Pinterest...I don't just pin! #4

I'm getting a bit burnt out on blogging pinterest stuff. I'd rather be pinning or making my pins I guess! That being said, this may be my last pinterest pin, maybe not, we'll see.

This was the water marbling technique, I loved it, it also actually lasted longer than when I polish my nails the usual way! I watched a how to video which helped a ton. It is a pretty easy way to get a very cool look. Below was my first attempt, I learned a lot. The more polish you drop in, the closer your lines are and the darker they are. Notice my middle finger that looks a bit like candy corn? That one didn't have as much polish dropped in.

This is after I removed the tape and most of the polish from my skin.
My right hand, the ring finger was less polish and I swirled it around a bit more than the others.

Deep fried battered chicken, I think it was called sesame ginger chicken. I had to change the sauce recipe quite a bit to make use of what I actually had. It turned into a grapefruit ginger chicken. It was actually really good. It was hard to keep my oil at the right temp. I got it way to hot at one point and smoked up the whole house. Next time I may borrow a deep fryer, that would make things much easier.
Loved this one, we have very few Halloween decorations so this was great. We ran out of trash bags so I sent Micah to a neighbor where he got 2 black trash bags. We cut them into strips all the way to within 1 inch from the bottom of the bag, then cut the side open and along the bottom of the bag. Then we stretched each strip, if it tore, we tied the back on. I taped the bottom of the bag behind the front overhang on our porch. Viola! Witch curtains. They look so cool when they sway in the breeze.

Pinterest...I don't just pin! #3

Black Licorice Caramels for Tyler's birthday. Even if you don't like Black Licorice you might like these, they were SO good.

I changed up the same recipe and made Coconut Caramels. Again, yummy.
I'll be making these again.
I found a recipe for sugar cookies that are as good, if not better than Lofthouse cookies, you know, the kind you find in the plastic containers that are frosted based on whatever holiday is closest. Anyway, really, really good. We made them for Activity Days too. I made them for Tyler's birthday as well, initially. I didn't have any powdered sugar to make the frosting and it was Sunday, so the store wasn't an option and I found out by googling that you can make your own powdered sugar! It's much cheaper, I will be doing this from now on.

Projects projects!

Ok, when I am not posting it is because I am living! You know, I am a creature of phases. My most recent thing has been cooking. I really want to make recipe cards using my digital scrapbooking stuff. I want to include pictures for all of them. These are going to only be things that I've made and really like and want to continue to make. I'm going to print them in 4x6 and laminate them and put them in a recipe box. This first pic will not go onto a card but I saw a cake like this when I was googling peeps pics for the scrapbook page below. I loved it and decided to make one for FHE.

Peeps Sunflower Cake.

We love Hawaiian Haystacks here and all the toppings are so pretty together. I never use a recipe to make them but I'm going to make a card for them. The cards could also be a great gift idea, I could even give a set to my daughter's in law right?

Grandma Kay called last Friday and gave me a recipe for french bread. The kiddos were spending the night at my parents house so we had the house to ourselves for date night. We made the bread together and played Sequence.

Next time I think I'll try to make it in a loaf pan. The recipe said to form it in a loaf but we'll see.

A seasonal favorite, made with lemons from our neighbors tree.

Lemon Bars

This is a new one for us, Bunny Buns. We got the recipe from The Friend magazine this month, it was a reprint from a 1980's issue. It has orange juice and orange rhind. The kids didn't like the rhind so I'll leave it out next time, I also want to make the glaze with orange juice instead of water. Oranges courtesy of Grandma Kay.

Tortilla Soup

Don't these pics look yummy?

I have also been sewing a bit. I found a link to an awesome blog (on Lindsey Davis's blog), MADE. There are tons of tutorials on it but the first one I've tried was this. They say it's the easiest skirt you'll ever make and it IS. The two tiered style is my favorite and it really isn't any harder than the single layered skirt. I'd like to get more ruffles and trims and have fun with it.

