WE HAVE A WINNER!

Congratulations Kimberly! You just won a Williams Sonoma 12 cup muffin pan!!

A big thanks to all that entered! Keep checking back for more exciting giveaways!!

BARBIE CUPS and a GIVEAWAY!!

Some of you may know what Barbie cups are and others may not. They have been around in our family for as long as we can remember. We thought our mom made it up herself, but more than likely many moms have made this recipe without even knowing it. Mom just always called them "Barbie cups." Here is the quick how to!

Ingredients include:

Hamburger meat, your favorite barbecue sauce, Grands buttermilk biscuits and cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

First, you cook the hamburger meat and strain it. Next, add your favorite barbecue sauce to the hamburger meat. At this point you can add any of your favorite ingredients to the hamburger meat to enhance the taste. You could try a little brown sugar, onions, ketchup or green peppers. Whatever your family likes best. Mix the meat and sauce in a bowl.

Now, open the can of biscuits and flatten them out. Lay them each in a muffin tin opening leaving a large dip in the center. This is where the hamburger meat will go. We love to use the Grands buttermilk can biscuits, but you can also use a regular size biscuit. We like them big and chunky!

Now, place spoonfuls of the meat inside the biscuits and place in oven at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.

After they come out of the oven, sprinkle some cheese and now you have a wonderful dish. Our kids love these! Hope you try them!

And now for our GIVEAWAY from

a commercial quality 12 cup muffin pan!

To enter all you have to do is leave us your favorite thing to make in a muffin pan. Leave this in the comments section along with an e-mail address or way to reach you. All comments are automatically numbered and one will be randomly selected using http://www.random.org/ to win the muffin pan. Only 1 comment per person allowed.

Contest will end at 10:00pm Friday night - May 22

Winner will be announced Saturday morning

GOOD LUCK !!

This contest has ended! Thank you to all who entered!

How to Make a Light Tent for Taking Pictures with White Background

Here are instuctions for creating a light tent that will help your photos look like they have a pure white background. Have you ever noticed pictures of objects that look like they are almost floating on the screen? You can achieve this by using a homemade light tent. We are certainly not photographers but just by doing a little research we've found that it can be easily done by a few materials and a little photo editing. If you need to sell an item on ebay, etsy, or any other online shop this is a great tool for you to use can inhance your pictures! Here is our version of a light tent.

Please Read All Instructions Before Beginning

Materials Needed:

*2 sheets of white foam board (If you wait until they are 50% off at Hobby Lobby you will only pay 99 cents for each.)

*Vellum paper (This is a transluscent paper you can get at Hobby Lobby. Really you can use any material that you can see through...white fabric, light interfacing)

*1 white poster board

*clear packaging tape

*ruler

*knife or razor blade

1. Measure and draw a line every 2 inches all the way down one piece of the 20x30 foam board. When you finish you will have 15 sections that measure 2x20.

2. Using your knife cut down each line until each section is separated.

3. Take your other foam board and draw only 5 lines this time, just like before, every 2 inches down your board until you get to 10 inches. You should see that you now have 5 long sections and one large square.

4. Cut through the lines of this board and now you should have 20- 2x20 long pieces and one 20x20 square.

5. Now you are going to take 10 of your 2x20 sections and cut 4 inches off of each of them. Now you have 10 pieces that are 2x20 and 10 that are 2x16.

6. Take 2 of your 2x20 pieces and 2 of your 2x16 pieces and lay them accordingly. Longest on the sides and shorter on top and bottom. You will be making a square and then tape each end together. The pieces do not need to be on top of each other when you are taping, only closely beside each other. Once you have one side taped together, flip it over and tape the other side as well. This is necessary for them to hold together securely.

7. Repeat #6 until you have 4 large squares that have been taped together.

8. Take your one large square (from #3) and one of your pieced together squares. Tape them together as shown above.

9. Continue adding the other 3 sides. You should have one taped square left and it will be used for step #11.

10. You need to cut 2 inches off your poster board all the way down the longest side so it will fit inside your box. Sit your poster board in the box and tape as shown above.

11. Now you can add the last taped square to the top of your light tent. Tape accordingly and securely.

12. You will need to cut 4 squares from your vellum paper. 18x18 pieces work well. Tape on to 3 sides leaving the front side open. Cover the top as well.
13. You can use 1 lamp or in the picture above three different lamps are used. The more lights the better. The desk lamps on the side were purchased for $5 each from Target. You will need to buy n:vision flourescent daylight bulbs and you can get them at Home Depot.

13. After a little photo editing using Gimp (a free photo editing program) with the brightness and contrast, here is the final photograph.

Good luck! Let us know when you try it or if you have already!

HOW TO MAKE CORN FLAKE CLUSTERS

Corn flakes - 4 cups

Sugar - 2 cups

Karo syrup - 2 cups

Peanut butter - 2 cups

Start the stove eye on low, then add the 2 cups of sugar and 2 cups of Karo syrup. The consistency will be very thick and cloudy. Keep stirring and gradually turn up the heat. The mixture will soon thin out and began to bubble (or boil). At the first signs of boiling, take the pot off the heat.

After the pot is off the heat, add the 2 cups of peanut butter.


Stir in peanut butter until it has melted.



