Do You Have What It Takes...

Yep.  That's right.  I decided to go ahead and enter my "God Bless America" blocks in the American Crafter contest hosted by Naptime Crafters!  Wish me luck!

Girl's-Day-In: Farm Animal Puppets

So a couple of days ago I had a Girl's-Day-In  with two of my friends who are both expected babies.  They had seen these fun farm animal puppets I had made for my Little Man and wanted to know how, so we spent the day working on these adorable guys!  (There is also a cow and sheep, not pictured.)

With felt, puppets, pizza and friendship, what more could a girl ask for?   Make sure and check out my tutorial page, where I'll be putting up tutorials on how to make your own set of these adorable guys! 

Deliciously Beautiful

Valentine's Day.  You're probably sick of hearing about it, but I had to share one thing that my hubby did for me.  Yes, he's pretty "crafty" too...in a manly make-my-wife-happy kind of way, of course.  He knew I'd always wanted one of those Edible Arrangements where it's a "flower" arrangement made of fruit.  Not only beautiful, but also delicious!  I just never could choke down the price for one, so I just thought it was going to be one of those unrealized dreams.  Until this year.  Check this out:

Don't you just want to eat this up?  Well I did...literally.  With a $2 flower pot from Jo-Ann's, some fruit, some skewers, a piece of foam inside the pot to hold them up, a flower cookie cutter and a melon baller, this piece of delectible art made all my edible arrangement dreams come true.  Easy and beautiful.  What more could you want?

Traditions, Valentines, Delicious Dinner & Lots of Love!

Happy Valentines Day...or at least Valentine's week!  This year we did some of our celebrating on the actual day (Feb. 14) but then because we had some things going on that night that we couldn't get out of, we are REALLY celebrating tomorrow. 

So, my Mom is wonderful and for Valentines Day she would always make us Rice Krispie Hearts.  It was magical when we were kids.  We would go to bed on February 13th and wake up on February 14th to find our own individual pink-ish Rice Krispie treat heart complete with candy or some other treat in the top of it.  Since she decorates wedding cakes, she had a plethora of heart shaped pans and would lay the candy down and then dump the warm, gooey rice krispie treat on top and smash it down, and then arrange it beautifully on individual plants for each of us.  I attempted this last year, and let's just say...it didn't look much like a heart.  So this year, I got smart!  I bought these springform pans from Target and solved all my heart-shaping problems!  This year we used fruit snacks as the "treat" in them.  They turned out a LOT better than last year, and my Mom would be proud!

I had fun making homemade valentine's this year too!  Check out the tutorial tab to see my links for my Easy Crayon Valentine (Little Man's valentine to Daddy) and my Fold Out Valentine Card!

I also made my Love a delicious dinner.  Here's the menu and the links to the recipes I used. I've noted any alterations I made.  It was DELICIOUS and needless to say, there wasn't many leftovers that night!  I think I might see how many times I can use the word "delicious"....

The Main Course:

Olive Garden Alfredo Sauce: we like to half the garlic because it's really strong, and then add some extra cheese because it's delicious!  FYI...this isn't that good the next day.  It kind of separates and makes you realize just how much butter you consumed.  Just don't look at the calories and it will be the best dinner you've ever had!  Cook up some Fetuccini and you'll have everyone impressed with your homemade sauce!

Oven Baked Parmesean Chicken Strips: SO delicious and easy.  I didn't have all the spices, so I just used onion & garlic powder and some black pepper and they were delicious.  I wish I would have made more...

Parmesean Heart Rolls: So this is just the recipe that gave me the inspiration.  Instead of using the filling they do (although it would be good and I want to try it sometime!) I just spread the dough with some butter and parmesean cheese.  So cute and delicious.





Dessert:
Chocolate Raspberry Hearts: Nutella.  Need I say more? 

Easy Crayon Valentine

This year I helped my Little Man make this simply adorable Valentine for my husband.  Originally he had just scribbled all over the paper (I made sure to only give him Valentine appropriate colors to somewhat control the outcome...) but then I got the idea to do crayon rubbings with cardboard hearts!  I was pretty happy with the results and it seriously took us about 5 minutes to do.  Want to see how we did it?  Here goes!

First you'll want to gather your supplies:

• Paper
• Crayons (or colored pencils)
• Cardboard Hearts in Various Size

I just freehanded these hearts so they wouldn't be perfectly semetrical and add some "character."  This would work great with other shapes for different occassions too!  Be creative and experiement!  I just used an empty ziplock bag box I had just thrown in the recyle bin and cut these cuties out.  Use whatever you have on hand!  Cereal boxes would work great!



Then place the heart you want to use under the paper where you want it to show up.

 

 

 And start coloring over the area!  NOTE: It works out better if you hold down the heart a little bit with your other hand so it doesn't move.  I just couldn't do that AND take a picture, but I highly reccomend it or else you get some pretty interesting shapes that slightly resemble hearts...

 And Voila!  A beautiful heart! 

Add as many hearts as you want and make sure and sign that masterpeice!  My Little Man had a great time doing this and an even greater time giving it to Daddy!



Fold Out Valentine Card

This year I wanted to make my special Valentine an awesome card.  My inspiration was this fun fold out book that my sister made years ago:

I decided to put a Valentine twist on it.  Of course, feel free to make one for any occasion!  They're so fun and easy to make.  Some parts can seem a little tricky until you get the hang of it, but once you do you'll be asking yourself why you never thought of this before!  Ready?  Here we go:

Supply List

• Paper for background (I used a neutral brown)
• Paper cutter (not completely necessary but will save LOADS of time with scissors)
• Colored paper for inside squares and for cover
• Cardboard for cover (2 small squares - I used a box from a Little Debbie snack cake that I had just thrown in the recycle bin)
• Ribbon to tie card shut
• Glue

First step is to cut three 8 1/2 inch squares out of your background paper.  If you are using a regular sized paper (8 1/2 x 11) then all you're doing is cutting 2 1/2 inches off of the long side.

