Grandma & Grandpa Dolls

14 Jan

I made these for my parents as a gag gift for Christmas. I got the idea from Angry Chicken.

1. I used the inkjet iron transfer paper, and printed my parents’ faces.
2. Then I drew a gingerbread man type doll body on white muslin. I made the head almost exactly the same size and the pictures I printed. In retrospect, I should have made the head 1/4-1/2 inch bigger than the picture. Then the faces wouldn’t have been so distorted by the stuffing. I DID NOT CUT OUT THE DOLLS YET
3. I colored the clothes directly on the muslin with crayons. Then Put the muslin between paper towels and ironed it to melt the wax out. As you can see, the color stayed. It is easier to color the dolls if you have a page of fine sand paper under the fabric to sort of hold it in place as you color.
4. Repeat step three to get bold colors.
5. I ironed the faces onto the dolls, following the directions for the transfer paper.
6. I layered a plain piece of muslin over the doll drawings, right sides together and sewed all around on the line I had drawn, leaving 1 1/2″ open on one side for turning & stuffing.
7. THen I cut out the dolls, leaving a 1/4 seam allowance all around.
8. I turned the dolls right side out and stuffed them tightly. As you can see from the lumpy dolls, I do not know the finer rules of stuffing. **note to self: Research finer rules of stuffing on one of those fabulous softie making websites I have bookmarked.
9. I whipstitched the opening shut.

Judging by Diva#3’s reaction to the dolls, I need to make her a set so she can play with Grandma every day. She picked up the dolls and laughed with glee and pressed them to her, shouting, “They’re hugging me, they’re hugging me.”

P.S. Grandma and Grandpa got a good laugh Christmas morning, and Grandma says she can use it for a voodoo doll when Grandpa is in the dog house.

The Ultimate Cookie Recipe is mine! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!

5 Jan

My sister, Amanda, asked me over a year ago to post the ultimate cookie recipe. But I could not because I did not have it. The ultimate sugar cookie would:

1. Taste good and not taste like baking soda.

2. Not require to be refrigerated before rolling (I do not have time for such nonsense.)

3. Not be too soft and sticky when rolled out. (all recipes I have tried were to soft, even after hours of useless refrigerating)

4. Be easy to transfer from the rolling surface.

5. Retain its size and shape when baked and not melt or spread.

I HAVE DISCOVERED THE RECIPE which meets all 5 of these criteria

Here it is: the ultimate sugar cookie

3 sticks (1 1/2 cups) salted butter
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
4 teaspoons of vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour (I was successful using 1 cup whole wheat flour and 2 unbleached flour)

Cream butter in an electric mixer set at medium speed.
Add powdered sugar and beat until smooth.
Add vanilla and mix until creamy.
Scrape bowl.
Add flour and mix at low speed until thoroughly mixed.

Roll out on a floured surface to 1/4 inch thick and cut out.

Place on and ungreased cookie sheet

Notice how even this intricate MOOSE cookie shape did not distort when I picked it up and placed it on the cookie sheet!!

and bake at 325 degrees for 16-18 minutes
or until firm.

Note how they did not melt or spread during baking.

These cookies are crispy when baked for the full 18 minutes. If you like them softer, bake them for less time.

This recipe also works great as the crust for Fruit Pizza

Happy New Year!

3 Jan

We had a wonderful Christmas, thanks to our wonderful family and many friends.

Here is a picture of one of the felt princess crowns I made for the divas.

I like the things I make. even when I am copying someone else’s idea, like I did here. This is the doll quilt I made for our swap in the Newtonia Battlefield Quilters December meeting.

Now it is January Second and I need to solidify my New Year’s Resolutions.

What is really important to me??? I can’t do everything, but I want to !

Goals should always be stated positively, with what you will do/gain, not what you will not do/loose. So:

For myself, I will
1. read my scriptures every day
2. each week I will write 5 pages of that book (I have wanted to write for the last 6 years).
3. exercise 5 days a week and replace sugary snacks and chocolate with veggies and fruit.
4. Do something for my Mary Kay business every day (mon-fri)

5. I am determined to keep the house clean and orderly. I feel that my best plan to accomplish this is to go back to the FLYLADY

6. I will consistently plan good Family Home Evening lessons and teach them on Monday Nights. I have always been more successful at this when I had an overall plan. So my plan is to use the conference Ensign. Each week I will choose a talk given by one of the apostles or the first presidency (I will go in order of seniority) that I feel is relevant to our family and base the lesson on that. That is 15 weeks of lessons and the children will know all of the apostles by the end.

Apron Swap!!

2 Jan


THere is a new apron swap–Just in time for Valentines day 🙂 It is put together by my loveley Aunt Lucy and the sweet Shawnee. I am so excited as I have participated in an apron swap before, an dknow how fabulously fun it is. You can join too over at Sassy/Flirty Swap!

