Gift Exchange

I am so excited!  I signed up for the Craftaholics Anonymous Gift Exchange    I have always wanted to do one and the one time I did the art exchange I never received anything in the mail.  It was still a good experience though.  I am hoping this one will be much better!  I can't wait to see who I get and be able to make something cute for them.  YEAH!   And if you want to participate click on the link above and read all the rule.  Then sign up!  I don't know why I am sitting here surfing the internet because I have   a MILLION things to do today!  I mean seriously.  Between now and around 1 o'clock tomorrow I have to pack all of us for our 3 day trip to Disneyland, make a purse, fix a repurposing I started I plan on wearing Thursday, do some laundry, try and finish cleaning my kitchen ( YIKES! ), go to the post office and mail my latest etsy sale and put my etsy site on vacation!  When we get back later this weekend and take my site off of vacation mode, I will be adding some new things!  WOO HOO  I can't wait.  Adding things is so annoying but exciting at the same time.  

Well....I guess I REALLY need to get off of my butt and get going.  Sometime today I plan on writing a post.  I have a great beauty tip for y'all thanks to my sister Kim.  Happy Tuesday everyone ( I totally wrote Monday and then realized I lost that day yesterday! ) haha

Miracle Stain Remover!

So when I was talking about doing green month I asked if anyone had any suggestions.  I got one and dumb old me didn't even do it.  Sometime I get overwhelmed and sometimes I just don't follow through.  This time it was both.  The suggested given me was an all natural stain remover.  Well, I just happen to try one yesterday and it worked AMAZINGLY well.  Want to know my secret?  Vinegar.  Yup that's it.  We went to church and Kayla was wearing a flower dress with light colors.  The nursery leader was running late and so someone who didn't know the rules was helping out.  They brought RED punch into the nursery.  Of COURSE someone spilled and of COURSE Kayla sat in it!  BOOOOOOOO   I was a little sad but then I figured this was my chance to find a GREEN cleaner.  I looked it up in a book I have that I bought on sale for 5 dollars and Barns and Noble.  It is called GREEN CLEANING ad it is all using white vinegar, baking soda, lemon juice, tea tree oil or borax.  AWESOME.  I haven't even read half of the book yet and learned so much.  So I whipped out the book and looked up under vinegar something to get our berries or fruit.  I figured that was the closest thing to red punch.  It said to soak the stain the straight vinegar.  So I did.  For about 3 or 4 hours and then rinsed it out in the sink and hung it dry.  There is absolutely NO evidence that there was ever a stain. Freaking awesome. So next time you think something is ruin by red punch or fruit ( I cut fruit a lot! ) then have no fear!  Get out your white vinegar and clean away.  HAPPY CLEANING!

Flower CRAZY

This weekend I went flower crazy.  I have issues....I find something I like and then get really into it and neglect all other things.  A couple of days before this was the sun glasses case.  I was SUPPOSED to make some bow ties this week and never got around to it.  Boooooo.  Check out my craziness

Like I said CRAZY!

While making flowers I found these I bought like 5 months ago and then didn't do anything with.

I bought some in a couple of different colors and kinda made a head band and then forgot about them.  SO some hair accessories are being made now.  

Then I made another one of these but with some recycled satin and some feathers.  I love the frayed edge look.  It's so fun!

And now I must get in the shower.  I would say I was listing all of this flower craziness in my etsy shop today BUT I remembered later yesterday that we are going on vacation this week and so I will have to close the shop for a few days.  This means less work for me for the week but more work for next week.  That's okay.  I REALLy want to have more stuff in my shop and start selling more regularly.  I sold 3 things this week but hadn't sold anything for almost 2 weeks before that.  Hmmmmm

Have a great Memorial Day everyone!  I am heading to JoAnn's to fight all the crazies who are going for their big sale.  I NEED interfacing for a purse I ammaking me for our vacation so I MUST go.  Cross your fingers I come out alive!  Those crafty, sewing women are CRAZY!  haha

TV Show's

I need some help!  I have been doing really good working out as much as I can.  The problem is we do not have a TV in our bedroom and that is where our elliptical is.  What I have been doing is dragging my lap top into the bedroom and then watching a season I got from Netflix on there.  I was watching The Good Wife season one and I just finished it!  I love that show.  But I already watched season 2 on TV.  I am looking for some good ones to work out too.  I like the one hour shows better but if it's a 30 minute show that's okay too.  Have any suggestions?  It can be old or new, I don't care.  I just need to keep up with my working out and when I have nothing to watch I get lazy and don't do it.  Any ideas would be great!  THANKS!  Have a happy weekend Y'all!!

