Lulu's Sizzlin' Saturday... Cutie Pie Cupcakes

I love everything about cupcakes! I love making them, decorating them and eating them! It amazes me that you can pretty much turn a cupcake into anything you want! A dog, a penguin, corn on the cob or... mini pies!! I have books of different ways you can decorate cupcakes and I just love looking through them! I found this idea on an I Heart Cupcake Calendar! I made 24 vanilla cupcakes and got to work! To get the light brown frosting I tinted white frosting with cocoa powder. I lightly frosted the cupcakes, placed the M&M'S on and then piped the pie lines and edging on! This was my first time making these and I think they came out pretty cute!!

Best served by the pool on a beautiful, summer day!!!

Enjoy!☺

Linking To...

   

Tin Foil Meals

We just spent a very fun, but rainy, week camping. My sister and I plan all the dinners for the week and one of our favorites is a tin foil meal. This was inspired by my husband's many years of Boy Scouts and he is definitely the master of the charcoal. We just bring all the ingredients and everyone builds their own dinner.

We start with a good sized sheet of heavy duty foil sprayed with non-stick cooking spray. We flop down a hamburger patty (or two if you're a very hungry camper ☺), then add sliced potatoes, carrots, zucchini, onion, salt and pepper, and a slice of bread. Yup, that's right, a slice of bread. The bread absorbs the liquids from the veggies as they cook and it sorta turns into stuffing. Our group is split 50/50 between those of us who like to add bread and those who don't. (I vote yes! to the bread). This dinner must have belonged to a non-bread-adder.

 We don't add anything like ketchup or hot sauce until after everything cooks because we found that any sugar in a sauce just makes the meal burn easier, we figured that out the hard way years ago!

Now wrap up the foil and then double wrap it in a second sheet of foil so nothing can leak out while it cooks. Then you give your foil dinner to The Mayor who sets it on the charcoal. None of us can figure out how he remembers whose dinner is whose (there are 9 of us) but he remembers! It must be his Eagle Scout skills kicking in, incredible memory stimulated by the smell of food cooking in the woods.

 We use a couple of metal shelves from an old refrigerator as our grates and The Mayor has a really heavy pair of gloves that he wears so he can just pick up the foil packets and move them or flip them.

The Mayor lets them cook for 10 minutes, then flips them and they go for another 10 minutes. They start to smell so yummy I am surprised the bears didn't come check us out!

These are hungry children, waiting for their dinners to finish cooking, passing the time in the hammock. See the sun streaming in through the trees from the lake? Truly beautiful. Take a good look because pretty soon it will start to rain...and rain...and you will be stuck in your camper or under a 10 x 10 awning listening to NOTHING BUT RAINDROPS!!! Okay, back to the dinner...

Ahhh, yumminess in a foil packet. Thanks Mayor/Dad! Luckily I remembered to take a photo before I doused mine with ketchup so you could actually see the food! I am a ketchup queen. Somehow the burger gets cooked and the potatoes come out tender and it tastes oh, so good! It tastes like camping... but without the rain!

the babe's faves

One of the most asked questions I think any pregnant woman gets would be "are you craving anything?"  At first I really didn't crave anything as much as I had "anti-cravings."  During the first trimester, anything chocolate sounded more like the plague to me, and I couldn't stomach the thought of chili.  But now that we're almost at the close of the second trimester, I can definitively point out some yummy (and new-to-me) recipes that the baby just can't stop flailing his/her arms for (or legs for that matter!).

So, here we go with The Babe's Faves!

Bread: Coconut bread with orange glaze

I think this is the BEST gluten free sweetbread I've ever homemade before. Whether it's the hormones or the baby talking, I can't be sure, but this bread is GOOD.

Snack: Apples! Apples! Apples!!!! (did I say apples?)

