Cream Mints

I just love easy recipes, the only ones worth having, in my opinion. This recipe is a “double whammy” – only a few ingredients, and it only took me 30 minutes from start to finish!

What you will need:
- 6 tablespoons (3 ounces) reduced fat cream cheese, softened
- 1/4 teaspoon extract (you can use any flavor you want - I used raspberry)
- food coloring (optional) - I used Wilton's "Rose"
- 4 to 4 1/2 cups confectioners sugar (You will just need to add it slowly to test the firmness of the mixture)
- about 1/4 cup superfine or granulated sugar (optional)

Instructions:
1. Mix your cream cheese until it is soft, less than two minutes
2. Add in your extract of choice and food coloring, if desired
3. Mix together
4. Add your powered sugar to the mix – doing only ½ a cup at a time to allow for it to mix easily
5. Add sugar until you have a firm mix (If you add too much and more sugar won’t mix – simply add a little more cream cheese to soften up the mix).
6. Roll mixture into balls slightly larger than a dime (you could really do any size you wanted, but I think this size is good for the flavor/sweetness that theses treats pack.
7. OPTIONAL - roll the ball in sugar (You definitely don't need to do this - I think it gives a more polished finished look and makes it easier to flatten in the next step).
8. Flatten ball with a fork (I suggest only going 1 way across the ball - so you get "stripes" and not "checkers" as you get when making peanut butter cookies).
9. Throw mints into the fridge for 30 minutes to harden up.
10. Store in air-tight container in fridge with wax paper between layers for up to 2 weeks.
11. ENJOY!

I LOVE that you can make these any flavor or color to match a party theme. My mom does peppermint flavored ones at Christmas!

If you try this recipe - which flavors and colors did you try?

Little Man Onesies

My Pinterest "Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails" Board is overflowing with ideas for crafts, if we were to have a boy. In this 2-month long period of waiting since we were supposed to find out the baby's gender - I found myself dreaming about being able to start on some of my projects, someday.

To busy myself and easy my crafting cravings - I decided to make onesies for my nephews for Christmas. (Another wonderful benefit of being an Aunt!) I was going to just do the tie onesies that you see everywhere - but after making one, I got up the confidence to go for the vest as well!

What you will need: 

- 1 white onesie of your size choice (pre-washed and dried)

- Fabric scraps

- Heat'n Bond Ultra Hold Iron-On Adhesive

- Thread to match your fabric

- Sewing Machine

- Iron and Ironing board

- Fray Check (optional) 

- Less than an hour of time

Instructions: 

1. You need to make your pattern for your tie (and other elements).
2. Lay out your pattern over your fabric to make sure you like the part you are cutting out.
3. I chose to make the tie and knot 2 different pieces - in the future, I'm going to make these one piece as it will just give me 2 fewer edges and remove the necessity to match up the pieces exactly. I did like making the knot from a different section of the fabric so it looked more realistic.
4. Pin down your pattern.
5. Cut a square of fabric around the pattern - you do NOT want to cut right along your final edges at this point.
6. Remove your pattern from the fabric and cut an identical size square from your Heat'n Bond.
7. Iron on the Heat'n Bond to the back of your fabric (You want to lay your fabric face down - and place the Heat'n Bond so the paper backing is facing up at you).
8. Once the Heat'n Bond is secure - pin back on your pattern.
9. Cut around the pattern. (We waited to do this because your fabric will fray less if the Heat'n Bond is attached when you make the final cut).
10. OPTIONAL - I added Fray Check along the edges to ensure I didn't get fraying - you do have to let your project sit for about 30 minutes if you include this step.
11. Remove the paper backing from your pieces (pulling the paper from the fabric - not the fabric from the paper).
12. Place on onesie and iron on - holding to get a good adhesive to the onesie
13. Unsnap onesie and sew border inside of tie fabric to ensure it holds to the onesie. (Another thing I like about doing the knot and the tie separately is that you get the definitely from stitching between the two pieces - but you could still sew here even if it was only one fabric piece.) You will want to use thread that matches your fabric as closely as possible.

If you are going to add the vest - do the same process - cutting out two pieces - the reverse of each other. One for each size of the vest.

The trickiest part of this whole project is maneuvering your fabric so you can sew on the applications - I made a different pattern on a newborn onesie (whereas these are 18 month size) and the newborn was much more challenging just to move around the sewing machine. 

Have you done a custom onesie? What did you do?

Salted Caramel Bark

You will want to make this - I promise! And the best part - you probably have all the ingredients in your kitchen - so get going! :)

You will need:

• ½  bag of mini pretzel
• 2 sticks of butter
• 1 cup of brown sugar
• 1 bag of chocolate chips
• Sea salt or table salt
• Tin foil

1. Lay down your tin foil - make sure to leave edges sticking up so you can easily remove the bark at the end.
2. Layer your pretzels - you can be as neat or as haphazard as you want.
3. Make your caramel - Melt your butter and brown sugar on medium heat. Stirring constantly until it bubbled slightly and starts to stick to the bottom. (Your sugar and butter might be separated throughout - but will become one as it gets closer to bubbling).
4. Pour over your pretzels. Don't worry if it doesn't cover every pretzel.
5. Put in over at 350 degrees for 5 minutes. (This will cause the caramel to boil and it will cover all of the pretzels).
6. Sprinkle your chocolate chips over the mixture. Again, don't worry if they aren't evenly distributed.
7. Place in over for 1 minute
8. Spread out melted chocolate chips over pretzels.
9. Add sea salt on top of bark - as much as desired. 
10. Place in fridge for 2 hours
11. Remove and enjoy in bliss!

