“Serenity Soon” Glitter Bottles

I wish I had thought of these, but, alas, I found them on Pinterest.  They originally were designed to be bottles to help kids learn to center themselves and meditate, but they’ll be perfect for my hooligans as “serenity soon” bottles.  For the littler ones, it takes about 5 minutes for the glitter to settle, so they act as a timer for timeouts and give them time to calm down as they watch the glitter.

For the oldest, who has ADHD and mild Aspergers, they function to relax his mind and allow him to focus. All for a few bucks. Of course, the hubs and I also find them calming…kind of like watching an aquarium filled with fish, I guess.

The blue one just started settling, the green is done, and the pink is about halfway there.

Here’s what you’ll need:

• SmartWater bottles (smaller size), labels and goo removed, using Goo Gone and hot soapy water
• 3 oz (or so) bottle of glitter glue in your favorite color
• Small tube of fine glitter in the same color
• Alene’s Clear Gel Tacky Glue
• E6000 (you didn’t think I’d do a project without it, did you?)

In the clean bottle, put the glitter and glitter glue, along with a bit (1 Tbsp or so) clear gel glue.  Heat about 2-1/2 cups water in measuring cup in microwave until very hot, but not boiling.  Add that to the bottle, and shake it like a madwoman until the glitter glue is no longer clumpy.  You’ll see what I mean.

Time it when you’re done to see how long it takes to settle.  The blue and green ones take about 6-1/2 minutes and the pink one only about four.  That’s perfect for my kids’ ages. The more clear gel glue you add, the longer it takes.

When you’re happy with the time, use the E6000 to glue the lid on. You don’t want sticky, glittery kids when they manage to open it, do you?

Also, the pink was more expensive glitter glue (because Walmart was out of pink) from the craft store and was much harder to blend.  So in this case, the cheaper, the better.  I think the dollar store has glitter glue, but didn’t have the fortitude to go there with three kids.

This would make a fabulous moms’ group craft, I think.  Counting the bottled water, the cost is about $4, but that’s because my glitter glue was $2 each. The SmartWater is important because they are the only completely smooth bottles.

The hooligans are completely fascinated with these, so much so that I called them Relaxation Bottles rather than Time Out bottles so they wouldn’t be trying for timeouts to get to play with them!

Find the original post from My Crazy Blessed Life here

Linking up at The Frugal GIrls
and Happy Go Lucky

Sufferin’ Soybean Succotash!

Here’s a little known fact…my GI Joe’s favorite vegetable is lima beans.  I know, right?  I found a recipe in Everyday Food last summer for a succotash made from edamame rather than lima beans, and he was quite disappointed when all the hooligans and I liked it better than regular old lima bean succotash. Oh, well, that’s the way we roll.

Of course, when I wanted to make it again this year, I had misplaced the recipe.  And Martha didn’t have it online anywhere that I could find. So I recreated it as best I can remember, and it was amazing.  I’m pretty sure the hubs licked his plate, it was so clean when he finished.


I like the blend of flavors and, especially, how quickly this comes together.  Twenty minutes…really!  Everyone was so anxious to eat last night, I totally forgot to sprinkle a bit of feta or goat cheese on top…about 2 Tbsp per serving.  It’s excellent without, but even better with the cheese.

This seems like a long ingredient list, but it’s an entire dinner, with no sides necessary.  If you’d like, some crusty bread to dip in seasoned oil would be tasty alongside, though.

