Crafting Coupons

Here is a link to "Obsessed with Scrapbooking's" page where you can find current coupons for the craft stores! Click here to go to her page to print.

Blackberry Cobbler

I did 2 soups last night. A broccoli cheese soup and a taco soup - both from allrecipes.com. Both turned out great though everyone liked the broccoli cheese better. THEN I made a blackberry cobbler - OMG! It was divine and so easy its almost embarrassing. The recipe is from the Pioneer Woman and can be found here. It is a must do!

Homemade Soups!

The rain and the flurries started today so I lost myself in the kitchen and made some homemade soups. One, an Italian sausage tortellini was divine - it was the kids favorite. (Italian Sausage Tortellini recipe)

The chicken tortellini was my honey's fav. (Chicken Tortellini Recipe)

Served these up with whole grain rolls and a side caesar salad. Everyone was pretty happy!

Printable Holiday Tags

Well - Ive run out of Christmas gift tags! Seems I never have enough. So I went searching for some and found these ADORABLE tags.

To print these at home, click here: Heidi Stock Design. They are too cute and her Etsy shop is quite nice too! Enjoy!

Christmas Decorations (finally)

In between the normal tasks of life (work, kids, cleaning and shopping for the holiday!), Ive managed to get a few crafts completed! First I made these trees.

I saw them on eighteen25 and you can find the directions here I LOVE LOVE LOVE them. I changed 2 things. One, I tacky glued the form shapes first, glittered them then sprayed on spray adhesive and put on another coat of glitter. My other change was instead of painting the candlesticks, I wrapped them with beaded cord. Easy and so cute!

The rest of the shelf decor was just as easy. I threw up some Christmas greenery, tied on a couple bows, set up two really nice candles and some large ornaments that look like wrapped gifts. I bought the snow man (which is really a storage tin) from Michaels. I used a 40% coupon and I think it cost me $2. I quickly printed the "Believe" off the web and put it in a frame that I already had. (I dont recall from where). I was pretty pleased with myself, feeling like I had gotten a lot accomplished in little time and was quite thrifty doing it. But something wasnt quite right. My shelf wasnt balanced, so back to Michaels I went! 

I picked up a rectangle shape of styrofoam, wrapped it with a sheet of candy caned striped scrapbook paper, spray painted some twigs (from a nearby park) white, added a touch of silver glitter and made him a nice little winter wonderland. 

Now, isnt this much better?

Wow - its been a busy few weeks!

Lets see... well, I must admit that after my last post, my head was still stuck on Halloween for a bit and I continued crafting Halloween decor. Its snowed here in NJ on Halloween and I was completely robbed and I just needed a little more time to get it out of my system. Im glad to admit that that I am totally focused on Christmas now and have been quite busy.
I will mention quickly that we had a great Thanksgiving and started something new this year. We did a bake-off of sorts. We teamed up (we have 8 family members mind you) and had 3 teams of 2 people each - we were excited to cook yummy sweets and have the 20+ guests enjoy and vote. My youngest step-daughter Jackie and I did two desserts. First we did easy individual oreo cheesecakes - you can find the recipe for those all over the web and they are so easy. The second cheesecake we did was a caramel apple cheesecake by following this recipe - Caramel Apple Cheesecake Bars | The Girl Who Ate Everything. Simply awesome and everybody loved it and it was an easy win! Make this if you love cheesecake - it is to die for!

Just do it!

So I'm the one that has the desire to craft, has some fairly decent ideas and a TON of craft supplies gathering dust in my garage because I never make the time to just do it. Today is the that is going to change.

On the note of craft supplies - I LOVE HALLOWEEN, and Michaels is having an awesome 70% off sale on fall items and the scrapbook papers I've gotten as well as all the other Halloween/fall items Ive gotten for practically nothing makes this the now or never time for me. I literally got about $300 worth of stuff for $60. My once organized garage has been taken over by bags from Michaels and the dollar stores and I must get organized and on to some crafting.

SADLY, Halloween is over and I should be concentrating on Thanksgiving and Christmas and I'm going to try REALLY hard not to let myself sink into just doing Halloween crafts... did I mention I love Halloween? Stay tuned for a few things I am going to throw together this weekend (I'm starting with some simple items). Pictures to come soon.