing hard between applying different icing layers, I wanted an extra moist cake....for directions, click here. 

-Tips to making your cakes/cupcakes extra moist are adding:

 ~1 cup of buttermilk

~1 3oz. package of dry instant pudding (match pudding flavor to cake flavor) 

**If/when using a box cake, mix dry pudding with dry cake mix and add the buttermilk to the wet ingredients of the cake mix. 

The buttermilk is an addition, not a substitution.

This was the best darn cake ever! And I put it in the freezer 3 times! Once to cool after baking and then again after each layer of icing (like in the Betty Crocker vid).

The way I made the pegs was by dipping mini oreos in candy melts!

For party favors, I made 'lego' cookies, but they kind of didn't look like legos to me. Like I said, I need more practice.

Sorry for the blurry picture.

I baked some Pillsbury sugar cookies and trimmed them into squares while they were still hot. Its much easier to do when they're hot versus already cooled.
Then I melted some almond bark in a bowl, like I did with the candy melts and dipped the cookies so that it only covered the top.
Almond bark hardens a bit faster than candy melts (less than 2 mins) so I put the m&m's on quickly after each dip.

Next year, I'll probably just buy a cake. I'm thinking I'll alternate years of baking and buying birthday cakes.

I guess this is a food week for me.
I hope you get some ideas from this post, whether it be the extra moist tips or the Betty Crocker youtube tutorials!

Easter Weekend With An Egg Hunt

I had such a good weekend because my brother flew down to visit us.
He had a lot of fun with his nephews. My brother is 2.5 years older than me but isn't married nor has any kids....but from the time he spent with my boys I can tell he will be a great dad.
Anyway, we had an egg hunt after church with my friend's daughter, but since it rained we had to have it inside which wasn't nearly as fun. All in all, the church message was great and so was our 'chill' weekend.

His egg hunt at school.

After church, before the rain.

The Easter bucket I made for the kids...but the candy is for the parents, ha!

The colorful eggs are at the bottom. And though you can't see it, behind the cross is a tiny dinosaur that was placed in the eggs with fruit snacks and tiny squish balls (behind the baseball egg). We stuffed 18 eggs total so they all had 6 to open and play with but of course they opened them, took the toys out and left all the eggs scattered for me to clean up. Thank goodness my husband did the dishes----> we served a brunch that I hope post the recipes to later in the week.


What did you all do Easter weekend?

Christmas: Reflections Throughout the Year

My homemade Christmas Chocolatte! I mixed my coffee with hot chocolate and threw some marshmallows and candy cane on top! It was delicious! You gotta try this! This was inspired by my artsy friend, Marilyn!

Christmas Eve of 2010 - We went to Barnes & Nobles' storytime! I loved his "cheese!"

Our Family Christmas photo of 2010....and my pregnant belly.

Look, what the new year brought in!!!

Look! Now he "cheeses" too!

I think this may be a new holiday tradition! Cheese and wine! This cheese was amazingly delicious!

Bellavitano Espresso Cheese -- actually espresso on top!

I can't forget about my new Christmas cookies!!!

My latest Christmas craft that is completed is my little Jingle Bell Tree! I glued little acorns and bells to the tree. I wish I would've lightly sprayed it with my red glitter paint beforehand. I may still figure out a way to 'doctor' it up. Either way, every time I shake it, it sounds like Santa is coming, lol!

What's your Christmas reflection(s)? I'd LOVE to see them!

Pumpkin Playdough (late post)

I found a recipe on pumpkin playdough and since it turned out well, I thought I'd share it. I don't know why I didn't think to do this earlier in the month, but now I have it for next year!

This was a great seasonal toy for my toddler to play with as well as a way to get accustomed to the gooey texture. He's not a big fan of gooey-ness.

Still no gooey-ness for him!

Ingredients: 
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 cup water
Food coloring (I used close to what the website suggested)

First, combine the dry ingredients in a nonstick saucepan. Add the oil, water, and food coloring and whisk until smooth. Stirring constantly with a rubber spatula, cook the mixture over medium heat until it forms a ball, about 3 to 4 minutes.

