AWESOME Popcorn

Have you seen the popcorn recipes out there for popcorn?  I LOVE to make popcorn super unhealthily!  haha  You know, lots of salted sweet cream butter.  One of my guilty pleasures is to buy the kettle corn popcorn and after I pop it, I spread melted butter allllllll over it.  MMMMMM

While at my parents house for Thanksgiving I bought a bag of the candy cane chocolate kisses.  I love white chocolate even more then regular chocolate so these things are like heaven to me.  My mom and I popped some pop corn and guess what we did?  Made the best stinking popcorn ever!  Here is what you need

I love that we used healthy choice popcorn!  haha  Pop the popcorn and while you are doing that you need to unwrap about half the bag of candy kisses.  I put the kisses in a glass mixing bowl with two tablespoons of butter ( I used salted sweet cream ) and stick that in the microwave for about 30 to 45 seconds.  Stir until well mixed

Then pour ALLLLLLL over the popcorn and stir until mixed. 

 Then eat and enjoy the couple of extra pounds you just gained ( with a huge smile on your face ).  I am telling you this stuff is awesome.  I would make more tonight only it is Thanksgiving and I am stuffed.  Not full of turkey but we decided to make potato cheese soup for dinner and eat out of bread bowls.  It was delicious.  Let me know if you try the popcorn!  It's seriously divine!!! 

Sorry the pictures are not great.  I took them with my phone because my camera was in the room where the kids are sleeping.  :)

Crochet Has Taken Over My Life

Well, it's been a LOOOOOOONG time since I have been on here to write a blog.  It was not intentional that I took such a long break, but I feel it was necessary!  I embarked on a new life a couple of months ago and it has taken some major adjusting to figure out a new schedule for myself and my family.  Back in March when I stopped writing, I started up exercising!  It has been fantastic for me.  I started running and doing cardio 3 days a week with a group of girls from my church.  Since I was making a compitment to a healthier me I decided 3 days a week wasn't enough.  I decided 5 days a week was really what I needed to be doing.  So most mornings start out with a hour and a half work out with my friends.  If it isn't the day to work out with them then that means I am grocery shopping or taking my daughter to her dance class.  It has been hard finding the time to do anything I want to do in the creative aspect.  My biggest creative outlet right now being crochet.  It has completely taken over my life.  Let me show you a few of my creations in the crochet department.

So there you have it!  And that is probably only HALF of the crochet stuff I have done.  I found that after I had a basic knowledge of hats and how to make them, it was really easy to create the different character hats.  Most of those I just made them up as I went a long.  So I would say about half of what you see is from a pattern.  Either one I bought on easy or a free pattern I found on line.  Then the second half was just made up because someone asked me to make them a certain hat like the Brobee one and the Ninjago hat.

Any ways, I just LOVE crochet and creating things!  I still love to sew, it has just taken to the back burner for now.  :)  I am hoping to try really hard to update more.  The first couple of post I am sure will all be catch up of the things I have been doing since March and probably my sons birthday party that is coming up.

Hope everyone has a great day!

My Girl

We have been super busy lately!  I have been doing lots of projects and trying to not go TOO crazy with everything going on.  I started to exercise with a group of ladies from church three times a week and it has been keeping me pretty busy.  It takes up almost the whole morning each time we meet but I am feeling much better about myself and feeling good.  The days we do not get together I work out by myself at home.  The other day I ran 4 miles on my elliptical without stopping.  I have NEVER done that before.  I usually do 3 miles and I usually stop a million times.  haha

A couple of weeks ago something happened to me I wanted to share with you.  It is personal and not crafty related.  BUT it is entertaining!  My daughter....my sweet little baby girl KNOCKED HER FRONT TOOTH OUT!  I was DEVASTATED!  Is it sad that I kept thinking, "Why couldn't it have been my SON?"  haha  Boys are supposed to have teeth missing but not sweet little baby girls.  I cried...a bunch that night but by the end of the next day I just loved her that much more.  Her is a picture of her right before she went to be that night.

She was still smiling and waiting for the tooth fairy to come.  The tooth fairy felt so bad that she knocked her tooth out she gave her extra money!  ;)   My poor daughter had a lisp BEFORE she knocked the tooth out so you could only imagine that got much worse.  Despite it all I just love her to death and I think it has made her even more adorable!  Check out this other picture I got of her last Sunday after church

 Gotta love her!

Hair clips

So a LONG time ago it seems I was very into making hair clips.  It really has been a while since I made hair clips for babies.  I took pictures for someone's baby shower last month and so I brought a hair thing to give her.  She thought it was so cute she asked for my etsy web address and then ordered 4 more clips from me.  When I showed up at her house with the hair clips she handed me some flowers and a felt cupcake she found in the dollar section at Michael's.  She asked me if I could make her some more clips with the flowers she got.  So I got right to work....okay really it took me about a week or two to get around to it.  haha  The baby isn't born yet and isn't due for another couple of weeks.  I have to show you one of the headbands I made though because it is so cute.

Isn't it cute?  I hate it sitting on my ugly ironing board but I was in a hurry when I took them.  :)  She asked me if a couple of them could be Velcro hair clips.  I hadn't done those before but it was SO easy!

