Soda Tab Earrings in My Craft Shop

Well I finally put together some more earrings together and love the way they look. You can find them on my shop (up on the top on my navigation bar)

Keeping your mind at work and hands busy will keep you out of trouble..

1 Timothy 5:12–13


12 Thus they bring judgment on themselves, because they have broken their first pledge. 13 Besides, they get into the habit of being idle and going about from house to house. And not only do they become idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying things they ought not to.

 
I always liked this scripture. It is the epitomy of human life as we know it. To summarize Zig Ziglar, one of the world's motivational speakers, people with nothing to do, or no goals tend to fall into depression and are very negative. Why? Because they have no drive..no hope.
 
I feel that if one feels no purpose, drive or has something to keep them active, they fall into a state of "uselessness" and are stagnant. I always notice that the ones that tend to have the most drama, tell the most gossip, entertain the most outrageous ideas, usually are those who are not sure on what to do with theirself or need to be doing more to their life. I will call it idleness.
 
For discretion's sake, I will not mention any references of people who mimic this in my life. I try to avoid getting caught in this vicious lifestyle by keeping myself busy. Thus..my craft escapades.
 
However, if one were to ask me the first step to avoiding the trend of idelness, first things first, get a relationship with God. If you are willing to try Him on for size, the only thing I guarantee you to lose is some pride..and Lord knows we could all go without a little of that.
 
Secondly, once you have made a step forward, get yourself involved in something- a hobby, work, a social group..but if you choose to do the latter, please keep yourself away from shameless slanderers! What I mean is misery loves company and if a bunch of people who like to do a whole lot of nothing get together..well, I am sure you can picture the rest.
 
The Lord instructs us that idleness leads to no bread on the table. In addition, we become gossips, and hurt others. Gossips are nothing more than glorified insecure people who want others to see them look good by critiquing other things that would be looked down on by them.
 
Enough of my soapbox. Summary: Idleness=Trouble. Get a hobby.
 
On this note, I am very excited about my newest craft I have started for this time period has been getting my creative juices flowing. I plan on making a stock of these items so I can take them to the flea market next week or so and see how they do:
 
Here is what I have started on so far:
 
Soda Tab Jewelery
This was sooooo fun! So far I have a collection of earrings I have made and will get those pics out soon.
My fav. has to be the lady bug ones I did:
 

And.. I finished my first bracelet. I will be adding a little more flourish with cute ribbon and some that has a little more transparent ribbon..but for now, I am just happy they came out great.

I am taking personalized orders if you would like a bracelet or earrings for your very own- right now they are going for $5.00.
 
I am making some custom Alabama Roll Tide and Auburn Tiger ones .. (WAR EAGLE!!!) you can probably guess which ones I am going to wear..

Nothing's Better than a Good Read..

I would just like to take this time to announce how thoroughly I am enjoying the book series "Fallen" by Lauren Kate. I can't recall how I happened to stumble across her books, but I instantly downloaded it to my Kindle after hearing about it's romantic supernatural theme--for all you Twilight lovers, if you haven't read this one, I think it will be on your list. As far as I am aware, right now the Fallen Series consists of three books, Fallen, which was released in late 2009, Torment, which was released late 2010, and Passion, which will be expected to probably come out Fall of 2011.

If Lauren Kate's topic of teen love between mortals and angels don't get you, the cover illustrations definately will. Bordering on a mixture of gothic and drama, I give the illustrator a 2 thumbs up.

Fallen gets a little stale when Luce gets frustrated and can't figure out what's going on with Daniel but the plot develops further in Torment and to prevent spoilers, I will just tell you to hang in there until closer to the end of the book of Fallen and middle of Torment to get more answers.

Although I don't believe in any of this stuff, it's a great read and I definately am enjoying Torment, looking forward to Passion!



Hope you enjoy or have enjoyed also!

Cupcake Pops

I had honestly meant to post this sooner rather than later, but along with many other items in my house, my camera usb cord to upload the pics decided to walk off and hide. I decided in answer to that after scavenging the place up and down, it was time to clean the house..especially since the place looked like a warzone after Christmas.

First, I will as promise, share my cupcake pops experience. I thought it was an excellent ideas as favors to Madeline's upcoming first birthday and was excited to see if they turned out remotely as cute as what they appeared when I first saw them online. They cost WAY less than trying to buy them already made as well.

