loving this summer a bit much.

being with these silly girls is what life is all about…

we are loving every little bit of our summer!

we attempted riding without training wheels, for like, 15 minutes..

they are back on, as high as I can get them to help her learn to balance..

best $20 spent this summer was on a slip and slide.

seriously..  this is awesome!

up next, we have a bathroom re-do coming up where I will attempt to board and batten one wall.  yes, just one.

until then, we will be outside, soaking up the sun, a laughing, a lot.

saw this quote on pinterest

and knew it needed a home on one of my pages.  I really wanted to put it on a canvas and hang in the house, but then liv came out with her latest creation, and it was decided.

her cut-out alphas are perfect, don’t you say?

so the pic is old, just a couple of years, but it’s perfect..

(click on layout for full list of credits.)

back to laying in the sun.

I will let you know about all the beautiful things I see later.

feeling scrappy.

I love pinterest for some good old inspiration, love blog hopping for the same reason.  there have been many things that have caught my eye, I have pinned them, totally planning on doing something with them sometime…

I finally crossed off a couple of those ideas last week.

#1 – wood grain.

now I have used it here and there, but I wanted to use it in a funkier way.  not in your traditional woodsy tones.

splendid fiins came out with another “knock-out” misting mask, and well, the rest is history:

(click on layouts for full cred.)

I have admired the look of title work cut from the main background paper, with a fun patterned paper placed behind, peeking through.

here’s me favorite example from elizabeth kartchner.

I mean, sure, you could get stickers, or cut the letters out of the patterned paper, but there is something about the look of it…

I can admit, that it took me awhile to get the drop shadows on this kraft background just right, and still, I look at it and wonder if it should be tweaked more…

I adjusted those darn drop shadows, merging layers, duplicating them, tweaking the shadows, multiplying and tweaking so many times, I lost track of how many times I did it!

my eyes, seriously, were on the verge of bleeding.

but that is what happens when you get passionate about an idea!

the best hot cocoa EVER.

(I have my friend dani, and our mutual love of pinterest to thank for this incredible pot of hot goodness.  thanks dani!!!)

christmas break finds our little family staying inside and spending a lot of time together.

(I started to wonder if it was too much time this year.  can you say drama?)

when evening comes, you can usually find three little girls who are in need of a snack (read: they are “starving”), and I could take a little sweet something or other as well.

I found this recipe, through a friend’s pin on pinterest, and knew I had to make it.  I am pretty sure it was the can of sweetened condensed milk that convinced me.  you can take that to mean either that it has sweetened condensed milk in it, or that I get to lick the can clean.  whichever. take your pick.

(but I did get lynn hooked on it, so there.)

I apologize for no picture, but if you can imagine a cup of melted chocolate (plus that sweetened condensed milk, please don’t forget that, whatever you do!!!), some whipped cream on top, and angels singing, you got it.

now I say it is the best because merrill likes it!!

merrill calls most cocoa “hot caca”.  and if you remember anything from junior high spanish, you will recall that “caca” is not good.

but let’s be honest, the kid doesn’t like green olives (?!?) and he usually sleeps diagonally in bed.  he has a few issues.  (we can go into those later.)

I changed it a tiny bit, because the first time I made it, I used the bittersweet chocolate chips and it was “too rich” for some people’s taste.  so the second time around I used milk chocolate instead.

here’s the link.

here’s the recipe:

Polar Express Hot Chocolate (aka the BEST hot chocolate you've ever tasted) Recipe:

--1.5 cups of heavy cream

--1 can of sweetened condensed milk (14 oz)

--2 cups of bittersweet chocolate chips

--6 cups of milk

--1 tsp vanilla extract

In a large pot over low heat, combine all of the above ingredients.  Stir regularly for 30-40 minutes until chocolate is fully melted and incorporated with other ingredients. 

this was perfect to have in the evening and cover it, stick it in the fridge and then warm it up the next morning to have with breakfast.  or FOR breakfast.

seriously the best EVER.

sugar cookie bars: more “pinspiration”.

so when there was nothing better to do, I perused pinterest and saw that one of my friends had recently pinned a rather tasty looking treat.

I thought, “how perfect for my family!!  they love sugar cookies.”  I don’t so much love the mess.  whenever I roll out the cookie dough, little hands want some to either eat, or roll, roll again, then re-roll to make one nasty looking cookie.  a totally inedible cookie.

this recipe is perfect because you make the dough, spread it in a pan and bake it.  we love our sugar cookies THICK, with lots of frosting, so this was perfect!

I didn’t have any cream cheese on hand, so I made my usual buttercream and everyone was happy.

(although, I know someone might just fall over in shock, but I thought it was too much frosting.)

