DIY Skirt Extender

We all have them.  That skirt or dress that isn't too short until we try to cross our legs.  It can be hard to find dresses that are long enough.  I have had a dress sitting in my closet for years that I have wanted to wear that was given to me but it has always been just a little too short for my liking.  (not the dress in the picture though haha)  But this last Mothers Day I wanted to wear something new but I didn't want to go out and buy a new dress.  Because I'm cheap.  So, I had a thought come to my mind.  At Seagull Book and at different boutiques I had seen skirt extenders.  Which as the name suggests, are a skirt that you wear under your skirt or dress to lengthen it.  They are really cute, but it was Saturday night and the nearest place I could get one is an hour and a half away.  So I decided to go the DIY route, and it only cost me $5!

Tea Party Bridal Shower

This last weekend I helped my mom with a bridal shower for a good friend of ours.  She seriously is one of the sweetests girls you could possibly meet and we wanted to do something special for her.  We did a Tea Party theme, because it TOTALLY fits her personality.  And what a tea party it was!  My mom loves to throw parties, which is a trait that was passed on from her mother, which she got from HER mother.  They all have loved dishes, and my mom inherited a lot of beautiful dishes from my grandma.  We don't drink actual tea, so the pretty teacups and saucers that they collected have never really been used but this was a perfect opportunity to break them out and show them off!  Antique hankies, doilies, and tea towels with hand stitched embroidery and tatted lace from my grandma and great-grandma that have been folded neatly in dusty boxes were also brought out and used to decorate.  We polished off some of their old brooches, pins, and pearls to add a little sparkle to the table.

 

Long Time No See!

Wow it has been so long since I last posted.  It's kind of embarrassing that it is now May and to look back and see that the last thing I shared was a HALLOWEEN PARTY!!!  And that there wasn't much before that either.  This last year was kind of a flop on posts, but I had a few reasons.  I am still new to blogging, and am not to the point where I'm months ahead in prepared posts just waiting to be posted.  I am still at the point where if I put something up, it's because the paint is still wet and I literally JUST finished it!  Haha but I hope to get better at that.  

This last year was extremely crazy for my little family.  We temporarily moved out of state for a few months for a summer sales job my husband had, and then we moved back again. So we had two moves last summber/fall, and now we are about to move again!  Also, we had another baby in December!  SURPRISE!  His name is Rockwell Oaks Ritchey, and we are so in love.  

So between moving a few times, a billion doctor visits, a new baby, and an extremely tenacious toddler, I haven't been up to taking the time to document anything I've done.  But I hope to start sharing things again! So stay tuned!

(And I have become increasingly aware that the color in my photos look suuuper off on other computer displays for some reason, so I'm trying to figure that out.  If anyone knows what I'm doing wrong please comment!  Haha thanks!)

Witch Party

I love Halloween!  I think that I get it from my mom because she does too.  I just helped her throw a little party for some family friends, and it turned out so cute!  Basically we had fun decorations, and a ton of yummy food, so what more could you ask for??  So here are some pictures of our Witch Party.  Hopefully you can get some fun ideas for any Halloween parties you may be throwing yourself!

The Living Christ Challenge

I'm back!  I know it's been a long time but I'm finally getting back into the swing of things.  We were in Maryland for a couple months this summer, and then we moved and my husband started a new job when we got back so things have been a little crazy around here.  But now that we are finally settled and not going anywhere I feel like I can get back to sharing some fun things!

So for this first post back from the long absence, I am actually sharing something that I DID NOT MAKE!  No, all credit for this one goes to my amazingly sweet and thoughtful husband!

I love General Conference, and I really enjoyed the Women's Conference this year.  If you didn't get to watch it, Sister Neill F. Marriott gave a wonderful talk titled Sharing Your Light in which she shared a story about attending a girls camp in Alaska where the Young Women all memorized “The Living Christ: The Testimony of the Apostles.”  She then shared:

“I have now begun to learn the words of “The Living Christ” as these sisters did, and because of their influence I am more fully experiencing the sacramental covenant to always remember the Savior as I repeat over and over the Apostles’ testimony of Christ. The sacrament is taking on a deeper meaning for me.

My hope is to offer the Savior a Christmas gift this year of having “The Living Christ” memorized and securely held in my heart by December 25th. I hope I can be an influence for good—as the sisters of Alaska were for me.”

