The Bib Mat

 

Bibs made out of dish towels are my absolute favorite.  Mostly I love them because little kiddos can't take them off (too easily).  I also love that they're super large and can catch all the little crumbs and protect the clothing underneath.  We always like our bibs to stay up, on top of the table, instead of tucked down in.  This helps so all the crumbs aren't falling down on the lap.

I was just getting ready to make some new bibs when I saw this post from Made.  She turned some vintage place mats into bibs.  Fabulous idea and she has a great tutorial for you to follow.

I grabbed a set of four bibs from Target and some ribbing from JoAnns.

I took her pattern and enlarged it for my sweetie's larger head.  Basically you just want to make sure your cut out fits over baby's head, to get the correct size.

Then I cut out my ribbing and sewed them onto my dish towels

It was a really quick, easy project.  And if you have a messy eater, I highly recommend them!

As we were sitting together for lunch, my husband was commenting how these towels are a lot larger than the last ones I made.  He told me, "It looks like a bib place mat-- like a bib mat."  Thus the name was born.  And, yes, he wants full credit for the name.

Before Lunch.  Yum, yum. 

After, crumbs perfectly captured. 

My Sweet Garden

One month ago we planted a garden.  It was so lovely to explain this gardening concept to our children.  They, of course loved it and it was so fun for each member of the family to do their part.

One week later it began to poke up and show it's little planty heads.

Then my dear husband built me two garden boxes.  I love them.

Last week our little sprouts were ready to plant.

So what have we got in there?

As you can see we still have a few things left to plant.  We also got that blue box from my son's school.  His class was doing a plant unit and asked for volunteers to take the seeds home.  We volunteered and are excited to add them to our garden.

And to my utter joy yesterday I was able to go out and pick fresh cilantro for dinner.

 Ahh, garden, you will be enjoyed immensely.

Aidell's Sausage Fresh Stir fry w/ freshly grilled Pineapple.

I was walking around the grocery store last week, perusing the meat department when I came across one of our favorite sausages and to my utter surprise I learned they were Gluten Free.  We have purchased Aidells Sausages in our former eating life all the time because they were delicious-- and to learn that they're also something my husband can eat scores them Major Points. 

Last week I made up a recipe that turned out super tasty for dinner.

First I started with some Fresh Pineapple.  I had decided I wanted to make some grilled pineapple and I wanted it to look all fancy with the core cut out of the middle.  I was contemplating how to achieve this when I thought of this really cool kitchen gadget I have.  It's a biscuit/donut cutter that my husband bought me a few years ago.  I occurred to me that if I popped out the donut portion, I could use it to core my pineapple.  Worked like a charm.

I followed this recipe for my grilled pineapple.  But I used coconut oil (instead of butter to make it GF), which I thought would be really brilliant-- except that I didn't take into account that once I put my mixture into the fridge, the coconut oil would quickly solidify and not really adhere to the pineapple.

That's okay, it still worked and turned out yummy!  I cooked it on our George Foreman Grill.

For my Stir fry I first cooked all my vegetables in coconut oil, rice vinegar and teriyaki sauce.

Then I cut up and cooked the sausages.

Mixed it all together and it made for a super tasty meal.

Click HERE for the Printable recipe.

Aidell's Sausage Fresh Stir fry

Original recipe from Freshly Completed

http://freshlycompleted.blogspot.com/

Ingredients

1 cup cooked rice

2  TBS. Coconut Oil

3 cloves of garlic minced

1 chopped yellow pepper

1 cup Mushrooms chopped

1 cup Broccoli, chopped

1 small purple onion, chopped

2 TBS. (GF) Rice Vinegar

3 TBS. (GF) Teriyaki Glaze/Sauce

1 – 3 links of Aidells  Pineapple & Bacon Sausages, sliced

Directions

Cook 1 cup of rice. Chop up all vegetables and stir fry in fry pan until vegetables begin to soften (about 7 minutes).   Add cooked rice, rice vinegar, and teriyaki sauce to vegetables and stir for about 2 minutes longer.  Removed vegetable stir fry from pan and set aside.  Cook, sliced Aidells Sausages in pan until beginning to brown (about 5 minutes) stirring as needed.  Return vegetables to pan and continue to cook all together, stirring, until warmed.  Serve immediately.

Thanks for joining me today for:

The Silhouette Portrait Present

 

This year for Mother's day my siblings and I worked together to make a group project.  We started several weeks ago and bounced around a few ideas of getting our pictures put in a frame for my Mother. 

 Then one day I was snopping around Pinterest when I saw THIS card from Mr. Boddington's Studio.  I loved it and it inspired our next project.

I checked with all the siblings and they all agreed this would make an excellent gift for my mother.

Here's how we did it:

1st everyone sent their photo (taken against a white wall) to my sister who's a Pro at using Photoshop.  She took all our photos and made them into darling silhouettes-- and even added lovely falsy lashes (bless her).

If you don't have photoshop (or don't know how to use it, like me) you can visit this Blog.  She explains how to make silhouettes using the free program ipiccy.  I made this quick silhouette using ipiccy just to see if I could do it, using a picture of my cute son.

Once my sister had turned all our photos into silhouettes she sent them to me.  I put them all together and added the words, "You are well loved".

After I made the file, I uploaded it online sent it 5 states away to be printed right next to my Sister's house using FedEx.  She picked it up and found this cute frame.  Then she put everything together and some of my siblings got together and gave it to my mother for Mother's Day.

