No Sew Tutu

Supplies Needed

Scissors

Tape Measure

Ribbon

6-8 yards of Tulle in your choice of colors

(I used baby pink, hot pink, & purple)

                           

First measure the child’s waist.  Then pull out your ribbon, from the end measure eight to ten inches and tie a knot.  Then from the knot measure the distance of the child’s waist, the child I made this for has an 18 inch waist.  So far my length is 26 inches, then at the end of the child’s waist measurement tie another knot, then from the second knot measure another eight to ten inches and cut the ribbon. Should look like so…

       ---------knot-----------18------------knot--------

Sorry didn’t think about taking a picture of that. I hope that makes sense. If not let me know and I’ll find some more ribbon.

Then you want to determine how long you want your tulle pieces to be. Mine were 45 inches long and 4 inches wide. Four inches wide seemed to work the best, so go ahead and cut all of your tulle. Now I know 45 inches sounds really long, but you are going to fold each pieces in half so in all actuality you are only having lengths of 22.5.  So you have to figure that in with the child’s height. On this particular tutu I made it WAY to long, so I’m going to have to trim it, it will look more like a dress on the child I made it for!  

The white ribbon photos are strictly to show you how to tie the tulle onto the ribbon. You take your first length of tulle and fold it in half, then open the half behind the ribbon.  Then you take the ends of your tulle and poke them through the hole together as if one piece, then pull through gently. After you have the tulle through and are tightening it, you’ll have to nudge it and pull it in different directions to get it tight along the ribbon. Keep in mind you can rip the tulle, it’s not very strong. 

One you have a piece tied on you then slide it all the way over the knot, you can alternate colors of tulle or you can use all the same colors, you can even cut the same length of ribbon as your tulle and add ribbons to your tutu as well. I did hot pink, baby pink, purple, then a ribbon.  You’ll add the tulle all along the ribbon between the knots.

Once you are done you are ready to tie it onto the child using the two 8-10 inches pieces hanging off the ends. You’ll have a dancing fairy princess all over hour house in no time.

Also this isn’t exactly easy to do by yourself, so you can find a way to tie the two ends of the ribbon to something to hold it taunt, your can enlist your own Mr. Honey Amazing to hold your ribbon for you, as I did.  

Tiny Fairy Clipits

Supplies Needed

Scissors

Artificial Flowers

Hot Glue Sticks & Gun

Craft Felt

Alligator Barrette Clips

not pictured above, Center Pieces (flat back marbles or gems)

Start off by removing all your flowers from the stems, then use your scissors to

cut the end of the stems off.

When you’ve cut off the ends of the stems your flowers should start coming apart in pieces, pull all of the pieces apart and set aside in order as they were together as a flower, this is the order you’re going to hot glue them back together.

Now you’re going to glue them back together piece by piece.  Use your hot glue and make a circle of glue around the hole in the center, then press the next flower piece into the glue.  You can use something like the end of your scissor handles to do this because the GLUE IS HOT!  And it will burn you. I know from experience. 

Once you have your flowers all back together you’re going to glue your center  piece in, you can use flat back marbles, or little jewels you find in the craft section. So put the glue directly on the back of your center piece, I discovered if you put it in the flower you will squish glue all out of the sides of your center piece, you can see this when you look at the finished green flower. Bummer that  one was my favorite! 

Now on to the back.  You cut a small rectangle of  felt out, about three times the size of your alligator barrette clip.  Then run a line of hot glue on your felt and open up your alligator barrette clip and clip it onto the glue line.  

                                                                            

Then on the side of the clip that is in the glue, put more hot glue all over the back side and press onto the flower and hold tightly for a few seconds.  

Voila!

Then you have your very own cute Tiny Fairy Flower Clipit! These are super cute on babies, and with the right flower look elegant on women! 

