America the Beautiful

It has been forever since I have actually posted a blog and documented any baking and crafting adventures but for good reason! My husband and I bought a house in January and moved in in March. With all of the new house fun and projects, there has been a lot less time to devote to my crafting outlet but alas as things have started settling down just a tad, I found some time to celebrate Independence Day. Below are some pictures of my patriotic crafting endeavors.

Patriotic Wreath

I saw this DIY wreath on Pinterest and immediately fell in love with it. I just had to make it. It was fairly easy but a bit time consuming. I think it turned out pretty fab though and was well worth the time and felt square cutting.

Materials Used:

• 6 Red, 6, White, 4 Blue Felt Sheets
• Scissors
• 1 Box of Straight Pins
• Rounded Foam Wreath
• Jewelry Wire
• Foam Cut Stars or White Card Stock to make stars

Directions:

Cut Felt into 2x2 inch squares (this is the most time consuming part). The squares do not have to be perfect but relatively the same size so you can eyeball it. Take one square at a time and fold it corner to corner in half and then in half again. The piece should now look like a folded triangle and pin it straight into the wreath at the corner. Hold back the pinned pieces and keep pinning so that the felt pieces get packed in tightly so that the wreath looks fuller. Try to keep the red and white sections about the same width but if it is off by a bit, it shouldn't be too obvious. Once all of the felt is pinned, you can affix your springy stars. I used foam stars that were already cut into shape and hot glued them to my wreath. Once those were on, I coiled the jewelry wire around a pencil to give it a springy look. Once the springs were to my liking, I hot glued those onto the back of the stars. Last but not least, I tied a piece of yarn around the top of the wreath for hanging then TADA!!! All done!

Total Cost: 

About $15 give or take a few dollars depending on the materials you choose and supplies you already own

Patriotic Printable

I see free printables online to download all the time for various holidays and events. This time I decided to actually use one as decoration in our house. I already had the red frame and star stickers so all I had to do was print the printable and put it all together. This might be the easiest project I ever made but pretty cute huh? 

Materials Used:

• 5X7 Frame or whatever size you would like. (This frame was purchased at Target awhile back)
• Star Stickers or whatever accent you might want
• Printable. Here is the link: http://www.bloglovin.com/viewer?blog=2030982&post=1209237517
• Printer
• Scissors to cut the printable

Directions:

Download printable, cut printable, put in frame, affix decoration to frame if desire, display and admire. :-)

Cost: This was free for me because I already had all of the materials.

Firecracker Cookies

These cookies were a breeze to make and are made with cake batter. I LOVE anything cake related so I had to give them a try.

Materials Used:

• 1 box of French Vanilla or Yellow cake mix (I used yellow)
• 1 tsp of baking powder
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• red sprinkles (as much as you want)
• blue sprinkles (as much as you want)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, mix together the cake mix and baking powder. In a small bowl, mix together the eggs, oil and vanilla. Add the egg mixture to the cake mixture and stir to combine. Stir in the sprinkles. Drop by spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes. Let cool for a few minutes and then use star shaped cookie cutter if desired. The cookies will be very soft at first. Cool and enjoy! 

Cost:

Again, this depends on what supplies you already have. It cost me $6.00 to make these cookies.

Hope everyone has had a great summer so far! 

Winter Delights

I'm not fan of winter AT ALL but it does lend itself to some beautiful pictures from time to time. Today I'm sharing a few of my favorites that I have taken so far this season:

Obviously I didn't take this one but this was our holiday card and I thought it was cute even if Frankie is blocking Travis' face.

Ice literally covered our entire front window during Chiberia with negative 50 degree temps.

Watching the arrival of the Polar Vortex

My Pretty Ornaments

Snuggled up on a cold day

Cold day project: Snowman Cupcakes that my sister in law, Bethany, and I created for a family holiday party.

Unfortunately winter will still be around for a long time, but Valentine's Day is coming soon and I LOVE the day of love. Time to find some new fun creations to celebrate! Thanks for checking out my pictures and stay warm!

Getting Into the Holiday Spirit!

It's been awhile since I've shared a post or even thought about writing one. Once November hit, things got pretty busy with a birthday trip to Vegas, more birthday celebrating, Thanksgiving, a trip to DC for the Kennedy Center Honors via my husband's amazing job, and Christmas prep. In between all of the fun, I did find some time to make some tasty treats and create an adorable snowman to adorn our door all winter.

Turkey Cupcakes??

First up are these fun turkey cupcakes! They're not made of turkey but certainly look like them. I never put much effort into Thanksgiving decor and crafting but I do always find myself baking something for the holiday so this year I thought that I'd put a little Thanksgiving decor into our dessert. Behold the end result:

Aren't they fun? Unfortunately they are not such a novel idea as I have seen a lot of people posting their version of this creation this year but nonetheless, I enjoyed this project. I must warn you they are not as easy to put together as they look due to the messy nature of the fudge frosting that I used.