What is your favorite easy recipe?

DIY Frame Chalkboard

This Pinterest inspired project has been one of my favorites! (and easiest!)

I wanted to make a chalkboard to take my "weekly bump pictures" as well as for the nursery. I went to Goodwill and bought a cool old-looking frame and painted the frame with simple wood paint. You could do this to give it texture or a pattern, but I wanted something simply. For the chalkboard, I actually just covered the painting that was already inside the frame, but you could paint the backing to the frame, or a piece of wood you adapt to be the back.

I've actually had to repaint the chalkboard portion once already. I first painted it with the generic brand paint - but each time I used it, it didn't really erase and after a while it was looking really dingy. So I recently just repainted the chalkboard with Martha Steward's chalkboard paint - and I'm much happier with the result - so I recommend purchasing nicer paint.

Baby's Gender

Sadly, no we don't know the gender of the baby....YET!

I lot of people have been asking us if we are going to find out the gender - we sure hope so!  We had our original ultrasound in June - and I was over the moon about finding out the gender. I had a list of crafts and projects ready to start, we had a plan for how we wanted to find out the gender together - but alas the ultrasound tech couldn't see clearly.

Almost 2 months have past.

And I haven't been able to start any of my crafts, and I'm dying a little bit inside. Please pray that we will be able to tell the gender on the 20th. We have our ultrasound at 7:45 AM! (We are waiting to reveal the gender until August 26th - at our shower - but please pray anyways! :) )

Out with the Old; In the with New

I grew up with an extremely crafty mother - so as motherhood approaches, I felt the need to increase my "craft factor." So, recently bought my first sewing machine, and have had a sewing project strewn all over the house since!

My most recent project was recovering the living room pillows. When we bought the couch 3 years ago, it came with the 5 pillows you see at the top. I never loved them, but this was the first time I had the power to eliminate them!

(Actually, buying non-matching random pillows and recovering them will save you a lot of money - and might be the way to go! You can get them cheap at TJ Maxx and Marshalls). 

I had recently updated the pillows on our bed and wanted do do some new designs. I loved the ruffle pillow from our bed so much, that I did do another ruffle (far right pillow in picture above) - however, this time I made the pillow double sided. So the part you see, is actually the back where the pocket to insert the pillow is.

The pillow all the way on the left - with the square-shaped design,  was my first attempt at making a covering that the pillow slides in from the top - not from the back. For all accounts it was easier - I wish I would have made the teal part larger in the corners - as it is now - I had to add a little Velcro to hold the flap down so you couldn't see the pillow inside.

For the middle pillow, I used muslin to lighten the color scheme up. The muslin was much lighter weight than my other fabrics, so I doubled up the fabric - and it worked much better.

What projects are you working on, or already completed you are excited about? 

DIY Ruffle Pillow

I've gone a little crazy about pillows on Pinterest - and have since recovered the pillows on our bed and now the couch. I really loved the ruffle pillow ideas - and wanted to share the modifications I made.

Here is the tutorial I followed to get the gist of what to do. The one thing I found really confusing about her instructions is that when she is making her ruffles for her 12x12 inch pillows - she chooses to make the WIDTH of her largest ruffle 12.5 inches - without really explaining she just happened to be using all measurements of 12. (My pillow was much larger and it took me a bit to figure out that as long as I had enough material to work with to go from one end to the other - the width was up to me.)

After cutting your front piece of the pillow and your 2 back pieces in order to allow you to slip the pillow in, you will start working on your ruffle. Fun things first - determine (1) how wide you want your ruffles and (2) how many ruffles or layers of ruffles you want.

After you determine how wide you want your ruffles to be - cut strips of fabric by doubling the width of your finished ruffle and then adding another 1/2 inch. You are going to sew the fabric into a tube and then pull it right side out, so you need to cut your ruffle width double so you will end up with two layers of fabric and a 1/2 inch seem.

Make as many ruffle-tubes as you are going to want on your pillow. In the picture above with the green polka dots - I did 2 ruffles so I made the smaller one 1/2 the size of the larger. In the image on the right - I just chose to do 1 larger ruffle with not as tight of scrunching. (This pillow is actually double-sided - so the ruffle is on the "back" covering the pocket to slip the pillow in. On the reverse side is the green and blue flower fabric only - so I can do either side out on my couch.)

This next step - scrunching the ruffle tubes - I definitely recommend playing around on your machine and figuring out what is going to work for your project BEFORE you do anything to your ruffle tubes. You will want to play with your tension - I adjusted to the highest level - on my machine that is a 9. You will also want to make your basic basting stitch as long as you can - again, on my machine this was a 5. Now practice sewing through 2 layers of your fabric so you can get a visual for how much your ruffle tube is going to scrunch up. If it gets too ruffly you may not have the length you need to stretch across your pillow - so play with it so you will end up with the ruffles you want.

Once you are ready to make your final ruffles - iron them so the seem is in the middle of the back - and then stitch the length of your tube, the seem in the middle - and watch your ruffle be created before your eyes! (Note: different fabrics are going to work differently than others, so definitely think about that when buying your fabric. Cotton will do this much better than a thicker cloth). In the picture on the left - my fabric was a little thicker so it didn't want to scrunch with two layers - so I actually just used Fray Check along the edges and didn't sew them into tubes.

Now that you have your ruffles - pin them onto the front of your pillow where you want them. If you are going to layer them - sew them on in order from back to front. Once your ruffles are on - match up the front with your back panels and sew right sides together. Turn your pillow right side out - and enjoy!