Start by mixing up your dry ingredients in a small mixing bowl. For the record, 1 1/2 cups of graham cracker crumbs is about 15 whole crackers. Or you can just buy the crumbs.

In a separate bowl, cream together butter, sugar, and brown sugar until it’s light and creamy.

Add in two eggs and vanilla, and beat well.

Add your dry ingredients and mix until it’s all combined.

Divide the dough in half, and press one half into the bottom of a greased 9×13 baking dish.

Lay the Hershey bars on top in a single layer.

Then smear on your marshmallow fluff. To make this easier, I zapped the whole jar in the microwave for about 15 seconds, and I sprayed my spatula liberally with non stick cooking spray.

Now we have to get the remaining dough on top of the marshmallows. Obviously you can’t just press the dough on there, so here’s what I did. I divided the remaining dough in half and placed each half into a ziploc bag and pressed it flat, so that it roughly was the same size as half of my pan. Then I cut my ziploc down the side seams.

Then I picked it up and layed it dough side down on top of the bars. (I had extra Hershey’s so I did an extra layer of chocolate on top of the marshmallow fluff. This is totally optional.)

Then all I had to do was peel off the ziploc bag.

Repeat those steps again with the remaining dough to cover the other half of the bars, then just press it together, gently, with your hands.

Pop it into the oven and bake until golden brown. Allow to cool slightly before cutting.

And then just try to resist eating the whole pan!

So, so good! Now you can have s’mores without the campfire!

here’s the printable recipe….s’moresbars

(Kate’s cute headband was made by her aunt who is super talented. I’ve purchased stuff from her for my niece and everything is so dang cute. Check out her shop here and here. PS: This is my honest opinion. She has no idea I’m putting this out there!)

While we were at it we did a few pics of all three girls as well….

And even dad jumped into a few pics…

What a difference a year makes….

I did pics of the whole family together but I’m not satisfied with them. Kids are easy, adults not so much. I definitely need more practice with the grown ups! Any volunteers???

Here’s all we need to make them. Now you can go online and find grass fed, organic gelatin if you’d like, but I just used the old Knox blox gelatin. It worked fine, but if you’d like to go even healthier, be my guest!

I cut all the strawberries into pieces.

Then I used a masher to mash them up along with some blackberries.

You need about two and a half cups of mashed up fruit.

Toss it into a pot along with some lemon juice. (The lemon juice does make these a bit tart, if you like them sweeter, use orange juice instead. I’ve done it both ways, and they’re both equally good, just depends on if you like sweet or sour.)

Cook it on medium heat until the fruit releases all it’s juices and becomes even more mushy.

I used my immersion blender to puree out the chunks. You can either mash it up, or use a mixer or toss it into a regular blender. You just want it to be as chunk free as possible.

Then add in some honey,

And the gelatin. Stir until the gelatin is all dissolved.

Pour into a 8×8 pan. I lined mine with parchment just to make lifting it out easier. Wax paper would work well too.

Refrigerate until it’s firm. I left it in there for a few hours.

Then just lift it out of the pan and cut into pieces.

Yum! While not exactly the same as those little prepackaged little bites, these really are a refreshing and healthy snack. And they’re perfect for this summer when it’s too hot to turn on your oven.

These kept in a covered dish in my fridge for about 5 days, I think they could probably last about a week, at most, in an air tight container.

Make ‘em for your kiddos (or yourself) soon!

Here’s the printable…homemadefruitsnacks

To start, I make a batch of my favorite homemade pizza crust…

Sprinkle some dry yeast on top of warm water and set aside.

In the bowl of your mixer, combine flour and salt.

With the paddle attachment set on slow speed, drizzle in some olive oil and mix just until it’s combined with the flour.

Then pour in the yeast/water mixture.

Mix until it’s all combined and a sticky dough forms. Grease another bowl with some olive oil and place the dough into the bowl, toss to coat the dough with oil. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and stick it in the fridge. Now this is where your willpower is tested. Ideally you should let the dough sit for a few days, but if you can’t hold back, just let it sit for a couple hours.

When you’re ready to get cooking remove the dough from the fridge and separate into two halves. Using your hands pull and stretch the dough out until it’s thin. (Please note that in this picture, this is way to thick! I wasn’t planning ahead and didn’t leave myself enough room to spread out the two crusts. I’ll show you the difference later.) Place onto a greased baking sheet and shape into a rectangle.