Primitive Nativity

17 Dec

It’s Finished!! the pattern is done and up for sale in my etsy store

I owe it all to the encouragement of my wonderful Aunt Lucy who insisted that my little nativity set was marvelous and that the world would love it.

P.S. writing patterns is time consuming and way harder than I imagined!!

Christmas Tag

16 Dec

1. Wrapping Paper or Gift Bags-Do Walmart bags count? Just kidding. I do usually wrap the presents at Christmas. Other times of the year, I use gift bags.

2. Real Tree or Artificial–artificial, no pine needles to vacuum or allergies to deal with.

3. When do you put up the tree-last Friday (December 12).

4. When do you take the tree down-as soon as possible, so that the kids don’t destroy it.

5. Do you like eggnog? The only question dumber than this would be “Do you like chocolate”

6. Favorite gift received as a child–That would be the 2 volume book set of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas I got in high school.

7. Hardest person to buy for–My son, Blueberry Pie. I am all about handmade gifts–but what do you give an 8 year old that he will really love? Because you know that all he really wants is an X-box.

8. Easiest person to buy for–the girls. Is it pink, fluffy, and include the word “princess” ? They’ll like it.


My sister has tagged me.(There seem to be a lot of tags going around recently. hmmm….) Here goes:

9. Do you have a nativity scene– I do. I made it myself and the pattern is coming out soon!

10. Mail or Email Christmas Cards–I never get around to this. sigh. Usually I mail out a family letter in January.

11. Worst Christmas Gift you Ever Received–too many people read this blog for me to say. Let’s just say that I was disapointed at the time, but the gift turned out to be very useful and I use it all the time, so I’m not sad about it any more.

12. Favorite Christmas Movie–Scrooge the musical with Albert Finney

13. When do you Start Shopping for Christmas– I actually bought a gift in September this year. But usually it is November.

14. Have you Ever Recycled a Christmas Present–No, but I did recycle a couple of wedding gifts.

15. Favorite Thing to Eat at Christmas–Pie Pie Pie Pie Pie

16. Lights on the Tree–Yes, but I don’t plug them in too much because I feel like it is a frivolous waste of electricity. Seriously, it stresses me out, all the electricity that people use up on Christmas lights.

17. Favorite Christmas Song–“We need a little Christmas” right this very minute, candles at the window, carols at the spinet.
and my favorite carol (a song about Jesus Christ) would be Handel’s Messiah

18. Travel at Christmas or Stay Home–we usually travel and visit family, but this year the family is coming to my house

19. Can you name all of Santa’s Reindeer–yep even Olive, the other reindeer


20. Angel on the tree top or a star–a star

21. Open Presents on Christmas Eve or Morning–Christmas morning

22. Most Annoying Thing About this Time of Year–kids going in and out of the house and letting in cold air

23. Favorite Ornament Theme or Color–every year my Grandma Bennion makes her grand/great-grand children an ornament. I love them! My favorite is the baby Jesus in a walnut shell. My kids like the chairs that hide candy. My DH likes the suger plum fairies.

24. Favorite for Christmas Dinner–Beef Briscuit and mashed potatoes and Pie and fudge and tamales

25. What do you want for Christmas this year–I want to get all the presents I’m trying to sew finished. Since I’m shooting for the moon already, I would also like a new vacuum and lots of chocolate and a CD player for my kitchen and new sharp sewing scissors. (Thanks, Santa)

26. Favorite Christmas Memory- We would stay up as late as we could, putting together jigsaw puzzles in our rooms. Dad would set the timer for 6:30 a.m. and we were not allowed to get up before then. We would wake up much earlier and all gather in one bed and shout Christmas songs at the top of our lungs until the alarm went off. Poor Mom & Dad. My children are not so naughty. I usually wake up before them, wait as long as I can stand it, and then have to go wake them up to see the presents.

P.S. Suddenly, my digital camera will not download its photos to the computer. Instead of freaking out, I am going to bed and pretending that everything will be okay tomorrow morning.

Hugs and Snoodles

12 Dec


**Warning: sappy post**

It was all started by a book, as many good things in my life are.

I have never been a “Huggy” person or a “touchy-feely” person. I like my personal space to stay personal. Not that I didn’t love my children, but somewhere around their second birthday, I just didn’t actively think about hugging and snuggling them any more.

That changed the summer I read “Missing May” by Cynthia Rylant. It is about an orphan girl who has been passed from relative to relative until she is taken in by a couple named May and Ob.

“…the first time I saw Ob help May braid her long yellow hair, sitting in the kitchen one night, it was all I could do not to go to the woods and cry forever from happiness. I know I must have been loved like that, I must have; otherwise, how could I even recognize love when I saw it that night between Ob and May? ….[My Mother] must have known she wasn’t going to live and she must have held me longer than any other mother might, so I’d have enough love in me to know what love was when I felt it again.”