This project turned out so cute and it was so fun working all together, though some of us live far away from each other.

And my mother LOVED it.  

She loves bright colors and she was so surprised to have this sweet, colorful gift from all her children.

How to make the Easiest Hairbow Holder

My 2 1/2 year old daughter is finally getting some hair on top of her cute head and after all this time I'm having so much fun doing her hair each day and putting cute little bows on her.  However my former place for all her bows was jumbled up inside an empty Tupperware container.  This wasn't working.

I know there are tons of ideas for cute hair bow holders (I've seen everything from picture frames, to chicken wire, to lamps, and ballerina skirts), but I wanted to devote five minutes to this activity, spend no money, while still making it still cute and functional.

Mission Accomplished.

So, last Saturday while I had time set aside for cleaning the toilets...I quickly distracted myself with this fun, quick solution to my hair bow problems.

MATERIALS:

1. Hanger

2. Ribbon or Bling on a Roll

3. Hot Glue

4. Bows

STEP ONE: Grab a hanger with a straight bottom part.  

This was a hanger I got when my daughter was first born.  It held a cute snugly blankey on it and I'd been using it for dresses, it awkwardly did the job.

STEP TWO: About a month ago I was given lots of Bling on a Roll, which works perfect for this project because it's sturdy, cute, and shiny  But a sturdy ribbon would work, too.  Cut your ribbon to desired length. Cut three or four strips as needed.

See my other Bling on a Roll project Here.

STEP THREE:  Heat up hot glue gun and prepare your work space.  Place ribbon under the hanger.

I choose to work in the bathroom because I was trying to be speedy.  I placed a paper towel under everything.

STEP FOUR:   Place hot glue on underside of ribbon.

STEP FIVE:  Quickly press the top of ribbon down and allow to cool.  Repeat for other ribbons.

Done.  Start to finish 2 minutes flat (even less time than I had set aside).

Last thing you need to do is add your bows and elastics.

Ahhh, now I know just what bow to grab so I can color coordinate. 

 Simple, functional things make me happy.

How to Clean Crayon off of your Dryer.

I wish I didn't know the answer to the question: How do you clean crayon of of your dryer?

But, I do, so I thought I'd share.

 

And I made some more than helpful (totally useful) pictures to demonstrate how this works.  When my husband saw me over here playing around in "paint" he asked me what I was up to.

I told him, "I'm making a toothbrush".  He was confused.  So I explained what I was doing-- and he told me what was taking me a half an hour could easily be done in one minute using free clipart.  But I ask you-- Where's the fun in that?  I find a lot of fun in drawing in paint.

Plus, I didn't take any pictures, during-- I was too annoyed busy trying to save our dryer.

So about two weeks ago my dear 1st grader left a crayon in his pocket-- his favorite color "Bluish-Greenish" (I once told him this was my favorite color when I was a child-- so he's adopted the tradition). 

Of course, I only realized it was in our dryer when I began pulling out all of his clean laundry with traces of bluish-greenish melted crayon everywhere!

Annoyance quickly set it.  Then I consulted my favorite go-to resource, the internet.  It was there that I saw Lots of common themes-- heat up the dyer- use a credit card to scrap off everything, spray it down with WD-40, clean it off further....Then go to town trying to clean all the WD-40 out of everything, using hot soapy water-- still smelly of WD-40, clean it all again.  Still stink?  You know the drill.

Well, what was the point of cleaning something with one agent, just to have to use another cleaning agent to get it out?

I knew for sure I wanted to skip the stinky (and flammable) WD-40.

My method?  Worked like a charm.  It got all the crayon out and my dryer looked cleaner than it did to begin with.   So, here's how to clean crayon off of your dryer (without using WD-40).

STEP ONE: Heat up your empty dryer for 15 minutes, to get the crayon nice and soft.

STEP TWO: Scrap off as much of the crayon as you can using a credit card.  This works really well with the big chunks. 

STEP THREE: Scrub off what's left with a toothbrush and comet.  I made a bowl of hot water with comet in it and scrubbed off the last of the crayon.

                        

STEP FOUR: Once you're done, just to be careful, run a load of damp towels (that you don't mind getting crayon on) through the dryer to pick up any extra crayon you may have missed.

Worked like a charm.

Now just remind me to start checking pockets (I hate doing that).

Super Fabulous Lemon Bars

Let it be known, I'm a sucker for anything lemon.  Just a huge fan of all things lemon

The other day I had a fresh Meyer lemon that needed to be picked from my own lemon tree.  I knew just what I wanted to whip it up into-- some Super Fabulous Lemon Bars.

So I quickly hopped onto Food Gawker and looked up some good lemon bar recipes.  I wanted to also use up a lot of eggs and use lots of fresh lemons.  I stumbled upon this recipe which fit the bill perfectly.  

They were seriously the best lemon bars I'd ever had-- like the kind you pay $5 each for at fancy shops.  They were set up so nicely and they were thick and sweet, and yumm....I need to go make some more....

As I went back to see the recipe so I could link it up here, I realized it was adapted from a Barefoot Contessa recipe.  Ah, no wonder they were SO fabulous.  

These come highly recommended by me and are my new go-to Lemon Bar recipe.

See my other Lemon posts here.

Lemon Drop Cookies

Lemon aid

Diary of a lemon tree

Lemon painting