They should look like this.

Then we start folding.  Fold in half one way.

Open it back up and then fold it in half the other way.  You are making the creases so that it will fold properly when it's all put together.

Now it should look like this.  One big square with 4 equal little squares.

Then you fold diagonally once. 

So now it should look like this.  Two little squares and then two squares that now are made up of two triangles each.  Do that with all three of your 8 1/2 inch squares you cut out of your background paper.  Don't worry too much about wether you creased it the right way, or which way it folds because we'll tweak that as we put it together.

Then you are going to cut out your pretty colored paper to go on the inside of your card.  I actually put some on the back of mine as well, so I cut 6 squares.  If you only want it on the inside and not on the back, you only need 4.  They just need to be 4 inch squares.  I alternated between red and pink to keep my Valentine theme going. 

Next we're going to glue those pretty 4 inch squares to the background paper.  Make sure you glue it only on the squares that are NOT made up of two triangles with your folds.  If you are only using 4 squares of colored paper you will end up with one blank background sheet of folded paper.  Don't worry, that goes in the middle to help with the folding! 

Now comes the trickiest parts.  First we have to glue our three big squares together.  If you used 6 colored pieces and so you have it on the back too, you just have to make sure that the big square you put in the middle is facing the opposite direction of the other ones.  Meaning, the middle big square (one pictured on the right here) has the colored pieces facing down while the other big square has the colored pieces facing up.  If you are only using 4 colored pieces, you don't have to worry which way the middle piece is going because it looks the same on both sides!

Then we glue the other side on as well.  It should now look like this.  This is the inside of your card!

Now we'll get working on the cover.  You need two 5 inch squares of thin cardboard.  Cereal boxes are great for this, or any other box you have around.  You just don't want it to be too thick of cardboard or your card will end up really bulky.  It doesn't matter what the cardboard looks like because it will soon be covered with paper.

You'll need two 5 1/2 inch squares of colored paper for your covers.  We are only covering one side because the inside of our card will cover the other side of the cardboard.  Glue your cardboard square onto the backside of your colored cover paper.  Make sure you leave about the same amount of extra paper on each side (get that square, square in the middle if you can!) because you'll be folding it up and gluing it.  If you want to, you can cut your cover paper a little bigger (6 inches or so) to give you a little more folding room.  I would probably do that if I did this again.

When that is nice and dry so it won't come apart with you folding it, fold up the corners like this:

Then fold and glue the edges around the cardboard so it looks like this.  I glued them and then put it under a couple of heavy books for a few minutes to make sure it stayed down where I wanted it.

Now on to the folding!  This can seem a little tricky and you'll just have to try it out until it works, but basically you fold up both sides and then the middle square folds inside and it all sandwiches nicely into a square like the one below.  None of the colored paper should be showing if it is folded properly.  You can test it out by opening it and seeing if you see what should be the inside of your card.  If not, try changing the direction of the creases of the middle big square.

Once you've conqured the folding beast, you're ready to glue that baby onto the cover.  Make sure that you line up the papers if you want a certain part to be the first part of the inside of the card with the front cover.  Glue the front cover to the stack of folded card.  Mine again went "under the books" to give it some pressure to make sure it was nice and tight. 

It will look like this if you pick it up now.

Now, this step is VERY IMPORTANT because if you forget this step, you will be tearing off the back cover and re-gluing it again...like I did.  I didn't feel it was necessary to document that with pictures...

Before gluing the card to the back cover, cut a piece of ribbon long enough to tie around the whole thing and make a nice bow.  You can decide how long you want the bow "tails" and cut accordingly.  I cut mine pretty long and then ended up cutting some of the extra off, which is a lot easier than the alternative!  Glue the ribbon onto the inside of the back cover leaving equal amounts on either side of it.  THEN glue the card over the ribbon and onto the back cover.  It should look something like this:

And now you can tie it up with a pretty bow!

This is the front view of it all opened up:

And this is the back:

You did it!  Now you can decorate this amazing fold out card any way you like.  Here's a sneak peak at what I did for my Valentine.  This is the "not yet completed" version.  I put in the other spots where there wasn't colored paper, reasons why I love him. 

Enjoy!

Where Have You Been?!?!

Sooo...it's been awhile.  A long while. 

My biggest reason for being a crafting slacker is that I got a job!  A perfect work-at-home job that paid really well and I could do while my Little Guy was taking his naps in the afternoon.  Life was good.  Things were going well.  Then my project ended ubruptly because of lack of funding.  So, here I am!  Back in the crafting world and ready to rededicate myself to my Etsy! 

Want to see a couple of fun things I was busy with during my Etsy/Blog Hiatus?  Okay!  Here we go!

HALLOWEEN PARTY

Who doesn't love candy corn??

Cookie Bones!

Eensy Weensy!

Ghosties and Jack-O-Lanterns!

"Well, this is a splendid party, if I do say so myself."

BABY SHOWER FOR K.

Handmade Thank You Cards

Delicious Blueberry Themed Brunch (Plus a few other things...)

Felt Banner!

Oh...and I also did a lot of taking care of things like this...

And enjoying delicous homemade things like this...

Courtesy of my wonderful hubby!