Shamrock Pancakes

My family celebrated St. Patrick's Day throughout the weekend!  Being that my husband is from Ireland, the holiday is personal to us and I have fun making the extra special connections to the Irish culture with our children.

The week leading up to St. Patrick's Day, the kiddos were hard at work designing and building traps to capture a leprechaun (with the hopes of keeping the leprechaun's gold).  From Lucky Charms lined streets and gold garland to written notes promising a cozy night's sleep, sadly no leprechaun's were caught (but he was certainly up to a lot of mischief throughout the house)!

As a consolation, I whipped up my favorite homemade pancake recipe and cooked up Shamrock pancakes!

Good Old Fashioned Pancake Recipe (from allrecipes.com)

1 1/2 cups all purpose flower

3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon white sugar

1 1/2 cups milk

1 egg (I use egg substitute and it works perfectly)

3 tablespoons butter, melted

  

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt and sugar. Make a well in the center.

Pour milk, egg and melted butter into the well of the dry ingredients and mix until smooth.

 

Since these are special Shamrock pancakes, I used a funnel to fill a condiment bottle with batter so that I could draw the Shamrock design.

I ended up cutting down the tip so the batter could flow through better.

 

When the griddle was ready, I made one heart.

I continued drawing two more hearts and made a stem.

Then, I filled in the shamrock with more batter and flipped over the pancake.

A Shamrock pancake! Yummm!

Fabric Quilt Wall Art

My husband and I received the entire set of Pottery Barn king size bedding that we registered for as a wedding gift nearly ten years ago.  My absolute favorite piece was the duvet.  When my daugher was two, she left a black felt tip marker on the bed under a coloring book which I didn't see until later that night when I went to bed.  I was devistated.  I spent several hours soaking, washing, you name it....trying to get out the stain.  After many failed attempts and spreading the stain, I kept it with the hope that I would think of some way to salvage the remaining fabric.

I've been considering making my own headboard and browsed Pinterest for inspiration. I ran across a headboard made out of plywood squares, batting and fabric.  I took that concept and decided to make hanging quilt-art using the fabric from my duvet.  

I decided to have one row of four, 14 inch x 14 inch squares across the width of the bed. My husband took a quick trip to Home Depot to have the squares cut from 1/2 inch birch plywood. I tested the fabric measurements using the stained section of the duvet.  Then, I cut out four sections of the fabric and quilt batting for underneath. 

I placed the quilt batting on top of the square and the fabric on top.  For a thicker display, you could use batting foam.  Using a staple gun, I pulled the fabric tight against the board to secure the fabric on the backside. 

 When finished, I hammered in a small OOK nailness sawtooth hanger on the backside.

 

Before I nailed anything, I held the finished squares up to the wall and I liked having two rows of two centered with the middle of the bed.  Nothing like changing my mind at the last minute.  Here's the final display!

My First Rag Quilt!

My First Baby Rag Quilt!

During a girl's weekend shopping trip last fall, I ran across the most precious flannel baby blanket in a specialty store. It was patchwork-like with tiny frayed edges, soft and as cute as can be. It didn't look too complicated to make but I was missing one essential piece of equipment...a sewing machine and oh by the way, I hadn't sewn since my high school 4-H days. So after my mom sent me one of her extra sewing machines, I immediately began searching for patterns like the quilt I had seen and found an easy to follow Baby Rag Quilt Tutorial on Pinterest.

Laying out the pattern

I split out the work over three days and spent about 3 hours each day to make the crib-size baby quilt. I bought the fabric and cut all of the squares on Saturday, sewed on Sunday and snipped, washed and dried on Monday. My kids helped me "make the sandwiches" and sew the X's. It was a real team effort and pleasant re-introduction to sewing!  I had the most fun snipping out the seams to make the fringe.  That's what really makes it pretty! :)

Sewn squares and rows

A few tips when you try this yourself:

• Use a rotary cutter and cutting board.  I went through one blade cutting all of my fabric and batting so you may want to have some extra blades handy!
• Measure squares accurately and try to finish all of your cutting in one sitting.
• Sew carefully to keep consistent seam measurements.
• Don't wear black when you are snipping the seams or you'll be covered in lint!  
•  After washing and drying, be prepared for a lot of lint.  I used a tape lint brush to really get in the "rag" edges. (Note, I didn't pre-wash my flannel.)

All sewn together - before snipping the edges

Picking out the fabric styles for my quilt turned out to be the hardest part of this project for me!  There are so many varieties and styles of flannel prints available so fabric stores tend to group like color schemes together.  You can buy pre-cut flannel squares, it costs more but it saves cutting time.  If you use them, have an idea of the quilt size you plan to make and how many squares you will need for the front and back to make sure you get all of the pieces you need! 

Paper organizer made from a cereal box!

I can't believe it...a paper organizer that's made out of a cereal box!   While searching for inspiration for ways to organize the paper clutter on my counters, I ran across a really cute idea to make an organizer out of a cereal box and scrapbooking paper. So earlier this week, I finished my box of Cheerios and picked up a few new scrapbook paper packs while at Target (8 sheets 12 in x 12 in for 99 cents).  My kids helped me gather the tape, marker, glue stick and ruler.  I got my x-acto knife and followed the Cereal Box Stationary Organizer Tutorial.

As a finishing touch, I cut out a "T" initial and circle on complimentary paper as a decorative accent. OMG - it was so easy to do, very inexpensive and how super cute!  It's the perfect size for notepads, incoming mail or to organize stationary, stamps and address labels. Guess I'll be eating a lot of cereal this week so that I can make a few more!

Giving Flipboard a Try!

I was reading another yet another "simplify your life" article but this time, I think I found something that truly will make a difference for me!  In the February issue of Health, I discovered the customized reading app, Flipboard.  It works like a personal magazine that centralizes articles and images from your social networks, news sources and other content that you can pick from Flipboard's resources.  I've been able to streamline information on my iPhone from my various news apps and social network sites so I don't have to jump from app to app anymore.  I think that this might be just as addictive as Pinterest!

My Flipboard

Personalized Valentines for Kids

Two of my favorite things are Martha Stewart's Living and Pinterest.  Taking ideas from both, I created these valentines for my children's kindergarten and first grade classes.

From this:

To this:

How I did it:
For photos, I had a few foam hearts in our craft-bin and took a picture of each child holding it over their heart. During photo editing, I added a border around each photo.  I created a 3" x 5" portrait Word document, inserted a two column table at the bottom half of the page.  In the right column, I inserted the photo.  In the left column, I typed the Valentine's Day message.

Supplies:

• 3" x 5" plain index cards (no lines)
• Color printer
• 3" x 4" clear plastic baggies - I found these at an office supply store
• 3 bags of miniature candy (we used 2 per packet and made 48 packets)
• stapler

The kids counted, placed the candy in each baggy and sealed them.  I printed each card, folded and stapled them to each baggy.  This was an easy project with no mess, clippings or cuttings!
These valentines are the perfect size for kindergarten and first graders.  I LOVE how these turned out and prefer them over the licensed character cards, stickers and tattoos (are kids really that into those things anyway)?