Finished…

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

This weekend marked the end of the
Crafting Over Sweeting Challenge.

It’s just oh so bittersweet.

I definitely would describe this challenge as a crash course in self control.
Sweets are still a weakness of mine, but at least I know now I am strong enough to resist.
I think that is the most important lesson I learned:

You’re only as strong as you allow yourself to be.

That being said, after the 21 days I did do a little celebrating sweet wise.
How did I celebrate you might ask?

Buttermilk syrup and homemade pancakes, 3 slices of my Mom’s famous cheesecake, and Martinelli’s…
all over the course of a couple days of course!
It was heavenly and oh so yummy.

I still eat sweets, but not as much as I did before the challenge.
My favorite is a handful of semi-sweet chocolate chips,
which I must say is vast improvement over
the half dozen or so chocolate chip cookies I used to consume.

Now that the challenge is over,
I’ve been contemplating what to do with this blog
and I finally decided I’m going to keep doing it.

I’ve learned that I LOVE blogging!
It is such a fantastic way to have fun and meet new people.

I’ve learned that I LOVE crafting.
I love creating, and I love sharing my ideas with everyone.
It’s my passion, and I can’t imagine NOT doing it.

I have so much more I want to share and so many crafts that I still want to do!
Even if there is just one person reading this, I will be here writing.
So please stick around, and as always

Happy Crafting!

I love yardsales..

Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Who doesn’t love a good yard sale??
I always get a little sad when those chilly fall days roll around because I know
that it brings with it the end of yard sale season.

As I was finishing up the final crafts of the
Crafting Over Sweeting Challenge
I decided I wanted to make something could put in my boy’s room.
I’ve been dying to do their room in a beach theme ever since I saw this photo:

*From here.*

One of my many yard sale finds was a surfboard. I knew I wanted to do something lasting with it, because I loved it oh so much. I came up with this…


I just loved the idea of making this surfboard into a height tracker!
This way it becomes a piece of decor I’ll always love to have around.

I painted on the numbers, inch markers and hibiscus.
*I did this by printing out the numbers in different fonts and sizes, cutting them out, trace them onto the board, and finally painted them by hand. Vinyl would have been oh so easier, but alas! I didn’t have any on hand.*


I got these beach themed wooden painted lovelies.
*I have no idea what these are actually called, but I found them at JoAnn’s Etc for about 60 cents a piece.*


Each of my boys got to choose their own, which they loved.
I measured them and wrote down their name, height and date on the front.


Voila!


My boys have so much fun seeing how tall they are getting,
and now I think I have that motivation to finally get their room done.

Happy Crafting!

Fall = Stew

Saturday, October 22, 2011

It feels so good to be back blogging again!

The past week has been a little crazy. We’re getting ready for things which I can’t go into a lot of detail about (I’m a military wife though, so you could probably guess from that.).

There is a lot of stuff we have needed to get done, and a lot of time we needed to spend as a family.

I have managed to still be crafting though, even involving my husband and kids along the way.These next posts are going to be the last ones for the Crafting Over Sweeting Challenge.

It’s a little bittersweet and I can’t believe the 21 days are over, but more on that later.

This post’s featured craft is:

Yummy Creamy Beef Stew

picture & recipe inspiration courtesy of Italian cooking goddess, Giada de Laurentiis.
** I couldn’t even snap a picture of mine, the family had it gobbled up before I could!
So, imagine this picture with lovely, creamy sauce.**

I consider cooking a craft. To me, it’s just another way to get your creative juices flowing.
When I stumbled upon this Beef Stew recipe by Miss Laurentiis I knew I had to try it.
Her recipes are fantastic and oh so flavorful. When I started cooking it though, the creative juices started to flow. The end result was a combination of lack of ingredients, preferred taste, and things I just needed to use, that resulted in something utterly delicious.

Pair this stew with these, I you got your self one heck of a dinner!