Turn the dough onto a counter, let it cool slightly, then knead the dough until it has a smooth texture, about 1 minute. The dough will keep up to a week in a ziplock bag.

These directions are from the site I used verbatim, see here.

Fall Inpirations.....

The weather is beeeeeauuuuuutiful.

Beautiful array of Fall.

Mmmmm....smores!

Made of leaves....

Pumpkin Patch!

Just a great shot.

More Fall Crafts

My original craft was supposed to be mini pumpkin cakes. I bought a mini bundt cake pan and made mini chocolate cakes. They are deeeeelicious! The problem came when it was time to do the icing. I didn't like how the consistency changed once I added food coloring to dye the icing orange. I prefer to make my own icing [but use box cakes] because I can control how much sugar there is.  Anyway, here's my inspiration:

Since my orange icing didn't work out, here is my revised inspiration:

I really need to learn how to make colorful icing because I have plans for my boys' birthday party. I gotta get this together quick! Last year I made colorful icing that turned out great, so not sure how I messed this batch of icing up so badly. I'm taking them to my mom's group party tonight and will have to post pictures of them later.


Today's Fall Crawl craft takes us over to Meli Faif Life. Her blog (and daughter) is incredibly adorable! So check her out.

Yarn wreath.

Tutorial here. Yep, gonna try and make one of these too!


Have a great weekend Lovelies!

Fall Craft: Give Your Pumpkins Some Bling!

Today is my craft day for Marilyn's FALL CRAWL, woo hoo!

I have the simplest way to decorate pumpkins but make them somewhat jazzy.
Dun dun nuh nuh.............self adhesive rhinestones!

For ladies always on the go, tied up with work, school, work+school or babies....or maybe even the less skilled craftsman, this craft is for you.

What you'll need:
-decor pumpkins
-self-adhesive rhinestones (I got mine from Michael's; they have all several shapes)
-1/4 of creativity :-)

Bling pumpkins.

Orange potpourri in vase as well as bowl.

Small decor for hall/entry way.

One pumpkin did not make the photo. It was the tall pumpkin. I used the glittered, gray-looking circles for to make a spider web....buuuuutt, the Michael's I live near was out of  fake spiders. The plan is to glue the pumpkin. It just doesn't look right without the spider. I looked for this particular spider for a week, but everytime I go to the Michael's near me, they're out and I keep forgetting to just go to Hobby Lobby, probably because its further away too.

Anyway to complete the look, I suggest buying a bigger pumpkin and several packs of adhesive circles (glitter or clear rhinestones) and put them in the shape of spider web. Then glue a spider to the middle of the spider web and voila. It took me 20-30 minutes to put all of the 'bling' on the pumpkins.

I think my next pumpkin project, just in time for Halloween, will be this.....

Another easy project. Looks like what is needed are black pumpkins, or black spray paint, colorful felt fabric for the eyes and ears and a pumpkin cutting knife to cut the stems.

I hope you try one of these easy, decorative pumpkins projects.....and when you do, be sure to let me know!

Happy seasonal crafting!

Day 1 of FALL CRAWL

Fall is almost here and its time to get crafty!!! I'm definitely not the most crafty person in the world, but I surely can decorate some already put-together crafts! He he. Anyway, I've decided (some time ago) that my tots will be a reason for me to get crafty. I've always wanted to be the kind of mom that decorates the home for every holiday and makes cute party sweets. I haven't started doing this just yet but I think now is a good time to start, especially with all the inspiration I've been seeing. Enter in....Marilyn over at The ArtsyGirl Connection. She is a very artsy lady with all kinds of beautiful things on her blog so check her out, here. Today is the first day of her FALL CRAWL, where she will be showcasing the crafts, recipes and other fall diy projects form various bloggers for the rest of the month. I'm excited to be apart of it and to get some cool ideas for the seasons to come (with a mere change of the colors :-)).

Today's craft is from Marilyn herself! She made the cutest little paper pumpkins (pictorial included)! These are a must-do, but maybe everything will be. :-)