(gasp.)

here’s the pin.

here’s the recipe:

Sugar Cookie Bars

1 cup butter, room temperature
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
5 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp lemon zest (optional)
Cream butter and sugar until fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing after each egg. Add vanilla and mix well. In a separate bowl combine flour, salt, baking soda and stir with a whisk to combine. Add to wet mixture and mix just until combined. Spread on a greased baking sheet (use a 13 x 18 pan). Bake at 375 degrees for 10-15 min, until light golden brown or until a toothpick comes out clean (they won't look done so do the toothpick test). Cool completely and frost.

Frosting
1/2 cup butter, room temperature
4 ounces cream cheese (1/2 of an 8 oz block) softened
1 tsp vanilla (I used almond extract for half of the frosting)
¼ tsp salt
4 cups powdered sugar
5 Tbsp milk
food coloring (if desired)
For frosting combine butter and cream cheese until smooth and creamy. Add vanilla and salt. Add powdered sugar in 1-2 cup increments until combined, then add milk a little at a time and mix until smooth and spreading consistency. You may not need all the milk! Spread over cooled cookie bars.

so go and try them out, use some fun sprinkles!

eat.

merrill hates the obviously stated.

hates it.

so being the wonderful wife that I am, I decided that it would be cute, to post something stated quite obviously, because I thought it would be cute and rather fitting.

while hunting down corbels for a project that has cost me much time, sweat, and tears, I came across these at hobby lobby.

aren’t they cute!!  they are about 2 feet long.  so fun.

I had to put the word eat above them..  had to do it.

and merrill hates it.

(maybe hate is too strong a word.)

he really dislikes the obvious stated.

“I know what to do when I see a knife and fork.”

(maybe sometime I will have to go into more of this particular conversation wherein he told me that he resents me for making him read everyday.  “you put this stuff up around the house that I have to read..  I pass it everyday, and I know what it says, but every time I pass it, I have to read it.”  see, resentment.)

oh well.  I think it’s cute.

I look forward to making the word “read” and hanging it in the reading area downstairs.

(I love my scroll saw.)

and before we leave the subject of eat..

(didn’t we, when I started talking about reading?…)

I made these.

found on pinterest.

they are good.  and I am talking about every step of the process, from licking out the sweetened condensed milk can, to cleaning the pan, to you know, eating them…

(I used yellow cake batter cake mix.  it is merrill’s favorite and I used it trying to coax him into liking my “eat” wall wordage.)

(hey, the tasty bribes worked with the wee ones.)

(don’t judge me.)

but I would suggest following her recipe for the glaze.

this silly woman (finger pointing at me) thought she knew better, tweaked it a bit, and well, we were left eating them like this:

with a spoon.

but they are tasty.

(and the picture isn’t as pretty as hers.)

“pin”spiration.

so let me tell you how pinterest snagged me and hasn’t quite eased up.
a lot of my friends out there (you better know who you are..) have been talking all about it, saying how great it is, yadda yadda yadda.
knowing how I am, a rebel to all that is popular, I ignored it.  for a while.
you see, I had a routine for saving all those things that I found around the internet and blogs that I loved, and dreamed of making, that just wasn’t working out as well as it had been.
I began saving images in my picture file on my computer.  (good.)
my sister-in-law told me of a genius idea to put those things in their own folder on my computer, labeled, what else: “ideas”.  (better!)
but then there arose the issue of me not remembering exactly where I got the idea from.  (instructions are very important things at times.)  oh sure, I usually knew where I got the idea from, sometimes there was a watermark on the image, but to sift through hundreds of blog posts, sometimes months after I came across the idea, was a major time waster.
so I tried to save all the ideas I liked in my bookmarks folder.
until merrill made fun of me.
and really, before he mocked me, it really wasn’t working.  there were vague descriptors of what that bookmark was marking, no image, and the were forgotten.
enter pinterest.
I looked into it, and it made total sense.  it solved all of my problems in that, I could save the picture AND the link to where the idea was found.  no searching and pulling my hair out trying to find the original source!!
oh, but that is not all..
it does more!
I can sort all of my “pins” into neat little categories or boards (something that I am still trying to perfect).  so all my halloween stuff is on one board and christmas gets its own area.  photography ideas don’t mingle with recipes..  it’s order, not chaos anymore!!
I also love that I can follow people whose style I admire, people who have crazy ingenuity and creativity.
I am totally addicted.
(I have also found new blogs to stalk..)
so out of my love of pinning, and creating my own version of others ideas, I am officially coining the new word: “pinspiration”.
I saw this:
(click on image for source.)

and I LOVED it!!!
(it is so me, and a few others I know..)
I took the idea, tweaked it a bit, and came up with this:
(click on the image for full list of credits.)

I can see that this is going to be a long, beautiful relationship!