Fall craftiness

We are SO making these! Check out the how-to at Hostess with the Mostess. :)

And some super cool leaves to let your kids craft here.

Saturday distractions

This Saturday we had a bunch of formal plans and due to a sickness in the family, we had to forgo them. So I let the kids entertain themselves with homemade playdough.


I used the time to catch up on some very much needed cleaning and laundry.
And to sew the girl's a couple of new dresses. I haven't taken time to make them new dresses in some time. I made some jumper dresses and boy oh boy! My new machine makes button holes SO easy! I know that most have had this luxury as a given with their sewing machines, but let me tell you ...you should have seen the rigmarole I had to go through to do button holes before! I'll have to post about it some time. If you have never used a really old machine, you won't believe the contraption I used!
Here they are ready to go to church in their new dresses the next morning. They seemed pleased (well Kalla liked her new dress with flowers and butterflies and Maressa was just annoyed at tripping over it to get up a step from our playroom).

Oh and I also tried a recipe from a book I checked out from the library. It's The Cupcake Doctor or something like that. She has a whole series of muffin recipes in the back using a premade muffin mix. This is the sweet potato casserole muffin, complete with marshmallows on top. I have to say they were SO good warm straight out of the oven, but just so-so later on. They are actually too sweet for my taste. I think I'll try to make some using my yogurt muffin base recipe.

Go visit a museum with your family this weekend

For free or almost! Saturday is Museum Day and participating museums are giving 2 free passes for this day. See what museums are participating in your area here. :) For our family of 6 we can get in the Space and Rocket Center for $15! ;)

It's Fall!

Still working on my fall mantel as I haven't found any mini pumpkins yet. I do have some new stuff though so my mantel is a bit different this year. But join me in decorating and celebrating this scrumptious time of year.

Make super easy decor by framing fall scrapbooking papers (these retro prints found in the Target dollar section!)

Make some magnets for your fridge!
Put a fall stamped note cube by the phone.

Make some pillow slipcovers with some Farmer's Market.

Now light that apple spice or pumpkin spice candle, open then windows to the cooler breeze, sip on some Chai Tea and sit back and relax for a few!

I now have a seven year old!

We celebrated Zachary's birthday this past weekend with a bunch of boys and a bunch of legos. More details of the party stuff here.
He requested a pile of rice krispie treats and push pops instead of cake and ice cream (however, on his actual birthday, this past Mon, I made chocolate chocolate cupcakes with a cream filling that we shared with our Monday night bible study). We also had popcorn, veggies n dip, fresh fruit and cheezit snack mix and Lego fruit snacks. I 'glued' the big candle on the top treat with melted chocolate. I decorated the tables with festive yellow paper table cloths and red and yellow balloons and a few Lego creations of Zachary's.
In the center of our deck I poured a huge pile of Legos on our train table and the boys had a blast building there. We saw who could build the tallest tower without falling. Then they made their own creations to take home.


Everyone seemed to have a blast and this was my easiest party yet.

After all the presents were opened we presented Z with our present. We got him a real live leopard gecko. All the boys got a kick out of this baby reptile cutie (yes, even the moms thought he was cute).

Then when all was said and done a bunch of them squeezed into our big sandbox.

Awesome FREE paper downloads

I made up a little gift package for a friend of mine's birthday the other day. It consisted of mini loaves of chocolate cake in this post, a recipe card for it, a key fob and some cute stickers and to do list with magnet.
The paper came from a free download on this blog (be sure to check out her whole blog to find really cute papers she designed for free printing use). I got the link from another great blog that always has great crafty links and finds. I printed up some of the to do lists and the labels. I cut out the labels and then made them stickers on my Xyron sticker maker And one portion of the label page I put adhesive magnet sheet on the back.

I found also some awesome cute free recipe cards to download/print for free here. Be sure to scroll down to find some more links for more types of recipe cards on that site.

Hope you have as much printing as I did! ;)

Super Capes

I made this cape for my Super Micah the other day seen here modeled on Maressa actually! This came about from his superman jammies he inherited from big brother that has a velcro on cape. He was ALL about the cape and wanted one to wear all the time. So I made him this blue cape upon request with his initial. It was super easy! ;)

To make your own toddler sized cape you simply cut out a rectangle 22"x24", Hem three side leaving on of the shorter sides unfinished. The unfinished side make a gathering stitch all the way across. Now cut a rectangle 22"x4" for the collar. Fold in half wrong sides together and sew short sides together and turn back out. Iron the long side tucking under a seam along the raw edges. Now mark the collar about 3-4" in from the edges. Gathered the top of the cape and pin in between the 2 marks. Sew it down inside the collar. Now pin the other side of collar over the top of the cape and sewn along the entire bottom edge of collar. Lastly, sew velcro on the edges of the collar.

If you want to add an initial or superman logo, use heat n bond lite to iron it on, then a zig zag stitch to sew it down. Hope my directions make sense! I'm not to great at describing how to sew things as I am a visual learner. ;)

And here are a couple of 3 and 4 year old projects I finished the other day! These were started for Kalla and now they are Maressa's size! :) Better late than never right??
And I'm STILL getting through the half done projects pile!

Make your own baby legwarmers

I love the look and ease of the baby leg warmers. I bought some of the fancy boutique ones last winter and loved them. I wanted more colors this year (to add to our current stash) and came across directions to make them!!! All ya need is some cute women's knee highs.
Just cut the foot off and take a 2.5" section of the foot to make a cuff for the cut end. Here is a picture of the sock with foot cut off and the cuff section, one folded and one not. Then you fold the section of the foot in half, right side out. Pin the edges of the cuff and cut end of the sock together and sew. Serge or zigzag if desired. Turn down cuff and you are done!

