Please Leave Us a Message...

Tomorrow is February and that's one of my most favorite months!

It may or may not have something to do with a birthday, but throw in Valentine's Day and there's nothing but LOVE.

And once you become a parent, Valentine's Day seems to be focused on your kids. And that's what we're beginning today.

We're making a message center:


A few weeks ago, I ordered these mailboxes from Oriental Trading for *cough, cough* $3.99 a piece. I justified the price with the idea that we will re use these each year. On Saturday night I was racing against the girl locking the doors of Target to get to their pharmacy department. As I was hurrying across the store (because I got locked out of the green doors but slipped through the blue doors) I walked by the dollar section. And what did I see...these exact mailboxes for $1 a piece. So if you like, hurry to your nearest Target!

Last night, we pulled out some stickers and got to work decorating our own mailboxes.



And then I took my napkin/utensil holder and turned it into our card/pen holder. 3x5 cards fit perfectly inside the mailboxes.


Now the kids can leave messages for each other. My little 6 year old boy was busy this morning before school writing notes. And he walked in the door after school and went straight to the table. I love it! In fact he even left a message for himself: "Dear Me, I make me laugh. Love, Me" We're not worried about self-confidence over her.



It's my goal to leave a note for everyone each night before I go to bed. I figure surely this won't be too difficult to do until Valentine's Day. We will then collect all their notes, put them in an envelope and into their memory boxes. These notes will be great to look back on someday.

Simple.

Easy.

Memories...Light the Corners of My Mind

It always seems this time of year brings on nostalgia...

A great childhood brings even better memories. And I am thankful to say that my childhood was everything I hope my children will experience!

My dad was often busy between his job and church service. Because of this, he always made sure to build in those bonding moments with the six of us. And they say the kitchen is what brings families together. He always made breakfast for us on Saturday mornings (still does when I go home to visit). We're talking pancakes, waffles, and our personal favorite Norwegian pancakes. One of the other things he would do is make dessert on Sunday evenings. There were always two family favorites: Tapioca pudding and Carmel popcorn.

This New Years Eve was the first time the hubs and I decided to stay home and begin our own family traditions. There were personal pizzas, milkshakes, movies, and a puzzle that we obsessed with for 3 days. Seriously, we just finished it. But one of the things I decided to do with my kids is to make carmel popcorn. And as I poured the carmel over the popcorn, I was taken back to my childhood watching my dad do this same thing. And I remember keeping my eye on the parts that were drowning in carmel in hopes that I could be the lucky recipient.

So I'm sharing the recipe that I take no credit for but simply sharing a tried a true with you.



Ingredients:
Freshly popped popcorn
1 stick of butter
2 cups of brown sugar
1 cup of Karo syrup
1 can of Eagle Brand milk

Pop your popcorn first. My sister swears by her Whirley Pop. "It makes the best popcorn!" That's a direct quote. I used a microwave bowl that I got at Target for popping corn. It did the job.

On a stove top, bring butter, brown sugar and Karo to a boil. Add in the milk. Stir constantly while bringing it back to a boil. Pour over popcorn. Mix it all up.

Enjoy!

You Better Watch Out!

What? Christmas is already over? Cover your ears then because I've got one more Christmas Idea. File this one away or better yet, take advantage of Christmas clearances happening right now!

I found a flaw in buying and wrapping presents early "so you can enjoy Christmas even better."

It leaves you available to browse blogs a few days before Christmas and happen upon an idea that you have to have. And because everything's all ready, you decide you can do it in time for this Christmas.



I came upon this idea at HowDoesShe.com. It's a bag for Santa to put presents in.

There always seems to be a dilemma of whether Santa should wrap his presents or let them sit out. I grew up with Santa having his glory out and ready for us. But as I read this post about Santa bags I decided that it would be a fun surprise to unveil Santa gifts (the ones that fit in there). So I decided to give it a try.

I thought I'd make them pretty much like pillow cases. But I wanted them to be special. So I got material to add each person's initial as well as a sash to tie them all up.

I started with a yard per person for the body of the case and 1/2 yard of coordinating material (all total, I bought 6 yards of the Christmas material and 2 yards of the coordinating material). How cute is my Christmas material? It's cookies with a bite taken out of them. Perfect for Santa!

I cut the main material into a yard each. I cut the red fabric into 6 inch strips (I cut it down the length of the two yards to make it long enough to tie a pretty bow).



I angled the sides of the sash. I cut different angles on either end.



I ironed the ends in to create finished edge. I then ironed the entire sash in half lengthwise (right sides together). I sewed the entire length of the sash (leaving the ends open). I then turned the sash right side out. After ironing it. I closed off the ends by sewing on the outside so you can see the stitching.



