Date Night

Jake called me at work on Tuesday and told me not to plan anything for supper, he was taking me out.  So sweet!  He knows how much I love spontaneous surprises:)  So after Chinese he took me here...

Why have we never been here?  Seriously?  They have 16 different flavors of soft frozen yogurt.

It is self serve so you can have as many different kinds as you want.

Such a neat place.  I highly recommend this if you have never been to one.  You get your own cup and put whatever you want in it, add toppings (they have a huge selection from candy bars to fresh fruit), then pay by the ounce.  It can definately add up in a hurry with the toppings.

They have the coolest spoons too!  I was feeling kinda fruity and tried orange, pineapple, and peach.  I was a little disappointed in the peach- not as flavorful as the other two, but still good.  We are already contemplating our next visit.  There was a coffee one I would love to try and a passionfruit that sounded interesting.  They said they change out one flavor per week...hmmm... maybe we need to start making this a weekly trip honey?  Or not, our waist and pocketbook would never forgive us.  Thank you so much for an awesome evening!

 

Sympathy Tile

Just a tile I made for my sister-in-law who lost her Grandfather.  I put a picture stand backing on it so it does stand up for display.  Disclaimer:  I did not spell good-by wrong, that is how it is spelled in the song. :)

Layered Cookie Bars

The original pin from Picky-palate.com

These sounded absolutely divine!  I mean, what could possibly be better than all cookies rolled into one bar.  You start with a layer of sugar cookie, then double chocolate cookie, then peanut butter cookie, and lastly chocolate chip cookie.

Here is mine:

Verdict:  I had trouble getting all the different layers done at the same time.  The outside edges were getting way too done by the time the middle was even close to being done.  I even tried Picky Palate's trick of covering it with foil for the last 10-15 minutes.  Don't get me wrong, they were delish, but I'm not sure if they were worth all the work of layering all the sticky dough or not.  Also, they are super rich, so make a pot of coffee while these are baking.



Birthday Card

I had 2 birthday cards to make this weekend and I always find that masculine cards are harder for me to do, so I somewhat dread them.  They were for my brother-in-laws so I knew there had to be some humor involved or they would glance inside to see if there was money and promptly put it in the trash... (mild sarcasm, I should prolly give them more credit than that)

 

So, I put this on the inside.  I seriously wish I would have had my video camera ready for this one.  Matthew was a bad actor but it was kinda cute to watch him fake shedding a tear.  Nathan didn't have to act or fake it.  He literally laughed so hard he did cry :)  Mission accomplished!

Hall Closet Reveal

This project started off as an accident.  I was just going to reorganize the shelves... 1 week later and I have a new closet!

I made this curtain (which is why there is no close-up for you to see) out of burlap, then deicded it wasn't long enough so I added on some brown polka dot fabric.  It covers our ugly electrical box.

On the left side of the closet is 3 shelves that hold my paper products.  I fell in love with these chicken wire baskets from worldmarket.com (fabulous website by the way with reasonable prices).  I still plan to make some tags to hang on the front of the baskets as to what is in them.

On the right side there is only one shelf that I put all my baskets on.  I also store my mop/broom/vacuum in this closet.

On the left side on the floor, I covered this cardboard box with the same fabric I used for the curtain.  This is my "Donate" box.  As I come across things I just toss it in there and when its full it makes a trip to Salvation Army.

We also use this as our coat closet.  I am not a good photographer, so just imagine that I was and you can see how much more organized it is now!  Of course, I didn't even think about taking a complete before picture, but if I would have you would be able to agree with my husband.  The first words out of his mouth when he saw the finished product was "Wow!  How come there is so much empty space in here?"

Spring Wreath

My inspiration from Shanty 2 Chic

 My tulle and burlap flowers.  These colors inspired me.

The finished product.  A few things I wish I would have done... 1.) a bigger letter
2.) more flowers on or around the bigger letter.
I wrapped the wooden letter with twine and hot glued it about every third time around. 

Sneak Peek

 A little sneak peek of our front hall closet.  I was just going to reorganize it Monday and took everything out and decided it needed a little TLC.

Not sure if you noticed or not, but I didn't until after I painted my stripes.  One of my strip of painters tape went below the marked spot instead of above it, so my stripes didn't match up around the electrical box.

