Holiday Treats (recipes)

Yummy treats for friends and family.

This week's Iron Craft challenge was Mulligan, meaning that we could do any of the previous challenges that we wanted. I did challenge #46 Handmade Holiday. This is just a small portion of things I've made for gifts this year, but since it's not Christmas yet, I didn't want to spoil any surprises.

The Periwinkle Chandelier

Ashley over at The Periwinkle Chandelier made an adorable bow, in fact made several adorable bows, that started with my Super Simple Four Loop Hair Bow tutorial. How fab is that?!? Check out her Made a bow! post and let her know she did an awesome job. This is her first craft and her first hot glue gun. I'm pretty certain it won't be her last. You may want to stick around and read her other posts. She's one of the funniest people I know.

Great coleslaw! (That line was stolen from her.)

Cupcakey Christmas Tree

Oh, Christmas tree!

A couple of weeks ago I took a nap and Seán and Zara took the opportunity to decorate for Christmas. So sweet! And speaking of sweet, we have a pretty sweet tree. Cupcakes and candy kind of sweet.

Super Simple Art Fix

Swirly!

For the past six years I've had a problem. A massive, ugly problem. A hideous, embarrassing problem that has cause me much stress and has made me think hard for a solution. Wanna know what the problem was?

Yummy Scrummy Desserts!

I want more!!!

My brother recently had cause to celebrate good times and I felt the need to bake. Normal, right? I asked what his favorite dessert was and found out it was red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. I've never made that before, but have eaten plenty. Mmm...sorry, got distracted.


Anyway, the best red velvet cupcakes I've ever had was made from Carrot Top Mom's recipe. Because of my grocery shopping brain blip, I had to make a few changes to the recipe. I only had one cup of white sugar, so I also added in brown sugar. I only had enough sour cream for the cupcakes, so I left that out of the frosting altogether. I used silver and gold sugar sprinkles for some added sparkle. Her recipe made two dozen cupcakes and had enough batter left over for an 8" round. Wanna know what I did with that?

Holiday Hair Clip

A hair clip that's perfect for the Christmas parade.

Iron Craft's For the Kids challenge was easy. My kid told me exactly what she wanted and I was able to make it in just a few minutes. When Zara saw the presents clip on The Ribbon Retreat's site, she had a Veruca Salt moment. She wanted it and she wanted it NOW!

Super Simple Dangly Beaded Earrings

Warning: I'm easily distracted by shiny objects.

I whipped these Super Simple dangly beaded earrings up as a thank you gift for my friend Deirdre who gave me a fab ring just because I admired it. How sweet was that?!

Ingredients:

• Chain
• Ear hooks (2)
• Jump rings (2)
• Head pins (4)
• Beads
• Wire cutter/plier tool

Simply cut the chain into six pieces, making sure that you have a matching set. Using the head pins, attach the beads to the ends of the chains. Attach the chains to the ear hooks using the jump rings.

Told you it was easy!

Super Simple Wreath Napkin Rings

These wreath napkin rings would make great favors for your holiday party.

So now that you have a stack of No-Sew Napkins just in time for the holidays, you need a bunch of Super Simple Wreath Napkin Rings to go along with them. Well, that was my thought process for this week's Iron Craft Wreath challenge.

No-Sew Napkins

The start to my napkin collection.

My favorite part of participating in Iron Craft? The fact that it makes me get somethings done. I'm great at planning projects, but tend to lack in the follow-through department. I've had these no-sew napkins planned for a while, but it took Iron Craft's For the Table challenge to get me to do them.

A Hard Candy (& Cupcake) Christmas

Cupcakes everywhere!

Zara and I made these for Iron Craft's Handmade Holiday Challenge. They were so easy and we had so much fun making them. I'm doing a candy and cupcake theme on our Christmas tree this year. These are made out of scrapbook paper, a glue stick, and a marker for the wrapper details. The icing is glitter card stock.

The two in the lower left corner were done by Zara. I drew the shapes on card stock and let her color them in with markers and glitter glue. Everything was free-handed (as if you couldn't tell).

