Anniversary At Home

It seems the more kids you have, the harder it is to get out of the house on a real date! I knew that my husband and I would have that problem this year on our 9th anniversary (especially since it fell on a Tuesday night) so I decided to plan a special "date night" at home for us.

I made an early dinner of mac-n-cheese for the kids and had them eating while I worked on a special dinner of steak, roasted red potatoes, and broccoli for my husband and me. I also made a strawberry cheesecake for dessert.

After I had fed the kids, I sent my husband upstairs with them to get them ready for bed (that's usually his job anyway) and I started prepping the kitchen table for our date. I brought in a lamp from our hall table, various flowers (real and faux), faux rose petals, candles, and our wedding photo. I set the table with silver chargers, our nice china, cloth napkins and crystal wine glasses.

Before he came down, I turned out all the lights except for the lamp, I lit the candles, and I turned on "At Last" by Etta James. The result was perfect!

It was weird, despite the fact that we were sitting in our kitchen, it still felt almost just like a real night out. I think that the lighting and table transformation really helped. After we ate we slow danced for awhile, and then he helped me clean up and we watched a movie together. It was wonderful!

So next time you can't go out, stay in. It can be just as special. ;-)

Someone Had a Birthday...

I can't believe my little Monkey turned 7 this week!!!! Here's a photo of him at the Washington D.C. LDS Temple from my sister-in-law's wedding last week. What a cutie. :-)

We had several celebrations and several cakes for him (he thinks it's very important to include everybody...and get lots of presents...and of course eat lots of cake!) and last night we celebrated with my dad, stepmom and grandparents. Here are a few shots of the cake I made for him:

I just made a simple chocolate cake recipe (that link is to my other blog, The Silly Mom) that I chose because it was vegan- no eggs or dairy (we have a nephew with allergies)- and because it's incredibly delicious and very convenient because I pretty much always have the ingredients for it on hand.

I decorated it with well-washed dinosaur toys from my son's room and some leftover easter egg candy. I used cream cheese frosting, which I added green food coloring to, for the lettering and some viney decoration.

I think that decorating cakes with toys is a great easy way to make them look really fun and fabulous, and the kids love that they can keep the toys! (okay, not much excitement there in this case since the toys were already his, but you know what I mean!)

And incidentally, my kids are just so stinkin' cute.

I know it's been quieter than usual around here lately, but I have a bunch of new crafty ideas I'm dying to get to, and I will be sure to post again soon! :-)

Photo Party? Okay!

I follow a fun little blog called "Tracy's Trinkets and Treasures" and recently she's been hosting some great photography link parties. This week the theme is "Sunset, Sunrise, and Sun Flare". I thought I'd post this lovely photo, but I actually can't take credit for it, other than being the subject (well, me and Chase). My husband took this shot of us back when we were visiting my parents at Thanksgiving. It was close to sunset and I just love this photo because it really takes me back to that chilly November eve, quietly sitting atop a warm horse as he blew steam out his nose. :-)

For another favorite sun-related photo of mine check out my Spiritual Sundays post, "Help From the Source". :-)

Check out Tracy's site for more great sun photos!! She is a talented photographer!

Good Clean Fun

I was inspired by yet another fabulous idea from Martha Stewart when I saw her make these Fruit & Herb Soaps. She has a fabulous video tutorial on her blog (and step-by-step instructions) so I won't go into a ton of detail here, but I'll give you a basic idea of how it's done! I thought these would be a perfect gift for Mothers Day for my many moms (3!) and alllll of my many sisters-in-law (10!).

I started out with a giganto tub of glycerine soap, which I purchased at Michael's using one of my 40% off coupons. So it was only $24 instead of $40. I popped the whole block out of the tub and started chopping it up. I found that the easiest way to do this was to use a loooong knife and hold the handle in one hand, and then cover the end of the blade with a pot holder, so as not to stab myself, and then just gently rock the blade back and forth until it made it all the way through. I then cut it into cubes for easy melting.

As per Martha's instructions, I used a heat-resistant glass measuring cup to melt my glycerine in the microwave in 30-second intervals, stirring in between.

Meanwhile, I gathered my fruits and herbs:

Some fresh lavender from my very own garden (feeling very Martha Stewart-y about that).

An orange and a lemon and my Ultimate Chopper. It is SO ULTIMATE! And it needs to be cleaned on the outside. Yick.

I peeled the orange and lemon and tossed the peels into the chopper, pulverizing them into teeny little bits. Then I added them to my melted glycerine.

I stirred it around for a little while, letting it cool some before pouring it into the greased molds so that the citrus bits would be evenly distributed.

I used applesauce cups as my soap molds.

Then I did the same thing with my lavender, only I had to add water to get the leaves to chop up correctly. Then I just placed a paper towel over a cup and poured the lavender-water out onto it, using the paper towel as a filter. I carefully removed the paper towel, squeezed out the excess water, and left it out to dry some so that the lavender wouldn't stick to it too much. I was then able to sprinkle it into the glycerine. Here I'm using yogurt cups as molds. I also decided to do some strawberry soaps at the last minute.

I let the soap sit in the molds for about 20 minutes before sending them to the freezer (freezing helps release them from the molds).

After 2 hours in the freezer I popped them out and they looked great! One warning though- allow the soap to sit out at room temperature before you try packaging it. Because they've been frozen, they'll develop a layer of condensation. The moisture along with the thin layer of oil (I used olive oil to grease my containers) gives the soaps a slippery coating. Once they were at room temperature (and all done sweating) I just wiped them off with a paper towel and they were fine.

