Potato Salad Recipe - Yum

Chop up 1 cup celery and 1 cup white or red onion:

Add 1/2 cup light mayo, 1/2 cup sour cream & 1/3 cup apple cider vinegar, 2 tsp kosher salt & 1/2 tsp pepper:

2 1/2 lbs boiled & cubed red potatoes, 3 hard cooked eggs diced & 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley:

I like to eat it while the potatoes and eggs are still warm, but it's super yum chilled (for at least 2 hours) too:

Valentine Cookies for the boys

I used to only make goodies for holidays for the boys when they younger and bring to their elementary school so they'd feel special, but now that they only have 1 & 2 years left, I feel like I have to do it again ;) And they loved it! I guess the moral of the story is - don't stop bringing stuff to school for your kids because they really do like it. I didn't sign love mom or anything, but they both said I could have =) Awwww.

I love sprinkles! I would have spent more time decorating them, but as I had the idea to bring cookies to school on Thursday morning that I'd have to bring them to school that day because there was no school on Friday! But they were tasty and the boys could have cared less if I spent more time making a pattern or not so messy - hehe

1 cup butter

1 cup powdered sugar

1 cup sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla

3 1/4 cups flour

1/2 tsp cream of tarter

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

Cream butter and sugars. Add eggs and vanilla - cream until fluffy. In a separate bowl add all dry ingredients and stir together. Then add to butter mixture. Refrigerate 2 hours or longer. Roll out and cut into shapes, bake on parchment paper at 400 degrees for 4-6 minutes.

Frosting that dries hard:

2 cups powdered sugar

3-4 tbsp milk

1 tbsp corn syrup

1/2 tsp vanilla

Mix together, add color if desired.

Beaded Watches

My mom picked out like 10 different beads that didn't really go together . . . ;) I was able to use some of them and by the 4th pattern, she liked it - LoL
I put together a YW value color watch too:

Jewelry Designs

I beaded a green jewelry set:

And a pink jewelry set:
Fun, fun =)

Keaton as a Red Wolf

Here is Keaton as the mascot at the High School:

He says the head part is very uncomfortable. Last time he wore it the bridge of his nose hurt for 2 weeks. So we didn't get to see him in action, he was told he was going to be the mascot the 2nd half of the basketball game (and we didn't get there until right before halftime =( But I guess the film people were there early so he ended up doing it for the 1st half.

Visiting Teaching Handout Feb

Some more self reliance stuff - I think we must have missed this in the past so we're getting it in abundance now ;) We had a church lesson on it, last month's HT and VT messages as well as this month's HT & VT message.

I used the house template from papercakesandicing blog and just used it with the scripture D&C 88:119 from the VT message for this month. My flower stem says 'Managing Resources wisely 'stems' from' and the red flower middle part says 'wise planning' and in each of the flower petals it says 'financial matters', 'personal health', 'education', 'home storage' & 'emotional resiliency'.

My handout found here.

YW Handout for Home Environment

I had the girls each choose a name for their 'home' and I made a handout for lesson #5, Manual 2 on Home Environment:

I used the quote 'Order is essential in the heavens otherwise, chaos would rule. Order is just as essential in our homes' on the temple picture and the scripture D&C 132:8 about a house of order, not confusion.

Then I incorporated 'when life hands you lemons' . . .

and gave them lemonheads instead of lemonade since it was fast Sunday!

The quote from the lesson says:

Decide now how you will positively influence your family members and home life when 'sticky' situations arise. YOU can make a difference by keeping the spirit present.

Canned Pickles

I have been doing a food co-op for the last 6 weeks and get lots of fresh veggies/fruit for $15. My friend PJ gave me a recipe for canned pickles since we got cucumbers in our last basket.

