DIY Valentine Poppers starring Brooke and Sydney

Watch Brooke and Sydney make Valentines Day poppers - what a fun party or gift idea!



Supplies:

-tissue paper
-empty toilet paper or paper towel rolls
-ribbon
-tape
-scissors
-small candies or toys

Cut up some tissue paper into small bits to make confetti.
Lay down a big sheet of tissue paper.
At one long edge stand up 2 paper rolls (either 2 toilet paper rolls or cut one paper towel roll in half) and fill with candy, confetti, toys, whatever.
Lay the rolls down carefully so the ends butt up against each other.
Roll the tubes up in the tissue paper and tie both ends with ribbon. Note Brooke tapes the solid roll in the middle but that made it too hard to crack the popper open, tape on either side of the middle.
Popper is done. To open, pull both ends away from each other causing the paper to tear in the middle and the confetti, etc. comes flying out. Cute!

Super Bowl Party Planner

My sister is going to a Super Bowl party and asked if I have any suggestions for something she can take - just to force her to read my blog and think about being crafty I'm going to put some thoughts on here and tell her to come check them out :) Here are a few things I have made in the past if you want any ideas:

- cupcakes topped with marshmallow buttercream frosting, tootsie roll footballs, and sprinkles in the colors of the playing teams. To make the frosting I fold marshmallow cream into buttercream - delish. The footballs are flattened tootsie rolls that I cut into football shapes and piped white chocolate laces on. I also added a little green colored frosting for some "grass". I know there is no way she is going to make these, she stopped reading this part at "tootsie roll footballs" I bet. Not hard tho so try them!

- strawberries dipped in chocolate, piped white chocolate to look like football laces.

- deviled eggs with chives on top to look like football laces.

-carve a round watermelon into a helmet shape, fill with fruit.

-a football stadium: layer 3 different dips next to each other (this is cheese dip, guacamole, and spinach dip) in a smaller rectangular dish, top with shredded cheese to divide the "field" and black olives (lined up to represent the players), pipe sour cream for the lines. Put into a larger container and fill around it with assorted crackers, chips, veggies, pretzels, etc.

And finally, a very easy idea is to make some dip (cheese, 7 layer dip, whatever) and put it in a plastic football shaped bowl :)


The menu for our party this year so far is (not counting the munchies hopefully everyone else will bring):
- mini pigs in a blanket (my friend Patty requests these every year) that I make with mini turkey smoky links and crescent roll dough (cut each triangle into 6 or 7 smaller triangles then wrap around the sausage, bake at 350' until golden brown). You can make these ahead of time and freeze, then bake from frozen - it'll just take a few extra minutes in the oven.
- pulled pork I'll make in the crockpot for sliders. This pulled pork recipe is super simple: rub a mixture of lemon pepper, seasoned salt and garlic powder all over a 5 pound pork shoulder butt. I put a crockpot liner in my crock pot for easy clean up and then put the pork, one sliced onion and a bottle of beer in the crockpot on low for 10 - 12 hours. Remove from liquid and shred apart using two forks.
- I saw a recipe for "Touchdown Brownies" on Pinterest (click here) - they are topped with caramel, pretzels and chocolate chips that I think I'll make.  I'm sure they'll be good, what can go wrong with brownies topped with caramel and pretzels - salty and sweet! I will leave out the nuts for Dave who is allergic, and so far I haven't found the football shaped pretzels so will use the extra butter snaps I have left over from making pretzel hugs the other day.

Oh, and I'll use this football runner I made a couple years ago for decorating the table - it's just a long strip of green felt with white electrical tape for the lines, and numbers cut out of a piece of white duct tape sheet (they have sheets of this now in lots of different colors that has a peel off back - cut out the numbers or letters or whatever then peel off the paper backing and stick to your project as needed).

it got wrinkled in the drawer,
hopefully no one notices!

The other thing I will do is print out a football pool/squares thing for the "gamblers" among us - click here for the one I'm using. Have everyone who wants to buy a square (or 5 squares, or 10 squares!) put their initials in one of the white boxes. After the grid is filled in (there are 100 squares), rip up little squares of paper and write 0 thru 9 on them and put in a hat, someone draws the numbers while someone else fills in the 10 gray squares across the top - then put the numbers back in the hat and draw again to fill in the 10 gray side squares. We like to give prizes to whoever has the correct score at first quarter, half time, 3rd quarter and then final score. You could also give prizes for other random stuff just to keep people paying attention to the game - for instance who is going to win the coin toss, how many times they show the cheerleaders, how many beer commercials there will be...whatever you can think up!! Have fun :)

Cookie Bites

I normally make chocolate chip cookies from scratch, but sometimes I'm in too big of a hurry and use store-bought dough...and when that happens I usually make these cookie bites just to make them a little more "homemade". This is so simple it's almost embarrassing to write out the directions haha!! They are really good though, so I wanted to share my little shortcut with you.