As she said this, I felt like this would be a wonderful goal to challenge myself to, even though I know that I am getting a lot later start than she probably is.  I shared this desire with Evan, and the next day, he came home with this book.  

HERE is the PDF link

Wanting to help me in any way he could, he had spent lots of hours that day breaking down the document into 13 different sections, so that I could work on one each week and have the entire thing memorized by Christmas.  He also had it laminated and spiral bound!  The first week is already done, but I have just kept thinking that this is such an amazing tool that he made, and it needed to be shared with anyone else who also has felt inspired to memorize “The Living Christ.”

Instructions on how to use the book:

Each page has one portion  of “The Living Christ” on it.  At the top of the page is the whole portion without any words removed.  As you moved down the page, it repeats the same portion three times, taking more words out as you go.  Read through the whole thing several times, and then take the next section down on the page (with some words removed) and work on trying to memorize which words have been taken out.  It will get harder as you work on sections with more and more words removed.  Eventually after you have mastered the last section, it will be all about saying it with no visual clues.

Some sections are longer than others, but some are really short so you can play catch up some weeks if you fall a little behind.  I have already finished the first section, and this book has really helped me a lot.  I hope that if you take this challenge like I did that you enjoy it as much as I do!

Pink and Gold Polkadot Easter Wreath

This wreath is one of those things that just kind of took form.  I didn't really have a vision for it.  I already had the foam wreath and I knew I wanted to wrap it somehow and make it pretty for Easter.  I went to Hobby Lobby and I found this thick canvasy type ribbon with gold polka dots on it that I fell in love with.  However, Hobby Lobby has a million cute things and they also had this same type of ribbon but with gold chevron... and they had burlap ribbon with colored patterns...  So many cute things!  I changed my mind a million times and walked back multiple times to grab something different but kept coming back to this gold polka dot one. 

Burlap and Egg Carton Flowers Banner

Later post today, but I totally forgot to take General conference into consideration.  I love all the messages that we hear from them.  I had several young women over for the morning session and when Elder Holland got up for the first full talk one of them literally cheered out loud!  Haha I think they were excited to hear from him.  And it was wonderful to hear President Monson talk about the Cultural Celebration that they participated in.

Anyways here is the banner that I promised I would share.  It was really easy to make, and I love how colorful it is.  I had a bunch of scrap papers and burlap left over from different projects so I stared putting things together and this was what I came up with.  I really like how it turned out.  And you can use any colors that you like.  (Haha and don't pay attention to the stuff on top of the shelf! It's not finished)

Here's how I put it together, it was so hard. ;) 

 You can use your own pattern if you already have one or don't like the shape I used, but 

HERE is a PDF 

drawing of the shape and sizes I did.

1. Cut your first shape out of cardstock for the bottom layer

2.  Cut your 2nd slightly smaller shape out of burlap and glue to the piece you just cut out.

3. Cut your 3rd and smallest shape out of a different cardstock and glue to the burlap

4. I drew my letters for the banner I made, but you can find a font that you like and cut out then trace onto the cardstock from the bottom layer.  Cut those out and glue on top of all three layers.

5.  Use a hole punch and put two holes on either side of the shape and thread whatever ribbon, string, jute or yarn that you like through the holes.  

(I have about 10 miles worth of jewelry hemp left over from jr high when the pooka shell necklaces were so popular, and I just braided several strands together.)

6.  I hot glued the flowers from yesterday's post right onto the rope.  I left about an inch and a half to two inch gap between each shape and glued the flowers in between.

Egg Carton Spring Flowers

I don't know about you, but I am so excited for Spring! Of course here in Arizona we just skip straight to summer and start having 93 degree weather now.  But am so excited about Easter this year.  I love all the bright colorful flowers and springy decorations.  And even though Ammon is only going to be 10 months old... I'm still excited to do a little egg hunt with him.

Yet again, as I was taking down all my St. Patrick's day stuff and going to get out my Easter decorations, I realized that I didn't have any!  So I got into crafting mode.  We had just bought some eggs from Costco in their big cardboard flats, and I that was my inspiration.  I wanted something bright and possibly with some flowers so I got the idea to make some egg carton flowers like I've seen on Pinterest.  I looked it up and there are a TON of different types you can do, so I just kind of did my own thing.