I don't have a serger but Teri Stringham (a friend) showed me a stitch on my machine that is almost like having a serger and I love it.

The great thing about making this for little girls is that you need hardly any material! You can even make two side seems instead of one so you can make use of your smaller scraps.

In the picture below Peyton wore the blues and greens skirt today and it looked cute even with her little pink Jumping Beans shoes from my Aunt Jan.

Another thing the blog inspired me to do was make my own bias tape. It was easy and rather fun. I made a little mistake with our curtains, I washed them and they shrunk about 6 inches! I thought I had washed them before and they had done all their shrinking. Well, I had washed one panel that I ended up haveing to take down. Anyway, to make a long story short, Tyler unstitched to bottom hem to make them longer and I made bias tape with the one panel I washed previously and sewed it on the bottom so they could be as long as possible.

Yes, the bottom strip is lighter because it was facing outside and got sunbleached. They still look pretty sad, but not as sad as having curtains WAY too short that show where our carpet is worn down to the pad and to the concrete in places! So, if anyone has long curtains sitting around and you want to give them to me, I'm not too proud to take them!

This is after the bias tape, pretty cool huh?

I also made some pillows with the leftovers. I used the middle meshy net part of an old bedskirt for the pillow forms inside, I feel so frugal!

Next up, I want to make Peyton a dress out of Tyler's old dress shirt, I have to draw my own pattern though and I'm not too sure of myself on that!

Barbie Cakes (from Last January!)

I had an unfortunate accident with my camera last year and deleted many pictures, including all of the pictures from P's 2nd birthday party and her Barbie cakes. My mom had some on her camera, but of course, with the way we do things it takes a while, they get done, just not always right away! As you can see we made good use of my Pampered Chef bowl. Next time I do Babrbie cakes I'll use two cake mixes so the girls have more adequately sized skirts, they look like they must have very short legs!
What a cute 2 year old Peyton! She's grown and changed much in the last year.

Teapot Cakes and Teacup cupcakes

So, this was my first attempt with fondant. I thought it was going to be kind of hard, but it wasn't at all, it's super easy. I googled fondant recipes and went with the one that said it was the best tasting people had ever had, and it was really yummy. I didn't have clear vanilla extract so I used almond extract. We had grandparents over for a mini family party and I practiced my cake. I had a monster of a time with the cake part. I intended to use two cakes and put them together. After making 3 cakes, 2 of which got stuck in the Pampered Chef bowl I noticed my teapot on the stove and it was this exact shape, so that was good enough for me, I guess it's more of a tea kettle. I was not happy with the handle and decided I would improve on that next time around. One of the kids asked if the handle was a donut, not exactly the look I was going for!
I added some milk to chocolate frosting to make it thin so it would look like hot chocolate. The marshmallows added to the effect. In some of the cups the frosting ran down the sides a little and I liked it.

After all, this was for Peyton's 3rd birthday so I thought I'd include a picture of her. We got her a doctor's outfit that came with medical tools and she was a very happy girl.

On her actual birthday we had some friends of hers over for a little tea party and I made a few improvements to my cake. This is the snack table. I tried to make it cost effective, kid friendly and tea party like food.

I made the spout, handle and lid a bit more decorative. I would like to learn how to pipe frosting, I'm not very good at it.

For the frosting this time I added baking cocoa to vanilla frosting and made it a little thicker.

Well, I have been trying to add a picture of Peyton with all her little friends that came and blogger won't let me add any pictures for some reason. It was fun and Peyton had a good time.