Materials Used:

• 2 boxes cake mix (any flavor that pairs well with chocolate/fudge frosting)
• Ingredients required by chosen cake mix
• 2 cans of chocolate or fudge frosting
• Candy Corn (buy this early because it runs out towards the end of November)
• White Non Peril Sprinkles or Edible Eyes
• Toothpicks
• Muffin/Cupcake wrappers

Directions:
Bake 1 cake mix box into cupcakes as directed by instructions on box unless you are following a recipe. Let cupcakes cool. Make 1 box of cake mix into cake pops (minus the sticks) for the turkey heads. I have a cake pop machine which makes this task much easier. Let the heads cool. Frost cupcakes and frost turkey heads. Use tooth pick to affix turkey heads onto cupcakes (I could not get the heads to stay on the cupcakes without the toothpicks). Attach and arrange candy corn on cupcake to make feathers and beaks. Attach your eyes. Put in fridge until an hour before serving to allow the candy corn to affix better to frosting. Don't forget to tell your samplers that there is a toothpick attaching the heads if you use them!

Total Cost:
About $12

Snowman Door Greeter

I was ecstatic when my good friend, Sarah, said that she wanted to make some winter crafts with me. Crafting is more fun with friends after all. We had ideas for about 3 different crafts we were going to make one cold Sunday, however, the first one took us the whole time that we had which means there are future crafts for us to get together, make, and post about.

I saw this idea on Pinterest and thought it was adorable...

 So we made our own...

I think that they turned out really cute and it's fun how you can tweak them to have their own personality. I decided to stay with more of the rustic look for mine while Sarah wanted to add some color to hers. As mentioned this craft took us a long time to create (about 3 hours) so it was not as easy as it looked, however, well worth the time if you have it.

Materials Used:

• White Yarn 
• Burlap Garland Roll 
• Wired twine 
• Styro foam plates or styro foam boards
• 3 buttons
• Pipe cleaners 
• Cotton balls
• Hot glue
• Scissors

Directions:

I decided to use styro foam plates because it is less expensive, but you can buy styro foam boards that are sturdier from the craft store. You can leave one plate alone to be the largest, bottom piece. For the other two smaller circles, I cut them in graduating sizes for the head and torso. They do not need to be perfect because the yarn will cover up any cutting imperfections.

Next, make a spiral in hot glue in the center of the foam circle and place various cotton balls, this is to make snowman appear fuller. Hot glue the end of the yarn to the back of the foam and start wrapping the yarn in one direction. This can be tricky when you get close the sides of the circles, just hot glue the yarn in place. I wrapped the yarn over each foam circle twice to cover all the cotton and foam. It also helps to cut some slits in the plates to run your yarn through in the beginning while you build up a good foundation of yarn. Next hot glue the circles together. I overlapped the bottom two and glued the edges together of the top two.

The arms & hands are made from twine and pipe cleaners. My twine was not sturdy enough to hold shape on its' own so I wrapped it around pipe cleaners to give it more of a rustic look and then bent, shaped, and twisted for strength. I then hot glued them into place.You can also make the arms just out of pipe cleaners sans the twine like Sarah did.

For the hat and scarf, I simply cut pieces from the burlap roll. You can just tie the scarf around the snowman's neck to your liking and hot glue gun the hat on the snowman's head.

Frosty's nose is made from an orange pipe cleaner twisted in a spiral as I could not find a tiny enough carrot in the craft store for this. Hot glue the nose on along with the buttons. Affix some yarn in a loop to the back of Frosty with a hot glue gun for hanging and you're done!

Total Cost:

$20 (You can make many snowmen out of these supplies at the quantity that they come in)

Rudolph Cookies

Last but not least, my husband needed a quick and fun item to bring to a holiday work potluck. These cute Rudolph cookies did the trick and were easy to make!

Materials Used:

• Sugar cookie recipe and ingredients needed or sugar cookie mix, Bake and Break, etc..
• M&Ms
• Mini Twist Pretzels or Chocolate Flipz pretzels would be good too

Directions:

Prepare sugar cookies as directed. While cookies are baking prepare your pretzels and separate out your brown and red M&Ms. As soon as the cookies are out of the oven, start placing the M&Ms and pretzels on the cookies and press them a bit into the cookie while they are still soft. I had a harder time getting the pretzels to stick and had to use some frosting to affix them to the cookies. I then put the cookies in the fridge for about an hour to let the frosting harden. All around, very easy and festive!  Next time I think I will frost the entire cookie before affixing the M&Ms and pretzels to make them stick easier.