**The ingredients/instructions in BLACK are from the original recipe, the ingredients/instructions in TURQUOISE are my own add-ins or substitutes.**

For this craft you will need:

  • 3 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1 onion, peeled and chopped
  • 2 cloves of garlic, minced
  • 1 teaspoon dried rosemary
  • 1 teaspoon dried thyme
  • 2 pounds stew beef, cut into 2-inch cubes
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
  • 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more to taste
  • 2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
  • 1 can of French Onion soup
  • 2-3 cups of butternut squash, trimmed and cut into 2-inch cubes
  • 4 carrots, peeled and chopped
  • 3 potatoes, peeled and chopped
  • 2 cans of beef broth
  • 1 cup heavy cream
  • 1 Tablespoon cornstarch

Directions:

In a large soup pot heat 3 tablespoons of olive oil medium heat.

Add the onions, garlic, rosemary, and thyme and saute until the onions are tender, about 2 minutes.

Toss the beef cubes in salt and pepper and flour.

Turn up the heat to med-high and add the beef to the pot. Cook until the beef is browned and golden around the edges, about 5 minutes.

Add the can of French Onion soup. Using a wooden spoon, gently stir up all the brown bits off the bottom of the pan.

Add the butternut squash, carrots, and potatoes. Stir to combine.

Add enough beef broth to just cover the beef and squash. Bring the stew to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to low and simmer, covered, for 1 hour.

After the stew has simmered, combine the heavy cream and cornstarch in a separate bowl. Make sure there are no lumps left.

Add the cream and cornstarch mixture to the stew and heat until thick, bubbly and delicious.

Mmmm… so perfect for a cold day.

Happy Crafting!

 

Melted crayons… who knew?

Saturday, October 22, 2011

If you have not seen melted crayon art simply type those words into

Google and see what you have been missing.

I have seen this all over the place. It can be found on multiple blogs, Pinterst, Tumblr…it is pretty much everywhere! (You can find the originals here. Her Etsy shop is so much fun!)

Needless to say once I saw it I knew I had to try it!

For this craft you will need:

1 blank canvas

Crayons
*Enough to extend across the whole top.
Mine was a rather long canvas so I used the 120 pack.*Hair dryer or a heat gun
Hot glue gun

Ooh, so many colors!!


Organize the crayons in the order you find most appealing.


Use your hot glue to attach them to the canvas.


Get your hair dryer and heat gun and start melting!
**Helpful Tip: If you are using a hair dryer, keep it as close to the crayons and situate it near the middle of them. If you get too close to tips, the melting wax will splatter instead of run. This was a trick I learned a little too late, so I had to kind of roll with the splattered look.**

This is no good,
massive amounts of splattering is about to happen and I was clueless.


This is much better! You can see that it is beginning to run instead of splatter.


So cool!!


You can tell I was really working the splatters at the end.
I just went with it, and ended up really loving it!

This is such an awesome project and all the materials only cost me around $10,
which is another major plus.

Who know melting crayons could be so much fun??

Happy Crafting!!

Leslie
October 23, 2011 at 9:37 PM
I seriously need to do this with my boys. They would LOVE it!!!

Sometimes you need a breather.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Hey all! This is the final week of the

Crafting Over Sweeting Challenge!
I can’t believe that I only have 3 more days… CRAZY!

I’m so excited because we have family in town for a couple of days.

This of course does not mean I’m not keeping up with the crafting
(I have pictures to prove it! :D),
it just means that I won’t get to blog about all of them until Friday & Saturday.

I am going to be featuring 4 more crafts by the end of the week.

-Melted crayon art
*So awesome! If you haven’t seen this yet just type it into to Pinterest
or even Google and check it out. Once I saw it I knew I NEEDED to try it out.*

-Surfboard height tracker
*For my kid’s (soon to be) beach-themed room.*

-Floral Monogram
*I needed to use the flowers from the wreath I took apart
and this worked out perfectly!*

-Yummy Creamy Beef Stew
*just as an added bonus, and because it’s a-mazingly delicious.*

Happy Crafting!