Think Spring

I love this time of year and everything about it. Here's a little tasty treat that takes me back to my childhood as every time around Easter we'd stock up on the "peeps" and make these fun little treats. They're super easy and tasty so it's a great activity to do with the little ones. Enjoy!


4 cups chow mein noodles
3 cups miniature marshmallows
3 tbsp. margarine
jelly beans
peeps chicks

Grease cookie sheet. Melt butter and marshmallow in microwave for 1 min. (cooking time varies). Stir until a smooth consistency.
Add chow mein noodles and stir until evenly coated. Shape into nest and place on cookie sheet. Add the jelly beans and the peeps and you're done. Easy as can be!

(Note: These are pretty gooey at first but will harden up a bit after they cool.)

Tip: If you don't like chow mein noodles, we have also done these with rice krispy treats and they turned out really cute as well.

Makes 10-12 nests

Rosette Bib Necklace

Apparently these are all the rage these days. I may be a bit late jumping on the bandwagon, but I've been wanting to make one of these forever! I found this amazing tutorial online from youcanmakethis.com blog and got started right away.

Here is my first attempt. I could see making these in many fun colors. For my first, I wanted to make something neutral that would match lots of outfits. And each part of it has its own story behind it. Like one of the embellishments on it is from my junior year prom dress that I finally dug out of my closet and decided to use the material and clip off the pretty jewels from it. Another embellishment is from another old college shirt. The wool felt is hand-dyed. And the white rosettes are from an upcycled wool sweater I found at a thrift store.

Here's another rosette necklace tutorial I found at the Tortoise and the Hare. Enjoy!

Pantry Secrets

I'll admit I was skeptical of this new way of making bread. Homemade bread in one hour? Hmmm........no way it could be very good, right? Well, I've been proven wrong. I'm loving this new recipe and have made 4 loaves this week, including a BBQ Chicken Braid for dinner last week and homemade grilled pizzas tonight. One loaf worth of the dough made five perfect sized, personal pizzas.

Here they are right before grilling with a bit of olive oil and cornmeal for the bottoms.

The kids were boring and just wanted cheese pizzas. Mine was a salad pizza - a bit of mozzarella and feta cheese with a bunch of spinach, yellow and orange bell pepper, red onion and fresh garlic. Nothing beats vege pizzas. My husband had the same thing, but added jalapenos.  The crust was thin and crispy and soooo tasty! We did a 50/50 wheat/white flour blend.

Thanks Melony, for teaching us about this awesome way of making breads! Pantry Secrets dough recipe can be found here.

Easy Toddler Flip-flop Fix

I got these little flip-flops at Old Navy's $1 sale last year, and they now fit my toddler. The only problem was that they didn't stay on. She is not accustomed to wearing flip-flops, and they flopped right off her pudgy feet. I have seen ones in the store with elastic around the heel to keep them on and figured I could do that myself.



I made a fabric casing (a long tube) and pulled some elastic through, then sewed it on.



It was a little hard to wedge the flip-flop strap under my sewing machine needle, but I got it.



It's not the neatest job, but it'll do. I'm sure she'll grow out of them in a few months anyway.

Not Your Ordinary Betty Crocker

This past Tuesday was our Monthly Girl's Craft Night. We made homemade bread and cinnamon rolls in less than 1 hour! We used soy lecithin from Pantry Secrets and it was so easy...minus some mechanical issues. So here are some of the products of that evening. Girls and I will be happy to say the bread is still soft, moist and fresh as of today. We made a loaf of white and whole wheat bread.

And a batch of white and wheat cinnamon rolls with cream cheese frosting: Yummy!

I have been slacking in the crafting department lately, but this is a ruffled apron that I made for a certain family member for easter. I fell in love with the retro pattern on the fabric and had to get it.

Project Boards One and Two

I finished two out of the three project boards that I have planned for our house. I have one for each of the kids rooms and then need to finish the one for our downstairs. Just thought that I would at least share what I have done.
Can I just say that I had a lot of fun doing the one for my girls. Next step is to get them hanging on the wall so the last step of getting artwork hanging can happen.

Here is the one for our little boys room, much more manly then his sisters' board.