You just open it up and put the one side under a section of hair and then velcro it closed.  Easy right?  And what a great way to do hair clips that aren't going to bug little babies heads, or for babies with hair not quit long enough for alligator clips.

I totally didn't take a picture of the rest of the stuff I made her but oh well.  Now you can see that I HAVE been working on stuff and I haven't just been sitting around all the time not blogging.  I haven't been able to get myself back into blogging after we moved.  Before we moved I was already having a hard time.  Then the internet wouldn't work and now I have just gotten out of the habit.  I really haven't been working on as much stuff either.  What has messed me up the most was I ALWAYS blogged first thing in the morning. That is when I always browsed all the blogs I loved too.  I would get the kids up and get us all breakfast and then we would sit on the couch together for an hour or so watching cartoons while I had my lap top on my lap either writing a blog, or browsing other blogs.  Now we have to get ready for school as soon as I get him up and so there goes my blogging and browsing time.  My sons school starts so late and it kinda kills the morning.  I haven't also started something new I am really excited about.  No it is not ANOTHER crafty project!  I think I am busy enough between the sewing, crafting and crocheting for now.  I have started exercising a couple of times a week with some ladies from church.  My body hurts so bad this week but I don't even care because it would be so wonderful to be in shape again.

So for now, the blogs will continue to be a "whenever I can manage to sit down and write one"  thing.  Some weeks will be better then others but for now it will have to do.

What has everyone else been working on lately?  Anything for Easter?

Buttercup Bag

I haven't made the buttercup bag in a while.  I decided about a year ago to actually buy the pattern with the license to sell it, then never made it.  Sometimes I do silly things like that.  I have had "plans" but just never did it.  SO, a friend had a birthday and I thought I'd better make her something.  I decided to do a purse for her and so I busted out with the enlarged version of the buttercup bag.  I found this cute fabric at walmart and I think it turned out really cute.

I didn't want the inside to be JUST black so I put a strip of the polka dot fabric just at the top of the pocket.  I love how the inside turned out.

I like the light blue flower too.  It gave just the right tough to finish it off.   I hope you like it Kerry!

Cupcake Hat

So who here follows the blog U-create?  I'm sure a lot of you do.  It's such a great blog.  I found a tutorial for a cupcake crochet hat on there and decided to make it for a friends baby shower.  I didn't realize that it was going to be a little challenging for me!  He had some stitches I had never done before but once I looked them up on youtube, I was good to go.  Here is how it came out

See that bottom part right there?  That is the part that had me looking up stuff to see how to do it.  I had never done the back stitches before.  It was very easy, you just have to pay very close attention to what you are doing or I guarantee you will mess up!   So who else wants to make one?  It was really quick just so everyone knows so give it a try.  Here is the link HERE  Also I have a bunch of other cute crochet projects pinned on my "crochet" pinboard if you want to take a look HERE   I am SLOWLY trying to do as many of them as I can.  :)  What have y'all been working on lately?  I have many more projects that I FINALLY got pictures loaded for so in the next day or two I will try and post some more. Happy Saturday everyone!!!

About Time

Well, now that it is almost March, why not finally post pictures of my sons Valentine's me made for his kindergarten class this year.

Seriously, what is my problem lately?

Here you go

Mustaches and lips!  They were fun to make and not TOO much work.

Mustaches for the boys  and Lips for the girls.

And here is my handsome dude writing in his teachers card.

I realized AFTER he put down his first hand that we faced his hands the wrong way.  DOH!  Oh well, I think it is still cute.

So Happy LATE Valentine's day!  I hope everyone here had a great day.  Did anyone else make Valentine's for their kids class?

What I Always Wanted!

We went to Costco last night and had dinner with some friends.  While we were there we noticed the obscene amount of guys leaving with flowers for their wives/girlfriend/significant others.  My husband and I have an understanding that he is NOT allowed to buy me flowers on Valentines day.  I told him that is anything, he should wait until the next day when they go on sale for 50% off.  I wonder how many times he has done that and the people he was buying them from were thinking what a horrible guy he was for "forgetting" to get me some on the right day!  haha

While we were at Costco I had to laugh because while going through the meat I saw this

REALLY?  Who thought that a woman would see this and say to herself, "OOOOOH I bet my husband would LOVE a heart shaped steak!"  haha  And if a man was ACTUALLY cooking this for his wife for dinner I highly doubt most would think cooking them a heart shaped cow was romantic.  Maybe if she REALLY loved steak.  I think more so the fact that they were getting dinner cooked for them would be more then enough but whatever.  I just thought it was hilarious.  I had to share.

My son and I made Valentines for his class.  I'll share later.  We are about to leave to take him to school. HAPPY VALENTINES DAY everyone!

Here is what I got from my hubby

In my opinion, this beats flowers ANY day!

