Friday Fix-Squeeze Please

Use a squeeze bottle for pancake mix or for piping frosting
I got a set of ketchup and mustard bottles at the $1 store!
Our favorite pancake recipe is from Bakerella

Do you have any other ideas for these bottles?

Felt & Fabric Earrings + Tut

I made these earrings for the Ongoing Wish Swap. They were inspired by a pair on my partners wist.

They are super simple to make and took me only a few minutes to make. It's a great way to use up scraps! Gather some scrap fabric and matching felt pieces.

I also used some eyelets, an eyelet setter, some fusible webbing (not pictured) and three varying sized circle templates.

You will also need jump rings and earwires.

Fuse your webbing to the wrong side of your fabric.

Cut out a large felt circle, a medium, fabric circle, and a small felt circle.

Iron your medium fabric circles onto the large circles.

Poke holes on the top of your large circe and the top of your small circles.

Push an eyelet through and use the eyelet setter to attach the circles.

Attach a jump ring and earwires and you have earrings!

Mmmm S'mores Stuffed Brownies

The next project I worked on Saturday was S'mores Brownies. I love marshmallows and chocolate so I knew these had to be good! The recipe came from Making Memories...One Fun Thing After Another. First I gathered my supplies.

A brownie mix + ingredients needed to make brownies

Graham Crackers

Chocolate Bars

Marshmallows

Make your brownie mix according to the package directions and spread half the batter into your prepared pan. ( I should have lined my pan with foil and used a bit of a smaller pan)

Add a layer of graham crackers

Ooops I totally forgot to add the chocolate bars as in the orginal recipe. There is always next time.

Then a layer of marshmallows....

Marshmallows + AZ summers do not mix! Every brand new bag at the store had sticky marshmallows! I had to rip these apart to put them in the pan. Next time I will use WAY more marshmallows too!

Cover with the rest of your brownie batter

Bake at 350 for 40-45 minutes or until a toothpick stuck in comes out clean.

Let these babies cool before cutting.

Then ENJOY!

Mmmmm Donuts.....

I had quite a productive weekend in the kitchen and in the craft room. I started Saturday morning trying my hand at making homemade donuts. I got the idea from Every Crafty Endeavor

It started with a can of refrigerated biscuits.

I spread them out a bit then poked holes with a water bottle cap.

Be sure to save the cut out holes!

Toss those donuts in the fryer, cook on one side then flip and cook the other. I put them on a rack to drain after I took them out of the oil.

For the Glaze

You will need:

You will need:
1/4 cup milk
1 tsp. vanilla
and 2 cups powdered sugar

(I halved this and still had way more than enough)

Mix the milk and vanilla together in a pan on low heat until warm.

Add in the powdered sugar and whisk until blended.
I let it boil up a little bit and then remove it from the heat

Brush the Glaze over your donuts. I found that if you let them sit for a bit they aren't as sticky from the glaze but they don't taste as good!

Now remember the holes I saved? I fried those up too and tossed them in a papersack with cinnamon and sugar. I think these tasted better than the regular glazed donuts. Next time I may do all donut holes and toss some with cinnamon and sugar and some with powdered sugar.

Hope you enjoy!

Friday Fix-Envelopes

I love to make my own envelopes. All you need is a template , a glue stick, and decorative paper. You can use old calendar pages, childrens books, cardstock, really anything you want to make your envelopes.

Select the template you want, trace it onto your decorative paper, cut it out, fold it and glue the edges.

I have many envelope templates which are "laminated" and I keep them in my crafty binder.

If you have ideas for Friday Fix please email me at craftylikelindy at yahoo dot com

Have a great weekned!

PostSecret

I participated in a PostSecret swap on Craftster. If you don't know what PostSecret is, check it out http://www.postsecret.com/

You will see secrets that make you laugh, cry, and cringe. You will also realize that you may not be the only one with the same secret.

I somewhat anonymously sent in 5 secrets to 5 different Craftsters

(The Craftster swap can't be completely anonymous, I'm sure if someone wanted they could track down who sent the secrets to them.)

Since my secrets are to remain my secrets I will not post them here but I will post the 5 secrets I received in return. It's kind of crazy that I can relate to more than one of these secrets.

I would like to thank everyone who shared a secret with me. I will keep them safe, I promise....

Mmmm Egg Rolls

Mmmm egg rolls. I love egg rolls. It's one of my favorite parts of getting chinese takeout. I had never considered making them at home until I met Ryan. He made them for me and I am now and forever ruined on all other egg rolls. I won't even eat more than a bite of one that I get from a resturaunt now. Ryan makes THE BEST egg rolls ever. I have friends who beg us to make the egg rolls.

