I Love You Because…

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Rita

I saw this idea the other day when I was out shopping for things for our princess party and I fell in love with it. So I decided to make one for me, and one to share with you!

I tend two of my grandchildren a couple of times a week and the 6 year old is just starting to read and she laughed and laughed when she figured out what I had written. For some reason it really tickled her funny bone. I thought this might be fun to write something different every day.

You will need a frame with a glass front and a dry erase marker.

I did mine in an 8 x 10 frame, but you can use whatever size you wish. You do not want to go too small because then there is not a whole lot of room to write the “because”s. You will need to print it off;

To print, just right click and go to copy. Open your favorite program like Word or a Presentations program, right click again and go to paste.
Insert print into your frame, tie a cute ribbon around the frame and tie the marker onto the frame so that anyone can write their special message.

Place it where everyone will see it…like in the middle of all these goodies on the kitchen counter! :)

Have fun with this and let your imagination and your gratitude go wild!

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Ruffled Quilt

Posted on January 26, 2012 by Rita

My daughter made this darling quilt for her daughter and had it all quilted up cute. All that need to be done was to put the binding on and it would be finished. Easy, right? Well not to her. She struggled to get it finished and finally just brought it to me to complete it. Isn’t that what moms are for? I really didn’t mind, because I just worked on it one evening while we were watching a ball game. She designed this pattern from a couple of other quilts that she had seen, and of course I loved all the ruffles!(I cannot believe that we are taking pictures outside in the middle of January in Utah and there is no snow!)

She started with 8 1/2 ” squares of fabric. Then she cut 2″ x width of fabric strips for the ruffles. She then cut the strips in half so they were about 21-22″ long. Gather each of the strips and sew them onto half of the squares. She randomly placed 5 minky flowers on 5 of the blocks with no ruffles. She stitched 1/4″ from edges of flowers and also from the edges of the centers of the flowers. She then laid it out on the floor and placed every other block with ruffles and each row had the ruffles turning the opposite way. Then simply sew the blocks together and then sew the strips together. I think that her design turned out absolutely darling. She put a minky backing on it so it is such a cozy quilt for her little girl. The edges of all the ruffles and the flower centers are raw, so that when you wash it, it will rag out and be so soft and cuddly!

I think that I might need to get another quilt project going after seeing how darling this one turned out! I loved the fact that she designed this all by herself, it tends to make a mother right proud! :)

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Magical cookie Wands!

Posted on January 24, 2012 by Rita

I made these for our princess party and they look so stinking cute in this little pink bucket! I have been making these for many years. They are great as a cookie bouquet for someone special or for a fun centerpiece!Do you want to know why they are magical?

Because there is no baking involved!

All you need is the striped shortbread cookies with a hole in the middle, some gumdrop or Ju Ju hearts and wooden skewers! Push one of the hearts down onto the skewer, then the cookie, followed by another heart. So stinking easy and so cute.Then tie a bunch of ribbons below the gumdrop and you have a Magical Cookie Wand. If you want to make this into a cookie flower bouquet just add green ribbons or tape silk or paper leaves to the “stem”. Add a note that says, “Love you Bunches”Put into a container with some floral foam and grasses or moss etc.

It doesn’t get much easier than this to make a “Magical Moment” for someone special in your life!

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Princess Party

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Rita

We had our little princess party last week and the girls (my granddaughters) LOVED it. They were so cute and they all get along so well.

I made these tutu’s

a few days ago, I found this fun party pack with the tiara’s, jewelry, wand, flashing microphone, banners, and lip gloss! It was perfect for what I wanted. When the girls got here, the very first thing they did was to to get all dressed up like little princesses!Aren’t they adorable?!Then they each strutted their stuff! Some sang,Some were coy,And some were practicing their model poses!We had a royal lunch with heart shaped tea sandwiches, chips, heart jello jigglers and a royal drink (cherry 7-up). We learned how to use our napkins, sip our drinks, be polite, and stick out our pinkie finger to show how posh we were! We had these princess cupcakes for dessert.After lunch we played pin the frog on the princess, fairy-fairy-princess (duck-duck-goose), we colored paper dolls and did a princess maze, then we practiced walking and sitting like a princess and worked on some of our dance and twirling moves!

After we had worn ourselves out, or at least grandma, we read Fancy Nancy and learned how to be posh and very FANCY!

When it was time to go home they all got to fill up their goodie bags with some yummy treats and goodies and Magical cookie wands!

It was a great party and they were all so cute and so sweet that it was a joy to have them and to spend the afternoon all together. There is nothing that beats being a grandma!

They are blowing a kiss to all of you and hoping that you can be princess for a day too!