For extra stability, I cut two pieces at the same time and glued them back to back. When the tree goes up, I'll hang them with decorative hooks. They could also be hung with some pretty ribbon and would make super-cute gift tags.

Boo! (A Jane O'Lantern)

This is Jack's sister Jane.

Iron Craft's Boo! Challenge was a no-brainer for me. I had some pie pumpkins that needed to be decorated. Zara and I used washable markers instead of carving so that the pie pumpkins can be turned into, ummm, I dunno...pie after Halloween.

Butterfly Jar

So girly I heart it!

Raise your hand if you tend to save interesting-looking bottles and jars? Mmmkay...looks like I'm in the minority with my jar hoarding. That's alright. When Iron Craft's Bottles and Jars challenge came up, I had the perfect project in mind. And the perfect jar.

Tricked Out Trick-or-Treat Bucket

Trick or treat! Preferably treat.

I was so unbelievably relieved to see this week's Iron Craft challenge, which is called Hold It. You may (or may not) have noticed that I haven't been posting much lately. It's not because of any tragedy or anything like that, so don't worry. I've just been so busy. So. Very. Busy. I have also been feeling much better lately. So much better, in fact, that I haven't been able to find time to veg in front of my laptop or at my craft desk. Yay (sorta)!

Wow! That was a serious digression. Sorry about that. Anyway. I was relieved because I had jazzed up Zara's trick-or-treat bucket on Sunday, which worked perfectly for this week's Iron Craft.

Zara's planning on going as Cinderella this year thanks to the generosity of my cousin Kristy Tolley's awesome daughters. They passed along some great dress-up clothes and Zara fell head over heels in love with the Cinderella costume. So, of course she needed a trick-or-treat bucket to match her pretty blue dress.

I Heart Books Recycled Bookmark

I heart books!

Done reading? That's the question asked by Iron Craft's challenge. The instructions were to do something with a book. To be honest, my stomach was in knots over this one. Books have always been sacred to me. I've always felt that they should be handled with care and given respect. Yeah, even those biographies from reality television stars. Okay...maybe not so much those books, but you get what I'm saying. The idea of cutting up a book is horrifying to me. I really thought about skipping this one and then I remembered something...

Mini Peach Cheesecakes (recipe)

Since they're mini, does that mean I can have two...or three?

This is the first year that our baby peach tree has given us a proper harvest. And by that I mean it produced a few peaches that are big enough to do something besides feed the deer. I didn't know quite what I wanted to do with them until I caught a rerun of the Rachael Ray Show. Paula Deen was on and had a recipe for a Cream Cheese Tart With Raspberries. It looked delicious and easy...two of my favorite things. I used her tart base recipe (with only a minor addition) and came up with a peach filling that topped it off perfectly.

Caught! (A W.I.P.)

Needs more work...a lot more work.

I love, love, love Iron Craft's challenge for this week...U.F.O. (UnFinished Object)! I have so many projects that I've started and not finished, or bought supplies for and have not even started (that learn-to-knit kit is gathering so much dust) that it's sad. This challenge gave me the incentive to start a painting I've been meaning to do for a while and just hadn't found the time. And do you know what I realized? I really miss painting. I used to paint on a regular basis, but haven't done anything real in years. The idea for this painting that I'm calling Caught came directly from my friend Travis of Orfanhed. It's still an U.F.O., but it's a lot closer to being finished than it was before...which was still in the shrink wrap.

My Mom's Birthday Cake (frosting recipe)

Happy Birthday, Mom!

My Mom turned *ahem! cough! cough!* years old last Thursday and I volunteered to provide the cake. Of course. And since she so thoughtfully bought me the Wilton flower set for my birthday, I figured her cake needed flowers. Lots and lots of flowers.

I’ve had the time of my life...

Soooooo happy to be there!

My husband Seán and I had the opportunity to go to the Greenbrier Classic and attend the Black Eyed Peas concert last Friday. I've been a giant BEP fan for, like, forever. And I've been a Fergie fan since way back in the Kids Incorporated days when she was still known as Stacy. Please don't do the math on that.

Super Fruity Sorbet (recipe)

Yummy!