Minnesota Visitors

We had a fantastic time with my brother's family that came from Minnesota Feb. 20-23.  I had some good bonding time with Kelsey and Kaley.  Some of these pictures don't even need captions :)  Derek called me Tuesday night and said they were going to leave a day early so they could get ahead of the snow storm that was going to be hitting us Thursday.  So, I went to Wal-Mart at 5:30 Wednesday morning to get some groceries.  It was actually quite relaxing to do my shopping with no one else around.

Kaley feeding her doll sheep and cows.

I still had to go to work on Thursday so I set up this play station for the girls so they wouldn't get bored until I came home.

We did LOTS of crafts... thank goodness I had a bunch of leftover things from when I taught Sunday School.

(no words needed)

Playing Let's Go Fishin'.  It is sway harder than it looks, let me tell ya.

We played with LOTS os play-doh.  Kelsey made a popsicle.

(Again, no words needed)

And this one, just because she's so stinkin cute!  I love her fountain out of the top of her head.

Sorry!

We went to West Bend a few weekends ago and spent some quality time with my nephews.  Yep, they whooped me at Sorry!  I'm pretty sure they are the most suave cheaters around though.  They were pretty slick- especially when I pretended not to be paying attention when Mason dug through the card pile for a sorry :)  Oh, what an aunt will let slide...

Valentine Treats

Jacob's Mom rescued him on Valentine's Day for supper plans, so I thought this would be the perfect time to do some of those cute Valentine ideas I saw on Pinterest.  Needless to say, my brother-in-laws rolled their eyes, but appreciated the candy :)

Valentine's Supper

There were 4 young couples that were able to come this year for our annual Valentine's Supper.  Jacob & I hosted it this year.  Here is just a few pictures.

My awesomely talented husband made the centerpieces.  He happened to have a wood burning kit that he had gotten when he was a kid- you know, one of those things I have been wanting to get rid of because we would NEVER have a use for it- yep, that one.  He cut the holders, burned the initials, and drilled out a spot on top for a candle. 

 My tablescape didn't turn out exactly as I had envisioned it, but it was okay.

 I found a tutorial on folding cloth napkins into the shape of a heart.  Somewhat time consuming, but it fit the theme of things.

Saw this idea on pinterest.  Tilt the glasses in a loaf pan and fill partway with jello and let it set up in the fridge before adding the jello/coolwhip combo for the other half. 

Chicken Enchilada Skillet

Here is a successful Pinterest recipe I wanted to share.  It was delish!

Chicken Enchilada Skillet

This recipe has been husband approved.

Baby Kraft Shower

I never thought I was so attached to my laptop... it took it totally crashing for me to realize this.  Yes, I lost everything...  All my Creative Touch vinyl designs, all my pictures, all digital scrapbooking kits, and all my software (which included Photoshop, and my Cricut cutting software) :(  I literally just bawled for a couple hours and had to just let it all go.  Needless to say, I have a new hard drive and a new account on crashplan.com.

I am now back to the blogging world.  I made these baby shower invitations for Alex's baby shower.  I cut the diapers out with my cricut and designed the actual invitation on Craft Artist 2.  We did a "Cute As A Button" theme.

Front of invitation- and before someone points it out, yes, I do know I spelled "Baby's R Us" wrong.  I realized it after I had done all 50 invitations so I decided everyone would understand since I have never actually stepped foot in the store :)

Back of invitation

Cheese & Sausage- notice some only have 2 holes punched in the middle (I used a straw)...  That's how they all were until Kent told me they looked like pig noses so Haley got busy and punched some more holes until people started showing up. 

Liz made these adorable cupcakes.  She made marshmallow fondant for the buttons.

I just can't resist striped paper straws.  They have been my most recent addiction.

Jane made a lime slush- it was delish!

Lize also made these little butter cookies.  Notice that they only have 2 holes...

Great-Grandma Kraft is trying to figure out about how much yarn it takes to go around Alex right now.  Alex was such a good sport- we either had some really bad guessers or people just thought Alex was huge :)  There wasn't anyone who guessed too short.  We had so much fun doing this shower!