April Fools Day Food Tricks

April Fools Day is a couple weeks away! And April Fools Day is a special day in my house, because its also my son's birthday!

Last year we hosted his birthday party on April Fools Day, so we had to have a couple treats! Look at all of these yummy treats! Who doesn't love Cheetos, Tootsie Pops and Easter Candy!

Well this is all actually healthy food!!!

The Tootsie Pops are actually Broccoli - I opened the suckers and kept the wrapper. You need to also buy new sticks.

The Easter Candy is grapes, wrapped in the Easter Candy Wrappers.

The Cheetos are actually carrots. Carefully open the bags from the bottom, and add in a few baby carrots. I used a hot glue gun to VERY CAREFULLY glue them shut again. 

My kids are already dreading the treats for this years April Fools Day because they are expecting the tricks!!

Happy April Fools Day!!!!

Painting Stripes Quickly

This is my third time painting striped walls! And I liked how they turned out in Little Man's last bedroom I replicated them in his new bedroom. The difference this time I was I decided I wanted six big stripes instead of eight smaller ones. 

Before I started painting the stripes, I looked for tips to paint stripes quickly, because I needed to finish this project in as little time as possible. We were hosting a house warming party soon and I had a babysitter for my daughter. (She isn't the best helper with painting!) 

I used green frog painters tape and I read some tips that if I used this I could just trust that my lines would turn out crisp. Well since I had such a limited time and was using a dark color on a light wall, I didn't want to take the risk. So after I used a level to get my tape on the wall, I used my base paint (the light blue) and painted right over the tape to seal the tape. I only used this technique on the top two stripes, since the bottom stripe won't be seen with the bed and the shelf. 

After two coats of my dark navy paint (which is my absolute favorite!!!!!) I removed the tape while the top coat was still wet. Since I didn't do the extra bottom coat on the bottom stripe, that was the first one I removed the tape on, and it was horrible!!! The line looked horrible. It had bled so much under the tape I was so disappointed!! And so nervous about my other two stripes. Luckily you can't see the bottom stripe, so it is ok. See below for how much it bled! 

With my fingers crossed, I slowly removed the tape on the top two stripes and they were perfect!!!! So in the long run my extra step of painting the bottom coat did save me time, or I would have spent a lot of additional time fixing the bled. 

So save yourself some time in the long run and do the extra step of painting your base coat over your tape, even if you have the best tape out there! 

DIY Hand Scrubs

I was in charge of Craft Club for November and I decided we would make some fun hand scrubs that we could use as Holiday gifts! We made a Candy Cane Sugar Scrub, Gingerbread Sugar Scrub and a Honey Coconut Sugar Scrub. They all smell SOOOO wonderful and are so easy to make!! Plus they make GREAT gifts!!!

You can use any kind of baking oil for these recipes when it just calls for oil. Olive Oil works fine, but it has a stronger smell than some of the other oils. Grape Seed oil works well and doesn't have a strong smell.  These all make about 16 ounces of scrub!!

My favorite is the Gingerbread Sugar Scrub because I LOVE Gingerbread!!!!

Gingerbread Sugar Scrub
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground ginger
2 teaspoons ground nutmeg
1 cup oil

I also LOVE LOVE the smell of the Honey Coconut Sugar Scrub.... this one is good enough to eat....

Honey Coconut Sugar Scrub
1 cup Coconut Oil (in the solid form)
1 cup Honey
1/2 cup white sugar
Mix together the Coconut Oil in it's solid form together with the honey until they are mixed together. Add in the sugar.

We learned from experience that you don't want to melt the coconut oil into a liquid state or it will not combine with the honey!!!

Last we made a Candy Cane Sugar Scrub.

Candy Cane Sugar Scrub
2 cups white sugar
1 cup oil
Several drops of mint (to your preference)
Split into two portions and add a VERY small amount of red coloring

The first time I made this I used food coloring. While it gave a really nice red color, it also slightly stained my hands red when I used it!! We used soap colorant and that worked better, but didn't give us a bright red color. In my opinion, I prefer this to red hands....