I buy the kind of dough that is prescored and you just break off the square and put it on a baking sheet, except that I put each square into a greased mini muffin tin (my mini muffin tin gets used a lot, have you noticed that?!) and bake at whatever temp the package says for approx 11 minutes until lightly browned but not too well done. Pull the pans out and let them cool for a couple minutes, then insert a piece of unwrapped candy into the top of each cookie - whatever kind you like or have on hand. I use chocolate hugs or kisses, chopped up caramels, mini peanut butter cups (my favorite), whatever. Let the cookies cool until you are able to remove them from the pan then carefully run a small knife around the edges to loosen, and sort of twist and lift them out of the pan. Set on a wire rack to completely cool - if you can wait that long :). Easy-peasy, and yummy!

Organizing Wrapping and Tissue Papers

I really like to wrap presents (I think you know this by now?), but if all my paper and supplies were buried in the closet or under the bed I might be less inclined to wrap a gift - so we've come up with a way to display everything and have it close at hand so it's easy to wrap when I need to. There was a small empty wall in my "office" (I call it my office but really its the spare bedroom that holds my desk, a fold out couch, my piano keyboard, books, wrapping paper, and all my miscellaneous stuff that doesn't have a home anywhere else!) that is now a wrapping paper station. My friend Mark made me this cool  holder from 2 long pieces of wood that are 1.5" wide with dowels attached every 6" - the dowels are angled slightly upward so the rolls of paper sit on them without rolling off. Laying across the bottom 2 dowels I have a small metal rod with some ribbon rolls threaded onto it.

I  hang all my tissue paper on plastic skirt hangers (on the left bottom dowel) - I save all the good tissue paper I get, smooth it out and clip it on these hangers...I can easily see what colors I have and by hanging it up the paper stays nice and flat, and is easy to get to. I would do this even if I didn't have a dowel on the wall to hang them from - it's such a nice way to organize tissue paper, otherwise it would be stuffed in a drawer somewhere and I'd just buy more not knowing what I already have; find a closet or somewhere you can hang them so you can see what you have and you'll save yourself some hassle when you need tissue paper!

Hanging on the right bottom dowel is a pretty canvas tote bag  that holds gift bags, wine bags, little fabric bags, etc...

I have bows, tags, markers, etc. displayed on a tray nearby so all of that stuff is also handy. I have no excuse to not wrap pretty presents - everything is easy to see and use.

Repurpose a Frame (make a wire and cork memory board)

We have a canvas painting that had a shiny black lacquered frame on it that was so dated and matched nothing in our house anymore - so I decided to change up. It was easy to remove the painting from the frame, and it actually looks better frameless so I hung the canvas back up without one.

I spray painted the frame bright orange. A little tip: do not spray paint anywhere near anything, take it way out in the yard or driveway or something - do not spray paint close to the garage. Don't ask me how I know, just trust me - overspray is a b*tch.

I put 4 small nails in the back of the frame (2 on each side across from each other) and strung thin wire between them, wrapping it tightly around the nails to hold it taut. To finish I cut strips of cork (found them at the craft store in 12" squares) 2.5" wide and glued them around the inside of frame to act as a bulletin board of sorts.

Hang it on the wall and clip pictures, mementos, cards, whatever, to the wire strings and use short tacks to pin things around the edges. Much better than when it was shiny black!











For some reason Sarge is fascinated with the back side of the display...

Pretzel Hugs

I love to make pretzel hugs. They are simple and quick to make, and I especially like if there are kids around to help unwrap the hugs - other than how many they end up eating before putting them on the pretzels, it's a big help to not have to unwrap them all!

You'll need:

• baking sheets
• pretzels (I used to use the small circle pretzels but they are hard to find - I now use butter snaps, they are small squares)
• chocolate hugs (or kisses)
• m&m's

Heat the oven to 200' and then turn it off.

Lay pretzels on a baking sheet and top each one with an unwrapped hershey hug (or a kiss if you prefer - and peppermint hugs are good too) and put them in the warm oven for just a few minutes until the hug softens but isn't melting - maybe 6 minutes or so. Watch them to make sure they aren't melting.

