Great Craft Blog

Hi Everyone!

My roommate from BYU has a really cute craft blog. I thought I would share...

Lynnspin

She just did a tutorial on how to make cute yo-yo jewlery. I have been wanting to know how to make a cute yo-yo and just learned that there is actually a yo-yo maker that you can buy. Who knew? Okay, probably everyone:-)

Enjoy!

Don't mess with these guys...

Did I ever mention that I LOVE Aaron in his softball clothes? Well, I do ;-)

Little Penelope Lane Party & Recipes

Saturday was the day! I hosted a Little Penelope Lane hair party. The long day of cooking and cleaning paid off with a good turn out of really fun girls! Poor Aaron was forced to find plans out of the house but after coming home and finding a lot of the banana bars left over for him I don't think he minded that much:-) Here are some pictures of the party...







This is Sarah, the creative girl herself! Check out her blog or join her facebook page to see more of her creations. Did you know that she is also a very talented photographer? Well, she is! Check out her photography blog (she did our last family pictures). Speaking of family photos, Sarah is doing a fund raiser right now to help her darling little girl that has Spina Bifida Myelomengocele and Hydrocephalus get her first bike that she can ride all by her self! Go to her photography blog to read more and find out how to schedule a time!


Some of you asked for the recipes of some of the dishes I had at the party so I put links and tips for the dishes below.



A- Ice-cream cone cupcakes. I used a box mix for them and didn't use a recipe but I found one that sound about right HERE. I filled them a little bit more so it would look like the ice-cream was dripping over. I also found that if you use the "Whipped" frosting it stays better on top. I frosted them then put some star sprinkles on them and a cherry on top. These little cupcakes are darling BUT you need to know that they are not easy to move . So, frost them where you want to serve them and don't wiggle the table because they will ALL fall over and you will get frustrated trying to fix them. I learned the hard way.

B- Frosted Banana bars. A huge hit! I think my husband fell in love with me all over again after trying these. Even people that don't really like bananas liked THESE. I stuck to the recipe for this one and didn't change anything. Oh, FYI- a "cube" of butter = one stick of butter (also learned the hard way).

C- White pizza with spinach and fresh tomatoes. I used THIS recipe but without the crawfish tails (yuck). I also went light on the garlic to be better for a crowd but if I were to make it again for my self I would put more garlic on it. I also added a sprinkle of spinach (frozen and then thawed) and some tomatoes from my garden on top. I didn't actually make the pizza dough. I just went to one of my favorite pizza places ( Cortinas ) and bought the dough ready to be baked. It was only $1.18 per pizza dough! They have an Italian market attached to the restaurant and have everything Italian you could need. That is where I bought my fresh mozzarella too. If I had a Tader Joes somewhat near by I probably would have picked up their hole wheat pizza dough but I live in a black hole for Trader Joes so Cortinas was a good option.

D- Black forest ham , brie, and raspberry preserve sandwich. I got the idea from watching a cooking show and changed it up a little.THIS is the original recipe. I used black forest ham (the recipe just says ham) and ciabatta bread instead of a baguette. I found using a baguette was just to "bready" and hard to eat. I also put the ham and brie on the ciabatta bread then covered it in tin foil and baked at 400 degrees for about 15 min (till the brie is all melty)then took it out and THEN spread the raspberry preserves on so that it didn't make the bread mushy. I also put the sandwich back in the oven for about 5 min to make the top crispy. This is a really easy sandwich and it turns out looking and tasting fancy. Also a crowd pleaser & Pregnant lady approved ;-)

E-Pesto Pizza. I was inspired by THIS blog post. I'm not vegan so I used regular fresh mozzarella cheese and the same pizza dough that I used in the White pizza. I make my own pesto from fresh basil, garlic, olive oil, pine nuts, salt, and Parmesan cheese. I put it all in the blender and add more of what ever to taste. You could probably use the recipe for the pesto that is on the blog post or just buy some at the store if you don't want to deal with making it your self. I do have to say though that home made pesto is always 10 times better then store bought. This pizza was one of my favorites of the night.

F- Spinach salad with glazed walnuts, fresh granny smith apples, shaved Parmesan cheese and a raspberry vinaigrette. I didn't use a recipe for this. I just bought a bag of baby spinach, chopped up two granny smith apples, used glazed walnuts bought from the store, put in some shaved Parmesan cheese that I used on the pizzas, and used a raspberry vinaigrette from the store (any brand would probably be fine. It's the raspberry part that is important.) I would have put some blue cheese crumbles in it but forgot to buy it so that is why I used the Parmesan. I think I liked it better.

Okay, that's it! Enjoy!

Hair party! Come one, come all!

Saturday July 24th 6:00-9:00pm
At my place- Everyone is invited!

A lot of you have requested it- So here it is! I will be hosting a hair party at my place and Little Penelope Lane will be here with all of her cute hair accessories. You have seen me wearing them (all the time) and I know you want some for your self or for the little girls in your life. The are really beautiful and she has a huge variety of styles for you to choose from. THey make great gifts! So, come on over and shop for so...me cute hair accessories, snack on some yummy snacks, visit with friends, and basically have a wonderful night out. Feel free to invite anyone you would like and bring them with you! Don't be shy! If you need my address just leave a comment with your email address and I will send you my address.



