Old Man Winter Is Back Again

I've been feeling under-the-weather this past week - sinus headaches, runny/stuffy nose, sneezing, coughing, ugh. At least it waited to hit me until after my trip to the dentist to have an old filling replaced. My tooth had started to bother me this past week when I ate on that side. Fun fun fun. Soooo...

Today was a nice change of pace. I spent the afternoon with B., her grandmother (my mother-in-law), and my little nephew. We went to the movies and saw Justin Bieber in 3-D which was pretty cool. And as much as I never thought I'd say it - it actually was a good movie. B. loooovvvves Justin Bieber. I glanced over at her a few times during the movie and there she was  every time I looked over - holding up her 3-D glasses with both hands, watchin' the movie on the big screen with a big 'ole grin from ear to ear - sooooo stinkin' cute! lol!

By the time the movie was over, it was sleeting out. We stopped at Wendy's and had a late lunch then went home. The weather forecast late last night (11 pm) said we were only supposed to get some rain today and then 1-2" of snow tonight. No big deal, right? Well, it's been snowing a lot out there this evening.... so weird to see big huge snowflakes coming down while it's thundering and lightning at the same time.... thunder snow?? lol!  Yep, we had thunder snow a couple hours ago. Plus the kids are having a snow day tomorrow.  So the long weekend has just gotten even longer. It is really windy out there, so the snow has blown up against the door and we can't get it open to take the dogs out. Opened the door and there's a wall of snow. lol! Poor dogs didn't know what to do. So my hubby is heading out there to shovel. 1-2" - no big deal - um... yeah right. I just checked the weather forecast again - and now it's saying 5" to 8"..... and it looks like we already got about 8" out there already. Crazy!

Winter ain't over yet....

Birthday Bear Card

I hope you all are having a wonderful Sunday afternoon. It's actually warming up here to the upper 40's/low 50's today and it's nice and sunny out. My husband decided to take advantage of the warmer weather and wash up the cars and get the salt off of them and clean the garage floor.

I just finished up this quick birthday card for one of B.'s friends. Nothing fancy or too involved since I didn't have a whole lot of time to put it together. I used my Create a Critter cartridge and the Cricut to cut out the bear (at 3") and the "Happy Birthday" sentiment inside. The pink papers on the base of the card and the brown & ivory cardstock for the bear are just scraps I had leftover from other projects. I used one of my Martha Stewart deep-edge border punches for the bottom portion. And the cardstock base of the card came in a 20 pack at Big Lots for $1. They were already pre-scored and came with the envelopes too. I've made more than several cards with these already. It's a really great value and I'm glad I stocked up on them when I had the chance last year.....

Thanks for stoppin' by! :^)

What a Week

I was sick with that nasty stomach bug last weekend. It hit me late Saturday/early Sunday - about 48 hours after B. got sick with it. I've been sick before, but that was the worse ever. It was awful. Hopefully, my hubby doesn't end up with it too. It's been almost a week, so hopefully he's been spared.

So the Valentine projects had to go on hold for awhile until I was feeling better. I was just feeling tired and just blah all week. One of my little dogs (weighs more like a medium-sized dog) decided to jump up on the dining room table and get into the remaining miniature Reese's cups that I was using for the candy iPod earbuds. I came home from grocery shopping one day after not going anywhere for a week, and found little gold foil wrappers everywhere. He ate I'd say at least a dozen of them, maybe a few more than that. I've made treat bags lots of times before on the dining room table and he's never done that in the 4-1/2 years that we've had him. But I think it was the smell of the peanut butter that made him do it. Plus one of the chairs had been left out just enough for him to jump up on. I called the vet because I was concerned about the chocolate. The vet said he would probably get an upset stomach from it but he should be ok given his weight and the amount he ate and because it was milk chocolate and not dark (dark is more dangerous because of the higher caffeine content). And sure enough, he did get sick - three times. Apparently he ate them wrappers and all. Ewwww. But he's ok now and I've started putting him in the laundry room with our other little dog or at least behind the doggy gate when I leave the house just so he stays out of trouble.

Needless to say, I had to go back out that day and buy more miniature Reese's cups so I could finish the iPods. I ended up staying up late the night before the party finishing those up and B.'s Valentine box. I have to say that this project took way more time than I initially had anticipated especially since there's almost 30 kids in B's class. But the kids at the party yesterday really liked them and thought they were cool, so I'd say it was definitely worth it. But I doubt I'll be making them again anytime soon. lol!

