It has been too long...

Hey everyone. I cannot believe that my last post was Mother's Day. I guess things have gotten a little busy around here. Lots of cleaning and school and not much crafting. :( good news is that this term is almost over.

In one month Richard and I will be in sunny California for Vidcon... Well he's going to Vidcon and I'm going for Disneyland. But either way, I'm so ready for the sunshine.

You can't see it really well in the picture, but this was a storm we had Friday night. It hailed and poured... There was thunder and lightening too. Absolutely insane, especially since we are almost in June now. Oregon has some crazy weather.

We are getting really close to Richards surgery. Hopefully it will get done by the end of the summer. The closer it gets the more excited I get. I cannot wait for him to have it... I'm ready for my hubby to have two arms again :)


Let's see... What else is new... Oh, Richard got a new internship. He is working with VOKLE doing their social media internship. I am so proud of him and this is his first step toward his dream. It's an exciting time!

I have officially registered for my last term of undergraduate classes. I am so excited about it. So much has happened in my life on my way to this point, but it is here. I cannot believe how close it is getting. The next term will be completely surreal. How I cannot wait!

Anyways, that is just a quick update of things that have been going on. I am going to try and get at least two new tutorials up this week with videos... And, I'll give you guys the first view of my new craft room that will be getting set up this week! I am so looking forward to a little place of my own.

Make sure to check back this week for all the new updates!

 

 

Mother's Day :)

For Mother's Day lunch I was in charge of desert.... It is my favorite :) So I logged onto my Pinterest to find something delicious. It was way too easy.

 

This was my original inspiration, which can be seen on my Desert Board. But, my sister Megan and I wanted to make it our own. So we did.

Our bottom layer was a mixture of crushed up Oreos, Oreo cream, and a little butter to hold it together.. We are still working out a way to perfect this, so any ideas would be awesome. I think I had more fun taking the cream off of the Oreos so that I could mush up the Oreos easier. For real, it was a lot of fun.

Anyways, back to the cooking. Mush up the Oreos so that they are as fine as possible. I recommend doing this in a plastic bag and using a rolling pin... Or letting a little kid step on it a few times :) Once the Oreos are crushed, pour them into your pie pan. Next, in a small bowl throw all your Oreo cream and about 2tbs butter then place it into the microwave to melt it. Mix this into the Oreo crumbs until everything is covered well. Press this into the pan well and bake in a 300* oven for about 8-10 minutes to help it set.

Next is making some mousse. I decided to use a White Chocolate Jello mix for this. A small box of the mix will work just fine. Mix that with 1-1/2 cups heavy whipping cream. Whisk it until it is nice and thick. Now is putting together the pie.

So here we have the Oreo layer... On top of that I put a layer of strawberries. After the strawberry layer was the mousse layer. Then, after the mousse layer I put another layer of strawberries.... Finally, I topped the pie off with some melted Hershey kisses and semi-sweet chips. We put this in the fridge to set for about an hour while we ate dinner and so that the chocolate could harden up.

While we were kind of worried that this pie was not going to turn out, it was delicious. I know there are stil. Some kinks to work out, but I will definitely be making this again and again... And really, who doesn't love strawberries and chocolate?

That's all I've got for cooking originality... I also made some lemon cookies which you can find in my desert board and they were outstanding.

All in all, this weekend was awesome. Here are some of my favorite pictures from it.

Lexie cuddling with uncle Richard and Coco.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lexie showing Avery how big kids play with the toy piano... He loves his big sister.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Mother's Day Crafting with Lexie

Hey everyone. Yesterday was a huge day for the hubby and I. We got a new car :) a 2007 Nissan Altima. It is gorgeous. After that he had a VA appointment so we were out in Hillsboro. We decided to go out to my sister Megan's house so I could do some crafts with the kids and have a little BBQ.... We are having great weather for that finally! Below is a quick tutorial for the crafts Lexie and I did, plus a video tutorial because I didn't get a lot of pictures.

First project is painted candles. For this you will need:

A pillar candle

Wax or parchment paper

Hair dryer

White tissue paper

Acrylic paint

And a cute little kid, like Lexie... Obviously this one is optional because an adult could do this as well.

Begin by laying out some parchment paper, this craft can get a wee bit messy. Then, cut a piece of tissue paper slightly smaller than your candle. This will be your painting surface. I gave Lexie about four colors to choose from and let her paint however she wanted. Now, Lex is two so her painting wasn't more than dots really. Anyways, I let her paint and after she was done I added some finishing touches. You'll see those below in the finished picture.

