Rocking Chair Makeover

Recently I've really been getting into the idea of refinishing furniture. So I've been buying furniture like crazy and refinishing it. At the moment all the furniture I've bought I've needed for our home. But hopefully in the near future I will buy things to refinish and sell. Here is my most recent refinish a rocking chair I bought for a whopping $20. It cost about $10 for all the materials. I wonder what I could sell this for if I tried. What do you think? Do you enjoy refinishing furniture? Any tips?

Bar Stool Recover

You know that feeling when you finally find something you've been looking for. Something you've wanted for what feels like ages but the right fit or in my case the right price never comes up? Well that was me and bar stools. I've wanted some for our kitchen bar since we moved back to the US but I could never find any the right height or more commonly the right price. That was until last week. I came across someone who was selling two for $15. I was so excited I didn't even try to talk her down. This week I bought some fabric and tonight while my lovely hubby was watch The Avengers for the 3rd time this week, he's a Marvel fanboy!, I recovered the bar stools. All I have left to do is put some clear vinyl in them.... I know, I know only Granny's cover their furniture with plastic. I may not be a Granny but I have got 4 small messy children. I'm going to cover in plastic for my sanity. :-)

Pumpkin Pie French Toast

Tis' the season for pumpkin. Honestly I can't get enough of it.

Tonight for dinner I made Pumpkin Pie French Toast. I put a picture up on Facebook for all my lovelies to see and had an overwhelming number of requests for the recipe. I guess I'm not the only pumpkin lover out there.

So as requested here is the recipe:

Pumpkin Pie French Toast

4 eggs
1/2 c. Pumpkin Purée
1/2 c. Milk
3 Tbsp Brown Sugar
2 teas. Vanilla
1 teas. Pumpkin Pie seasoning
1 loaf of French Bread sliced thickly

Mix the eggs, pumpkin purée and milk together. Add the brown sugar and vanilla and mix well. Finally add the pumpkin pie seasoning and give one final mix.

Heat a frying pan or griddle to medium and spray with your favorite non stick cooking spray.

Dip the French bread into the pumpkin mix. Make sure to cover both sides. I really like to let the soak it up. Place on your fry pan or griddle for 2-3 minutes then flip and cook the other side for the same amount of time. You want both sides to be a lovely light brown color.

Serve warm with maple syrup and/or whipped cream. For a special treat I whip up my own fresh cream with a little sugar and ginger added to it. Lovely.

He said WHAT!?!?!

The other morning I came downstairs after a long sleepless night with the baby. My hubby had gotten up with Miss K and Mr S to help them get ready for school and I took just an extra 15 minutes to "wake up". When I got down stairs Mr S was no where to be found, which is unsual for our 5 year old. I asked the huby where he was and he explained that he was probably hiding because he was embrassed. Embrassed? What? Mr S never gets embrassed. I asked what he did that was so embrassing and my hubby explained that he dropped the F BOMB.... Eeeekkkk What? My sweet innocent 5 year old said what? As far as I had known he has never even heard that word before. But then wait he just started Kindergarten this year. My once sweet and innocent little boy was being exposed to the world for the first time. And I quickly learned that not all 5 year old boys are as sweet and innocent as Mr S.

I wanted to do something and quick so after a little discussion about what words are right and what words are wrong we sent him off to conquer the world one bad word at a time. It must has worked because last night we watched Jumanji as a family and someone said OMG and he asked why if we cant say those words would we watch movies with those words. Nothing like a 5 year old to put you in your place :)

Anyway I was flipping through this months friend and found this totally awesome story and Pledge. The "Help Stamp Out Bad Language" Pledge. Needless to say we will be doing this for our FHE lesson on Monday evening. If anyone else is interested and doesnt have the Friend, here is a link to the website and page. Maybe we can all help to "Stamp Out Bad Language" In our own little parts of the world.

Pumpkin Spice Muddy Buddies

So I discovered a new love while at Target last week.... Pumpkin Spice Hershey's Kisses. Imagine my excitement when I came across these bad boys. I started to think of all the lovely Pumpkin Spice Treats I could make. Cookie, truffles, and, wait for it.... Wait for it.... Muddy Buddies. Or as they like to call it here in East Texas, Puppy Chow. I know weird, who wants to eat something called Puppy Chow. I'll stick to Muddy Buddies 😉

These bad boys are easy to make and oh so tasty. The thing that takes the longest is unwrapping all the Kisses.

So here's what you do:

1 pkg Pumpkin Spice Hershey's Kisses
1 box Chex Cereal
1 cup Powder Sugar(or more if you like

Unwrap all the Hershey's Kisses and put them into a bowl. Melt them by sticking the bowl in hot, boiling water so as to heat the bowl melting the chocolate. Stirring constantly.

When the kisses are all melted add about 9 cups of the cereal to the chocolate and mix well.

Finally put the powder sugar in a ziplock bag. Add the chex cereal covered in chocolate and do the Wiggle Dance shaking that bag so all the cereal is covered in the powder sugar.

Open the bag and pop one of those bad boys straight in your mouth. It's not my fault if you can't stop at just one. I know they are simple divine.

Enjoy!

Pacifier clip

Another project I have been meaning to do is a pacifier clip. My two year old still uses a pacifier.

Ok so here is the story. She NEVER took a "dummy" (thats what we call them in England) but when I had to stop nursing her when I got pregnant this time my wonderful, amazing, extremely helpful 8 year old thought it would be a great idea to give her a pacifier that she found from when the 18 month old was a baby. BIG MISTAKE! she loved it. So much so in fact that now she is completely attached to it and I fear that she might hide it in her purse on her wedding day for a quick suckle to settle nerves :)

No but honestly she loves it. The only problem at the moment is when it falls under her crib in the middle of the night and she cries cause she cant find it. Me and my 9 month pregnant belly have a little bit of a difficult time crawling under the bed to get it. So for months I have said I really need to make her a dummy (pacifier) clip. So last night I finally did it.

Again this was so easy I have no idea why I waited so long. I could have saved myself so much discomfort in the middle of the night especially these last few weeks.

All I did was:

Buy:

Ribbon

Clips

cute bows

cute buttons

I cute the ribbon long enough to double it over and hung the clip at the bottom. I ran a couple stitches across the bottom to keep the clip in place and a single stitch up either side of the ribbon so that it wasnt a loop. I wouldnt want it to get stuck around her neck. I them added some velcro and the cute bow and button for decoration. And that was it.

Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy!

Boppy Cover Remake

So I was given a boppy a few months ago and it has been sitting in a closet with all the other baby items just waiting to be used. Last night I pulled it out and decided to finally redo the cover. It needed a serious make over. It was so simple to do. I literally took the old cover traced around it on some really cute fabric, cut it out, sewed a zipper on it and then sewed the whole thing together. It only took about 1/2 an hour to do. I have no idea why I had been putting it off for so long. Now that I have done it I think I will make another one as a spare. Here are a few pictures :)

Here is while I was tracing and cutting the fabric. And that is the old cover.

Here is the finished Boppy cover on the Boppy. So easy Im not sure why anyone would ever buy a cover over making one :-)

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!