Somewhere, Over the Rainbow (with unicorns)

So I'm back in the saddle for being crafty again. It's December, and it's my niece's favorite time of the year. I'm sure every kid loves December for Christmas, but in our family, it's a busy month for birthdays.

Erica has requested an obscure birthday theme, a Rainbow Unicorn party. Really?! Of course she couldn't pick a theme that is easily found at Party City. And, you guessed it, I'm up for the Auntie of the Year award again.

Her requests were simple. (Yeah right!)

• A Rainbow Unicorn invitation
• Some bows for her hair and a matching rainbow outfit
• Unicorn goody bags
• Cute centerpieces

 

This is her invitation that I came up with. I left it very simple, but she adored it!

 

These are her rainbow bows, I didn't quite finish the middle yet, because I need to buy barrettes to glue gun it to.

 

These rainbows are about 7" tall. They will part of her centerpieces, which will have paint cans filled with jellybeans with these on a dowel rod coming out of them. They were made with our Cricut die cutting machine.

 

I made about 30 Unicorns with rainbow manes to be stuck onto the outside of colored gift bags. These were also made with the Cricut. We glued little purple jewels for the eyes to girly them up.

 

We got most of it accomplished. We still have a ways to go with her outfit, it's being made, but I feel like we've done most of the grunt work.

Stay tuned for next week, I think I'm  going to attempt a festive wreath for our home's front door!

Cookie Monster

So there I was, minding my own business, catching up on work.....when the inevitable happens.

My husband lets me know at 9pm that he signed up for a potluck at work for tomorrow and needs a lot of cookies to be baked. REALLY?! It must be my lucky day!!!

Thank goodness that Target is already on Holiday hours so that I could speed over and get cookie supplies. I don't have enough time to bake from scratch, so premixed bags will have to do. ( Did I mention that although I don't cook or clean, I'm an awesome baker!)

So, I'm currently still working on the cookies, while doing laundry and catching up on overdue homework and caring for the dogs and a houseguest. Whew! I want flowers or something for this.

A little pic of our scrumptious baked goods....

The artist in me

I don't always like to toot my own horn, but I have to admit that I take my academics seriously. Now that I am much older than typical college age, I have learned the importance of keeping a good g.p.a. I currently have a 4.0, but that may come to an end soon by the one class I thought would be an easy A!

I am taking a Drawing I course, and it has been the death of me. I have struggled every week, with every assignment, and I have a B. I am in denial/shock that there is not a paper I can write to fix my grade. I thought I would document my latest assignment which was drawing fabric or paper. I chose to do paper because after trying to draw fabric, I found I do not have the patience to do the work carefully. ( I later found out that I was the only student to attempt paper, because it is SUPER HARD!)

Below, you can see my drawing transform from nothing to the end product. I think I got a B on the assignment, but I did my best to try for an A.

Skeleton Mania!

So, finally an update on our skeleton craft.

My students LOVED this edible craft. Not all went as smoothly as Pinterest made it look, but that's to be expected my kiddos are 3 years old afterall.

The brownies I found were round instead of the square they were supposed to be, so the space the kids could work with was limited. The lollipop sticks were way too long which made an inch of the stick come out the top of the marshmallow skull. We of course cut the sticks, so we fixed that problem fairly quickly. My assistant allowed the kids to make the faces themselves, which in some cases was hilarious.

I think overall, the project was a success, and the parents were surprised and impressed that their kids made these skeletons.

I'll let ya'll be the judge.

The skull is connected to the rib bone....

So I haven't officially made anything for this week, but I have a craft in mind.

Since I am a teacher, holidays are always a fun topic to cover and there are lots of cutesy things that we can do with our students. This year as a food craft, we are going to attempt a skeleton coming out of the dirt.
Supplies needed:

• brownies
• white chocolate covered pretzels
• marshmallows
• black edible decorating pen
• lollipop sticks
• clear bags

The one thing I don't have is the black edible decorating pen, but I do have NEON colors! I don't know if it will have the same effect,  but I will update with our version when we do it tomorrow.

Here is a picture of the original post I saw on Pinterest.

Coming soon: OUR version.

Fifty shades of what?!

Alas, another bachelorette party is amiss. I find I have no time to cook or craft because I am so busy fulfilling invitation orders in my free time!

I created a bridal shower invite a few weeks ago for my friend Alex, and got a special request to do the bachelorette party. After a summer obsessed with "Fifty Shades of Grey", she decided that was the theme she wanted!

I like the end product and I think she will too!

(And yes, I am patting myself on the back.)

Mexican Fare

We had Mexican night courtesy of moi'!Ole'!

I have to give thanks to my old pal Trappey's for helping with the beans again. I also bought the HEB fully cooked shredded chicken and some corn tortillas. I heated up some oil and dipped the corn tortilla in there, then filled it with chicken, and put it back in the oil to fry it up. I made chicken flautas with guacamole and shredded Monterrey Jack cheese, and rice and beans. I CAN cook rice. It's one of the few things I do well. Here is a picture of it all cooking. And it was scrumptious!