Chicken

We eat a LOT of chicken.  My poor husband.  He loves beef.  He would eat it all the time but me...not os much.  He has got to me like steak and we cook that a couple of times a month.  I don't really like hamburgers that much.  I like them at places like McDonald's and In-N-Out because they are super thin.  If somewhere has a fat patty,  I can't handle it.  I also like Taco Bell's "beef" which is ironic because a couple of months ago there was a lot of talk about Taco Bell and how it's beef is actually so little beef, that people were getting mad that they were calling it beef.  Um, gross.  But at the same time explains so much why I can actually eat there's.

Any ways.  We get tired of cooking chicken in the same ways over and over again.  We found a recipe that we tried and it was really good so I thought I'd share it with you.

You get some chicken breast.  Either you can get thin sliced OR you can take whatever chicken breast you have and pound them thin.  Then you put a piece of cheese in the center.  The recipe said to use Kraft singles which I liked but my husband didn't.  The second time we made it we used sliced provolone which was good too.  So use whatever cheese you think sounds good!  You then roll the chicken up around the cheese ( which is why you want the chicken to be thin ) and then you wrap a piece of bacon around the entire thing and close it with a tooth pick.  The missionaries from our church were coming over for dinner when we tried this and we told them we were experimenting on them, which I am sure they LOVE to hear.  haha   Then we told them what it was and the one missionary said you can't go wrong if you wrap something in bacon!

Next you take these bad boys and either throw them on a grill, skillet or frying pan.  We just fried them on the frying pan.  Do each side for a couple of minutes.  I kept flipping them every 5 minutes or so.  Having a lid on helps.  When the chicken are starting to look cooked, you take some Balsamic Vinaigrette dressing and dump it all over the chicken.

MMMMMMMM  I'm telling you this meal was pretty tasty.  Cooking chicken always makes me nervous so we used the thermometer and made sure it was at least 160 degrees before eating.  One thing I learned from Doctor Oz ( who knows Dr. Oz and LOVES him!? )  If you freeze your chicken it kills 99% of bacteria so I ALWAYS freeze my chicken just in case.

So just remember, wrap thin chicken around a piece of cheese, then wrap with a piece of bacon and fry.  Dump some dressing on at the end and eat!  The dressing really soaks into the chicken and makes it super yummy and moist.  My only complaint is that the bacon doesn't crisp up and cook very well. The second time we made this I cooked the bacon in the oven for about 10 minutes before wrapping and it helped a little but it still didn't cook as well as I would have liked.  My husband liked it just fine so it's just a matter of preference.

And one more thing!  VERY important!!!  The recipe reminds you to take out the toothpicks before serving.  haha  Thank you recipe for making sure I don't eat a tooth pick!  Now go make this and enjoy.

Coconut Oil Remix

So almost a year ago I started my coconut oil kick!  I LOVE THIS STUFF!  Just now while browsing pinterest I found a blog post that list 160 uses for coconut oil.  Seriously guys.  READ THIS ARTICLE!  It talks about using it as a nipple cream, lubricant, and face moisturizer to helping cancer, sunburns and toenail fungus.  This stuff ROCKS!  It's magical and we should ALL be using it!  Take a look HERE

Air Freshener

So we all know the baking soda deodorizes right?  Well, while at a friends house once I noticed she had a mason jar with baking soda in it with holes poked in the shape of a heart on the top.  Hmmmmmm.  I wondered what it was but never asked.  then I started noticing them on pinterest.  I finally decided to try it. So here is what you do.

Take a mason jar.

Add baking soda.

Add essential oil.  I used cinnamon but you could use anything.

I added a LOT!  Like 15 drops or so.

Put the lid on.  Take a hammer and a nail and poke holes in it.  You can make a shape or just poke away  randomly.  I copied my friend and did a heart.  In case you are wondering, I am talking about you Amanda!  haha

Then I placed it in my kids bathroom.

IT.  WORKS. GREAT!

Every time I go into their bathroom,  I just shake the jar around a bit and the whole bathroom smells of cinnamon.  AWESOME.

Cheap, easy and no chemicals.  That's my kind of fresh air.

Try it....you'll love it.

Crochet CRAZY!

Why do I feel the need to be obsessed with things as I am learning them?  My newest since November has been crocheting and I am telling you I have gone crochet CRAZY!  But I LOVE it and I am loving all of the things I have been making.  My daughter turns 3 on Sunday and so Friday we are having a princess party.  I was going to crochet princess crowns for her friends but I think I have run out of time to do that.  HOwever, I got hers done today and put little pearls in it and it turned out SO cute!  I love it.

She would NOT model it for me ( she is s stinker like that some times ) so I promise it looks much cuter on.  I have also been doing a lot of hats.  I am LOVING the hats!  Check out these ones I just crocheted this weekend and put in my etsy shop.

Okay so this first one I actually made for ME but it was too small for my huge head.  Just barely too.  If my hair was long I could get away with it but it's short and looked funny.

This next one is so cute!  It is a new born one and is so tiny.  I love the HUGE bow on it and I am loving the grey and yellow together.

And lastly a toddle size hat.  I love the yellow and white together.  This hat was pretty easy to make so I think I will be making more in different colors for my shop.  I might try and make one of these ones for me.

So please tell me I am not the only one who becomes obsessed with things when you first start learning them?  Pretty please.....