Valentine's Candy Jars

I may have mentioned before that I am not a huge Valentine's Day celebrator. I know, I am kind of bah humbug about it, but it seems like such a retail holiday. I love the people I love EVERY day, not just on Valentine's day. But for some reason this year, I was feeling the love and I wanted to celebrate it.

I happened to be in Northern California spending time with some of my biggest loves and so I thought, "I don't get this opportunity very often, I want to do a little something." So, the BFF and I headed out to the stores after the kids went to the school and got creative.

My niece, aka "Princess" is like her mom and I in that she loves all things peanut butter. So her jar is filled with peanut butter M&Ms and her card says, "You're the peanut to my butter."
My nephew JP likes just about any candy so I got him Starburst and told him he was my "shining star." Awww!
And my other nephew, who I don't really have a nickname for without giving away his name, likes chocolate mint stuff so I got him York Peppermint Patties and told him we were "mint" to be together. Schmoop!
(The Reese's hearts were from their mom.)

I also made similar ones for my sister, brother-in-law, and nephew - theirs just had different kinds of M&Ms. Oh, and my sister and bro-in-law got a bottle of wine with theirs too. And then they fed me a delicious steak dinner.

OH! And I almost forgot the best Valentine's/Birthday gift ever! My sweet nephew, JP, gave me this:

It says, "I love you so much, I will build you a house of money." Ugh! Just melt my heart, why doncha! He has a heart of gold, that kid. It was agreed that I couldn't spend it until he came down to So Cal to visit me. That middle part? That's a $20 bill folded into a shirt. That's 25 dollars that kid gave me. I mean, I have to wait and spend it with him, but what 11 year old do you know that would give away $25 of his own money? He's the only one I know!

Baseball Flip Flops

I recently traveled up to Northern California for some much needed friends and family time. While there, my BFF and I were crafting machines! We made these really cute candy jars for Valentine's day (stay tuned!) and a few days later, we made these cute flip flops!

The BFF got the idea from this pin, which doesn't link to a blog or any place I can give proper credit to. We winged it and made them our own and since we were figuring it out on our own, naturally they got cuter as we went along. 

See? We were so excited to just get the first shoe done! One down, five more to go. 

Here's what you need:

• Flip flops. (We got ours from Old Navy and Target.)
• Leather Hole Punch Tool
• Ribbon
• Baseball beads
• Some rhinestone embellishments (from the scrapbooking section)
• Super Glue
• Patience

This is the first pair:

Cut the ribbon long enough to go on both sides of the shoe with extra to at the end to tie. 

We punched five holes on each side. 

Tied one end of the ribbon. (As you can see, this part was the key part to figure out. My concern was that the knots would not only loosen when walking, but might even irritate the skin/foot. I think we nailed it on the next attempt.)

Weave the ribbon through the holes, putting a baseball on when the ribbon is on the outside of the strap.

Repeat till you get to the other side of the shoe and tie off. 

Then we super glued the embellishments down (this is the part where you need patience) and we even glued the baseball beads down for good measure. 

Here's our second attempt: 

We did these the same way as the other ones except we tied the ribbon (and super glued for good measure) to the little prong thing on the bottom of the flip flip. After tying it on there and securing with super glue, we just pushed the prong thingy back into the shoe for a smooth transition! Genius if I do says so myself. (I wish I could take the credit here too, but it was technically my sister's idea.)

And last, but not least, these ones were my favorite! 

The only thing we did different on these is instead of 5 holes, we punched two. One on each side of the thing that goes between your toe then tied off the ribbon into a bow. They are both really cute, but the less busy is just my personal preference. 

We'll see how well they hold up. I mean, they're not made to play baseball in, they're made to look fashionable while you watch someone else play baseball! So they should be fine. 

 As soon as the BFF posted them on her Facebook page all the other baseball and football mom's wanted a pair so I think she's jumping on the opportunity and will perhaps make a buck or two making them!

I am proud of both of us for making our (really, her) vision come to life. 

And thank goodness she painted her toes the day before we made these!

Roasted Potatoes

I may have mentioned before that I haven't met a potato I didn't like. This was no exception.

I modified the recipe from McCormick's website.

I didn't have any of the seasoning's they suggested, so I improvised.
I also didn't add onion like they suggest. 

Here's what I did: 

• Preheat oven to 425 and spray a baking pan w/cooking spray. (I used a 9x13 Glass Pyrex.)
• Cut six red potatoes into bite-size cubes and put them into a gallon sized zip lock. 
• Dump the following ingredients into the bag w/the potatoes:
•  3 tablespoons Olive Oil
• 1.5 teaspoons Garlic Powder 
• 1 teaspoon Lawry's Seasoning Salt
• Sprinkle in some pepper. (I use McCormick's Peppercorn Medley.)

• Shake it all up until the potatoes are nicely coated and dump it into the prepared pan.
• Bake for 45 minutes or until golden to your liking. Stir occasionally. (I stirred about every 10-15 minutes.)

Throw it together with some chicken and asparagus and you have a le gourmet meal!

Bottle Cap Magnets

I don't really get along with this project and it seems so simple to do!

1.) Drink some beer and save the bottle caps. (I'm really good at this part.)
2.) Use a 1" circle punch to punch the pic.
3.) Glue pic to bottle cap and allow to dry.
4.) Put glossy substance over pic and allow to dry.
5.) Add magnet on the back of the bottle Cap.

Simple.

Or so it should be. The first time I attempted these, I half assed glued them down and didn't allow for drying time so when I added the glossy substance the pictures moved and sort of floated into weird positions. And there were bubbles in the glossy substance. This attempt, my glossy substance was a liquid glass of sorts I use for scrapbooking.

So this time, I filled the cap with a layer of glue and let the glue dry overnight. It still didn't really seem like it was dry but I'm impatient. Plus if it didn't dry in 12 hours I'm nit convinced it was gonna dry. Haha Anyway, I added the glossy substance. This time I used Mod Podge Magic Dimensions (or something like that) and, well, it dried wierd. Kind of concave. And with bubbles. :o|

Whatever. I was over it. I slapped a magnet on the back and sent them off to their unexpected recipient. She'll love them because she's not the anal critic I am and probably won't see all the flaws like I do. :o)

Not sure where to give the original credit to because the idea came from multiple pins on Pinterest and I probably checked out all of them to see where I was making mistakes sooooo - for original cred see various pins and blogs on Pinterest.

School House Treat Jar

So, I made another one of these guys. (You can find the instructions here.) This one was for one of my BFF's that runs her own in-home day care, hence the school house theme. My thought was it could be a special treat jar for her kids as a reward for when they have good behavior or do something kind, but of course she's welcome to use it however she sees fit! :o)

This is a left over from my pay it forward post from 2012. ("Pay it forward 2012. I promise to make something hand made to the first 5 people that comment. Then post this to your status and do the same... It can be as simple as a coffee, hand written note, or something more. Just has to be done in 2012.") The beauty of being a procrastinator is that the people that were promised these things have likely long forgotten that they've had it coming. So when it does finally come, they aren't expecting it and it becomes a random act of kindness that hopefully puts a smile on their face. 

She likes the "Live, Laugh, Love" saying so I threw in those cards to go with it. I think she was pleasantly surprised since this is the Facebook post that followed after she got it: