Coconut Almond Hot Chocolate

In honor of our little Tea Time get together at the Grand America Hotel, I decided to try and duplicate a delicious hot chocolate many of us ordered. 

Using THIS recipe for normal hot chocolate (slightly modified) and adding just two ingredients, I think it’s pretty yummy.  Just a hint of coconut flavor and a delicious almond taste.  I imagine you could probably modify THIS recipe as well, if you don’t have any sweetened condensed milk. 

 

Coconut Almond Hot Chocolate

1 can sweetened condensed milk

1/2 c. unsweetened cocoa powder

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

1/8 tsp. salt

1 c. hot water

2 1/2 c. milk

1 can coconut milk

3/4 tsp. almond extract

 

Whisk all ingredients together in a large soup pot and heat through over medium heat. Do not boil. Serves 6-8.

*To cut back on calories, you could replace the coconut milk with regular milk and use coconut extract to taste.  I also think that if you do use the can of coconut milk and still feel you want more coconut flavor, again the coconut extract is a good choice. 

Enjoy!

Cupcakes with Bunting

I recently saw a beautiful 4th of July cake on stitch/craft HERE (she links to her sources where she got the idea from as well). 

I loved that little bunting on top of the cake so much, that when my friend had her baby last week, I made her some cupcakes to bring over and meet the new wee one. 

I think they turned out pretty cute! I used a recipe found HERE for Red Velvet Cupcakes. 

The cupcakes were seriously yummy and moist. 

I think next time if I made these for a new baby’s arrival, I would use blue food coloring for a boy and red for a girl.   I still need some practice on the frosting.  I think it was too thin and I needed a larger opening on my point. 

It’s like a little party on a plate.

Have a happy weekend, everyone! 

(don’t hate me) 3 Silhouette Projects

Happy April Fool’s!  No silly posts here, but there have been some fun ones out there today.  My favorite was on Crafterhours :). 

Just so you know, I get no compensation whatsoever for posting projects I use my silhouette on.  My husband bought it for me for Christmas, and since I love it and it makes projects easier, I post about it!  All the things I show you today could be done with freezer paper, or just tracing your fabric/paper—it just takes a little more work.

First off, I’ve seen these “peeps” shirts everywhere, and have always liked them!  I had some saved that used freezer paper and paint, but used my silhouette to cut them out of fabric. 

B was afraid of our dog behind the fence, so she opted out of the photo shoot here.

Gotta love bed head!

Life is sure hard as a two year old!

Trying her best not to smile!  She LOVED her shirt, though.  So did the boys.

I used brown paint to color in the eyes and nose on the boys’ shirts, plus brown fabric for the words.  If doing that, just remember to put paper between the shirt layers!  I always seem to forget that and thank my lucky stars that it didn’t soak through yet! 

They looked way too girly before using brown, and I knew they wouldn’t wear them if they looked girly!

Next is just some small goodie bags for some family or friends.  Not too much chocolate, but it hits the spot, and fits in the budget!

You can just fold a paper in half and trace the bunny shape to cut out.  I have found a lot of templates for these bunnies online by doing a quick search for it.

The healthy option!

And lastly, I have 3 nieces from the same family all having a birthday next week, all two days apart:). 

I boxed them all up together (because I’m a little lame and didn’t want to wrap three tiny presents).  I taped the lip gloss and hair clips onto the tissue paper though, so that when they open it up it won’t look bad.

**A few of you have asked how the Heat n’ Bond works—it works wonderfully if the fabric is thin.  I used thicker fabric on the flowers and it had a harder time cutting through it all, but I just used scissors and cut anything that didn’t work. 

How I use the Heat n’ Bond with my Silhouette:  Iron it onto the back of the fabric, peel back the paper.  Press the fabric onto the sticky mat.  Set the speed to 2 or 3, and the thickness to 33 (highest, I believe).  Use the pink blade.  I hope that helps!  That is what works for me, at least!

Have a Happy Weekend!  It’s finally warming up here and has been BEAUTIFUL!!!

Rum Cinnamon Almonds or Maple Cinnamon Pecans

In case you missed this post over at KOJO designs, here it is!

I’m not going to lie--when they asked me to participate, I was really stuck.  I was trying so hard to think of something I could craft that would be useful to my hubby.  I thought about a guitar strap since he’s in a band, but generally speaking a lot of guys wouldn’t need that (unless your hubby rocks out on Guitar Hero).  I thought about a tool belt because he’s always complaining that they don’t make them tough enough (he’s a general contractor and wears a tool belt all day).  Well, my little machine was not going to be able to sew anything tough enough to last him in his profession! 

But what guy doesn’t love food?  My husband really loves rum flavoring and maple flavoring, so I decided to incorporate that into a recipe for Rum and Maple flavored nuts.  Candied nuts with a harder outer shell normally call for an egg white, but other than that, I added what I thought would taste good! 

The only thing you have to interchange is the rum extract and maple extract.

Rum Cinnamon Almonds or Maple Cinnamon Pecans

1 egg white

1/2 c. brown sugar

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/8 tsp. nutmeg

1/4 tsp. salt

1 tsp. rum extract or maple extract

3 cups natural whole almonds, or 4 cups whole pecans.

**If using almonds, toast them at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes.  This will allow for a crunchier almond.**

You can click here for a printable recipe.

