Valentine's Day Cookies

We've been cooped up inside for the last few days due to weather. A rare event in Dallas! We finally got above freezing today and what did we do? Made it another pajama day and baked cookies. :) My absolutely favorite cookies are my mom's sugar cookies with buttercream frosting. YUM!

This is a NON-refrigerated dough. When I make cookies, I like to make them right away, not wait for my dough to chill, then come back to partial room temp. Here's our super-secret family recipe.

Gram's Sugar Cookies
1 cup margarine, softened
1 cup sugar
1 egg
2 tsp baking powder
3 cups flour
1 tsp butter flavoring



Cream together margarine & sugar, then add the egg and butter flavoring.

Mix together 2 cups of the flour and the baking powder, then add them in slowly to the sugar mixture. I take it off the mixer and mix in another 3/4 cup of flour by hand. If you're keeping track, we have used 2 and 3/4 cups of the flour so far. Keep the other 1/4 cup set aside. We'll work that in as we roll out the dough. Putting in the entire 3 cups, plus using more as you roll it out can over-flour your cookies and make them dry.

Allow some time for a little Quality Control:

Next, you want to roll out your cookies. My mom taught me this neat trick for rolling out your dough so that it is a consistent thickness. Take a dowel rod and cut it in half so you have two dowel rods approx the same length. I use a 5/16" dowel rod. Tape one dowel rod to the counter. Place your rolling pin on top of it so you can see how far apart you want your second one to be. Once you have figured that out, tape down the second dowel rod.

Of course, if you have rolling pin bands, this isn't necessary, but I don't have any, so this is my method. :)

Flour your working surface with part of the 1/4 cup of flour that we held out. Be sure to give your rolling pin a little flour too. Take 1/4 to 1/3 of your dough and roll it out. Keep the edges of your rolling pin on the dowel rods and all of your cookies will be the same thickness.
Take your favorite cookie cutters and start cutting out as many shapes/sizes as you want.

With the "extras" you have leftover, work it back into the dough instead of continuing to roll it out over and over until it's all gone, then starting with a new part of the dough to roll out. If you keep working the same dough into more and more flour, it will make your cookies hard.

Once you have your baking sheets filled up, bake at 400 degrees for 7-8 minutes. At the 7 minute mark, check one of the cookies and just as it is starting to get very, very, very lightly brown, take the cookies out of the oven and immediately move them onto a cooling rack. Keep in mind, if you leave your cookies on the baking sheet, they will continue to cook, so get them off ASAP.

Don't they look pretty? This is how my husband likes his cookies. I think there might be something wrong with him...he doesn't like icing!

Use whatever icing recipe floats your boat. I'm a buttercream fan, so that's what I used on these.

Happy Valentine's Day!

...9 days early. :)

Linking up at Tatertots & Jello.

Valentine's Mantle

I cannot believe it. I'm actually ahead of the game for a holiday! This many be the only place in my house where there is Valentine's decor, but at least I'm not desperately trying to come up with something on February 13th. :)

Noramlly, my V-Day decor is minimal...a heart shaped something or other here and there. I have never tried to put together any sort of vignette (for any holiday!).




I'm always telling the kids, "Gimme some sugar!", so I thought it appropriate to make this little sign. I just reused a frame that was already on the mantle.



Mine and DH's anniversary is 2/26. Last year, I gave him this picture for our anniversary. I bought it from a seller on etsy. Love that site! It normally hangs in our bedroom (as does this mirror, actually!), but I brought it out for the holiday.

I made several small banners for Christmas, but none of them were long enough to go across my mantle. I actually measured 3 times so that this one would be long enough. Lo and behold, it was too short too! LOL I was not about to rip out stitches from my bias tape, though, so I made do. I taped my banner to the mantle with scotch tape, then glued a little glittery heart over the tape so it didn't look so unfinished. Most of the fabrics were from my stash, but I bought a couple of new ones last week. I think it turned out cute!
I totally ripped off the feather boa wreath from Tatertots & Jello. It's so fun and cheesy, how could I not run with it? :) I took two boas, white & pink, and wrapped them around a dollar store wreath. In order to be able to reuse both the wreath and the boas, I didn't glue them, I just stuck the ends of the boas into the wreath with floral pins.

Linking up at Tatertots & Jello, Under the Table and Dreaming, The Tattered Tag, Somewhat Simple and Dittle Dattle.

Better late than never...