Thankful Thursday

I am going to TRY and start something new on my blog.  I am going to try and write something I am thankful for every Thursday.  Someone I know used to do this on their blog a while ago and recently I was thinking about it.  SO going along with the post I wrote yesterday about marriage, I am thankful for my HUSBAND!  Not only does he not complain EVER that the house is a mess or I didn't do his laundry or make him something for dinner other then pizza, he also ALWAYS asks my permission before spending money ALWAYS.  We had been talking about getting a grill.  We use a small Gorge Forman grill and it has seen better days.  Here we have a little cement patio in the back and so we knew we wanted to get one with some of our tax return money.  Well, the tax return money kinda went to a bunch of other things and we didn't get one.  My husband has been eyeing some on line.  He has been wanting to learn how to smoke.  He told his mom he wanted to learn how to smoke and she looked at him like he was crazy!  Then he explained that he meant MEAT and she laughed.  SOOOOOO after looking for a couple of months and not buying anything he finally decided to buy one.  Then he kept NOT DOING IT!  haha  I guess he is like me sometimes about spending money.  One night he had told me he was going to order it and I said "Go for it!"  Then next day I get a phone call from him.  He says, "I just wanted to be sure it was okay with you if I bought the grill?"  Um...didn't I already say yes?!  haha  Then he started to tell me he was going to use mostly amazon gift cards he had from one of his credit cards ( cash back for buying certain items ) and I just laughed at him.  I begged him to buy it and leave me alone.   He did, and I was SO happy he did.  I am SOOOOOOOO grateful for a husband who includes me in finical matters.  I know some married people have separate accounts.  We have one and I don't even know how to use it.  I don't need to really because I COMPLETELY trust him.  He has always been more then forth coming and he always says it's OUR money and gets mad when I refer to it as HIS.  I am so blessed for this and so I am GRATEFUL for my husband!

Marriage

How many people when reading that title said it like on Princess Bride?  That is how I say the word always!  Isn't it amazing how a movie can have such an impact on so many people.  I am not writing this post to  discuss movies though.  I wanted to talk to you guys a little bit about marriage.  What marriage means to me is not the same thing it means to other people.  My husband has a job where he used to travel ALL the time.  It was hard.  Our relationship started out long distance and because of this it prepared us for what our life was going to be like for the next 8 years.

A little back ground about us.  I lived in Southern California and Cody lived in Southern Utah.  My sister and her husband live in Utah where Cody lived.  My brother in law met Cody and they became friends.  They "hooked us up".  We met, went on a "date"  ( the date included both my sisters, my brother, my brother in law and my nephew ) and was something like 10 or so hours long.  After this I went back to Cali and we started emailing each other a lot.  Then we started chatting over MSN messenger.  Sometimes we would talk until 4 or 5 in the morning.  When my semester was over I went up to Utah to spend the summer which was only 2 months.  It took us a while to get the relationship going ( we are both shy! ) but once we did we were both smitten.  At the end of the 2 months I had a ring on my finger and we were planning a December wedding.  At first December seemed SO close.  I went back to Cali to finish up another semester and he worked and went o school in Utah.  It was the LONGEST 5 months ever!  December felt forever away.  We finally were married and we thought, "GOOD!  No more time apart!"  Then about 4 months later my husband got a call and a job offer in Texas.  We went gladly.  They said there was travel involved.  Well, we could handle that right?  Within two weeks of us being in Texas, Cody had to go to Kuwait for a month, come home for 2 weeks and then head back to Kuwait for 3 months.  HORRIBLE!  Our life was like this for the last 7 years.  The longest trip being while I was pregnant with my daughter Kayla.  Cody was in Iraq for 7 months.  Thank goodness we moved in with my parents in Utah while he was gone because I had lots of bleeding my first 2 months of pregnancy and needed the help.  ( My husband knocked me up on his way out the door to Iraq!  haha  We didn't even know I was pregnant until he had been gone 3 weeks or so )