Floydian’s Kicking Creamy Chicken (crockpot)

Floydian’s Kicking Creamy Chicken (crockpot)

Yield: 4 servings @ 293 calories per serving

Ingredients 

1 - 8oz pk of Fat Free Philadelphia Cream Cheese  (210 calories)

1 - 10 ¾ oz can of Campbell’s 98% Fat Free Cream of Chicken Soup (175 calories)

10 ¾ oz of Fat Free Milk (use can to measure) (121 calories)

1 packet of Good Season’s Zesty Italian Salad Dressing (40 calories)

1 6.5oz can of Mushroom Pieces & Stems (30 calories)

½ cup Chopped Onions (I used red, my favorite!) (34 calories)

1 Teaspoon garlic pepper

1 Teaspoon Tony Chachere’s

16oz Boneless Skinless Chicken Breast (560 calories)

Toss your cream cheese in the microwave to soften it up, I did it in 10 second intervals, you don’t want it to explode!  Also if you get the kind wrapped in foil, TAKE OFF THE FOIL! But y’all know that.  Once pretty soft put it in the crock pot, also add the soup, the milk, the packet of dressing seasoning, use a whisk and whisk it all up in there till it’s pretty creamy. Your cream cheese may leave some small lumps but you can whisk to pretty smooth.

Once you have your sauce done add your chopped onions, mushrooms, garlic pepper, & Tony’s, stir it all up in there.

Now frozen or thawed it doesn’t matter, cube up your chicken into small bite size pieces, add the chicken. Stir everything together and kind of make sure it’s all even in the crock pot, don’t leave the chicken all piled up on one side or in the middle.

Pop on your lid, turn it to high, will be good to go in 3 to 5 hours depending on how big you make your chicken pieces.

Serve over Rice or Pasta.  The calorie count is only for the chicken. If you serve over 1 cup of rice add 200 calories, if you serve over 2oz of pasta add 200 calories.  Then add some fresh steamed veggies to the side, (which I won’t be eating, but you enjoy!)

Ps. There was lots of “gravy” left over after we had plated dinner, so you might cut back to a half of can of milk, or even forgo the milk all together, up to you, it’s still a work in progress, but it was super yummy!

Hair Bow Holder

My good friend Cinda just had a sweet baby girl. And I've made lots of things for this little darling already, but I'd never made a bow holder. I saw one somewhere before and thought that is super cute!  So here's my version of baby K's bow holder.

I went in to Walmart's craft section and selected Baby K's first initial. You could do the child's whole name or their initials, I stuck with the one letter. How many bows can a newborn have?  Well this one perhaps many she is the first granddaughter in a long long long line of boys!  While at WM, I also picked my paints, hot glue sticks, & ribbon (craft section), then headed over to hardware and grabbed a can of Crystal Clear Enamel.

 You can paint your letter any way you want. I chose to paint my letter the same way I already painted a couple of canvas for baby K's nursery, my Jackson Pollock motif.

You can paint your letter anyway you like. To get your letter to look like this you have to waste a lot of paint, but you squeeze your paint out on the letter like you see above on the canvases. Then you have to hold your letter at different angles and bang the edges in the plate that will cause the paint to mix and swirl, do it from the top and from the bottom then from the sides and you'll get an outcome like this below.

After your paint is completely dry, take your painted letter OUTSIDE and spray the whole letter edges and all, minus the back with the spray enamel. Do not breathe this stuff in, inhalation abuse can kill you!  I chose to do several layers to make it super shiny looking. I sprayed it all over once every thirty minutes four times.

After the letter has dried over night, I attached about eight inches of ribbon to the back side of the letter with a hot glue gun. When I cut the ribbon from the spool use a lighter (I have one for the BBQ grill, cost a couple of bucks) and "warm" the edges of the ribbon so they don't fray. You don't want to BURN the edges because the ribbon will turn black.

When your letter is dry and your ribbons are hot glued on you're ready to hang it on the wall and clip on your hair bows! Super cute, super easy, great baby shower gift!!!

Soda Slushy....by accident

I decided that I'm also going to add in little tidbits of awesomeness for life.

 If you are anything like me then when you had children your brain went with it. I used to remember everything, now just about nothing. I am the ultimate list maker because I forget EVERYTHING.  So with that being said I forgot a soda in the freezer today! When you travel for a living, and you live in a 5th wheel you have a freezer the size of a shoe box.  So there really isn't room for ice, so that's why drinks go in the freezer!  However I learned long ago after Mr. Amazing left a Red Bull in the freezer that if I were going to put a drink in the freezer again it was going to have to be in something to assure it wouldn't explode all over my freezer like Mr. Amazing's Red Bull did. That was by far the worst freezer clean up job to date!  Granted I have never been the sufferer of a power outage freezer clean up!