I then put the initial on the main body. I did this before sewing the case together. I found a font that I liked on word and enlarged it to the size I wanted. I then followed my WonderUnder instructions to put it on. I placed it about 1/3 from the bottom, centered on one side (the case was folded in half when I ironed it on). I then did a top stitch around the letter.



I then sewed the body together. Place right sides together and sew down the side and then bottom.

We placed these next to our stockings before going to bed on Christmas Eve and Santa placed them in front of the tree.



If you want something like this too, Christmas fabric is on clearance. OR, you can find an already made Christmas pillowcase on clearance and just make a sash. These turned out so great and I'm excited to make this a new family tradition.

Some gift ideas, Christmas Card Display & a Yummy Treat

The count-down to Christmas is so exciting. Christmas cards - check, gingerbread houses - check, rearranging the ornaments on the tree after the kids go to bed - check, Christmas shopping - check...oh wait, what about those neighborhood and office gifts. Yikes!

There are so many people and we budgets are tight this year. Even baking and making treats are pretty expensive activities. So I'm going to share some quick and inexpensive Holiday gifts I've done accompanied by a suggestion of copy for the gift tag. Scroll down and you can see my new way of displaying our Christmas cards and don't forget to get all the way down for a fabulous yummy treat my friend gave me the recipe for after I pretty much inhaled her dessert.

1. Hand soap. One year I made foaming handsoap which is so easy. You buy a foaming pump dispenser from here or someplace like that supply store. You buy a scented soap base and fill the dispenser about 1/3 of the way and then fill the rest with water.  I don't have a picture...although I think one of my co-workers still has it on her desk from last year, but you get the idea. Or you can just buy a soap from the dollar store and attach this to it :

‘Tis the season for family and friends,

And your to-do list that never ends.

‘Tis the season of kisses and hugs,

And those viruses, bacteria and bugs.

So as you spread goodwill toward man(s)

Don’t forget to wash your hands!

2.  Door bell or star. These cute antique door bells are on sale at Michael's right now for only $.64. Then you take ribbon you bought at after-Christmas sales from last year and just make a pretty bow.

The Holidays are here - what a celebration,
Except sometimes they're full of stress & frustration.
So here's a little bell (or star) to hang on your door
To remind you again what the 25th is for.
As you open your home and hear this bell (or star) of tin,
Let the real spirit of Christmas come and enter in.

(Just letting some of my friends know that I dibs this this year. Some of you may be getting this.)


3. Home spray infused with essential oils. You can see the tutorial here. I think that was my very first post. I just wrote on the card:
 

Infused with Lavender & Chamomile, this spray helps calm the soul, allowing you to enjoy friends, family and the coming of the New Year.

CHRISTMAS CARD DISPLAY 

We've always just taped our Christmas cards to the wall every year, but then the kids got carried away the tape or the cards wouldn't stay on the wall and then our friends would come over on the day their card fell off the wall...how embarrassing. Anyway, this year we decided to make use of the blinds that always stay closed and some clothes pins.  I found a bag of many snowflakes at Michaels for $2.49 and glued them to the cloths pins I found for $1.49 at Walmart. And then we just clipped the cards to the blinds. It looks really cute.

YUMMY PEPPERMINT PIE (or cake...whatever) 
1/4 cup butter
1 pkg oreos (crushed)
Container of Peppermint Ice Cream
Hot Fudge
Container of Cool Whip
Crushed up peppermint candy
9x13 pan

Crush the oreos and mix with butter and press into pan making an oreo cookie crust. Keep about 4 Tablespoons of crumbs to decorate the top.


Take your softened container of peppermint ice cream and spread over oreo cookie crust and smooth the top.

Drizzle hot fudge all over the peppermint ice cream.


Spread softened cool whip all over the hot fudge and ice cream. Then top with left over oreo cookie crumbs and crushed peppermint. Put in the freezer for a few hours to harden. Serve and then MOVE OUT THE WAY, because people are going to be knockin' you down to have a treat.

I hope your Christmas and Holiday season is filled with joy and love with minimal stress! :)

Sew Much Ado
Someday Crafts 
Blue Cricket Design 
The Trendy Treehouse 
Hope Studios 
Paisley Passion 
Allie Makes

Yam-A-Lam-A-Ding-Dong

This week's post idea has had me in a predicament. I want to share my Sweet Potato Casserole recipe but I didn't want to make it just for the pictures, feed it to my family and then make it two more times on Thanksgiving Day for my in-laws and my side of the family. That's overkill in the yam department!

So I've decided to share it sans pictures. I want you to have it pre-Turkey Day. It's the dish that I'm asked to bring every year for the past eight or so years. It's that good! It's a conglomeration of several recipes that I've tried over time.

Enjoy!!

