Browsing Category

FUN/DIY

FUN/DIY/ Seasonal/ Valentine's Day

Valentine’s Day Craft Ideas

Egg Carton Heart Art from A Little Hut
I just love this. You could make all kinds of shapes and colors out of these egg cartons. What fun!
Puffy Tissue Heart from Kaboose
I remember making tissue art as a kid. These are cute, my girls could do this craft without much direction from me. Bonus!
Ruffly Felt Rosette Wreath from Domestifluff
I think this is so elegant. You could use any color felt and a heart shaped foam form. These white ones would be beautiful to decorate a winter wedding. Red would be great for Christmas. Brown for fall.
Potato Stamp Art from Cafe Mom
I plan on using the inside of brown paper grocery sacks for this project.
Homemade Chocolate Playdoh from A Foothill Home Companion
This idea almost seems cruel! It smells like chocolate, looks like chocolate, but you can’t eat it!
Sour Cream Container Look-Alikes from Skip To My Lou
I have never seen this craft before. What a great way to package little valentine treats!

2
FUN/DIY

Baggu-This Would Make Me Happy!

I’ll take one in every color, please.

Plastic is bad, Baggu is Rad. (my sisters make fun of me when I say “rad”)
They have Big Baggu, Baby Baggu, Drawstring, Duck Bag and even Produce Bags.
2
Beauty

2 Minute Messy UpDo

I’ve been doing a bunch of posts on healthy eating, to help make our innards beautiful, so I thought it was time for a little something to make our out-ards (ha) beautiful.
Even thought I am a hair stylist, I love easy-to-do hair.  The hairstyle in this video is perfect, in fact..it is how I am wearing my hair right now.  It really does only take 2 minutes, and can be done with shoulder length or longer hair.
FUN/DIY/ Holidays/Parties

New Years Kid Crafts/New Year’s Eve Traditions

We made these goofy glasses today. Head over to Make and Takes for directions. While you are there, at the end of the post is a link for homemade New Year’s Eve Noise Makers made out of toilet paper rolls. They make the sound of a kazoo while blowing into them. I get a little jeebed out thinking about putting my mouth on something that spent so much time in a bathroom, so I will let my girls do the noise making.
We also made these Noisemaker Shakers out of ribbon spools. (go to Family Fun.com for directions) The girls decorated them with their brand new glitter glues the got from Santa. They turned out pretty cute, no picture for ya, though.
I plan on making these cute pancakes for breakfast, using this recipe, on New Year’s Day. (Picture and idea from FamilyFun.com) I will sprinkle dried cranberries as the confetti since it is what we have on hand. (gotta stick to the challenge!)
I bought some poppers that have little toy surprises in them when you pull the string, and some silly New Year’s Day hats. We have a countdown in our kitchen using our kitchen timer, well before midnight, so we can put the kids to bed and enjoy the new year alone as a couple. We usually do the kids countdown around 10:00 so they still feel like they get to stay up “late.”
One of these years I may feel motivated to have a party and invite lots of friends over. Usually, we are just getting over all the family Christmas celebrations, so we are partied out by New Year’s Eve.

The kids really get into the kitchen countdown tradition, we have done it the last 3 years. After we put them to bed, I love snugglin’ up to my husband to watch a movie, and pushing pause around midnight to watch the ball drop. After our New Year’s smooch, we push “Play” and finish up the movie. We are old…and boring(except that smooch)…and… I LOVE IT!

1
Holidays/Parties/ RECIPES/ Sides

Frosted Grapes/New Year’s Eve Tradition

I found a box of jello looking very lonely in the very back of my pantry while I was organizing yesterday. It made me happy because it is an ingredient we use for one of our New Year’s Eve traditions. We sit at the table with a bowl of frosted grapes, and pass it around. Each person has to take a grape, name a favorite memory that happened during the year, eat it, and pass the bowl to the next person. We do this 12 times. It is just fun and silly, the girls love it.
I have grapes on hand, leftover from Chicken Salad that I made a few days ago,
so we are set for our tradition!
Click here for the recipe!!

**I recommend NOT using red jello on green grapes, unless it is close to Halloween and you want to feel like you are eating some type of alien food. Not very pretty. Stick with white/light colored jello or use red grapes.


FUN/DIY/ HOME/ Homemaking/ Organizing

Pantry Organization

There is nothing like a well organized pantry! I personally think that having a well organized pantry (and refrigerator and freezer) is KEY to saving money on groceries. You can clip coupons all you want, but if the food you buy ends up getting stale and expired while hiding out in a messy pantry, those coupons are meaningless and your money is wasted.
The jars in the above picture are so great! I believe you can get them at target. I use mason jars, they are half the price of these jars, and now come with silver lids. They are so helpful in keeping food air-tight and on display. My food peers at me through the glass, giving me all kinds of ideas and inspiration to create with their contents. They can’t hide as easily when in a mason jar!
A project that I am planning on asking my now retired Dad to help me with, is hanging shelves on a very blank wall in my kitchen. I want them to hold rows of beautiful jars filled with seeds, pastas, beans, lentils, corn meal, etc. Can’t you just see them lined up so pretty with all their beautiful shades of color, creating art and storage at the same time? Ahhhhh.
Here is a photo that inspires me. The black shelves are exactly what I want, but instead of jars of cupcake sprinkles, mine would be…well, what I said above.:)
Here is the blank wall in my kitchen that I am talking about. Won’t that look nice? Won’t it? (psst…Dad… when can we start?)
Maybe, just maybe–someday–my pantry will look like this. Isn’t that just pantry heaven?
I don’t know if I will ever get into canning, but the old-fashioned part of me sure would love to! I would like join a community garden this coming summer- there is one just a block from us, which is great because our back yard is tiny and all shade. Depending on how successful our harvest will be, I just might get to experience canning! If not, maybe I’ll find a good deal on peaches and at least can those.:)
6
Beauty

How To Wear A Scarf

We survived the great Blizzard Of 2009, but now we are in for a very cold week, so get those scarves out!  During one of our Christmas celebration dinners, the subject of “scarf wearing” came up.  Scarves are GREAT for keeping warm, but are also GREAT for giving a boring outfit a punch of color and interest.  Lately I have been wearing scarves in place of a necklace, they have really helped update some of my winter outfits.
Back to our Christmas dinner…  I gave a quick tutorial right there at the table, using the scarf I was wearing.  I showed a couple of basic ways to wear a scarf, but I knew there was much more scarf fun to be had!  I did a little searching on youtube,( I knew I would find some die hard scarf lovers there), and my search did not disappoint!

This one covers 4 different ways to wear a scarf, explained in detail by a stylist.

This one shows 5 ways to tie a scarf, and tips on scarf length and scarf storage.

This one uses a thinner scarf, one that would be used more as an accessory than 

for warmth.

The scarf in the photo below is called a muffler scarf. Click here for a video tutorial on how to wear one.

3
Top