So since I know my brains memory faults I inserted my can of Caffeine Free Dr. Pepper into a one gallon freezer Zip-lock bag and placed it in the freezer. (They were meant to freeze sodas right?)  And of course I forgot about it. (It was destined to happen.)  So HOURS later when I removed my safety bag from the freezer it hadn't exploded so I was able to save the bag for another rainy day. But when I popped the top to my frozen soda I realized (DUH) it's frozen!  So I had a genius moment and got out the can opener and cut the top of the can off and poured my Dr. Pepper slushy into a cup. AMAZING!  So now you know how to prevent major freezer clean up mishaps and how to get your frozen soda out of the can!

Enjoy!


(Happy Birthday Steve E., I love you brother)

Craftiness and how it came to be... for me.

I always wanted to write a blog, but I never had anything to write about. Until now! I am so excited about this blog. I hope my blog will inspire others to want to do crafty things as well.  

All my life my Mama and my Grammie have always been into crafts and do-it-yourself kinds of stuff. I always admired the abilities they had to make just about ANYTHING with their hands. My Mama could make beautiful bows with ribbon and wire, she made amazing things out of barbed wire, & to see the glorious things she could paint or draw with charcoal pencils, it's something to be in awe of!  I was so proud the day my Mama agreed to make the flowers for my wedding. I saved my beautiful bouquet in my wedding keepsake box.  My Grammie well what can't she do is an easier way to describe her.  She refinishes trunks and quilts the most beautiful quilts. She asked me what I wanted as a wedding gift and I told her I wanted a KING size quilt for my marital bed.  She and my Grampa drove all the way to Texas from Connecticut to see me marry the man of my dreams. She gave me my King size wedding quilt a couple of days before the wedding with a side note "I will NEVER make a KING size quilt again! That thing took up my entire dinning room table for months!"  She's the best!!!  My husband and I are going on six wonderful years of marriage this summer and we still sleep under our wedding quilt every night, we do not own another king size blanket. <3

I always wanted to be crafty like these two amazing women in my life. But with my Mama crazy busy with a full time career and my Grammie living 2000 miles away in Connecticut I had to find another way!!!  When I was pregnant with my twins boys I wanted to learn to sew.  So I got on my local Yahoo Garage Sale message board and put out a post asking for sewing lessons.  I  found Ms. B, who agreed to give me twice weekly sewing lessons, while I was big and pregnant and waddling around (pre bed rest). We bonded over baby stories, spools of thread and cute frog patterns, while trying to guess what the gender of the babies was going to be! Ms. B. is by far one of the kindest most patient women I have ever met in my life.  And no matter how many times I had to rip out those seams and start over she just smiled and told me I was doing a good job. I enjoyed those days with her that summer more than just about anything. 

Days after I delivered I was sitting in the NICU holding Thing 1, a nurse who'd helped deliver the boys walked in the room. She looked at me and said "HI! Do you remember me?"  (Apparently I was a little jacked up on the morphine lol). We got caught up a little and she mentioned how cute the twin's frog blankets were, and had asked me where I got them. I informed her that I had made them. She looked me straight in the face and said "You don't look like Martha Freaking Stewart to me!" You see I'm not your Mama's Martha Stewart. I'm your New Millennium tattooed pierced Martha Freaking Stewart!  I never laughed so hard in my life. I understand the comment now more than ever when I get looks from women my grandmother's age in the fabric store.  

My mama taught me to be crafty, Ms. B. taught me to sew, my Grammie and Mrs. P. taught me to quilt, and for that I am so grateful for these women. Y'all are an inspiration to me!  I hope with this blog to be able to teach others the things I know how to do, so that they can learn to be artsy-fartsy too! Something I hear all the time from people is "I want to learn how to.......(fill in the blank) but it looks so hard."  I hope to prove that wrong! I hope to show you crafts, yummy foods, and little tidbits of awesomeness for life!  Come with me and lets have some fun!