Smores' Treats

I LOVE smores!!! My favorite way to make them is with the fudge striped cookies and a fire roasted marshmallow. A while back I kept seeing recipes for smores cookies and thought "I've got to make those!" But I never did.
Well, I recently bought several boxes of Golden Grahams cereal because between the sale price and my coupons they were 75 cents a box. This morning after popping a handful of cereal in my mouth, I realized how easy it would be to make some Smores Treat bars.
We have tried the pre-made Golden Graham cereal bars before, but they were pretty gross. My kids wouldn't even eat them!
But I figured a marshmallow base and bits of chocolate would by yummy!
And it really was! Okay, so after some thought I realized this was probably not a new concept (turns out there are several recipes out there for this kind of thing.) But if your tired of the same old rice crispy squares, try substituting Golden Grahams and tossing in small chunks of chocolate bar (wait until marshmallow goo has cooled a few minutes so the chocolate doesn't melt.)
My kids still weren't too hip on this treat...not quite sure why...so I guess I'll have to take them to a neighbor so I don't eat them all!!!
Real Mom's Dinner: 5 Buck Pizza...It's Friday and my DH is going to be gone to a business dinner. Ugh!

Kitchen Table Redo

I have wanted to paint my kitchen table for over a year now! It was a beautiful natural wood color that matched the cabinets in our first home beautifully. And now our cabinets in this home are much darker. (And I knew my DH would FLIP if I tried to paint the cabinets...he he he.) The table was bought new, but in the last 8 years, it has taken a beating...marker stains, fork stabs, etc. I knew a new dining table was out of the question right now. So I started making plans to paint.

Before:But I thought I would wait until it warmed up and then I got pregnant and then my DH wouldn't let me paint anymore...at least in large amounts that was noticeable.

So in preparation for Miss Sunny's Baby Blessing I decided I was going to do it...no matter what!

Over several weeks in the cold, cold January in the cold, cold garage, I slowly painted my chairs...one at a time. First, I did a light sanding (I didn't spend too much time on this part.) Then I primed it with a gray spray paint. Then I spray painted it black.
Fortunately, the picture doesn't show my many mistakes. I ran into a little trouble when deciding what to use as a top coat. I tried a couple of different things on a couple different chairs, so in person they look a little different. I really don't like the triple coat clear top spray paint. I may go back some day and fix it, but my dear twins are destroying the chairs faster than I can fix them, so I don't know if it's worth it.

I did the same process on the bottom half and under the table. It isn't perfect looking under there, but I figured no one over the age of 6 is going to be underneath there inspecting my work.

Then I sanded the heck out of the top using a heavy grit, a medium grit, then a fine grit. After a good cleaning I stained it using a stain with a polyurethane (Minwax Polyshades Pecan Gloss) already mixed in. I ended up doing three coats to darken it until I decided I was finally okay with the color.
My final product and I LOVE it!!! I am soooo happy with how it turned out!!! And I've learned a lot about painting and staining. I'm so glad I pushed myself to do this! It has made my kitchen feel a lot more "put together." At least to me...and that is what matters, isn't it?!

I'm linking to Domestically Speaking's Power of Paint Party

St. Patti's Day

We made a leprechaun trap.

The leprechaun took the coins, but left some Twix candy bars in the trap.

The leprechaun also turned our eggs green.
*Mental note: kids will not eat green scrambled eggs.

Little Miss was disappointed the leprechaun didn't turn our milk green like last year,
so I let her put in a few drops of food coloring.

We colored shamrocks and rainbows.

We had green grapes, honeydew, and green Pasta-Roni.
*Mental Note: kids struggle eating food that is green...
unless she drops the food coloring in herself.

We made chocolate cupcakes with green frosting.
And I thought a hidden rolo inside would be fun...and yummy.
*Mental note: when hiding chocolate inside cupcakes don't push it down to the bottom...it sticks to the liner.

We all wore green...except for dad. But he handled his pinching well.

Little Miss apparently had a blast at school with leprechauns, rainbows, lime sherbet floats, etc.

And we called Grandpa to sing him happy birthday.

That sums up our fun St. Patti's day!

Real's Mom's Dinner: Hot dogs with white cheddar and shells Pasta-Roni (dyed green) and green beans.

I'm Back!

Okay, so I've taken a much needed break from this little hobby of mine. Not that I've taken a break from crafting, just blogging. I had a darling baby girl in December and life's been pretty crazy since!

My last couple posts were about a my December Daily Album. Well, I'm happy to report I did do it. I mostly finished it. Although it wasn't quite as complete as I wanted it to be. It started out really cutesy. Then the middle of the month is pretty bare.

The end just has a few notes thrown on the pages.That crazy project is done. Will I do it again? I don't know. I'll decide next November.
Maybe I'll do a Summer Fun Album.

So I have lots of ideas for this blog. I might be changing things up. But I definitely will be posting a little more regularly now.

Real Mom's dinner: Last night we got together with some friends. We had some seasoned chicken. mashed potatoes, homemade mac n' cheese, and strawberry shortcake. mmm....

My Daily December Album

First of all, my goal for this project was to not spend any money. Although I like my homemade album, next year I will probably go out and spend a few bucks on an actual album of some sort depending on how this year goes.

(For a more detailed description of project and samples go here.)

My favorite part of my homemade album is that I reused cereal boxes. It makes me feel a little green. :)

My least favorite part of my homemade album was the time it took. Yes, it did take a little time. But hey, it was free!

