Bag sale bargain!

Today I got up super early to get to a bag sale that was going on at the local thrift store here on base. Of course the parking there isn't great so I showed up a half hour early to get a spot. My hubby kept the 3 little ones while I brought along my oldest daughter and her friend. I love these bag sales BTW. Anything you can fit into a brown paper bag or a green commissary bag for only $5 dollars! I was in there for about an hour and a half and made out with 6 bags full of clothes and a few other stuff!

Here's my lot of clothes. My 2 littlest girls really needed some new clothes and I came out with plenty. And it only cost me $30. I also got clothes for my oldest daughter, son, myself and a few for my hunny!!! Can't wait for the next bag sale!!! :0)

Scrabbled up!

A few weeks ago my darling little daughter Oliviah, who will be turning 3 soon, decided to get into my game closet and play with my scrabble game. Well, needless to say she lost some of the letters! Since it was quite an old scrabble board game anyway, I decided to do something crafty with it instead of just throwing it away.
 I went to the thrift store and found the exact same scrabble game for only $1. When I got home, of course some of the letters from that game were missing as well, but I wasn't concerned about that. I just wanted the game for the extra letters any how. And this is what I did!!!

I took my hot glue gun and put a line of glue down the back center of the scrabble board to keep it from folding in half. I also took a piece of string that was laying around and hot glued the ends to the back as well so I could hang it up like a picture frame!

Then I layed out the scrabble pieces so that they would spell out our last name and everyone else's names in the family. Along with some other kind loving words as well. When I was happy with the layout of the words I hot glued all of them down!

    Hung it on the wall and *TA-DA* all finshed!!!

Here's a close up!!! Hope you liked!!! :0)

Mother's Day crafts complete!

For the past few days I've been trying to finish these cute and simple Mother's Day gifts for all the Grandmother's and I finally finished them yesterday! Unfortunetly I cannot post any pics or info yet because none of the Grandmother's have received them yet and I don't want to spoil the surprise by having them see it on my blog, lol!!! But as soon as I know they have all received their gifts I will post pics and info about them!!! :0)

I did, however, finish another project today that I will share with you all in my next post!!!

My daughters Rapunzel hair!

So the other day I found this cute blog site that has so many cute ideas for doing up your childrens hair. This was a great find for me since I'm always looking for new things to do with my oldest daughter Yesenia's crazy long Rapunzel hair, lol! There are also easy to follow tutorials and the ideas are so adorable and pretty simple to do. I admit, they do look pretty intimidating when you see the finished hair-do, but they are actually very easy I think!

Here is one that I did the other day for her. I didn't follow the tutorial for it and just did it from photogenic memory lol, so it didn't come out exactly how it was supposed to look, but it still looks pretty cute!

I didn't braid it all the way down so there was quite a bit of hair left un-braided towards the bottom, which you can't see in this pic! Here is the tutorial below for this hairstyle, very cute:

http://www.babesinhairland.com/2009/09/uneven-accent-braid-into-uneven-side.html

This one I did this morning and tried to follow the tutorial. I was in a little bit of a rush to get them off to school so I wasn't able to take my time with this the way I wanted to. Still a pretty cute hair-do though!

The back!

Top from the front!

Left side!

Top view from back!

She was happy with it!!! :0)

Below is the tutorial:

http://www.babesinhairland.com/2011/03/double-braided-headband-any-age.html

So of course after I had done Yesenia's hair that morning Oliviah wanted her hair done too. So we took the kids to school and I promised to do her hair when we got back. I'm really happy with how this one worked out but it was a little difficult since her hair is so thin, because I had to make teeny tiny braids lol. Plus I thought her hair wouldn't be long enough to pull it off , but it worked and came out super cute! I love it!

Here's the top view!

Right side!

Left side!

She was so happy with her hair done up all pretty!!! :0)

Below is the tutorial:

http://www.babesinhairland.com/2009/01/braided-headband-shared-hairdo-spin-off.html



Picture day at home with my 2 littlest daughters!

Today I did some at-home photography with my basic camera and the camera on my phone. I needed some pictures to print out for some Mother's day gifts I am going to be making for the Grandmothers. Since my 2 eldest children are in school, I had already ordered their spring pictures this past February. (Their school takes pictures twice. Once in September and then again in February) Their pictures are below!

My oldest *almost* 10 year old daughter Yesenia!

My 8 year old son Adolfo!

 So I just needed pictures of my 2 littlest girls! I dressed them up in their little Navy dresses (since their Dad is in the Navy) and snapped away!!!  These below are just a few pictures that I took on my phone. I think I got some good ones! :0)

My *almost* 3 year old daughter Oliviah

Sideways pose :0)

What a cheesy smile, lol!

Wearing daddy's hat!

I love this pic with his boots and hat!

My littlest *almost* 5 month old daughter Natalia!

Navy Princess!

Laying on daddy's uniform!

I love how this one turned out! :0)

After all the photography was over, we headed out to the store to have them printed out! I did the 1-hour photos so they we're a wee bit more expensive, but still very cheap. I also printed out 2 extra 8 by 10's to display at home!!! :0)

Safari baby shower cake challenge complete!

So I had a request from a friend to make a Safari baby shower cake this weekend for a shower she was throwing for her friend and this is how it turned out!

I made the bottom 4 thin layers of chocolate cake, alternating chocolate and mint frosting. Big mistake with the 4 thin layers, should have stuck with 2 medium ones since the weight of the modeling chocolate animals smushed the cake down :0(

The top was 2 medium layers of chocolate cake with the same alternating frostings! Covered the cakes with MMF and the animals and decorations were all made of modeling chocolate!!!

This cake was VERY time consuming, but in the end came out better than I had imagined in my head!

All the modeling chocolate animals and such!

Zebra wearing a bib with a pacifier in it's mouth!

Giraffe wearing a bib and holding a bottle!

Monkey wearing a diaper and holding a blankey! (Yes I know his arm is missing) lol

Lion wearing a diaper and he has his little lion teddy with him! (His arm is missing also, but you can't really see it in this pic)

Elephant wearing a bib and holding a rattle!

I had so much fun making this cake. It was my first time using modeling chocolate and I must say, I loved it. It works very well with figures and such. Much better than fondant, I think!!!

Hope you like :0)

My cake experiMINT! lol

Okay, so I did some cake experimenting on friday evening like I said I would, and this is what happened!!!

I used a box of Betty Crockers Devil Food cake mix, YUM!

I just followed the directions on the box and mixeded it all up!

I took some Andes mints and chopped them up!

I cut each one into eighths!

Dumped the chopped pieces of Andes mints into the cake batter and folded it in with a spoon! Put the batter in a cake pan and into the oven it went!

All done, and time to cool down. For some reason it looks burnt around the edges in this pic but it wasn't. Must have been the flash on my phone!

While the cake was cooling, I made a batch of mint buttercream icing! I got the recipe from this site: http://www.bigoven.com/recipe/165932/mint-buttercream-frosting

When the cake was cool enough, I just poured the icing over the cake. Sorry it doesn't look very pretty lol! Then I had a slice to see how it turned out!

Conclusion:

 The cake was very yummi and I could taste the mints inside. The mints had all melted, but the flavor was present in the cake. Along with the mint buttercream frosting, to me, the mint flavors were a little too strong. There was too much mint present and not enough chocolate. So I took a spoonfull of chocolate frosting to add to my piece of cake, and OH MY GOODNESS, it was PERFECT. So, I decided that when I made the *ACTUAL* cake, I was going to alternate layers of chocolate frosting and mint!!!