So one month post-Christmas, I'm finally 1) updating my blog and 2) showing your our stockings! I had set a goal of having them complete by Christmas Eve. I met than goal by a whopping 30 minutes. On 12/23/2010 at 11:30pm, I hung our stockings by the chimney with care. Yay me! :)

Please excuse the quality. This is a 11:31pm picture taken with the iPhone and zero editing.

I was SO proud of myself for making these! It had been on my To Do list for much too long. My daughter is 2 (almost 3) and she had yet to have a stocking of her own. Bad mom! :)

I used a variation of the lined stocking with cuff tutorial from Cluck, Cluck, Sew. I did make a couple of modifications, but it's been a month now and I don't recall what those were! Her directions were easy to follow, though, so for that, she is AWESOME.

Now that I have this Christmas post out of the way, my next one will be for Valentine's Day. I have very little to work with for that holiday, so it's all going on my mantle.

Glitter Trees

These turned out so cute! The supplies I used were: candle holder (dollar store), styrofoam tree forms (dollar store), E600, white Elmer's glue and glitter (dollar store...again!).

The first thing I did was smush the candle holder onto the bottom of the tree form so I could make sure I had the forms centered on the holders. Then, following E6000's directions, I put glue on both surfaces...all around the top of the candle holder and all in the little groove that I created on the bottom of the tree form. I let these sit about 12 hours, although the instructions say you should leave them alone for 24 hours. The instructions also say you shouldn't use it on styrofoam, but it was fine.

After they glue dried, I used copius amounts of Elmer's white glue (raid the kid's stash!) and liberally spread it all over the tree form using one of the super cheap foam brushes. DOn't be stingy with the glue...you need something for the glitter to stick to. Then I took the glitter and shook it all over, covering all of the glue. Use LOTS of glitter! If you find that you missed a spot, go back and put more glue, then sprinkle over more glitter.

In my case, I bought my glitter at the dollar store and it came in little bitty bottles, so I had to refill my bottles with my overflow glitter several times. I sprinkled on my glitter holding over an open file folder so that when I ran out of glitter in my bottle, I could just easily pour it right back in.

This project was super easy. Not including the dry time for the candle holder and tree form, it took me less than 30 minutes to make all three. This was also a super cheap project! I already had the different glues and a sponge brush, so my other supplies cost $8. I have a small tree left over (it was a 2-pack for $1), as well as lots of glitter still remaining.

Pretty, right?



You certainly don't have to use traditional Christmas colors. The color combos are limited only by the colors of glitter you can find. :)

A Birthday Shirt for Miss S

I am a lame aunt. I not only forgot about my niece's birthday party last weekend (until my mom reminded me the day before), but I showed up with NO gift. Ack! Hopefully, my lateness will be excused!

Thank goodness for my mom. She brought her most hated sewing machine to the party for me to take home (thanks, Mom!). Her most hated machine is WAY better than what I had before. It sews on knit. With no issues. Yesssss!

I was prompted to try this after reading a tutorial one someone else's blog (I can't remember where I found it! She did a 4 with baseball fabric for her son's birthday). It was super easy...especially if your machine doesn't hate you. :)

So happy belated birthday, Miss S! Don't hate me too much for being so forgetful.

Since I can't remember what blog I got my inspiration, here is a super quick and dirty how-to (no pics) on this project. Prewash your fabric and shirt (since they are different types of fabric, it will alleviate puckering later on). I used my Cricut to cut out a large S and then traced the S onto the shirt. Next, I ironed interfacing to my white & pink fabric and placed it on the inside of the shirt, then pinned, pinned, pinned all around the S. It's not absolutely necessary, but I sewed two rows of stitches around the S. I tried to be all nice and careful with the second line, but very quickly figured out that there was NO way I would be able to mirror the first line of stitches perfectly, so I went all wonky with them making them criss-cross, curve, etc. After you are all sewn, very carefully cut out the pink shirt on the inside close to the stitches. Then go on the inside of the shirt and cut out all of the excess fabric, cutting near the stitches again.


Linking up to these parties: It's a Blog Party, Today's Creative Blog, Creative Itch

Goodwill Candle Holder Makeover

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Found this candle holder at Goodwill last week (was the ONLY thing I found...pout). It was marked $3, but it had a pink tag and it was "pink tags are half price" day, so it was a whopping $1.50 plus tax. I'm not really a taper person, but figured I could make it work for something. I'm not a huge fan of the grapevine ball on top, but figured it was better than seeing the taper holder that I didn't bother trying fill or cover.

