A Bright Idea!

I love decorating a nursery!!  So, when we found out we were having a boy... I immediately starting swimming in all the ideas I had!!  I am no where close to being finished with his room, but it is definitely moving along!
As far as lighting in his room, there isn't much!  There is no overhead lighting, and I really like to have a large lamp and a small lamp in a nursery.  That way... you can have dim lighting or bright lighting!  So, I started brainstorming about what I wanted to do.  When we had our daughter, I bought ribbon and made a custom lamp shade that fit her room, and was unique!  I wanted to do the same for Brady, but ribbon isn't exactly "manly"!!  I came across an idea on pinterest (where else of course!!)  and I made it my own!
I bought a lampshade, and placed it on a lamp base to keep it secure.



 The shade cost me $14.99 as well as the base at Garden Ridge.  Much better than paying close to $50 for the one that matched his room!  I had 4 different things that I was debating putting on his walls in wall vinyl...

Our Prayer

"Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my dreams are sweet.

Guide me safely through the night,

and wake me with the morning light."

(We had this in Abbie's nursery)

Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

Do you know how loved you are?

Love you Forever

I'll love you forever.

I'll like you for always.

As long as I'm living, my 

baby you'll be.

Something I found online...

Read me a story.

Tuck me in tonight,

Say a sweet prayer, and kiss me goodnight.

So, I decided to take a black sharpie marker, and write these on his lamp shade!  I printed all of the saying's out on the computer... 

cut them out, plugged in the lamp, and taped the sayings to the inside.  Then I basically had a projection, and I was able to trace the saying's onto the lamp shade! 

I used a red sharpie to put 3 "cross stitch" x's after each saying.  His bedding has red cross stitching accents, so I thought it would help it blend into the room!!

I am really excited with the way it turned out!!

Total cost of this project... $30

 - Jessica

Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins

The name of this recipe could simply be changed to DELICIOUSNESS!

I bought a few cans of pumpkin last week when they were on sale, and yesterday I decided to scour the internet for a good pumpkin muffin recipe!  I love to try new recipes, however... I never try a recipe that I have to buy all of the ingredients for!  I like to try recipes that use what I have stocked in my kitchen!
I liked this recipe because I had to buy only a few things... eggs, butter, cream cheese!!  That made for a very inexpensive treat to try!

The prep time for this recipe was pretty long.  It took me about 45 minutes to get everything ready to start baking.  And, unfortunately we had to throw a muffin pan away due to rust, so we only had 1 muffin pan to work with!  It was my Pampered Chef Muffin stone, which I can honestly say... I have never used before!  We are mini muffin people, so making "adult" muffins is a first for me!!
The prep work is a 3 step process.  First, you make the cream cheese frosting.  Second, you make the streusel topping.  And finally you make the muffin mix!  I have decided that I need to find extra mixing bowls for my Kitchen Aid mixer.  I have never looked for these before, but it would make cooking so much easier, if I could use the mixer to make multiple things!  If I cant make this happen... I think I will invest in a handheld mixer as well!

Step 1 - Cream Cheese Frosting
1 8oz package of cream cheese
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons of brown sugar

Preheat your oven to 375, Grease and flour 18 muffin cups, or use paper liners.
In a medium bowl, beat cream cheese until soft, then add egg, vanilla, and brown sugar. 
Beat until smooth, and set aside.

Step 2 - Streusel Topping
4 1/2 tablespoons of all-purpose flour
5 tablespoons of white sugar
3/4 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
3 tablespoons of butter
3 tablespoons of chopped pecans (I left this out.  I grew up with a sister who is DEATHLY allergic to nuts, so I am not a fan of nuts in food!  The recipe worked just fine with out them!)

In a medium bowl, mix flour, sugar, cinnamon, and pecans. 
Add butter and cut with a fork until crumbly. 
Set aside.  (As a heads up... I melted the butter before adding it, and the topping was too "wet", so we added equal parts of sugar and flour until the topping was "crumbly" again.)

Step 3 - Muffin Mix
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups white sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 1/3 cups canned pumpkin (just shy of the whole can)
1/3 cup olive oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

In a large bowl, sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. 
Make a well in the center of flour mixture and add eggs, pumpkin, olive oil, and vanilla. 
Beat together until smooth.

You should have 3 bowls that look something like this...

FINALLY - onto making the muffins!!!

Place pumpkin mixture in muffin cups about 1/2 full.

 
Then add one tablespoon of the cream cheese mixture right in the middle of the batter. 
Try to keep the cream cheese from touching the paper cup.
Sprinkle on the streusel topping.
Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes.
Allow muffins to cool before trying to remove from the pan. 

ENJOY... they are incredible!