I used the Rock Princess cartridge and my Cricut for the toppers for all the bags. I used sandwich ziploc baggies to put the candy iPods in and cut the cardstock to 4x6 which I scored in half  and folded lengthwise for each one. Then rounded the bottom corners of all of them with my Corner Chomper. I stapled them on the bags with my Tim Holtz Tiny Attacher just because it's the only stapler in the house that actually has staples in it. The Tiny Attacher is a nifty hand-held stapler that uses teeny-tiny staples that are tinier than your typical mini stapler. It's great for scrapbooking and it's usually pretty good at stapling through multiple layers of stuff. However, for some reason, the darn thing kept jamming up on me when I was putting together these bags. I got the pink cardstock at JoAnn's on sale for $2 a pack (50% off). The black comes from Wal-Mart (Colorbok)....

I also used Rock Princess to make B.'s Valentine box with. She picked everything she wanted to cut and I let her push all the buttons on the Cricut and showed her how to use it. The Cricut sure got a work out that night between all these treat bags and the Valentine box. She put a huge pink & black peace sign with her name on a banner on the top of her box, a big glittery guitar on one side, a glittery skull with heart cut-outs for eyes, a pink, black and white checkered glittery sneaker, and some more peace signs. It turned out really cute. I love how this cartridge has the three different fonts - one with little hearts on the letters and both a girl and boy skull font (little bow or not) in addition to all the other cool girly rocker things that are on it.

B. insisted that I get Rock Princess after she saw me looking at the .pdf of the handbook online one day last month. It does have a lot of really cute girly things on it. And I'm really liking it a lot so far.

Well that's all for now....

Thanks for stopping by and if I'm not back on here before then, I hope you all have a Happy Valentine's Day! :^) We already had our Valentine dinner out last night - we went to our favorite Italian restaurant and had a really nice dinner since it was easier that way and plus it's too crazy trying to eat out on Valentine's Day itself.


Have a good evening,

Valentine Candy iPods

I hope you all are having a good weekend. Poor B. caught the stomach bug and was up literally all night Thursday with it. It was awful. Poor thing. Neither one of us slept that night. Needless to say, she missed her first day of school yesterday because of it. And also missed the Super Bowl Pep Rally at school. She was all ready to go with her Steelers painted nails in black and gold....

 
But at least she's feeling better today and is back to her sassy, witty self.

I decided we better get started with the Valentine treats that B. will be giving out during her class party because it's coming up soon plus we need to make her Valentine box yet too. So this is what we've been working on today and I wanted to show you all real quick what we're makin' while we take a short break. These are so stinkin' cute!...

 
I found the idea on www.familyfun.com. But I decided to change them up just a bit by running my cardstock through my Big Shot with the Cuttlebug tiny hearts embossing folder that I got at Big Lots last year for only $2 and by adding our version of the iPod "apple" on the back - by using a heart instead where B. can put her name to say who it's from. The "bite" was made using a 1/2" circle punch. I also had to cut my cardstock 1/2" shorter width-wise than what the instructions say because of the brand of candy hearts we're using. The iPod song list and dial on the front were downloaded from familyfun.com. You can also get the basic instructions for the candy iPods there as well. I used my 1-1/2" circle punch to punch out the dials for all of the iPods. It made that part go so much quicker especially since we're making about 30 of these...

I have to say that the most time-consuming, tedious part of this project is cutting out all those 4" aluminum foil circles for wrapping the "ear buds" which are miniature Reese's cups. The plastic lid is what we're using to trace around for the circles. All-in-all, this is a fun project to make with your kids and we're really enjoying it so far. I'm planning on putting each of the candy iPods in their own little Ziploc bag to keep them from getting all tangled together. Then making a topper for the bags that say U Rock on them...

We're gonna get back to work on them now. Thanks for stoppin' by! :)

Creamed Chicken & Noodles

Is anyone else excited about the upcoming Super Bowl?? I know I am. :)

Today I made another crockpot favorite of ours, Creamed Chicken & Noodles. This is a super simple recipe that uses just a few ingredients and we love it....

CREAMED CHICKEN & NOODLES

2 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken breasts
salt & pepper
2 cans (10.5 oz. each) cream of chicken soup
14 oz. can chicken broth
16 oz. pkg. thick, wide-noodles, cooked (I use the kind made by the Amish)

Put chicken breasts in 3-quart crockpot. Salt and pepper both sides of chicken. Spread cream of chicken soup over top. Cook on high 1/2 hour; then turn down to low for 6 hours. Shred chicken with fork. Stir in chicken broth and cooked noodles. Cook additional 1/2 hour or until heated through. I add the chicken broth while the noodles are boiling and crank the crockpot back up to high to speed the heating-through process along.

Serve with a side of veggies like carrots or steamed broccoli/caulifower/carrots or whatever you like.

Hope you enjoy and thanks for stoppin' by. :)