I Spy my ABC's

I saw this great idea on {Obsessively Stitching}

She made an ABC book using fabric with pictures of things that start with each letter.

icecream for "i", moon for "m", you get the idea. I love it!

What a great way to teach your kids the ABC's! Great {Quiet Book} idea, too.

She has a tutorial! Find {part one here} and {part two here}. It looks pretty simple!

And she also has one in a lower case alphabet, {here}. Check her out!! So many good ideas.

Nautical Party

Saw the cutest boy baby shower at {Over Cocktails}.
Love the invitation!
LOVe the way this looks!! Cute little take home gifts with starfish all over them!

I like how they used messages in a bottle as food labels.

Little ships on the tables...

So cute.

And bottles as name place cards and twine as napkin rings.

Love the bunting...it could totally be used during the 4th of July or for any blue party in the future. I also totally love how it's held up by poles stuck in sand in jars on the table!!

This is a great party idea - especially if you already have a lot of sea inspired things. Also a great idea if her nursery is going to have a nautical theme. Your gift could be the decorations. Love it.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

To view all my St. Patrick's Day ideas, click {here}. Have a great and lucky day!

Shamrock Cupcakes

Here's a cute idea from {Gourmet Mom on the Go}

Just frost cupcakes with green frosting. Then, you buy a package of mini multicolored marshmallows and use the green ones. All you do to get that puffy petal look is cut the marshmallows in half with some scissors. Also, just cut a tiny strip to use as a stem. So cute! And so easy. My favorite combination. :)

*I've seen the other colors used as flower petals on cupcakes - so save the rest for Easter. :)

St. Patrick's Day Breakfast

For St. Patrick's Day, my mom always had a special breakfast, and that's a tradition I'd like to carry on in my family. Here are a few ideas.
Lucky Charms with milk that's been dyed green.
Yum!

Another idea I saw was to make shamrock pancakes. It would be easy to make these if you had a metal shamrock cookie cutter. You could just set it on your griddle and pour batter into it and let it sit there until it was set. And of course you could serve up some green fruit as well.Or even a green smoothie. Get this recipe {here}
Or, here's a great recipe from {Gourmet Mom on the Go}

Shamrock Shake
Ingredients:
handful of ice cubes
handful or two of fresh spinach (don’t see why you couldn’t use frozen, but fresh sure is pretty)handful of frozen peach slices or other yellow or green frozen fruit
1-2 frozen bananas
1-2 cups of pineapple juice
1 apple, cubed (golden delicious is great, or granny smith)


Directions:Throw all ingredients in a blender and blend. Enjoy.
Note: You could add some tofu for protein and make a great, quick Breakfast.
Keep in mind
1) you can throw in whatever you want, but if you start mixing in red/dark fruits, the color gets muddled and less-appetizing-looking
2) enjoy responsibly: 5 days in a row can cause problems in the poop/diaper department, especially if your kids aren’t used to quite that much fresh goodness.

Pretty St. Patricks Day Food

{She Who Eats} made these delicious looking treats.

If you're feeling adventurous you can try them for yourself. Check them out {here}.

Yummy little treats.

St. Patrick's Day Treats

I saw this recipe on {Bright Ideas}

Green Popcorn Balls

Ingredients:

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1/3 cup unsalted butter, plus extra for coating bowl and hands
1 tablespoon water
Pinch of salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon green food coloring, optional
9 cups prepared popcorn
2 cups green M&M’S® Brand Milk Chocolate or Peanut Chocolate Candies
1 cup mini marshmallows
Candy thermometer
2 quarts heavy bottom pot
Wooden spoon or spatula
Large pot
Waxed or parchment paper
Cookie sheet
Cellophane (optional)

In a saucepan over medium heat, combine sugar, corn syrup, butter, water and salt. Stir constantly until mixture comes to a boil. Continue cooking without stirring for another 10 minutes, or until the syrup reaches the hard-crack stage—300ºF on a candy thermometer. Immediately remove from heat, add vanilla extract and food coloring and mix well.
In a large greased pot, combine popped popcorn with syrup, stirring constantly with a spatula or wooden spoon until completely coated. Stir in M&M’S® Brand Chocolate Candies and marshmallows. Once mixture is cool enough to handle, coat hands with butter and form 2 ½-inch balls. Place on tray lined with either wax or parchment paper until ready to serve, or, wrap in cellophane.