Iron Craft's feeling Hot, Hot, Hot! this week. The challenge was to do something with heat - either representing heat or something to beat the heat. Well, it's plenty hot around here, so I decided to beat the heat with my super fruity sorbet. There's no ice cream machine needed for this one.

Cute As A Button Frame

Cute as a button! The frame's pretty cute, too.

Since I missed last week's Iron Craft, I was determined to do this week's. Challenge #29 is called Button Up and is all about it - you guessed it - buttons! I delved into my button stash and came up with a Cute As A Button Frame.

More Fun With Flowers

A tiny pink rose.

White gladioli with purple streaks.

While out watching Zara on her new swing set, I noticed I had a few more flowers that bloomed. The tiniest pink tea rose I've ever seen and some white gladioli that I had completely forgotten that we had even planted bloomed seemingly overnight. Admittedly, I don't hang around outside much, so there's a good chance they've been there for a while. Believe it or not, I'm sooooo not an outdoors kind of girl. Unless I'm at Holden Beach...which I will be later this year. And then I'll drive you nuts with endless photos of that, too, 'cause I know you must be sick of seeing flowers by now. You'll be glad to know that I'm only waiting on a couple of more plants to bloom and then that'll be it for the year. I pinkie swear.

As Seen On CraftFail

Spooky!

So, any chance you remember my Shrinky Dinks Polariod Photo fail? Well, it's being featured on CraftFail today! I get a kick out of reading about other people's craft disasters, so I thought I'd share my own. Fair's fair, right?

Have a fabulous weekend, everyone!

W.I.P. - Sketches for Paintings

I'm getting the painting bug! I did three sketches for paintings I'm planning and thought I'd share them with you. If you're wondering what ORFANHED is, it's a hard rock, punk, electronic music project by my friend Travis Saunders. He's so talented. He does all of the music and lyrics. How cool is that?!

Time is (not) on my side.

Time...where does it go? I haven't had a chance to do anything creative lately except take these photos of flowers that have bloomed recently around my house and I'm starting to get antsy. I've started work on my kitchen. That's a bit of a time-suck. I've neglected my blog and other people's blogs, too.
Currently I have 241 unread posts in my Google Reader. Yeah, that's going to take a while to wade through all of that.

On the other hand, my good friend Frugal Homemaker (she has a real name, but doesn't use it on her blog so I don't use it on mine) gave me some fab crafting supplies, I have two brand new canvases still unwrapped, and I picked up some gorgeous things from Scrapbook Page the last time I was there. I'm anxious to get started on something. Anything, really. Maybe even learn how to make some flowers for cake decorating. I certainly have enough photos of flowers for inspiration.

My Birthday Extravaganza (or What I Ate For My Birthday)

My girlies...and my Carvel ice cream birthday cake.

 Since losing weight, all I can think of when I think of celebrations is food. So, for my birthday I ate. And ate...and ate. My 72 Hour Birthday Extravaganza started on my birthday eve at Chili Willi's and I practically licked the plate clean. On my birthday, Seán and I had a date night and headed to Charleston where I ate even more.

Today's My Birthday!

Can't you tell we're excited to be at Chili Willi's?

Yeah, today's my birthday. So...what did you get me? This is the first birthday that I've had since I was seven years old where I wasn't depressed and sobbing for two weeks surrounding it. I'm actually pretty excited about it. Just don't ask me how old I am. I'll never tell. And if you know me, you better not tell either!

My First Blog Award!

The wonderfully talented illustration artist Joni Nickrent from Pop Art Minis was kind enough to award me (and seven others) The Irresistibly Sweet Blog Award! As part and parcel of the award I'm supposed to list seven random facts about me and then pass the award on to eight other blogs. Let the fun begin!

Kitchen Sink Candy (recipe)

Lumpy but yummy!

Stars and Stripes forever! I hope my American readers had a wonderful July 4th and my international readers had a great weekend. Iron Craft's challenge was to make something with stars and/or stripes. I did both with my Kitchen Sink Candy. It includes everything I had (that would be delish in candy) besides the kitchen sink...hence the name.