Conversation Heart Cookies

I bought a big heart cookie cutter at Michaels the other day and I was determined to use it, so I picked up some betty crocker sugar cookie mix and I thought I'd make some giant Valentine's Day Cookies.

I wanted to write messages on the cookies but I didn't have any cookie decorating supplies so I improvised.



I found mini marshmallows in the pantry and decided to try to stamp letters on them with food coloring.



First mix a couple drops of food coloring with a little bit of powdered sugar to make your "ink".

Then use mini letter stamps and stamp your message letter by letter onto your marshmallows.

Use kitchen scissors to cut the marshmallows in half so they sit flatter on the cookie.

Frost your cookies (I made homeade pink cream cheese frosting)

And press the letters gently onto the frosted cookie.

And lastly, give your cookie with a special message to someone you love (and try not to take a bite first!)

Valentine's Day Craft: Upcyled Heart tutorial

I was trying to think of a fun Valentine's Day Craft but I was hitting a wall creatively.  So I started to clean my craft room (rare occasion) and I saw these two empty wrapping paper rolls I had saved from Christmas (it's not hoarding if you eventually use it right?), and this is what my crazy brain came up with.  It turned out very simple but I imagine it has a lot of potential for embellishment or to be wrapped with fabric.  So here's the tutorial, enjoy!

Supplies: wrapping paper tubes, yarn (in your choice of colors), jute string (if you want to hang it), wire hangers, pliers, leather puncher, and large embroidery/yarn needle.

Use your pliers to help untwist and straighten the hanger into one long piece of wire.

Flatten the tub and fold in half

Use the leather hole puncher to punch holes into the folded tube.  Make sure you punch through all four layers.

Continue punching holes all the way down the tube




Cut a piece of yarn and thread the needle.  Sew up the tube using the stitch seen below.











Make sure you insert the wire at some point, I put mine in once it was about half way sewn up.  If you look closely you can see the wire in the pic to the right.

Ok so to finish you need to make sure your wire is pushed all the way to one end and leave an inch of tubing without wire on the other end (you may have to cut the wire with wire cutters if it's too long).  Then find the middle of the tube and bend it into a heart shape carefully.  At the bottom of the heart, bend the end with the extra inch and no wire and line it up with the other end.  Punch two extra holes in both ends to make four holes in a square formation.  Use the ends of the yarn to secure the ends together and tie off.  Punch holes into the back of the top of the heart to tie jute string if you want to hang it.

Enjoy your beautiful hearts that were made from mostly recycled materials!

backyard adventure

So I decided to let my little guy explore in the backyard since the weather cleared up and it's such a beautiful day.  But once he had crawled through every mud pit and splashed in every pool of water I realized why I don't always let him have free range of the backyard.  But then again, we built our mini-farm just for him in hopes that he'd learn more about the great outdoors than video games.  And there's nothing better than watching your little guy explore the world, being a true boy and getting as muddy as possible.

Does this hat match my outfit?

Trying to pet Kevin the pygmy goat (Kevin is a girl?)

I may only be 1 years old but I can still help on the mini-farm

Making sure I touch every bucket of contaminated water on this farm

The goat saloon

Griswold the half pygmy goat with a big heart

Ronnie our mutt puppy doing what she does best

My Spinning wheel.  I took this picture with my brothers canon with the 50mm 1.4 lens.  Now I'm ordering the 1.8 for my canon so I can take almost as cool pictures on my canon.  My spinning wheel hasn't been getting a lot of use lately but I plan to do a pretty in depth tutorial soon about spinning, from fiber collection, cleaning and preparation, to spinning and creating a complete project.  It's such a neat concept to me that I can take the raw fleece from my friends sheep and spin it into yarn which eventually becomes a beautiful one of a kind beanie or scarf.  When I was learning to spin I had a hard time finding good tutorials and pictures of the whole process which is why I'd love to put up a tutorial for all of those people like me who'd love to get into the lost art of spinning!

Consider the Ravens Twig Frame

So I've been saving two tree branches on my porch from my neighbor's tree for several weeks.  My husband has been wondering if they'll ever get used for a craft project like I promised him and so here it is.

I call it "consider the ravens frame" made from many materials including tree branches/twigs, yarn, jute string, cotton gingham fabric, felt, broadcloth, homeade foam stamps, store bought alphabet stamps, fabric ink paint, embroidery thread, and fusible fleece.  This project didn't take very long but I did spend several days playing around with it trying to glean inspiration and ideas.  I really like the finished project which is surprising considering it was such a random bunch of ideas.  I love when a project just keeps turning out better instead of worse (which seems to happen to a lot of my "great ideas").