Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Projects

Growing up I loved to do projects. Projects could be as simple as sticking stickers or as complex as creating and painting custom shirts. When I started babysitting, I would make sure to bring along projects to keep the kiddos busy. Now that Peachy is getting older, it is fun to come up with projects for her to make. When we were working on barrettes from Pinterest, Peachy kept busy with a project of her own. Someone on Facebook had recently mentioned that their child had loved putting beds on pipe cleaners. I knew I had both beads and pipe cleaners and stashed away the idea for a special day. Peachy kept herself occupied for almost an hour filling up pipe cleaners with wooden beads.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Pin It! Barrettes




Have I mentioned my love for Pinterest? Oh, I have, well, I just thought that I would mention it again. (By the way, if you would like to follow me, you can find me here: Bowl of Cherrys at Pinterest I know that I am not the only one, either! I have introduced a few of my friends to Pinterest and we all love it. In fact, I think our husbands may need a support group for spouse's of Pinterest addicts. We have actually started to get together a couple times a month to work on our Pinterest projects. While the children happily play, us moms get down to the business of crafting. We all try to pick a similar project to work on so that we can share supplies. (Quite often we also bring Pinterest recipes to share.) So far we have done wreaths, coaster, and most recently barrettes. I will try to get pictures of everyone else's projects, but for today here are the barrettes that I made along with the Pinterest link.

1. and 3. Cereal Box Bow
2. Ric Rac Flower
4. Flower Barrettes from Make Bows and More
5. Pinwheel Barrette

Monday, August 29, 2011

Garden Shed

I am not the only one who creates around these parts. Mr. Cherry enjoys building and working with his hands as well. Unfortuantely, he spends much of his time at work, which does't leave much time for playing in the workshop half of the unheated garage. Last summer he was able to build our deck almost single handedly. (See here, here, and here.) This summer he took on a project of a smaller scale, literally. He built a small shed to fit under the deck. It houses our grill and tools along with various gardening equipment. I think that it is cute, but don't tell him I told you that!

Friday, August 26, 2011

Foodie Friday: Taco Pizza


I love the Pioneer Woman. I love her writing style. I love her down-to-earth attitude. And I LOVE her recipes. I saw her taco pizza recipe and my heart was hers. I have made this pizza two times and it was like falling in love all over again. (Although I think this time may have won out because I was able to use lettuce, tomatoes, and cilantro from our garden!!) Thanks, PW, I love you!

Taco Pizza ala Ree
Ingredients

  • 1 batch crust (Instead of using PW's crust recipe, I went with my old stand by.)
  • 1 can (14 Ounce) Black Beans
  • 1 teaspoon Taco Seasoning (prepared, Or Make Your Own)
  • 1 bag tortilla strips (Instead of frying my own tortilla strips, I bought mine in the salad section of the grocery store.)
  • 1 cup Grated Sharp Cheddar
  • 1 cup Grated Monterey Jack Cheese
  • 1 head Green Leaf Lettuce, Sliced/shredded Thin
  • 2 whole Ripe Tomatoes, Diced
  • ½ cups Cilantro Leaves
  • Spicy ranch dressing (Ree makes her own sauce with sour cream and hot sauce. We have this dressing on hand, so this is what  I used.)

  • Directions
  • Make dough according to directions.
    Pour black beans into a saucepan. Add seasonings to taste and heat up beans over medium-low heat. Use a potato masher to mash the beans to desired texture. Continue cooking/heating beans over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until no longer runny (should be the texture of refried beans.) Set aside.
    Place oven rack in the bottom position in the oven. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
    With hands, spread pizza dough on an oiled baking sheet, making sure it’s relatively thin. Spread layer of refried beans all over pizza crust. Sprinkle mixed grated cheeses over the top. Place pan in the oven (in the bottom half of the oven) and bake for 9 to 12 minutes. Watch it to make sure crust doesn’t burn.
    Remove pizza from oven. Sprinkle on shredded lettuce, diced tomatoes, and cilantro leaves.
    Drizzle pizza with ranch.
    Sprinkle with tortilla strips. Cut into squares and serve immediately with good quality salsa.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Red Letter Mail Day