In a small bowl, combine some melted butter and olive oil. I didn’t really measure how much I used but I would guess it was about a 1/2 stick of butter and maybe 1/4 to 1/3 cup oil. Brush mixture onto crust.

Cover half with some pepperoni and mozzeralla cheese.

Carefully fold the other half over the top and press edges with a fork to seal.

Brush more of the olive oil/butter mixture on top. The sprinkle with some parmesean cheese and oregano.

Pop it into a pre-heated oven and bake it for about 20 minutes, or until the top is golden brown.

Using your pizza cutter, cut it into slices. Remember how earlier I said the dough was too thick? I know it’s kind of hard to tell, but you can see that the one in front is nice and thin, and the one in back is thicker. You want it to be thin. The one in the back is way too bready.

This was my first attempt at making this and I really was impressed at how it turned out. You should definitely give it a try. It’s a great appetizer or snack, but it’s also hearty enough to be a meal. Or of course you can be like Kelly and I and eat it as a side dish with your mac and cheese!

Whichever course you choose to eat it at, it’s tasty! Make it soon!

here’s the printable for the pizzacrust

I’ve been making a ton of these rag quilts lately. They’re so soft and snuggly and they’re much easier to whip out than a regular quilt. Whether you’re an expert seamstress or a novice like me, these are a cinch to make. I’ve made them two different ways, like I did here where I cut the fabric into strips, and I’ve cut the fabric into squares. Cutting it into squares takes a lot longer, requiring almost twice as much cutting and sewing, but it also allows for more creativity, so I tend to choose which way to make it depending on how much I’ve procrastinated! Let’s get sewing….

I found this fabric at Joanns and I fell in love. The colors are super yummy and the blues and pinks in the two printed fabrics match perfectly. I did not prewash my fabric.

Using my cutting mat and rotary cutter, I cut the printed fabric into strips. There is going to be three layers to the quilt: front, middle (which will only be seen in the ragged edges and is mostly for extra fluff and warmth) and back. For each layer, I needed 6 six-inch strips and 5 three-inch strips.

I have to apologize in advance for the somewhat confusing instructions. I wasn’t paying attention to taking pictures as I went along because I was watching Phantom of the Opera while I was working on this and I kept getting distracted by Gerard singing to me. But I’ll try to make it make sense.

First, I took my fabric for the front layer and laid it out to make sure I liked how it looked.

Then I made three piles of the strips, in the order I wanted them to be in. The left side will be the front layer of the quilt. The center pile will be the middle layer and the right side will be the back layer.

Then I took the top piece from each pile and made a fabric sandwich. So in this picture the silhouette fabric will the the front of the quilt, the tan will the the middle, and the flowered fabric will be the back of the quilt. Make sure that your front and back pieces are right side out.

I kept going until all my strips were sandwiched. I kept them in the order I wanted them to be on the quilt.

I sewed a straight stitch down the center of the larger strips just make sure they’ll stay together after washing the quilt. I didn’t bother with the smaller strips because they’re only going to be 2 inches wide when they’re done, so they’ll be fine.

I told you I was distracted. Seriously, even disfigured he’s so hot. If I was Christine, I totally would’ve picked the Phantom. Anyway back to sewing…

I pinned my strips back sides together. Then sewed them with a half inch seam allowance, so that the seam allowance was to the front of the quilt.

I kept going until all the strips were sewn together. You can see here how all the seam allowances are to the front of the quilt.

I didn’t bother with trimming the selvedge edges before sewing it all together because I knew it wouldn’t line up after sewing anyway. So once it was all sewn, I went back and trimmed both ends of the strips.

Then I went and sewed a straight stitch around the whole outside of the quilt, again leaving a half inch seam allowance. Then I went back and sewed every seam a second time, just for added strength.

After it’s all sewn together, it’s time to cut the seams. I just eyeball it, but I make little cuts about every half inch or so.

You want to cut as close as you can to the seam but be extra careful to not cut through the seam. Make sure to cut around the edges of the quilt too. All that’s left is just to wash it to fluff up the seams.

This isn’t the greatest picture, but you can see the how it fluffs up after washing, the edges get nice and soft and raggy.

I think it turned out super cute.

The back side.

I made matching burp cloths with the leftover fabric.