With love from,

the “Queen of Everything” and the “Princesses of Quite a Lot!”

Recipe Book Dividers

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Rita

It is January and I am still trying to do a little bit of organizing, I had this BIG stack of recipes that I had printed from different websites, pages that I had ripped out of magazines and some recipes that were handwritten by myself or given to me by a friend. So I decided that I really needed to get them all organized, since they are recipes that I use and I was getting tired of flipping through the whole entire stack to find one recipe! As I was looking through these recipes I noticed that some of them had been printed 3 years ago! So I would say that it was definitely time to get my act together. :)

I went to Costco and bought this plain white binder that you can put a page in the front of it and also in the spine. This is the 2″ size.Then I went to an office supply store to get these sheet protector dividers. If you put all of your recipes in sheet protectors like I did then you will need these sheet protector dividers or you will not be able to see the tabs.I then designed these dividers that I put in the sheet protector divider pages with the tabs. I used the “My Recipes” for the cover of my book and I created a spine title for the 2″ size binder. There are tabs for each of the different titles and I also created some blank ones if you want to write in a category other than what I have included. These are the different categories pages that I made for my book.

If you would like to organize your recipes, here are the page dividers for you to print. To print, right click and go to copy then open your favorite program like Word or Presentations, right click again and go to paste. These are in 8 1/2″ x 11″ format to fit in the standard size sheet protectors.

There are quite a few categories here so just pick the ones that you need and print them out for your own personalized book.

Here are the tabs and the spine title. Just print, cut out and fold tabs in half and insert.I hope that you can use these and that you can get all of your recipes organized. It really is a great feeling!

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Winter Blossoms

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Rita

We have had a very mild winter here in Utah with hardly any snow. We have had unseasonably warm weather and it seems like it should be spring, not the dead of winter! But all good things must come to an end and the forecast for the next week is snow and rain almost every day, with winter storm warnings. Ugh! I got way too spoiled with the good weather and do not look forward to the cold so I decided to bring some of that spring time feeling into my kitchen.

This arrangement sits right behind my kitchen sink and I love how much it brightens up that corner! Every time I walk into my kitchen this is the focal point.

My next door neighbor and great friend, Susan, works at a greenhouse and she lets me know what is blooming and when to plant different plants and how to fertilize etc, etc, etc. I really do not have the best green thumb but with her help I am learning a lot about different plants and how to take care of a lot of different flowers.

She told me about this pink plant and that it was in bloom right now, so I went down to see her at work and I got this “cyclamen” flower. Isn’t it beautiful? The blooms do not last for very long so I will have to enjoy it while they do. There are several new buds coming so I should be able to enjoy it for a little while.

I also saw this fun heart topiary and thought how cute they would look together for Valentines Day!

I tied a couple of ribbons into bows and made a vinyl with “Hugs & Kisses” to put on a tile to finish off this little winter arrangement.

I love the sunlight of the morning coming through my south window in this picture, it really does make me happy! Now I just need to look at this picture during the coming week when all the snow storms are here (Ugh) and remember that spring can be here in my kitchen!

What do you do to chase away the winter blues?

Headband Tutu’s

Posted on January 16, 2012 by Rita

I saw these made up at a boutique last fall, and thought what a cute idea it would be for my three granddaughters! They love to dress up and pretend that they are princesses, so I thought they might love to play in these little tutu’s.

They were really fun to make and you could do any color combination that you would like. There is also no sewing involved! So, who wants to make a tutu?

First, you will need one of these stretchy elastic headbands or you can just buy the elastic and make it into a headband. I found white and pink ones.

Then you need whatever color tulle you like. I chose white, light pink, and dark pink. I just used the tulle that comes on a bolt and all I had to do is cut the lengths that I needed. My granddaughters are still fairly small, so I used a 36 inch length and when they are tied they are about 17 inches long. The skirts are also are pretty full, so they are not quite that long when they are wearing them. You can make them as long or as short as you would like. Fold the length of tulle in half and put the loop through one of the holes like this:

Then put the ends, through the loop:and pull tight like so.

I skipped every other hole and tied a different color in it,

repeating until I had gone all the way around.

Then do one more row of tulle. I went directly above the first row and tied the same color as I had on the bottom row. You can mix it up if you wanted to, but I like the look of the colors being a little bit more grouped.

Then I went in between the rows of tulle and tied different lengths and colors of ribbon the same way as I had tied the tulle. Tie the ribbons all the way around mixing the different ribbons as you go. You could add flowers or beads or buttons on the ribbons at this point but I felt like these were great just the way they were.

So cute and no sewing!

We are going to have a Princess Tea Party this week, so I will show you what they look like on the little girls after we have our party.

