Craft room decoration

In my spare bed room is where my little craft desk is. I love being able to go in there and whip something up when creativity strikes. Usually its a mess in there by the end of the day. Someone once told me that where creative people do there work its usually a mess. Ever since then I use the excuse when it is a mess to say oh it was a Creative Explosion!! After this phrase left my mouth I knew I wanted to put it over top of my desk. So I came up with this temporary decoration. Its temporary because I would like to paint the room a different color but also I love the frame so much and want to keep it available for fun photo shots like this!

The words are cut out of bright card stock and stuck to the wall and the frame got a little spruce up with these fabric rosettes. I love the way it gives character to my little space in there!!!

For more fun ideas check out I love nap time and find out what others are doing during nap time!!!

Delicious Red Lentil Soup

This Red lentil soup was a recipe given to me by a great friend for when we were on the Daniel fast. It was so delicious that it made it on our regular meal plan night and I thought I should share the recipe with you wonderful readers

Red Lentil soup
1 tablespoon peanut oil
1 small onion, chopped
1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger root
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 cup dry red lentils
1 cup butternut squash OR sweet potato- peeled, seeded, and cubed
4 cups veggie stock
1 (14 ounce) can coconut milk
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 teaspoon curry powder
1/2 tsp cumin powder
1 pinch cayenne pepper
1 pinch ground nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste
cilantro for garnish

Directions

Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat, and cook the onion, ginger, garlic, until onion is tender.
Mix the lentils, squash, and cilantro into the pot. Stir in the stock, coconut milk, and tomato paste. Season with curry powder, cumin,cayenne pepper, nutmeg, salt, and pepper. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer 30 minutes, or until lentils and squash are tender.

Garnish with cilantro and enjoy.

We served this soup with whole wheat croissants and honey garlic sausages!!!

Hobby Decorating

I really love being crafty and one of my favorite things to do is scrapbook pages to use as decoration around the house. I have been doing a scrap book layout for my mom on special holidays and I love the idea that it can always be changing. Right now I have one winter lay out and one of my boys!

Before lady J came along I did a Big Brother page for Eben. I framed this and put it over his bed in his room!

Another thing that makes them so frugal is that I got the frames at the dollar store for only $2.00.

For more frugal ideas head on over to life as mom

Chocolaty Pumpkin Bars

Picture from bake at 350

This weekend I decided to try our a new recipe on the family which turned out to be a BIG hit. The recipe, Chocolaty Pumpkin Bars, was taking from Meal Make Over Moms and is featured in their newest cook book No Whine with Dinner. I have just discovered their website and love it. This is only 1 of the many recipes I will be trying off their website until I receive my own copy of the new cook book! After tasting these yummy treats I can't wait to try more of their stuff. I have planned to try the coconut chicken fingers later this week so I will be sure to let you know how they turn out.

Scrapping on Canvas

The kitchen is my favorite place to be as long as I am not cleaning it or doing the dishes. But of course many of you readers know that my second favorite place is my craft room. I find it so relaxing to be in there being creative. I love being locked in with my worship music making projects to decorate our house with or to give away as gifts.

Here is one of my lastest projects which was also used to decorate our house for love day. Its a scrap page of me and hubby. I started off with a black and white picture of the two of us. I knew that I wanted to use a black and white back ground but to add some elegance to it I wanted to use a splash of red.

To get the black and white picture to stick out I placed it on the red paper. To keep the embellishment simple, because this was a gift for my hubby, I made this rosette from a scrap of the paper and the swirly thing is cut out from the Cricut (home decor I think)

For the journal block I used Song of Song 1:1-4 (because it talks about kissing :)

Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth

for your love is more delightful than wine pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes; your name is like perfume poured out. No wonder the young women love you! Take me away with you—let us hurry! Let the king bring me into his chambers.

Then for the title which is also from Song of Songs and what we had engraved inside our wedding bands; My Lover is Mine and I am His

So great looking scrap page eh....well its not finished yet to make this a decoration cause lets be honest its too nice to put away into a book that will hardly get looked at I decided to put it onto a canvas.

I really love putting pages on to canvas cause its a cheap way to decorate your house. I purchased this canvas at the dollar store for $1.25. I used black paint to paint around the sides of it (giving it depth) then using modge podge I glue the page to the canvas and put a thin coat all over the page. Oh and one last thing I added the embellishment after I did the Modge Podge!!

So for more creative ideas check out I love nap time.

No Whine with Dinner

Ok readers I want to share with you an awesome cook book and website that I just stumbled across this week. Its called Meal Makeover Moms!! I am in love with a lot of their recipes and all the information they have on there to offer.

I have been in contact with these two lovely ladies and have decided to order their new book No whine with Dinner. If anyone else would like to order from them please let me know. We can order the book online for $15 (if we have 10 people who would like a book).

So what are you waiting for go check out their site and try some of the recipes they have. I can't wait to make their coconut chicken nuggets!

Valentines Party

I love LOVE!!! So what better way to celebrate then with a love themed party. Guest were asked to bring snack foods that were white, red, pink or brown and what a spread we enjoyed. The table just kept getting fuller and fuller.

Since there was so much food I decided to use jars to put our snacks in instead of laying them out on plates and bowls. I was hoping to save some space but it really created a cool candy shop effect.

The window that hangs above our table got decorated with hearts cut out from the Cricut and some sharpie markers. The verse in the middle uses VALENTINE as an acronym within John 3:16. I think its pretty cool that God is our first love and our very own valentine!

For drinks we served a cranberry punch, cream soda and root beer. The glasses were embellished with Love birds!! Which were also used during the game time to tell between two different teams.

Thanks for a great girly game night ladies!!!

oh I almost forgot about the parting gifts that everyone got. One lady brought pink reusable bags that fold up and got into your purse. Also everyone who left got to take a little coupon with them (you can see the jar in the first picture on the table that says love). These coupons have little special ideas on them (special treat, trip to a fun park, 25 kisses) so the ladies could give them to their hubby's as a valentines day present for him to redeem at any time.

Soft block letter

My friend Sera really helped me with this baby block project. We started off by cutting out letters on my Cricut machine. We traced the letters onto felt. We used 2 pieces for each letter. Once they were cut out my friend Sera did all the sewing (by hand) and stuffing.

These make great little play toys. We just stuffed them with fluff but you could also put in bells or crinkling paper so they will make noise.

Hope you enjoy and for more frugal ideas check out life as mom

Valentines Decorations

Now that February is here its time to break out the "lovey" decorations!! I love all the pinks, reds and blacks. Here is just the start to my valentines decorations. From the left I started out with some framed subway art. I got the pattern over here but because we don't have a coloured printer I decided to print it black and white on pink card stock. The pink paper makes the ink look brown so it goes great in this brown 8x10 frame.

I also used the scrabble pieces to spell out be mine on one and valentine on another. The xo xo blocks were some cubes that I have painted white, inked in red and the xo xo are puffy stickers from the dollar store.

The frame in the middle of me and hubby is my valentines gift to him. Its a scrap layout that I put onto a canvas which was bought at the dollar store. I painted the outside of the canvas black used modge podge to put my scrap layout onto it.

The other frame is a collage from that I cut valentine paper to fit into and used my circut to spell out L O V E.

Now of course you need some candy for the special day so I made this cool gum ball machine with inspiration from i love nap time. Eben sure had a lot of fun painting the pots red and he was even more happy to see it filled with candy when he got up this morning. It still needs to ball for the top so I will have to check around the house today to see if I can find anything.

So for some more really cool Valentine ideas check out we are that family