Best $80 Ever

What you are about to witness is one of my favorite things that our family does. It all started a couple years back when one of my grandma's siblings turned 80. We all got together and decided it would be really fun to come up with a creative way to give her $80 for her 80th birthday. So we all put our thinking caps on and came up with fun little projects. I think I did a scrapbook page that incorporated pictures of our family (we don't see them often at all) and when I put it in a sheet cover, I put 80 - $1 bills inside behind the page. Well it's sort of ballooned from there. Then the husband turned 80, and now another sister, and now HER husband. It's a full-on tradition now that we all love. I know it's lame that this is the first time I have posted pics of the projects... I have more pics from past projects that I will find and post later. But for now, enjoy our latest -

Happy 80th Birthday G.D.!!!

We always try to pick a little theme, so for G.D., since his birthday falls between Flag Day and 4th of July, we went with patriotic. This one is a little potted plant with flowers. Keep in mind, each of these projects includes 80 - $1 bills. It took us 2 days to finish all 5 of these. One from the Sannars, Haroldsens, Jones', Annie and Burdisons.

Here is a lovely Texas boot stuff with money. 

This one below doesn't really go with the patriotic theme, but once we thought of it, we couldn't resist. How cute is a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow?? We actually went to the bank and got 80 gold coins that are $1 each. It turned out so cute! 

And this one is just his name wrapped in cash! 

This one was kind of our retard project. Our initial idea was to make it look like a firecracker, but it sorta ended up looking like a patriot threw up all over our project... But hey, there's $80 in it - so I dont think he'll mind, do you? 

I love that as each of our relatives is turning 80, they are looking forward to what fun and creative thing we will come up with next. It's been a blast and I know it means the world to them. My family kinda rocks. :o)

Board Book Albums

Check out what I found! I love Leelou Blogs (it's where I get most of my templates) and I was cruising around there the other day and found my next project idea! So excited to try one of these...

http://leeloublogs.blogspot.com/2006/05/board-book-albums.html

Mother's Day 2011

Mother's Day has come and gone already... I just can't believe how fast time is going right now. I mean it seems like yesterday that I was Christmas shopping. I've already had a birthday and now Mother's Day... before we know it, summer will be here and gone.

Despite my best efforts, I feel like I can never fully show my Mom what she means to me. I don't think there's anything I could give her, or make her that would let her understand how she's shaped me into the person that I am today. How all the years of listening to me, teaching me, and being my mom/friend have turned me into a strong, confident woman that knows who she is and what she's about. This year, I decided to do a little craft project for her and I've postd some details below. I found this project on one of my favorite blogs, but I can't remember which one, so if you know where this is from, let me know!

I bought this frame at Hobby Lobby for 1/2 off and loved it because of the depth and detail. The three frames inside the one large frame was awesome, but black was not what I was looking for. I sorta had a vision in my mind of what I wanted.... so I visited the spray paint section. This picture below shows the pictures I wanted framed, but I haven't made any changes to the frame yet... It's kinda hard to read because I dont have an awesome camera yet... but it's all three of us kids names and birthdays. Leah Nichole, Lindsey Marie and Taylor Renee.

Then I went to the fabric section at Hobby Lobby and picked out 3 fabrics that I thought looked cute together. I wanted something Springy. What do you think?

Then I made strips for the fabric rosettes. I tore mine because the frayed edges added some detail that I liked. I found the tutorial for these adorable rosettes here at my very favorite blog.

After following her tutorial, I ended up with these adorable rosettes. I mean... I just love these things. I want to make hundreds and just fill my life with them. :o) (But I doubt the Hubster would like that.)

And then next came the spray paint. I went with white for the outside and the matting. And then I wanted a khaki color on the 3 inside frames. Here's what it looked like all taped with the white.

Then once the white dried, I taped it off and painted the khaki. At this point, I was freaking out because I wasnt loving this color... do you?

It sorta looks drab and dreary...

BUT - once I got the tape off and the paint dried, I loved the way it looked against the white!! So I put my papers back in the frames and cleaned the glass, and it looked like this!

I LOVED IT! I really debated on whether or not to put on the fabric flowers... but, since I worked so hard on them, I decided that I might as well. Plus I wanted a little more color. So a little hot glue, and VOILA!

What do you think?? I had a lot of fun with this project. It's the first thing I've ever done with spray paint, so even though there are flubs on there that I didn't show you, I learned a lot and will do better next time!

Then I made some brownies to take over to Mom's for our little Mother's Day get together... and it turns out, I am NOT a cake decorator. (er, brownies.) But you know what? She's my mommy, so she has to like it, even though it sorta looks like I let my nephews do this. :o)

Happy Mother's Day to my fabulous Mom. She really is the best there is, and the reason our family is what it is today. (which is freaking awesome.) I love you! 



Rice Krispies Easter Basket

WARNING: What you are about to see is RiDIcULoUslY cute! I was way too distracted over the past couple weeks, by our upcoming home purchase to get my act together and do the Easter Bunny Cake Pops I wanted to do from Bakerella. So, I decided to "hop" in on Lindsey's (my sister) project (nice play on words there right?) and feature it here for your enjoyment. I am not sure where she got this idea, I know she mentioned seeing a picture of them somewhere and decided to give it a shot.

