Crochet Swim Suit for 18-inch Journey Girl Doll

When you have a name like clever, crafty, cookin' mama... you really should live up to your name.  I realized the other day that I had been posting a little bit of "clever", a little bit of "cookin", but not a lot whole of "crafty".  This is not to say that I haven't been crafty, I've actually been cranking out a ton of crafts, I've just had not a ton of time to post about them.  I thought I would give you a sneak peek of something I whipped up two days ago.  Two out of my three girls now have Journey Dolls (from Toys-R-Us), which is the thrifty, economical (and might I add pretty adorable) solution to the much more over pricey American Girl Dolls.  With a full week of blue sky and sunshine around here, my daughter's thoughts have suddenly turned to darting through sprinklers and plummeting down slip n' slides.  Of course their dolls need some swimwear as well, to watch all the festivities in, right?

Journey Girl crochet swimsuit

So I went looking for some free swim suit patterns, only most of them were for the 18-inch American Girl doll size.  The only trouble with that was, the America Girl's are built like defensive linebackers in the neck and shoulder area.  The Journey girls, on the other hand, are pretty slender throughout their frame.  I decided to create a pattern specifically for this type of doll.  That's right. No pattern, just flying by the seat of my pants.  This aqua blue suit above was my first attempt!  Not too shabby, eh?  Last night I went ahead and tried to recreate the same pattern for my second daughter, who thought her doll needed a green suit.

Swimsuits for Journey Girl dolls

I was able to tweak a couple elements of where the center ruffle was, and smoothed out some of the between the leg area.  I think this turned out rather nice.  I didn't really see the need to add straps to the shoulder area, as this would make it a lot harder for the girls to put the suits on their dolls.  I am busy testing this pattern for a third time tonight, then I am thinking about sharing it or selling a pdf file of it for any of those of you who are interested.  Just thought I'd give you a little sneak peak.  

Super cute doll suit!

No worries, more crafts are coming soon!  Stay tuned...

Teriyaki Beef Skewers (Meat on Sticks)

One of my favorite cuts of meat to eat is London Broil (flank steak).  Especially if it is marinated in a delicious sauce first, cut nice and thin, and served up sweet and tender.  Matter of fact that is typically my go to requested meal for special occasions like Mother's day or my birthday.  Now that BBQ season is upon us, I was looking up ways to jazz up things on the grill.  My hubby Mr. D is a big fan of skewers.  Meat on Sticks.  He can't get enough of them.  When I saw this little recipe float by on Pinterest, I knew we were going to have to try it.  Feast your eyes on: Teriyaki Meat Skewers!

Teriyaki Beef Skewers

Okay.  I'm gonna pause for a second in case you want to smell or lick your screen...

Seriously though, doesn't that look delicious?  And just like my London Broil recipe, it is only two ingredients.  That's right, all you need to make these wonderful meat on sticks is: meat/flank steak (obviously)... and a really good Teriyaki sauce.  Namely, Yoshida's Gourmet Teriyaki sauce.  We happen to get ours in a vat/jug at Costco and it tastes great on anything!  In the original recipe they made their own sauce, but seriously, if you have the best tasting sauce in the land ready to go, why not make your life easy? Simply place your slab of flank steak in a seal-able zip lock bag, and pour some of that magic Yoshida's sauce in.

Let it marinate a while in the fridge.  I tend to flip it a couple of times while it's in there, just so both sides of the meat get evenly coated.  When you are ready, place it on a cutting board (discard marinade sauce), and get a sharp knife.  Thinly slice the meat into 1/4 inch strips.

Next you take some bamboo skewers that have been soaking in water for a few hours and gently "weave" the meat onto the sticks.  My flank steak was short, so I ended up putting two strips per bamboo stick.

I'm almost sure that this is the most beautiful picture of raw meat on sticks that has even been taken in the history of mankind.  Look at that lighting folks... just lovely.  Next you want to heat up your grill to medium high.  Grill them on one side for about 3 minutes while brushing on some extra sauce as it is cooking.

Can you smell them grilling yet?

Flip them all over to the other side and cook for 3 more minutes.  Keep brushing on extra Teriyaki sauce for added flavor.