Once your kiddo is done painting, and you've added your finishing touches, wrap the tissue paper around the candle, paint side out. This part is a little tricky since you don't want to smear the paint, so just be patient and take your time.

Next, wrap the parchment paper around your candle and tissue paper. This will be a handle for you to hold onto while you use the blow dryer. Now you should find a comfy spot next to a outlet and plug in your dryer. Sit down, hold onto the parchment paper, turn the dryer on high, and start blowing the candle. Soon, you will start to see the tissue paper disappear and the colors become brighter, and don't worry, you can take the parchment paper off while drying too and check. Basically, your candle should feel like wax again and not tissue paper. Below you can see the finished products, one for mom and one for grandma.

Another cute project we did was footprint animals. These are a cute way to remember feet at different ages, and makes a great gift from little babies like Avery. You can see ours below.

I love the way all these projects turned out :) I hope you all enjoy doing some Mother's day crafting and I know all the mom's out there will love these crafts.

 

Enjoy the crafting :)

 

Pinterest Interest

Pinterest constantly takes over my life. Here are my latest Pinterest loves.

Let me warn you before you make these.... They are HIGHLY addictive. Peanut butter chocolate chip shortbread cookies. We loved them, honestly it was more like obsessed. These are melt in your mouth deliciousness.

If anyone knows me, this little quote may be the most true thing ever.

I just love everything about this onsie. It's fairly cheap, $13, but could easily be reproduced. Maybe this will be a tutorial soon.. I think baby Avery needs one :)

I love these little sock monkeys. Seriously, they are so cute. Every baby born in my family from here on out will be getting a sock monkey. Totally fun and cute. I'll be doing my tutorial on this soon with a video.

For some reason, I love this whole room. Every single thing about it is amazing. I need to find some time to do interior decorating.

 

 

These little shells are delicious. It's like hamburger helper on crack. Taco seasoned ground beef, taco sauce, salsa, shells, and cheese... Lots of cheese. Let's just say these are keepers.

 

 

 

 

So there you have it, my addiction to Pinterest :)

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Crazy Fun Spoon Mirror Tutorial

Hey everyone, after a busy weekend I was finally able to get a tutorial done. This one was really fun to do; we were playing around cutting the spoons, but it took some patience... And a lot of glue.

Materials- sorry I didn't get the picture of all this

Plastic spoons- the flimsy white kind, I used almost six packs of 48 spoons

Small round mirror

MDF wreath frame 18"- this can be found at Michaels in the floral section

Poster board

Hot glue gun and glue, also wood glue

Paint in your colors of choosing- I used three reds to do a slight fade from dark to light though you can't see it in the pictures

To begin, use your MDF frame to trace and cut out a circle from your poster board. This will be the base for the mirror.

I traced a few different sized circles onto one side of my poster board to use as reference points when gluing on the spoons. The largest is the inside of the wreath, the middle is a plate, and the inner is the mirror. Next, I glued the wreath frame on the opposite side of the poster board. Use whatever glue you would like on this part.

While the base is drying cut all the spoons handles off. I used probably close to five boxes of the spoons, but I would have six on hand. I found that these spoons are just flimsy enough that you can cut through them with regular scissors.

You want to cut as close to the rounded part as possible, but I found that leaving a little piece of handle on some of them came in handy.

I also recommend sanding down the edges of the spoons that will be used for the smallest circle. This will be about 23 spoons. Do this so that if any of the edges are seen around the mirror they look clean instead of jagged.

Next comes the gluing. Plug in your hot glue gun and let it get nice and hot.

Start on the smallest circle that you traced, the outline of the mirror, and glue the spoons on. Try to keep them right on that circle. You can overlap them a little depending on the look you want.

Continue gluing the spoons on in circles going outward. Tuck the bottom of each new layer underneath the layer on top of it so it is hidden well.

The next step is painting. I wanted to have a slight fading effect in my colors so I used three different shades of red that were very close together. You can do any sort of painting effect that you would like.

I started painting from the inside to the out, using my darkest color on the inside and moving to my lightest color.

You can't really see the color change in the picture because it is so minimal but here is what my final painting looked like. The husband picked red because it is his favorite color and also one of our main accent colors downstairs.

 

The final step is gluing the mirror into the middle. I had to be a little creative in this part because mine didn't sit flush against the base, so I used a paper plate the same size as the mirror to give a little more room to glue. Use whatever kind of glue you feel comfortable with here. Then, secure some string onto the back for hanging or just put some nails in the wall and use the MDF frame to hang, either way, do it how you like it done :)

 

 

There you have it, a fun mirror made out of spoons that I would say cost about $15 :) I love it and hope you guys do too.

 

 

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