A Day of Hearts

On Valentine's Day this year I had fun creating heart-shaped things during our normal daily living.  Some snapshots:

What says love to a guy more than heart-shaped bacon?

My little display of everything pink and Valentine's Day related that I could find:

The water bottle wasn't meant to be a part of the display

Some sugar cookies-something I've been craving, so I had fun making them and indulged in a few- I could feel the difference in my energy level and mood, though :(

I tried to recreate this beautiful and healthy Greek yogurt-dipped strawberries from Pinterest:

 This is how they REALLY  turned out- kind of hideous!  The yogurt wouldn't stick to the strawberries at all.

Plus, they were rock hard and impossible to eat.  I plan to attempt consumption again after some thaw time.
But, they were redeemed because I used Greek Coconut yogurt, yum!

I hope you had a great Valentine's Day!
~Sally

Valentine's Day Crayon Hearts

I found inspiration for these on Pinterest (as usual) and started collecting old broken crayons destined for the garbage.

The Pinterest post I copied

I was about to give up the idea because I didn't want to spend money and time to hunt down silicone heart molds, but then I stumbled across some heart ice cube trays in the Target dollar spot (I think they were $2.50).  Then it was ON!

I love a bargain.  I am my mother's daughter in a lot of ways (but she is the bargain QUEEN).

So, since these cheap molds were not silicone as far as I could tell, I wasn't sure about their heat limits.  I cut the crayons in much smaller pieces and used my toaster oven around 150-200 degrees and it worked just fine.

If I did this again though, I would fill the cups even more.  The crayons are pretty thin and won't last too long.  At least they're cute!

Christmas Storage Organizing Tips

Over the past 10 years of having our own home and yearly decorations, I wanted to share a couple of tips I have discovered to keep things neater for next year.

1. Label bins so you know what is in there
This is the first year I'm labeling the bins, even though I've wanted to for awhile now.  Every year we bring bins and boxes up from the basement without knowing what is where, and we have a whole room taken up with bins while we find everything we need to put the tree up.  It's generally well-organized, but not knowing where the stockings are exactly means more time and digging around.  So this year, I finally just wrote on a piece of paper with a Sharpie and taped it onto the box with packing tape.
If I had more time on my hands, I would try and make it prettier like she does here, but who cares, it's done and labeled and will be under our stairs for 11.8 months of the year, right?

Christmas Cookies 2011

Every year for the past few years I've enjoyed baking different kinds of cookies to give to family and some friends.  I am scaling it back a little, only giving to out-of-town family and bringing them to Christmas gatherings.  I said this year that I would simplify Christmas, including the cookies.  You know what that plan ended up producing?   Seven different kinds of cookies.  This was supposed to be a scale-down year but I found myself making a batch every day or two starting Dec. 1st, and storing them in the freezer.  So now I have seven different kinds of cookie to bring with us tomorrow.  Oh, whoops, that doesn't even include the 3-minute fudge I made to satiate my mint chocolate craving this week and the Flourless Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip bars I just had to try (they contain garbanzo beans, butternut squash and my kids loved them!).
Here are how some of my recipes turned out:

Christmas Decor around my house

Would you like a Christmas tour?  It might even be better to take online rather than in person because you won't be tripping over stuff.

Sometime this past year (or maybe last year?  It all blurs), I took the big doors off of our main upper kitchen cabinets to create open shelving.  A few months after that I put the damask black-and-white wallpaper up in the back, which I love.  And I love that I can change out some of the items to decorate for the season.

Our everyday dishes are on the right, and more decorative stuff is on the left, which are the harder-to-reach shelves. 

The basket on the bottom left is full of kids' bowls, which they can reach from a chair on the other side of the counter.

Christmas Tree Over the Years

Christmas is just a week away and I thought I'd do a week of Christmas posts.

Today's is all about our Christmas tree and it's "evolution" over the years.  It's honestly not that much different from year to year until this year, where we can see a marked difference in ornament placement!

 This was Christmas 2006- our tree had few ornaments toward the bottom with a 1-year old in the house.

Outdoor Winter Containers

A few weeks ago I saw a demonstration at MOPs on how to create winter containers with the planter pots you have outside from summer. They are supposed to last all winter long and add some beauty to the bare winter landscape. The other ladies in my group agreed that they were cool, but none of us really expected to do these on our own. This is where I got the idea that it was a really good excuse for a party! These would cost between $50 and $130 ready-made at the nursery I shopped at, so for around $20 a pop by doing it together and buying supplies in bulk, it was great! We even made a few as gifts. I invited the other ladies to my garage for an evening of creating. I picked up supplies at local nursery and craft stores (one of us called around first to find the best prices on greens). I picked up the greens (spruce tops, evergreen and other green accents) which ended up costing us about $15 per pot since we bought in bulk. The guests brought any extras they would like to make their pot prettier (ribbon, metal plaques, wooden reindeer, and lighted branches). I also picked up some additional colorful and sparkly things like plastic berries, curly twigs and fake glittery branches to dress up the pots. Fake glitter snowflake ornaments were also a popular addition.

Here is how we set it up:

Christmas Wreaths

I have been on a wreath kick the last couple of years.   When our front door isn't decorated, the house looks naked to me!  It started with buying wreaths.  I bought one or two.  They are SO expensive!!  So then I decided to make one, but the ready-made supplies for that weren't much cheaper.  The first one I made was just a plain evergreen wreath that I stuck store-bought pinecones-and-berries-on-sticks into.  Later, I made another one for indoors that I added lights to.  They are nice, but nothing spectacular.
Last year I made this one with the TONS of pinecones my kids had gathered from outside.