Just Married

Here is a card I made for a wedding we attended this weekend.  The card base is a black cardstock cut into 5.5 x 4.25 inch.  The white cardstock is 5.25 x 4 in. embossed with a wild flower print.  I used a shimmer gold paper for the window, bumper and cans because I ran out of the shimmer silver.  The car is a sky blue. I  hand wrote the words "Just Married" and "Love".  I used red stickles to highlight the tail lights, pink stickles on the heart and gold stickles on the cans.  The stamp is by My Pink Stamper.

Inside of the card is just white cardstock cut at 5.25 x 4 in and another My Pink Stamper stamp.

Summer Gifts

I have had the privilege of being the coordinator of my MOPS group this year.  I have also  had the opportunity to work with some amazing and creative leaders.  Our last day of MOPS was today and I presented each of my leaders with a small gift.  I started out with the following items: Diet Snapple Singles to Go, Sunscreen, Aloe Vera, Flip Flops and Hershey Nuggets that I wrapped and put into a treat bag.  (See my post below for further info.)

Then I bought this mini milk crate in the dollar section at Target and lined it with colored tissue paper and put the above items in it.

Here is a close up picture of the inside of the box.

Here are all five them.  Cute he?

Kitchen Cake

I found this cute project on Pinterest. Instead of doing the traditional diaper cake for a baby shower, I made a Kitchen Cake for a bridal shower.

The supplies needed are: Two cereal boxes (I originally was going to use a flower pot, but it was too difficult), Cake Disk, Kitchen Towels, Fake Flowers, Kitchen Utensils and Ribbon.

Take your cereal boxes and open them up, cutting off all the tabs.  Shape them into round pillars and use hot glue to hold the shape and then glue them to the cake disk.  Wrap the kitchen towels around them.

Next, wrap the ribbon around the towels to hold them in place and also add dimension and add the flowers to the top.

Take your kitchen utensils and stick them in between the layers of towels.

Then I used my Silhouette to create and cut out the first letters of their names.  C for Cristoff & A for Anna.

Then I used glue dots to ad-hear the letters to the ribbon and the cake is done!  Font of cake and

back of cake.

Wrapped Chocolate Treats

In our church, we like to acknowledge all the mothers on Mother's Day with a flower. We also like to acknowledge those mom's with the most kids, youngest kid, most grandchildren etc.  Usually the pastor just has them stand up, but this year I thought it would be nice to present them with a little treat.  These are super easy & quick to make.

All you do is buy a package of Hershey's Nuggets.

Trim paper to 3in x 1.5 in. and 4in x 3.5 in.  Be sure to measure you treat bags, as they may be a different size, but basically make sure you have a quarter inch sticking over on each side.

Then you just apply adhesive to the smaller paper and wrap the candy.

Stick them into the clear treat bag.  I bought mine at Michael's.  50 bags for $2.99 w/o a coupon.

Take your lager piece of paper and fold in half, apply adhesive and stick on top of the treat bag.  See, I said it was super easy!

Then I took my 2in. flower shaped punch and punched out 16 flowers out of white cardstock and stamped with a Happy Mother's Day sentiment.  To adhear the punch out to the tag, I used a small pop dot, but you could also adhear it with 2-sided tap or adhesive.

Stick them in a basket and take to your event or in my case to church!  I also made a few extra to put into a gift box for my MOPS leaders next week, but used a stamp that says Thanks For Being You.  I will post more on that next week.  These would be great to use as baby/bridal shower favors, at a Mother & Daughter Tea or anything else you can think of.  All you do is change the paper and stamp sentiment.

Hamburger Buns

Okay, this is my last post on bread, but I wanted to show you that you can indeed make your own hamburger buns.  You make them like you would rolls, but a little bigger and flattened out.

And here it is as a delicious chicken & caramelized onion burger.  Yum!

Hoagie Rolls

Tonight we are having meatball sandwiches for dinner and I decided to try my hand at making my own hoagie rolls from my one hour bread recipe.  I cannot wait to try them!  Next I plan on making my own hamburger buns.

Planted My Garden Today

I am doing a garden blog for two reasons. 1. So I can see the progress my garden making month to month and 2. to remind me of what I planted and how it all turned out. Last year was my 1st attempt at gardening and it was a total flop. My tomatoes all split and didn't grow very big, both my zucchini and cucumbers never got past a couple of inches before turning yellow and shriveling up. I did get a couple of small bell peppers, beans, lettuce, carrots & herbs, but nothing to great or good for that matter.

I have been doing a lot of research on you tube and one thing I learned was that I probably over watered and didn't have much nutrients in my soil. I am also convinced that the wind and high heat didn't help much either. So this year, I added our horses manure to my soil as a form of compost to help get more nitrogen in the dirt and added an organic plant food all over the soil and also inside each hole where I put a plant/seed. I also moved my raised garden bed up against my porch. I am hoping this will help keep it somewhat protected from our horrendous winds and protect it from the harsh sun. Yes, I know plants like sun, but where I live it tends to be over 100 degrees all summer long. The plants will still get about 6 hours of sunlight and this should also help my lettuce to grow, since they tend to prefer the shade.

On April 3rd, I planted these strawberries in a rectangular pot and we already have 10 little strawberries starting to grow!
I also planted this Betterboy tomato plant on April 3rd. I opted for the pot this year because I watched several videos of tomatoes doing well in a pot and I figured it would give me more room in my garden bed. It is already starting to produce a few flowering buds and has grown a couple of inches since I planted it two weeks ago.
Here is my raised garden bed. It is 4 ft. x 6 ft. and planted the following. Back row L-R: Four Asian Cucumbers, One Zucchini, Three Yellow Crookneck Squash and then two seeds of Kentucky Wonder Beans.

In front of the cucumbers I Romaine Lettuce seeds and Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce seeds. In front of the yellow squash I have a Sweet Bell Pepper and in front of that a regular bell pepper. In the far front right corner is my artichoke and on the left front corner are some green onions. In the rest of the garden I have Walla Walla Onions. I didn't realize when I first planted them that you have to separate them into tiny strands and then barely bury them 9 inches apart. So after I had already planted them in four clumps, I went back out and separated them, causing them to be all over the garden bed. I am really not sure these will take. I had an extra tomato cage, so I just put it over my largest bell pepper plant.
I heard that if you buy green onions in the produce section of your grocery store and only cut off the green part, that you can re-plant them and they will last you an entire year. We shall see!