Archive for the ‘Family & Friends’ Category

Ok, let me see if I can get this right this time.

Isn’t this beautiful.  You should hop over to Whipperberry.com (click on the word Whipperberry.com) and see how to make  Homemade Vanilla Extract.  This is where I got the inspiration to try and make my own homemade vanilla for gifts to give to the ladies at the office.

 

I followed Whipperberry’s instruction for getting the cheap Vodka and ordering the vanilla beans.  Ordering the vanilla beans off the internet was a lot less than buying them in the store.

I found these little jars at M’s and thought they would be perfect; however, they did not seal as well as I thought they would (after all they had a rubber seal).

I stored them in the entry hall closet and once a week I would give the little bottles a shake.  As you can see they turned to vanilla extract (and yes it took about 2 months for it to homemade vanilla extract).

 

 

So since the little bottles were leaking and I decided to us Glad’s press and seal to see if that would help.  It did but it still made me a little nervous.

 

 

 

 

 

I didn’t have time to make the beautiful labels she made but I did make some that turned out pretty cute.  I simply used a Waltzing Mouse Labels 4  and printed the Homemade Vanilla Enjoy! out on cardstock.

Probably should have included the word extract….duh!

 

 

 

 

A little assembly line and before I knew it, they were ready to put on the bottles.

 

Punched a hole in one end and some Baker Twine wrapped around the lid and you are done.

 

 

 

 

I think they came out so cute and everyone like them at work.

 

I also used some in my Christmas Cherry-O Cream Cheese pie and it was excellent!

 

I love giving unique gifts but this one may be one that I do every year.  I’ve already started looking for some cute bottles.  I also think I may use vanilla Vodka to make ….”vanilla extract”… genius!

If you try making Whipperberry.com homemade vanilla, let her know and be sure and leave me a comment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our church, Elevate Church, participated in their 1st Dallas Metro Ministries for the Inner City Kidz.

We made, passed out and filled about 80 stockings.

Here is the collection of the “stuffed” stockings and we got them all ready to go to Dallas Metro Ministries.  The deadline is 12/1/2011, so they can get them ready to be handed out at Christmas.

 

A huge thanks to everyone who participated, and to Phyllis for helping me finish getting the stocking ready to be delivered  and then taking them down to Dallas Metro Ministries.

If you haven’t taken the time to get an Angel from an Angel tree, be sure and give back this year, it will bless your life through the entire year.  The word says “if you do it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me”.   Let God bless your life as you give unselfishly this year.

My #1 Daughter is dressing up her last year Halloween wreath.  This year we adding the stripped wired ribbon.

The rest of it looks like an old vintage Halloween card.  Sorry, no pics!  The rest of the wreath is at her house.

 

 

 

My #1 Daughter got these cute metal signs off of Pick your Plum.  This is one for my grandson’s teacher.  We added Read for a Spell in black vinyl.

 

 

 

 

 

Another little metal sign.  This is dry erase board vinyl.  I had some left over when I made a dry erase board for our woman’s ministry at church.  Worked just like regular vinyl.

 

 

 

 

Fun stuff and now on to things I want to do.

I know it has been a while since I posted anything.  Going back to work full time takes it out of you!  I leave the house @ 6:00am and once I get home I’m pretty fried.   Once I get use to things I’ll get back to posting regularly.

 

Here is Henry!  Yes, he is one big cat!  When I was refinishing my buffet and I had the drawers out he had to see if he would fit.  He didn’t.

 

You can see even sitting on my craft table he takes up a lot of space.  I think he was telling me I needed to use the Stazon ink.

 

 

 

 

 

Longing to go outside in the real world….he doesn’t realize how good he really has it.  You see Henry was an adopted cat from a shelter.

The people who adopted Henry didn’t realize that once adopted you can’t give the cat away.  They did and long story short (through other people giving him away) he landed in our home.

 

He is rotten!  We love him!

Alright, so I’m out painting the china cabinet the other day and my neighbor (who normally is at work by this time) comes out of her garage and tells me there is a huge owl in the greenbelt.

This greenbelt runs behind our house and we have a lot of various critters that roam in and out of the greenbelt.

 

 

 

I kept sneaking up on him trying to get closer and closer to get a better picture and hoping he would not fly away.

A couple of Blue Jays were very upset that he was sitting out in the open and started dive bombing him but he would not budge.  He stayed there in the daylight for several hours before he moved on.

I love the wonder of God in His creation and that I got to experience one of them.

There is a very cute and talented young lady at our church, Avery, who is making these sweet little card holders.

She uses decorator duct tape and then hand crafts the holders.  Of course when I saw them and found out that she even did special orders, I just had to have one…no wait two.

Love Hounds-Tooth and the pop of red just sets it off.

