Announcement

Some of you may remember nearly two years ago I had a very traumatic pregnancy when my water broke at 18 weeks with my now two year old.

Here is Siena at 2 years old. She is with her big sister and little brother.

You may even remember that I had explained how I always have very difficult pregnancies and that out of the three children I had never been pregnant longer than 34 weeks. My oldest was born at 34 weeks and my middle born at 26 weeks.

Well for this reason I was very hesitant to tell the world that I was expecting my fourth child. We are back in the USA now and I was very hopeful that things would be different and I can now tell you that things have been very different. I am now 38 weeks and am scheduled for a c-section in 11 days. I am so excited. This pregnancy has been wonderful. Im not going to say that it has been 100% easy but I have the most amazing Dr. who has worked with me so well to prevent anything from happening and everything he has done has worked. For the first time I am now carrying a full term baby.

This is the reason for the lack of posts over the past nine months. Being a full time mom and taking care of this unborn child have been my main priorities. I love being a mom. I feel that it, along with being a wife, are the two most important things in my life right now.

I have been crafting and the next few posts will be a few of the things I have worked on recently and over the last nine months. I have more to do before this little GIRL (yes we will have 3 girls and 1 boy) arrives and I will try to get some of them posted before she arrives.

Me at 37 weeks pregnant. I get asked a couple times a day if I am having twins. Nope just one, but she is a very big girl already according to the sonograms.

Frosted Strawberry Squares

There are certain tastes and recipes which immediately send me back to my childhood. One of those recipes is Frosted Strawberry Squares. My mom used to make these during the summer when the strawberries were ripe and on sale in the stores. With strawberries being on sale these past few weeks here in Texas for 99 cents per pound I have been making these babies and just as I loved them when I was a child. My children and my husband love them too. Hopefully it will be one of those tastes that will effect my children the same way when they are adults as it does me.

Frosted Strawberry Squares:

Ingredients:

1 Cup Flour

1/4 Cup Brown Sugar

1/4 Cup Slivered or Chopped Almonds

1/2 Cup Melted Butter

2 Egg Whites

1/2 Cup granulated Sugar

10 oz Whipping Cream

2 Tbsp Fresh Lemon Juice

2 Cups Sliced Fresh Strawberries, Crushed / Smashed

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 325F
• Combine Flour, Brown Sugar, Almonds and melted butter and spread in an 8x8 pan. Bake for 20 minutes. Stir a couple of times. Once done allow to cool completely.
• Once cooled press 2/3 of the mixture in the 8x8 pan to create the crust
• Beat egg whites and sugar until stiff peaks form
• Beat whipping cream until soft peak
• Combined beaten egg whites, whipped cream, lemon juice and crushed strawberries. Spread mixture over the crust.
• Sprinkle the remaining crust/crumb mixture over the top
• Freeze 3 - 6 hours
• Cut into squares and serve. I garnish with a little fresh whipped cream and strawberries.

As a side note this last week when I made this I used Splenda brown sugar blend and Splenda Sugar substitute. It worked very well. When frozen they needed to defrost a little bit before serving but it actually worked very well and tasted very good still.

Coronation Chicken Sandwich FIller

During the Queens Diamond Jubilee we decided to have a few friends over and have a little garden party. We served traditional British food. You know, scones with Clotted Cream and Jam, Sausage Rolls, Chocolate Rice Crispy cakes and Sandwiches. Not just any sandwiches though Coronation Chicken Sandwiches. Since then I have had so many people ask me for the recipe. Even people who werent at the garden party have now heard of this awesome chicken sandwich which I made that evening and been requesting the recipe. So I thought I would list it here. If so many of my Texas Friends want it than maybe people in the rest of the world would be interested too. If you try it let me know what you think. We love it!

Coronation Chicken Sandwich Filler:

Ingredients:

1 Can Chicken (Or 2 chicken breast cooked and shredded)
3 Tbsp Mayo
1 Tbsp Mango Chutney
1/2 teasp cinnamon
Curry powder to taste
1 - 2 small boxes of raisins

Mix all these ingredients together and serve on your favorite bread. I love it best on homemade Honey Wheat. Either way even on the cheapest store bought bread this recipe is delicious and I am sure you will enjoy it as much as we do!

Teacher Appreciation Week Printable

Next week is Teacher Appreciation week at my 8 year olds school. Each day the children are supposed to take a different kind of item for their teacher. Monday they are to take in some kind of poem or art creation. So I made this little printable which I will frame and have my daughter take with her.