Breakfast Casserole: Ham Egg and Cheese Strata

Finally!  Here is the recipe for that breakfast casserole I made for the baby shower I promised! This is a recipe from my Grandma Hart, and it has always been one of my favorites.  I personally could eat this for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  I love it.  It's just so cheesy, and eggy, and buttery.... and completely yummy.  I did not complain about making this again to take some better pictures for you. ;)  The recipe is super easy to throw together, and can be done the night before so that all you have to do in the morning is pop it in the oven.

Monsters Inc Baby Shower

Last week I had the fun chance to throw a baby shower for my good friend Emily who is due in a few weeks with her first baby! She's so cute.  I love her. =)  She is decorating her baby boy's room in a monster theme, so I decided to go with that theme and we had a monster/monsters inc shower.   I have to say that it was soo much fun to plan, design, and put together.  

I, of course, being crazy and scatter brained forgot on the day-of to bring my camera to take pictures, so a BIG thank you goes out to my sweet friend Carrie (from thirtyfiveninetyfive) for the pictures she snapped for me!  For my baby shower that my awesome SIL's threw for me last year, we had breakfast food served, and since Emily's shower was going to be in the morning, we pretty much used all the same recipes again!

Don't you love the monster cupcake/muffin stand?!  It turned out so much cuter than I had hoped!  The teeth and eyeballs are just made of cardstock and glued to the edges.  The stand itself is three square boards wrapped in lime wrapping paper on a glass cake stand with glass jars in between filled with blue sizzle paper.  I used green eyelash yarn to finish it off.

These two muffin recipes are awesome!  We followed my SIL's instructions here:

Glazed Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

Glazed Donut Muffins

My Silhouette machine made a lot of these decorations so easy.  I designed these little Mike and Sully silhouettes that I cut out of different colored/patterned papers.  I also found a free font that looks like the one from Monster's Inc.  

You can download Monster AG Font HERE

I also used my machine to cut out the letters for Oliver's name above the table and more silhouettes and circles to make a garland around the sides.

For this cinnamon roll cake we used the adapted recipe from

HERE

This french toast casserole recipe is a Pioneer Woman recipe and the directions I followed were from

HERE

This casserole is a family recipe of mine, and a favorite! 

 I will be sharing this recipe next week so make sure to check on Tuesday! =)

These were the invitations I made.  Walmart makes amazing prints... cough... so of course they printed up looking exactly like this... NOT.  They were still ok but just not what I was expecting.  (Haha I can say that calmly now, but at the time it was the end of the world. ;))

Well I hope that you liked some of the ideas that I had and that it maybe gave you some ideas if you are planning a Monsters Inc. shower or party for someone you know!

Quick and Easy DIY St. Patrick's Day Decor

Hello everyone!  Hope you all are having a good week so far!  I am finally getting around to sharing some St. Patrick's day printables and other decorations that I have made.  They are all super easy most can be done with stuff you may already have left over from other crafts.

Copycat Disneyland's Blue Bayou Monte Cristo

So I hope that you all had a great Valentines Day!!!  You know how when you are first married or in a relationship or whatever and you celebrate your one week... one month... two month... etc?  Wellllll... Evan and I still do that! And were going to do it until were dead!  Haha we were married on January 13, 2012, so every month we have a little mini celebration of yet another month.  Usually we just watch a movie and go get ice cream or something.  But, since February 13th is the day before valentines day, we always kinda get two days of celebrating and fun.

We usually switch off on who gets to plan which day when it comes to Feb. 13th and 14th, and this year Evan got the 13th and I got Valentines day.  He brought home Frankie's pizza (aka best pizza ever!) which, for the season, Frankie made in the shape of a heart.  Evan also got some foot lotion, and he rubbed my feet while we watched "Warm Bodies".  Haha I don't care how geeky this is, but I LOVE that movie!  Haha it's surprisingly cute for a zombie movie!!!

