Dare to DIY: Dare to Deck the Halls

My name is Casey and I can't stop crafting for the holidays. Phew. They say the first step is admitting you have a problem, right? I have already posted a few of these projects, with my tutorials (or attempts at tutorials), but for this weeks Dare to DIY party, I thought I would do an overview of my 2011 holiday crafts.

1. Wedding Invitation Ornament

Our wedding invite in an ornament!

2. Ornament Wreath

3. Christmas Card Holder

Empty frame+little bit of ribbon +super cute wrapping paper+ itty bitty clothes pins=
no more storing Christmas cards in a basket

4. Coming soon (?)

These super cute fabrics will become Christmas pillows... When I get the time to bust out my sewing machine and get it done.

What have you been crafting for the holidays?

Dare to DIY... Dare to Give Homemade Gifts

It's week 4/6 of Kim's Dare to DIY blog party! This week she is daring us to give homemade gifts. I never know how to feel about giving homemade gifts. I LOVE receiving homemade things, but I always feel like the things I make aren't good enough or exciting enough to give.  I display my crafts here in our house, but I start to feel self conscious when I give them away as a gift.

Anywho, taking some inspiration from Pinterest, I decided to make coasters with Scrabble tiles. I knew I wanted to make these for awhile. My BFF and I have played Scrabble together forever. In high school we would play Scrabble after school, on the weekends basically all the time. That probably makes us sound like nerds. Maybe we were, but we were happy :)

The hardest part of making these was actually finding the Scrabble tiles. I looked for about two months in all of the thrift stores/Goodwill's around me pretty regularly. I thought I found a set once, but when I got up to the register to buy it, I opened it and there weren't any tiles in the box! I ended up getting a set from my mom, and I bought some tiles on ebay as well. You can also order some from Hasboro directly, but it takes like 6 weeks and by the time I thought to look it up, it would have been too late.

The Supplies
Scrabble tiles
Glue gun
Sheets of cork
A box knife






Each coaster is made up of 4- 4 letter words. (or a 3 letter word and a blank). Figure out the words you want to use ahead of time, and lay them out. If you only have one set of tiles, it might get a little frustrating because you only have a limited amount of letters. Since I was pulling from two sets, it made it a bit easier.



I cannot figure out how to rotate this picture! So frustrating!


After you figure out your sets of words, line up the first letter in the corner of a sheet of cork. It's really important that your first tile is lined up, otherwise the rest will be crooked too.

** I noticed a couple tiles were not the same size as others. For example one of the I tiles was shorter. There are plenty of I's in a Scrabble game so it was easy to swap out.***

Then glue all the tiles down, and cut the cork with a box knife.

I made 4 total. These two are "drink" themed. I made one with her name, her hubby's name, their dog's name (all four letters each!) and "BABY" since her daughter is 6 letters. I also made one with their daughter's name (on two lines) and her birthday "JUNE ONE"

I think they turned out cute, and because of our love for Scrabble, it worked for us.

Do you give homemade gifts? Do you ever feel self conscious about it?

Dare to DIY: Dare to Eat Cookies

Week 3 of the Dare to DIY blog party over at Newlywoodwards and it is a dare I am up for. She has dared us to eat cookies!

Have you ever seen the episode of Friends where Monica is trying to determine the recipe of Phoebe's grandmother's famous chocolate chip cookies? She makes a ton of batches of cookies but can never get it right. Then Phoebe says that her grandmother got the recipe from an old French relative "Nessley Toolouse." Monica freaks out and says "Nestle Toll House?" Yeah. That's my chocolate chip cookie recipe too. I have tried others. Martha, Better Homes and Gardens, Joy of Cooking, even one from this blog, but nothing beats the recipe on the back of the chocolate chip bag.

As much as I love the Mister, he is a weird one. He once complained that his chocolate chip cookie had too many chocolate chips. Really? Too many? He said he wanted peanut butter chip cookies. Not peanut butter cookies, but the dough form chocolate chip cookies but peanut butter chips instead. When he said that, my mind went immediately to peanut butter cookies.

So what type of cookies do I make? I went with all three. Chocolate chip, peanut butter chip and classic peanut butter cookies. Whoa. That's a lot of cookies for two people. When I bake cookies, one of two things happen: we eat them all in two days and feel like big ol' piggies or we end up not eating all of them and they go stale. So, I decided to make the dough, refrigerate it, and then we have the ability to bake one or two cookies at a time. If I want one of each kind or all chocolate chip, I can do that. I love having the dough already made in the freezer or fridge so I can have a scoop of cookie dough whenever I want I can bake cookies whenever I want.

Since this is like a cookie exchange, I want to give you my cookies on a cute plate. I found this genius and simple idea. It really made me say, "how have I never thought of this?" I love cookie exchanges, and I also like giving out cookies as a thank you or for whatever. I hate handing them out on boring paper plates, but I don't always have a festive/cheap plate to give away. I've wrapped in printed cellophane before but look how easy this is!

Just take a paper plate, and with a hole puncher punch holes around the rim of the plate, about an inch or so apart. I used curling ribbon that I threaded around the plate, then curled the ends. Done! You could also use fabric ribbon, and then tie a bow. This is so simple, and you can easily change it up for the different holidays/seasons.