I have some ideas for the other days I just haven't gotten around to making them yet. But I will post those as the week goes by too. If you can use this please feel free to its a size 8x10 but you can shrink it down to whatever size you would like :)

Pretty Storage Boxes

So my husband and I are still in the process of decorating and furnishing our home. When we moved to Texas from England we literally brought 3 suitcases with us and sent two small boxes with a few misc. items. When we got here we bought all the essentials and have since been buying a few bits and bobs. A couple weeks ago we bought an entertainment center from Ikea. I love Ikea. This entertainment center has four cubby holes down the left side and 4 cubby holes along the bottom. I was able to fill all but two of the cubby holes and really needed them to be filled cause it was driving me insane having them empty. So I got onto pintrest and came across these really cute nappie (diaper) boxes which has been covered with material. I knew straight away that this was what I wanted to do. So here is what I made:



I kind of have a purple theme going on in our living room. I am not sure why I just really liked it with the black so it stuck. Here is a link to the site where I found the idea. I really didn't follow her tutorial just because it was so simple to do. But if you need a tutorial she has a great one. Happy Crafting!

Summer Wreath

I needed a cute wreath to adorn my front door. I mean lets face it I don't think its socially acceptable to have the Christmas wreath up at the end of April :) So I grabbed a few things from Hobby Lobby, one of my favorite stores since moving back to the US, and made this sexy little number:

It was so simple. I literally covered a styrofoam wreath with some scraps of burlap I had around the house and then stuck some sunflowers on and a cute bow to finish it off. So simple and yet really cute. I do think I will have to bring it inside during the CrAzY TeXaS StOrMs!! They are wild here!!

Family Rules

So since we moved back to the US I have been trying to decorate. I have a million and one projects on the go and about the same number to blog about. Here is something that I made today for a little table in our living room. Im sure there will be more of these to come.

Natural Homemade Facials

Recently I have been asked quiet a few times if I have any suggestions for simple Natural remedies for skin care. See I am a trained Esthetician. I went to school when I was in my early 20's and gave it up when we moved to England and had children so that I could be a stay at home mom. Even though I don't go to work and give facials or do aromatherapy any longer it doesn't mean that I am not interested in the skin any longer. In fact my 8 year old has recently been put on some medication which causes her to break out, not good!! I wanted to use some very mild Natural products on her and decided the best way to do this was by making homemade products.



There are two tips I want to share with you:

1) Always wash your face twice. The first time all you do is remove make up or dirt that is on top of your skin. The second wash is to actually was your skin.

2) Wash your face with warm water. This opens your pores and allows you to clean your pores. When you are finished splash your face with cool water. This will close your pores up and keep any new dirt from getting inside.

Mango Chicken Salad with Lime Cilantro Dressing

I thought I would share with you one of my favorite salad recipes. This salad is pretty and tastes delish!! If you have any awesome salad recipes you want to share back my family would thank you. It's like summer here in Dallas and I'm pretty certain that means this summer we will only be eating salads :)

Ingredients

4 cups torn romaine lettuce
3 cups cut-up cooked chicken
1 can (15 oz) Progresso® black beans, drained, rinsed
1 1/2 cups chopped tomatoes
2 ripe medium mangoes, seed removed, peeled and chopped
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup lime juice
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
2 tablespoons sugar
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon, if desired
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
Red pepper sauce, if desired

Directions

In 3-quart glass trifle bowl, layer lettuce, chicken, black beans, tomatoes and mangoes.
In jar with tight-fitting lid, shake dressing ingredients. Drizzle over salad; serve immediately. Or, cover and refrigerate salad and dressing separately up to 4 hours; drizzle salad with dressing just before serving.

Valentines Day Swag

So we have arrived in TX. We love it here. And I have now found a totally awesome crafting buddy! Yay for me ;)

The other day we ran to Joann's and brainstormed in the isles to try and come up with a really cute valentines day swag. Something not to red or pink but totally cute!

Here is what we did.

You need:

Burlap
Felt
2 pieces of card stock. We got the kind you can sand. Yeah totally awesome stuff!
1 piece of scrapbook paper

We cut the burlap into 8 squares 4" wide and 5 1/2" tall. Then we folded a 1" flap and sewed them over this is where you will pull your string through to hang it.

Next we cute a heart in the felt. We used a cookie cutter to gage the size. We used the outside of the cutter for a bigger heart made of felt, the inside of the cookie cuter for a heart made out of card and then just cut a smaller heart out of scrapbooking paper.

We then, using our sewing machines, sewed the hearts together and into the burlap. Way Cute!!!

Last I just strung them together and hung it on the mantle. So cute. Not to red or to pink but just enough to know that it is Valentines.

What do you think? Cute?