Hello Sprouts!

The grass I planted last week is growing! I finally moved the eggs from the carton they've been in to the centerpiece on our dining room table, just in time for Easter! 

And since I can't seem to part with eggshells lately, I created this little vase. 

I'm Cracking Up

Easter preparations are underway at my house and I’m trying something new this year—real live grass growing in eggshells to decorate our Easter table. 

I’ve been saving eggshells all week and it is full steam ahead! I bought grass seed and potting soil and got to work yesterday afternoon. There really isn’t much to it, but here is what I have learned so far (keep in mind I’m only a few hours into this little experiment of mine):

To break the egg, tap it on the top with a knife until there is a small crack, then remove the eggshell with your fingers a few pieces at a time so you get the shape you want. I showed Bryan my technique over the weekend and asked him to crack all eggs like that until I get enough for my Easter table. After he realized I was totally serious he assured me he would not be participating in this little project of mine.

When filling with soil, try to keep the outside of the eggshell as clean as possible. I kept one hand as my “clean” hand and the other one was the “dirty” hand. You can wipe the dirt off, but these are eggshells, people. They’re fragile!

I don’t have any good advice about sprinkling the grass seed. Just sprinkle it. I’m not sure how long the grass will take to grow, and I’m worried I’m a little too late, so I went pretty heavy on the seed. Besides, the bag I bought is enough to re-seed 1,200 square feet of lawn (the equivalent of half a tennis court, according to the bag), so I had plenty.

I did decide the best way to water these little things will be with a spray bottle. The goal is to keep the soil moist, but there is no drainage and I'm not about to try poking a hole in the bottoms of the shells.  

Unfortunately, we have less than two weeks until Easter, so let’s hope my little grass seeds start sprouting soon! I’ll let you know how it goes!

Candy Coal: In Case You Need a Jumpstart on Christmas 2009

It seems like there were so many Christmas projects I never got a chance to blog about what with all the Christmas projects and all. So, in case anyone wants to plan ahead, here are some little bags of candy coal I made for our family's Christmas Eve dinner this year. My friend Sandy, a master of all things stamped, made the tags and I made the bags out of muslin. My mom and I made the candy coal.

We made two batches, one cinnamon and one licorice. Here are the two pans--as you can tell one is already broken up into the chunks of coal.

We put the candy inside of cellophane bags so it didn't get the muslin bags dirty.

Here is the recipe if anyone wants to try it!

Candy Coal

2 cups sugar

2/3 cup white corn syrup

1 cup water

1 tsp. flavoring

Black food coloring (we used the Wilton food coloring for icing)

Combine sugar, water and corn syrup in small saucepan. Cook on medium high to 300 degrees F. This is called the hard crack stage. It will seem like it takes forever! Try to stir as little as possible or it will crystallize (believe me--I ruined one batch doing this).

Remove from heat and let cool to 280 degrees F. Add the flavoring and food coloring. Stir until blended. Pour into greased pan and let sit for several hours. Drop the pan on the ground to break it into chunks.

Handmade Gifts: Rice Therapy Packs

I made these rice therapy packs for several people on my Christmas gift list this year. I used the pattern from Sew Mama Sew at http://sewmamasew.com/blog2/?p=280.

Inside the pretty bag is a muslin bag filled with rice scented with essential oils.

It was one of my first sewing projects on my new machine--luckily it was all straight lines!

Handmade Gifts: Dishtowels

I didn't get to finish as many gifts as I had hoped to this year, but I was able to knock out a few. I made photo dishtowels for several people on my list using old photographs of my grandparents and pairing them with quotes I found.


With this picture of my Grandma Bonnie the quote said, "A dame that knows the ropes isn't likely to get tied up."

This is a picture of all the girls on the Jensen side of my family back in the day. The quote said, "For me sitting still is harder than any kind of work."

This is a collection of the towels. For my friend Sandy and my mother-in-law, Betty, I scanned in their favorite family recipes and put those on their towels, but I didn't get pictures of them!

Now that I'm home I need to make a few of these towels for myself. They are mainly for decoration since I don't know exactly how long the iron-on transfers will hold up. I advised everyone not to wash a car with the towels.