More Felt Lovelies

Made these felt goodies for our preschool teachers as a gift for teacher appreciation week.

This one is a brooch to add to a coat, scarf, bag or even a nice shirt. It's a combo of a hand-dyed wool felt rosette, organza flower and cotton.

Here is another brooch. Wool felt rosettes.

These are interchangeable wool felt pieces to add to a felt-wrapped headband.

I loved them all so much, I'll admit that I wasn't taking pictures to add to the blog, but so that I could remember how to duplicate it and make some for me :)

Project Board Uno

This is the first of two project boards I created. The other one isn't quite finished yet, but I'll post pics of that soon. Here is a preview of what we are doing for March craft night, inspired by the Make It and Love It tutorial found here.

I hang this one under the mirror where we store our keys. It's on the wall right as we walk in from the garage so it's fun to be the first thing we see when coming home.

Skirt Refashion

So my 4 year old had a pink twirly skirt that she just loved, wore it everywhere. It lasted all of three months before it was torn while playing outside. I never threw it away and instead salvaged some of the ruffles for a new skirt. The flower fabric was on clearance for less than $1. And miracle of miracles, I think this was the first piece of clothing I've sewed without using a pattern or online tutorial to guide me through. Woo hoo! Does that mean I've passed basic-elastic-waisted-skirt 101?

I added a little fabric rosette to the side just for fun.

More Quiet Book Pages

Since I have two girls, I decided to put some girly pages in the quiet book.

Hair Page


I got this idea here.


There are rubber bands in the pouch for practicing braids and tying them up.

Dress-up Page


This page is mostly original, but I got some help from here.


The outfits stick on with velcro.

The girly pages are turning out to be some of my favorites.

Girls Skirt

My 4 year old is all about fashion these days. She fights me to wear anything other than a skirt to preschool, which has been a definite 'no' given the incredibly cold winter we've had this year in Georgia. But I'm determined to fill her wardrobe with skirts galore for this coming spring and summer so she can prance around to tea parties and frilly delights til her hearts content.

I'm a VERY novice sewer, so it's exciting to see so many great beginner tutorials online. I found a tiered skirt tutorial from Kuky Ideas that was very easy and super cute. I loved her precise measurements so there wasn't any guessing involved and you could tailor it to fit any age. I used some silk satin found in the fabric clearance bins at Joann's so in total, the entire project cost about $2. I also made a couple felt rosette clips to match.

  

March Craft Night

Melony and I talked it over and have come up with what will be taking place for our March craft night. Of course everyone is welcome and you do not have to do what we plan on doing. Bring something else if you would like or just come and hang out.
We will be meeting at Melony's house again (thank you Melony) on the Tuesday March 23rd at 7pm. Our plan for the night is to work on Project Display Boards http://makeitandloveit.blogspot.com/2009/12/project-display-board.html and we will be making some yummy homemade bread that only takes an hour, http://www.pantrysecrets.net/

This bread is AMAZING! I mean who doesn't love homemade bread from start to finish in one hour? Pantry Secrets is a company that uses liquid lecithin to replace oil in the bread and adds moistures and it also speeds up the rising process. It also has a longer shelf life and is much healthier. So, for our craft night we will make a few varieties of bread using this amazing product while we make our project display boards or other crafts. I will be ordering an extra bottle of the lecithin ($8)and saf instant yeast ($3.50). If you are interested in ordering some post a comment and and we can split the shipping.

The Best Part

Truly the best part of this blog is the fact that we get to share our ideas and ideas of others. The next few posts our from our good friend Sarah. She always has some project going on and is ever so talented. I hope that she will continue to email me with great ideas that we can post. Enjoy.

Felt Flowers

Here is a picture of my finished felt flowers. We used some of the same patterns. I was glad to hear you were doing it too since “Great minds think alike!” I made all the flowers first and then glued them on some scrap upholstery microfiber samples. Then I cut another piece of the fabric just a tiny bit smaller. I used hot glue to put two edges together leaving a channel for the headband to go through. This way I can use the same headband and just switch out the flower for the day or I can use them on a ribbon to decorate a handbag or a pin on a shirt.