Here's a fun one from {Family Fun}

Pot of Gold

Ingredients
3-ounce box of lemon-flavor gelatin
6 limes
Sugar
1 teaspoon of whipped cream

Instructions
Line an 8-inch square baking dish with plastic wrap, leaving several inches of overhang on each side (this will make removing the gelatin easier). Combine a 3-ounce box of lemon-flavor gelatin and 1 cup of boiling water in a medium bowl, stirring until the gelatin is dissolved. Stir in 1 cup of cold water, then pour the mixture into the baking dish. Cover the dish with plastic wrap and chill the gelatin for 4 hours or until firm, then slice the gelatin into 1/2-inch cubes.
Cut off the top quarter of each of 6 limes, then, without cutting into the fruit, slice a thin layer of peel from the bottom of each one to help them stand upright. With a small knife, cut around the inside of each lime's rind to loosen the pulp, then spoon it out to make a shell.
Place a pinch of sugar and 1 teaspoon of whipped cream in the bottom of each shell, then fill each lime pot with gelatin gold. Makes 6

Or, here's an easy treat.

Leprechaun Pudding
It's just pistachio pudding, or any white flavored pudding with green food coloring in it, topped with whipped cream and little shamrock sprinkles! Love it!

St. Patrick's Day Party Ideas

First of all, I love this idea from Better Homes & Gardens. Love the green table cloth and the use of granny smith apples as a centerpiece. So, you could have the whole room be decorated in green, and then serve a rainbow of food like this table from {The Idea Room}.Another great food idea is pot of gold. {Family Fun} has this great recipe for Pot of Gold Soup, but you could also make potato cheese soup or scalloped potatoes.

One of my favorite drinks at party's is this sherbet punch. You just put a carton of any kind of sherbet into 2 liters of sprite. It's delicious! Of course, green lime sherbet would be great for St. Patrick's Day. And here are some rainbow cupcakes. I'd just frost them in a cute Leprechaun or St. Patrick's Day way.
{Family Fun} has the recipe for these.

Make Your Own Pillow Cover

{Make It and Love It} has an amazing tutorial for making this amazing pillowcase. It's so pretty! Check it out.

Family Gift

Saw this idea on {My Mix of Six}. She made the letters of her family's last name - each one using a full poster board so they'd all be uniform. But they don't have to be perfect...just look at the end result!Then, she had different members of her family wear darker clothes so these letters would stand out. She took pictures of different groups of her family as they held the letters of their last name. Then, she edited all the pictures to match - I think she did sepia tone, but they could be black and white, too. Then compiled this:

What a great gift idea for parents or grandparents!! I think it looks really cute.

More Kitchen Windowseats

To see the first group of Kitchen Windowseats I posted about, click {here}. I've since found more, and I really love this idea - especially in small spaces.
I mean, think of all the light this corner of windows will bring into your kitchen. And windowseats add so much seating - without all the chairs. Not to mention all the storage you can have in the bench.

It's kind of fun to think about looking out the window while you're eating. I think this would be especially refreshing at breakfast.

They just look so cozy. Eat in kitchens are nice because everyone congregates in the kitchen anyways. But the windowseat makes it look so much more inviting.

Here's a bench without the window behind it. I still like the bench idea...but I wish there were a window...

I guess they make the space feel a little bit more casual. But, you could dress it up as much as you want.It seems like people are often selling a table without the chairs. Here is your solution to finding the perfect table with not enough chairs. :)

I just can't get over how much I love all the light pouring in!!

Toot! Toot!

Goes my horn again... I made another Custom Bow Holder recently and I am just loving how they are turning out, so I wanted to share it with you all. This is the bedding this customer wanted me to match. So, we decided to match the ribbons to the stripes in the crib skirt.

I love how colorful this one is!!

And these flowers were fun to make, too.

Oh, I love getting crafty! And I can't wait to have a girl someday so I can make one of these and actually keep it!

Check out more of these in my Etsy Shoppe on the left side bar.

Gas Stove Miracle

This miracle brought to you by {Nannygoat}. I saw this on her blog and I about died.
If you have a gas stove, you know how yucky gas stoves get. Mine used to be WAY worse than this. I was so ashamed, but not strong enough to scrub the gunk off. Well nannygoat just put her burners in a ziplock and sprayed some ammonia in there. Then she let them sit overnight and the next morning all that grime just wiped off - so she says.
And they looked like this. I was amazed, because I could never get mine clean. So, I tried it. And I was too ashamed to take a before picture of my burners...seriously they were nasty. But it worked really well. I wouldn't say it was as easy as she made it sound - I definitely had to rub hard and it took a while to get all those corners clean, but the point is that they came clean. Totally clean. Like brand new. It's amazing!