Broccoli Potato Soup

Hi All, Beth here, I haven't posted in a while, but I made some delicious soup tonight that I though I would share. We were out of town this weekend and I didn't feel like going to the grocery store today, so I started looking to see what I could come up with using what I already had in the house and decided on soup.

I just kind of made it up as I went along which is pretty common practice for me and I thought it turned out well enough that I would share. Pinkerton and my hubby loved it as well and it was only about 6 WW points plus for a cup for anyone who is interested.

Ingredients:

2 cans (28oz) of chicken broth

1 cup chopped potatoes

1 1/2 cups chopped broccoli

3/4 cup of milk

2 Tbs. butter

2 Tbs. flour

3/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese

salt and pepper

Instructions:

Chop potatoes into bite size pieces, put in a pot with the chicken broth and bring to a boil. Let these cook about 10 minutes or until they start to get tender. While the potatoes are cooking, chop the broccoli into small pieces and make sure you keep all the little scraps that fall off while you are cutting. Put the broccoli in with the potatoes and cook another 10 minutes.

In a small sauce pan make a roux with the butter and flour and then slowly whisk in the milk and cook over low heat until thick whisking often. Mix the thickened milk mixture into the pot with the chicken broth, potatoes and broccoli and bring it all to a simmer. Then add the cheese and stir. Let simmer for another 10 minutes or until thick. Salt and pepper to taste. I served it with corn bread.

Like I said, Pinkerton gobbled it up! Hope you enjoy!

Too Short Shirt to Dress

Good Afternoon, it is Jennifer. I am here to share a recent transformation I did for little Cupcake.

I ran across a tutorial on Make It and Love It, a blog I follow and love, on how to repurpose a shirt into a dress and decided I really needed to try it out! The dress she made was just way too cute and I couldn't resist. I found a shirt in Cupcake's closet that fit, but was just a little too short. I wish I would have taken a before picture, but I totally forgot. I had some fabric my Mom picked up for me (thanks Mom!) at Tuesday Morning, of all places, that I hadn't found a use for yet. I took a look, and thought it would match perfectly with her too-short shirt.

Looking super cool in her shades and new dress

Ashley's tutorial was great! It was easy to follow and provided lots of pictures that helped guide me through the process. She even taught me what a french seam was and how easy it was to do! I did struggle a little with getting the pleats right - I am not experienced when it comes to pleats. Because I struggled with the pleats, I changed how I attached the skirt to the shirt. Ashley's tutorial directs you to sew the skirt wrong side to the right side of the shirt, allowing the top of the pretty pleats you made show. It looks super cute on Ashley's version, but I realized mine would not look that cute. My pleats were not as pretty. So, I attached the skirt right sides together instead. I also decided to have the sash tie on the side, rather than the back, just for fun.

Perfect twirling skirt!

And that was it. A too-short shirt, transformed into a super cute dress! The first time I put it on my little darling, she said, "I look pretty in mine dress." Yes darling you do look very pretty :-)

Showing of the back

She insisted on wearing her necklace with the new dress

Fancy Football Shirts

Andrea here! We are big Colts fans in this house and that extends to our two girls as well. They both jump and yell and scream just like Mommy and Daddy when the Colts are playing. We went downtown for the SuperBowl festivities a few weeks ago and that was when I realized that my kids had outgrown their current Colts shirts. Time remedy that! Unfortunately, the only options that were left at the stores were boy shirts. Both girls scoffed at the idea of wearing a "boy" shirt (too bad they were with me or they would have never known), so I bought one size up for next year and offered to make them more "girly." I asked my 5 year old what that meant to her and of course it meant pink and sparkles. I was at Michaels picking up a few other things anyway and found some supplies that I thought would work well. Pink and sparkles it is! Here are the shirts before, washed and ready to go with wax paper inside so the shirt wouldn't stick together from the paint:



Our supplies, pink puffy paint and spray-on glitter:

My 2 year old's shirt, before:

I began by using the puffy paint to make an outline:

Originally this was all I was going to do but my 5 year old suggested coloring in the entire horseshoe and adding sparkles all over the shirt and once big sis said it, little sis wanted it:

The spray-on sparkles were pretty neat:

First shirt, complete:

The shirt for my 5 year old, before:

Once again, filling in the white areas with pink at her suggestion:

For this, I put paper around on 4 sides to make a straight box around the logo:

And again around this logo (I also put some on my fingers and smeared it on the partial black horseshoe on above):

Second shirt, complete:

Two "boy" Colts shirts, transformed:

My kids love them and they'll be all ready for next season!

a heart in a cake

So with baby Gia turning one, I began thinking about what special touches I wanted to do for her celebration. It was modest celebration, but wanted it to have a few fun memorable things.