Sweet Potato Casserole

4 cups cooked sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
(or 2, 29 oz cans drained of syrup)
1 cup white sugar
4 eggs, beaten
3/4 cup butter, melted
1 c evaporated milk
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
2 cups miniature marshmallows
1 cup flaked coconut

Topping:
1 1/2 cup crushed cornflake cereal
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup chopped pecan
3/4 cup butter, melted

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly grease 9/13 casserole dish.
• In a large bowl, using a mixer, mash the sweet potatoes and mix in the sugar, beaten eggs, 3/4 cup melted butter, evaporated milk, nutmeg, cinnamon, marshmallows and coconut. Scoop the mixture into prepared casserole dish.
• Bake 35 minutes or until sweet potatoes are slightly firm (like a cheesecake.)
• In a small bowl, mix all topping ingredients. Spread over top of baked casserole.
• Return casserole to oven and bake additional 10 minutes.

__________________________

Now I know there are a lot of people questioning the addition of coconut. Believe me...it's fine. It adds additional texture and sweetness. A lot of people don't even notice it. But if it totally grosses you out, leave it out. Should be fine. But don't tell anyone you got the recipe from me. I don't want my name attached to a casserole that is "fine." ;-)

Also, because of nut allergies, I usually omit the pecans from the topping. I don't need a bunch of puffy-tongued family members trying to enjoy their turkey! Tastes great with just the cornflakes as well!

And because I can't stand to have such a naked blog post, I borrowed the pic below from Flickr until I can come back and add my own pics.....



Happy Thanksgiving!!

We All Want S'more

(Photo courtesy of Allrecipes)

I was standing in the candy aisle at Target on Friday and overheard a mother and son talking to each other. They were both searching for Reece's Peanut Butter Cups, the mini ones, and couldn't find them.

I love a challenge, especially a challenge involving chocolate. So without them knowing, I joined in their game. They had found the dark chocolate peanut butter cups, but that wasn't what they wanted. They had found the white chocolate peanut butter cups...who knew? They were convinced the originals were not on the shelf. That's when I had to jump in. I had found the prize. I was more than happy to point it out.

The mom then let me know that they were making S'mores using the peanut butter cups in place of a square of Hershey's chocolate. That got me. I'm still dying to try it. With traveling home from vacation this weekend I have yet to find myself a flame.

You're thinking about the concoction too now, aren't you. The traditional taste of graham crackers, marshmallows with chocolate and then a surprise.

And then I start thinking about other foods that might become married to the s'more family too. How about Rollos? Slices of banana or strawberries with your chocolate? S'mores using E.L. Fudge cookies?

And watch as my list grows. I'm throwing out a whole bunch of ideas to go along with the fabulous traditional summer treat. Click on the Idea and see if it interests you:

Chocolate Carmel S'mores on the Grill

S'mores Cupcakes

S'mores Bars

Dutch Oven S'mores

Indoor S'mores

Frozen S'mores

If you want to really spice up your s'mores and outdo the neighborhood, watch this:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Let me know if you try any out and if it had you asking for s'more!

Summer Recipe Swap

One of the things I love most about summertime is Grilling for dinner.

There are endless summer recipes that I love to mix and match throughout the Summer.

And when Summer rolls around, there is one thing I always crave that reminds me of home. My mom's potato salad. I'm telling you, it's the best you'll ever taste! Today, while staying with my parents on vacation, my mom has given me permission to pass along the secret to her sauce. Forgive me for only one picture (I mentioned I'm on vacation right?) and last week while dishing up left-overs, I quickly snapped a picture to go with this recipe swap.

CoCo's Potato Salad:

5 lbs of Red Potatoes

6 hard boiled eggs, diced

1 large red onion, chopped/diced

4-6 dill pickles, sliced/diced

olives, sliced (optional)

* We like to leave the potato skin on the potatoes. If you choose to do this, cook your potatoes until tender in salted water. Cut into bite size pieces after the potatoes are cooled.

For the sauce:

1 16 oz jar of miracle whip or mayo (whatever you prefer)

3 Tbsp of French's mustard

1 envelope of dry Italian Seasoning (0.7 oz)

salt and pepper to taste

For presentation purposes (usually not done if we are anxious to dive in for just our family), you can slice eggs on top and sprinkle with paprika.

So anyone want to share their favorite summertime recipes? Let's swap! Leave your recipe in our comment section. We'd love to give it a try!

Thank you Mom (Grandma CoCo) ! She's my biggest fan! I love you!

How to Make a Coin Money Lei

Graduation time is upon us and Mother's Day, too, so for the next couple of weeks, my posts will be centered on those two themes. Today, I'm going to show you how to make a money lei for your graduates. Now if you don't know what a lei is, it's necklace wreath traditionally made of flowers worn by Hawaiians (and pretty much anyone else) on all special occasions. Have you ever seen a Polynesian graduate? They are the ones with all the flower leis on and you can barely see their faces.