For valentines day, I decided to make one of our favorite special dinners.  We went on our honeymoon to Disneyland, and we love it there.  One of traditions when we go, is to go to the Blue Bayou!  It's the restaurant that's inside the beginning of the Pirates of the Carribean ride.  Our favorite food there is their Monte Cristos.  They are to die for.  I found a RECIPIE two years ago that I have since modified, and made multiple times for special occasions.  Here is how I make mine, and while they aren't exactly like the Blue Bayou... They are still stinkin' good and take us back to our happy place. ;)

LAST MINUTE! Valentines Day Printable

Oh my goodness... I have been so bad at sharing things the past few weeks...  this is how I've been feeling:

Haha not to say that I haven't done anything for valentines day, I just haven't  posted anything.  Ammon is just so much fun, I get distracted by him and his adorableness.  Plus I just haven't been able to think of much that I could share with you that isn't already plastered all over Pinterest.  =)  I'll be better, I promise.  I have been coming up with some good posts, with some yummy recipes so watch out for those.

I love Valentines Day.  I always used to say that it was MY holiday because my maiden name was was Hart. =)  But now I'm married it just great to have an awesome hubby to spend it with.  

For Valentines day, I did make a printable banner... but I was slightly frustrated at it and embarrassed about sharing it because of the fact that it didn't print out as bright as it looked on the computer... a problem I'm still trying to work through.  But here is a picture of it:  

Sorry the pictures aren't very good...  My living room has the WORST lighting.

It's still cute even if it is a little darker than I was expecting.

I know it's a little late in the game, but hey.  If you like this banner and would use it next year, or just want to throw up something for the day,
HERE is the PDF link.
After I cut out these printable triangles, I also cut out 6 more triangles that were just slightly bigger than these so that I could have a border around the edge, and so that they would be a little thicker.  I wanted the edges black, but if you're like me and don't have any black cardstock and don't want to go out and buy some, you can take a sharpie to the edges like I did.  I just colored the edges that would show on the big triangles before I glued the patterned triangles on.

Cupid Wings Tutorial

Happy beginning to February!  I am so excited about this tutorial!  I had an idea a while back to give Ammon's grandmas a valentine picture of him with him all dressed up as a cupid.  So naturally to get inspiration, I went to Pinterest knowing that I could not have been the first person to think of this.  Someone else out there had to have already dressed up their baby and taken pictures to show all their kid's friends and future spouse one day. ;)  And I did find a few things, but I ended up just making up my own.  And I think that they turned out pretty dang cute!  (or that could just be him =))  I thought that they were super easy to make, and they were extremely cheap to make too! 
TOTAL COST: $2

Ooooo!!!  I want to eat him! =)

Ritzy Reeses Squares

This is a recipe that a friend of ours made for us the other day. These are super easy, no bake, and only have 5 ingredients.  I know they look like a lot of other chocolate peanut butter bar recipes out there, but they have a secret ingredient! Our friends told us as they were dishing them up that the recipe called for graham cracker crumbs, but since they didn't have any on hand, they used Ritz crackers instead. And oh my heavens, was it a great substitute! It was perfectly sweet and salty, and chocolaty and peanut buttery and just yum.  =)

Kitchen Chalkboard Printables - EDITED!

Table Setting Printable has been edited!

So here is my first attempt at making a chalkboard printable!  It was an adventure trying to make it look right... How did I do?  I have an empty frame in my kitchen where I used to have the Elf Four Food Groups Pyramid during Christmas time.  But it has been several weeks since Christmas now, and it has been empty since December 26th, so I decided it was finally time to get something in it.  And of course when I started thinking about it I came up with more than one idea, so I'll just share all of them.

Grandma's Red Pepper Jelly

Today I am going to be sharing a recipe that I got from my Grandma.  This was always one of my very favorite things that she bottled every year. It makes as a great appetizer that is easy to just pull a bottle out of the pantry and pour over a brick of cream cheese to serve with crackers.  It also does make more than one bottle, so it can easily be shared with your neighbors and friends.

Simple Weight Loss Goal Chart

Happy New Year Everyone! I hope that you all had a great Christmas and a safe New Years Eve.  Ours was pretty quiet.  Ammon got spoiled by his grandmas on Christmas (of course), and we enjoyed just spending time with our families.  Now New Years is also over, and it is 2014!  And with the new year comes resolutions.  Yay!

 

I know like everyone else in the world, I have the resolution to lose weight and be healthier.  I've done really good in the 6 months since I had my baby, and I dont want to quit now where I'm at!  I am a very visual person.  For me, when trying to lose weight or work towards some fitness goal, I have to have a chart that I can look at to see my progress, and see where I am headed.  Usually in the past I have just scribbled on a scrap of paper the goals I have and what date I would like to achieve them by.  But then being the scatter brain that I am, I lose it!

