Ruffled Scarf in 5 min and no sewing involved!!!

Cut a long piece of fleece you can use another scarf as your template. The great thing about this ruffled fleece scarf is you can't tell if you don't cut it in a straight line.

Then every 6 in. cut a small slit and run your ribbon through the slits.   Have fun with the ribbon you choose: satin, colorful, sheer......

Tie a knot at the end of the ribbon and voila it's finished.  You can wear it as loose as you want like the pic. above and it hangs down low. I personally like it tightly around my neck so the full effect of the ruffle is seen!

Conquered my fear of Croissants but didn't master them

On Monday I bought some croissants and thought I would put Nutella in them and I absolutely fell in love with it.  So I got it in my head that I could make crossaints.  When I searched for recipes all of the them warned me with words like: complicated, patience needed, methodical approach, messed up again etc....  But alas I threw caution to the wind and dove in. Heck, I just got over my fear of making foccocia bread and that is big and bulky so surely I could handle this little dainty thing called a croissant. 

A friend let me use her family recipe and it was by far the easiest one.  I looked up a video for Croissant making (I am a visual learner) b/c I didn't understand all the terminololgy of "laminating dough with the butter."  The video made it look super easy so now I had my kitchen mittens on and I was ready to fight :).  The process was long, and time consuming even with this easy one day recipe.  I saw some that were a 2 day process, not my kind of recipe! I don't make any meal that takes more than 30 minutes to prepare so I was definitely not going to make bread that took 2 days.

Results:  My dough was not light and fluffy but it was flaky and good.  My friend with the recipe said that when she has had croissants in France they weren't light and fluffy.  So I think I did okay for the first time but I will try it again and hope for a better product.

Love Bug White Chocolate Cake

Delish and Cuteness! White Chocolate Cake with strawberry sauce in the middle! The lady bugs are made from chocolate clay.  For the body I used White chocolate clay and dyed it red with food coloring and the head was chocolate clay.  Chocolate clay is my new discovery and it taste so much better than fondant and just as moldable.  My  hubbie says it taste like a tootsie roll.  I also love how I can smooth out the white chocolate frosting also almost like fondant but it taste SOOOOOO  much better.

Can't buy me LOVE: Acts of Love Coupons

The boys V-day pouches

The coupons at work.

We decided that this year for Valentines day we would start a new tradition: Acts of Love Coupons.  We made some simple Valentine felt bags to hang up.  Every day this week we will take turns giving each other Acts of Love gifts (gifts that you can't buy) and a love note telling the other person why we love them & appreciate them.  We thought it was important for us to point out to our children that Valentines day is a reminder of Love and kindness for loved ones, friends and even strangers not just a guy/girl holiday.  Please don't get caught up on not having time for the fluff and cuteness. If you don't have time for that just focus on the main point: giving gifts that don't cost, serving each other and others, reminding them of how much God LOVES them & affirming each other.

• Start by reminding your family that God loves us and that is the only way that its possible for us to love each other especially in those times when we are not very loving.
• I wrote all of our names on a piece of paper and then we drew names for who would go first and what days.  Our oldest got to go first and he was sooooo excited!  He is only 6 so we wrote what he said for him & gave him some examples of possible Acts of love gifts he could give to us. 
• The person who does the giving only gets to enjoy the act of giving to others.   
• Then the person whose turn it is makes one of each: a love note & coupon click here (for coupons & note printables) for each family member minus themselves. 
• The next day it's a different family members turn and so on.
• Since V-day lands on a Monday this year our act of service for others will happen on Sunday. We will purchase Happy Meals for street kids and pass them out.  I am so thankful to my parents who instilled in me by example and the most powerful by experience the value of helping those who are not as fortunate as us.  I hope we can do the same for our children.
• We end on V-day with a hearts trail leading to a V-day treat as simple or extravagant as you would like (ours will be simple a pk of juice boxes & a candy for the kids). .

Examples of the coupons for the adults you can give: 1hr of free time to do whatever you want, no washing dishes for a week, a massage for 20min, free pass out of waking up in the middle of the night to feed the baby :).  For the kids: eat dessert before dinner, camping in the living room, pick a family game night (even if we just had one), pick a movie of your choice and get popcorn etc....  We made these up, get as creative as you want and make them up to fit your families wishes.

Total Flop Sunday

I am so glad yesterday was such a wonderful day because todays total flop Sunday doesn't seem so bad.  We had a class picnic planned for my sons Kindergarten class.  This morning it took me a while to get out of bed so I was running behind on everything.  I was supposed to make this deliciousness of a cake to take to the picnic.  I started baking it and then realized that there was no way it would be done baking by the time we had to leave for church.  So I dropped my family off at church and headed back home to finish.  I didn't want to miss all of church so I was rushing to get everything done.  The cake I made was a Chocolate Rasberry cake with Rasberry cream.  The Rasberry cream consisted of cream cheese, rasberry sauce, whipping cream and white chocolate.  Needless, to say this was going to be AAAAh-mazing.  Or at least that was my hope.  I took the cake out of the oven and it just fell apart.  I am not sure what I did wrong but it just crumbled when I took it out of the pan.  I tried to piece it together and let it cool in hopes that miraculously it would harden back to one piece.  It didn't.  I was not going to give up so once it cooled I put the cream sandwiched in between the cake and on top.  As I tried to spread the cream on top it crumbled even more.  Oh my, not pretty.

Once church was over we headed to the picnic and just as we got there it started to pour.  Picnic cancelled. So all that effort and no one was going to eat this mess of cake.  I guess that was a good thing.  One other family showed up and yes you know it I served the cake to them.  I have no shame:).  I will try this recipe again another day in hopes to redeem myself.

Valentines for classmates

The boys are getting their class valentines ready! They had so much fun working on this project.

They made these hearts from model clay that was coiled and then shaped into a heart. We let the clay harden outside and then painted the hearts. 

They will glue each heart to the clothes pin they painted red. Once the clothes pins are ready we will attach clip them onto a white baggie with a valentines cookie inside.

Strawberry Lemon Cupcakes with White Chocolate frosting- Conversation Heart Style

This cake recipe is a bit healthier than the back of the box directions. The yogurt addition makes it very moist!

350 F, generously greased pan for 25-30 min

1 box of lemon cake mix

3/4 c water

1/3 cp veg. oil

3 egg whites

6oz of strawberry yogurt

Mix all the ingredients in a large bowl.  Pour into pan.

White Chocolate Frosting:

12 oz of white baking chocolate, chopped
1 c butter, soft
2 tsp vanilla
2 cps powdered sugar

In a saucepan, cook and stir the chocolate over low heat until melted. Cool. In a large bowl , beat the butter until fluffy on med. speed, beat in chocolate and vanilla and gradually add the powdered sugar.
*Frosting will harden b/c of the white chocolate in it so if it hardens before your ready for it to then just add a couple of drops of milk in it and put frosting in a small bowl then place it inside a large bowl of hot water.  The hot water will soften it up again and the drops of milk will help give it a smoother spreading texture.

For Conversation Heart Style:
Put cake batter in heart shaped muffin pan bake for 15-20min
Let cool completely
divide them through the middle and add strawberry jelly and strawberries
assemble back in place and spread the frosting all over it.

Buy or make fondant and use mini alphabet cookie cutters for the lettering. assemble on top before the frosting cools. 

Store in a cool area.