 When I went to get the mail the other day the mailbox was very full. It was so full in fact, that I had to think if I had gotten the mail the previous day. I had. It turns out that three random packages all arrived on the same day. The best part about the packages was that they were all freebies.
The goods: a box of cereal, two diapers, and an energy efficient shower head.
Not a bad haul for one day.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Transition to a Big Girl Bed


Shortly after finding out we would be adding to our family, we put a twin bed in Peachy's room. We just told her that it was her big girl bed and left it at that. For a long time we simply used at as a vertical surface to store miscellany. After I finished the quilt, I made an effort to keep it made up nicely and to discontinue using it as a clutter keeper. We started reading books to on her big girl bed before putting her into her crib for naps and bed time. Around this time I also explained that it would be her bed and when the baby came the baby would use the crib. She started to refer to it as her "girl bed."

Reading to her friends in her "girl bed."
One day before nap she asked if she could sleep in her "girl bed." I double checked to make sure that was what she really wanted and she seemed to think so. She rocked out her usual 1.5 hour nap that day and the only casualty was the box of Kleenex on her nightstand. I asked her if she wanted to sleep in her big girl bed again that night and she did. A great night of sleep followed. This was working like a charm, I thought. Unfortunately naps have not been great since that first day. Peachy treats naptime like playtime. Exploring her room and taking things out of their respective storage places. Thankfully bedtime is quite different. As far as we know she stays in bed all night long from the moment we tuck her in. (Knock on wood it stays that way, too.)
Caught red-handed, getting into mischief at nap time.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

DIY Organic Bloom Frames

I fell in love with this picture wall when I saw a pin on Pinterest. I looked into the Organic Bloom frame business and learned that they are only available to photographers. I also found out that they were out of our budget. When I get an idea in my head, I have a hard time giving it up until I have tried every angle.
I first asked Mr. Cherry if he would be able to make them with his router. He said that they would be difficult and time consuming. That meant taking matters into my own hands. My first attempt at using 1/2 inch foam board and an Exacto knife did not work out real well.
Back to the drawing board. This time I purchased six unfinished wooden plaques from Hobby Lobby. After a few coats of white paint, they were looking good. I then purchased six of these metal clips from Target. (I got my clip inspiration from Shanty 2 Chic.)
They also got a couple of coats of paint and then were hot glued onto the plaques. Finally I added ribbon on the backs to use for hanging. Now they are all ready for their pictures.
I went with black and whites and decided that some colorful scrapbook paper would set them off from the white frames. I used cup hooks to hang them in the room. Not quite Organic Blooms, but not to shabby either!

I am linking to the following parties.
Todays Creative Blog

Monday, August 22, 2011

Nursery and Big Girl Room


Well, I think I can finally check "changing Peachy's room into a big girl room" off of the to-do list. You can read about the beginning of the transformation here. The short and sweet version is that our kiddos are going to be sharing the room and now it is a combo nursery/big girl room. While we didn't make many big changes, the paint color is the same, the crib bedding is the same, the basics are the same, I love that the changes we did make give it that little bit extra.
It started with making the bedding for the big girl bed. You can read all about the quilt here. (Coincidentally, Peachy decided it was time to start sleeping there. She does really well at night. Naps however, have turned into playtime. I am really struggling with trying to figure out how to get naps back.)
Other than the bedding the other major change was adding shelving to the closet. While it may not be picture perfect, it is nice to have more shelves to put things on.
All of  the other changes involve art work and decorations.
We put up some Chinese lanterns above the bed.  (They were purchased at Hobby Lobby.)
I made a subway art with Peachy's birth information. Below that I hung her name out of wood letters. To the right is the barrette holder I made. You can read about the barrette holder here.
We used IKEA spice racks for book shelves and I made an alphabet wall art. You can read about that here.
I added new ribbon to the dresser pulls. You can see the original idea here.

I painted a canvass of Peachy's favorite song, "Jesus Loves Me." I got the orginal idea from Etsy.