The hearts were my first attempt at applique and I think I did a pretty dang good job! The only thing I didn’t like was the ruffles shrunk up more than I thought they would, and I think I’d like them better if they were closer together. Ohwell.

I love this style of quilt. I’m really thinking about making a big one for me to snuggle under on the couch. Not that I really need anything to make me want to sit on the couch even more! If you’ve got a baby coming up, give one of these a try!

Yes that is an old square TV. What can I say, I’m not a big TV person and as long as I can see the picture, I don’t really care about the quality of said picture. What I do care about is the asthetics of my house, and this set up had to go.

So I asked nagged my little brother to bring me some pallets from his work.



What I didn’t know was just how dang hard it is to tear a pallet apart. It took me 3 hours to pull off just three boards, and one of those I broke in half. Not to mention I almost impaled myself on the crowbar! Yikes.



So what I did was, I took them to my parents house and had my dad use his skilsaw to cut the boards off the ends pieces, leaving them just attached at the center.



Then I just had to pry them off the center support, this was much easier!



These nails are the culprits, they’re called screwshank nails and they’re awful!



Anyway it took me all day but I finally got enough boards pried apart to cover the back of my bookshelf.



I started by taking the doors and shelves off my bookshelf. My plan was to leave the cardboard backing on the bottom half because it’s not going to be seen anyway.



I sanded it all down really well.



Then came the hard part, deciding which color to paint. I had intended to paint it a really light color, almost white with just a tint of a cool blue. But then when I was browsing colors I found the darker color that I absolutely loved and I couldn’t decide. So I bought a sample of both and tried them out.



To help me decide, I held the pallet up against them to see which I liked better. This is the lighter color.



And the darker. After I held the wood up against it, I knew the darker color was right choice.



So I primed it all.



If you ever decide to paint laminate, make sure you sand and prime it good. If it’s not sanded properly, the paint will bubble up like this. Because this is in the back corner behind the doors, I didn’t really worry about it, but if it had been a part that would’ve shown up, I would’ve needed to re-sand and prime it again before painting.



Two coats of paint on and it’s looking good!



I also sanded, primed and painted the shelves and doors.



I don’t know why I didn’t take the back off first, but it probably has to do with the fact that I’m a messy painter and I was doing this in the middle of my living room. To get it off, I scored it with a razor blade where it needed to be cut off.



Then I just pried it off.



When it was ready to be put back together, I laid the wood strips out on the floor to see how they fit together best. I knew there would be some gaps between the pieces, but I wanted to avoid any huge spaces if possible.



Then I laid the bookshelf face down on the carpet and got to work.



I was worried about the boards splitting, and nails going thru the side of the bookshelf, so I predrilled holes before I nailed the wood onto the bookshelf.



Then I stood it up and admired my handiwork. I love how the gray undertones in the paint are picked up by the gray in the wood.



After I put the doors on and the shelves back on, I loved it even more. (To get the shelves in I had to sand down the ends a bit to make it all fit.)



The before and after.



I could not love this more. Now I need to just figure out what to put on those shelves. It’s been a month and they’re still sitting empty, just waiting for the perfect pieces.

One of my favorite DIY blogs is hosting a pinterest challenge in which she has challenged readers to pick something they’ve pinned and actually do it, instead of just thinking about doing it, so I’m linking up to her pinterest winter challenge. Go check out her site and see what everyone is doing. You can also check out the other challenge hosts here, here, and here! If you’re so inclined, you can follow me on pinterest here. And I’d really love it if you pinned this too! I’ve got a lot more great living room posts coming up too, I’m loving the new look! Are you currently working on any great home renovations? Got any great pins that you’ve spinned and made your own? Leave a comment, I’d love to hear about them!

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You’ve gotta start with a great base though, and that means a tasty sugar cookie.


Start by combining your dry ingredients in a small mixing bowl.


In a separate bowl, beat together butter and sugar until creamy.


Add eggs…


and vanilla.


Then beat in your dry ingredients until just combined. Refrigerate it at least one hour, up to overnight.


And try not to eat it by the spoonful.


This dough is especially sticky, so to make rolling it out easier, I use parchment paper. And instead of flour, I use powdered sugar.


Roll your dough out until its about 1/4 inch thick.


Then cut out your shapes.