Sprayed with primer first, then two coats of glossy white. Sanded lightly, then brushed on and wiped off Minwax's Dark Walnut stain. One spray of clear coat, then let it dry overnight.

Family Art

Like I said in one of the first couple of blog entries, our house is a bit bland at the moment. We have very little of anything on our walls. BORING! We were looking for an inexpensive "something" to spruce up the walls and ultimately decided on a family art project. Everyone got a blank canvas and the same colors to choose from...even the 2 year old. Behold! Family Art!

Dad:

Mom - I am NO artist:

Kid #1 (age 10) - he said this is a worm den:

Kid #2 (age 2):

I came home from work today to find them in the breakfast nook. Not exactly where I would have put them (I was thinking above the tv) nor in the "shape" I would have put them (I was thinking like one large square...two side by side with two underneath), BUT my husband participated in family art and was happy enough with them to hang them up by himself. So I'm happy too. :)

Daddy's is on the opposite wall, but here's a pic of the grouping he put together (Blogger is cutting off my pic, so you can click on it to see the whole grouping).

There are a couple of good things about this project. First, it was cheap...less than $6. I bought the cheapest canvases that Michael's had, plus I used a 40% off coupon. Second, whenever we get tired of the colors, we can paint over the canvases with white and start all over! Lastly, it was really nice to hang out as a family and do something artsy together. Makes a Mama smile. :)

Terra Cotta Pot Transformation

I let the kids help with part of this one, so it's not exactly....right. But being a family project, I can't let my "issues" get in the way. :)

This "tutorial" is pretty basic since I forgot to take pics of a few steps.

I started with a couple of terra cotta pots. One was new and one I rescued from the plant hospital (aka, the back porch). I sprayed them with water to get the dust and dirt off, then left them for about 30 minutes to dry.

Spray paint the pots white. I recommend paint, not primer. But that's what happens when you are in a hurry and apparently only look at the color of the cap. Oops.

Allow the white paint to dry thoroughly (give it at least 20 minutes...more if it's humid outside).

For the striped pot, I used painters tape and placed it on the pot in the general design that I wanted. For the polka dot pot, I used some left over garage sale stickers that were in my desk (this is where my kiddos got involved and any anal tendencies toward symmetry went out the window). You can get several hundred for a buck at the dollar store. After you apply your stickers or tape, rub over them with your finger to make sure the edges are stuck down really well or when you paint over them, it will go underneath and look messy. I had trouble with mine sticking...I'm not sure if it's because I used primer instead of paint or if it's because it was humid.as.hell outside.

Now spray over your pot again with your color of choice, black in this case. No pictures of a black pot because, well, because I didn't take any. :) Allow the paint to dry and spray it again, getting any spots you may have missed the first time around.

After the black paint has had a chance to dry (another fudge up here because I didn't let mine dry thoroughly and because I didn't wear gloves, I looked like I had been fingerprinted), peel off your tape and stickers. I added a couple of coats of clear coat to help protect my awesome paint job from the elements.

Lots of sticker shape and color combos would work here. My sister is a ladybug fan, so she may get one that is red with black dots. I'm thinking of doing a triple threat this weekend...yellow, pink and teal. I'll let you know how it turns out. :)

Terra Cotta Pot Transformation

BEFORE:

I'll show the AFTER pics when I get home from work tonight. Let's just say that the title of this blog pertains to the contents of this post...it's definitely an imperfect transformation. :) See you tonight!

Tutorial: Numbered Bean Bags

I'm popping my tutorial cherry today. :)

I was inspired by this post at Lil Blue Boo (Ashley's site is one of my faves to visit...she's incredibly talented). She made a set of bean bags that spell out her daughter's name. So cute!

So being inspired, I decided to make alphabet bean bags for my 2 year old. 5 minutes into the project, I decided the alphabet was going to be too much work. I wanted something that would only take me a couple of hours. A nap time project! At this point, I went from 26 beans bags to 10. The nap time guesstimate didn't work out, though. All together, including taking tutorial pics, it took me about 5 hours. It could have taken about 3, but you'll see where I used some optional steps.

For me, one of the best things about this project is that I only had to buy beans. All of my material was scrap.

