Valentine's Day!

Ash and I had a lovely Valentine's Day! She received a new coffee maker, some candy, and she's getting an ipod nano with watch attachment! I received an ipod touch, lucky bamboo shaped like hearts, a panda, a beautiful card that Ash drew herself, two wooden owls, and an owl that she made!!! She is so awesome!
We went to an apartment party, where we ate a little chocolate, and Ash won a Cheddar's gift card! And I made a special dinner. Bowtie pasta (Ash's favorite) with pink sauce (it's just regular smooth tomato sauce--I used Ragu--and Alfredo sauce--I used Walmart's brand--mixed together), grilled chicken, and fresh grated parmesan cheese. The key to really making it tasty is the fresh grated parmesan! With a side of garlic bread.

(As a side note, I love bread! I usually have a regular loaf on hand, but I also like to have fancy breads like sourdough, sandwich rolls, garlic bread, croissants, etc. While these can be a little expensive, I always shop the bargain rack. Lots of times, the store bakery will overbake, or they'll have extras that are about to expire, so they'll slash the price by half or more!)

Finally, I made an...interesting...dessert. It was based on this recipe for Red Velvet Cookie Balls from Kraft. They're ok. Ash likes them a lot, but I think they're just o.k. And, they definitely don't deserve to be called Red Velvet. I call them oreo candy balls. Here's how I made them:
ingredients:
-one package of cream cheese
-one package each of golden oreos and regular oreos *I used regular stuffed, but I would recommend using double stuff oreos. Really, you can use any kind of oreos you want!
-one package of baker's chocolate

1. put about ten to twelve golden oreos in a plastic bag, use a canned food and crush up the cookies in the bag. I used a combination of smashing, rolling, and banging. The more crushed up the cookies are, the better. Do the same thing with a bag of regular oreos and a mixed bag with five or six regular oreos and five or six golden oreos.

2. split the cream cheese up into thirds. Mix together one bag of oreos with one third of the cream cheese. Mix, mix, mix. You'll probably also wind up crushing the oreos a little more as you mix, and that's ok.

3. once it's all mixed up, make little balls out of the mixtures. My balls were between the size of a bouncy ball and a ping pong ball. The recipe said it'd make about 48 balls. I wound up with about 20.

4. put the balls in the freezer for a little while so they can firm up.

5. Open up all the chocolate. Chop it up into small bits. Put it in a bowl, and warm it up in the microwave for 30 seconds at a time, stirring between each heating session until it's smooth and creamy. Don't burn it!

6. Drop the balls into the chocolate, swirl them around to get them covered, take them out and put them back on the cold plate that you just got out of the freezer. Quickly add some sprinkles, and you're done! A few helpful tips for this part: I put three balls in the chocolate at a time. If you wait too long to add sprinkles, it won't work because they won't stick to the chocolate. Also, we stored our extras in the freezer for a nice cool treat on this 75-degree February day!

Earrings of the day

Today's earrings were inspired by the sun! It's been a beautiful 70-degree week, and I have commemorated it by making a pair of earrings with rays of happiness! I got these beads at Walmart last night, and I used some wire that I already had to connect it all together!

Email or message me if you're interested in learning how to make or purchasing any of the jewelry I've posted so far!

Paper flower

I was fumbling around on Pinterest today, and I looked through my "crafty" board. I thought, "Hm, I bet these paper flowers are easy to make!" So, I followed the links to the how-tos at Seven Thirty Three and Ellinee. They are beautiful! But, they require things like brads and grommets, special punches, bamboo skewers, and patience. Right now, I have none of those things. So, I made the cheap, quick and easy version. Here's what I ended up with:

I think it's beautiful! Here's how I did it:

1. You may remember from previous posts that I have a lot of magazine subscriptions (They were all free!) I had these images of me going through and reading all these articles and becoming a pop culture trivia knowledge database. Yeah, right. But, I do love to look at the pretty pictures! Some of the pages are so beautiful and colorful! So, I selected three pages that were really pretty. I tried to pick pages that were pretty on both sides because both sides will show a little. The great thing is that they don't have to be perfect. (Nothing in this project does!)
I chose this one and a pink-ish one and a blue-ish one.

2. Next, cut the paper into manageable squares. I cut the whole stack of papers at the same time, and I cut the stack into fourths, so I would up with twelve small rectangles of paper. Like this:

3. Next you cut out the flower-ish shape. I did not use a pattern, a stencil, or a special punch. I did not really even follow a circle shape. It's more of a blob. But, it's a beautiful blob. I picked up four pieces of paper and cut a blob, then another four sheeted-blob, and the last four-sheeted blob. Obviously, each of the three blobs were not shaped the same. In fact, while I was cutting, some of the papers shifted, so each of the four pages did come out in the same blob shape. The main thing to remember when cutting the blobs is to aim for a round-ish overall shape, with scalloped-ish edges.

4. Stack all the blobs on top of each other. You'll have a handful of pretty colorful blobs! At this point (this is something I didn't do but I highly recommend) you should probably twist the papers a little bit so that the blobs are not perfectly stacked on top of one another, but they are a little bit whompy-jawed.

5. Turn the blobs over and staple them in the middle-ish. The flat end of the staple will be on the bottom/back of the flower, and the prongs will eventually be hidden on the inside of the flower.

6. Fold the staple in half. When you do that, the flower will also kind of fold up. That's a good thing. As you can see, I used a pink staple! (Not that it matters, but I like it anyway!)

7. Then, just squish! Starting with the top paper, squish up one page at a time until you end up with a little rose bud kind of thing.

8. After the squishing, you go back through and do a little bit of flattening. You're not going to iron out the pages or anything, but you want to be able to see the layers.

TADA! Now, you have a super fast, super easy, super beautiful flower! You can make millions of them and put them in your yard, then you wouldn't have to water your flowers. Or, you can sit your kids in the middle of a stack of magazines and tell them they have to turn all the magazines into flowers before they can leave. Or, it could just be a fun quick project.
Next, I think I will try it with cloth and modpodge. I think that might work...