Chicken with Edamame Succotash

4 thin-sliced chicken breasts (or two regular, cut in half horizontally)
Marinade:
    1/4 cup soy sauce
    2 Tbsp brown sugar
    2 Tbsp lime juice
    2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
    2 tsp Montreal Steak seasoning
    2 Tbsp olive oil
Succotash:
    2 cups frozen edamame, shelled
    2 cups frozen corn kernels
    2 cups diced zucchini
    2 Tbsp olive oil
    2 tsp Italian seasoning
    Salt and pepper to taste
2 Tomatoes, sliced into wedges
1 avocado, peeled and thinly sliced
1/2 cup feta or goat cheese, crumbled

1. In quart size ziptop bag, mix marinade ingredients and add chicken.  Let it marinate for half an hour or so.  Don’t marinate longer than an hour, or it will be too salty. 
2. In large saute pan with a lid, heat olive oil over medium heat.  Add vegetables and Italian seasoning, cover, and let cook for about 8 minutes, then remove lid and let it crisp up a bit, 3 or 4 minutes longer.
3. While vegetables are cooking, heat a grill or grill pan until very hot.  Grill chicken for about 4 minutes per side, until cooked through. 
4.  To serve, slice chicken across the grain.  Top succotash with avocados and feta or goat cheese. Salt and pepper tomato wedges and serve alongside.

Click here for the printable recipe

I Hope Organizing Is Not My Superpower

I mean, that would be handy and all, but there are times that I feel like it’s all I do.  Compulsive much?  Me?  Movers fear me because everything is so well-organized it looks like a deceptively small amount o’stuff we haul around every couple of years.  The hubs always warns them, and they never believe him.  Too bad for them.

But I digress. Another of my projects for this summer is getting my stamps organized.  I tend to forget what I have.  I prefer to believe my memory is failing, not that I own too many stamps. Anyway, I made a catalog to keep track of them.


I found a small three-ring binger at an office supply store.  It holds 8-1/2” x 5-1/2” papers.  I designed a cover paper using My Digital Studio, Stampin’ Up’s digital design program.  I thought since the stamps are all Stampin’ Up!, the cover should be, as well.  Plus, I need to justify buying the software.


To make the dividers, I just cut cardstock in half, then attached a tab I punched out of cardstock. I set my three-hole punch to fit the binder. Then I hid it so no one could reset it before I finish my catalog.


And now begins the rather tedious part…adding all the stamps. For clear stamps, I simply copied two covers from the cases on a sheet of paper, folded it in half, and punched along the open edge.  For wooden stamps, I either cut the set out of an old catalog and adhered it to a half sheet of paper or stamped each one from the set on a half sheet of paper. Guess which was easier? 

While I’m pretty sure I’ll still forget stamps, this makes it easy to page through instead of looking through my stamp sets on the shelves.  I’m also going to attempt to add each new set as I get it to the catalog, so I don’t have to devote another whole day next summer. 

This was a perfect project for this hot, sticky summer day…but tomorrow I’m taking the kids to see “Big Miracle” at the bargain movie and enjoy the a/c and polar scenes!

Increasingly Cute

I’m sure you remember last winter when I learned to knit.  What?  You don’t commit my every movement to memory.  Well, I taught myself to knit last fall and made several scarves, bracelets, and even a felted clutch.  What all those have in common is that they are straight rows of knitting, the same number on each row.

This spring I decided I probably need to know how to (intentionally) increase or decrease stitches, and found a simple headscarf pattern to make for Princess Thundercloud.  She and I went to the local yarn store and she chose a rainbow wool yarn to use.  It’s Crystal Palace Yarns Mochi Plus, Color 551 if you’d like to get some. It’s a lovely, soft 80% Merino/20% Nylon yarn.


One craft lead to another, and after taking the supplies on not one but two vacations and STILL not starting it, I finally took the plunge last week.  I was sitting in the doctor’s waiting room for about five hours while the oldest hooligans was undergoing tests, so I thought it would be a perfect block of time to get going.  And it was.

It took that day and a couple of hours on a couple of evenings to complete, mostly because I wasn’t sure what I was doing and kept undoing everything and starting over. It turned out really well, though, and now she wants them in many other solid colors (mostly pink and purple, of course).  I’m thinking a solid one with flowers embroidered on it would be super cute.  Or snowflakes for winter. Or hearts for Valentines Day. Oh, my, I best get to knitting.


Here’s how:

You’ll need sport-weight yarn and number 8 knitting needles.

Put a rubber band on one needle, to use as the one when you increase.

Tie a slipknot on the needle without a rubber band.