And I am SOOO nice :) I here are the labels I used to decorate my jars with!!!!

Sugar Scrub Printable Labels

I can't wait to give these as gifts and use some myself this Holiday season!!!

I canceled cable

I canceled cable!!! Our last bill for phone, cable and internet was $172 a month!!! How insane is that!

Out of the three of these we use the internet the most. I personally barely watch anything beyond local channels and my husband watches cable because its there.... not really because he needs too.

I had two big concerns about canceling cable.

1. I love DVR, how would I live without that?

2. Little man needs to be able to watch Curious George 24 hours a day.... we have 89 episodes stored on our DVR....

I was recently talking to my youngest sister about our last bill and she told me I should check out Roku.

After some research I realized Roku would help with the no DVR issue since for $8 a month you can stream anything from Hulu plus. And Hulu plus has pretty much all of the current shows available for viewing the next day! (I still have not figured out how to stream CBS shows, so if anyone knows, please let me know!)

So that brings me to the Curious George issue. Little Man has no problem watching the same episodes over and over again. Well I am also an Amazon Prime member and you can stream Amazon Prime with Roku as well. However Curious George is not one of the free shows included with that. I broke down and purchased a season of Curious George, so we now have 30 episodes to pick from (not the 89!)

So I finally made the call today and canceled cable! I wanted to cancel our phone, but was talked into keeping it for now. "Do you know 911 is much faster from a land line...." What a great thing to tell a pregnant hormonal mother who freaks out about everything!!! So for now I kept it!!! I decided after some research to stay with the cable company for internet. We have really fast internet with them and switching to someone else may have saved us a few bucks a month but the speed would have been cut in half, and I figured with all of our devices we connect to the internet and wanting to stream, keeping the faster speed was worth it!

 Probably not the best picture to show how little this Roku box is!! But it's like 3 inches by 3 inches! So small!!

The cost break down:

We previously paid $172 a month with cable
Currently pay $72 a month for phone and internet (and if I am ever brave enough to cancel phone this will only be $50 a month!!!)


Hulu Plus is $8 a month (but we have it free for the next 6 months)
Amazon Prime is $6.50 a month but you pay for that up front yearly (I am not sure if I will keep this after my year runs out!!) 

I purchased two Roku boxes for $180 which each including 3 months free of Hulu plus  (Target had this promo last week!!!)

I also had to purchase one antenna to access local channels, as we already had two. That was about $14.
And I bought one HDMI cable to connect the second Roku box to the TV (I could have just used the cable included, but decided to upgrade to the HDMI cable)

So we are at $80 a month versus $172 a month!!! That is a savings of $1,100 a year!!!!!! (Minus the $208 I spent on equipment)

Brownie Box to Washi Tape Mail Sorter

In my procrastination for my wedding duties, I decided I needed to organize my kitchen (there will be more on this later!!!) I decided I needed an inbox for bills and things that needed attention. Yes I could have gone to Target and bought one, BUT this was SUPER easy to make and really took me less than 30 minutes!

I started with 2 brownie boxes and NO plan, just a vision!

I started by cutting the top 1/3 of my box off and then cutting down the front of both sides of the box.

I then drew a diagonal line on the side of the box from the top to the bottom (see the picture on the right) to allow for the angled shape I wanted.

Fold on the line and cut off the extra little flap (Don't cut off the extra from your fold line, this is how you attach the two sides!)

Repeat this for the other side of the box.

Then, repeat the above few steps for the other box! I used the first box as a template for the second (see the image below on the left) Then to assemble, a little hot glue on the flap side, press and hold.

Glue both sides, and assemble the second box. SO easy! Then hot glue the two boxes together.

A finished, yet ugly In Box!

To decorate I used my Target Washi tape. As long as you don't look at the back.... I just applied layers of the tape until I had the design I wanted! (I changed my color from this picture to my final pictures!!) 