We got the offer to move to California with NO TRAVEL!  We jumped on the opportunity even though it meant working more hours for Cody and leaving our family and friends in Texas.  Cody has a brother who lived around the corner from us who we spent LOTS of time with.  They kept me sane whenever Cody was gone.  And while my sister in law was at work during the day time, my dear friend Sarah kept me sane.  We didn't REALLY want to move but for us to be together and actually get to be a family FULL time was way to good to pass up.  It's funny because Cody's sister Wendy went through the same thing as us in terms of having her husband gone a lot,  He is the one who got my husband his job.  When she found out we were taking the job in California she told Cody that it was going to be really hard on our marriage for him to be home all of the sudden.  We laughed.  I can see how some people would find this difficult but not us.

Cody works with a LOT of people who do not value marriage!  Nor do they value family.  They looked at being on the road as an opportunity to cheat.  The sad thing was that some of them had verbal agreements with their wives that while they were on the road, both of them were allowed to see other people.  I can tell you of the 5 or so people Cody told me about who did this, ZERO of them are still together.  Oh and did I mention that most of them had two or three kids?  Little kids too who were seeing this and being no doubt damage by this tremendously.  How could anyone be THAT selfish?!

Cody and I have always stayed close during this.  We learned from the very beginning of our relationship to communicate through words and not through touch.  Do I get lonely when he is gone?  YUP!  Was it hard on my hormones him being away for a month or so at a time?  HELL YEAH!  haha  But this did not matter as much as how much I loved him.  Sometimes when Cody was gone we talked more then when he was home.  he would call me when he got done with work and we would talk for a while.  Then we would talk on the internet or on the phone after the kids went to bed.  It's hard to NOT be close to someone when you know how to talk.  THIS to me is not only what kept us close, but helped us keep our relationship going.  We knew how to communicate and we knew how to love each other even when we weren't in each others presence.

So what about now that he isn't traveling anyone?  Do we still talk?  Are we getting on each other's nerves?  Well, I can tell you it has been wonderful having him home and in no way has it made our relationship harder.  We still laugh about his sister saying that.  I know she was just trying to prepare us for what might happen but for us it was a blessing.  I value our marriage.  Our value our friendship.  He means more to me then the world and I would never do anything to jeopardize this.  For too many people, they just don't value marriage any more.  They don't love their spouse unconditionally.  They don't give %100 percent of themselves to it.  This is so sad to me.  Why get married then?  Why try and spend the rest of your life with someone and have a family if they aren't the most important thing to you?

I can tell you so many stories!  Another guy Cody works with told him that his career was more important then his wife!  Not only did he say that but he said if he got a promotion and needed to move some where and she didn't want to, he would just go any ways.  SERIOUSLY?!  WHY GET MARRIED?!  Another guy has been with the same woman for years.  Her kids are practically his kids.  They are planning on getting married but aren't yet.  He cheats on his wife every time he goes out on the road.  Recently he had a threesome while on a trip!  What gets me more then anything is that we aren't talking about kissing and holding hands.  We are talking sex.  I have only given myself to one person and that is my husband.  I can not even IMAGINE what it would be like to give myself to someone else.  And for these people he works with they do it and then go home and look their wives in the eyes.  And some of them don't consider it cheating if they don't sleep with them.  They could do ANYTHING else but as long as they don't have sex, it isn't cheating.  WOW

I value myself, my kids and my husband!  I value my marriage and what it represents.  I LOVE and know that he LOVES only me.  This is marriage and I feel sick to my stomach that in  this day in age the word marriage doesn't mean anything.  Well, it means something to me.  It means everything to me.

No Driving = MORE Crafting

So this whole not being able to drive thing is doing wonders for my etsy shop! haha I have not had this much time before to devote entirely to it. But when you are stuck at home everyday it frees up a lot of time. I will be SO glad when my license comes in the mail but also a little sad. For now, here is what I did yesterday

I made some sunglasses cases!  WOO HOO  I have been wanting to make a bunch of these for the shop since I opened it but never got around to it.  I have tons more fabric I was planning on making some out of so maybe  I'll get around to doing some more.  Now that summer was fast approaching I figured I'd better get cracking on that!