Directions:

Beat the egg white until foamy and frothy as pictured.

To that, add the rest of the ingredients minus the nuts, and mix.

Mix in your almonds or pecans. 

Line a cookie sheet with foil and spray generously with non-stick cooking spray.  For the almonds, I used a slotted spoon to remove from the coating, and with the pecans I just dumped everything onto the sprayed foil. I like that they are a little different from each other, but do it however you’d like.

Spread them in a single layer on the sprayed foil.  Bake at 300 degrees for 15 minutes, stir, and continue baking for another 15-20 minutes.  The pecans bake faster than the almonds, even with pre-toasting the almonds.  I sprinkled the almonds with sugar once removing from the oven.  I didn’t do that with the pecans, but again, do what you feel would be yummy!

Bag or place in a cute container and gift to that special guy in your life!

Click here to download the labels for the nuts.  I mixed and matched them as well, so you can make Maple Cinnamon Almonds, or Rum Cinnamon Pecans. 

Guest Posting at kojo designs!

Have you heard that kojo designs is doing a whole gifts for guys series?  I was really excited when Kirsten and Jordan asked me to participate.  If you haven’t been to kojo designs before, they have a really cute, fun blog with many great tutorials and other awesomeness. 

Guys can be so hard to buy presents for!   So be sure to check out everyone’s posts on the subject!  Food is always a safe bet with my man.  I’d love if you stopped by to check out my recipes to make Rum Cinnamon Almonds and Maple Cinnamon Pecans.  I’ve included a link to download the nut labels to make it a very easy gift!

Click here for the how-to and recipes!

Gingersnap Cookies with Pumpkin Dip

I'll be honest--the first time I saw this dip sitting at a church meeting in the middle of some scrumptious cookies, I thought, "Gross--that looks like fry sauce!"  But once I dipped my chewy gingersnaps into that pumpkin dip, I was sold.





The lady who brought them gave me permission to post the dip recipe.  She found it online and I can find many similar ones, but not any that are exactly this recipe.  I'm sure you can use any recipe with cream cheese and pumpkin and it would taste great!

Pumpkin Pie Dip:

• 1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened
• 2 cups confectioners' sugar
• 1 cup canned pumpkin
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
• Gingersnap cookies

Directions
In a large bowl, beat cream cheese and powdered sugar until smooth. Beat in the pumpkin, sour cream, cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice and ginger until blended. Serve with gingersnaps. Refrigerate leftovers. Makes 4 cups.

I use this recipe for my gingersnaps.  They are pretty good, but I’m always on the lookout to try a different one.  Oh, and on that cookie recipe, I only bake mine for 7 minutes—maybe my oven is hot, but they wouldn’t be chewy if I baked them for as long as that recipe says!

**Like I said, I do have some tutorials in the works, but with all the busy-ness of Thanksgiving and Christmas, we’ll see when I get around to it!  But the baking?  That is one thing that cannot be skipped around the Holidays!  I hope you’ll forgive the non-sewing/craft related posts this week!**

Homemade Butter and Roll-a-Turkey

We are having Thanksgiving dinner at our house this year and I wanted to have a couple activities for the kids to do. 

Our local library had an activity last year making butter.  My kids thought it was very neat to make their own, and it was so yummy!

While we were there making our butter at the library, one of the other kids was shaking too vigorously and broke his baby food jar, but the librarian said he was the first one to do that all day.  So I guess I’m not recommending a glass jar, but it’s what we’ll be using. I think using the wooden ball will help in the jar not breaking.

You’ll need to have a plastic or glass jar, plus a marble or small wooden bead (mine was 16 mm).  I couldn’t find any marbles in my town, but I did have some wooden beads that I bought for another project that worked great.

All you have to do is pour some cream into the jar about 1/3 of the way full, add a shake or two of salt if desired, and place the marble or wooden bead into your jar. 

Then replace the lid tightly and shake shake shake!!!  Shake it until the bead or marble stops to move around.  It took me about 5 minutes.  It really doesn’t take long, but when my now 5 year old was just 4 last year, he did get a little tired of it but we just took turns…

until it was this:

Yum yum!  Remove the marble or bead, and label the jar.  I’m excited that we’ll be having homemade butter for our Thanksgiving dinner, made by the kiddos!  You can chill it in the fridge before serving if you want it a little harder.  Store leftovers in the fridge as well. 

I made some labels to put on the jars and set out on the table to be cuter than a baby food jar :).  Just glue or tape the label on.  You can add some burlap for a layering effect (I didn’t have any) and tie some twine around it.  I made the labels so you could read the homemade butter part on both sides of the baby food jar.

You can download the homemade butter labels here.  I printed mine onto colored speckled paper.

 

For our other activity, I used something that my son brought home from school called Roll-a-Turkey. The paper he brought home was from here on littlegiraffes.com.   Though still very cute, I thought maybe it could use a little update, so I redesigned it for our Thanksgiving dinner next week and will just print them out for all the kids to play while the dinner is prepared. 

Click here for the color version:

Click here for the black and white version:

Hopefully those two activities will find their way to someone who can use them next week!________________________________________________________________________

Shop for the holidays!  Sewing machine or camera pendants available in my shop!

Brassy Apple giveaway ends today at 5:00 pm, MST.  Click here to enter!