 

 

She brought me two different sizes and I decided they would be a perfect fit for all my reward cards.  This lighten the load in my wallet, not $$ wise but space wise.

Because they are hounds-tooth with the red trim, I can easily locate it in my purse.  At last, I will give one of these to my #2 Daughter since she loves hounds-tooth too.

 

All of this cuteness for $2 a piece.  Avery did a great job and I noticed she even matched the pattern on the overlaps.  Wow, talk about paying attention to detail.

Thanks Avery (thanks Mom, Rachel)  for taking the time to craft and for making the card holders.  Mine is already in my purse and full of cards!

Ok, I showed you this cutie with her outfit on, today I’m going to show you a little about the construction.

 

You can see the construction of the pillow case dress here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This attachment runs about $50.00 for the particular brand of sewing machine I own (baby lock).  My #2 Daughter is the one that owns this “awesome” little attachment.

 

 

 

 

This looks like a complicated tool but basically all you have to do is attach it and then run your material or ribbon through it and it automatically ruffles it for you.  It does have some settings that you can adjust for different depths and sizes of ruffles but that’s about it.

 

 

 

 

I decided to use ribbon to add the detail to her leggings.

 

 

 

 

 

I cut the ribbon twice as long as I needed to wrap around each leg.  Then I ran each piece through the ruffler and I was done.

 

 

 

 

I started layering the ruffled ribbon.  I pinned it on then sewed it on each leg, that way I wasn’t having to re-thread my machine with various colors of thread.

 

 

 

 

Oh my goodness, I love the way this came out and so did Rylan.

 

 

 

 

 

I got her the little jacket that matched the leggings so she would have something to put on in case she got cold at church or when we go out to eat.  Here in Texas the air conditioning gets turned up!

I rolled the sleeves up to make it a little more fashionable.

 

 

 

 

I took 2 yards of satin ribbon (not as scratchy) and actually found the exact color I needed for her dress.  It takes a yard of ribbon for each side to have plenty to tie in a bow.

 

 

 

 

Too cute and oh so easy!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well, here that little “Cutie” is in all of her beauty.  She has on the little pillowcase dress NaeNae made her and the her leggings with the ribbon ruffles.

It came out so cute and the little jacket I got at Target with her leggings.  She loved it and had to dress it up a little more with a purse.

So cute for just almost 3 years old.

This pillow at this point might have cost $6.00.  I got the 16″ x 16″ insert from Hancocks on sale and the pillow slip cover was two pieces of 18″ x 21″ fabric for quilting that cost $1.99 ea.

 

 

Yep, I sewed this baby up and Ta Da!

 

 

 

Then I got to thinking, I had some felt and a little left over material why not make a fabric flower to decorate the pillow.

This is the largest of 3 and the base starts with a 3-1/2″ circle.

 

 

 

I was playing with incorporating the yellow in the gray.  Not bad but not for sure I’m in love with it.

 

 

 

 

 

Oh yeah, I’m loving this one.  Totally felt all the way.

 

The base for this one is 2″ or 2-1/2″.

 

 

 

 

This is the smallest, the base is 1-1/2″ and this is ribbon, about 24″ worth to wrap around.  The other’s have somewhere between 20″ and 30″.  The length depends on the size you want.  My tip is not to sweat that if you don’t have enough the first time you can tuck a new piece under the place you ran out and keep going.

I used a hot glue gun so it would stick quickly.  Watch for burnt fingers.

 

 

Here are the curtains, with the pillow and the fabric flowers to add that bit of flair and to make the room feel special.

 

As you know, always use odd numbers to make it pleasing to the eye.

 

 

Ok, I’m digging this now, just hope the young lady that is designing the room will agree.

 

By the way I thought about doing a tutorial on how to make these but there are some really good ones out on YouTube, just search fabric flowers.

 

 

Now for some special news my DH and I are celebrating our 41st Anniversary today!  I heard him tell someone, I’ve raised her since she was 17.  Yep, I was not even out of high school!  Love you sweetie, thank you for being the love of my life!

I love cupcakes!  One reason is they are the perfect size!

These are Devil Food cupcakes for a meeting to start up the Women’s Ministry at our church.  The icing looks pale yellow but it is actually white.

So with a little help from my BFF’s (Phyllis) we took plain cupcakes and made them special.  I whipped up this fluffy frosting and then used Phyllis’ Pampered Chef’s press to get the icing on the cupcakes.

It was a little messy but it worked great.

A cute pedestal dish and some cup cake wrappers and they are so cute!

No, I didn’t cut the cupcake wrappers (although I could have).  I was running out of time for pulling the meeting together and actually found these at Walmart for $1.88.

Exactly, after a long day this is actually a good way to end it………relaxed and ready for a nap.