I marinated it overnight:

Then I strained the juice and brought it to a boil to make sure the salt was dissolved. Distributed the spears evenly and then the onion/garlic/dill mixture and filled the jars with the vinegar/salt juice. I boiled them for 15 minutes and they all sealed! hehe Yes, that's the best part when you're canning ;)

The recipe says to wait 10 days before tasting . . . so if this post is deleted in 10 days, then you know they turned out disgusting - LoL And if they're yummy, I'll post the recipe =)

Bracelet Redo

My friend gave me this bracelet last year - I loved the silver parts with the shiny hearts and sayings, but the smaller beads were orangish and sort of didn't really go with the sparkley red:

Another thing I loved about this bracelet was the red dangling heart charm - see it? So cute!!!

So I rebeaded it with beads that I had and now I'm really excited to wear it. It looks like a Valentine's bracelet, but I think maybe I could wear it year round if I wanted! =)

Egg Soufflé Recipe

18 eggs

1 cup milk

1 cup sour cream

¼ cup butter

1 ½ tsp seasoning salt

Optional:

1 can diced green chilies

1 cup shredded mozzarella

3-4 artichoke bottoms, sliced

3-4 Portobello mushrooms, sliced

Melt the butter and spread evenly on 9x13 pan. Beat eggs with seasoning salt until fluffy. Add milk & sour cream and beat again until mixed. Add chilies & cheese, mix until blended. Pour into pan and add sliced artichokes. Bake 20 minutes. Turn temperature to 400 degrees (but don't wait for the oven to heat up to 400 before you put the dish back in the oven) and add mushrooms on top and immediately put back in the oven, bake another 15 minutes or until middle isn’t sloshy – maybe another 5 minutes more – so 35-40 minutes total.

I used 2 pie pans because my kids don’t like mushrooms or artichokes and just divided the mixture up evenly.

Mix up the ingredients, we like pepper jack cheese in it too.

No Soliciting

We were driving out of the neighborhood and we saw the Penguin Windows people walking door to door for the 4th time since September and I got irritated! If I was looking to buy windows, I'd budget for it and go looking for a few estimates. Who decides on a whim that yes, they want new windows and will give their business to someone knocking on their front door without checking around to see if that's the best deal or not? Please! ;)

Anyway, I made a 'No Soliciting' sign and I'm pretty pleased with it ;) Yeah, pretty much we're not buying anything from anyone who knocks at my door . . . unless it's girl scout cookies - now, who can resist those? =) Is my message clear enough?

The fun thing about not using vinyl on tile is that I can use cute patterned paper. The not-so-fun thing is that it is a lot more work!

BIG M&M Cookie Recipe

These are twice the size of a normal cookie - they baked out well and are super yum!

I used my snickerdoodle recipe, then I added 8 oz of M&M's to the dough, rolled them into big balls and then squished 5 more M&M's on top.

I first baked them up for my sacrifice lesson. When the girl's played the game and got an answer correct, they got an M&M. At the end, we talked about things we have to sacrifice for goals. I said are you willing to sacrifice these M&M's to reach your big goals? They all agreed and we went over the definition of sacrifice and then I told them they gave up something little for something bigger in return and pulled out the cookies. Of course they were all happy with their decision to give up the M&M's. Seemed to be an impacting object lesson ;)

Funny Sign

I was getting gas at Safeway and saw this sign on the gas pump:

What's pretty funny is that someone actually must have done this and then tried to make Safeway responsible for the damage it caused! So they were forced to post a sign - wondering how common it really is?

YW Bulletin Board item

I used this saying in Activity Days 2 years ago, but I thought it applied for YW too =) I am trying out out scribd to see how it works! I'll be adding this to our YW bulletin board.

Safe Place

Bookmarks with elastic

So, I saw these bookmarks in a store and what did I think, yup, I can make these all by myself =)

If you drop your book, you won't lose your place because it doesn't come off unless you take it off.

Cut your elastic to the desired length, loop a charm, bead or shrinky dink on the end and tie it in a knot, then tie a knot at the top . . . and that's the extent of the instructions. Anyone can do this - that's the best part!

I made one 15 inches, 20 inches and 24 inches as I took the average of most of the books in our house ;) The longest one is good for a school text book.

I'm going to give 3 bookmarks to each of my Beehives on their birthday for 2010. Super inexpensive. One down, only 17 sets to go - haha (we have a lot of girls and 4 new Beehives coming in this year).

