Ice Cream Ornaments

Mom's annual cookie exchange theme for this year was Ice Cream Social.  She made mint chocolate chip, peppermint and vanilla ice cream in addition to chocolate bars (that come from mars!), white chocolate cranberry cookies and peppermint cookies.  It was a sweets feast complimented by mini meatballs, baked brie with cranberry filling, cheese and crackers, taco bites, veggies and dip, hot apple cider and wine, wine, wine.

Mom starts thinking about party favors in July and this year we decided on ice cream ornaments.  I looked at several styles of handmade ornaments and decided to use this idea from the Icing Designs blog.  The end result was a quick and cute holiday ice cream ornament.

Mom's Exploding Visit to SanFran

Mom's bags were packed the same day my brother and I asked her to visit - woah!

Mom had never been to San Francisco, let alone Northern California, and, needless to say, she had a blast!  Two weeks was clearly not enough time but it was enough time for her to enjoy a visit with two of her kids and relax from a crazy year.  What better way to remember her time here than scrapbooking her visit?  An exploding box! 

I found the tutorial from the Glitter Adventure blog.  At first it seemed a little intimidating with all of the steps but once I had the materials, the base was easily created in very little time!  I think the hardest part was picking out which pictures to use.  For a first time exploding box, it came out to be very cute . . . 

. . . and Mom loved it!

Simple Chocolate Treats

I am a simpleton.

The almond joys I made a few months ago turned out gigantic and were difficult to eat without making a gigantic mess so I decided the next go would be something bite sized.  These turned out to be perfect.  They take two bites (unless you're my husband who pops the whole thing in his mouth) and are just as satisfying as the "real" thing.

1. Lined mini baking cups with melted chocolate
2. Filled with coconut filling using a small cookie dough scoop
3. Placed one slightly roasted almond in each cup
4. Topped with ~1 teaspoon of melted chocolate
5. Let candies set in refridgerator

This recipe is very, very easy to make and I found it on the Greens and Chocolate blog.

But now what do I do with leftover chocolate??  More marshmallows!  These cute candy cane marshmallow treats came from the Liv Life blog.

I also went back to stuffed, dipped marshmallows.  I stuffed the marshmallows with larger chunks of crushed candy cane, dipped in leftover chocolate and rolled in smaller crushed candy cane.  It's a peppermint frenzy!

More chocolate, still?  No problem!  Husband and I are fans of chocolate dipped pretzels.  I still had toffee chips from my failed attempt at homemade twix and my last marshmallow frenzy and leftover pecans from Thanksgiving - perfect for chocolate dipped pretzel embellishments!
I chose salted versus unsalted pretzels.  I really like the salty n' sweet mix and these mini pretzels are perfect for satisfying a mini sweet craving.

Stuffed & Dipped Marshmallows and Chocolate Brownie Balls

It's almost Halloween and my sister, her boyfriend and friend are coming to visit.  It's not a visit without some sweets so following the success of the snickers, I wanted to try other things.  I recently sent a friend some stuffed marshmallows from the Ghirardelli Chocolate Festival.  I had never had these before and he told me they tasted great, so why not make them myself?

These are so easy to do and do not use a lot of chocolate for the dipping.  I had leftover chocolate candy melts from some cake pops I had made, M&Ms from my standing-in-line-at-store-snacky feeling, chocolate chips from the snickers bars and toffee bits from the "fancy" twix I unsuccessfully attempted.  Perfect, all I needed were marshmallows.

So I adopted these instructions from the Dip It In Chocolate blog.

Materials:
knife
chocolate candy melts
marshmallows
goodies to stuff marshmallows with

1. Lay out your marshmallows and goodies to stuff them with.

2. Cut out a piece of the center of the marshmallows and put them to the side.

3. Stuff them!  I started with two M&Ms to a marshmallow but later added a third.  I used two-three chocolate chips and a sprinkle of the toffee bits, just enough to stuff them below the cut line. 

4. Place the cut pieces of marshmallow on top of the marshmallow.  It was sticky so I picked it up with the tip of the knife and squished the top of the marshmallow over it so the cut pieces could "adhere" back to the rest of the marshmallow.  Very simple to do.

5. Dip away!  To differentiate between the toffee and M&M, after dipping them in chocolate I dipped them into the toffee bits, also added a cute touch to the marshmallows.

6. Set aside and allow the chocolate to settle.  I didn't put them in the refrigerator right away.  Instead, I worked on dipping brownie balls!

Brownie balls - simple, simple, simple to make.  Bake up some brownies, cut them up, roll them into balls.  They are moist enough that you do not need to add any frosting but I did add a 1/4 cup of vanilla for taste.  I am definitely not a master at chocolate dipping but found this technique to be helpful.

Stuffed-dipped marshmallows, chocolate dipped brownies, salted caramels, Caneles and Benziger port night at the Neilans.

Homemade Snickers

I came across this link for homemade candy bars on Huffington Post and thought I would give it a try.  I started with snickers bars, thinking that because they are my dad's favorite perhaps I could send some out to him if they turned out delicious.


I searched around for other snickers recipes, curious to see what others have done but they were all the same.  For whatever reason, I settled on a recipe from the BrownEyed Baker.  Making these turned out to be a lot simpler than I had initially expected and they taste fantastic and exactly like a snickers bar.

Upcycled Shopping Bag

I'm getting around to setting up my work station and realized that I do not have a small trash bin anymore.  Floor space is limited so I needed to get a little creative . . . 

We had our kitchen utensil rail from the previous place hanging around so I decided to put it to use in the work room.  The intent was to use it to hold all of my cutting tools but I have since found a really great n' old medicine cabinet from the flea market for that.  So now what?  No trash bin, limited floor space - maybe I'll hang a trash bag.  But that makes me feel trashy so I'll sew some fabric around it and make it cute  :)

I'm no professional so I needed a little guidance in what others have done when working with plastic.  I found a tutorial on how to make a plastic-lined snack baggy but I didn't feel as though I needed to iron the plastic and I wasn't looking to use my trash bag for anything more than scrap fabric and paper.  The tutorial is still really cute and a project I might try down the road. 

I ended up going with a standard lined bag, just lined with plastic:

The plastic bag is from TJMaxx and it says it would like to thank me for recycling their bag, knowing that I love the planet.

I added boxed corners, just to add a little character . . .

With the help of some great tutorials: Lazy Girl and Jessab Crafts

Next on the list - hanging fabric holders for scissors, rotary cutter and other tools.

New uses for old things?

Thanks to my sister's sisterly antics at the bridal shower that she, my mom and friends threw for me nearly two years ago, I am now the proud owner of many old, wooden thread spools.  These spools are totally neat and I had a project in mind to make some kind of tapestry out of them but thanks to Pinterest, I am finding more and more new uses for these old spools.

The first project I have started are simple purse hooks.  Inspired by what I saw people using them for as jewelry hooks, I thought I could use the larger ones as purse hooks at the entryway of our house.

Very simple:  From JoAnn Fabric I bought two, unfinished 3x5 pieces of wood, two colors of acrylic paint and a package of D-Strap hangers.  I attached the hangers to back of the wood, painted them and let set overnight to dry although the acrylic paint I purchased dries quickly. 

This morning, I applied wood glue to one side of the spools and placed a heavy book over them for about an hour.  I do need to purchase some 1.5 inch nails because I want to place additional security on the spools to the block by hammering two nails from the backside of the block into the spool.  Once I do this, I will start using the purse hooks.