The theme, 'hearts', sprung out of my frugal side. I knew that her birthday just 3 days after valentine's day, I'd be in no shortage of all things 'heart' and likely deeply discounted to move off the store shelves.

So when I saw this cake while perusing pinterest one evening, I couldn't stop wondering if I had an inner 'cake boss' that I could channel to pull this one off. THANK GOODNESS for step by step, awesome tutorials via the world wide web for allowing me to explore my skills!

My husband was telling me how delicious it was and I had to confess two words. Duncan. Hines.

So my inner domestic diva was only able to half execute this time since I wasn't willing to spend the time making the cakes & icing from scratch this go around. Next time however, I just may!

Another favorite addition to our celebration was this collage of her first year, fittingly, in the shape of a large number 1.

It was this, that made this momma sentimental, realizing that I have a beautiful young lady that will toddle today and soar tomorrow. #savorthemoments

Amanda

Big Boy Room...The Curtains!

My favorite part of the new big boy room is the curtains.  I really wanted to incorporate the road / car theme into the curtains, but wasn't sure how I was going to do that at first.  Then I thought about trying to make a road go across the curtains that then flowed into the vinyl stickers I had found.  At first I thought about making the curtains, but luckily found some at Target that worked out perfectly (saving me lots of time too).

Here is how I added the embellishments to the store bought curtains.

First gather your supplies:

Curtains (either home made or store bought), fabric for the road, and your normal sewing supplies.  (In this picture I show white fabric paint, but then after some experimenting I ended up using something different which I will talk about later.)

First I measured the width of the road on the vinyl stickers that I had bought.  I cut out strips of fabric a half inch bigger than that measurement.  I folded down both side of the fabric 1/4" and pressed to make a clean edge.

Then I realized that one strip of fabric wasn't going to fit the entire length of the curtain so I had to sew two strips together.  With right sides together sewing with a 1/4" seam allownce.

Press the seam open for a clean look.

Then press the top and bottom edges down again.

Here is what it looks like from the front, not too noticeable!

Lay the "road" out where you want it along the curtain.  My curtains had a hemline that worked perfectly to use as my guide.

I left about 1/2" overhang along one of the edges.

Then pinned the road down, leaving the excess only on one side.

I trimmed the excess off, and left a 1/2" to fold over the edge.

Top stitch the road to the curtain using a 1/8" seam.

With the two end edges, I folded them over 1/4", pressed, then folded that over the edge of the curtain to secure the raw edges.

Sew this down to finish off the edge.

The road is almost done!!  Here are the two curtains, they just need a little detail work.

To mimic the vinyl, I measured the white dashes and the space between them so that I knew how big to make them.

At first I thought I would use white puffy fabric paint, but I didn't like how it came out.  My mom suggested I use white iron on patches, since they already had the adhesive on them.  They ended up working out perfectly.

I cut the patches to the desired width.

Then cut them to the desired length.  I cut up a lot of these just to make sure I had enough.

I used a fabric marker to draw a line along where I wanted to iron on the patches.

Start the first patch along the line and about 1/2" from the edge.

From the first one I used the measurement I took at the beginning and started ironing on the next patch.

Repeat this step, until you have finished the entire length of the curtain.

The road is complete!  Now just add some cars and you are done.

I made the car out of felt using different Cricut templates I had cut out.  I used Wonder Under on the felt so that all I had to do was iron them onto the curtain.  The cars took a little bit of time, but I really liked how they turned out.

Hang up your new curtain and admire your work!

A quick note about the road on the wall: it's actually fabric!!!  I saw this tutorial on Positively Splendid (a blog that I love!) and knew I wanted to try this technique out.  It worked out perfectly and I am thinking of adding more....someday.