You will need the following materials:

• enough fabric for 20 squares
• enough fabric for your numbers (you won't need much of this)
• Wonder Under
• typical sewing accoutrements (pins, scissors, thread, etc)

I cut my squares 6" x 6", but you can go as big or small as you like, depending on what you have available. So here's how I did mine. Hope the directions are easy to follow!

I started by printing off the numbers 0-9. I used a text box in Microsoft Word so that I could easily size the letters based on the size of my squares. I used Calibri font in bold and made my letters 3" high by 2" wide.

Next, I traced my letters onto some Wonder Under using a ball point pen (per their instructions). There are a couple of ways you can use Wonder Under. I didn't want to have to cut my numbers more than once, so I used the trace method. I traced my numbers onto the BUMPY side of the Wonder Under.

One you get all of the numbers traced, iron them, bumpy side of the Wonder Under facing down. Yes, you are now looking at the mirror image of your numbers.

Now you'll cut out your numbers. This is time consuming. If you are going to satin stitch these onto your bean bags, being precise isn't necessary, but if you're not planning to do that, then get it as close as you can. I tried very hard to cut just inside my pen line because I didn't know if the ink would have bled through to the white fabric (FYI, it did!). Here are the numbers all cut out!

Next, I cut my bags out of some polka dot fabric. I made my squares 6" x 6", but like I said above, you can make them any size (or better yet, any shape!) you want. For the numbers we are doing (0-9), you'll need to cut out two pieces for each bean bag. You'll wind up with 20 squares (it only looks like 10 in my photo, but the other matching color square is underneath). My fabrics didn't have a precise pattern to them, so I actually cut 4 layers of fabric at one time (this will go quickly if you have a sharp blade on your rotary cutter).

Before we get to sewing, there is one quick step remaining. We now need to iron the cut out numbers onto the fabric squares. At first, I had a hard time pulling the paper back of the numbers, but if you gently fold it (don't crease the fabric) in your fingers, it will pull apart and come off easily.

The Wonder Under directions say you're supposed to iron these on with a pressing cloth. Oops! :)

This particular step is totally optional. I chose to sew around the edges of the numbers because I know how hard my kids are on toys. They are not gentle giants. :) If you're going to sew around the edges, I have no tips for you. Just...good luck. It took me over an hour to sew around 10 numbers. If I had it to do over again, I MIGHT do it by hand with long running stitches or I might just use stencils and fabric paint and paint numbers on.

Once your numbers are on the fabric (whether you sew around them or not), it's time to start putting them together. Place right sides together, add a couple of pins, and sew around all four sides, leaving a 2-3" opening on one side. Trim your corners.

Next, turn your fabric right side out and poke out your corners so they are nice and square. I'm an advocate of ironing, so iron your right-side-out bags so the edges look pretty and crisp. :)

Now it's time to fill your bags with some sort of filler. I used 3/4 cup of pinto beans (you may want a little more or a little less), but you can use any type of bean, rice or the little balls that bean bags are normally filled with. The hole in the side of your bag is difficult to put beans through (unless you want to spend HOURS doing it one by one). I attempted to use my kitchen funnel, but the opening wasn't large enough for even one bean to go through. So I improvised...I tore off a small bit of a piece of paper and quickly taped together a funnel shape. Stick the funnel inside the hole and pour small handfulls of your beans in. My 10-year old helped with this part. He was very intent on not spilling the beans. :) You can barely see the funnel in this pic.

After you have filled all of your bags, top stitch all the way around, making sure the catch the edges of your opening on each bag. As you are sewing, you'll have to putz with the beans a bit to keep them out of the way. Believe me when I tell you that if your needle hits a bean, it's toast.

Ta da! All done! Commence playing. :)

On this blog, I do plan to show my imperfections, so here's today's insight: this could have taken WAY less time than I put into it. :) There were a couple of places where I could have saved a lot of time.

• The first one I have already mentioned. It is not necessary to sew around all of the numbers. You could iron them on and leave as-is or you can use a stencil and use fabric paint (as Ashley did in my inspiration post...that would also save the time of cutting out the Wonder Under-ed numbers).
• The second place to save a little time is to not sew them together inside out. It would be perfectly reasonable to sew the wrong sides together (using a 5/8" seam and leaving a small opening), use the opening to fill the bag with beans, closing the opening, then pinking the edges of the squares. I may actually do an alphabet using this method.

I hope you found this tutorial helpful. If you have any suggestions or comments, feel free to have at it in the Comments section! :)