I love flower leis. I love the smell. To me they are quintessential Hawaii. (Unlike pineapple on Pizza...I mean really. I don't know many Hawaiians who actually eat "Hawaiian" Pizza. It's disgusting. And Hawaiian pizza has Canadian Bacon on it? Really...canadian? And that's definitely not bacon...You can click here to see my rant on mixing sweet and salty foods.)

Anyway, my cousin is graduating this week, so instead of just handing him a check and some card that I'm 99.9% sure he's just going to toss, I decided to make a money lei, like this....

Do you see all those coins? I chose this style because this was my favorite kind of money leis to receive when I graduated. It could be because the money was so hard to get out so that it hung in my room and was seriously my emergency money. Or it could be because I had an endless supply of quarters to do my laundry. But it was probably because it looked cool AND had money.

So here's what you will need.

For this lei I used $20 in quarters $10 in dollar coins and $45 in $5 bills. You can make yours as long or as short as you'd like and use nickels and dimes and little kids like pennies.

Coins

Cellophane

Ribbons

Scissors or rolling cutter

Mat (optional and helpful)

You also may need a heavy can of food or something else will weigh the lei down.

Start by cutting 5in x 5in squares. The rolling cutter was so much easier than scissors.

I needed 90 squares.

Then, cut 2 - 2.5 yard strips of ribbon

Tie the ends of the two ribbons together.

Use the can to weigh down the ribbon.

Place the coin in the square and twist a little.  

Then tie the wrapped coin to the ribbon.

Here's where a little video would be more helpful. Click here to see my short video of how to tie this. It's not a fun video...I don't even speak...all you hear is crinkling, but at least you can see that it's really easy.

When you are done, knot the end and tie the ends together.

Then, create a bow out of ribbon and tie it all together.

Now, you can leave it that way or add paper money for texture. This is also the easier way to give more money without the lei going all the way to the ground.

Fold up the paper money.

And then find the middle and tie a ribon.

 Then fan out half of it and tape it to keep it in place.

Then tie these little fans evenly throughout the lei. Tie them in between the coins.

And there you have it. You can make your money lei with any colored cellophane, add more curly ribbon, etc. It took me about a half an hour to tie the whole lei. Believe it or not, folding the money took a longer time. Next time I'm just going to use 20's. If you'd like, maybe I'll post how to make candy and toy lei's (great for party favors). [The post for the candy and toy lei's are here.]

I promise you'll love the Hawaiian tradition of wearing/giving leis. Remember, you always give the person a kiss (on the cheek is fine) when you put a lei around their neck. Although, I don't suggest doing that if you are handing them out as party favors for your child's birthday! Awwwwkward.
ALOHA!!

Click here to see the tutorial on how to make candy/toy leis.
Click here to see the tutorial on how to make a SUPER EASY satin ribbon lei.

NOTE: If you are interested in making all different types of leis, make sure to "Follow" our blog or "Like" us on Facebook because I will be blogging on all types of leis. Or send me an email about other types of leis and I'll post it on the blog.

Making It Personal

I still imagine myself as one of those young married youthful woman and am occasionally shocked when I see that reflection in the mirror that shouts I am not. This is why it is hard for me to believe that my oldest baby is coming of age...baptism age. She will soon be the ripe old age of understanding the difference between right and wrong - what we call the age of accountability.

(My sweet MayMay)

This event gets my No-Guilt-Wanted-Mommy-Wheels spinning! This is a moment when traditions will be started and continued for each of my four children. And I'm going to try my darndest to not have my oldest child say at my youngest child's baptism, "But you didn't do that for me." I know it will come...I'm trying to avoid it. So I've spent the last few months in my Type A mind thinking of what I want to become the family traditions that we will continue with each of the children on their baptism day.

Today, I will share one. This is where we get personal...

We believe in baptism by immersion. This means that my little girl will get wet. What better way to wrap her up after this moment than with a white towel that has her name on it. It's personal. Something that she can use again (or save in her memory box) and reflect on the decision she made that day.

Now, I love my catalogues. I will often skim through them looking and dreaming. I've always been a fan of the personalized towels at Pottery Barn Kids. But let's be honest...that will cost you close to $30 for one towel.

So here's my secret. This towel was bought at Target. Their towels range from $4 to $11. I then took it to my local embroidery shop and had her name added. You'd be surprised if you did a Google search for embroidery and your local city how many people can do this. Plus, there's always those shops in the middle of the mall. If you live by me, give me a call and I'll tell you who I let handle this for me.

We have also started doing this as a gift for our cousins. This one was recently sent to my nephew in Utah who was baptized this weekend.

This could also be an every day idea for your kids. There are many beach towels on sale this time of year. I always love to get my kids a new towel for the summer. It would be fun to add their name to that towel.