Tacky Christmas Sweater Invites Round 2

So earlier I showed off 2010's Tacky Christmas Sweater Invites. Here are this year's invites!

• To make these, I used my Silhouette Studio to create mini sweater outlines which I arranged into a Christmas tree shape.
• Then, I printed the invites on white cardstock using St. Nicholas font. 
• After printing and drying, I used my Silhouette SD to cut out the Christmas tree sweaters.
• I glued glitter cardstock in appropriate colors to the back of the cardstock and mounted it on some more glitter cardstock. (The tackier, the better!)

Once again, I hope everyone is enjoying this holiday season!

Tacky Christmas Sweater Invites Round 1

Fact: I love Christmas weather.
Fact: I love Christmas time.
Fact: My house is a perfect Christmas house.
Fact: I like to have fun and be goofy.
Fact: It's Tacky Christmas Sweater Party time!

Invitations are an easy way to spend extra creativity. Also, they're necessary for a part-ay. There are some important things to remember when crafting your invitations.

1) Crafting invitations is not cheaper than making them (unless you use what you already have...in which case they're free!). Well, its not cheaper than the invitations I would buy (but I'm a cheap-o with paper products), but it may be cheaper than custom ordered invites.

2) Buy on sale. Buy on clearance. Or with a coupon. Basically never pay full price for your paper or craftiness supplies. Most stores have email coupons, newspaper coupons, online coupons, and in-store coupons. Use them.

3) Plan ahead. I always plan my cards out in powerpoint or paint.net so I know what they'll look like, print like, and what supplies I need.

These are last year's invites. I love that each one is different.

• The font I used was Bodie MF Holly found here.
• First, I printed on the white card stock in green and red.
• Second, I matted the invite on red or green card stock.
• Third, I cut out and glued my sweaters from glitter paper in red, green, and silver.
• Finally, I glued on my embellishments and sequins to create a truly tacky sweater.

I hope everyone is having a great holiday season!

Halloween Cake Pops

Whew! It has been a crazy couple of weeks.

Quick catch-up before the cake pops...

The Mortons (+ a few others) came to visit for the Texas A&M v. Texas Tech game. We had a house full of Aggies (I'm sure there's a joke in there somewhere). The tailgating was great! More on the recipes from that later.

My sweet husband and me.

 My two Aggie sisters!

Travis's Grandfather passed away the following week somewhat unexpectedly. He was well-loved. We went home to be with family and were able to help out some. It was great to be able to share all our memories.

The next weekend brought a Texas Rangers loss and a huge Red Raider win. One week later we had an opposite experience (which was quite painful!). Travis's parents came to visit, and we had a great time tailgating!

On to the cake pops!!

I love chocolate. Not sure if I've expressed that enough. I also love brownies. I eat too many. Solution? Brownie cake pops! 

I used my Babycakes Cake Pop Maker. There's a bunch of recipes online, and much debate about boxed recipes. I threw caution to the wind (when my family was visiting) and gave these little guys a try. Result? Delicious!

Step 1: Mix
Mix up your boxed brownie mix. I used the recipe for thicker/cake-like brownies.

Step 2: Babycakes!
Preheat your Babycakes Cake Pop Maker.

Step 3: Zip Trick!
Load up your brownie mix into a big old Ziploc bag (I used 1 gallon). Cut the tip like the picture below.

Step 4: Fill 'er Up!
Fill up the wells of the maker. The instructions says to not overfill the wells and to use 1 tablespoon (if my memory serves me right). You know what? Forget it! Fill up each well to the top. You'll have some spillage, but it results in a perfect spherical cake ball each and every time.

Step 5: Cook! 
After some experimenting, we found that 6 minutes is just about perfect. If you overfill the wells, add an extra minute or so before taking the brownie balls out.

Step 6: Stick It
Insert your sticks in the brownie balls and let them cool (I stick them in the fridge for a few minutes here).

Step 7: Dip*n*Decor
Dip in chocolate and decorate as you'd like! I fixed these up to take to work on Halloween. Yum!

Hope you have a Happy Halloween!

Ribboned Paperclips

In my To-Be-Crafted post I mentioned bow paperclips. Here are my inspiration pictures:

Source: alteredtoperfection.blogspot.com via Meredith on Pinterest

Source: howaboutorange.blogspot.com via Meredith on Pinterest

Well. Let me tell you. That first set = totally do-able. Mini bows on top of paperclips = damn near impossible! I attempted the bow. Didn't even take a picture, though. My fingers are not nimble enough for that one.

What I did attempt was the ribbony ones. I didn't have much "cute" ribbon on hand. Let's be honest. I'm not going to buy ribbon for paperclips. That's just not me. So...here is what I did

I also did a few with some red and black polka dot. Turned out pretty cute!

Football Food: Tailgating Food

During football season there are two kinds of foods: Tailgating Food  and  Football Watchin' Food. Everything that is consumed on Saturday and Sunday falls into one of those categories.

Today, we're talking about the first one: Tailgating Food.

Every tailgating food has to be portable. This can be accomplished one of two ways: pack and carry  or  make on the tailgate. I prefer a combination of both. Below are some of my favorite tailgating recipes resulting in our go-to tailgating menu.


Course 1: Appetizers
It's always nice to have a bit of variety for tailgate guests. I tend to make a fruity/veggie healthy option and a cheesey not-so-healthy option.

Spinach and Artichoke Dip
This tends to be my go-to cheese not-so-healthy dip. People love it, it makes a lot, and I have the perfect bake-and-take carrier which makes it easy. I serve this dip straight out of the pyrex casserole dish hot with tortilla chips or crackers.

Fruit Dip & Fruit Tray
I love a good fruit dip! Many are easily make-aheadable. Store them in tupperware in the coolers for tailgating to keep them chill.

