[Help Please!]

Help Please!

here are the bags I am making, ( they still need to be sewn up and have drawstrings inserted)  I will be embroidering each child's name on their bag.



I need some ideas please.

I am at a total loss for ideas, I have 2 girls and 4 young nieces I have no idea what to put in the grab bags for the boys that will be coming to my daughters 4th birthday party.  I have the girls taken care of, hair barrets and head bands, purses. I also have a few gender neutral items mini reusable heat/ice packs stickers, bubbles.  I will put a few home made treats in them to.

I need help thinking of something special to put in the boys loot bags  I have already made crayon rolls for the past 2 years so they already have some of them.

the only idea I had was to pick up a few sets of jacks at the dollar store and making little bags for them?  any one please help!


of note I like to sew, crochet, paper craft and am willing to try anything else really as long as it is not too time consuming

[Patch Jeans With Flair... for kids or adults too]

Patch Jeans With Flair... for kids or adults too

Here is a quick tutorial on how I patched my Jeans,  this looks more kid like though so I put it here.

First you want to collect your materials needed.



Collect the materials Needed
Pre made patch (purchased from Walmart)
Fabric for appliqué
Cookie cutter to  use as template
Stamp to transfer the pattern
embroidery floss
Not shown
scissors, needle, thimble, embroidery hoop and heat and bond



Trim the edges of your hole to remove loose threads that will stick out. Cut out a patch that will cover the hole, I used the cookie cutter for a pattern.  also cut out an appliqué to put on top of the patch use heat and bond to attach the appliqué (for me it was the flower) and iron the pieces together.

Once the patch has cooled use the embroidery floss to sew the edges down of the patches and help keep the patch in place longer.



and here they are on.



A more detailed tutorial including a few exta steps that can help the patch last longer can be found on my Blog.

No Melt Popsicle Tutorial
Cantaloupe and blueberry flavour

I have 2 Young girls at home and many nieces and neighbours that like to visit my place and with the weather being as hot as it is Popsicles have been in high demand.  I hate artificial flavours, colours and added sugar so I have always tried to make my own when ever possible, I also find that little ones often put them down and forget about them at times in places you don’t see (like last week my 3 year old left hers on the end table in the basement for a least half an hour before I noticed, and since it was one of these she was able to pick it up and finish it!) and you don’t want a big sticky puddle, So I came up with these popsicles they are easily made with fruit and juice from your fridge maybe that two ripe fruit that you need to use up ( that is what this batch was made from) try it out and see how many flavours you can come up with!


Ingredients and tools needed:

Food processor (or blender even a potato masher would work)
Measuring cups (4 Cupper and 1 or 2 cupper)
Measuring spoons
Small bowl
Mixing spoon
Sauce pan
Popsicle moulds or paper cups and sticks

Cantaloupe or other Soft Fruit to blend (watermelon, peaches, canned pears all work well too.)
Blueberries or other fruit to stir in
Apple Juice or other non citrus juice or water
Unflavoured Gelatine powder or flavoured if you want


Step 1

Cut up your Cantaloupe and blend until liquidy and measure the amount you have, in my case it is about 2 cups.





Step 2

Pour into a separate measuring cup your apple juice to make a full number of cups of liquid in my case that will be a cup of apple juice to make 3 cups total.



Step 3

Bloom your gelatine.  I used 4 table spoons (2 packets) of gelatine (follow directions on your package) for 3 cups of think “juice”.   Blooming means put a small amount of your apple juice into your gelatine and let set for 15 min to begin desolving and avoid lumps.


(opps dont know what happened to the photo of this I will add some next time I make a batch)

Step 4

Place gelatine and the rest of your apple juice in a sauce pan and bring to a low simmer to fully dissolve the gelatine. Then remove form heat and let cool for 5 min or so.



Step 5

Mix apple sauce gelatine into cantaloupe mixture. And place in fridge for about an hour to begin setting stir once.



Step 6

Remove mixture from fridge and mix in blueberries ( I used a full pint).



Step 7

Spoon mixture into the popsicle mold. (Yes I have a crazy amount of molds as I only one to do this every few weeks)





Step 8

Freeze your popsicles.



Step 9

Unmold and enjoy.

For my first daughter I had some very gender neutral decore,  this time I have gone all girly with lots of pink, so i took the bird mobile pattern that is going around (printed it ages ago, over a year).  and recovered the mobile.

here it is, I really like the way it turnrd out.

*the wall  colour is more brown than it looks here.
  

c&c welcomed

I made these for my daughters play group,  the recipe is from the food network, a variation on a basic chocolate chip cookie,  the only thing I did different was use a mini muffin tin as opposed to a regular muffin tin (would have been way too big)



the kids called them cookie muffins!

It was made from a kit my mom got her but I think her design flair is wonderfull,  yes those are windows on the roof.  LOL

I have started to make hobby horses for my 2 year old and her friends.

I made the first one about a week befor christmass when my daughter was running around the living room with an over sized plastic candy cane between here legs.

I found the pattern at lionbrand.com
http://www.lionbrand.com/patterns/50782-2.html

and i got the great yarn for the horses mane at the dollar store.

here is my daughter with hers on christmas eve.


and here are a few better shots on the one I made for my friends little one earlier in the month.




I added a little stuffed ball at the bottom of them to protect your floors.

your comments are more than welcome.

I have had incredibly dry lips lately so I decided to make a lip scrub.  I decided to make one from honey baking soda and a few pinches of sugar.  It is working incredibly well.  I follow it up by using either oil (olive or canola) or a chapstick on my lips. I have read a few recipes that included ground up asa but am not sure the reason for that, I will do more research and if i find the information I will add it to my post, try it and let you know what I think of it.  for now here is a pick on my scrub in a pot from the dollar store and all I have to say is that  my lips are doing much better today.

So I was at my sister in laws last week and she was watching John and Kate plus 8 and i heard her say she made playdough for the kids using equal parts honey, peanutbutter, and milk powder so I figured i would give it a try.

I found it took a little bit more milk powder than equal parts to get a nice texture.

Here it is before my daughter played with it,  it is in a baggie since i had made it the night before.



While my daughter was not so much into playing with it she really liked putting raisins and dried cranberries on to the figures I made for her.

So this was my first time covering a cake with gnash, I think it tuned out well there was a crease where the two pieces of cake met and next time I will fill that with something before covering and I think that i re coated a few tomany times to try and fill the cracks hence the few bubbles and streaks that formed but hey you live and learn right?

Here they are, let me know what you think.




(with out the toppings)


It was a white cake filled with a chocolate Kahlua mouse and topped with dark chocolate gnash, strawberries and truffles made form the leftover gnash.