Lunch: A lettuce wrap with tomato and bacon (I use turkey bacon), pepper strips dipped in hummus, and probably another apple

Dinner: Real Simple's Mac and Cheese.  Okay, I get that this is very fattening, so believe me, I don't make it often at all.  I also do not use 6 cups of milk. That always seemed like a lot to me, so I use 3 cups of soymilk and only 1 cup of gruyere (hey, gruyere is expensive!).  Is it weird that I use soymilk and then real gruyere? Probably, but that's just how I roll! haha!  I also never have cayenne seasoning so I just use chili powder (sorry, free spirit here, I can never follow directions). :)

Dessert: Mud Pie (I received this recipe from a friend, and used a homemade hot fudge from a recipe I found online.)  Sorry for no photo, I would have taken one, but I made it in a regular cake pan at first, when looking back I should have done it in a spring foam pan.  Once I had baked it in the regular pan, there was no getting it out so I served it straight from there (you can gather from the name that this is a moist cake!). I have not made it in a spring foam pan yet, though I don't believe it would fall apart, but don't take my word on it so use a cake pan if you don't care about presentation!  Rest assured, it is very appetizing!

   Mud Pie
     1 c. sugar
     1/2 c. melted butter
     1 tea vanilla
     1/4 tea salt
      2 eggs
     1/3 c. flour (I used 1/3 c. all purpose gluten free flour plus a tea of xanthan gum)
     1/3 c. cocoa
     1 c. chopped walnuts
     1/2 c. hot fudge topping
      whipped cream

• Grease spring foam pan (or regular cake pan- see note above), set oven at 325
• Mix all ingredients together except for the hot fudge topping and whipped cream.  Pour into springfoam pan and bake 20-25 min.
• Remove from oven immediately, prick holes in pie with wooden pick.  Spread 1/4 c. of fudge over top
• Let first spreading of fudge cool for a few minutes before adding another 1/4 c. on top. Then put the cake in the fridge
• After at least an hour in the fridge, take the outer springfoam part off, spread whipped cream on top, and if you're feeling fancy, top with mini chocolate chips or chocolate shavings.  Store leftovers in refrigerator.

Enjoy perusing some new recipes!  If you are gluten free, you must try the coconut bread, it's amazing!  I think the babies' top favorite right now is apples (in case you couldn't tell, haha!).  NOT applesauce though, they've gotta be good ole red gala apples!  Now, I know the baby wishes they could eat all these foods every day, but don't worry, I keep the mac and cheese and mud pie's to a healthy minimum!  All in all- the baby really has been making me crave a lot of healthy foods like apples, hummus, almonds, etc.  I can't complain!  What are YOU craving lately?

Lovely Lemon Laundry Soap (and another face scrubbie ♥)

Happy Tuesday sisters! ♥

I've been thinking about makin' my own laundry detergent for a little while now...just thinkin' if it's cheaper, has less chemically-ish stuff in it, and is not on the "potentially leads to cancer" list... then why not?  I found a couple recipes through Pinterest which got me all excited! (about saving some money on our grocery bill or about how cute this detergent looks in a glass jar with an old measuring cup in it, i'm not sure)

I tried it last night and it worked great (I have a Kenmore HE front loading machine...something the chief mentioned I should take into consideration when I was reading through the recipes and comments)...(I use the right side of my brain people - not the left in any way - i don't think of logical stuff like soap suds pouring out of my washing machine...just stuff that's cute) the load came out clean and smelling really lemon-y...I have yet to try it on rough and tough manly clothes though (heehee) and I chose to make the powder recipe 'cause I'm a powder junkie...no liquid for me, but there are many recipes for both. 

...the Fels Napthia is what smells so good, and it looks old fashioned too! caauute!

1 bar of the soap is a little over a cup...it can be grated with a cheese grater or processed in a food processor, the smaller you cube it the better if your processing it.

I have to tell you that my whole house smelled like lemon when i was doing this part...so fresh and clean!

