I have been searching for something cute, quick and inexpensive to do with the windows in our dinning room. I have recently finished place mats for the table and a cafe curtain for our kitchen using some beautiful fabric I picked up on sale at JoAnns. Luckily I had enough left over to make a simple little window treatment for these two bare windows.
So, do you want to learn just how easy this little widow project is? Just click here to get the full tutorial.
We had a wonderful Father’s Day weekend!! Full of food and fun 
I spent Friday night making Nate’s Root Beer Float Cake and a cookie cake for a friend (didn’t get picture of cookie cake). The Root Beer Float cake turned out VERY tasty and wasn’t too hard to recreate. I followed her method pretty closely. I found my root beer extract at Wal-Mart. Instead of making 2 cakes and cutting them in half I baked four 8″ round cakes. I used a cake leveler to get them as level as possible. I didn’t want a leaning root beer float. I used about 1 1/2 batches of buttercream icing. I used this recipe. In the end I kind of ran out of white/vanilla icing for the top, but I tried to just make it work. I also used several bamboo skewers to help keep the cake layers in place. I would put them in after adding each layer. Nate LOVED it!! I totally recommend making this cake for the root beer lover in your life.
Saturday we celebrated with Nate’s dad, and I put the finishing touches on the Root Beer Sampler. A few days after Father’s Day last year I found this post on HomemadebyJill. I knew Nate would love this!
I based my Root Beer Sampler Card off of the ones here and here. They had a description for most of the root beers I found except for the Old Town ones, which I wrote on my own using descriptions from Cosmo’s Root Beer Reviews and Root Beer Reviews. I just quickly designed the card using Picnik and had it printed as an 8×10 at Costco.
Nate loved his Root Beer-themed Father’s day!
On Sunday we celebrated with my Dad. I’m so mad because I forgot to take pictures. We had a really great weekend. Natalie loved hanging out with her Dadda, Papa and Pops!
A few days ago I found a delicious cookie recipe in the July issue of Family Circle. I knew I had a bag of Ghirardelli milk chocolate chips sitting in my cabinet just begging to be used. I do believe chocolate and peanut butter make the most tasty combination! A true match made in heaven
So after a failed attempt at strawberry jam, I decided what the heck, the kitchen is already a disaster, why not make cookies!
To make these tasty treats, first you need to combine your dry ingredients.
Then combine the wet ingredients.
The wet ingredients combined should look something like this: (PS- please don’t hate on my superb photography skills, abundance of natural lighting at 11pm and amazing 6-year-old point and shoot. K, thanks!)
Next stir together the wet and the dry– but don’t stir too much! Just until it’s all combined.
Should end up looking like this:
Add your chocolate chips.
Prepare your cookie sheets. I only have 1 Silpat, so I also use parchment paper. Honestly, I think it works just as good as a Silpat and it’s not annoying to clean. You just ball it up and throw it away!
Scoop the dough on the cookie sheets. Flatten each cookie a little with the back of a spoon, and then make little criss-cross designs with a fork if you so please.
Bake for about 10 minutes at 350°F, and then pull these beauties out of the oven (and take a picture of them on some vintage stoneware that you picked up at a yard sale last weekend).
Then pack up the rest to give to someone else You don’t want these sitting around for too long, trust me!
Adapted from recipe found in Family Circle, July 2011
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup butter-flavored Crisco
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 bag (11.5 oz.) milk chocolate chips (Ghirardelli makes large milk chocolate morsels)
1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Whisk together flour, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
2. In large bowl, beat crisco and peanut butter until smooth. Add sugars one at a time and beat well. Add eggs and vanilla and beat until smooth.
3. Stir in flower mixture a little bit at a time, stirring just until combined. Add chocolate chips and stir until they are evenly distributed.
4. Scoop dough on to cookie sheet lined with Silpat or parchment paper. Flatten dough a little with the back of a spoon, and then press down with a fork to get the criss-cross pattern.
5. Bake at 350°F for about 10 minutes.
6. Enjoy with a glass of cold milk, and then send the rest to work with your husband
I have been getting Disney’s FamilyFun magazine for a couple of months and LOVE it! Each magazine is full of fun, kid-friendly ideas and crafts. Today you can get a year’s subscription for $5, and possibly free. Just go here, and she’ll explain how!
Lately I have been purging a lot of “stuff” from our home, including magazines. I have a bad habit of hanging on to old magazines thinking I might one day want to look in them and find something cool to make or bake. But really they just end up junking up our drawers and closet, destroyed read by Natalie and so on. Even though I was in the “get rid of it” kind of mood the other day, I kept every one of my FamilyFun’s. And I came up with a great way to store them- a little reduce, reuse, recycle to make up for filling our garbage can with junk. Check back soon to read all about it!
Wanna see what I’m planning for Father’s Day? Here’s some of my inspiration…
Clockwise: Root Beer Float Cake, Root Beer Sampler, Father’s Day Banner – Free Printable!, Blueberry Pancakes, Tie Box
Yay! It’s my first blog post! I hope to use this blog to keep track of my cooking, sewing and crafting projects and progress. Here are some things I’ve done recently:
Matching Skirts, Necklaces and Flower Clips for Mother’s Day
Matching skirts for Natalie and her little friend Cally using this tutorial.
Gracie by Portabellowpixie
Natalie’s Valentines — Photo, Valentine Template
Pink Tutu {Photography} — Love her!
Bonnie BlueDesigns , Pattern: Riley {Photography}
Natalie’s Dress, Pattern: Madison/ My Skirt