Here we go - without any further ado! We started with a little bit of this:  

Ingredients: 6 Cups Rice Krispies, 4 Cups Mini Marshmallows, 3 Tbsp Butter, Shredded Coconut (not pictured), Robin Eggs or Peanut Butter M&M's, Green Food Coloring (not pictured).

I'm sorry we didn't get all the ingredients in the shot... we just were kind of all over the place. :o)

Step 1: Melt the butter in a fairly good sized sauce pan, and when melted - add the 4 cups marshmallows.

Step 2: Stir constantly while marshmallows are melting and when completed, remove from heat.

Step 3: Add Rice Krispies and stir until well mixed.

Meanwhile, off to the side somewhere, you'll want to color the coconut. Depending on how green you want your grass, you can just do this however you see fit. Ours looked like this:

Step 4: Take your well greased cup cake tins, and put a good amount of the Rice Krispie mix in there and shape it like a basket. We kept ours pretty shallow, because the deeper ones didn't look as cute. Again, whatever floats your boat. Here's ours:

Shallow Baskets (above) VS. The Deeper Baskets (below)

Step 5: Place the green coconut in the bottom of your basket for the grass.

Step 6: Add the ADORABLE robin eggs, or M&M's.

I mean... does it get any better than that?? Lindsey - NICE WORK!! 

I mean these are just PERFECTION! I know what you're thinking... how can these possibly get any cuter? Well, I'll tell you: RIBBON!!!

SERIOUSLY!! It's almost too much to handle. Amazing work Lindsey, thanks for letting me be a part of it.

Side Note: Lindsey had originally planned to try and use Twizzlers, but they didn't work out as well as we had hoped...hence the switch to ribbon. It was last minute, but in my opinion - a great call. The ribbon looks as cute as Twizzlers ever could!

I hope everybody has a wonderful Easter and enjoys this special time with their families. I love big Sunday dinners, it just doesn't get any better... Except when Lindsey has adorable Rice Krispie Easter Baskets to put around as place settings!!! Have a good one! XOXOXO

OH - and one more thing... our dog wants to wish you a Happy Easter also - I mean, does this face not seriously melt your heart??

Happy Easter!

I know right?? This Easter Bunny cake took me 2 tries because my first cake got stuck to the bottom of the mold. But how cute is this?? I had a lot of fun decorating and it totally got me into the Easter mood! And do you know what else put in the Easter spirit? The place settings we used this year! So Mom and Taylor and I were all at Walmart and we found these little miniature baskets and decided to use them as place settings. We hard boiled eggs and then dyed them and each person got one with their name on it! Oh my gosh, it turned out so cute. Check out the photos below:

And of course, below - I had to take a picture with my creation... You know, for posterity's sake.

And Mom and I put together a basket for the Missionaries, and they loved it!

Well, our Easter was great, we just hung out and spent time with family. We had a really nice time. I hope that everyone out there enjoyed their holiday as much as we did. That's all for now!

Triple Post for the Slow Pokes

POST #1 - St. Patricks Day!

So, I know it's a little late to be posting about St. Patty's Day, but I am just getting around to it, and I can't let this moment go by without showing off my first Key Lime Pie!! I took it to work for potluck and it was a big hit. I had a great time putting it together.

POST #2 - Free Shoes??

Not so much...Steve Madden (Shoe Designer) came to Austin and was signing autographs and giving away free stuff at the Barton Creek Mall. So Taylor and I went down there and got free t-shirts and tote bags. However, we didn't win any of the free shoes! It was pretty cool though, Steve Madden turned out to be super nice. Here are a couple shots from that day.

Julissa Bermudes from Jersey Shore was the MC of the whole event, I guess she's touring around with him. She was really sweet too and completely beautiful. Kinda makes me sick...

POST #3 - Tim's 29th Birthday

This year for Tim's birthday, we all went out to dinner at The Salt Lick BBQ. It was his choice, of course and this was our first time there. We had a really great time! We invited lots of friends and family and ate some delicious food. Micki had cupcakes delivered to the restaurant which was totally awesome. Here are some pictures from that!

OH, I forgot to mention, that our dear friends the Shumways thought it would be a hilarious joke to go to Goodwill and get Tim a sweater vest. Well, what they DIDN'T know about Tim was that he would LOVE it and rock it all night long... I have no explanation. He's just a nerd. :o) We laughed about it all night.

Here's a shot of everyone at the tables. We had two tables that were lined up lengthwise so I took both of these shots from in between the two tables. We had the family to the right and the friends to the left. We had a really great time that day! Thanks to everybody for joining us and making it a special day.

Mom and Dad enjoying the cupcakes... or something. And the Shumways I'd like to know where Steve's sweater vest is?? What a cute couple. :o) After the dinner we went to the movies and saw The Bounty Hunter. Us girls liked it, the boys not so much...

And this is a recent picture of Josie I just took for no reason. Isn't she cute though?? Man, I love this little dog. She's my baby. :o)

Hope this post finds everyone happy and healthy! Til next time...