Bake on parchment (or silpat) lined cookie sheets for 8 minutes, or until edges just begin to brown. Allow to cool completely before frosting.


Because even the single girls need love on Valentines day too!

To make your frosting…

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine meringue powder with water


Using the paddle attachment, beat until it’s frothy.


Sift in some powdered sugar


and beat until combined.


Add in corn syrup and increase speed to 5-6 and beat until it’s glossy and stiff peaks form.


You should be able to hold the paddle upside down and jiggle it without your frosting flopping over. If it flops over, just beat another minute or two.


Divide your icing into bowls and add your food coloring.


Mix it up until you get it to the color you want it. Because it was Valentine’s day, I did two different shade of pink, red, and white.


This is your royal icing and will be used to outline the designs on your cookies. Place about a 1/3 of each color into piping bags with a number 2 or 3 tip attached.


Now we’ve got to thin the remaining icing down to make the flood icing. So add a teaspoon or so of water to the icing left in the bowl and mix until it’s all incorporated.


You want the icing to be the consistency of thinnish syrup. To make sure your icing is thinned enough, hold your spoon over the bowl and drizzle in a small ribbon of the icing. The ribbon should be reabsorbed into the bowl in 2-3 seconds. If it remains on top of the other icing, just add in another 1/2 tsp of water and mix it up again. You can see in the picture on the left the ribbon of icing is sitting on top of the rest of the icing, and on the right it’s blended right back in, this is what you want. Place your flood icing into small squeeze bottles.


Assemble all your equipment and let’s get ready to decorate!


Start by piping a thin line of your royal icing to outline the cookie. I usually work on a few cookies at a time, outlining them all first, and then filling them in.


Then use your flood icing to fill in the design.


Use a toothpick to spread the icing to the edges. The icing should not just flow to the edges, if it does, it’s too thin.


To make pretty designs, allow your filled cookies to sit for just a few minutes, then you can drop more of the flood icing in to make polka dots. Drag your toothpick through the dots to make swirls and hearts.


To make this super cute design, I dropped two rows of dots around the outline of the cookie, then drug my toothpick through the dots in opposite directions to make the hearts.


You can also let the frosting harden completely, then use your royal icing to go back and write on the cookies.


The design possibilities are endless.


And remember those hearts that I cut apart before baking them…

I made them into these!


Give this cookie decorating technique a try someday, I promise you, you’ll love it. And you won’t be waiting for Christmas to dig out all those cute cookie cutters!

here’s the printable for the cookies…rolledsugarcookies
and for the frosting…floodicing

The ugly bulletin boards….

Here’s the view from the doorway, the previous bulletin board is now to my right. You can see there’s another ugly board on the far wall, and there’s a third one to my left that you can’t see in the picture. The cupboards are actually in (relatively) good condition, so we didn’t touch them. But that mirror is getting a makeover too. And I’m going to figure out something to do with that code blue button (let’s hope Kim doesn’t stop breathing while she’s working!)

I figured finding fabric that she liked would be harder than finding a coordinating paint color, so I started by bringing in some swatches. She had requested a teal-y blue color with yellow or orange accents. These are the rejects, but how great are the turquoise and orange chevrons. I’m totally digging all the chevron patterns now.

I brought the boards home to take them apart.

This one was especially nasty. Someone had previously attempted recovering it with felt, but they didn’t do a great job and all the fabric was sagging off. Yuck.

The smaller boards are getting a coat of spray paint on the frames and the blue/green fabric. The big one gets the yellow chevrons.

The cork was stapled into the frames and I was able to just pull them out with a fingernail. The few that stuck, I used a screwdriver to pry them out.

They were so disgusting, that stuff was flaking all over me and the floor, thank goodness I was doing this in my garage. Once I got them apart, I gave the frames a coat of primer and then a couple coats of spray paint. Sorry I neglected to get a photo of that step.

I laid the board out on a table and placed the fabric on top to make sure it was straight.

This stuff is key. If you don’t adhere the fabric to the board it will eventually sag. And when you pull the pushpins out the fabric will pull away from the board. But this stuff dries quickly and is super tacky so work fast.

I started in the corner and just sprayed about a six inch square, then I laid the fabric over it and smoothed out all the wrinkles. I worked down the long side of the board and then across the short side, always smoothing the wrinkles away from the part that was already stuck down.

