I was at Walmart the other day, walking past the Halloween fabric yet again, thinking how absolutely adorable it was and how badly I wanted a project to use it for. Actually, it wasn’t even really that Halloween specific, but was black with little crescent moons and stars in a yellowish-orange, but it was CUTE. Then, it hit me. Halloween candy bags. By the time I actually bought the fabric, it had been marked down to $2/yd. SCORE! So I bought it, and am planning to make the bags. I hunted for awhile for a good tote bag tutorial, but didn’t see one I really liked. I suppose, if you sew, then making a tote isn’t that big of a deal. All you need is 4 sides and a handle, then sew it all together. The size is going to depend on how much candy your kid rakes in, so really I guess you don’t need one. Point is, if you...
Yes, we are getting close to that time of year again! I couldn’t be more excited, since it’s my favorite holiday. Halloween is coming soon! Hurray! This year, my daughter tells me she wants to be a “dead bride”, which she came up with on her own (she’ll be 6 in a few weeks). I am so very proud. *sniff* Now I could go out and look for a costume, but why do that when I can just make it? For the last week or two, I’ve been working on the dress and snagging the accessories when I see them. The pattern for the dress – Simplicity 5645, in case you want it – was a little more expensive than I wanted it to be ($5.97, although it was still cheaper than the ‘real’ costume patterns), but that’s alright, because we decided to make more dresses with the same pattern. To go with the dress,...
Here it is, almost Easter and we still don’t have our Easter eggs done yet. Gasp! No worries, we plan to tackle this project on Saturday right before Easter. Today I found an articled about painting eggs instead of dyeing, which I thought was rather interesting. The thought never crossed my mind that we could actually use paint instead of those messy dyes. Not a bad idea at all! The article goes on to give ideas for different ways to paint, which I also thought was very useful. This got me thinking – exactly what do we want to do this year? Do we want to paint them or dye them like we always do? Well I think we are doing a little bit of both. Usually we get the kind of dye kits that come with little sponges which allow you to “paint” the dye onto the eggs. This has always worked pretty well and kept the mess to a...
This winter has been absolutely horrible, and there’s still no end in site. If it’s not near zero or below, it’s snowing. Well, I’ve had enough. Any mention of cold weather or snow is starting to set me off, so I had to do something. The first thing I did was changed the template here at the blog. The last one was for Valentine’s day, so we needed something a little more like spring. It wasn’t my first pick, but it was the first one not to give me major problems with the design. If you dropped in during the revamp yesterday, I apologize. While working on the template I pulled out some specific candles. One was in the scent floral bouquet which is burning in the front room, and the other was lily of the valley. Nothing like the scent of fresh flowers to trick your mind into thinking it was warm. Everything...
Valentine’s day is only a little over a week away, do you have plans? Unfortunately being single, I have none. While it’s a romantic day for most, it can be a little depressing to me. No big deal though, I just do my best to ignore it all together. It’s just another day, right? I kicked around the idea of maybe hosting a chat for all us single fokes (moms in particular), but not sure how much interest there would be. It would of course be a controlled chat, unlike so many chat rooms are now. What do you think? Would join in if you knew of a friendly chat designed to distract us single fokes from the day of depression? I do have a chat room in mind, so let me know! Read More →
Need some cute eCards for Valentine’s Day? American Greetings has lots to choose from! Plus you don’t have to worry about spyware or other computer problems by visiting this site. With their free trial, you can send out all your Valentine’s day cards for free before you decide to use them for other holidays. I was especially impressed with the number of different holiday cards they have available. Just about everything you can think of is listed here, including the major holidays like Valentine’s Day, Halloween, and Christmas. For those that send out a lot of ecards or print cards at home, they’ve got a whole lot of options for a pretty good price. Worth trying out free for 30 days! Read More →
Here we are officially one full week into the new year. A good chunk of you probably had resolutions and goals you wanted to meet this year. So how are they holding up? Yes I know it’s only a week in and your probably doing alright. But as the year wears on, it gets harder and harder to keep up with those resolutions. I know because I’ve let mine slide year after year. Unfortunately they are the usual type of goals – make more money, lose weight, or keep myself more organized. Those empty goals sound good in theory, but really have no real solid plan behind them. I think I’ve come up with my own personal solution to the failing resolution problem though. For one, I don’t care what time of year it is. I don’t wait until January 1st to start a new diet or start cleaning my house. I don’t even care if...
With New Year’s almost here, many of you are surely thinking of what your New Year’s resolution will be. While I tend to set goals all year round, I know many take the new year to make a new start. A few weeks ago we put up a brand new page specifically for help with setting goals. We hope this will get you started on your new years resolution! As always, if you have something to add, please be sure to use the form on the page. We’re always looking for additional ideas to feature on the site. Read More →
Did you forget someone on your Christmas card list? I know it’s easy to do sometimes. Especially when you are trying to remember all your family, friends, and neighbors. If you are in need of one more quick Christmas card and don’t have time to send it, why not send an eCard? They can be just as personal and perfect for last minute (and we mean at the VERY last minute!). You can even wait until the day before Christmas to send an ecard and know it will get there in time. Blue Moutain is a site we highly recommend. You can get unlimited ecards and printed cards for a very low price. Best of all, they have a free trial. So if you need to send out a few more Christmas cards via email, give them a shot. Hey why not? It’s free! Just click on the button below to get started. Read More →
A friend and I spend the entire day baking over the weekend, making cookie and candy dessert trays for our family, friends, and neighbors. While it was a lot of work, we made some pretty fantastic dessert trays. Here’s our list all the desserts that went on our plates: - Chocolate Covered Pretzels - Peanut Butter Fudge - Caramel Filled Chocolate Bars - Sugar Cookies - Cookies & Cream Truffles - Pumpkin Bars - Peanut Brittle Several of these recipes my friend brought over, while a few of the others I had on hand. I think just about everyone has a basic sugar cookie recipe, but the others you might have to look for. One of the recipes I pulled from the Chocolate Lover’s ebook was the carmel filled chocolate bars. The recipe for those are below, but I do have to warn you. I had my doubts it was going to come out good just from...