Breakfast for Dinner!

Posted on January 14, 2012 by Rita

Do you ever have breakfast for dinner? The other night that is what I did and my husband kept telling my how good it was! I guess that I need to do that more often! I saw this idea out there somewhere in blog land, but I honestly cannot find where I saw it. So I decided to just make up my own recipe. Do you ever do that? I am kind of a dump person when it comes to cooking. I add a little of this and little of that until I think it looks/tastes good, and I must of had just the right portions, because this recipe really seemed to hit the spot! I made Croissant French Toast! Whoever thought up this idea was a genius!

I added some frozen fruit to mine along with, yes, canned whipped cream! It was so yum!

My husband is more of a maple syrup kind of guy, so I just sprinkled a little powdered sugar on his, before he smothered it with syrup! I added a ham and cheese omelet to round out the meal. And like I said, it really hit the spot!

Does anyone else out there want to make croissant french toast? Your taste buds with thank you if you do!

Croissant French Toast

1 egg

½ cup milk

2 croissants split in half

1 tsp cinnamon-divided (or to taste)

Mix egg and milk together until well blended in a flat bowl.

Add ½ tsp cinnamon to egg mixture.

Dip both sides of the croissant into egg mixture.

Cook on a hot griddle until egg is cooked and slightly browned, repeat for other side.

(I only added ½ of the cinnamon and dipped two slices then added the other ½ before dipping the next two slices. I like quite a bit of cinnamon, so you may have to adjust how much you use for your own taste.)

Top with powdered sugar, fruit and whipped cream, or your favorite syrup.

Serving size: 2

Prescription Fulfillment Issues

Posted on January 12, 2012 by Rita

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Walgreens for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

My husband and I were just recently made aware of a situation that is going on with some of our pharmacy providers and wanted to pass this information, that could be important, to you and your family.

Express Scripts is a pharmacy provider for some health insurance policies. You can find your provider by looking on the back of your insurance card. For instance, our pharmacy provider for our insurance is Caremark.

Express Scripts has elected as of Dec 31^st 2011, to break their relationship with Walgreens Pharmacy and the consumer is the one who loses when the pharmacy providers put their profits ahead of our convenience and safety. Take a look at this link: Walgreens and Express Script

Walgreens offers more 24-hour and drive-thru pharmacies than any other pharmacy in the country. Obviously anyone who has Express Scripts as their pharmacy provider has just had their options considerably limited for the fulfillment of their prescriptions. It appears that some pharmacy providers are making more profit from mail order than letting you go to your local pharmacy!

The problem with mail orders is pretty obvious if you need your prescription at 2 in the morning, on a major holiday, or just in an emergency that can’t wait. For instance, two years ago on Christmas Day, our daughter was having some pretty major difficulties after having given birth a few days earlier, and was in desperate need of a prescription. Luckily for us, Walgreens in a town fairly close to us was open on Christmas day and we were able to get her the relief that she so urgently was in need of.

Our experience with mail order pharmacy prescriptions has been mixed. For instance on one occasion,we had an order that we still had not received after two weeks, it then became our responsibility to contact the provider and they ended up sending out the order twice, and we also got billed twice! It then became our responsibility again to get all the billing and shipping straightened out. Not the best experience.

If any other providers follow suit it could become a problem with our availability to 24 hour, local and personal pharmacy service!

Walgreens is trying to minimize the disruption to Express Scripts clients by offering a special discount on annual membership for its Prescription Savings Club. An individual can join during a special January promotion for only $5 or $10 for a family membership, and receive savings Walgreens Prescription Savings Club

Don’t let the middleman pharmacy provider take away our choices!

Follow me and go to Facebook and/or twitter to voice your support. Walgreens on Facebook, Walgreens on Twitter

Valentines Subway Art

Posted on January 11, 2012 by Rita

Is it too early to put out Valentine decorations? I know the stores had them out the day before Christmas, but that is just plain crazy! I know that there are a few of these already out there in blog land but I wanted to create my own version of a Valentines subway art. It was fun to create and I think that perhaps I shall have to try my hand at this for Easter!

I found this frame at the dollar store and I spray painted it with a Krylon, red gloss paint. The color really adds to the overall look of this project.

Here is the printable for you to use! Just right click and go to copy, then open your favorite program like Word, or Presentations and right click again and go to paste. The original is 8 x 10, but you can re-size it to whatever you would like. I had mine printed on glossy card stock and I think it looks great!

I have mine on my kitchen counter and it really brightens up my kitchen on these cold, dreary, winter days and makes me happy! :) These would be a great little gift for teachers, friends, sisters, SELF etc!