So my original idea was to have a 6x6 album so I only had to use 1/4 of a piece of paper. But then I thought and realized that however I bound the album would take up a little room. So I made the pages 6x7.

I used a sturdy cardboard box to make a cover...had to actually measure!

Then I used cereal boxes (had to raid my recycling bin) to cut the pages. Again, had to measure pretty good.


Then I took 16 sheets of coordinating paper (from one of those big blocks of paper) and cut two 6x7 pieces from each sheet. I then glue sticked them to the cardboard, cut down as needed, and inked the edges. The good thing about the 6x7 is that I have leftover coordinating paper to make backgrounds, pockets, etc.
I covered the cardboard with burlap, using hot glue to stick it on good. Then I cut out circles and used some brown alphas to create the dates.
Some sample pages...Then I embellished the front a little from my Christmas scrapbooking stash. And I'm pretty much done!

Oh wait, the binding. Ha ha.

So my intentions are to drill 2 holes in the edges and just use the loose leaf rings to hold it together. Haven't gotten that far yet.

I do have a stash of "stuff" to use when I'm ready to actually do every day. The original idea was to put your embellishments on each page BEFORE hand to lessen your work during December. But I think that would bug me. I can't just "adapt" my idea to the page format. I think it would less stressful for me! So I'm leaving "as is" until December.

I'm linking up to:
Tatertots and Jello
It's Fun to Craft


REAL MOM'S DINNER: Plan on having beef enchiladas. Not everyone will like those so we'll whip up some cheese quesadillas. :)

December Daily Album

I've mentioned before that my most favorite magazine out there is Scrapbooks, etc. There was an idea in the December issue to make these December Daily Albums. It was truly inspiring for me! Now for most people this would look like a total pain to add one more thing to an already crazy month. And I hope I'm not crazy taking this on myself, but I have reason to my madness.

Before I get too into explaining things, if you want a better idea of what I'm talking about then you need to check out these two blogs because I'm sure they explain it a whole lot better than me!
Ali's December Daily 2010Michelle's December Daily Album
The idea is to create an album to document your daily December life. To simplify things you create the album NOW before you get busy with Christmas. Then each day in December you spend a few minutes documenting that day. You could use pictures, children's quotes, recipes, memories, activities, etc. The idea behind this is that you have a tangible record (journal, if you may) of one of the funnest, craziest months for most of us! I love journals. I love scrapbooks. I LOVE this idea!

One of the reasons of course, I'm so excited about this idea is that we are expecting a new baby in December. Before you think I'm crazy I want you to think...wouldn't it be AWESOME to have a small daily record of the first few weeks of your new baby's life?!

I will show my homemade album here shortly. It's not quite done, but close.

I seriously challenge you to try this! The purpose of this album to JOURNAL, not to drive you crazy! So simplify it as much as you want. It doesn't have to be all cutesy like the ones shown. A simple 8x11 binder with page protectors would work! A 5x7 photo album would work. It would be so cool to have a record to pull out every year to see what kinds of things you did the previous year. Maybe keep a list on one of the days of what Christmas activities you didn't get around to doing that you'd like to do next year. Or keep adding to your holiday recipe collection!

Oh, the memories it could hold! The funny little things your kids say. Some pictures of their school art. The parties, traditions, and food that surround the holidays!

REAL MOM'S DINNER: Planning on having chicken drumsticks with Rice-a-Roni

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!

I really have been alive...and crafting! I just haven't posted in a while. I did manage to create a couple new spooky crafts for Halloween. There were so many inspirational craft blogs I saw for Halloween projects, I wanted to do a lot more than what I did, but I'm happy that at 30 weeks prego I was able to get something done!

My front entrance alcove is now spookily decorated. This was actually a lot of fun to create!

I used a DI flower vase (which went from gray to spray painted black,) a branch (which was also spray painted black) and homemade paper bats to make a Halloween tree.

I used the old mod podge book idea to create a "SPELL BOOK." Just glued purple paper to an old book, rubbed tons of ink on it and added a few embellishments. (The back side of the book isn't even completely covered because I knew it wouldn't show.)

The wordage looks pretty cool, right? Well, I have to say this is my first craft I used my new Cricut on! My awesome hubby found on at his work's clearance sale for $25!

Anyway, the chain is part of a broken necklace that I stuck on and a then there is a random bat sticker. I wanted the book to have a little more height and thought about creating a little box to hold it up higher, but then decided to grab my little jewelry box to see how it would look. Turns out I really like it!

Then I threw up some spider webs and spiders and it looks pretty cool. (My daughter insisted the witch and pumpkin bear sit there. Ha Ha!) Best part...it was all stuff I had on hand and so it was pretty much free!

This next project was another freebie with things I had lying around. I have been seeing these Subway style word boards all over the craft blogs and wanted to try my hand at it. I didn't have a Cricut when I created it, but I what I do have is TONS of alphas! So I dug through my stash and came up with this. I already had the board, you guessed it, from an earlier DI buy, sitting in my "pile" of junk. I think it turned out pretty cool except for one part that I keep looking at and thinking I need to fix. Maybe I'll get around to fixing and maybe I won't. The biggest problem I have with this kind of project is I don't have many spaces to hang things like this from my walls. So it is sitting on a bookshelf right now.
Real Mom's Dinner: Italian Breaded Pork Chops (click here for the recipe)...it was a lot of work and was glad hubby did dishes after because I was feeling the Braxton Hicks come on strong after this meal!