Row 1:  Knit into the front and back of the knot.

Row 2:  Knit across both stitches.

Row 3:  Knit into the front and back of those stitches. You have 4 stitches.

Row 4:  Knit across the stitches

Row 5: Knit the 1st stitch, then knit into the front and back of the 2nd stitch, knit into the front and back of the next stitch, then knit the last stitch. You have 6 stitches.

Row 6: Knit across the stitches.

Row 7:  Knit the 1st stitch, knit into the front and back of the next stitch, then knit across until only 2 stitches remain on the needle.  Knit into the front and back of the next stitch, then knit the last stitch.

Repeat rows 6 and 7 until you have about 64 stitches on your needles.  Your scarf should be about 8” long from the center to the tip of the triangle.  You can, of course, make whatever size you’d like.
Bind it off.  I sewed the points together then sewed a button on, just to make it cute.  You could also knit cords and sew them on as ties, or sew an short piece of elastic to connect the point. It’s up to you…you’re creative!



I promised Thundercloud I would include this photo with her Bunny on my blog, because “Bunny is sad she never gets to be in pictures or on your blog, Mama.”  Who can resist such cuteness?



Linking up at The Frugal Girls, Happy Go Lucky, and Petals to Picots

Stamping Cravings

Stampin’ Up!’s colors make me crave snacks…take today, for example, while I was designing cards.  I used Crumb Cake, Raspberry Ripple, Tangerine Tango, and Razzleberry.  Now all I can think of is a yummy poundcake studded with raspberries and blueberries, with a little orange extract.  Doesn’t that sound good?

Anyway, here are the cards.  I kept them simple, because I needed several for different reasons, so the sentiment on each is interchangeable.

Stampin’ Up Supplies:  Sunflower and Sweet Essentials stamp sets; Raspberry Ripple ink

Crumb Cake and Raspberry Ripple cardstock; Floral District DSP (for small flowers)

Scallop Border and Itty Bitty Shapes punches; Some rhinestones from the craft store (ack!)

All Stampin’ Up! supplies:  Pursuit of Happiness stamp set

Crumb Cake, Lucky Limeade, Whisper White, and Tangerine Tango cardstock

Tangerine Tango and Lucky Limeade markers; 1”, Scallop Circle, and 1-3/8” Square punches

Lucky Limeade Ruffled Ribbon

I’m torn about my feelings for these cards with medallion/ribbon type things on them, so I’ve resisted creating one.  But they’re everywhere, man!  So I tried, and I was pleasantly surprised that this one turned out pretty well.

All Stampin’ Up supplies:  Perfectly Penned stamp set

Crumb Cake, Tangerine Tango cardstock and Floral District DSP

Brights Collection Buttons; Island Indigo Bakers’ Twine; 1” Square Punch

This was a sketch challenge I saw on Pinterest and remembered as I started designing.  To make the pennants, you just slide the end of your rectangular paper diagonally into a square punch and snip off the ends.  Nifty, eh?

So there you have it…a little creative surge I forced myself to have today so that I could get cards in the mail…and now I’m off to do just that! And maybe pick up the ingredients for a raspberry-blueberry-orange poundcake.

And the Army Goes Rolling Along…

We attended a Change of Responsibility ceremony yesterday downtown at the War Memorial.  What a difference a year makes! People actually smiled during this one, including my GI Joe.

When the hubs took command last July, it was approximately the temperature of the surface of the sun with absolutely no breeze.  Yesterday was about 75 degrees with a refreshing light breeze.  Of course, it probably helped that I was doing naught but attending the ceremony and reception, unlike last year when I catered the reception and was a little stressed about it all.

Anyway, I made some Army mints as a welcome gift for the new Command Sergeant Major and his lovely family.  These mints are super cool-looking, and they taste delicious…like a Girl Scout Thin Mint. And did I mention how very simple they are to make? Just look and be amazed!


I lucked into some Army seal candy molds at a garage sale at Ft. Leavenworth a few years ago, but this would work with any circular design, such as a flower, as long as it’s larger than your cracker.  And you probably don’t need Army candy, anyway, right?


