Marble Painting

My daughter brought home this painting she made at school with......don, don, don....... MARBLES! How cool is that! Just put a piece of paper in the bottom of a shoe box. Squirt some drops of paint onto the paper. Drop in your marbles and shake shake SHAKE! I LOVE it!

Resurfacing With A Kids Craft

I know, I know. I have officially been put on the missing in action list. I went into hiding but am now resurfacing. Hehe. Actually, my brother and his daughter came in from out of state last week and well, you got neglected so I could spend time with them. Sorry about that.

But I'm back this week with some fun kids craft ideas. For my first one, we made sun catchers. My aunt always does a craft for the kids every April and October coinciding with a certain religious event. Hehe. We call it our Conference craft and it's something the kids can do between sessions.

The kids had tons of fun. Here's how they turned out:

Aren't they fun! So to make your own you will need: hand towels, wax paper, crayons, a zester, pressed flowers and leaves, foam paper, a stapler, an iron, a hole punch and ribbon.

First cut out your wax paper in the shape you want, you will need two of the same shape. Lay a hand towel on your counter. Put one wax paper shape on the towel. Now zest some of crayon around your wax paper, not a lot just some to add color. Lay out your flowers and leaves leaving enough room around the edges to make the frame. Zest some more crayon over the top. Lay the second wax paper on top. Place another towel over and iron. Do not slide the iron, just press and lift.

Now cut out a frame the same shape from your foam paper. Again cut two of the same shape. place your wax paper between the frames and staple together. Punch two holes at the top of the sun catcher and tie on the ribbon.

Pretty easy and just in time for spring.

Shoe Restyle

Hey everyone! Before I get to my post I just wanted to share this funny picture I found online. And no I am not feeling competitive today, I just found it funny.

Okay on to my post. My girls have been into wearing skirts a lot lately. But they are not the most modest thing to run around playing in. So I decided for this summer, instead of buying them a bunch of shorts, I'd get them some capri leggings to wear under all their skirts. That way they can run around outside without showing off their undies to everyone.

I also wanted to get them some converse style flats to wear with their skirt/leggings but without the name brand price. So I went to that store we all hate but always find ourselves it, yes you know what store I'm talking about. And I found these on sale for $5!!!

But did you notice something was missing. Yeah, no laces. My first thought was maybe that's why they were on sale but they had so many of them. How could they have so many defective pairs of shoes? So I asked the sales lady if they came with laces and she said no, they have elastic in them. Apparently it's the "trendy" thing to not have laces. I must not be very trendy cause I thought it looked a little funny. No offense to anyone who likes it.

The other problem with the shoes was the elastic. It's a great idea in theory to put elastic in the tongue to hold the shoes on, but whomever made them must not have kids. The elastic was soooooo incredibly tight I needed a crow bar just to try them on the kids.

So here's what we did. After I finally got their feet into the shoes and got the right sizes, we cut the elastic out of the tongue and laced them up with some ribbon (which I already had). Now my girls have adorable little "converse" with cute laces for only $5 each. I'm a happy mommy!

Where For Art Thou Spring?

I wanted to post this yesterday, but we had a power outage half the day. And by the time the power came on and I did the dishes, played house, cleaned a bathroom, had a playdate, did the laundry, cooked dinner, gave my little man his first hair cut, and got all the kids to bed..... Well let's just say I was wiped. So lucky you to get to see me on a weekend!

After enjoying several days of nice spring weather, yesterday morning looked like this:

And today looks like that too. What happened to my spring? I want the warm weather back. But one cozy thing about the snow yesterday, I got to wake up to this:
My husband had a nice warm fire going in our new fire place. When we built our house we had the rock for the fire place put in, but not the stove. We weren't sure if we wanted to get a new stove or a used one. New ones are pretty pricey so we wanted to just have the house stove ready and we could put our own stove in once we got one.

We are so glad we did it that way because we ended getting a stove for FREE!!! The glass needed to be replaced in it and it was pretty rusty. But my amazing hubby sand blasted the whole thing and repainted it. And now I have a wonderful wood stove that keeps our house toasty warm! Thanks hun!!!!

Thanks!

I just wanted to say a big THANK YOU to all those who voted for me on Saturday Mornings. I didn't win but it was sure fun to participate. And thanks again Dana for including me! Have a wonderful night everyone.

My First Fondant Cake

I've always had this great ambition to make amazing birthday cakes for my kids, but frankly I'm not very good at making the frosting smooth. I usually end up just buying figurines and putting them on top of a regular cake. I've seen lots of cute fondant cake ideas and wished I knew how to that.

My cousin found a recipe for homemade marshmallow fondant for me and since my little man turned 1 this past weekend, well, I decided to try it. And after ruining my first batch, and then employing the aid of my husband, the second try worked. I am so excited how it turned out.

So do you want the recipe? Here it is with all the tweaks we made:

Marshmallow Fondant

8 oz mini marshmallows (4 cups not packed)

4 c powdered sugar, plus a little for dusting

2 T water

Food coloring and flavoring, optional

Put marshmallows and water in a large microwave safe bowl. Microwave for 1 minute and stir until smooth. If you are adding flavoring, stir it in now. Also if you are only doing ONE color, add it now too. If you're doing more than one color, wait. Add the powdered sugar and stir until it becomes too difficult to stir. Dust your counter with powdered sugar and dump the mixture out. Knead with your hands until all the powdered sugar is incorporated and it is smooth. If your doing more than one color, split your fondant and hand knead the coloring in. It is now ready to use. If you're not using it right away, wrap in plastic. You can store it in the fridge also. If the fondant gets a little stiff, microwave for 5-10 seconds to soften it up again.

Note: If you don't want to have to knead the coloring into the fondant, split the recipe up before you make it so you are doing several partial recipes and dye each section before you add the sugar.

Now to use your fondant:

Spray your work space and rolling pin with cooking spray. Yes I know it sound weird, but trust me you want to. This is where I messed up my first batch. Roll out fondant to desired thickness. To transfer to your cake, roll the fondant up around the rolling pin and lay over the cake. Use your hands to smooth out.

To add the shapes to my cake I rolled out the fondant, or rather my husband did, and we used regular old cookie cutters! For the border around the bottom we made two long snakes out of the two colors and twisted them together.

Isn't it AMAZING!!!!!