Chips and Salsa
Easy. Easy. Easy. And yummy! A variety of chips + some awesome local salsa = party hit. Just make sure you have a bowl for the salsa.


Course 2: Main Dish
Burgers
A tailgating staple. Class it up some by adding A1 or your favorite steak sauce after you flip the burgers to add some extra flavor. Have a couple of varieties of cheese (cheddar, american, pepper jack) and a few toppings (pre-cut lettuce, sliced tomatoes, and condiments).

Hot Dogs
Second tailgating staple. Go with the classic all-beef franks. Toast buns and add some basic condiments like mustard and ketchup for a yummy meal!


Course 3: Desserts
Cookies
See my post about freezable cookie dough here. Pre-bake some cookies and throw 'em in a tupperware. Easy as pie (except it's cookies).

S'Mores
Marshmallow + Chocolate + Cookie. What could be more simple? Everyone loves this finger food throwback. Plus, there's no fancy serving necessary. All you need are bags of ingredients and a coathanger or two!

Freezing Fall Cookies

We are officially in the midst of football season out here in W.Tex! We've survived a home tailgating with all limbs still attached, and we're looking forward to many more this fall.

In preparation for more out of town visitors and football-watching, I've decided to pre-make a few cookie recipes and freeze them. When we have visitors coming, I can then thaw the cookies, prep, and bake without dirtying a bunch of dishes!

I absolutely love fall recipes. The pumpkin, cinnamon, and allspice smells that fill the kitchen are so relaxing! My mom loves fall, so our house was always so welcoming and homey during those months.

Here is how I freeze my dough for quick cookie-bakin'.

Freezing Cookie Dough

Step 1: Mix and Make
Make dough as directed. Bake whatever cookies you want to eat right then. Remember to save some dough to freeze!

Here, we're making some chocolate chip pecan cookies.

Can't forget the butter! Yum!

Done dough!

Step 2: Chill Out
Chill dough 1 hour. If this already isn't part of the recipe, chill for an hour. This firms up the dough so you can portion without sloppiness.

My nifty pampered chef covered mixing bowl right next to the Dead Guy Ale. Just chilaxin'.

Step 3: Prep Freezer
Decide what you'll be freezing in. I use mini muffin/tart pans to freeze my dough in. This keeps the cookies separate from each other. Also, if you end up with a soft dough that "melts" before its frozen, the mini muffin pan keeps a cookie-like shape.

Make sure you have room in your freezer for the cookies. I always have to clear some space to make sure this happens!

My mini muffin pans.

Step 4: Portion Control
Using a cookie scoop or two spoons to portion out your cookies. I use a medium scoop by Pampered Chef for the perfect size.

Medium pampered chef scoop. Perfect cookie size!

Voila! Perfectly proportioned cookies ready for freezing!

Close up. Look good enough to eat.

Step 5: Freeze Out
Freeze your dough for approximately 1 hour. I check after 30 minutes and rotate the dough. This assures even initial freezing. It also keeps your dough from freezing to the pans (makes the removal much easier).

No judgment, please. This is actually my freezer.

Note: below the muffin pans are the pumpkin snickerdoodles I froze the day before!

Step 6: Prep Containers
How are you going to store your cookies? Freezer bag? Food saver bag? Tupperware? However you slice it, it needs to be somewhat air tight and freezer friendly. I use freezer bags and freezer-safe glass/pyrex tupperware.

Label the container. For the freezer bags, I label with a sharpie. For my pyrex tupperware, I use a post-it taped to the top inside a baggie.

Make sure you include:
-Recipe Name (no mystery cookies!)
-Date Dough was Made
-Expiration Date (figure ~6 weeks from when dough was made)
-Bake Temp
-Bake Time (I add 2 minutes to my recipes)
-Special Prep (like rolling sugar, shaping, cooling, glazes, etc)

Baggie ready for filling. Note I put the expiration as 2 months instead of 6 weeks. I'm living on the edge!

Step 7: Fill & Freeze
Think about how you will be using the cookies. In groups of 6? 8? 12? 36? Fill your baggies or containers accordingly.

Time to freeze. Store your containers with like items (I keep all my cookies together toward the top of the freezer to avoid cross-contamination with frozen meats). Keep in  mind that you'll need to be able to see what the cookies are and how many you have. Rotate older dough to the front as you add more to avoid expiration.

Here they are! I froze mine in groups of 24. However, since they're individually frozen, I can take out however many I want/need!

Step 8: Enjoy
Decide how many cookies you want. Thaw cookies in the refrigerator on wax paper for 1 hour before baking. (Going straight from freezer to oven may work, but I get a little paranoid!) Follow the instructions from the bag and voila!

Succulent Garden

For some added greenery and life to our patio, we added a succulent garden.
Stephanie over at Under The Table and Dreaming has an awesome tutorial for creating your own succulent dish garden.

We used her tutorial plus a few googled tutorials/images to decide what we wanted ours to look like. When making a succulent garden, rocks are added at the bottom to ensure proper drainage. This creates an awesome layered look. We wanted to take full advantage of this, so we opted for a glass container.

First we added a layer of small river rocks about an inch deep. Next layer was a mix of potting soil, perilite, and sandy soil from our yard. The exact ratios of each of these is debatable. I encourage googling in regards to this. Next it was time to plant the succulents!

We selected 9 succulents from WallyWorld and TheOrangeStore with different growth patterns, colors, and shapes.

Our final layer was some more small river rocks to prevent the soil from moving around, assist with drainage, and look awesome.

Here's the final product. Love those layers!!

It has a nice home on our coffee table on the patio. They require thorough watering once weekly. It becomes quite easy to tell when it's time to water. The plants droop, discolor, or wither some when they need water. After watering, they return to their healthy look in just a few hours.