These were shrinky dinks - that part did take the longest. But oh so cute =) I bought the paper at create for less for ink jet printers. Again the site for the cutest graphics for scrap booking is found here.

YW Game & Handout (idea) for Sacrifice

Building the Kingdom of God, Lesson #3, Manual 2

Here's a fun little handout I'm going to give the girls - I wish I could share the graphic, but it's copyrighted. If only I were an artist, I'd share the image with ya ;) I guess if you are a member at www.stackablecrew.com I could share/send the image with you =)

Someone had an idea to make a game out of the Sacrifice lesson, so I made a game board (how dare someone have an idea and not do the work - haha)

Board 1 found here and board 2 found here.

And here are the game cards:

Page 1

Page 2

Page 3

Page 4

YW Bulletin Board pocket

I guess our YW President wanted a pocket with papers for the girls to write what they're thankful for - hehe And I insisted on creating one so it would match:I will hang the pocket up and then as the girls fill in what they're grateful for, we can staple those up on the bulletin board.

YW Bulletin Board

I used shower curtains to cover the bulletin boards as they were cheaper than material by the yard, even on sale ;) And ribbon to hide the seams. Paper kept ripping and it is a pain to keep replacing. I designed everything you see (except the colored cubes logo).

YW theme we recite each Sunday (what, I should have ironed the material before putting it up? LoL):

YW President wanted this scripture up:

Value Focus for the month:

Calendar:

YW purpose:

2010 youth theme:

Logo for 'Be Strong' - youth theme:
Second bulletin board, YW motto & activities/events:
Pictures were hanging up, but we still need to cut them out and take quite a few more photos as some girls weren't there the Sunday they were taken by the stake. That and the fact that someone drew goatees on a few of the girl's pictures - have to reprint those ones.

Okay, so I cut all the girl's pictures into egg shapes to create flowers. I used a lady bug pin stuck in the middle to hold them up:

And someone actually stole the 'girl's camp' and 'standard's night' word art - rude! ;) I suppose they just didn't realize how many HOURS I spent trying to make it look nice and matching!

Invite for YWIE NB combined

Visiting Teaching Handout Jan

Found a cute web site with scrap booking images - http://www.stackablecrew.com/

January's VT lesson is 'Becoming Self Reliant'. Great message! Of course my lion handout doesn't have the copyright wording, so it turned out pretty cute ;)

Snickerdoodle Recipe

I changed up a Snickerdoodle cookie recipe and it turned out yummy =)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup butter flavored shortening

Mix butter and shortening together until combined.

1/2 cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar

Add sugars to butter mixture and whip for 5 minutes until batter is fluffy.

While that is mixing, measure and sift these 4 ingredients together in a separate bowl:

2 3/4 cups flour

1 tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

Add to butter mixture:

1 tsp powdered vanilla (can add liquid)

2 eggs

Mix until combined.

Add flour mixture to the butter bowl and again mix until combined.

In a separate smaller bowl combine these 3 ingredients:

1 tbsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground nutmeg

3 tbsp turbinado sugar (coarse sugar that gives a little crunch!)

Roll cookie dough into balls, dip into cinnamon concoction and lay on ungreased cookie sheet, bake for 11 minutes. Makes 36 cookies.

2010 Youth theme bookmarks

I just shrunk down the original image I designed to make a bookmark:

Want to print out some for your youth? 4 to a page - google doc found here.

These bookmarks are found here. The t-shirt logo for the 2010 theme is the 10 colored blocks with 10 different languages that say 'be strong'.

Primary theme 2010 necklace

Nat is visiting, so we made her a Primary necklace to match the theme of 'I know my Savior Lives':

I made a bottle cap necklace with a paper bead to match.

picture is blurry when I enlarge it, but it looks perfect when it's shrunk down for the necklace:

I used fonts Kristen, Amy, Stacy, Cheri, Sarah - Natalie's mom and aunt's names!

Want to make your own? Google Doc found here.

Reptile Zoo with Nat & Andrew