Christmas Morning plus Monkey Bread

Just some pictures from our Christmas morning. :)

Adley had fun unwrapping her presents and she did it pretty well. These next few pictures of her unwrapping a box make me laugh. 

Our morning also included this : 

We had already started picking at it. yum yum! 

MONKEY BREAD! warm gooey goodness! 

I got this recipe from my momma who got it from a friend of hers. It is wonderful! I only made a half recipe for our Christmas morning since it was just us, and that would have been fine for 4 people. Do not do the math, you will be depressed at how many biscuits you can eat when they taste like this! 

Monkey Bread

Ingredients: 

4 cans (10 count) biscuits

1 cup cinnamon sugar

1 1/2 sticks of butter

1 1/2 cups of brown sugar

1 tablespoon cinnamon

Directions:

Grease a bundt pan. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Make some cinnamon sugar to your liking. Cut biscuits into fourths, and roll in cinnamon sugar. Place 1/2 biscuits into pan. Cook butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon in sauce pan. Pour 1/2 butter mixture over 1/2 biscuits in pan. Add remaining biscuits, pour remaining butter mixture over biscuits in pan. Bake 35-40 minutes. 

**bundt pan is not required, any pan will do. I sometimes even use a casserole dish or the bundt and a casserole dish, it cooks a little more even that way. With a bundt pan, you might get some gooey biscuits in the middle.. especially if you use 4 cans. In case you are wondering.. 8 count biscuits do not work as well for this. They are thicker biscuits and the outside will look done but the inside will be gooey and some won't be cooked. 

**Also if you only do a 1/2 recipe, you can put all the biscuits in the pan and pour the butter mixture over top. It makes it's way down through the biscuits no problem. 

This makes a pretty yummy New Years' Day breakfast too! 

Birthday Craft THREE

Birthday Napkin Flowers 

I am on a roll :) I found a tutorial for these flowers while browsing for party ideas. Here is the link to the tutorial on Made. This craft was super easy and fast. I did it the morning of the party. That is why I only have a couple pictures. Here is a quick run-down. (Check out the Made website for the real tutorial and lots of pretty pictures of her wallflowers.) 

My supplies: 

1. 3-ply napkins (big and small)  

2. scissors

3. string 

Each flower uses 4 napkins (3 larger and 1 smaller). I just opened the napkins that I had bought for the party and took out what I needed. Open the flowers up and lay them flat as shown. Go ahead and round the edges of the smaller napkin. (The larger ones can be done all at the same time after folding.) 

The next step is to fold the napkins back and forth as shown.  (This step is shown and described in detail on the other website.) Tie a string around the middle of the 'flower.' Now is the time to round the edges of the larger napkins. I don't have a picture of that either.. 

Then pull out the napkins to make the petals. They turn out pretty nice. I made several of them, orange and pink, to set around the room as extra decorations.

I also sewed the table topper that you see in the this picture. I don't have any pictures of the process, but I actually found the tutorial for them on the same website. I had not used my sewing machine yet, so I needed the tutorial, but it is really easy too. Dana-made-it is a great site! 

Here is my big baby reading to my little baby on her birthday.  

 They sure are cute aren't they? :)

Birthday Craft TWO

M&M Kid Candy Jars

Okay, so this idea naturally came from the mason jar idea and seeing some of the empty baby food jars being stored in my cabinet. But I also found this cool way to cover jar lids from DesignSponge. This link takes you to the directions for this project. I am still going to show my step by step as well, just because I want to. 

Obviously, I used baby food jars for this project which saved money because I just needed to save up Adley's baby food jars as she went through them. This did not take long. :) 

Alright, so here are the supplies for this project: 

1. Baby Food Jars 

2. GooGone 

3. Clorox 

4. Scrapbook Paper (thinner paper may work better)

5. ModPodge 

6. Ribbon

7. Pencil

8. Paintbrush

9. Scissors

10. Ruler

1. First step is to clean the baby food jars. I used GooGone to get the glue from the labels off the baby food jars. I then disinfected the jars with a little clorox. Some baby food jars hold the smell of the baby food. The clorox helps take care of this little problem. Make sure to do these steps in a well-ventilated area. Both of these products get VERY fume-y. You live, you learn.  

2. After you have cleaned all of your jars and let them dry, the fun part begins. Trace the lid on the back of your scrapbook paper with your pencil. (The paper I used was double sided.) You can't see the pencil line in this picture but it is there. From your traced circle, measure a bigger circle (height of the lid + 1/4" for wrapping over). Cut around the bigger circle. Since all of my jar lids were the same size, I just used the first one to trace and cut out the rest. Once you have your circles cut out, mark every approximate 1/4" around your circle. 

Then cut at every mark from edge to your mark for the smaller circle. I had already cut the slits in the picture above but thought you could see it better here. 

3. Now gluing begins.. Put ModPodge in the smaller circle as shown below. 

And affix the lid in place. I let it dry a little so it wasn't sliding all over the place while I was trying to glue the rest. 

4. Begin gluing strips 2 or 3 at a time and move around the lid clockwise. Here is where the thinner paper may come into play. I had to hold the glued strips and press them firmly as I went around to make sure they adhered to the lid. I think thinner paper would fold and glue easier than some scrapbook paper. 

Continue process all the way around the lid. I coated the paper to seal. 

Then flipped it over and coated top with ModPodge as well. Let dry. Notice my crafty ruler drying rack. 

After drying, fill jar with candy! :) Put the lid on and tie ribbon around the top of jar. 

Note: Baby food jar lids don't go back on very easily anyway... so with the added paper they are hard to get back on tightly. It is doable but get ready for a tad bit of frustration. 

Here is the cute finished product! 

Birthday Craft ONE

Candy Mason Jars

This is me at the start of my project. Well after collecting all of the necessary supplies. My supplies are 1. Variety of Scrapbook Paper 2. Cupcake and Circle Template (I made this in a word document and printed it out.) 3. Mason Jars 4. Ribbon 5. Mod Podge 6. Heart hole punch And a few other usual items: 7. Scissors 8. Paintbrush 9. pencil/pen

Oh wait one more, . 10. CHOCOLATE! Yes this is a necessary supply item for me. It helps me to mark the progress of my task. Work a little, eat a little.. I can find myself many an excuse to eat chocolate and this is just one of them. ;) hmm, maybe I should apply it to my blog posts.. then maybe I would post more often.. 

This is what the jar looks like close to the end of the project. There is this cupcake shop that opened up here recently when I was browsing around for ideas for birthday party favors. I got the idea to decorate a mason jar from their cute cupcake in a jar. I love mason jars :) 

So first job is to cut out the circles. I measured the inside of the top of the mason jar, it was pretty close to 2 inches. On the computer, I printed out a couple of circles with sizes close to 2 inch diameter and then tried them out to see which fit. 

I traced and cut out the circles. 

I had to play with the size of the cupcake too, just based it on what it looked like on the circles. 

Traced them on the back of the scrapbook paper and cut them all out and played with the colors, lining them up for easy gluing. I also punched out hearts and decided where to put them. 

ModPodge the top of the jar. It gets pretty self-explanatory from there. I used Mod Podge between each layer and on top to seal it. I didn't take the first two pictures in succession so that is why the colors do not match up. 

I let them dry and then tied ribbon around the lid of the jar. I also filled the jar with candy. These last few pictures also allow for a sneak peak into craft number 2! 

Birthday Baby!

My baby is 1! We had a little party for her over a month ago! I know I am SO late posting these.. My excuses: 1. Family in town 2. Baby's first stomach bug... ewh! 3. two trips. 4. I'm lazy. 

Here are some pictures from the day! :) Actually just pictures from Adley "eating" her cake, because that is really what first birthdays are all about, watching a baby dig into a yummy cake for the first time!  

She had fun playing with her cake. Didn't really eat much of it, just smooched it around. 

In the end, she pulled it into her lap!

Time is up! Really not sure how some ended up on that little foot.. 

Thanks again to everyone that joined us or thought about us that day! 

ADLEY had a blast :) Big smile! 

P.S. I got into this little chick's birthday party. I am hoping to post some pictures of a craft or two I did for her party. Hopefully, coming soon!