I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut out two fun shapes with Chalkboard vinyl! A couple Command Adhesive strips on the back and I have a new organized in-box!

It feels so much better to be organized!

Honey Lemon Sugar Hand Scrub

For Mother's Day I made some Honey Lemon Sugar Hand Scrub. It was so very easy and took all of a few minutes!

I loosely followed a recipe...
3 cups of sugar
4 lemons
1/2 Cup of Honey (or so)
Less than a cup of Olive Oil

I added the simple ingredients in the order listed above, slowly adding in the olive oil until its the desired consistency you want. I didn't want a strong olive oil smell so added in a bit extra lemon. Mix well and you are done!

I distribute them into cute mason jars, added chalk board vinyl and some ribbon and I have a simple mother's day gift. Plus I tried it out and have super soft hands!!!

Chevron Curtains

I finally finished my Chevron Gray and White curtains!!! I was so intimidated for the longest time, so I was afraid to start them (sort of like the 2 chairs I have in my garage that needs to be re-upholstered.)

This is my lovely Target lamp and the shade I covered with left over material from my pouf! I LOVE LOVE LOVE the lamp and base combo! I love that mustard yellow color!!!! The curtains were not hard to sew, but they intimidated me, and once I got past that, they were easy!!!! (It's just sewing 4 straight lines with the top and bottom a bit wider than the sides) I also took great effort to make sure that if they were pulled shut the pattern would match up between the two panels.

I spray painted some black grommets I purchased on sale white since I thought the black would stick out too much. They were very easy to paint and look great!!
I love how light and flowy they are compared to the brown curtains that were there before. I am glad I finally got over the intimidation of finishing these and actually finished them!! Now to actually start those 2 chairs that are in my garage. When I actually find the time I know I can do it after my last few projects!

How to cut burlap

I am not a fan of burlap at the moment, but only because we used it to make my sister's shower invitations and it makes a huge mess and smells a bit funky!

I originally gave my mom the task of cutting the burlap into strips. Well that did not work so well because we did not realize there is a WAY to cut burlap and in case you do not know how, here is how you do it! We were even considering ordering burlap ribbon because it did not look nice once cut! But this easy trick saved us the $20 for a roll of burlap ribbon!

Determine where you want to make your cut and pull out a piece of the string as shown below. Continue to work the entire string all the way out.

Then you have a nice line where you can make your cut!
Use your sharp scissors to cut along this new line!
Look no fraying!
And now you have a nice piece of burlap!

How to take a picture inside at night... a-ha moment!!

Over the weekend I took a photography class with an AWESOME local Photographer.

I have had my DSLR for almost 2 and a half years now and I have taken a few classes on how to take pictures with it and I had learned great things. For the most part I could take great shots of my soon to be two year old in the daytime, but I could NEVER get good pictures at night inside our house....

Last year for my birthday when I got a gift card to a local Camera Company, I bought a Canon Speedlite 430 EX II. I used it pointed straight up to bounce the light off of the ceiling. It worked great but I was bad about replacing the batteries in it.

So over the weekend at my class, I brought up the issue I had with taking pictures at my house, at night. They were so YELLOW looking.

Here are a couple pictures I took last week before my class. Blurry and yellow! Could be cute, but they are not.... sad mama!

Then enter my class!! I learned that in this situation I should change my white balance setting to the Tungsten setting and up my ISO to at least 1600.

TWO SIMPLE CHANGES!!! But wow do they REALLY make a difference!

The next two pictures were taken in the same spot of the house, similar time, same lighting... etc... I just changed the ISO and White Balance BUT they aren't yellow like the first ones!!!


I love this last picture! It looks like something I could have taken in the middle of the day!
Once again the side by side comparision! Look at the difference in the picture on the right! The color is SO much better!!! I am SO excited to have finally learned this tip! Two simple things and my pictures look so much better!!