A Complaint and a Mystery

So let me begin by complaining...  One of the roads I take to work every day just got closed for repairs and now it takes me an extra 15 minutes to get to and from work. Boo! Am I a big baby? Yes, but it's still annoying.

Secondly, I present to you this:

I know you're thinking, "What is that? What could it be?"

Well, I'll be sharing more on Monday. =) Have a great weekend everyone!

No Bake Reese's Bars

Growing up my mom would make Reese's bars for me and my sisters and we loved them. Since then I got the recipe from her and would make them from time to time for parties or just hanging with friends. They are easy to make and so yummy!

Ingredients:

1 ½ cups peanut butter
1 stick butter
1 (6 oz) pkg. semi-sweet chocolate chips
½ cup graham cracker crumbs crushed
1 box powdered sugar
1/3 block paraffin

Melt butter. Mix with rest of dry ingredients. Press into a long cake pan. Melt chocolate chips and paraffin. Pour over ingredients in pan. Let cool; cut into squares.

Those are the basic directions. Here are my directions -- with visuals!! (More fun that way, right? Get enough powdered sugar to kill a horse (1 box) and pour it into a big bowl.

 

Get 1 1/2 cups of peanut butter and dump that in on top. (make sure your counters are as messy as possible before doing this step)

 Melt a stick of butter and pour that in too. (Paula Dean would be so proud!)

Pour in 1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs and mix together.

Once your hands are covered with all your ingredients, wipe them on your pants and get your pants all messy too.

Melt 1/3 block of paraffin in the microwave (mine took me about 3 minutes). Then pour your chocolate chips into the bowl with the paraffin. Stir until mostly mixed.

Put the bowl back in the microwave for 30 second intervals until the chocolate is good and melted, stirring at the end of each 30 second interval.

Pour your peanut butter mixture into a pan and roll it out.

Then pour your chocolate on top.

You, my friend, have homemade Reese's bars!

And a messy kitchen too, but what-evs. You get to enjoy a tasty treat so it doesn't matter! =)

Party Party

So at the end of November was my BFF Sharon's birthday. It's always right around Thanksgiving so she was a turkey baby. =) Of course we had a party for her complete with pumpkin spice cupcakes.

I make these pumpkin spice cupcakes quite a bit in the fall/winter. I love them! I got the recipe from Pam over at Relatively Reagan. These cupcakes are so moist and tasty! I usually use cream cheese frosting from a can or I'll make my grandmother's cream cheese frosting and use that.

We re-used the banner we made for our friend's Matt's birthday back in March. I think it will be tradition now to put it up for everybody's birthday.

My ladies!

Sadly I was not very well prepared for this party and I did not have any candles for Sharon to blow out... This also happened last year on her birthday. But we always look on the bright side and just grabbed my big soy candle and lit that for her to blow out. We're so resourceful, right? ;-)

We also played board games. One was a game Sharon brought called Wise and Otherwise, which was new to me. Basically each card has an old saying on it with the latter part left out and you have to fill in what it might be and people vote on the best ones. It was pretty cool! I love making up stuff so that was fun for me.

In summary, I love parties. =)

Hopefully at some point I will get around to re-capping this past weekend was pretty much completely full for me. I need a few days to re-adjust my sleep schedule, haha.

Guest Posting

Happy Friday all!

I'm guest posting today over at The Snugly Duckling for Kara's 25 days of crafts! So pop over to Kara's blog and you can see how I made this:

 

and this:

Check it out!

Behind Closed Doors

Let's talk about the space underneath kitchen sinks. When we moved in I threw a bunch of stuff under there and didn't give it a second thought. It was just a jumbled mess of cleaning supplies and miscellaneous items. I "cleaned it up" at one point and this is what I had.

At Target the other day I saw this adorable contact paper and I was inspired.

Plus I had a Target gift card so what could I do? I had to get it.

Tada!

I found that hanging thing (that's a technical term) on clearance at Marshall's one day - I love getting things out of the way so that I can store the big amount of nothing that I have...

At least it looks better under there and there's some cute contact paper to look at!

Oh, and I also got this hand towel holder. It's quite convenient as it's right underneath the sink.

It's the little things that make me happy. =)

Step 1

The little half bath downstairs has been pretty much the same ever since I moved in. I didn't know what I wanted to do with it so I just never did anything. I added hardwood floors throughout the first floor last year, but outside of that the bathroom was looking very... blah.

As we all know, paint works wonders. I chose to paint the bathroom Wales Green by Benjamin Moore, which I got color-matched to Olympic no-voc paint. I'm loving it so far!

I took down the ugly builder mirror that came with the house and will be replacing it soon, but at least step 1 is over for the bathroom! You know I love color and this green is so cheery.

My next step is DIY-ing a roman shade for the window following my friend Meredith's tutorial. =)

Christmas Gifts

After completing a yarn wreath for myself back in October and discovering how easy it was, I decided that I wanted to make one for my grandfather's wife for Christmas (It also didn't hurt that they had a BOGO on wreaths at Joann's). She enjoys crafting herself so I thought she would appreciate one, especially since I chose to make it Alabama themed. My grandfather and his wife are huge Bama fans so I think they will both be happy to have it.

Since Bama's colors are crimson and white, that's what I chose to wrap the wreath with. After wrapping for quite some time this is what I had:

Of course I had to add the iconic Alabama A to the wreath and I think I get bonus points because I made the A out of houndstooth felt! How Alabama is that? If you don't live in Alabama, you probably have no idea what I'm talking about, but just trust me. =)

I also added these felt flowers that I made after reading a how Brittani made fabric flowers over at Birdie Branching Out.

It was really fun to make and I hope it's something my grandpa and his wife will be able to enjoy for many years to come.