I spent several hours after reading that imagining how if I took in an orphan how I would hold her and sing to her every night and tell her how much her mother had loved her. Suddenly I thought, “I don’t even do that for my own children.”

Yikes! So after that, I started remebering to hug my kids when they got home from school. And instead of saying, “Last one in bed gets a spanking,” I said, “First one in bed gets a snoodle.” Actually, everyone gets a snoodle, but it still works every time. They all go running and laughing to bed for the honor of the FIRST snoodle.

What, you may ask, is a snoodle? Well is is a cross between a kiss and a raspberry. You start about 2 feet away from your child and make those kissy smoochy noises as you get closer and closer and suddenly plant a whole bunch of little kisses on that tickly part of their neck. Admittedly, I have had my face smashed a couple of times by a wriggling giggling child, but it is worth it.

Here’s what I found: our family is happier. Hugs make the hard parts of the day work better, like in the morning getting ready for school, at bedtime, any other stressful time. When I say “no,” to my 4 -year old and she starts wailing, instead of saying something like, “stop that awful noise,” or the old “Stop crying or I’ll give you something real to cry about,” I just hug her. I don’t give in and give her what she wants, but I do hug her. I let her know that I understand it’s tough when we don’t get our way. After all, I have seen many an adult (including myself) throw a tantrum because they can’t have what they want. Working from a viewpoint of empathy is so much more effective than working from the angle of force and control.

Tags:

Christmas Special

7 Dec

As many of you know, I have a Mary Kay business. I am making an order next week–the last one before Christmas, and it needs to be BIG!! So I am having a special sale for all of you wonderful people who read my blog. Order by Dec 10 and get 15% off your whole order plus free shipping and gift wrapping and a free mini spa set gift with $40 purchase.

You can order right off my website!

And have you done the virtual makeover on my website yet? It is too fun. Get over there & do it!!!

Tagged

29 Nov

My cousin over at Merrie Melody tagged me. I am supposed to write 7 random things about me and then tag 7 other people. I did a tag like this before here and it was way hard to think of things.

This time I am going to tell you my top 7 favorite movie quotes of all time.

#7- “Luckily, movies have taught me exactly what to do in this situation.” (Said by the man in the yellow hat in Curious George)

#6- “Did he say, ‘Marvelous Pigs in Satin?'” (said by the glow worm in James and the Giant Peach–the lady bug replys–“No, he said, ‘Marvelous things will happen’)

#5- “No thanks, I choose life” (Sid the Sloth in Ice Age)

#4- “Carl, let me explain something to you, You’re Stupid.” (maid in The Return of the Shaggy Dog)

#3- “No joking, I beg you! There’s lace at stake!” (Cransford)

#2- Jack: How you can sit there, calmly eating muffins when we are in this horrible trouble, I can’t make out. You seem to me to be perfectly heartless.

Algernon: Well, I can’t eat muffins in an agitated manner. The butter would probably get on my cuffs. One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them.

Jack: I say it’s perfectly heartless, your eating muffins at all, under the circumstances.

Algernon: When I am in trouble, eating is the only thing that consoles me. Indeed, when I am in really great trouble, as anyone who knows me intimately will tell you, I refuse everything except food and drink. At the present moment I am eating muffins because I am unhappy. Besides, I am particularly fond of muffins. [ Rising. ]

Jack: [ Rising. ] Well that is no reason why you should eat them all in that greedy way. [ Takes muffins from Algernon. ]

Algernon: [ Offering tea cake. ] I wish you would have tea cake instead. I don’t like tea cake.

Jack: Good heavens! I suppose a man may eat his own muffins in his own garden.

Algernon: But you have just said it was perfectly heartless to eat muffins.

Jack: I said it was perfectly heartless of you, under the circumstances. That is a very different thing.

Algernon: That may be, but the muffins are the same.

(The Importance of Being Earnest)

And finally, the Motto for my whole life:

#1- “I’ll MAKE it fit!” (Wicked stepsister in Cinderella)

I would love to hear everyone else’s favorite movie quotes because I’m sure I’ve forgotten some of mine.

So I tag

1. Lucy
2. Jill
3. Melody
4. Vicky
5. Brandie
6. Angelic

Good things begin with T

24 Nov

Such as

Guess what movie My Auntie and I went to see on Saturday!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Good Times

Also beginning with “T” is Thoreau, as in Henry David. I came across this marvelous thing that he said. I think certain people I know who are always too hard on themselves should adopt it as their motto.

The woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best.

I can think of other things I like that start with T also. It may come as a huge shock to you that most of them are food.
Tomato Soup
Truffles
Toast (good with Tomato Soup)
Toffee
Turky (Roasted)

Now that I am stuck on a food theme, I need to go to my kitchen. See You Later 🙂

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