I also made this

I intended on it also being a sunglasses case but it ended up being much bigger.  You could probably fit a small digital camera in the big pocket!  I love that it has two pockets so you could also put in a cell phone or ipod.

I am not sure if you remember back a month or so ago when I talked about making chap stick.  WELL, I also told y'all that you could get the chap stick tubes for cheap.  That is not entirely true.  They WANT you to think you are getting them for cheap but in fact, you are not.  They only cost 25 cents a piece but then every place I found that had them charged at LEAST 9 dollars shipping, even if you were only buying 4 of them.  LAME!  SOOOOO  it took me a while but I finally got around to ordering me some and for cost purposes I went a head and bought 100 of them.  I do NOT need that many but I figured it was cheaper to buy more and I had to pay for the dumb shipping any ways.  What this means for you is I have some in my etsy shop for sale.  I am doing quantities of 20 for 7 dollars ( that includes shipping! )  That way you do not have to pay an arm and a leg for them.  It's still cheaper then buying 3 dollar chap stick from the store and you get to control what goes in it.    Look how pretty they are!

I can't wait to make me some chap stick now.  I found a couple different recipes I want to try so we'll see which I choose.

Any ways.  I also put in my shop some interfacing.  I bought some thinking it was iron on and it wasn't.  The sew in interfacing just isn't for me.  I used it on a purse and some hair clips and one of sun glasses cases I made but I would rather sell it and buy some iron on kind.  So that is in the shop now too.  I am also hoping to add some of the jewelry my sister made today  It takes so long to list stuff and I already spent well over an hour listing things so we shall see.

On a personal note I have a hard time spending money.  Especially if it is a BIG dollar sign on a single item.  There is a camera bag I want that is 89 dollars.  I know it is very practical for me as a photographer and I know it is a very resonable price for a camera bag.  It is also really freaking cute and that can't hurt either right?!  It also just looks like a normal purse which I also like so that I can go somewhere and bring my camera and not have it obvious that I have a huge camera and a lens in my bag.  :)  So I decided to check my paypal account to see how much money I had in it and I was shocked that I had over 100 dollars!  WOO HOO  I went to the site for the camera bags a little hesitant.  I mean, 100 bucks is a lot for ME to drop on a single item.  On a side note I have also been wanting to save up to buy a silhouette REALLY bad!  My husband offered to buy me one for Christmas and I wanted to say yes SO BAD!  However, we were getting ready to move and dropping tons of cash on all sort of moving expenses. I told him it probably wasn't a good idea to be spending that much money on something that we didn't NEED ( even though it would have been very useful! )   So back to the camera bag.  I decided to go ahead and order it.  My heart was racing as I looked through the web site and got to the purse I wanted in the color I wanted and read OUT OF STOCK!  COME ON!  Seriously.  I finally decide to buy it and the color I want is out of stock.  It says it will be back in stock mid June so I guess I have to wait.  They have lots of colors but really I want to teal one and why should I finally spend the money and not get the color I want.  So waiting it will be.  What a bummer.

I hope your week is going well.  I am loving what the hot sun is doing to my daughters hair.  It is starting to go very red again and I love it!

Seriously Addicting

Um the Jack and Jill hat pattern by Izzy and Ivy is SO addicting! Seriously! I made msyelf one last week without all of the ruffles and flowers and then a couple of days ago I made one for my friends niece. I think it turned out SO cute!

My mom just made two this weekend as well.  My sister's best friend Beki was coming to visit her in Utah and so my mom made hats for her girls.  I feel so bad because the older girls hat didn't fit!  BOOOOOOOOO  So I told my mom if she wanted I would try and sell it in my etsy shop.  So stay tuned and if you love these hats I might have one for a 1 to 2 year old up in the shop sometime this week.  I would love to sell a bunch of these in my shop but I like selling pre-made things I can have done and then post.  Since these have to be made in a specific size, I just haven't done it yet.  I am thinking about doing a couple though. We'll see.  For now I am just making them for fun!  I think they are just too darn cute.  IN fact, I think I am getting ready to make the boy version for my son.  My husband just gave me 3 of his work shirt's that either didn't fit or had a stain.  My mom was making fun of me and said, "what, you aren't going to cut them up and make something out of them!"  Little did she know I was already plotting stuff in my head.  In fact, I am making him some play shorts out of them too.  They would have been done already except I made them a little too big so I need to fix them.