Here are the ingredients (you won’t need to make a list):  Andes Mint Chips and Ritz crackers. You can also use regular Andes mints, but then you have to unwrap each one. Who wants to do that?


Melt the chips for one minute in the microwave and stir until smooth.  Put a spoonful of melted mint chocolate in each mold, then top with a crackers.  I wiggle it down as far as I can without smooshing through the chocolate layer. That's a technical chef-type term, smooshing.


Spoon a little more melted chocolate on top and smooth it with a spoon until all the cracker edges are covered.  When you’re done with the whole tray, rap it sharply on the counter a few times to level it and get any bubbles out of the chocolate.


Chill them for about 15 minutes, then pop them out onto a dishtowel.  One bag of chips makes about 18 mints.  I really like using the Andes chips because they’re shiny when they harden again.  Regular chocolate chips would not be, unless you tempered your chocolate.  Then easy goes out the window for this recipe, and we don’t want that to happen!

I'm linking up to 

and at The Taylor House Thursdays

Scrapping Confession

I’m just going to come clean…I am woefully behind in my scrapbooking!  I just never got back into the groove when we moved last summer, so other than creating two pages a month for the books we give grandparents for Christmas, I’ve done very little.  I mean, as in maybe half a dozen other pages. To put it in context, I usually make between 125 and 150 pages a year.

My biggest summer resolution was to catch up on scrapbooking.  I’m not there yet, but I’ve made a sizable dent in it.  As I scrap, I’m also organizing my photos, deleting duplicates and only keeping those with meaning. I save about 5,000 photos a year (imagine how many I take, since I’m the queen of deleting while they’re still on the memory card in the camera).  As I’ve been culling this summer, I find I really only want to keep about 1,500 of those each year.  I know, it’s still a huge number.

I  was completely overwhelmed as to how to go about this organization.  Once upon a time (meaning when I had only one hooligan), each quarter I printed, backed up on CD, and backed up on an external hard drive all my favorites. That fell by the wayside about, oh, five years ago. You can see why I wake up at night in a cold sweat, worrying about this. You can’t?  Oh,well, so I’m a little compulsive.

I came up with a catch-up schedule that’s working really well.  One week I organize and print my favorites from a quarter, ruthlessly deleting all those so-so and redundant photos. The following week, I digitally scrap the photos from that quarter. I just made a little note on my calendar of what quarter is what week (I’m working backward in time) and it’s going pretty quickly.  The organization and cleaning up takes about an hour, then the scrapping takes about 5 or 6 the following week. I try to do a month a night(after the hooligans are in bed, of course) on the the weeks I’m scrapping.

The renaming system I decided on works really well, too. In my “Pictures” file on my computer, the files are automatically created by date as I download photos.  I’m consolidating and renaming all those daily folders into one monthly one that contains 4 or 5 subfolders.  For example, for June, 2012:

Folder Name is 0612

The subfolders in that file are:
Family
Crafts
Food
Stampin’ Up

The photos in each subfolder have names like “0612 MKE Zoo(1)” or “0612 Raspberry Limeade".”

That way, I’m not looking for a certain photo and they’re all named DSC002010 or something.

I know, it sounds tedious, but I’m enjoying looking back and remembering what we were doing when. I’ve even been inspired to make some cool scrap pages.  These are some of my favorites, of a couple of days we spent on a Lake Michigan beach last summer.

 

All this photo work has reminded me of why I love digital scrapbooking, and it’s given me new inspiration to save my family’s memories in a way that’s creative and rewarding to me.

I print a large number at Costco for only 9 cents a photo.  I take mine in on CD (because my internet is only a wireless hot spot and works too poorly to upload them all) and it only takes about an hour before I can pick them…and I can easily waste an hour at Costco! I usually print two quarters at once, to qualify for the discounted price.

If you’re like me and feeling overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of photos you have stuck on your computer, just start small.  Organize this month’s photos.  Then last, and the last, and so on. You can DO it!