Pinecone Garland DIY

Well, the festive season is upon us, and here is a simple DIY garland that can transition your home from Thanksgiving to Christmas. What I love about this garland is that it is a hardware store craft; I don't know about you but I love going into hardware stores and imagining what I can do with non-crafty supplies.

Supplies: Package of small screw eyes, pinecones, twine and scissors (they didn't make it into the picture, rats!) 

Twist the screw eye into the center of the pinecone. It is pretty easy, but you do have to use a bit of gentle pressure. My finger tips were just a little bit sore after doing all of these.

If the screw is a little bit tight, you can use a pair of scissors or a chopstick to help twist it into the pinecone. Once all of the pinecones have the screw eyes, tie them onto a length of twine. I cut a 7 foot piece of twine and I tied the cones about every 6 inches.

Ta-da! An easy pinecone garland, if you want to get even more festive you can paint the pinecones gold or silver or add glitter to them.

Happy Halloween!

Today is the Big Bad Wolf's first time trick or treating, I think he's going to make the cutest wolf around. We decided to make it a family affair and I am going as Little Red and D. is going as the woodcutter. For baby's costume, I wanted to get him this sweet one from etsy, but the price ($55.00) was a little too steep for me. So I got some fleece from Joann Fabric, which was running a great sale and I just figured out a pattern and made Little Baby this wolfie costume for a whopping $2.70. I must say, I am a bit proud of myself. *Pat self on back* I am new to sewing and I was a bit doubtful of my skills, but I am happy to have pulled it off and it looks strikingly similar to the one I found on etsy. My cape is the bottom of a skirt that I cut off a long time ago and the hat was out of my collection. Yes, I do wear this gnome/pixie/Little Red hat on a regular basis when it is chilly outside. :)

Chrits and Little Baby's Birthday

Oh boy, posting has been sporadic as of late because on December 21st D. and I welcomed little baby Georgie into our lives. He is our sweet sugar pie who makes us sooooo sleepy, but I will still try to come on and post semi-frequently. I don't know how I feel about posting pictures of him on my blog, so for now, no pictures but let me tell you he is the cutest little baby I ever did see!

Aside from baby news, around these parts we celebrate Christmas until Epiphany, which falls on January 6th and commemorates the visit from the magi to baby Jesus. I like celebrating the full 12 days of Christmas (yep, that's where the song comes from, the first day is December 25th ending with the feast of Epiphany), that way the day after Christmas doesn't feel like such a letdown. You know what I mean? With that being said, here are a couple of Christmas cookies that didn't turn out quite right...

It's actually more difficult than you might think to try to spell things backwards. I had problems spelling "Christ's Birthday" with the cookie stamp, and there weren't enough "s"s  to spell Jesus correctly. :)

Christmas Cookie Extravaganza!

This year I had a plethora of cookies I wanted to bake, and boy did I make a lot! Here's the cast of characters.

A whole lotta butter. I got a Costco membership as a wedding gift last year and I like going and eating samples and buying jumbo sized packages of things. I ended up not need as much butter as I thought, but hey, it freezes well.

Next up, some good recipes... I use a delicious sugar cookie recipe that was D.'s grandma's and I found a recipe last year for gingerbread boys that I like to make. I also made marshmallows, yes I know back a couple of years ago I made a horrible batch of gloopy marshmallows but I found a new recipe from Ina Garten and they turned out great!

Fixins for spritz cookies and sprinkles for the sugar cookies.

Cookie stamps that you can customize, these are fun but a little difficult to cram the little letters into place.

See, my marshmallows turned out just right and they were the yummiest topping for chocolate surprise cookies, I just didn't add the chocolate frosting that would actually make these cookies a surprise.  Delicious nonetheless, recipe here.

The final product: spritz.

I made some "fancy" sugar cookies which means I bought meringue powder and iced them. It was labor intensive but they turned out pretty cute.

I couldn't help myself.

I passed these out to our neighbors, but D. was afraid I was giving too many away. Don't worry D. we still have about 4 dozen left! Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, homemade marshmallows are scrumptious on hot chocolate. 

Merry Christmas Eve!

Easter Cake

Easter is just around the corner and I would love to try making this cake for the holiday. How cute!

Blast from the Past

D. and I had nowhere to go on Halloween, except for Chipotle, but that didn't keep us from dressing up! Please pardon the mirror photo and poor lighting, it's the best we could do!

The beatnik and the go-go girl. (I am such a fan of the 1960's effect on picnik)

I drew a little mustache and goatee on D. I told him it kind of resembled el diablo. The Ray-Bans helped to pull the look together though.

This was a pretty easy costume to throw together, if I wasn't planning a wedding during the month of October, I might have had more time to invest in my costume, but overall I liked the look. My boots turned out pretty good too! D. and I had so much fun wearing our costumes, we grabbed our donut masks and headed out the door to Chipotle. We came back and handed out candy to four trick-o-treaters. There weren't too many around, which turned out to be a good thing since we only had a small bag of Werther's.

Belated Valentine's Day

I had such a delightful Valentine's Day, but sadly I was behind on mailing out my cards. I finally got them out today, yay! I purchased a pack of blank cards from Target for $1, rummaged around in my closet for some doodads, and came up with these lovelies. p.s. DYMO label makers are fun for adding personalized stickers.