So we shall see what crafty things I have time for this week.  I always have a million things floating around in my head and we'll see what ACTUALLY gets done.  I am not the best multi-tasker.  Just ask my house.  It gets so messy when I am in the crafty zone.   This week I am trying to make sure to keep some balance.  We shall see how it goes.  :)

Oh Well...

My hubby woke up yesterday with a terrible tummy ache.  I made us some wheat pancakes and they didn't stay down for him.  He was running to the bathroom every half an hour or so.  I would be talking to him not paying attention and then all of the sudden I would look up and he would be gone.  I told him there was no way he could go to church.  He felt bad and I said, "It's not like I've never taken the kids to church by myself before"  He still felt bad.  Around 11 o'clock I was fixing Kayla's dress I was going to put on her for church when I realized DUH!  I can't drive us to church because my license expired and I am waiting to get my new one in the mail.  DOH!  My boy was so sad.  He LOVES church and was looking forward to seeing his friend.  So what was I supposed to do now?  I cleaned a little.  And then.....well.....I updated my etsy shop of course!  haha  Check out the three cute things I worked on yesterday while the kids were napping.

I like how this one turned out.  I actually had it done about a week or two ago but never attached it to any thing so I finally got in on a head band.

I think this one turned out cute too.  Next time I make one I won't make the ruffle quite so long.  I htink a little shorter would be better.

And lastly ( I LOVE this one! )

YES, it is HUGE!  I didn't mean for this one to be this huge BUT I had never made one before.  I am going to make more though because I think they are so cute.  Next time I know to start much smaller.  So what do you think?  I also added a purse which is SUPER cute.  I am sad because the pictures I took don't really do it justice.

I love the fabric.  I originally bought it to make a summer dress for Kayla and then I never did.  So now it got turned into a purse.  I am planning on making either a matching wallet or sun glasses case to put in the shop too.  I am also hoping to add some jewelry later.  My sister is the jewelry maker, not me.  She made some for a church function and they didn't end up using all of it.  She was going to just give it to me and my mom and I told her why not sell it?!  That is expect for the necklace I really like which I stole.  haha  Any ways.  Hopefully that will be up in the shop later today.  Go take a look y'all.

SO what did YOU do this weekend?  I hope you got to go to church since we didn't.

Linking up to these

Sometimes

When I get asked to do something for a family member I try REALLY hard to pull through and make it happen.  Sometimes, it may not be on a time line that is quick but I TRY.  Needless to say, when I pull through I try and do a good job.  My sister wanted some bow ties and well, she got four of them.  They were free too and for the most part, they were free for me as well!  ( we used my moms fabric.  hee hee ) I already showed you one of them and here are the other 3.

I am LOVING them!  And I love how quick they are.  It's 30 minutes tops and that includes cutting out and hand sewing some of it.  Can't beat that!

Your Mouth Will Thank You

Take some of these

Cut up the cheese and place it on the crackers like so ( the thicker the better if you love cheese like I do )

Microwave about 15 to 20 seconds ( depending on how thick your cheese was! )

And enjoy!

The Triscuits come in so many yummy flavors.  One of my favorites is actually the fire roasted tomato and garlic.  Those are AMAZING!  This is of course not a South Beach Diet Approved snack.  It is however, a Katie is on her period and needed something more then a salad snack!  :)

Oh and by the way, you're welcome!

Brazilian Cheese Rolls {Pao de Queijo}

My husband went on a mission for our church in Brazil.  He loves Brazilian food!  The Brazilian BBQ places are SOOOOOO expensive.   I have never gone to one with him, he usually goes by himself.  My brother in law Ender also went to Brazil on his mission, therefore my sister tries to find different Brazilian dishes to make them and then I get to hear which ones are good.  The other day we made Brazilian style steaks.  SUPER easy.  You take your steak and you rub kosher salt ( or any salt you have ) all over it.  Then you drizzle olive oil on it and rub smashed up garlic on it.  Let it marinate for a couple of hours and then grill it.