Those of you with children- You may bring them:-) Or maybe take this opportunity to have a night out with the girls:-)



Want to see some of the cute things that will be here? Check out their blogs...
http://littlepenelopelane.blogspot.com/



I hope to see all of you there and to meet a lot of your friends!
Marly






P.S.- Cash and Check accepted. They are all very reasonably priced.

Did you know...

...That you burn 662 calories if you ice skate for 90 min? I'm all about the exercise that is fun to do:-)





This is where we went. It was very reasonably priced and a nice rink. You should try it out! For you moms out there, they have day time open skate sessions that would be a fun and cool summer activity:-)


P.S. I only fell once

P.P.S I could not spin to the left! Weird.

Craft night skirts

Making of a skirt. Sounds easy? Well, it did to us. Then we tried making one and it was a disaster. Mainly because we used a pattern and didn't understand the sizing. We decided to make the skirts 2 sizes bigger than the size that we would buy at a store just to be safe. Well, after sewing all SIX of the panels together when we went to try it on (before we added the zipper) it was WAAAAAY to small. So, we pretty much left that craft night defeated , feeling fat, and skirtless. Good thing we had good company and had each other to laugh about it.

So, our next craft night we decided to tackle the skirt again but tried an easier pattern and made the skirt about 10 sizes to big (we ended up having to cut A LOT off. That is a much better feeling that the opposite) and I think we did a pretty good job! All of us that made skirts decided to wear them to church on Sunday and of course we had to take some pictures. I love that we all used the same pattern but we all look so different:-) I wish I had taken some pictures of our actual craft night. It was a pretty funny night:-)




P.S.- We learned a pretty fantastic tip on sewing in zippers. Let me know you need it!

"Come out and play?"

At the rick of sounding like one of those crazy dog people that share stories of their dogs- I have to share this story...

The way it starts:

One dog will go out and go to another dogs door and start sniffing under the door. That dog comes out and joins him. They both go to another dogs door and start sniffing then that dog joins them. This continues till all 4 (sometimes 5) of them are out and playing together. At first I couldn't figure out why my dog was at the door literally crying (especially because I had just recently took him out). He would follow me around whimpering, yelping, and dragging his leash (he has been taught to get his leash when he needs to go out). I first thought that he was in pain so I would pick him up to see what was wrong and he was always fine. Then I could hear a faint sniffing sound under our front door and realized what was going on. His friends wanted to play...

(Luke is the one in front)

(Click to enlarge this one)

They are all boys and will play and run around the courtyard chasing each other (Luke is the smallest of them and can't run as fast but has figured out a way to cut corners and take shortcuts to keep up). When one of the dogs gets disciplined all the other ones will come to his rescue and bark. It is so dang cute!


Here it is; Luke (my Maltese), Cody (poodle/cockerspaniel) , Navar (Maltese), and One-gee (not sure- but he looks a lot like a creature from Star Wars and is named after how much he cost)

Busy week!

Aaron started up softball this week. I have really missed his softball uniform *wink* and the softball wives (and wives to be:-). We have a couple new softball babies this season. They are so cute!




We had our second primary day activity on Saturday and had a lot of fun with our Olympic events. It was a little bit of organized chaos but the kids didn't notice.



We finished off the week by celebrating Arthur's (Aaron's friend since 7th grade) 35th birthday. And I must say they certenly did celebrate it in style! Good food, lots of friends and family, bouncy house (an amazing workout-by the way), fire works, kids against grown-ups bball (do you think the adults refrained from dunking on the kids? Absolutly not), the cutest cup cakes (I wish I had taken a pic of them), and fireworks to finish off the night.



Yay for summer time!

Team Edward

Oh yes we did...

I love these girls and I LOVED the move:-)

Okay, so let's here it. Team Edward or Team Jacob? If you pick Team Jacob you have to tell me why (and I don't want to hear b/c the actor is hotter-it's about the characters people not the actors) because I really have no idea why someone would not be team Edward.

Okay, I'm probably to excited about this...

So, nothing really exciting happened this week. Until I was walking by my garden and spotted this...

Can you see it?

How about now?

Yes, you guessed it!

My very first successful homegrown tomato! After my fiasco last year of planting my tomato plants and having them grow to be 8 feet tall without a single fruit I was trying hard not to get my hopes up this year. So, I was so excited when I saw the green tomatoes growing and then the waiting for them to turn red was really hard. I seriously considered picking some green ones and making fried green tomatoes (not that I have ever had them , know how to make them, or even know if I like them).

I am really excited because I have a tone of green tomatoes on the vines! Aaron doesn't like them so don't be surprised if you get a bag of tomatoes from me:-)

Yes, I do eat them like an apple strait off of the vine with a little salt. I am one of those people. Yummm!