So, this year, I thought I'd make a cute actual chart that I can print up nicely and put somewhere where I won't lose it.  Here's just my simple weight loss chart I thought I'd share with you.   I have three different styles. One more neutral one, the second is the same with just a little bit more girly flare, and the third is just straight up girly.

Reindeer Hunt

When I was little, my dad used to do the cutest things to make Christmas morning more special for us.  We always left out the milk and cookies for Santa, and we always left out some carrots for the reindeer too.  And in the morning, the cookies and carrots weren't JUST gone.  My dad would do things like crumble up some of the cookies and spell out, "THANKS" with the crumbs, or carve a snowman out of the carrots.  One year he even made a video of the carrot being sucked through the blinds.  He always made it so fun.

 

I want to do fun things for my kids to make Christmas morning as fun and magical for them as it was for me and my brothers.  However, Ammon, is only 6 months old, so he doesn't really understand the whole missing cookies thing.  So, this year I decided to do something special for my nephews last night instead.  They are at the perfect age right now for something like this!

 

I made a fluorescent "paint" and a reindeer track stamp out of felt hot glued to the bottom of a super old shoe I was going to throw away, and I put tracks leading them down the sidewalk and around the front of Grandma's house.  It was dark out so I borrowed a blacklight flashlight that Grandpa uses to hunt for scorpions and made a label for it turning it into a "Flying Reindeer Hunting Light".  I got several carrots, and tied them up with a ribbon.  I also wrote a little poem and turned it into a cute printable note and tag.

To download PDF copy of printable, click here

 

Haha... the label was more as a joke.  There are a lot of people in my family that like Duck Dynasty.  So I made it a DEER Dynasty light, and put a Santa face on it.  Only looking at it... I think it's pretty easy to just mistake the Santa face as one of the people on the actual show! '=)

 

So once all that was in place, I sent them on a reindeer hunt!  I told them the North Pole called me that day, and told me that at a certain time, someone would be stopping by, then told them it was time and sent them into the front yard.

 

(I did colorize the footprints when editing these pictures so you could see how I did them)

The boys had a lot of fun following tracks to the surprise from Rudolph at the end with the carrots to leave out.  The was super easy, and fast, and I think that they enjoyed it.  AAANDDD... it was super CHEAP.

    M&M candy canes ($1/each)
+  Carrots (50 cents for 5)
+  Highlighter ($1)

TOTAL COST: $2.50!!!

How to put it together:

Reindeer stamp:
The printable has a template for the reindeer hoof.  I printed this, traced it on to some felt, cut it out, and glued it to the bottom of an old shoe I was going to throw away.  I was originally going to glue it to the bottom of a can, but all the cans I had were really small, and my shoe was the first alternative I thought of.  Haha, I'm sure you can find something better!  But I just dipped the felt in the paint and stamped out the hoof print.  Easy peasy.

Reindeer Footprint Glow Paint

Fluorescent highlighter (yellow or green work best)
1/4 cup water
1 Tbs liquid dish soap
1 Tbs cornstarch

Here is a tutorial how I got the idea for my reindeer footprint paint using a highlighter.  (link shows how they open the end of the highlighter and pull out the inside felt)  It's super easy.  I just let the highlighter felt soak in the water, then added some green liquid dish soap I had on hand (which kinda glowed under the blacklight too), and then the cornstarch. It was still very liquidy, but a little bit goes a long way!  It may not look like much on the sidewalk, but under the blacklight it glows really good! It dries super light colored, and in the dark you can't tell it's there.  And it just washes off after.

Here is a tutorial for just plain ol' washable sidewalk paint if you don't want to cut open a highlighter, or don't have a flashlight blacklight.

I hope you enjoy!

Buddy The Elf! What's Your Favorite Color?!

Elf, is probably one of my favorite Christmas movies.  I will admit that I sometimes watch it once or twice throughout the year, not JUST during December.  I made this printable like a food pyramid, showing what Buddy described as what the elves up at the North Pole consider to be the four basic food groups.  I put mine in my 8x10 picture frame in my kitchen.  Because at this time of the year, it just seems like candy, candy canes, candy corns, and syrup really do somewhat become the only foods we eat!

Click HERE to download a PDF copy

Here's what it looks like in the frame in my kitchen

Hope you like! =)