My husband said that when they would do this in Brazil they would use rock salt and after it was cooked you would gently knock the salt right off of it before you ate it.  I thought this way was good.  My husband just ordered a grill and is SO excited to try this again so we can actually grill it.  We used our tiny little Foreman grill. hee hee

NOW for the WOW recipe.  I didn't take pictures because I was making these in a hurry last night but if you like cheese bread you have to try these.  It's called  Pao de Queijo or you can just say Brazilian Cheese Rolls.  They are SO yummy.  You have to use the ingredients provided though.  Substitutions don't cut it!  You HAVE to use tapioca flour and you HAVE to use canola oil.  My sister used vegetable oil once and they were almost un editable.  So be careful and have fun.  These are super easy and super yummy.  Another MUST do is you have to cook these in a mini muffin tin.  No exceptions.  I got the recipe off of Our Best Bites.  GREAT blog people with tons of ideas and recipes.

Quick Brazilian Cheese Rolls {Pao de Queijo} – Gluten Free!
Recipe by Our Best Bites

1 large egg
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup canola oil
1 cup tapioca flour (sometimes labeled tapioca starch) no substitutions
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/4 C grated cheddar cheese* (preferably medium or sharp)
1/4 C grated Parmesan cheese
*you can play around with the cheese.  I’ve used Monterey Jack, low-moisture mozarella, swiss, and even gruyere in place of the cheddar.  All great!

Optional:  extra cheese to sprinkle on top and any herbs/flavorings you’d like to add.  Try rosemary and or garlic powder, my favorites!

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Place egg, milk, oil, tapioca flour, and salt in blender and blend until smooth.  Add cheeses and pulse 2 times.  Immediately pour batter into a mini muffin tin (if your muffin tin isn’t non-stick, spray lightly with non-stick spray first), filling each well about 3/4 full, or just slightly less.  If desired (and I recommend), sprinkle a bit of parmesan cheese on top and/or a tiny sprinkle of kosher salt.

Bake for 15-20 minutes until puffed and golden.  Remove from oven and cool for a few minutes before removing rolls from pan.  Serve warm. {Que Gostoso!}  These actually don’t re-heat well so I recommend making and eating fresh.

If you want to see their whole post with pictures and all check it out HERE

You will not be disappointed if you make these!  They are soft and gooey on the inside and crunchy on the outside.  It's fabulous! 

Sleep Mask

I got lasik.  Most of you know this and I don't want to keep bringing it up.  BUT my eyes have been so dry which is a side effect of having it done.  I have recently figured out that I am one of those people who don't always close their eyes all of the way when they sleep.  Creepy, I know.  So when I wake in the morning sometimes I have a dry spot on my left eye that takes TONS of eye drops and a couple of hours to go away.  It's annoying because the dry spot  causes some blurriness in that eye.  It's VERY annoying.  Any ways.  I wondered if wearing a sleep mask would help.  My sister and her husband use them and love them so why not try right?  I found a tutorial ( you don't REALLY need a tutorial but I like at least finding one that has a template you can print out )  I found it at Prudent Baby.  If you have never checked out their site I LOVE IT!  They have awesome stuff on it.  

The original tutorial I read used regular fabric on top and minkie for the inside.  I used minkie on both.  Also, it says to use dark fabric because that's the whole point is to have the room dark.  I used this light fabric plus I didn't use interfacing and it still seemed pretty dark.  The point for me was not to have the room dark though, it was to cover my eyes from the air.  The first night was great!  I slept better which was SO nice.  It gets light by like 5:30 here and it's so annoying.  My eyes, however, were SUPER dry! BOOOOOO  I figured I would try again last night but I had one of those nights where I just COULD NOT SLEEP!  Half way through the night I took it off.  I will try again tonight and see what happens.  I think it turned out really cute though.  I was looking at some on etsy.  People on etsy make me laugh!  Some people are charging like 18 to 20 dollars for these. Um, it took me TEN MINUTES TOPS!  That includes cutting out the template, cutting out my fabric...everything.  I would say 20 bucks is for sure over kill.  :)  

here's the LINK

I have a really cute idea to make some of these for my sister and brother in law.  I hope it is something I follow through with because I really think it would be super cute!  

