Teacher Gifts- Hand Sanitizer Valentine-ified

So I've been seeing these everywhere out there in blogville. I just HAD to make some for the teachers at Boy Genius' school. (The daycare teachers will get something different. They cannot have alcohol based cleaners in the classrooms with the little ones.) We found some stickers in the scrapbooking dept and thought they would go great on these green bottles of hand sanitizer!

These are super easy to make and did you know that kids LOVE stickers??? I know, shock! Tie a simple little ribbon on the top and WHAM!, you become the teachers pet. ;)

Here's some of the pictures I used as inspiration and a link to their lil beauties!

The Idea Room

Scene of the Grime

Sugar Bee - Craft Edition

Just a Girl

Little Birdie Secrets

Aren't they all fabulous?!? I told you there are some uber-talented ladies out there and I'm thankful to have found them! They sure are making the teachers like me more. (Wink, wink!)

Before and After: Magnolia Print Frame

This was given to me...FREE!! My family is really good to call me before they throw something out or sell it. I've had no idea what to do on our mantel since we moved in, IN NOVEMBER! It has been a blank canvas SCREAMING for help. The frame seemed the perfect size, just needed a makeover.

My MIL had gifted me a box of old fabrics that were her mother's! I found a nice neutral colored fabric (don't know the name of it, sorry) and buried covered the magnolias. Here's a view of the back...

This is the first time I've made the little rolled fabric flowers. I Hot glues three to the bottom corner and thought I was done. HA! I asked The Hubs what he thought. Okay, so there was the first mistake! He said it looked like an empty frame. So what? Well, it DOES kinda look like an empty frame until you get close. :(

So I went digging around the house to see what I could hang over the top of it. I don't have any wreathes (yet!) but I found our loot from last years beach vacay!

So whatdya think? Wish you could see the fabric a little better. I wish I knew the NAME of said fabric so you could at least imagine how it looked in better light, and taken with a better camera. (Hint, hint if you are reading dear sweet hubby...)



Linking up over at:

Ladybug Diaper Cake Reveal!

Pink and Green Ladybug Diaper Cake

I may burn brownies but diaper cakes are no-bake!




Linking up to:

Diaper Cake Sneak Peek

GIVEAWAY over at Raising Olives!

Raising Olives is giving away TWO copies of Large Family Logistics. Go here to see how you can enter!

Party Favor Inspiration

I'll be hosting my second baby shower in my new home next month and I'm trying to find ideas on something I can make on the cheap as party favors for the guests. I stumbled upon these cuties. Whattaya think?
They are coffee cozies but with the weather being so frigid here in the south I'm thinking more along the lines of hot cocoa cozies! Yeah? I'm thinking I could buy some cute fat quarters at Wally World and I already have TONS of buttons. Wanna learn how to make your own coffee/hot chocolate/to-go cup cozy? Jump over to Sweet Pea and Pumpkins to see the full tutorial!http://sweetpeaandpumkins.blogspot.com/2010/12/teachers-gift-part-2-coffee-cozies.html


Next I came across these key fobs. Just like the coffee cozies, they are all over blogville but this tutorial made them look so easy.

For the tutorial click here or visit CraftSanity.


For my sister's shower I made a fabulous homemade vanilla brown sugar body scrub. Found the recipe over at Under the Table and Dreaming. Let me tell you, this was such a hit! I could always make these again.

Then of course there are edible favors. Check out this amazing (and simple!) recipe for Rock Candy over at Creative Juices for Decor.

Cocoa Krispies (which fit right into my blue and brown colors!!) over at Creative Mommas which looked ah-mazing at the shower she put together!

So there's as few of the ideas I'm toyin' with right now. I'll keep looking around but what do you think? Practical vs Edible???

Snow Day!!

This is what I woke up to yesterday morning! Isn't it beautiful!? And with snow, comes snow days! The schools and daycares were closed so I stayed home with the boys and crafted the morning away.

To start, The Baby and I tried to figure out how to use up some of the frozen blueberries The Hubs' aunt gave us. POPSICLES!! I googled it and found this on at www.blueberrycouncil.com. I'll share the directions with you, too.



Blueberry Fruit Pops


1 can (15 1/4-ounce) fruit in heavy syrup* such as pears, peaches or apricots
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1 cup fresh, frozen or canned drained blueberries

In a blender, puree the canned fruit with all the syrup and lemon juice. Transfer to a large measuring cup or pitcher. Return 1/4 cup of the fruit mixture to the blender; add blueberries; blend until pureed. Holding a 6- or 8-ounce plastic cup at an angle, spoon in a layer of fruit puree then a layer of blueberry puree; repeat to make 4 layers filling the cup about two-thirds. Set cup upright and insert a plastic spoon or wooden ice cream stick in the center. Repeat to use all the pureed fruit and blueberries. Place cups on a baking pan for support and freeze until firm, 4 to 6 hours. To serve, place pops at room temperature for 5 minutes then twist from cups.

