St. Patrick's Day Decor

Hello all, Sara here.

It's March, can you believe it?  I can't.  The start of March means less (well hopefully less) than two months until Baby Brother's debut.  It also means spring is right around the corner and St. Patrick's Day is coming up.

Until this year I didn't have any intentions of decorating for St. Patrick's Day.  The last couple of years we have gone down to the St. Patrick's Day parade with playgroup, but other than that I haven't gotten into the holiday. Well thanks again to Pinterest and all the fun things I saw on there, I just knew I would end up making a couple of things to decorate our front entryway.

Here are all the decorations, I came up with.  I kind of pulled things from all over the house to bring this all together, but I am really loving how it came out!

The St. Patrick's Day printable came from Funky Polkadot Giraffe (there are a lot of fun printables on this site!) and was the starting point for everything else.  I loved the thought of using rainbows along with the different shades of green.

I made the topiary on a whim.  I had seen a shirt made with a rainbow using scrap fabric and loved it.  I searched my stash and luckily had all the colors of the rainbow.  I used Heat n' Bond to put it together and simply hot glued the dowel rod to the back of the rainbow.  I used some gold coins from my son's treasure chest and some left over yarn from the wreath to complete my pot of gold topiary.

The wreath is based again on one I had seen on Pinterest (I am on that website a little too much apparently!).  I made a smaller version of the rainbow and attached it to the wreath with a hair clip.  (I have plans to change the wreath around after St. Patrick's Day, so stay tuned.)  The shamrocks are made of felt using this tutorial from Sugar Bee Crafts.  Again I used hair clips so they can easily be removed or moved around.

I loved the splashes of color with all the green. Now our house is ready for St. Patrick's Day!!

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