Of course, in every situtation where I find myself mimicking a craft, nothing ever goes as perfect as you think it will in your head...as it did not with me.

So I shall start first with the ingredients really needed:

1 box of red velvet cake mix (or whatever type you wish)
2 cans of 16 oz Cream Cheese cake frosting
2-3 bags of your choice candy melts, I chose red, white, and chocolate
Sprinkles and Red M&M's (not required)
Popsicle Sticks
Styrofoam square
Wilton Tulip shaped Cookie Cutter
Treat Bags

For viewing purposes, I have included my lovely display of items gathered:
                                                 
Now, notice the tulip cookie cutter I am holding. I bought this seperately at Hobby Lobby thinking it was the same as the one requested to make the cupcake pops. Don't make the same mistake I did. You will need the Wilton tulip that comes with a pack that looks like this:



The difference is the cookie cutters in the pack are a lot smaller and will form the dough better for the cupcake pop. Mine turned out too big to create a cupcake, so I had to form it with my hands.

Before I get ahead of myself, you will first want to bake the cake as instructed from the back of the cake box. Let it cool, and take the cake and put in the blender and pulse until ground up in crumbs.

Once the cake was ground up, I put the cake in a bowl and stirred in some cream frosting a little at a time until the cake was easy to form in my hands. If the mixture is falling apart, you will need to add more.

Once I was able to get a good consistency, I took an ice cream scoop and scooped the dough into balls. I put them on a wax lined pan and in the freezer they went for 15 minutes. You can put them in the fridge too, but it may take about 30 min instead. Multi-tasking works best for time conserving, so while you wait on your little freezer-balls, you can heat up your candy melts. I started with the chocolate first. Heat in 30 second increments until smooth. If it seems stiff, you can add a small amount of vegetable oil.

Once the doughballs were firm enough, I took them back out and (at this time found out the tulip cutter did not work) prepare to shape them into cupcakes. If you do have a tulip cutter that works, shape the balls into an elongated oval shape and press the tulip halfway into the ball. This will form a little bottom ridge and you can shape the top into a rounder cupcake shape. Pull out and put back on the pan. Continue to do the same with the rest.

For you poor saps like me, do your best to flatten one end against your hand and then slightly roll with your hands like you would clay, this will create the bottom part of the cupcake. Round out the top as best as you can.

Remember the chocolate melts? These come in to play now. I made sure the chocolate was smooth enought that it dripped.

Because the melts cool  quickly, you will now dip the bottom of the cupcakes in the chocolate melt, swirl, and place back on wax lined pan. I put the popsicle sticks through these immediately to avoid cracking the chocolate later.



Pop these sucker's back in the freezer for a couple more min to set and heat up your top color for the candy melts. My choice was red and white chocolate to make coral pink.

Dip the top of the cupcake into the pink, swirl, top with sprinkles and a red m&m for a cherry and set in the styrofoam board to dry.

 

When dry, add a treat bag and tie with ribbon.

And you have a cute cupcake pop assembly! I got a lot of compliments on the taste of these, and tried them myself..sort of resemble zebra cakes!

Scotcharoos..and Multi-tasking

As promised, Madeline and I set to work on the Scotcharoos I had seen on Jess's section of Mad in Crafts.
As listed on her page, I picked up all the ingredients close by to avoid the mad rush of last-minute Christmas shoppers and stand a chance of being mauled. With items in hand, and Madeline strapped in the highchair, the following the directions was fairly easy, but warning, this page contains a lot of RECOMMENDATIONS from Me, Myself, and I, so disregard if you think you can wing it.

Because my child is nosy for the sake of being nosy, it absolutely kills her to be sitting still longer than 5 minutes in her chair (can you blame her?) without some compensation. So of course, being the good mother that I am..I gave her some M&M's. My FIRST Recommendation of the day is to occupy your child. Secondly, if it is like mine where food works, make sure you can keep them under supervision when giving things like M&M's to them. Some wouldn't do so, some would, but for me, everything is trial and error. Luckily, there was no choking involved while performing this feat.

With the measurements prepared (because, trust me, you will want to be able to just pour in the items as needed instead of srambling for a bowl), I first got a large pot for my 1 cup of corn startch and 1 cup of sugar. Mix it, put over medium heat until it comes to a boil, and immediately remove from heat.

