My family keychain

My little family keychain!

The first penny is the year my husband and I met, then the year our first child was born, the year we got married, and the year our last child was born.



Baby feet! Baby feet! Baby feet!

Seriously....who could resist how cute these feet are!?!  Especially when you add the little flower baby booties!!  I whipped these up in about a half hour on a Saturday morning and everyone loved them!  Here is the link that I followed http://icandabble.blogspot.com/2011/08/diy-barefoot-baby-bloom-booties.html. 

AS YOU CAN TELL, DELANEY LIKED THEM TOO!!

Found a new love

I THINK I MAY BE IN LOVE.....and they were soooo easy to use!

End of the school year...

Bode has made it through his first year of school....he tells me almost daily that he is now a first grader!  We put together buckets for his teacher and one for the aid in his classroom.  We made some bookmarks out of paperclips for them.

We also made magnets out of clothes pins.  His teacher's name was Ms. B, that is why half of the items were decorated in bee paper.

We wrapped note pads in the matching card stock, highlighters, pens, and other little useful items for them.  The pic at the very top show the finished buckets.  There was also the small hand sanitizer from Bath & Body Works attached to the handle of each bucket.

I'll love you forever.....

Decided it was time to get that tatto for my children....Bode and I love to read the book I'll Love You Forever....so here it is for Bode and Delaney....as long as i'm living my baby you'll be

Teacher Appreciation Week

I found the base of my idea here http://www.skiptomylou.org/2008/04/22/appreciation-7-days-a-week/, but I decided to change it up a little bit.  I bought treat bags (wanted clear but ended up with green because the clear was all gone).  I also got all of the supplies to go along with it.  Here is my list:

Thumbtacks
Paperclips
Post-it notes
Cans of soda
Mints

I went through and basically picked out five things to pass out, one for each day of the week.  My son and I split everything up and put it in the baggies.  This is what we ended up with!  There is a bag for his teacher and his class's aid for each day of school for the week.  We also made a bag for his gym, art, music, and library teacher (the specials teachers).  For example, Monday is art so the art teacher, his aide, and his teacher all get the same treat bag.  On Wednesday, his aid, teacher, and library teacher get the same bag.  No specials on Tuesday, hope this makes sense!  I typed out my own tags and printed them on cardstock.  I asked my son what were things that he liked about his teacher, the aid, and then each special teacher.  I wrote this on the back of each tag and had him write his name also.  So everyday they get a little gift with something that a student likes about them!

Homemade Laundry Soap

I have been making my own laundry soap for quite some time.  I was at Rural King shopping and found the recipe in the laundry soap aisle with all of the makings.  I decided to give it a try because other people I knew had tried it too.  That recipe called for me to grate the soap and cook it and add all of this water to it.  It worked well, it just took a bit to make it.  Not to mention it made 2 1/2 gallons at a time.  I found a new recipe online and decided to try it since there was no cooking involved.  All you need is: 2 bars of fels naphta soap, 2 cups of borax, and 2 cups of washing soda.  I grated the bars in my food processor then I mixed in all of the soda and borax.  Gave it a good shake to mix it up and I was done!!  I use 2-3 tablespoons per load, just depends on what I'm washing.  What a productive weekend!  Fabric softener made one day and laundry soap the next!

Banana Bread Muffins

2 cups of flour
1 tsp of baking soda
1 tsp of baking powder
1 tsp of salt
2 eggs
1 cup of sugar
3-4 bananas
1/2 cup of vegetable oil
1 tsp of cinnamon
1 tsp of vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Combine flour, soda, powder, and salt.  Cream together eggs and sugar then mix in bananas, vanilla, oil, and cinnamon.  Add flour mix 1/3 at a time until combined.  Pour into greased muffin pan and bake for 18-24 minutes. 

These are fantastic muffins!  Sometimes I will pour part of the mix into a loaf pan and then the rest into muffins.  This recipe will make enough to fill one loaf pan and more.