Total Cost:

$6

Thanks for reading this very long post! I hope you enjoyed what I shared and that it might have inspired your next creation. I think my next post will showcase some holiday decor that I've been capturing during my whereabouts. 

Pumpkins, Wreaths, and Pups in Costumes

I love Halloween so much and always have. This post and the pictures that I am posting don't even come close to doing it justice, but I thought I'd share a few lovely tidbits and crafts from this chilly October.

Behold the friendly and cute greeter that you'll find when you come visit us. You can see some of my Halloween decorations but I wish that I got a better picture because it was quite cute (yes, I even decorated our hallway and the stairs leading up to our apartment).

Pumpkins!

One of the crafts that I had my eyes set on for this Halloween was making a monogram pumpkin for our family that we can put on display for years to come. This craft was really easy but requires patience and some time. Here is the end result. I think it came out really well especially for the "R" being hand painted.

Materials Used:

• White Craft Pumpkin
• Small bottle of black paint or whatever color you want your monogram to be
• Fine Tipped Paint Brush
• Festive Ribbon
• Hot Glue Gun
• Pencil

Directions: 

Print out a stencil if you would like to use a guide for painting your monogram. Outline the monogram letter on the pumpkin in pencil. Take your time because it is easy to erase pencil but not easy to erase paint. Slowly begin outlining and then filling in your monogram letter. Patience is key with achieving a crisp, neat letter. Be careful not to touch the paint with any part of your hands as you hold and rotate the pumpkin. Create your bow. I think a large bow works best. When paint is dry, hot glue your ribbon onto the top of the pumpkin.

Total Cost:

$15-$20. You can find cheaper craft pumpkins mid-late October.

Wreaths!

The next craft that I made was this autumn wreath that I found at Target. It was a craft kit with all of the necessary pieces to make the wreath so I can't really take much credit for this one but still thought it was cute and worth my time plus it was a steal at only $2.50. The only thing that I added that was not included was a ribbon hook on the back so that I could hang the wreath on our door.

Pups (and a lady) in Costumes!

Last but not least for my amusement and hopefully yours too...

Frankie was a dragon for Halloween this year. He didn't really enjoy it but I, as well as our entire family, couldn't get enough of it. It's safe to say he's relieved Halloween is over.

I work in a pretty awesome office that lets us dress up for Halloween and being the Theatre and Music Advisor, I had to do something for Halloween....enter Waldo or Wenda...Did you know Waldo had a girlfriend named Wenda and that she has a twin sister named Wilma? Neither did I! Look it up. :-) I got quite a few laughs and smiles on Halloween so I'd say Waldo was a success and the best part is that it was probably the most comfortable Halloween costume that I ever wore. I also did not need to worry about how my hair looked that day!

As always thanks for reading and until next time...

Smores Cookies

As fall arrives it is the perfect time to make Smores...although, for me, it is always the perfect time for a smore! I saw a recipe for Smores cookies during the summer and decided that I had to try them once the weather and my kitchen got a bit cooler. They are so easy to make and I'm wondering why I never thought of this myself! Here are the tasty results:

The Prep

Cooling

Inside View (Sandwhich Style Option)

Materials Used:

• Sugar Cookie Dough
• Mini Marshmallows
• Hersey Bars

Directions: 

Cut Round or Square slices of sugar cookie dough. Put two or three squares (depends how chocolatey you want your cookies) on the dough. Put 4-5 mini marshmallows on top of the chocolate pieces. Bake as directed by the sugar cookie dough.

Optional Step: 

Cover cookie with another round or square slice and crimp the end of the cookie dough pieces together making a smore pocket or sandwich. Bake as directed by the sugar cookie dough.

Total Cost = About $6 to $8

I think this will need to be my next Smores endeavor: Smores Cupcakes!

Until Next Time...

Fall Themed Bridal Shower

In addition to some random baking goodness, I also had the pleasure of planning out my best friend's Bridal Shower. Her wedding is in the fall so we went with a fall theme for the shower. Here are a few of the decorations I got to play with and some of the desserts I got to make (can't take credit for the cake though). If only I could do this for my real job everyday!

Dessert table complete with cake, cake pops, and pumpkin cookies

Loving the desserts!

Bride and Groom then and now

Only a small fraction of the gifts they were showered with. I just liked my curly bow and lettering. :-)

The bridal party and lovely ladies who worked to make this such a fun day!

Cupcaking!

It's been forever since I've documented any of my creations. With moving and a new job life has definitely gotten busy. Here are some tasty treats that I've made this summer:

Lemon Cream Cupcakes for Memorial Day

Devil's Food Cupcakes for my brother's birthday

American Flag Cake for the 4th

Hopefully now that I have a larger kitchen and everything is unpacked, I can get back to some more baked goodness!