Ryan always makes the meat. There are no specific measurements for any of the ingredients. Ground pork, fresh ginger, minced garlic, and onion. Fry it all up and toss with a bag or two of coleslaw mix. We like to use the broccoli mix.

You will also need egg roll wrappers. I like the ones the sell at Sprouts.

(These are not them and I complained the whole time)

To seal them you need a mix of flour and water "glue".

Lay your wrapper out, put in some of the meat mixture, use your glue around the edges.

You kind of make like a little envelope looking thing to start.

Then you roll it up tight

Wrapping all the egg rolls it messy and time consuming. If you live where it's warm do not stack the egg rolls on top of each other or they will stick together and the wrappers will tear.

My job is to wrap and Ryan frys them up. I am sure you can bake them but I am not sure how to do that. We are unhealthy :)

Enjoy!!!!

Friday Fix

Every Friday I will post a Friday Fix which will be a tip or idea that I have thought up myself or used. If you have ideas for Friday Fix please email them to me at craftylikelindy@yahoo.com
If this turns into a popular feature then maybe we can have a Friday Fix link party someday!!!!

Todays Friday Fix is do it yourself laminate. I have been using clear contact paper to laminate paper templates. This way templates that I am going to use over and over get more than one use. Just sandwich your template between the two sticky sides of contact paper and cut it out. I also punch a hole in my template so that I can store them in my crafty three ring binder.

One roll of clear contact paper will last for quite a while and is a lot cheaper than laminating sheets.

Finally some stuff that I made...and it's not even a shirt!

No it's actually some Vampire inspired jewelry I made for the Vampire swap. I didn't want to do anything totally vampy so I went more with inspired by those with fangs.

I have been wanting to make a pair of these for a while. They are guitar pick earrings!!! The creepy tree kinda thing is vampire related right??

Okay I admit that this necklace is a bit more blood suckerish. This was one of my favorites and it was hard to give up.

This is a crochet braclet. Great Bloody colors! This was a new one for me but it actually whipped up really quickly and I like the way it turned out. I may make some more in different colors to wear in the cooler months.

Finally the bracelets. You can't see very well but the red and silver one has a cross on either end. I had two partners and they each got one bracelet of their very own. Lucky little Fang Bangers.

One Hit Wonder

Lately I have been a one hit wonder and have just been stenciling like crazy! I made a slideshow of all the stencils I have made in the past, including the first stencil I ever made. So some of you may have seen these before.

I hope you enjoy!

Natural History Museum

Ryan and I took the kids to the Museum of Natural History on Saturday. I have been wanting to take the kids here for a few years but have never made it. It's a bit of a drive but it was worth it! It wasn't overpriced to get in, the gift shop had VERY resonable prices, and it had lots of different exhibits.

Landon was much more into letting me take photos of him than Adia was which is why there are more photos of him this time around.

Here is Landon in the section with all the rocks and minerals. He thought the green stuff was paint. It took a bit of convincing that it was part of the rock.

Here the kids are in Jail! These are the original cells from the Mesa jail that was built in the 1800's. There were 4-6 cells and all of them are explorable. There were also interesting facts regarding the cells and strange laws that are still in effect in Arizona to this day.

The kids were also able to pan for gold outside. Landon of course got soaked and I ended up having to find some gold for him. It was fun if not very profitable.

Adia put together this 3D mammoth puzzle

They both put together alligator puzzles while Ryan and I got to sit and relax on a couch.

Ryan and Landon did the large pottery puzzle in the Native American exhibit. Adia and I attemped to put together a lizard pot puzzle and didn't do such a great job so there are no pictures!

Here are all the dinosaurs! This picture reminds me of the movie Jurassic Park.

Here Landon is comparing his foot to a dinosaur foot. It shows that he really does have small feet!

In the Arizona and the movies exhibit the kids got to play around in front of a green screen. I got a shot of their big screen debut!

And finally with a very wet Landon we saw some prehistoric sea creatures. After seeing these monsters I don't know how we are scared of little old sharks in the water.

If you are in the Mesa area and have a few hours to kill you should for sure vistit the Natual History Museum. I was also very impressed with their gift shop. They offer items starting from $1 so that everyone is able to get a souviner. I got each of the kids the $1 pack and it came with two special rocks, a dino Arizona map, dino stickers, erasers ,and a pencil.

The only drawback is you cannot have any drinks in the museum. You can purchase bottles of water in the gift shop and drink them in the shop or lobby then re-enter the museum.