Pioneer Woman Challenge #1

I love Pioneer Woman. I read her blog religiously. She has the best of EVERYTHING.

Then I saw this on Pinterest: Knock You Naked Brownies

Don't these look fab? Yowza!

So I went to Pioneer Woman and found her recipe. I love how when you print it out, they are like 4x6 cards. Love that.

Here is her recipe, which is apparently based on another recipe.

As a sidebar, the reason why I love her recipes, is that she has awesome photos. I have photos, they aren't awesome, but at least I have them. Plus she is funny.

Alright. Basically you are making a brownie mix from a cake mix, adding some melted caramels and choc chips and then putting more brownie mix.

Here are some craptacular photos for you:

Basic ingredients

I couldn't find GERMAN chocolate cake. I got Devil's Food. It looked chocolatey.

Ugh, this is what took so long. First of all, the recipe says SIXTY. I did not have that much, and it took a long time to take the wrappers off those suckers.

And, the caramels take a LONG TIME to melt. Like 20=25 minutes. I was losing my mind.

Finally it looked like it was coming together.

So the short version. Add butter and evaporated (Carnation not Eaglebrand) milk to your cake mix. Bake. Then do your caramels and more Carnation. Pour it over. Sprinkle with chocolate chips. Take the other half of your batter and put it on the top. Bake for 25 min. Let cool and refrigerate for several hours. (really?)

And Voila!

Now Pioneer Woman says that you have to dice with lots of icing sugar. Mine are still very hot. I think I'll let them cool overnight and then put them in the fridge tomorrow. Perfect for afternoon tea!

no sew shopping bag with t-shirt

A short and sweet little project. It's an easy grocery bag you make with all those old t-shirts that you can't bear to give up!


I saw this on Pinterest (of course):

I saw this on Martha Stewart a long time ago. She even has a video! I love you Martha!

Here is a great tutorial (let's not re-invent the wheel)

For a no-sew version, line up both sides of the shirt, and cut 2 inch strips. Then, tie in knots along the bottom. Voila!

I made one for my Secret Santa. They would make great grocery bags- would fold up neatly into one!

Pinterest Challenge- Earwarmer!

So, someone who I follow on Pinterest asked me if I could make this:

I LOVE IT.

I do crochet, and I don't use patterns alot. I often buy patterns off etsy, but I love to make things my own. So I set about doing this. I used chunky off white yarn, and a simple pattern to give some visual interest. I liked the flower in the photo, but I wanted it bigger. I had a pattern for a flower and I just adapted it to make it bigger.

My version:

Simple and cute. Has a wooden button at the back to adjust perfectly!

A better view of the large flower. La piece de la resistance!

The same designer/Etsy seller has a pinwheel earwarmer. I think I might try this next-

Keep your requests coming!

Curls Without Heat - Part 1- Rambo Headband

So, I have long hair. It's a bit wavy but more annoying than cute.

I have 2 sets of hot rollers under my bathroom sink that I never use. I also have a few curling irons and a flat iron or two that I never use either! Being a busy work at home mom means I usually do not take the time to use heat appliances to make my hair fancy. Because 1.Inevitably I have to wait for it to be ready. And my son will have to see what it is and touch it. and 2. It's just too much of a bother.

While perusing YouTube one evening, I found this:
Curls Without Heat

There are several other ways to do it, but this one looked the easiest and the fastest (takes me about 5-10 minutes to get it wrapped and less than 5 to get it out the next morning).

I had bought one of those "no-slip" headbands from Goody, and of course it slipped, so it was just sitting there in my bin of hair stuff.

So I thought, I will try it.

Please note: I have alot of thick, long hair, and this worked like a charm. You could use it for any length of hair, but I would think shoulder length or longer would work best. As you can sorta see from the photo, the curls dont' start until the top of your ears (which you can't notice on long hair). It's worth a try though!

Basically you put the headband on like RAMBO (as my husband would say). Start on one side and wrap hair around the headband (loose or tight- depends on the curls you want). The next section you pick up the tail of hair you just wrapped along with more hair (kinda like a french braid). You do this on both sides, and then MacGyver something at the back. (I twisted the ends in a bun and put a bobby pin).

Then, you go to sleep.

I look worse than Sly Stallone. Can't remember if this was before I went to bed or when I woke up, Either way, scary!

It's easy to get out in the morning and you have great curls that last all day.

A couple more shots for you. The curls are big and bouncy!

A bit of makeup and some hairspray and you are all fancy!

Try it!

Homemade Playdoh- looks and smells yummy!

Ok, so everyone loves Playdoh. But, having a 3 year old- I just find harden bits on the carpet or those little tubs with no lid. Grr.

As a teacher, I did have a playdoh recipe somewhere that was my mom's (she was a teacher for 30 years!). But, having taught intermediate kids (gr 7 and 8) and now high school, I just was out of touch with homemade playdoh.

So I noticed something on Pinterest that someone else had pinned: THIS:

Which led me to this website: Playdoh Recipe

I read the recipe: Seemed straight forward. Loved that the colour came from jello, and not food colouring (that I inevitably will have all over my hands for days).

I had most of the ingredients, except the weird Cream of Tartar.

$2.99. We used the whole thing for 5 batches. 2 tbsp per batch.

ALWAYS USE CREAM OF TARTAR.  Please don't ask why, just buy it.


Oh, and I thought I had jello, but it turned out to be fat free pudding.
No worries! I read the comments and saw that people used Kool Aid (the cheap ones that you add sugar to that I never buy or use- too much work). I remembered I had some from somewhere! I found them.
Thirty cents a pack.

I gathered up my materials:

(You don't need a photo of salt, oil, flour- do you?)

My little helper. We made a BATCH for every colour we wanted.