Sizzling deliciousness right there!

You want to make sure that the meat is cooked to about a medium rare, though I like to head into more of the medium zone personally.  It's up to you.  Also all I care about is that delectable sauce!

Teriyaki beef skewers - the close up

After that, just pile them high on a plate and watch people run from everywhere just to get close to you.  I think we had two neighbors peering between fence posts after these babies came off the grill.

Run, don't walk to your nearest plate of skewered meat

These were so good by the way!  Here's a "meat-cam" close up

We ended up serving ours with a bit of teriyaki rice... yummy!!

Heat up a little extra sauce and pour it over the skewers for an extra pop of flavor.  These were so fun and easy to make.  You could make mini ones and serve them at a party, not to mention I'm sure this would work for chicken as well.  Mr. D just called me after I put up this post to tell me we should make these again.  Like tonight!  Enjoy!

Bunny Cakes

Over the last few years, the girls have really enjoyed making Rice Krispie bird nests for Easter and begged for us to do them again this year.  However, a good friend posted the most adorable bunny-shaped cakes on Facebook, and I knew we should try something brand new this year.  They turned out pretty cute, and a couple of people asked me to make a tutorial on how to make them.

They are cute... they are bunnies... what's not to LOVE?!

So the best part about these little guys is that you do not need a special pan, just a regular round pan.  We ended up using store bought cake mix, store bought frosting, and strawberry jelly from the fridge for a filling.  First cook two round cakes.  It is easiest if you remove them from the pan while they are still warm.

The best thing to do now is let them cool completely, wrap in plastic wrap, then put in the freezer for a few hours, or even over night.  The next day pull them out of the freezer and place the first cake "round" side down, flat side up.  Spread a glob of jelly and spread around to almost the edges

Spread a glob of jelly and spread around to almost the edges.

 
Take the other cake and place it flat side down on top of this cake.  The two flat sides will be together for this.  Normally a regular double round cake you would not do this, because it would make the top and bottom of the cake curve.  However, we are standing each half of this up on it's end, so rounded bunny haunches will be just fine.  At this point, the cake is still pretty frozen.  You can take a large knife and cut right through both layers of cake

Each half of this cake can make one bunny cake

Now we want to turn this cake up on it's end.  I put a strip of wax paper under our first attempt, which turned out pretty tricky to pull out later on.  I would recommend putting this half circle right on whatever you are going to serve it on and frost it from there.  Now that the cake is up on it's side, we need to "carve" the bunny shape out.  Starting a little past center, and with a sharp knife, carve down into the cake right where bunny ears might go.  Leaving a section at the bottom to become the "face" of the bunny.

Don't throw away the piece you cut away, flip it upside-down and place it at the back end of the bunny to create the "tail" area.  Now comes the frosting.  We were in a rush and just decided to use the store bought frosting from the can.  This can be a bit messy as there really isn't a way to do an efficient "crumb coat".  Because the cake is semi/frozen, frosting is a tiny bit easier.  It's still akward though, just because the shape of the cake is so odd.

After you have a good layer of frosting on, take a knife and smooth it over.  Another option is to immediately press sweetened coconut over the whole thing to mimic bunny fur.  The girls are not big fans of coconut, so frosting it is.  We repeated the steps because we wanted both a brown bunny and a white bunny

Here's a good shot of the round parts of the cake on the outside, with the flat parts of both cakes on the inside.  Reminds me of big giant hamburger.

We got smart on the second one, and place the cut half right where we were going to serve it.  I put small strips of wax paper underneath so we could frost without making a mess on the serving tray, and the small strips are easier to pull out after you are done frosting.

Cut the same shape out and frost the same way.  While those are sitting, you can make bunny ears.  We just used construction paper and cut an ear shape the same colors as our bunnies, then glued a slightly smaller ear shape in pink for the center of the ears

Next we took the ears and taped them to the ends of toothpicks.  We did this so paper would not be resting on frosting and soaking up moisture.  This way the ears would last over night and survive travel time the next day to grandmas without getting mushy near the frosting.

My daughter was the one that wanted to make a bunny face.  She thought toothpicks would make great whiskers.