Food

I had a lot of food pictures building up so I thought I'd combine them in a post. Tyler laughs at me everytime he sees me taking a picture of something I've cooked or baked but oh well. I have only made one pie in my life, a few months ago, and then the other night I made the one below. I had always heard pie crust was hard to make but I just followed the recipe and it turned out perfect. This one is an "invention". I made a dinner pie with roast beef, cheese, green beans, cream of chicken soup and diced tomatoes. Micah hated it.
A few months ago Tyler decided that we needed to have a dessert or treat every Monday night for Family Home Evening. So I decided I would use that request as an excuse to go through and bake different things from my cookbook every week. I love baking and I love making new things. The cookies below are Peanut Butter cookies, I have made them before, but I had to make something we had the ingredients for! I also hope to someday make a recipe book and include pictures, at least for many of them. I want to digitally scrapbook my recipes and print them into a photo book, wouldn't that be cute?

I made this cake for Ben's 5h birthday, nothing amazing by any means, but it's our family's favorite chocolate bundt cake, this time I put frosting on it, usually we just have powdered sugar on it. Micah was worried it wouldn't be as good with the frosting, but I did light frosting and everyone liked it. You can't really see, but Ben picked out a spider and a snake as we were headed out the door, he wanted his cake to be decorated, so cute he is.

This was Ben's birthday dinner. I didn't plan anything out ahead of time, I'm always so unprepared. Ben's favorite food is fish, and of course that's what he'd request when I asked him an hour or so before dinner what he would like me to make for dinner. We had no fish, but we always have tuna, so I improvised and made tuna patties and fried them in Olive Oil. They were quite tasty and Ben was happy.

Lemon bars! Another FHE treat. Tyler's mom used to make these for him often when he was a kid and he loves them. I made them once before (Ty insisted) but it was from a Krusteez box so I don't think it counts at all. These are my first from scratch using lemons from our wonderful neighbors tree that hangs over the fence into our yard.

Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies. Benji and Peyt both helped me, again, I used what we had on hand. I do plan on picking some new things out and getting what we need to make them.

Below, Snicker Doodles, mine and Papa Louie's favorite cookie. Made it dozens of times but we had all the ingredients.

Most things are better PINK!

Truth be told, I'm not a very big pancake fan. It's usually quite easy to turn down most pancakes, but I have to admit, these looked pretty good. It must have been the pink color. I love pink. Tyler is pretty much always the one to make pancakes for the kids because I don't care for them much. I was feeling the Valentine love in the air and I decided to wake up a little earlier and surprise the kids with some pink heart pancakes before school on Friday.

Miss P just couldn't wait and had hers minus the syrup.

This is what really drew me in, those sprinkles made them so pretty!
Jacob was very happy about the heartcakes.

I guess Micah was too.

This is Benny awhile later, he decided that a little extra sleep was better than heartcakes.

Maybe next month I can do green clovercakes for our annual green St. Patrick's Day breakfast!

November is here! segment 21, 22 and 23

I am still thankful! I have been too busy being thankful to post I guess.

I am thankful for the simple pleasures in life, a good show, a cute outfit, making a wish on a dandelion, and really cute little clips.
I am super thankful to have my wedding ring back. Tyler got it sized for me for our anniversary, I haven't been able to wear it in over 4 years. He also got one of my diamond earrings made into a necklace (thanks Bro Kennington!) I lost the match to it this summer, sniff, sniff. I think it looks even better as a necklace though. Tyler asked me not to spend money on him this year, so I gave him...homemade Andes mint cookies. They really are quite amazing. As you can tell by the look on his face, he liked them. Notice the jar Allison?

Mmmmm, I am thankful for sweets!

I am thankful that I had a wonderful weekend. Our date was fun, we had a great dinner at P.F. changs, it was my first time there and it was wonderful, they even gave us 25% off for our anniversary. We finished our Christmas shopping for the kids too. I took a picture of us to start a new tradition, pictures every year on our anniversary, that way we'll at least get one picture of us a year!

I am thankful for Family Home Evening, especially the ones like tonight that make me feel like we have perfect children, at least for the moment. Peyton kept pulling Micah's head to her and cuddling him, it was very sweet.

I am thankful that I got the Van completely cleaned today and some clutter boxed up and shelves in the china cabinet cleaned off in preparation for Christmas decor! I love this season and I love Christmas decorations!!!