After lusting after the frames from Organic Blooms, I decided to try my hand at knocking them off. I will post more on this later this week.
Here are some of the original nursery items. You can read more about our original nursery transformation here.

And that about sums it all up!

I am linking to the following parties.

Baby Week Recap

Thanks to everyone for the fun comments and links throughout Baby Week. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did!
While all the links are awesome, here are a few of my favorites.
Kayla Danelle's Ezekiel's A-Z, a darling photo collection!
Thanks again everyone for participating and making this week so much fun!

Friday, August 19, 2011

Foodie Friday: Freezer Meals


***Don't forge to link up your baby projects here throughout the week!!***

I am very proud of myself. The last month I have been doubling up on meals some nights in order to stock our freezer for those busy days of having a newborn in the house. I have one more recipe to make and then I am calling it good. While it does make for long supper prep times, I like doing it all at once so that I only have to heat up the kitchen and make a mess once. I also purposefully didn't make myself do them every night. I knew that would get to be too much. To find my recipes, I searched the internet and then made a freezing board on Pinterest. While I was planning the monthly menu, I just sprinkled in some of the recipes as I went along. Then when I grocery shopped for the week I bought the extra ingredients.
I meant to get a nifty picture of all the meals stacked up. It didn't happen. Just trust me that they are there in our freezer awaiting consumption.

Here are links to the recipes I made:
Baked Potato Casserole
Meatloaf Minis
Crispy Southwest Wontons
Sausage and Spinach Pasta Bake
Baked Chicken Penne
Baked Pasta with Chicken Sausage
Beef Tamale Pie
Freezer Burritos

Thursday, August 18, 2011

New Blog Look

Up until this point I have done all of my own blog design. It was nothing fancy. Only what I could figure out through online tutorials. Somehow I managed to mess something up, go figure, and with my very limited knowledge of html, could not figure out how to fix it on my own. I am sorry if any of the changes in the past week made viewing my blog difficult. I know it was frustrating for me! I decided it was probably time to bring in some professional help. I found the Etsy seller Dream Like Magic and liked what I saw in her shop. I purchased a premade design and away we went.  I am loving the new look. Now I just have to manage not to mess anything up. :o)

Baby Week Day Four

Are you ready for some more cuddly goodness? After having Peachy, we learned the importance of a good swaddle. We also learned that I am not very good at using the traditional receiving blanket as a swaddling device. So we invested in a Miracle Blanket. And let me tell you, it was a miracle! I decided with this baby that I would try to make my own swaddling blankets. I searched the internet and saved several tutorials to Pinterest. I ended up deciding to use the original Prudent Baby DIY Swaddle Blanket Pattern. (Note, they also have a revised version here.)
I dipped into my fabric stash and came out with these two cuties.

And while I don't know if Cream will be a swaddle baby and I don't know how well this particular swaddler works, I do know that they are cute!
Can't you just see the little baby head peaking out now?!!


Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Baby Week Day Three

Day one brought us clothes, day two brought us a warm and cuddly blanket, what is in store for day three? How about something for mommy? When I had Peachy I used a promotional code to get a commercial nursing cover. And while it did the trick, I knew I could do better. I found my tutorial at Sew Much Ado and first made it for a friend a few months ago. (You can see that one here.)
This cover is the perfect size and I love how it turned out. It will be tucked into the diaper bag for those occasions that a discreet nursing is in order.


Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Baby Week Day Two

Yesterday I showed you what Baby Cream will be rocking on the way home from the hospital and today I will be sharing an adorable receiving blanket that Baby Cream can use in the hospital, on the way home, and many times once home. I have made this blanket several times for friends and loved the results. (You can see those blankets here.) So I just knew that I would have to make one for our baby as well. I used a tutorial provided by Elisabeth at Growing Your Home.
And here is Little Cream's blanket.
I used a cotton print for the front and a cotton flannel for the back. The jumbo ric-rac perfectly finishes the blanket off.
The size is perfect for wrapping baby up, covering a car seat, or spreading out on the ground or floor.
And the flannel backing adds just enough weight to keep it warm and from blowing away on a gusty day.
Perfect for baby cuddles!

Todays Creative Blog