YIELD: 8 pops

I didn't have a 15 1/4 oz can of fruit so I used a 11oz can of mandarin oranges in heavy syrup and yielded 4 pops.

I left them in the freezer overnight to they were completely frozen. I took a pic of both the boys eating them but... my laptop crashed yesterday :( and I'm afraid I lost all my pix. Thankfully I had drafted all this yesterday meaning to post it then (before I got busy and forgot. oops) so at least I didn't lose all these! The popsicles were yummy btw. I still have LOTS of blueberries to use up though. :)

Thanks for visiting!

There is a Bug Among Us

So, the stomach virus has been going around everywhere I turn. It hit us a week ago Sunday with The Baby. Then this past Sunday, Boy Genius. Yesterday, me. Ugh. Why does it always strike in the night? And why with such little warning? The iphone should make a virus map app and monitor the spread of the death bug. Can't you see the map now?

It should look just like a weather map with colors and a legend at the bottom so you know how severe it is in your area. Green for diarrhea, yellow for vomitting, red for both. Yuk! But then we could have some warning when the colorful cloud starts rolling into the area! That would save us all a lot of stomach aches, money, clean up heartache. Yeah, we need an app for that. Hey, Apple. Hey, hey Apple. Are ya listening?

Baby Shower Punch

That's what I have it saved under in my recipe book but I've used this punch at housewarming parties, wedding showers and birthday parties... You can make it different colors depending on what your theme/party colors are. I got this from a friend I used to work with. I think she got it from someone at her church.

Basic Recipe:
2 liters of clear lemon-lime soda, I use Sprite or 7-up
Lg Can pineapple juice
1 jar of cherries
1 quart sherbert, slightly thawed

For pink punch: use rasberry sherbert
For green punch: use lime sherbert
Basically, the color of your sherbert determines the color of the punch.

Mix the 4 ingredients together in a large punch bowl. If you are using a small serving bowl, you can mix everything but the sherbert in a pitcher first, then serve half of the sherbert with half of the mixture in your pitcher.

Note: Make sure when adding your cherries you pour the juice in the punch also. The cherries will sink to the bottom so go low with your laddle when serving, that way you get a few in the punch cups. YOU CAN MAKE THIS RECIPE WITHOUT THE CHERRIES. It doesn't add much by way of flavor, it only provides a little snack in your cup when all your punch is gone. ;)

Girl's Pink and Green Baby Shower

I recently hosted a baby shower for my sister. This was her first baby, a little girl. I'll go over a quick run of all the pink and green snacks we had. And then you can look over the pix.
Pink sugar wafer
Strawberry marshmellows
Srawberry milkshake Whoppers
Srawberry cupcakes with cream cheese icing (colored in pink and green, of course)
Pink and green cotton candy (bucket said holiday cotton candy, we found it at WalMart)
Green punch (lime sherbert punch from a friend's recipe)
For party favors, I gathered empty baby food jars, filled them with homemade vanilla brown sugar body scrub, printed some labels onto pink paper using Excel and tied some pretty tulle around the mouth of the jars. Everyone loved using the scrub when they got home!
Now, enjoy some pix...

Figured I'd show you the homemade goodies I made her too. I tried to enlarge this photo a little so you could make everything out. There is a coral colored hooded towel, diapees and wipees, 3 stretchy headbands in pink, black and white and a pink gerber daisy hair clip to attach to them. In the back you can see the jars of body scrub again.

I'll be playing baby shower hostess again next month. My brother and his wife are expecting their first also! :) But this time it's a boy. I'm gathering ideas for homemade baby boy gifts...any ideas?
Are you planning a baby shower in the near future??

Do you really have to ask??

I love them. I crave them constantly. They can be plain, turtle, infused with cream cheese, surrounding an oreo or chocolate chip cookie. There is just something magical about brownies. Magic, because I cannot bake them. Seriously! My husband will be the first to tell on me, that when they come out of the over they are either burnt all the way through or (my most common disfunction) burnt around the sides and raw in the middle. Not sure how I accomplish this task so often, but alas, I do. I still eat them, btw. Oh! I left that off my list didn't I? Plain, turtle, infused......OR BURNT! OR RAW! I still love them. Just as I love my children no matter what mess they get into, I love my brownies no. matter. what.

So there ya have it. That's the story of my blog title, in case you had any doubts. ;)

Anyone else suffer from this mysterious condition??