Second Recommendation: You might want to use a large pot so that you will not have to find a way to fit all the Rice Krispies for later.

Because you have to immediately remove the pot, your next item to mix in will be your 1 cup of peanut butter. (Creamy will be alot better to work with.)

Mix this until smooth, I put mine back on the stove for 1 minute later just so it would all mix nicely.

If you were like me where a baby was added to the preparation, by now they have consumed the few M&M's you have offered them and are squalling for more. I took out my spatula I was using to mix the peanut butter and gave for Madeline to help me clean.



Return to your pot, it is off the stove and add your Rice Krispies to the mixture, sifting and mixing to make sure the peanut butter is thoroughly mixed in.

Because the peanut butter is still hot, and the heat is essential to help hold your rice krispies together, you will want to go ahead and begin to plop the mixture into a 9x13 inch pan and start spreading and packing to maintain cohesiveness.

Okay, at this point I had to clean as I went, because the kitchen begins to feel a little overwhelming with clutter everywhere- so I clear off my station (3rd Recommendation, clean as you go and you won't feel as overwhelmed later!) and wash dishes. If you are lucky, you have a dishwasher, unfortunately for me mine has went out of commission, but you will wish you could put your baby into it if you do, if she/he looks anything  like Madeline did after about 5 minutes:

At least she was content. Okay, so I waited to clean the baby until afterwards..

Now, because you made it a priority to pack your rice krispy and pb together first, you can now go ahead and pour your butterscotch and chocolate semi-sweet chips together and put in microwave to heat up. I didn't use a whole bunch of butterscotch because I am a bigger fan of chocolate, but I will go ahead and suggest to leave it out if you don't like it at all. 4th Recommendation for the day, you should melt your chocolate about 30 seconds at a time in the microwave to avoid burning it, and mix each time. If the chocolate seems pretty stiff, add a little vegetable oil to it while mixing to maintain smoothness.

I had to melt this for about 1 min 30 seconds in intervals and then poured over the rice krispy mixture.

Once you have smoothed and spread this over the mixture, your next step is....adding the M&M's..my favorite part!

I used Christmas colors to maintain the mood, but Jess used red, yellow and green to make a stop light..super cute!

Basically, you are pretty much almost finished, but the chocolate will need to set and cool- and it will eventually harden so you can cut into little bars or do what you may. Some dedicated cookers may wait on this to happen..but I stuck mine in the fridge and dug in our left over Taco Bell Burritos, painted my toes and watched Phineas and Ferb. (In my defense, it is a pretty good show, Madeline was tired and needed to take a nap, and I may never grow up..so what does it hurt?)

The great thing is, my toes looked Merry, Madeline was refreshed and happy, and our Scotcharoo bars turned out great and yummy!

 

Merry Christmas!

Cheap way to add festive touches to the holiday season..

Okay, so I pretty much have designed most of Madeline's headbands with decorative flower pins which are easy as pie to make for any old person with a glue gun. Don't know why it popped into my head, but after I put on Maddie's black dress to look festive for the Christmas Merry-Go-Round in our town, It seemed like the outfit just wouldn't be right without a poinsetta. Of course, my creative juices bubbled at the thought of it and 5 minutes later with a white head band, an aligator clip and a clipping from one of my artificial poinsetta plants, Houston, we were ready for liftoff. Of course, Maddie could practically soar above the high seas with this huge flower over her head, but I personally think the bigger, the cuter.

We are at the stage where she likes to pull any foreign object off of her body-including socks, headbands, pacifier clips and the list goes on..but after distracting her with Christmas songs, all seemed to go well. A few fun pics later, we had another unique memory to add to our Caldwell Christmas. I would recommend spicing up any headband with a cute present bow also if you aren't into spending the extra effort to go buy a poinsetta- they are just as cute! I think I will be doing this for her birthday next week as well- it will be simple and cute!

Merry Christmas, all! I will be posting my Scotcharoos tomorrow that I got from Jess at Mad In Crafts.  You can go to her blog by clicking her button under the "Blogs I Love to Visit" section.They look tasty and I couldn't resist!

My Ephiphany..A Storm Is Coming

If you have been dealing with a lot..click my babble below this picture.............I took this at my apartments and what I wrote came to mind while looking out the window.

  A Storm Is Coming