The brown and white bunny were for Easter, the blue bunny the girls made for our dessert that night

We placed the ears above the head line, and they worked perfectly.  We used two regular sized chocolate chips (with the tips pointing in) to make round bunny eyes, and we used a large candy corn flavored MnM (left over from Halloween) but any round candy will work for a nose.  You could also use a pink jelly bean.  After that we pulled out the wax paper from the bottom so our little blue bunny was sitting proudly on our cake plate.

We then gave the brown bunny her face

And the white bunny her face

You can't see it, but we put rainbow sprinkles on the white bunny's tail, and we put chocolate jimmy sprinkles on the brown bunnies tail.  All in all these were a big hit at the family Easter dinner the next day!

These are so cute for Easter, but would be equally adorable at a bunny themed birthday party or ladies spring tea function.  I also realized with just a few tweaks here and there, these could easily be converted into car or VW bug shaped cakes.  Have fun cake carving, remember, if the cake is frozen, it will be a lot easier to cut and frost!

Color Coordinated Egg Hunt

Well I don't know what your Easter Bunny was up to last year, but ours had a absolutely BRILLIANT idea about a color coordinated Easter Egg Hunt.

A color coordinated Easter Egg hunt is the way to go!

Not only did it solve a number of problems due to the age differences between cousins... but the kids had a BLAST!!

A color coordinated Easter egg hunt.  Each kid was able to find their favorite colored eggs.

In the past, on a regular Easter egg hunt, we have had some issues with the older kids getting a lot more eggs than the smaller ones.  Either that or the older ones would pick up the really easy ones because they were quick to grab, rather than leaving them for the 5-year old to find.  Well this year, the Easter bunny left a note for all the kids:

Each of them was assigned a specific egg color.  This was fun because the Easter bunny happened to know what each kid's favorite color was.  Jacob, for example, loves all things orange (if you can't tell), and the Easter Bunny had assigned him all the orange eggs.

Avelyn's favorite color in the whole wide world is purple... so she got all the purple eggs assigned to her

Here is Avelyn in action now.. she was hard to photograph in her "natural" setting of a full sprint.

Eva finding pink ones (they match her bunny AND her dress):

While Viv finds the blue ones (cause they match her eyes - the Easter Bunny KNOWS!!)

This also made it so the Easter Bunny could put the older kid's colored eggs in the more camouflaged or hard to reach/taller places.  Gabe really had to work to find some of his more challenging green eggs.

We could not believe how well this type of hunt turned out!  We even had kids helping each other find their colored eggs.  It was amazing.

A good time was had by all at our color coordinated Easter egg hunt

We loved how the Easter egg hunt turned into an absolute success!  We had kids helping kids, big kids helping little kids.  Little kids spotting eggs and pointing them out to the older kids... AND everyone got about the same number of eggs in their favorite colors!

It was a win win for everybody.   So if you have a big group of family or cousins that get together for a big Easter dinner and an egg hunt, have your Easter Bunny try out a color coordinated one this year and watch the fun and camaraderie commence!  We will definitely be doing a color coordinated event this year and every year to follow.

Snickerdoodle Breakfast Puffs

If we have a little extra time on Saturday mornings, one of the favorite things my girls and I like to do is watch the Pioneer Woman.  They love watching all about her horses, farm animals, kids, and the recipes she whips up on the ranch.  We were actually watching an older episode where Ree was making something called "French Breakfast Puffs", and I could tell just by the look in my oldest daughter's eyes she was dying to test out that recipe.  Like, right that very second.  So into the kitchen we went to surprise daddy with a home-baked tasty treat!

Snickerdoodle Breakfast Puffs - or French Breakfast Puffs from the Pioneer Woman

I happen to have all of Ree's cookbooks, and we found the French Puffs recipe in the first one.  Did I mention that all my books are now personally signed by the Pioneer Woman herself?  That's right!  Last December I was able to meet Ree in person when she came to our town.  I shall blog about that soon, but you must know, she is as sweet and kind in person as she comes across in her show!  All of that, and she makes some pretty delicious food!  We got so excited about making this recipe I even forgot to take pictures until the dough was already in the muffin tin.  No need to fret though, Ree has the play by play picture recipe posted on her blog in case you want to make these bad boys yourself.  Once you get the dough ready, you scoop in generously into a 12-muffin tin.