I was more worried about getting the chevron fabric on, for two reasons. This board was much larger and it would be much more noticable if this fabric wasn’t straight. So I lined up the fabric on the short edge of the board and stapled it into place.

After I got the fabric stapled on, I turned it around and realized I had forgotten a key step. You’ve got to iron the fabric before you glue it to the board. No amount of smoothing will get those wrinkles out. So rather than pull the fabric off and have to re-staple it, I just brought my iron out to the garage and ironed it right on the board.

Then I glued the fabric on using the same technique as I used on the smaller boards…down the long side then across the short side. Again, always smoothing the wrinkles away from the fabric I had already adhered. The frame on this board was metal and wouldn’t come off, so I just wrapped the fabric around the whole thing.

I let them dry overnight and then stapled them back into the newly painted frames.

I love how they turned out. The gray in the frame perfectly matches the gray in the fabric and the yellow in this fabric perfectly matches the yellow chevrons. And both fabrics are super yummy. They’re sure to bring new life to an office that sorely needs it.

I’m purposefully not showing you the completed yellow board because I don’t want Kim to see it here before it’s on the wall in her office. But I’m hoping the paint will go on this week and I can get it all together next week. I’ll be sure to bring you the rest of the projects soon!

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It was an excellent 10 months with lots of vacations, both big and little.

We went on a roadtrip, Griswold style, to Yellowstone. Seventeen hours in the car, eleven of those with a 3 year old, is always fun!

Fly fishing was so much fun!

We saw so many wild animals. I think the grand totals were…13 black bear, 5 grizzlies, and 5 wolves. Not including the babies. This little black bear climbing down the tree was so cute, I really wanted to take him home with me. Buffalo, elk, and deer were in abundance. The only thing on our list we didn’t get to see was a moose. Guess we’ll have to go back for that one.

Seriously, the scenery was amazing. I’ve been to some beautiful places, and Yellowstone is near the top of the list, maybe only second to Alaska.

In the fall, a group of seven of us went to Washington D.C. and New York City. I hadn’t been to DC in about 13 years and New York in about 5 years, so it was great to get back to both cities.

Thirteen years ago, when we went to DC we visited Ford’s theatre. Outside the theatre was a tree that was covered in pennies, stuck on the tree with ABC gum. My cousin and I added our pennies to the tree and took a picture of them. This time, the tree was cleared of all those pennies. So I decided to start it up again. I have no idea if my penny is still there today, but I’d like to think it is.

We went to the new WWII memorial which was very touching. My grandpa had four older brothers who all served overseas during the war, one of them was even a POW in Germany for 18 months. All four came home safely. We also went to the Vietnam memorial. My dad served in Vietnam so we quick called him while we were there, and asked if there was any names he wanted us to look for. Without hesitating he gave us the names of James Combs and John Bring. Forty years later, and he remembers them, and details about them, such as age and hometown, without hesitating. I can’t imagine what it is like to serve with someone and then one day they’re gone, and to carry that for with you for 40 years. It was very moving.

New York was, as always, completely amazing. I am in love with this city. We spent hours just walking around the city. Some of our group hadn’t ever been there so we had to do some of the touristy stuff like visiting the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island (where my mom had some testing done.) We rode bikes around Central Park and went and saw shows on Broadway (Rock of Ages….fantastic, highly recommend!) We ate tons of food. One night we went to Carmines and got so much pasta we couldn’t eat even half of it. We decided to take it to go and give it to a homeless person on the street. We had no sooner walked out of the restaurant when the Naked Cowboy approached and asked my mom what was in the container. She said it was spaghetti and asked him if he wanted it. Before we knew it, he was gone and her spaghetti with him. Two days later we ran into him again and asked him about it. He laughed and said he was so shocked when she offered it, he didn’t want to give her a chance to change her mind. Then he took a bunch of pictures with us. This one is my mom and one of the other girls. He kept grabbing their butts and they were super embarrassed!

There were a few more little trips…Arizona for Thanksgiving and our annual girls beach trip. A ski trip. A weekend in Vegas for a friend’s wedding. It was a really good year.

But, like I said earlier, now I’m back. There are however going to be some changes around here. I think part of the reason that I stopped posting was I was tired of just recipes. Taking pictures of everything I cook takes so much time, and it really took some of the joy out of cooking.

I’ll still be posting lots of recipes, like all these yummy desserts.