My First Blog Giveaway

To make up for my week of bad blogging, I thought I would do my first blog giveaway. My friend Sandy and I made these "naughty or nice" gift tags. We thought they were cute. I'll give away a set of six--three green and three red. So, leave a comment by Dec. 17--let's say midnight mountain time--and I'll use a random number generator to pick the winner. You have pretty good odds of winning! :-)

Mini Photo Books

I finished a mini photo book this week!!! Yeah!!! Another project I can check off my to-do list! I made a couple of these last year for gifts and wanted to make more. This one has pictures of my mom's family on Christmas morning sometime in the 1950s. I love looking at the pictures and seeing what each person got for Christmas!

Here is the cover:

This is my grandma. You can't really see it in the photo, but she received new dishes and a purse.

The photo on the left is of my grandpa, who got a new gun. My Uncle Kenny is on the right. He received Army men, a truck and a jack in the box.

My mom is on the left. She is holding what looks like a bathrobe and she also received a new dress and a Buffalo Bill, Jr. book. My Aunt Norma on the right is holding a radio and received an Elvis record and some books.

My Aunt Nette received a baby doll, a stroller and a purse.

This is my Uncle Roy, the baby of the family. He got a football and some pull toys.

I always have fun making these books, even though they don't turn out as cute as I'd like them to! I hope the person I'm giving this to likes it. Shhh...it is a surprise!

The Sewing Machine is Winning

I spent several hours fighting with my sewing machine last night while working on some homemade Christmas gifts. I'm sorry to say the machine is winning as of this morning. I finally called it quits last night after several failed attempts to wind the bobbin. I'm not quite sure what I'm doing wrong, but I decided I'd start fresh after a good night's sleep.

The good news is that I did finish a couple of projects over the weekend. Bryan has (lovingly) forbidden me from buying any new crafting materials until I finish some of the projects I have going. Although I didn't say obey in my wedding vows, I typically tend to do it anyway. So, I'm hoping to get a few projects done this week while my writing is slow. Wish me luck!

Felt Food: Ravioli

I am hoping to make Evan a whole grocery bag full of felt food for Christmas. He has started doing a lot of pretending lately, and I think he'll have fun cooking for us. I decided to start easy with a plate of ravioli. Since he doesn't read my blog, I can go ahead and post about it.

Christmas Crafting Begins

Last night I finished my first homemade Christmas gift. I can't post a picture of it or any details since I will be giving this certain type of gift to several people who read this, but it has gotten me really excited for the holidays. (The bad news for me is that I turned to crafting because I was procrastinating research I need to do for a story on automatic transmissions in Class 8 trucks that I am writing, but that is another story).

Since I can't post a picture of the item I made last night, or probably any of the gifts I'll be making, until after Christmas, I thought I'd provide some of the sites I've been looking at to get my inspiration.

There are a whole bunch of ideas from last Christmas up at Sew Mama Sew: http://sewmamasew.com/blog2/?p=291. I just got a sewing machine and hope to break it out of its box this weekend (depending on how much research I get done on those darn transmissions).

There are a lot of free things to download and do here: http://templettes.blogspot.com/search/label/free. They have other ideas, too, but I was attracted to the free ones!

This lady makes really pretty cards: http://kimberly-crawford.blogspot.com/. And this lady makes all kinds of cute things out of paper: http://michellewooderson.blogspot.com/.

Homemade by Jill has lots of great ideas: http://www.homemadebyjill.blogspot.com/. She just had a baby and probably won't be posting as frequently (let's hope!), but I like looking at her past projects!

Let me know if you have any great crafting ideas you can share!

My Attempt at a Scrapbox

My friend Sandy is the queen of scrapbooking. She is nice enough to share her ideas with me. She made a really neat scrapbox, so I attempted it this week as a gift for Ashley. There are three different layers, each with pictures, then it folds up into a cute little box. I struggled with the lid a little bit, but I finally got one made and stuck a little tag on it that says, "I will never forget." I am giving it to Ashley tonight. I'll post instructions soon in case anyone else wants to try it.