Friend book

I made this for my BFF. First I made of template of each letter, I lined them up to make sure they stuck out just enough. I glued together two 12x12 sheets of scrapbook paper for each letter and then traced the letter on the paper to cut out. Once they were cut and ready to go, I stacked them together and punched the holes. I bought book rings to hold it all together and notted different colored ribbon on each ring. I then went through and basically scrapbooked each letter. The "F" was the introduction, there is a quote on the front and I wrote her a note on the back. The front of the "R" was a pic of one of our first years of friendship. I tried to date the pics as I went through. The front of the last year, "D", was the most recent pic of us at that time (that's one of the pics I posted). I did not scrapbook the back of the "D". I just stamped my handmade by with my name and the year I made it for her. It was a hit!

T-shirt scarf

I seriously have been crafting stuff most of the day...its a bit out of control today! This was the easiest and quickest thing to do.....step 1 find an old shirt or tank, step 2 cut it in strips, step 3 stretch each strip out ( I made seam covers for my strips because my shirt had a side seam). I cut the tops off the tank top and glued the edges under then wrapped around strips where the seams were. 

MY BFF WEARING THE SCARF AND FELT FLOWER PIN!!!

Felt flower pin

Another fantastic idea from pinterest....here is the link for the instructions I mostly followedDIY Mother's Day Corsage.....I used a hot glue gun instead of the bottled glue (the glue gun and I are great friends!!)  I didn't put a pocket on the back of mine either.

Frozen yogurt drops

Scoop some yogurt in a ziploc bag, snip a small corner off and drop circles of yogurt onto a cookie sheet then freeze! I put them in a baggie once frozen for a quick snack. I am thinking this will be a great thing this summer for my boy when its hot out and he wants to cool down!

OMG!! Apple pie with a twist

I keep seeing this recipe for this banana toffee pie. I decided I was going to try it with apples, since I had some that needed to be used. I bought a graham cracker pie crust, a tub of whipped topping, and a can of sweetened condensed milk. You have to simmer the can, completely submerged in water, for 2 1/2 hours. Make sure you remove the label before boiling. Yes you can really cook the can!! I was kind of freaked out by this, but it works. I let it cool for an hour or so before opening the can. While it was cooling I made my own apple pie filling. Once everything was cool and ready I put the apples in the pie crust then dumped the cooked milk on top. They say it is now toffee, tasted and looked more like caramel to me. At the end you top it all with the whipped topping and refrigerate for about an hour before serving.

low sodium taco seasoning

During both of my pregnancies I had to cut back on my sodium intake.  I found this taco seasoning recipe and loved it!  I was never much for measuring, but I actually did when I put this all together.  I saved it in a ziploc baggie with my spices.

2 tbsp chili powder

2 tbsp flour

2 tsp cumin

2 tsp oregano

1/2 tsp onion powder

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp cayenne

Need a good book now....

Hi, my name is Karrie and I am addicted to pinterest.  I have so many ideas that I don't know what to do with myself.  Paperclip bookmarks....why not!?!  Now I need a good book...

Dr. Seuss Day

Being at home with the baby gives me some extra time on my hands, although I will be heading back to work soon....:(  Anyways, I found this awesome idea on pinterest and decided that Bode and I would make them for his kindergarten class since they were celebrating Dr. Seuss the entire week at school! (sandwich cookies, a pouch of cookie icing, and gummy lifesavers)

Lego City....literally

Bode's 6th birthday.....hard to believe my boy is 6!!!  He is absolutely obsessed with legos and of course had to have a lego party....first the invitations, I used my cricut to cut out all of the circles for the invites and then used pop up dots to attach them to the invite.  I dated all of the invites for 2011...nice job Karrie!!

THE CAKES!!!!  That was a treat to ice....okay I hope you sense the sarcasm there!  My awesome husband ended up stepping in and icing the cakes for me!  ILU ELI!!  I baked them in loaf pans.  The only bad thing about this is that you have to bake them longer to get the middle done and then your edges end up a bit hard.  We used half of a giant campfire marshmallow for each lego dot.  You can see them in the first pic behind my awesome son!!