Simple as that! Here are some that I made from sock picked up at Target. They came in a 2 pack. Can't wait to make a jumper to match the polka dotted one!

I've had some good quality (not quaNTITY, but quaLITY ;) time in the sewing room here lately and blogger wasn't working right for me yesterday, so I'll be sharing plenty more this week.

It's gonna be a Lego birthday party

It's almost that time! My oldest will be another year older in less than 2 weeks! This year we are doing a Lego theme!

I made these custom invitations myself. First I took a large flat green Lego piece and color copied it onto white card stock. Cut that out around the edges. I made the center part on the computer using a publisher program. I swiped the logo of the internet and found this site that you can build yourself into a Lego character (not all the parts are too wholesome, so I would NOT advise letting your child play on there).

**Edited 9/23/09 I just checked to see if the above link still worked and it's changed and they have made a 'kid safe' version now. Here is the link to that.

Anyway, I made a Zachary type one with balloons and copied and pasted it into my document. Thought it turned out pretty cute!
Here are some cute party favors I found on eBay. These cool pens and some Lego shaped fruit snacks found at the grocery store.
And I found these wonderful 3-D cupcake toothpicks on eBay as well. I didn't feel like hassling with making a Lego shaped cake and the birthday boy has requested a tower of rice krispie treats and push pops anyway. I'll use these to decorate the rice krispie treats.

I found more great ideas here. We will have a timed tallest tower building contest and a make your own design contest where they will also take home their creation as part of the party favors. I got a bunch of misc used bulk Legos on eBay as well for this part.

Will have bunch more pictures in a couple of weeks!

*edited to add: you can see pictures of the actual party here.

A little sewing room organization

I saw a useful tip in a magazine a while back to organize sewing machine needles between projects by type. It suggested putting them in a coordinating pin cushion. So I made simple little pincushions for my different types of needles. A cotton fabric one, knit one and denim one. If you are a cutesie pincushion type of person check out these free patterns:

Heather Bailey's square cushion

Some cute random pincushions

And I finally organized (well started) my patterns. I got some super huge binders and sheet protectors and stuffed my patterns in those.
One day I'll get around to categorizing them by type in the binders. ;)

Nature walk and chalk therapy

After a rough week last week, we tried to take it easy this weekend. Yesterday we enjoyed the nice weather and went for a nature walk.
Zachary picked things for me to take pictures of so he could share the things that God made with his bible class next Sunday. Yesterday he had a baseball game as well. He made his first run of this season (we are half way through a short fall ball season) as he is now in coach pitch in Little League which has been a more competitive transition from tee ball.
Then we spent the rest of the evening hanging out on the drive way. I didn't have any homemade lemonade, but we chilled out with a dose of sidewalk chalk.
I made the giant letters of their name and they enjoyed coloring them in.
Kalla is big into rainbows and lots of colors. :)

I even got some time in my sewing room. Zachary really loves his baby sister and entertaining her. As much as he quarrels with the others, it's so amazing how he is so gentle and kind with Maressa.

And another token picture of our miniature entertainer. :)

Recipes with sour cream

For those who accidentally buy a Sam's size sour cream tub mistaking it for cottage cheese. Hubby is a big cottage cheese and fruit eater. We don't use a whole lot of sour cream in daily use. So I found I could use it up with some baking.



My friend gave me a simple recipe for pancakes that used sour cream. They are really good. They have a little twang to them that goes well with sweet syrup. Here's the recipe:



Omelet Pancakes

1 C Krusteaz Pancake Mix

1 C sour cream

1 egg

1/4 C water



Make as you would regular pancakes. The kids really liked these.




Here's a recipe I've had and used for some time. It is super easy, and super good. This cake is dense like poundcake and too rich for a traditional frosting. It goes really well with whipped topping, vanilla ice cream or thinned royal icing or buttercream icing glaze. I like to make them in mini loaves to give as gifts.

Chocolate Almond Cake

1 pkg devil's food cake mix

1 (3.9 oz) pkg instant choc pudding mix

2 C sour cream

1 C melted butter

5 eggs

1 tsp almond extract

2 C semi sw choc chips

Preheat oven 350F. Grease 10" bundt pan (or several loaf or mini loaf pans). In lg bowl stir cake mix and pudding mix. Make well in center and pour in sour cream, melted butter, eggs and almond extract. Beat on low til blended. Scrape bowl and beat 4 mins on med speed. Stir in choc chips and pour in pan. Bake 50-55 mins (make it shorter for smaller pans). Let cool in pan 10 mins.

And last but not least are these super yummy Frosted Butterscotch cookies. I found the recipe in my cookie book, but apparently the recipe is on the web as well. It's the icing (browned butter icing) that makes these cookies butterscotch. The icing tasted just like butterscotch...you know the good kind, not the fake butterscotch pudding kind. Also in my version I substituted the walnuts for almonds in mine because I can't stand walnuts, but still wanted a crunch in this cookie.

YUM YUM!

A craigslist find

Last weekend, jeans. This weekend contemporary sectional. The great deals just keep getting better! It's still a little wrinkly (all the upholstery comes off and is washable) from washing it all and hanging it on the clothesline to dry. Thinking of slip covering the pillows to a funky orange printed fabric. Now I just need to find really cool (ie loud) fabric to make curtains with and a shaggy rug and this room (this is what we use as our living room...it is right off the kitchen...just to the right of where the picture ends is completely open to our kitchen) will be about done! The other sofa went to the red room, so it's not completely empty anymore. :)