Love Life!

Share Goodness =)

I survived! The hardest thing in my whole life. I am a better soul because of my challenges. In addition to lots of prayer, scriptures, loving friends & family, I focused on positivity and happiness. I believe that what we think about & talk about we bring about. I want to bring about hope, peace, random acts of kindness, and goodness. Here is a little bit of goodness from me to you. May your day, week, month be a little brighter. ((Hugs))

Fun Spring LDS General Conference

LDS General Conference is a fun and special time for our family. We spend the weekend together, feeding our spirits, eating yummy food, napping and being together and feeling blessed. This precious time that we spend together connects us to our Heavenly Father, His words for us, and to each other. I love the spirit that conference brings into our home. Here are some of the fun things we did for conference this year.

My conference basket is ready with everything we need - packets, pencils, scissors & treats.

You will need:

empty toilet paper rolls

Small candy & toys

decorative tissue paper

wrapping ribbon that matches your tissue

scissors & glue

(I can not find the link to the wrapper around the tube - it is so cute. 

You could use scrapbook paper.)

Cut squares of tissue large enough to go around the tube twice.

Stuff the candy & toys into the T.P. rolls. 

Apply a line of glue on the roll and stick the tissue to the roll rolling the roll 

over the tissue as you go. Apply one more line of glue at the end. 

Twist ends and tie with ribbon. 

I used this cute wrapper that says:

Conference time comes twice a year

A true blessing for us all...

Once in the spring when the flowers bloom,

and again when the leaves start to fall.

Oh please listen to the prophet

I know he will show us the way.

Our Heavenly Father will lead him,

and help him to know what to say. 

In the spring we usually have a gourmet hamburger bar with finger foods & treats. 

Happy Conference - enjoy your precious family and the spiritual feast.

Merry Christmas Neighbor Treats

Some of the most beautiful people in our lives are our neighbors. Even when we try our hardest we can not catch up to them when it comes to yummy treats that they supply us with throughout the year! At Christmas time we try to come up with the cutest, yummiest, fun Christmas gift and we have tons of fun doing it. Here are some of our ideas. Hope you have fun spreading Christmas cheer to your neighbors too!

 We made cake balls that turned out sooo yummy!

 A tip on these suckers put a dab of chocolate down to hold the stick and then fill the rest of the way. We filled gallon zipper baggies and then cut then corner off. To add a little more flair we sprinkled red crystals to the tops. Then we put them in sucker bags with twisty ties. Adorable!

 Can you tell we love chocolate? These are chocolate flavored rice krispie treats and then we made stars with white chocolate. I drew stars on a piece of paper and then we put it under the parchment so we could keep our star shapes nice. We also added vanilla snowman marshmellows marshmallows Too cute.

August Canning!!!

Papa grew a fabulous garden - he always does! We get to be the recipients of all the yummy treats he grows......being recipients comes with responsibility too. =) We get to be the harvesters and the bottling committee. Jami, Breonna & Bryce came over and we all worked together. We bottled tons and had fun with some experimental recipes and things I have never bottled before like jalapenos, jalapeno jelly and eggplant chutney. They all got rave reviews so we did something right. In the process we learned new stuff and had fun.

Re-purpose Dresser/Entertainment Center

I have so much to catch up on! We have been busy re-painting, re-finishing & re-doing. This was our first project and we still have "stuff" to do! It has been great getting LOTS done.
I needed a new entertainment center but of course the ones I love were way more than I wanted to spend. My sister and  friend of mine re-purposed dressers so I decided that was they way to go. Jordan did an AWESOME job re-purposing this dresser into an entertainment center. We are sooo happy with the way it turned out that I thought I would share.

BEFORE

 Jordan removed the top two drawers and the hardware for them and then sanded the entire dresser. We drilled two 2 1/2 inch holes in the back so that all of the cords could be hidden. Then he painted it with BEHR exterior semi-gloss enamel. (I love BEHR paint!) I lightly sanded the edges and added a swipe of walnut stain. I bought a piece of trim that we nail gunned on to the front and distressed that a little as well. I also purchased new handles. We put a power strip in the center of the opening so that everything could have an easy plug.

Working on it =)

 Isn't it beautiful! I love it!

AFTER!

Dragon Fandango!

Karlie wanted a Dragon party. We have read The Care and Keeping of Dragons and she wants to own a mountain and raise a dragon or two. Ideas, ideas - it took some work but it worked out great and was a super success. I came up with the name because of a mix up with cascarones, fiestas & fandangos. In a way they all go together and it sounded good so we kept it. The cake turned out awesome! Karlie thought it should be a little more fierce but after Kaity turned it into a fire breathing dragon she decided it would do. I got my instructions here. I used vanilla cake mix and made homemade icing with this recipe. It turned out really yummy. I used snackwells cookies for the scaley back-bone, a jumbo marshmallow cut in half for the eyes with candy dots left over from decorating gingerbread houses and chocolate marshmallows for the nose. I covered orange slices with green fruit roll ups for the eyebrows.

For the invitations I used the pattern here. I printed our party information on the center paper and used bamboo skewers cut in half for the sticks.

For our first activity everyone made some dragon bones! They loved this activity. I gave each child a piece of tinfoil and sugar cookie dough that was previously divided into plastic bags. They made the bones on the tinfoil and I cooked it on the tinfoil. (I wrote each child's name on the tinfoil before baking so they wouldn't get mixed up.) I like this recipe it stays nice and moist and it doesn't have to be rolled out.

This is what Karlie's turned out to look like. I wish I had taken a picture of all of them - they were pretty cool. We had skulls and all kinds of amazing bones, we even had one egg.

For our next activity we made cascarones. I saved up egg shells for a few weeks prior and blew the out every time I cooked an egg dish. Before the party the girls and I dyed the egg shells. We made homemade confetti out of paper grass we had left over from Easter and paper left over from making the invitations.

Then I cut circles out of crete paper and we glued them over the holes with glue sticks.

After that we were going to have a hunt to find the Dragons nest of eggs but it rained that morning so we didn't hunt but everyone got an egg. This project needs started a few days before you need them so they have time to dry. Here are the steps to out of this world dragon eggs.

7" balloons blown to desired size. Strips of newspaper. A mixture of two cups water, 1cup flour and a bottle of Elmer's glue (partially used.) Dip the strips in the mixture and layer them on the balloons leaving a hole at the top to insert the treasure.

We layered ours with two layers of newspaper and one layer of colored paper and then added spots of shiny tinfoil. Then we popped the balloons and pulled them out and filled them with candy. I thought it would be cool to put a Safari brand miniature Dragon in them but candy worked for us.

It was work and took a little planning but it was a pretty inexpensive party and was an absolute hit!

HaPpY BiRtHdAy to my future DrAgOn TrAiNeR!