Remove them from the oven and put an m&m in the middle and push down very lightly to settle it into the softened hug.

 Refridge them still on the baking sheet until the chocolate firms up. That's it!

Sweet Sunrise Mocktail

For breakfast this morning we had the other breakfast pie (click here to see that post) that I made and froze in December, and Brooke made us these yummy morning mocktails using orange juice and grenadine - they made our breakfast pretty fancy I gotta say...









Pour orange juice over ice in a small glass.

Add a couple tablespoons of grenadine, Brooke poured the grenadine in very slowly using a spoon against the side of the glass so it wouldn't get mixed in - the grenadine sinks to the bottom so you have pretty layers. You can stir it up if you like, we decided to leave them in layers - no one wanted a maraschino garnish but that would be a good finishing touch if you want.

This is a virgin version of a Tequila Sunrise. I bet you can figure out what to do if you want to make a non-virgin one...;)

Making Homemade Playdough starring Brooke

Watch Brooke make homemade playdough in this new video, what a cutie! I love her facial expressions, especially when the playdough is still too hot to handle, I laughed out loud watching her ("hot hot hot hot hot..."). And listen for my favorite line in the video - "if it's too watery, you did something wrong" - helpful, right? Ha!

I don't know where she got the recipe - she does tell you what ingredients and amounts to use but I'll break it down for you so you can reference the directions easier:

2 cups water
1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
1 cup flour
1/4 cup salt
one Koolaid packet in the color/flavor of your choice.

In a pan on the stove bring to a boil the water and oil.
In a separate bowl mix together the flour, salt, and koolaid packet.
When the water boils add it to the dry ingredients and mix well. Turn the dough out onto a large piece of aluminum foil and let it cool. When you are able to handle it, knead the dough until it becomes smooth and not sticky. Store in a covered container to keep it from turning hard.

She has some good tips (don't put it in the fridge to cool it down, store in tupperware) and is a natural at this whole 'making videos while creating projects' thing - I have a hard time talking and creating at the same time!

Ready for Guests!

We have company coming today for a few days and while I was getting things ready this morning I thought I'd share a couple pictures of how I organize the guest room closet and bathroom...plus I don't have time to make anything today cuz I'm crazy busy so at least maybe you'll get an idea or two from this :)

Our guest room has a large closet which is great. We put up shelves on the side and that's where I store all the sheets, blankets, beach towels, etc. Each shelve holds a different size (queen, twin for the air mattress, etc.) and I labeled them so I can remember which is which (ok, ok, I can remember just fine - I'm just a label freak).
I also have a hanging closet thing in there for clothes we don't wear very often - cocktail dresses, Dave's suits...there is still plenty of hanging space for company.

In the bathroom we have one of those over the toilet free standing shelf things that I got at Target and put together, it adds a lot of storage space for towels, etc. I like to get lots of bars of soap and put them in a big glass jar in the bathroom - it makes the room smell pretty, fresh, and clean. I get the bars at the dollar store since I need like 10 of them to fill the jar.

Under the sink I put a standing shelf - underneath is extra towels, hair dryer, etc. On top of the shelf I have a bin of all kinds of things, if I get samples for anything they go in there for guests to use. Same thing for the little toothpaste, floss and tooth brushes the dentist gives out (Dave used to not take the free bag of dental things but now he knows that they go in the guest room!). The other thing on the shelf is a small divided box (labeled health, first aid...) filled with advil, bandaids, etc. I also like to put command hooks (the stick on and easily removable kind) on the back of the cabinet doors and hang things like a mirror, brushes, etc.

Hopefully this gives you some ideas if you haven't already organized for company! Gotta run, lots to do before making the airport run :)

Displaying Recipes

Here's a quick little decorating idea that takes seconds to do - frame a recipe and display in your kitchen.

I had this frame that I found at Hobby Lobby and wanted to use in the kitchen because the colors are so good and I love the look - so I went thru some handwritten recipes that were passed down to me and found one for my all time favorite sweet treat...doughnuts! Perfect to put in the frame and show off on my kitchen counter. I have no idea who Ruth is, and I haven't made her doughnut recipe because I will eat every one of them all by myself if I do - but I love how her handwritten recipe looks in this very cool frame.  

                                             

Here's a close up of the recipe in case you want to try making Ruth's doughnuts. Let me know if you do and if this recipe is great. On second thought, tell me if you make them but don't tell me if they are amazing please...;)