Boyishness and Stylishness

Now, I am a mother of girls, but in hopes of one day having a boy, I am always on the lookout for boy clothes that have a high studly factor... and I found some recently at Bobinette. Not only are these clothes too cool for school, BUT they are totally original!

Its a Bird, Its a Plane, Its a Shirt...

Its a dress!!!


You may have seen these all over the place by now, the dress made from Daddy's old shirt! I thought I would share with you my most recent Recycled Shirt Dress! This one was actually made from one of MY old shirts, not Dad's. I wore it while serving a mission for my church in Cleveland Ohio... So it has a bit of sentimental value. One more reason to love the shirt dress!

Wanna make your own? Its Easy Pea-sy to make! Click HERE or HERE for a little help!

Beautiful Fruit Pizza

CRUST:

-1 yellow cake mix
-1 egg
-1/2 cup melted butter or margarine

Mix cake mix, egg and margarine together and spread
on greased and wax papered large pizza pan.
Bake 15 minutes at 350 degrees. Cool.

TOPPING:

-4 ounces cream cheese, softened
-1 cup confectioner's sugar
-4 ounces Cool Whip topping
-fresh fruit (blueberries, kiwi, strawberries,
peaches, mandarin oranges, bananas, etc.)

NOTES: I have found that this particular crust is a
little crispy the first time you serve this fruit pizza,
but it is nice and soft the next day.

For the Love of an Appliance.

Holy Crow! Did you know you can cook things OTHER than Rice in a Rice cooker? I feel like I have been opened to a whole new world of cooking. As if I wasn't already IN LOVE with my rice cooker. The great part is, the rice cooker NEVER burns your food, which I am usually a pro at doing. Brilliant! Here is a good no rice in the rice cooker recipe that you can try! Yum.

Rice Cooker Mac n' Cheese

2 cups Macaroni
1 cup chicken stock or water
1 cup heavy cream or half and half
1 1/2 cups of your Favorite Shredded Cheese
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 teaspoon garlic salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper and salt

Place pasta, chicken stock, and heavy cream in rice cooker. Press cook! When it goes to 'warm' add the other ingredients and stir. Close lid and keep it turned to 'warm' until you are ready to serve it. The best part... its easy PEA-sy to make!

hippity hoppity

i have been looking for easter baskets for my girls, and was having a hard time finding anything that i liked... then i thought, why don't i make them! duh! and it would be 'cheap cheap' (nice baby chick reference eh?) i finished these two days before Easter, and although they weren't what I had pictured in my head, I LOVE how they turned out. It is always funny how things work out that way!

just so you know, using felt as appliques is SO easy... also wonder under is my new BFF. that stuff is a-ma-za-zing!

click HERE for the free pattern provided by Dabbled

Twilight Tide Pettiskirt GIVEAWAY!!!!

Twilight Tide Pettiskirt GIVEAWAY!!!!

Sweater Vest and Matching Leg Warmers

Ready for a fun project that requires no sewing. My friend Jessica saw this idea on Good Things Utah. Anyway, here's what you do, go through your closet and find an old wool sweater that you don't wear any more...or go to Savers or DI or Good Will and find some wool sweaters. Go home and wash the sweaters in hot water in order to shrink them. Then simply cut off the sleeves. The sweater becomes a sweater vest and the sleeves become the leg warmers or leggings. So, here are the steps:

Step 1: Get a wool sweater.

100% wool is probably the best, but as you can see mine is 98% lambswool, 1% nylon, and 1% lycra spandex.


As you can see, the washing instructions clearly show that you should not wash a wool sweater in hot water. However, since we want it to shrink, go ahead and ignore that. Also, I threw mine in the dryer for a bit after I washed it and that seemed to be fine.


Step 2: Wash your wool sweater in hot water to shrink it and then allow it to dry.



Step 3: Cut off the sleeves at the seams


Step 4: Find a cute little girl to wear it like my neighbor Chadley.


She is about 4 1/2 years old and was the perfect size for my new sweater vest and leg warmers.


So this sweater went from a GAP woman's size S to 4T-5T...pretty awesome huh?

After cutting off the sleeves at the seam you will need to even them up so that they have a straight top. Also, according to Chadley, the wool leg warmers were a little itchy for her so I would recommend having your child wear tights or something like that under the leg warmers.

What's For Dinner? - The Dinner Menu Solution

So, although I love to cook, I found myself only making real organized meals for dinner like once or twice a week. This bothered me so I sat down and tried to figure out the underlying reason why that was happening.

The first thing I realized is that there are just going to be phases in life when real dinners don't happen very often. Some of these times may be when you have a new baby, when people in your family are sick, when you are traveling or preparing/recuperating from a trip, or when school or work schedules get in the way...but at the time I was trying to get this figured out none of those things were happening in our family. I knew it had to be something though...

I finally figured it out...the problem was that I didn't have a plan and in my life I need to have a plan. The problem was it would get to like 5 or 5:30 at night before I would start thinking..."ok, what am I going to make for dinner?" Here's the thing though, it's not like I had never seen the idea of making menus and shopping lists and charts and caledars etc. It's just that those ideas just didn't work for me.

Well, I'm proud to say that I have found the method that works great for me and my family and I decided that I ought to share it with you all in case one of you is searching for a way as well.


What we do is we have our dinner tub. I thought about all of the meals the I like to make and I probably thought of about 30 or 40. Then I put them on slips of paper and put all of those slips into the tub. Then, as a part of Family Home Evening, we plan out our week and one of things we plan are our dinners. Jane gets a kick out of this because she gets to help, Brad likes that part too. So Jane and Brad draw out slips of paper and I have the calendar and a pen and I fill them in when we find winners. This way if they pick one we just don't feel like, or maybe one that we don't have all of the ingredients for we can just put it back in the tub. Once we have our four or five dinners picked out for the week (some nights we have dinner plans and we usually don't pick out dinners for Friday and Saturday nights due to date night and other unpredictabilities and we usually eat Sunday dinner at the Ellertson's house) we move on in FHE.

I couldn't believe how much this helped me cook more. It seems simple, but it makes a world of difference. This way if I do need to go grocery shopping I can look at dinners for the week and see what I need to get. Also, in the morning I check the calendar to see what I will be making for dinner that night and I can plan what time I will need to start and if there are any parts of it that will require special preparation. It also has just the right amount of variety and flexibility that it is a realistic method. It has been so awesome and I would recommend anyone finding theirselves in a similar predicament to at least give it a try.

Here are some of our favorite dinners in the tub:

Chicken Croquets
Chicken Parmesan and Angel Hair Pasta
Potato Bar
Chicken Fajitas
Chili with Ground Beef and Corn Bread
Mexican Lasagna
Hawaiian Hay Stacks
Spaghetti with Ground Beef
Taco Salad
Pork Roast
Special Breakfast
Honey Chicken
BLT Sandwiches
Hamburgers
Ham and Potatoes
Chicken Noodle Soup
Chicken Enchilads

This method has also inspired me in other areas of our lives. Meaning I have made more tubs since experiencing the success of the Dinner Tub. I have a tub for choosing hymns for FHE and a tub for Primary songs. A couple of the tubs that I want to make are for helping choose what movie in your collection to watch on movie night and an activities tub if you and your kids are having a hard time deciding what to do or if your kids are bored and they think there is nothing to do. I just think sometimes we end up doing the same things over and over because it's hard to think of and then decide on other things. We all need a little inspiration and motivation to try new things and be creative. I think this might be just the thing...