This dough is nice and thick - easy to use an ice cream scoop to get it into the pan

Bake at 350º for 20-25 minutes until golden brown.  These baked up huge! Enormous actually.  Come to think of it, the next time we make this recipe, I am totally going to make these in a few mini muffin pans.  That way you can pop them in your mouth like a little sugary donut hole.

Next, while they are cooling a bit on the stove top, mix in a bowl 1 1/2 cups of sugar and 3 teaspoons of cinnamon.

Mix sugar and cinnamon until blended, and at the same time, melt two sticks of butter in another glass bowl in the microwave.

Making an assembly line, roll the muffin completely in the melted butter and quickly roll around in the cinnamon/sugar mixture.  This was a bit messy and I must appologize there was no real way to snap a pic with my camera of the dipping process, mostly because my hand was coated in cinnamon and sugar the second I started.

Mmmm delicious Snickerdoodle puffs

Most of my muffins were so big that I ended up cutting them in half to make smaller portions.  The butter made a nice way for the sugar and cinnamon to stick and coat the whole thing.  Seriously.  These were so good!  We could not get over how much they tasted like a snickerdoodle cookie.

 
We stored these is a plastic container with a lid and they lasted for a few mornings of breakfasts, and come to think of it, bed time snacks to boot!  Ree also said you can freeze these up and defrost them as needed.  We can not wait to make these again in mini muffin size. Here's a link to her recipe one more time.   Enjoy

 

Headband Holder

They say necessity is the mother of invention, and boy did we have a necessity here at our house.  On our main floor, we have a tiny half bathroom under the stairs.  It is the only bathroom on that floor, so is used for guests and family alike.  It came with a beautiful pedestal sink.  Pedestal sinks can be lovely, but there is zero storage.  If you have three little girls and zero storage, you are in for a world of hurt.  If you have three little girls with zero storage, AND a ton of hair AND about 5 billion hair accessories, you are in for a world of chaos!  One day I got a little portable plastic tower of drawers, which helped immensely!  Combs, brushes, and hair ties went in the top drawer, while fingernail polishes went in the second smaller drawer. We put all of our headbands and bows in one of the larger drawers.  Only trouble was, pulling a headband out on a busy school morning meant they would tangle together and the drawer could not close.  

The next person to grab a headband or bow would dig to the bottom and the whole mess would fall all over the floor.  We would come home from school and the bathroom looked like a complete disaster after our morning rush. It's hard standing at the sink trying to wash you hands, while trying traversing a sea of pokey headbands.   I had seen on Pinterest the idea of making a headband holder out of either an empty oatmeal box container, or a roll of paper towels.  Some of these things were crazily decorated, and a little on the gaudy side. Okay a LOT on the gaudy side.  Not only did I not want to gift wrap a roll of paper towels, I didn't want to eat 12,000 bowls of oatmeal just to empty my pretty full container of quick oats.  Suddenly.. it HIT me.  I knew EXACTLY what was a perfect head band size. Though it's original intention for use was no where near close to what I was going to use it for... but enter in the tubular toilet paper holder!!

I ran to the store and picked up one of these lovely stainless steel toilet paper storage towers for under $10.  It turns out this was the absolutely PERFECT size for headbands.  I immediately pull out by drawer of tangled headband-ness and went to work.  Look how beautiful it turned out!

A headband tower you can be proud of!

Well of course I put them in rainbow order!  Not only is it pretty, but functional.  The girls can quickly find the color that matches their outfit.  To top it all off, you can still use this thing for toilet paper storage if you want.  We actually put our flat iron and our curling iron in here to free up even more drawer space.  We also kept the brown and black headbands in the drawer (in case you were wondering about them), now that there was plenty of room.

Check out our headbands now!  It sits nicely on the back of our little stack of drawers looking all organized and easy to get to!  I so love this idea more than the other options that were out there. It's really given our tiny bathroom not only a pop of color, but solved one of our daily getting ready issues with organization!  Hooray.