For snacks, we went with cheese and crackers.  The day before the party I sat down with a tip to the pastry bag and cut circles out of cheese slices of mozzerella and cheddar.  I was going to attach all of the circles to crackers with cream cheese, but when I got done cutting the circles I said forget it! LOL!  The kids, or the adults, didn't care either!  My husband has a bit of drawing ability so I got him to draw lego guy faces on all of the cups.  I went with the basic primary colors for everything (red plates, blue napkins, green tablecloth, yellow cups).  Under the cups you can see sheets of lego dots I printed off in all of the same colors to put on the tables also.

The gift bags for the kids were pretty simple!  I bought pencils, erasers, and crayons at the dollar store.  Bode helped me split everything up into the bags.  The only hard part was the coloring tablets I made for each bag.  I found free lego printable online and printed them off double sided.  I stapled the pages together at the top to a piece of cardboard for the backing.  Bode and I went through and glued a strip of blue cardstock to the tops to look like a tablet.

Snow much fun!!!

Snowman cookies!!!!

Seriously, candy and cookies together!?!  Who doesn't love that????  Sugar cookies, icing, lifesavers, m&m's, twizzlers that you peel apart, and orange slices are all you need!  We made these for the christmas party at preschool a few years back.....lets see what else I can find to post!!!

Monster Truck Madness!!!!

IT'S THE DUKES OF DIRT DERBY....THE SULTANS OF SMASH...CREATORS OF CRASH...$20 A SEAT, BUT YOU ONLY NEED THE EDGE!!!!

The monster truck birthday was AWESOME!!!  The base of the cake is a piece of plywood covered in a plastic racing flag tablecloth that I bought off of ebay with the flag cupcake pics!  For the cake I baked two cakes in a regular rectangle cake pan.  I stacked them on top of each other and went from there.  I tinted white icing green to ice the sides of the cake with.  The edging I did with a baggie by cutting the corner off and piping it on.  I iced the top of the cake with white icing then covered it in graham cracker crumbs to look like the dirt/sand track the trucks drive on.  On the side of the cake, where the blue monster truck is, I cut out a chunk off the top of the cake.  I used the chunk I cut out to make the ramp the dalmatian monster truck is on, jumping over the cars.  The ramp from the board to the cake is a graham cracker covered in icing then the graham cracker crumbs.  I put some icing on the tires of the trucks to help them stay in place.  I used the leftover green icing in the baggie to write Bode's name on the cake board and to put squiggly lines on the cupcakes.  The monster trucks and cars on the cake were purchased brand new as part of Bode's birthday present.  I bought plastic gift bags that had monster trucks on them at the Dollar Tree.  I filled them with tire shaped yo-yo's, car flip discs, candy, and a monster truck sticker that I bought off of ebay.  Each kid got a gift bag and absolutely loved it!!

WHO LIVES IN A PINEAPPLE UNDER THE SEA........

WHO LIVES IN A PINEAPPLE UNDER THE SEA........

Bode asked for a Spongebob birthday for his 5th birthday......and this is what he got!  Spongebob is just a cake baked in a regular cake pan.  I simply tinted white icing for the yellow (for the sponge), green (for the swirls), and blue (for the center of the eyes).  I bought a small tube of black and red icing to use for the mouth, tie, and around the eyes.  Spongebob's pants are iced with chocolate icing and then dashed with the black like stitching at the top (it's hard to see in the picture, sorry!).  The nose......a big marshmallow!  I cut a slice off of the marshmallow and coated it in yellow icing and stuck it on his face!  (I made this cake for a couple of other parties after this one and ended up putting a toothpick in the nose for extra stability in traveling.)  I made cupcakes too because I was not sure the cake was going to be enough.  I used stickers that Bode had in a coloring book to make the cupcake pics.  I just cut out squares of cardstock and put a sticker on it with the toothpicks under the stickers.

My family...

Here we are!!  This is my wonderful family!  I am not sure how we got so lucky to end up with an awesome boy and a fantastic baby girl, but we did.  I thank God every day for what he has given me!  I figured if I am going to start sharing things I have created, either out of my own head or from others, I think you should know a little about me.  I love to try new things and like to consider myself pretty crafty.  I started out doing little things here and there and wished I would have taken pics of some of the things I have done!  I moved onto scrapbooking and cardmaking and now the list goes on and on.  I also have a fantastic BFF that helps out quite a bit!