Now gradually add in the corn flakes, one cup at a time. To be honest, we add the corn flakes until we get the right consistency. There has to be an even amount of corn flakes versus peanut butter. If there is too much peanut butter and not enough cornflakes, you may have to use a spoon to eat it:) If there are too many corn flakes and not enough peanut butter, they may be a little dry:) Whatever works for you!



After the corn flakes are mixed in with the peanut butter, you can pour it onto a piece of wax paper to cool. After 10-15 minutes of cooling, roll them into balls. Or if you want the easy way out, pour the mixture into a pan to cool. Then cut them into squares.

We like to roll the balls and arrange them on a platter.

For as long as we can remember, corn flake clusters have been a delicious treat enjoyed by our entire family. They are wonderful for the holidays, teacher gifts, road trips and even the beach (one of our favorite places to eat them). If you love peanut butter, you will absolutely love this recipe.

Have fun and enjoy!

How to Make a Flower Pinwheel

Pinwheel Pinwheel Spinning Around. Look At My Pinwheel and See What I found.

If you were born in the late '70's early '80's, you might remember the tune to this song from Nickelodeon on a show called "Pinwheel." It was one of our favorite shows.

We found this precious little flower pinwheel pattern on Heather Bailey's Blog. We altered her pattern a little but go to her website for exact instructions. This would be a great activity to do at a little girl's birthday party, used for decorations, a party favor, or even gifts. Almost everything used for making these came from Hobby Lobby. Here is the supply list.

2 sheets of double-sided cardstock

some scraps of cardstock for the circles and flower cut outs

buttons or any other decorative do-dad for the center

2 1/8"-3/16" eyelets (you will also need some eyelet pliers, they usually come with a hole punch attached that you will also need)

wire, 18 gauge

wood bead 1/2"-5/8" in diameter

18"wood dowel, 5/16"-3/8" in diameter (also a drill to make hole)

paint for the dowel and wooden bead

ribbon for dowel

craft glue

flower punches

1. First thing you might want to do is drill a hole in the dowel.

2. Paint both the dowel and the wooden bead so they will be dry by the time you need to work with them.
3. Print out and trace the pinwheel pattern on 2 separate pieces of your cardstock. We were excited to find Amy Butler scrapbook paper at Hobby Lobby so that's what we used.
4. Punch a hole in the center of each pinwheel and at the end of all the spokes. (there are black dots on the pattern that you cut out to show you exactly where you need to punch the holes)

5. Cut out the circle in the center of the pinwheel pattern or use a 1" circle hole punch. You will need two circles cut from the cardstock. Punch a hole at the center of one circle.

6. Place the 2 cut out pinwheels together face up to where they are locked with spokes on top.

7. Attach the eyelet at the center to hold them together. You can still adjust the pinwheels a little even with the eyelet in place. The eyelet pliers take a little getting use to, especially manuevering around the paper so that it doesn't tear. It's actually a pretty neat tool that scrapbookers use for decorations.

8. Then comes the hardest part of all. This took a little time figuring out but it did finally work. You need to bring each spoke to the center, one a time, attaching them to the other eyelet. You will need to hold them down together with your fingers and try not to let your fingers shift sideways or the eyelet will not be facing up when you attach it. Now, use your pliers to set the eyelet. This is a little difficult to do but you can do it!. Both eyelets should be centered if it's done correctly. You need them to be centered so that the wire can easily go through both holes to form a straight line.

9. By now your dowel should be dry. You can use your craft glue to attach ribbon around the dowel.

10. Take your wire and cut about a 12" piece. Bend the wire about 3/8" from the end.

11. Slide the hold-punched cirle onto the bent end of the wire. Then glue the other circle on top so that the bent end of the wire is no longer showing.

12. Cut out flowers for the center or use some flower punches that are used for scrapbooking. Glue them on top of the circle and then add your button or decorative doo-dad in the center.

13. Slide the flower pinwheel through the other end of the wire until it reaches the spindle. 14. Add the wooden bead. Slide the wire through the hole of the wooden dowel. Leave some space between the bead and dowel so that the pinwheel will have room to spin.

15. Finally, wrap the remaining wire around the top of the dowel tightly.

16. Your done!! Admire your hard work!

The winner for the Target Gift Card Giveaway is shown at the end of the previous post.

Who Wants a Gift Card?

Our passions definitely run deep. Welcome to our new blog and to our new endeavor of showcasing some of our favorite crafts for your enjoyment. We may even throw in some recipes here and there. Our hope is that we can put a smile on someone else's face that enjoys the things we do, by duplicating things we have done and that they too can share with others. Making things can be fun and rewarding. Too often people say, "I just can't do that!" We show you step by step instructions so that you too can succeed. If we can do it, you can too!

We are truly honored by your presence here at our new blog. In honor of our little grand opening we would like to give something back to you! Target is one of our favorite places to shop so one person will be randomly selected to win a $20 Target Gift Card. The winner will be announced Wednesday morning. All you have to do is sign in at the comments section below and leave your email address.

If you get a chance, check at our new Etsy shop! We have adult and child size headbands like you see in the picture above! We were so excited to find out that we were featured in an Etsy Treasury and in someone's favorite list!! The pics are below.

AND THE WINNER IS......

Thank you so much to all who signed up for our first giveaway! Your kind words are so encouraging! Please check back soon for our next giveaway!!!