Cute 4th of July Goodie Plate

I love the 4th of July! I made up these fun little plates to take around to my Visiting Teaching ladies. I absolutely love sugar cookies. I have the best sugar cookie recipe, you can get it here. The cute tags and much more, you can find here.

And this is my new favorite Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting:

Beat 1 pkg. (8 oz.) cream cheese, softened, 1/4 cup butter, softened, 2 Tbsp. sour cream and
2 tsps pure vanilla extract in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in 4 cups powdered sugar until smooth.

Darling & Free Babyshower Download

Stumbled across this the other day. Though you might like it. Go visit Fresh Linen, (what a great name) to get these goodies!

GOOP

(this is a repost from the very beginnings of our blog, almost 2 years ago!! This is what we will be doing today!)

Logan brought home his planner from school today and slammed it down on the kitchen counter and said "Mom, I have been dying to make this all day!" I turned to look at him and he had all the ingredients out and ready to go....how could I say no. It was the coolest thing ever and perfect for the Halloween spirit!

Ingredients:

2 Cups Cornstarch

food coloring

1 cup water

Put cornstarch in bowl, add food coloring, and slowly add water to cornstarch while mixing with hands. HAVE FUN!!!!

The Best Applique Templates

Aren't these cute? Makes me want to have another baby boy!!! So, I am still loving the applique's. I have a few others I am working on. But it seems that I am surrounded by friends who are having boys! Gotta stock up. I want to share some great sights to find free applique templates.

Homemade by Jill, she has the cute tie printable! There is a link to Martha website, and as always, she's got the goods!!

Planet Applique, has a ton of free appliques, plus some you can buy.

Better Homes and Gardens, has a HUGE list! However, you do have to sign up to access them. But that is free.

Free Appliques, has oodles of great templates. Everything from Christmas to baby!

Scherenschnitte, has these great templates, that are used for paper cutting, but could definitely be used for some appliques!

Martha's got two darling downloads on this post. A cute wren and a horse!

Wee Folk Arts, also has a ton of free templates and huge list of fun and free patterns.

Oh, and this guitar shirt is darling and she's included a free download!

Popsicle Cosies

Type Popsicle Cosie into your google search and see what pops up. HILARIOUS and somewhat disturbing.... Anywho, I saw this idea last year, and I can't remember where, hence the google search. I thought about making them, but just never got around to it. My 3-year-old loves Popsicles, but doesn't like to hold them, so she wraps wash clothes around them. The other day, I was watching her and remembered these!
So easy and my kids are in love with them. Every time they have a Popsicle, they have to run and grab a cosie now. Even my older kids! I love it. I took pictures to post a tutorial, but they are the simplest things ever to make.

1. Cut yourself a piece of 3x4 felt. The 3 being your height and the 4 your width.

2. Fold the felt in half, so that you have a 2 inch piece of felt. Sew a stitch down the side. I did a fun zig zag stitch. I used the edge of the zipper foot as my guide. Trim it up and you've got a Popsicle cosie that will fit an otter-pop!

That's it! So easy and so cute! We have a huge stockpile in different colors, because we are the neighborhood party house.

Flowers

Just a sampling of the many I have made in the last week!

I have found a new technique with these. I bought a bunch of silk to do flowers and discovered that this particular blend catches on fire when you use a lighter!! So I was trying to think what to do and I ended up doing an embosser. It took me several attempts to figure out how to do it without burning my fingers. I just used tweezers to hold the material, but then you have to be careful not to touch the tweezers! Anyway, it melts the edges, without leaving black on the material and it gives you a more crinkly flower. I am loving it!

I am also loving these little gems. They are attached to little silver bobby-pins and they are tiny! Not the easiest to make, but super cute! I wish I could have gotten a better picture to show you the material on this one. It's creme with crocheted pink flowers. It was a little girl shirt that got a hole in it! Waste not, want not!!

I signed up for a homemade gift-exchange over at Craftaholics Anonymous. I sent my cute gal 6 of the above flowers. I hope she likes them.

Placemat Scripture Tote

Mandee's little girl is getting baptized next weekend. I wanted to try my hand at making a scripture tote from a placemat. I've heard it's really easy and so I gave it a go. I got the placemat at the dollar store. It was a thick, canvas type material. I lined the inside with some coordinating fabric. I followed a tutorial from Little Birdie Secrets. It's pretty self-explanatory. I totally complicated by adding the lining. I really just got the basics and did my own thing!
Add a big huge flower and it's darling!

I am really tickled with how it turned out. It's defiently not perfect, but it will do the job. And really, who's going to be looking that close at it!

I am going to try and make some with just fabric and some interfacing. I would probably make some improvements, by adding a pocket inside and possbily a closure on top. I'll let ya know how it turns out!

Fathers Day Coupons

I love Lettering Delights! I get email updates to my inbox and visit their often to get fonts and dowloads! For one week they are offering a free download of these darling dad coupons! Easy gift for the kiddo's to make for dad!! One of them is good for 1 hour of silence. How cool would that be????