Birthday boy.

Put everything in the pot. That's it. Even a 3 year old can do that.

The messy goo.

Ok, so the one MAJOR problem with the recipe on the website above is the LACK OF INSTRUCTIONS. Nowhere does it say to cook it! Hello? Thank goodness I read all the comments below where another wonderful poster had posted the same thing. So I put it on the stove, medium heat. Some of the batches I watched and stirred, the batch above, I forgot about it. Oops. Here is the result:



Do NOT leave the pan. Ok, well it came off pretty easily with hot water.



Once you cook it and stir, this is what it looks like. It looks oily and wet- and it is. I set it on foil and waited a while. It gets less gooey and supersoft! Love the vibrant colours. It does smell yummy for a little while. And if your kid decides to try and eat it, it tastes awful (yes, I tried).

We used all the colours we had!



Remember to knead it so you dont have weird clumps (like mine!)



All ready to go. Will last a long time if you actually keep it in the ziplocs!

I put each in a ziploc bag. As an activity, we used dollar store stampers to make impressions in the playdoh. We also used hard placemats (not pictured) to use as a table to we could sit on the floor. And it DOESN'T come off on your hands- no matter how many times we checked!



Why don't you try it?

Photo Thank You Cards

I always write thank you cards. It's a nice old-fashioned way of letting someone know that you appreciate their thoughtfulness.

So here are a few ideas:

1.These are adorable!

These would be good for a child who can scribe or could write.


2.For a child that could draw or write a thank you.

These are nice, all purpose cards! Love the avatar.


3. For a smaller child (like my 3 year old!)

Love this idea. But, I didn't have a recent portrait. Hmmm. Then I thought, why not include a photo of my child playing/wearing/doing something with the gift and put it in the card with the recipient?

I thought- I could print out a photo and use double-sided tape on the photo of my son.

I started off by keeping my camera close, and every time I saw my son with a present, I would snap a decent pic, to be printed later.

Then I went to Picnik to put the words on. I have a decent printer, but didnt want to try and figure out how to put the cards through it. So, I thought- I might be able to put text on a background photo and add it to the card. Then I could print it out for everyone, and use said double-sided tape and add it to the card. This is my version:

So- all I needed was cards. I thought I might have saw some at the dollar store- And yes! There they were. Plain white. Love them. Perfect for my two photos. And best of all, I just needed to print the thank you for everyone, and then one copy of each photo to match the gift-giver. No writing required. (ok, maybe the envelope!)

I also included a photo of my son with the recipient's gift. For those that I didn't catch him playing with, I used a photo of him blowing out his candles.

Note: I saw cards like the first ones pictured above at Dollarama for Christmas.

Snowman Activities from Pinterest (Part 2- Review)

So, as I said, yesterday was my little man's 3rd birthday (hard to believe!)

I am a theme person. I like themes. Themes make everything easy. You can pick a theme and run with it.

When I asked my son what he wanted on his birthday cake, he said "Sponge Bob". This is peculiar- as I don't ever remember him watching this show. And, I'm not into Sponge Bob.

So I decided a good theme for a little boy's 3rd birthday in November would be SNOWMAN.

Being a teacher, I had a few ideas. But with Pinterest, there is no need to spend hours searching and searching for things.

But of course, you have to be REALISTIC. I mean, I consider myself crafty with an above average skill level, but there are a few factors: 
 1. It's for a little boy's 3rd birthday. Most 3 year olds don't care about decor.
 2. Only close friends and family are invited, and most of them don't care about decor.
 3. I'm not going overboard- money wise, time wise or decor-wise.

So of course, I hit the dollar store. I found some cute things to give away to the kids. But I needed more.

I found this:

And I thought- OK! Some powdered donuts, some choc icing and a nose. Would be cute on the munchie trays.

I couldn't find the mini donuts, but I found 6 powdered donuts for 99cents. They are probably stale, but I figured they are only for looks.

I bought a tube of icing at the grocery store for $2.29. I used it for the eyes and the mouth. I used baby carrot pieces for the nose.

Super Easy. Here is my version:

Obviously I used raisins from a bag of trailmix, slices of carrots for the nose, and dots of icing for the mouth.

Then I found this:

Looks cute! I found some snowmen with coconut and this one with sugar. I wanted the kids to be able to make them themselves, so I tweaked it a bit.

I thought, maybe a "make your own snowman" station would be good. So, I collected what I thought might work.

I bought large marshmellows, mini-marshmellows, toothpicks. For the record, I bought the Oreos for the hats, but my husband and son ate them. So we didn't have hats.
The night before, I put the faces on some marshmellows so that it would be dry for the kids and we wouldn't have to mess with it in the fury of activity. Of course, the plate of those marshmellows were left in the house.

Here is what the kids came up with:

Ok, so its really my example. For the record, I wouldn't try and use that icing again. It didn't have a tip on it (I thought it would fit my other tips, but it didn't). I ended up putting in a ziploc bag and snipping the corner off to make a pasty/icing bag like in the awesome photo below:

Then I saw these:

Since my little guy loves Timbits- I thought I would try it. However, I ran out of time. I had the chocolate to dip them, but didn't have the other stuff, so I improvised. I went through the Drive Thru of Tim Horton's and asked for 9 powdered Timbits. They thought I was nuts. I came home and used popsicle sticks and then some chocolate icing as glue and the rolos for the other snowman (see above). They were cute!

 Oh, and don't use the chocolate icing because it doesn't stick to the powdery-ness of the timbits.




So, my first review of stuff on Pinterest. I bet you are thinking I'm really not that crafty. If I had been having a party for adults, I might have paid more attention to detail. Oh, and I promise to get way better photos next time.

Please leave a comment or a request!