My mom and dad are on their way to my house.  It takes them 5 or 6 hours but I can't wait to see them.  the kids are super excited.  They will be here until Thursday morning so it's a quick trip.  I probably won't post again until then.  So have a great few days!  I know I will.

Crackers

I went CRACKER CRAZY this weekend!  I needed to bring a snack to church for the nursery and instead of bringing store bought graham crackers or fishy crackers, I decided to try and make some.  On my search to find other graham crackers recipes I read a lot of different things.  This led me to find other crackers recipes and go a little crazy.  I ended up making graham crackers, "ritz" crackers and fishy crackers.  The fishy crackers were good but not EXCELLENT.  Part of that was my fault.  I only had low fat cheddar because of my south beach diet and so it was as cheesy tasting as they should be.  The good thing though is that is recipe has spinach and carrots in them and I SWEAR you can NOT taste them.  This makes them perfect for picky kids who don't eat veggies.  The dough is really simple.  You basically put everything in the food processor.  Then you chill the dough for a couple of hours, roll out and cut out the fishy.  This part is tricky.  I wanted them to look like fishy crackers so I had to make a cookie cutter.  I cut open a soda can to shape myself a fishy.  It took three tries because I kept breaking the aluminum.  :)  By the way, NONE of this was my idea!  I stole it all from the source I found the recipe.  I will post a link at the bottom of this post so you can check it out.  The only modification I did was I added some pepper jack cheese which I wish I would have added more of because I couldn't taste it.  So here is my pictures!

LINK HERE  Get the recipe by clicking on the link.  Also I did two batches of these puppies and the first batch I thought I over cooked.  So the next batch I took out sooner.  The "over cooked" ones ended up having the crunch you want in a crackers and the others ones were more like bread dough.  The crunchy ones were better!

Now for the ritz crackers.  I messed this up because the dough is SUPER springy!  I didn't roll mine out thin enough.  It was HARD to get it thin.  Then they also cooked up in the oven which I didn't think they were going to do.  SOOOO the ones that came out thin were good and did have some crunch to them.  The thick ones taste more like biscuits  which are still really yummy, but aren't ritz cracker like.  So make sure you roll them out REALLy thin when you cut them out.  I just used something round and then poked holes in them with a tooth pick.  I didn't take pictures of these but they are worth a try.  Here is the recipe for those RITZ RECIPE  ( awesome blog if you just poke around on here site.  She also has a fishy cracker one with no carrot or spinach in it if you are scared to try that! )

And lastly was the graham crackers.  I made these before and thought they were very good but I wished they had a little more flavor to them.  The recipe is found HERE  After reading several other recipes I changed a couple of things in this recipe.  I did half white sugar and half brown sugar.  Plus I let my 1/4 tsp of cinnamon turn more into a 1/2 tsp.  I also added a few dashes of pumpkin pie spice!  YUM!  That's it.  I think they were for sure more flavorful.  Still not perfect for my tasting but much better.  I like things sweet though so for those who don't like things sweet you probably want to stick with the original recipe.   So go try some cracker recipes.  

On a side note I ALWAYS try and give you guys a link if I got an idea from someone else.  Even if I changed the recipe like in the above crackers.  Please let me know if you feel I took something from you and didn't give you any credit.  I HATE when others do that to me so don't let me do it to you!  Thanks. Hope everyone had a great weekend.

Sun Glasses

One of the nice things about summer is the sun!  What comes with the sun is protecting yourself from it.  SUNGLASSES!  I love how cute sun glasses are.  Whats better is when you can find a cute case for them so you don't get scratch or broken.  Last summer I made one and I really liked how it came out.  Since summer is around the corner again I decided to make some for my etsy shop.  I have had kind of a weird week as far as getting things done.  I ended up getting frustrated with the one I was working on, especially since half way through I realized that there was something on the outside of the case on the fabric.  DOH!  So now I have a sun glasses case that I can't sell and don't know what to do with it.  Hmmmm  But I think it turned out cute in the end.

Cute right? Now what to do with it?!  haha