Pluse, when you sign up, you get $50.00 worth of free downloads! You'll love them, I promise!

Fathers Day Blues

I'm not a fan of Fathers Day! I love my husband and I love showing him that I appreciate and love him for all that he does, but well, it makes me feel bad for several reasons.

My own father died when I was nine. So there are few Fathers Day's that I remember as a child.

My husband, bless his heart, feels the need to spoil me for Mother's Day. This year I got a new camera. And usually he does really well at making it a surprise. I'm not so prone to spend a lot of money. I love the idea of giving something homemade and from the heart. He thinks it's kinda cheesy! But every year he smiles and says thanks. And every year I feel really bad. He doesn't make me feel bad intentionally, but I can just tell he's not as excited about the case of Dad's rootbeer and homemade cards, as I was about my camera!!

Also, I wouldn't mind spending money if my guys was easy to shop for. BUT HE'S NOT! He's not into gadgets, he doesn't golf, he doesn't read, he only wears ties on Sunday. Do you see my point?? He likes guns and cars. Both of which are out of my gift giving budget.

But the web isn't all that helpful this year. Of course, their are a few blogs with projects on them. Tip Junkie is always a favorite.

What would we do without Tip Junkie and all of her ideas? She has oodles of Father's Day ideas.

I have a few ideas and I will try and implement them today and see what happens. I'll post later this week to let you know what he will be getting. I am going to try and be a little bit creative!

And, while you consider all these fun ideas, go check out this video. It made me tear up just a little!

5 Daily Reads

Women are so crafty and so inspirational. Just a few more I thought I would share!

Pinkalicious Party

This was the cutest and funnest party to plan for!! Up to now I've only ever hosted little boy parties, but this way fun! It was also one of the simplest parties I've ever thrown. I once made a pirate ship from a canoe, PVC pipe and a whole lot of canvas! So yeah, this was easy.
And look at that little face! It was so worth it!

First, we had the girls wear pink, pink, pink! And then we painted their toe nails pink.

And of course we read Pinkalicious!

I made each of the girls a pink cupcake Barrett for their goodie bags! My sister thougth I was crazy because I handstitched each one!

We filled their goodie bags with everything pink! They also were given a pink and silver crown when they arrived. We blew bubbles and ate lots of pink cupcakes, raspberry sherbet and drank pink Kool-aid.

It was fun and so easy to do. The party only lasted an hour, as it was for 3 and 4-year-olds. I had to much going on the day of the party, to decorate the way I had wanted to, but they didn't mind. I also made up a printable invitation, that you can print off and fill in the blanks. You can find it here.

There are also some great posts out and about in blogger, about Pinkalicious parties, if you want to go really crazy and above and beyond! How Does She, just posted a great one! If my little girl was a few years older, we might have gone this big.

A Couple of Food Storage Recipes

Sorry, I've been missing in action! Last week was crazy! I mean crazy, crazy! I held a mini-food storage class at my house. It was a lot of fun, but a lot of work. I wanted to share with you the recipes that I made up. You can dowload them here.

These yummy whole-wheat brownies, were adapted from the cookbook, I Can't Believe It's Food Storage. I also made up a yummy Mexican Casserole with dehydrated beans and tvp, a wheatberry casserole and wheat bread. The wheat bread recipe is the one from My Crazy Life's blog. I have posted it before. It is by far the best bread recipe ever!

Happy Monday! See you all later this week. We are in the midst of hosting a Pinkalicious Party. I'll be back with those details later this week!

Christmas in July Gift Exchange

How many of you know Linda over at Craftaholic Anonymous? Love her and her blog! She is hosting a Christmas in July, homemade Gift exchange. Sign up ends on the 9th.

I'm totally in!!!! Are you?

Applique Tutorial

Remember to scroll down and get entered in the giveaway!

Step 1. Find an applique that you like. Cut it out. Cut out a piece of Wonder Under, that is big enough for your applique.

Step 2. Iron your material, wrong side up.

Step. 3. Place the wonder Under on the material, placing the bumpy side to the fabric. Press with a hot, dry iron for about 15 seconds until it is stuck well.

Step 4. Trace your applique onto the wonder under. Cut out the applique.

Step 5 and 6. Remove the backing on the applique. I use a seam ripper to carefully slice a small line in the backing and then I peel it off. It is the easiest way that I have found to get the stuff off!

Step 7: Press the shirt that you are putting the applique on.

Step 8: Place your applique on the shirt. Adjust it to where you would like it. Press with a dry iron, set on the wool setting until applique adheres to the shirt. This only takes about 30 seconds.

Step 9: Wear your cute shirt!

You can also sew a cute top stitch around the edges of the applique. I recommend this. I left the top stitch off of this shirt and washed it to see how it held up without it and it was did great! However my little 2-year-olds fingers managed to peel it off.

This is great for those stained t-shirts and onesies!! Extends their lives and makes them oh, so cute!