Here's wishing you...

A lovely & oh-so-happy Halloween!

Here's a taste of some of the final decorations that
are going to be adorning our house tonight.


I made five of this cute little guys for our table.
I have a potpourri filled wrought iron pumpkin that they will be residing on for the evening.
They even have little bow ties for the occasion!


I was so frustrated when I couldn't find a tutorial on making big flowers for a centerpiece
that didn't involve tissue paper.
Don't get me wrong, I do love the stuff... it's just I wanted something a little different.

That's when I came up with this. It's made out of a plastic tablecloth,
the kind you would find by the party goods.
It gave me the big flower look I wanted, and I absolutely love it!!

I'm going to be posting the tutorials of these tonight and tomorrow.
I also am planning 5 days of giveaways for this week, so PLEASE keep checking in as I want
you readers to win some fun stuff again!

Happy Crafting &
Happy Halloween!

Day 21: A whole lot of flowers...

This is the final craft I made for the

Crafting Over Sweeting Challenge.
Twenty-one days just flew by and I just can't believe that is over.

This featured craft is the:
Floral Monogram


If you recall, I had a whole lot of flowers left over from this craft and
I had been thinking and thinking about what to do with them.
I just love their colors and I didn't just want to throw them away... what a waste!
I decided that I really wanted to use them in a monogram and this was the result.

For this craft you will need:


Flowers... lots and lots
*choose any color and variety you would like. Make sure to cut them down as close to the flower as you can.*
1 large cardboard letter
*JoAnn's Etc... I love that store!*

Hot glue gun
*with tons, and I'm talking TONS, of glue. I almost used up a 30 pack of glue sticks... so stock up!*

Start gluing your flowers on.
I started on the sides, but then decided to do the top of the letter first.
**This is where you're going to want to turn a movie on...
my movie of choice was The Proposal.**


Keep gluing

and gluing.

Did I mention to keep gluing?
Good, I didn't think that I had.

That's it!!

So simple and it turns out oh so beautiful.
I'm excited to finally have a monogram in our home!

Happy Crafting!

Linked up to:
Southern Lovely
Home Stories A to Z
Lil' Luna
Someday Crafts
Sew Much Ado

Finished...

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..

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!

Melted crayons... who knew?

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!!

Fall = Stew

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!

Sometimes you need a breather.

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!

Day 16: Felt... I love it.

Welcome to Day 16 of the

Crafting Over Sweeting Challenge.

Sweets eaten: Nada.
I even made s'mores (my FAVORITE sweet) for our family dessert last night and didn't eat any.
Can I get a "Woo-Hoo!"?

Sweets craved: S'mores... obviously :D.

Today's featured craft is:

These are so simple, so cute and so versatile.
In this tutorial I use them in clips, but there are so many awesome ways you could use them. One of my future projects will be to do these in red and white for a Christmas garland....
so excited!

For this craft you will need:


1 sheet of felt

Buttons
*any that suit your fancy*

Embroidery thread & needle

Hair clips
*any hair supply store will carry these.
You will also need ribbon if you want to cover them.
Here is an excellent tutorial on how to do that.*

Scissors

Rotary cutter, quilting ruler, and rotary cutting mat
*or a ruler and scissors, the above items just make it a little easier*

Glue Gun

Start by cutting a 3"x 3" square


Keep cutting squares, decreasing their size by 1/4"
(3" square, 2 3/4" square, 2 1/2" square, etc.)

Your last square will measure 1" and
this is what your finished pile of felt squares will look like...


Now you're going to shape your squares into flowers.

Take a square and fold it in half.


Cut the folded edge so it's curved, like so...


Then do the other side.


Unfold, then fold so the cut sides are together.



Cut the two edges like you did before.


and Voila!


Repeat these steps with the remaining squares
and you get a lot of scraps,


and a beautiful flower.


Sew together the flowers in the middle
and attach your button of choice.



Tie your embroidery thread in a knot on the back of your flower.


Hot glue your clip to the back of your flower.
**Update: At this point in the post I did a "Helpful Tip", that was more me
voicing my frustration than an actual tip. My issue was that the ribbon covered clips
always seemed to slip out of (my) hair more than the the non-covered clips did.
Thanks to a comment from Kayla, I now know how to avoid this.
Check out Kayla's awesome comment below
to see how to keep your ribbon covered clips from slipping.**

So pretty!


Here's a second, smaller one I made with a ribbon covered hair clip.


These are so much fun, and like I said you can do so many things with them.
Get creative, and like always
Happy Crafting!

Linked up to:
Blue Cricket Designs
Lil' Luna
Sew Much Ado
Sweet Little Gals
Fabric Bows and More
seventhirtythree

Day 14 & 15: I SEE YOU...

It's nice to be posting about the

CRAFTING OVER SWEETING CHALLENGE again.

I've still been crafting, but like I said in a previous post we spent this weekend as a family...
in my mind that meant no blogging.

Sweeting Update:
Sweets eaten: I'll admit, I had a couple sips of soda this weekend.
The amazing thing was, just a couple of sips made me completely sick to my stomach.
I guess my body is getting used to no sweets. I know it was a misstep, but at the same time
it just made me realize that this Challenge is totally worth it!

I am so excited about today's featured craft!
It has actually taken me a couple of days to complete, which is why I combined days 14 and 15.

Today's featured craft is the:
"I SEE YOU" Yarn & Tulle Wreath

Tulle wreaths seem to be the popular holiday decor for this Halloween,
so of course I had to make one :).

For this craft you will need:
1 wreath

Yarn
*I used white*

Strips of tulle
*Use any color you like, get creative!
Mine measured about 3"x 20"*

Googly Eyes

Sparkly letters
*I got mine from Wal-mart... have you noticed I get most everything from there?*

Trusty glue gun

If needed, remove any flowers or decorations from wreath
*This one is gorgeous, but it is also old, worn and balding.
It was crying out to be revamped*


There we go... fresh start!


Wrap your yarn around your wreath,
leaving 3 inch spaces for the tulle.


Simply tie the tulle in a knot around the wreath



Line the knots on the edge of the wreath like so...


Trim tulle to whatever length you prefer


Almost done!


Play around and figure out where you want your
eyes and words to go, then glue them on.


and there you go!


I absolutely LOVE this wreath!!
I know I may seem like a wreath fanatic at times (and I may be)
but this is just perfect for Halloween.
Not to mention it is a-mazingly easy to make, which is always a plus.

Happy Crafting!!

Linked up to:
Sumo's Sweet Stuff
Mommy by day, Crafter by night
Sugar Bee Crafts
Today's Creative blog
Someday Crafts
Skip to My Lou
Hope Studios
Tip Junkie
Roca and Company
Sew Woodsy