These were 2 different combinations i came up with by mixing and matching other recipes and through reader comments on Tipnut...I used the first set of ingredients because it seems like the Fels Napthia is concentrated and the idea of using 2 cups of it with 1 cup of each the washing soda and borax would have been to strong. Also, the second calls for 2 Tbsp. per load, which hardly seems like enough but maybe is because of the higher soap concentration?  After you process your soap, it's just equal parts of each ingredient...then 1/4 c. per load...for waaaaay more information...go HERE, HERE and HERE.

After 2 loads of laundry I might be in love ♥ 

...and somewhere in those 4 million comments I read that Tide Powder Detergent, on average, costs .25 cents per load...homemade lemon-y goodness is 1 or 2 cents per load! wow :)

Scalloped Face Scrubbie Pattern

(aunt crochet strikes again!)

with some cotton yarn and a G hook....

♥ch 4, form ring

ch 3 (counts as 1st dc)
11 dc in ring (12 dc total)

join to 1st dc with slip stitch

♥ch 3 (counts as 1st dc)

dc in same stitch

2 dc in each stitch around

join with slip stitch (24 dc)

♥ch 3 

2 dc in next stitch

1 dc in next stitch - around

join with slip stitch to top of 1st dc (36 dc)

♥ch 3 (counts as 1st dc)

4 dc in same stitch

skip next stitch

decrease over next 2 stitches

5 dc in next stitch around

Happy crocheting and laundry detergent making!

Linking to these great parties ♥

Running with Glitter
The Shabby Nest - Frugal Friday
The DIY Showoff Project Parade
Sunday Scoop - i ♥ naptime
Get your craft on Tuesday - Today's Creative Blog
Weekend Wrap Up - Tatertots 'n Jello
DIY Project Parade - the DIY showoff
The 36th Avenue - Share Awesomeness Thursdays

How to make your own... Buckle Bear...

Right now Little E is about 18 months old and really really really into BUCKLES!! Every buckle that she can find seems to occupy her little hands for hours. It wasn't until recently that she mastered the art of the buckle and is still fascinated with buckling and unbuckling everything. And the more things that keep my little 18 month old "busy" the better!! At least my poor house that gets trashed every morning at 7am thinks so..hehe. Jaime recently sent me a link to a website called  Buckley Boo. It is where I got my inspiration! And Little E is at the perfect age to start working on smaller motor skills and the concept of matching colors.                                  For awhile now I have been wanting to make a "busy book" for Little E, but was afraid that it was going to take me too long. Not to mention she is really not into any other part of those books besides the buckles. So I thought why not make my own.... and make it entirely with buckles.. and instead of making a buckle book..make a buckle bear!!

This little guy makes the perfect gift and only took me an hour or two to make. And if you are like me then you already have an assortment of stuffed animals at your disposal to work with so the only thing I had to buy at the store was the buckles and ribbon. (Most of the ribbon I already had, but I wanted to do a rainbow)

Supplies:

One cute and fuzzy stuffed animal (preferably with a long body)

Buckles ( I found mine at Joann's in the sewing section)

Ribbon

Basic Sewing Supplies

1. The first thing I did was measure and cut all my ribbon and then pinned 

it around the bear to make sure that it would all fit and buckle easily.

2. Then I took it all to my sewing machine and hemmed each end of ribbon and then 

sewed it into place around the buckle.

A view of the ribbon from the front and back.

Once all my ribbon was sewn onto my buckles I wrapped them all around the bear

and used embroidery thread and hand sewed each ribbon piece to the back of the bear. This way Little E can't remove the ribbons from the bear. This is how the back of the bear looked when I was done.

This is a view of the front of the bear when it was finished. It's just too stinkin cute!!

And now the fun part!!!

This little bear was a lot of fun to make but what's even better is the fact that Little E will not put it down! Once she buckles him all up she puts him in her little stroller and takes him on a walk. She even had to bring him with her to church on Sunday!