Project Paper Wreath

Well, I was browsing pinterest the other day, and I saw a paper wreath!  I thought it was pretty cool, but didnt really feel like it was something I wanted to start at the moment!
Last night, Derik and I had pizza for dinner, and as I was cleaning up... I spotted the cardboard circle from under the pizza!!  A light bulb went off in my brain, and I decided to put with my craft supplies, so I could begin work on my wreath today!

My supply list for this project was short and SIMPLE!
 - Pizza Cardboard
 - A Large Bowl
 - Pencil
 - Tape
 - Staples
 - Scrapbook paper in fall colors

 I traced the large bowl in the center of the pizza cardboard...

I cut the center circle out, so that I had a wreath shape.

I cut out strips of paper 3"x1" from fall colored scrapbook paper...

 

I rolled the paper into loops and taped 3 of them together like so...

 Then stapled them as shown below to the cardboard.

 

I continued stapling rows of paper loops all the way around the wreath.

  And I finished the wreath off with a bow!

 I love being festive!!

Total cost of this project $0.00!!!  I love projects that are free!! The next time we eat a frozen pizza, I will make a Christmas wreath!!

 - Jessica

Gearing up for Christmas...

As you can probably tell, I am super excited about Christmas!  I have been planning and trying to come up with some ideas to implement this year, so that they can be our "tradition" for years to come!  I have come up with 2 ideas, that I am pretty excited about!!

Our first tradition will be Santa Bags. 

The small bags are $19 from Pottery Barn Kids, and I will have my kids names put on their bags.  Each bag will have 3 "big" presents in it from Santa.  When I say "big", I really mean the ackward presents that everyone has trouble wrapping!!  We write up a Christmas list for our kids, and then pick 3 items to be called the "Santa" items.  We will use this opportunity to bring the story of Jesus into Christmas.  The 3 wise men brought Jesus 3 presents, which is why you get 3 presents from Santa.  We will give them the rest of their Christmas from "Mommy & Daddy".  I think it takes some of the "Santa focus" off of Christmas, and puts the focus where it should be.  The gifts that are in the bag will not be wrapped, so that they will feel different from our "Mommy & Daddy" gifts!


Our second tradition is going to be "Breakfast in our Stockings".

Instead of gifts in the kids stockings, you will find the ingredients for their favorite breakfast!  Boxed cereal (yes the sugary kind... its Christmas!!), fruit, granola bars, pancake mix, I could go on and on!  The possibilities are endless!  I love the idea of not having to buy "gifts" for the stockings.  We will open stockings last and start working on breakfast!  I just love this idea!!


I just love Christmas, after all... "Its the most wonderful time of the year"!!

 - Jessica

Place Mat Pillows

I absolutely LOVE decorating for Christmas, and look forward to new and fun decorations every year.
However... unless you buy things on clearance after Christmas each year, which I sometimes do, you will find that the decorations are not cheap and can add up fast.
One of my favorite things to put out at Christmas are cute Christmas pillows!  You can add a little touch of Christmas to any room in the house when you just put out a pillow!  I love that, but pillows usually come with oddly high price tags, and I refuse to foot the bill for them!  Last year about a few pillows I fell in love with at Target for 75% off, and I cant wait to put them out this year, but I wanted to have a couple of others that I could spruce up the house with.

While wondering through Target one afternoon, I found the cutest place mats.  

I really liked them, but I am not a "place mat" kind of person!  We rarely put them out, mainly because I like a CLEAN table, and place mats tend to make my table look cluttered.  However, I really liked these place mats!  I picked on up to look at it, and realized it was an ideal Christmas pillow just waiting to be transformed!  These place mats were only $3.99 each, which is FAR cheaper than a pillow! (It seems that most decorative pillows run from $12.99-24.99 at Target.)
I bought 2 place mats, and headed home to begin a very short and super easy transformation of place mat to pillow!  I wanted one pillow to have the snowflake on top, and one to have the snowflake on bottom!

I grabbed my seam ripper, and broke one seam on each place mat.  

I broke the seam open just wide enough to fit my hand into the place mat.  

 These mats were really ideal because they were literally 2 piece of fabric sewn together, and 

I didn't have to do much. 

After breaking the seam open, I filled each place mat with poly-fil fluff. 

 I keep poly-fil on hand pretty much all of the time, so this wasnt something I had to purchase, but if you do not have any... DON'T FORGET to bring a 40% off coupon with you to your local craft store before purchasing!  JoAnn's and Michael's actually have APPS that you can download for free, and pull a coupon up on your phone in store!!  They honor each other's coupons too... so make sure you download both as each store usually has different coupons!

After filling the place mats, which are now pillows, I simply hand stitched the opening I had made shut with matching red thread.  

Total this project took me about 15 mins to make both pillows, and I love the finished project!!  I cant wait to put them out at Christmas...

Total Project cost $7.98... for 2 pillows!  I cant understand for the life of me why they charge so much for pillows!!  I feel like I outsmarted the pillow making people!!

 - Jessica