I thought the soaps were so pretty, I didn't really want to hide them with wrapping paper so I wrapped them in cellophane instead. I took a jar that was about the same size around as my soaps and wrapped the cellophane around it, taping it at the seams, then slid the jar out so that I was left with a bag that was just the right size for my soaps. I added the soap and tied it up with a ribbon and tag, and I think they turned out nicely! I love how colorful they are without any food coloring or dyes.

Happy Mothers Day, ladies!!

This week I am linking up to...

Weeks of Weddings...

It has been a CRAZY weekend for me, but I wanted to check in and share a few of my latest beautiful thrifty projects with you! Did you totally love the royal wedding? It was so inspirational to me as I helped throw a bridal shower for my sister-in-law this weekend (remember those invitations?)! Above and below are the "cake balls" (though I'd really like to come up with a fancier name for them!) that I made. Her wedding colors are dusty rose, green, cream and brown, so I used strawberry cake mix for these and then added some green food coloring to my white chocolate before piping it on the top.

Some simple paper doilies arranged on this silver charger plate make it extra fancy! I found the recipe for the cake balls on a blog (as usual, can't remember which one!) but it's super simple- use a cake mix to bake a cake 13"x9", then dump the cake into a bowl and mix it with half a container of frosting (I used cream cheese frosting). You will end up with a cookie-dough-like consistency; roll the "dough" into 1" balls, then dip in melted white chocolate. Easy and tasty!!!

My pretty paper doilies also came in handy for this project...

Just fold them in half and hang them along the string and you get a lovely bunting that's just perfect for an afternoon tea party! (and yes, in case you were wondering, this is yet ANOTHER idea I borrowed from another blogger who has since become lost somewhere out in the blogosphere! *sigh*) I glued mine also to help them stay put. (sorry it's not a great photo- I forgot to take one of them so I had to crop another photo!)

Last but not least were these pretty little party favors! I picked up several packets of flower seeds from the store ($0.20 each) and wrapped them using scrap paper from my stash. Then I wrote this poem:

Just as these garden seeds you sow,

Each day our friendship grows and grows.

May the beautiful blooms from these tiny seeds

Be as lovely to you as you are to me.

Thank you for attending my bridal shower! Love, (the bride)

And I printed it up and used my Quickutz to punch out a little star burst shape.

Next weekend is the actual wedding which, thankfully, I'm just supposed to show up for!

Hope everyone else had a great weekend too! :-)

Linking up to...

DIY Edible Arrangement

My 2010 Edible Arrangements knockoff for Easter

This particular project started in my usual way: Last Easter I was trying to find something nice to take to the annual Easter gathering at my in-laws' house and I thought, Ooh, those Edible Arrangements sure are nice. Wonder how much they run? So I checked it out, saw the price tag (start at around $40 for a small arrangement- like, big enough for 2-4 people), nearly had a heart attack, and got my thrifty thinking gears going. And of course, those thrifty thinking gears churned me into some classic knockoff action! I scoured the internet and found several sites with tips on how to do my own. So I messed around and got a fairly good Edible Arrangements knockoff out of it!

One warning: This takes time!! It takes time to cut up the fruit, and time to arrange it as well. All in all, plan on about 2 hours of hard labor for one of these babies!

Now I'll share what I've learned with you!

1. Choose your container. Make sure it's sturdy and deep enough that you can weigh it down in the bottom, otherwise your arrangement will be seriously top-heavy. Not good. Here I've used a #10 can (like a coffee can- I liked the simple rustic look of it) and weighed it down with some canned food and stuffed newspaper around them so they don't roll around.

2. Get some floral foam. NOT THIS FLORAL FOAM!!! I discovered after I began that this stuff is waaaaay harder to get skewers into than the real floral foam (that stuff that you can push in with your finger that also holds water). Cut the foam to fit your container- it's okay if it sticks up or is even down below the top of your container- just make sure you have enough foam to put lots of skewers into.

3. Arrange green leaf lettuce or parsley to cover your foam. The skewers you'll stick in will keep this in place.

4. Cut and skewer your fruit!

- cantaloupe & honeydew melon- these will be your "leaves" in your arrangement. Cut them into slices (they will have a half-moon shape) and then in half so each one looks kind of like a claw.

- red grapes- place on skewers 4-5 high, making sure not to poke through the top grape.

- strawberries- stick and you're done! Just don't poke all the way through!

- pineapple/melon "flowers"- cut pineapple into 1" thick slices and cut with a flower-shaped cookie cutter. Use a melon baller to create the centers. Poke skewer all the way through pineapple flower, then place ball on top (but don't poke all the way through it!).

5. Arrange- Use a photo as inspiration! Start at the bottom and work your way around and up. I discovered that in order to get the same look as the Edible Arrangements you have to start putting the skewers in nearly horizontally at the bottom and then gradually have them go up (like the spokes of a lady's fan- horizontal at the bottom then angling up to the top).

6. Fill in- use your lettuce or parsley and tear it into smaller pieces to fill in any areas where the skewers might show.

Here is my rushed masterpiece from this year! If I'd had more time (and had less stupid foam) I would have made it nicer, but at least it was colorful and fun! Total cost for fruit and materials was less than $20, and I had plenty of fruit left over to cut up into smaller pieces and mix together for a nice accompanying fruit salad. All in all, I'd say it's a successful knockoff, and great for Easter, Mother's Day, a birthday, or any kind of spring or summer gathering!

Linking to...

Spiritual Sundays: He Lives!

To learn more about what I believe as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, please visit www.mormon.org. :-)