Life's a Crock

Mission:
Make something edible to eat

Recipe:
Pinterest Crockpot "Easy" Recipe

Taste Tester:
My guinea pig husband Jerry

So, I finally took on the task of cooking a meal. I didn't want to do anything over my very basic skill level, so I found a Pinterest recipe that had 5 ingredients and a basic throw it all in the pot set of instructions.
The ingredients were as follows:

• 4 thawed boneless/skinless chicken breasts
• a box of Cornbread stovetop stuffing
• one can of Cream of Chicken
• 1/2 cup of sour cream
• 1/4 cup of water

These are the pics I got to take of my mission before anything actually cooked.

 Here are the directions I followed:

• layer the four chickens side by side
• pour the box of stuffing on top
• mix the can of soup, sour cream and water in a small bowl
• pour the mixture evenly over the stuffing
• cook on low for 4 hours

This is what the thing looked like while cooking. Doesn't look too good, does it?

Although I don't have a final picture of how it all came out( because I finished at 11:30pm!), I will tell you that we each took it for lunch at work the next day. It tasted really good! Almost like a turkey dinner! Not bad for an amateur!!

Another one bites the dust...

Another one of my teacher friends is getting married. And since I created that invitation I posted about two weeks ago, word has gotten around that I'm decent at designing invites. This time it was her sister that came to me, and was desperately looking for an invite because the shower is going to be this Friday! Well, color me pressured!

She had no idea what type of design she wanted, nor colors, nor theme. After much probing, she gave me that she was thinking a classy tea and lace theme for the shower, but still had no idea what she wanted invites to look like and gave me free reign on whatever I would like to do. Well, I settled on a classy beige,pink, and grey color scheme. The final product was so well liked, that I received a phone call from the bride herself, in tears, thanking me for knowing her so well! Side business maybe??

Crafting with Love

My five year old niece basically has me wrapped around her little finger. I am not a crafty lady, yet time and again I find myself making things for her. This child has done it all: hip hop, ballet, folklorico, gymnastics, competitive cheerleading, and now soccer. All of which, I've made a sign, an outfit, or an accessory for.

She liked the way the other girls wore super cute bows with their uniforms, and well, I can now add soccer bows to my craft resume'. I went to Michael's and bought 3 ribbons all in various sizes. (Of course they coordinate with her black and red uniform)

I tried to watch YouTube videos giving a tutorial on how to actually make a bow, but I easily get ADD and said forget it, I can figure it out.

After a little trial and error, I folded the bow and got it looking decent looking, and a made a second one. Thank goodness I still had some supplies leftover from that cheerleading stint a year ago.

I did the same with the red and black ribbon, then hastily glued it all together with a glue gun and stuck them on some rubberbands.

And voila'! I better get that "Auntie of the Year" award that I formed in my head. I have to say it was fun to be creative, but it was also a challenge. I think I'd rather learn to cook now.

Design on my dime

I did not make anything to eat this week.  Correction: I made a "sandwich" that consisted of bread with a piece of ham slapped between it. So I went with a craft, if you will, for my blog this week.

This week was trying and BUSY! I have a good friend that was getting married in Vegas this weekend, but no one had thrown her a bridal shower or bachelorette party. I told her I was going to give her both. I've never thrown either of those types of parties before, so I took on the challenge and to make it just a little bit harder, the parties were going to be on a Wednesday night, and one right after another. YIKES!

To make a long story short, I successfully threw these parties and every guest that attended said that they had a great time and loved it. My main creation for the parties was the invite, which I admit, I am really proud of. I went with a Las Vegas theme, and threw in some glam. My final product is my pride and joy!

The First Supper

I achieved dinner! Before the sound of the applause throughout the world resonates within my ears I must confess I am a cheater.

I came home from work a little late on Wednesday, and I was starving and not feeling very well. I had just gotten a text from my husband saying that he was going to be at the office until 8pm. Well, my initial hopes of him coming home and cooking flew right out the window. I had to run some errands anyway and I figured that some sort of dinner inspiration surely had to form within my mind in the next hour. I went up and down every single aisle in Target. Nothing happened. Everything looked like it required effort and skill. I'm chock full of effort, but I lack the skill.

The drive home was sad. And I was still hungry. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw our local Culebra Meat Market and the light bulb went on in my head. I can buy tortillas and a can of beans! I will make bean and cheese tacos for dinner!

Ok, so I didn't make the tortillas from scratch. And the beans were precooked and canned by Trappeys. And as you can guess, Kraft made the processed cheese slice that was going inside the taco. But I kid you not, I warmed those tortillas and refried those beans like no ones business. As soon as it was done, my husband walks through the door, asks me what smells so delicious, and gives me a huge smile.  He ate every last bite.

Bless My Heart

If you don't already know the term "Bless your heart", it's a snide dig at an imperfection that we Texans use. And yes, I'm blessing myself.

I am a 30-something teacher/wife but you would never know the latter. We'll just say that my husband did NOT win the wife lottery. I have a great sense of humor, and a gigantic heart, but I know nothing about keeping a house or cooking. I would love to eventually become Wonder Woman-esque and be able to work full time and come home and cook and clean. This road brings us here, to this blog.

I am going to keep this blog as I slowly try to domesticate myself. I LOVE Pinterest, but I see "simple" recipes and crafts as way too complicated to even try. So with that lovely preface I will document my attempts to cook/bake recipes, try hairstyles, and make the occasional DIY craft that can be found on Pinterest.  My husband is 100% supporting me in this endeavor and has even volunteered to eat whatever I make regardless of how it looks.

Stay tuned for weekly posts that I hope I don't embarrass myself in.