Here is the link to the Nestle Toll House recipe, if you don't have the bag of chocolate chips or if you buy them in bulk like I do. I made two batches of this to put away: one with the traditional chocolate chips and another batch with the peanut butter chips.

Here is my peanut butter cookie recipe:
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 t baking powder
1/4 t salt

Start by sifting the flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl. Then cream the peanut butter and butter together using an electric mixer (or lots of arm muscle!) Add in the sugars and the egg. Then slowly add your dry ingredients to the bowl.

Wrap the dough in plastic wrap, and let it sit for at least an hour in the fridge.

When ready to bake, make 1 inch balls and flatten them with a fork. Bake for about 15 minutes at 300 degrees.

What is your favorite cookie recipe?

Dare to DIY... Dare to Entertain

There were about a million reasons why I was going to skip this week's Dare to DIY challenge. This week is Dare to Entertain, and the idea is to show off your table settings.

1. I am not cooking Thanksgiving dinner. I honestly don't know if I will ever cook Thanksgiving dinner. It's not that I don't want to, it's that the Mister has a HUGE extended family (his mom is one of 9 and his dad is one of 8) and we live fairly close to them. They have big coordinated dinners where people bring dishes, have cake walks, play BINGO etc. It's not weird for both sides of the family to have holiday dinners of over 50 people. (my family is much smaller: 10 is a huge gathering for us.)
2. We don't have any "nice" China- well, that's only kind of true. I inherited my great-grandmother's China when my grandma passed away. But, it's not a whole set, and its packed away until we get a hutch to display it in.
3. Our table sucks. It is small, and we only have two real chairs. There is a folding chair that we keep at the table too. If we have another couple over for dinner, we bring in a patio chair. I'm kind of embarrassed that I just typed that.

But here is the real reason I was going to skip this week:

Our table is a dumping ground for junk mail, bills, random papers and keys/jackets/my purse/my lunch box. As soon as both of us get home, stuff from our pockets/in our hands goes on the table. I go through it every month and a half or so, but I get frustrated/overwhelmed with it all.  So when I saw what this week's theme was, my immediate thought was, that's nice, but not for me.

Then I decided to use it as motivation. This challenge gave me a reason to find homes for previously homeless items. I went through papers, put a bunch in the shred pile and others could go straight to the recycling. And just like the spare room, it really didn't take that long. Then I got to the fun part.

Our dishes are Fiestaware, which I love. The place mats were actually a set of 3 gigantic cloth napkins (A gift from Crate and Barrel or Willams and Sonoma I think). A friend of ours cut them each in half, hemmed them and then viola, we had 6 place mats. The center piece is a basket of paper mache fruits and veggies. I am slightly obsessed with these bad boys.

Guacamole anyone?

How cute is that banana??

Here is the rest of the collection. Sometimes I switch out the
small baskets with different combos of fruits and veggies. Is that weird?

The Mister was very happy that the table was cleaned. I figured he would want me to put all the dishes away after my little photo shoot, but he said that we should leave it out for awhile. Then the fat cat jumped on the table, and after shooing her off, we cleared it.

Besides for the napkins turned placemats, there isn't any DIY involved in our table. Except the cleaning and organizing of the stuff that was on the table. That was enough DIY :)

So there you have it, our everyday table. Someday I wold like to have a holiday table scape, but it will probably be awhile.

Are you hosting any holiday dinners this year?

Dare to DIY: Dare to be Thankful

Here is my first post for the Dare to DIY blog party  over at Newlywoodards. The theme this week is Dare to be Thankful. As I was thinking really hard about what I could do looking at Pinterest for inspiration, I came across this little set up:



The Mister and I got married on the farm his dad grew up on. His uncle and aunt still live there and the major crop is filbert nuts (hazelnuts if you are fancy), so when I saw this I just smiled. I put this together and I think it would be perfect as a centerpiece for Thanksgiving with his family.



 I absolutely love the different sized candle holders in the original picture. However, I was trying to use what I had on hand, which are vases from the dollar store.  I used the metal tray that held my candy corns during Halloween, and I bought 1/4 yard of brown leaf fabric to cover the base. To give some height to the display I took a small box and put it under the fabric and put the back candle holder on top.

And yes, that is my bouquet from our wedding a year and a half ago. I thought it looked nice next to the display :)

Did you Dare to DIY? Do you have any Thanksgiving decorations that you love? Is it weird that I still display my wedding flowers?

It's here!

It's no surprise that I enjoy crafting and DIY projects. It might be a surprise that I don't have a sewing machine. Until now!

Source

It's just a basic machine, and I think it will be fine for my needs. The Mister said if it is something I really like, I can upgrade later. It sounds like he is approving of my new hobby :)

I have sewn before. I took Home Ec. in 8th grade and made boxers. And scrunchies. Lots of scrunchies.

Source

Since then, I have also made a set of place mats and super basic curtains for my first apartment.  I have wanted a sewing machine for quite a while now, and the other day I just decided to do it and order one off Amazon. So I got online, found a few basic models, read reviews, and ordered one. Two days later, it was on my front door! I have few projects in  mind, but I want to practice first. I also want to set up a table in the craft room as a sewing table. I am really excited that Friday is a day off work so I can get started!

Are you starting any new crafty projects? Did you decide to join the Dare to DIY challenge?