Caught by the 'BUG

You read correctly. I've been caught by a bug - the cuttlebug that is. I'm not one for jumping on big ticket scrapbooking items. In fact, I consider myself pretty cheap and rarely give into spending a lot of money at one time on something. But, I just couldn't resist this one. I gave in and bought one and some dies and embossing folders.

See, this nifty little machine will work with any dies (like sizzix or quick cuts), and not that I have any of those, but I might find a good deal!

Anyway, here's my first project using my cuttlebug. The entire cupcake is free hand. I used my cutter and scoring blade to make the lines in the cupcake wrapper and then sent the "frosting" through the cuttlebug in the swirl embossing folder. Then I used glitter on the swirls to make it stand out a little more.

The stamp set is from Close to My Heart; it's called Card Sentiments.

Fall Friend Tree

Each day, I try to come up with some "activity" for my kids to do. It varies from playdoh to watercolors to puzzles. One afternoon, I had (what I thought) a great idea for an activity. I don't remember what it was, but when my son asked me, he curled up his nose and said, "I don't like that activity!"

Not to be so easily put off by my son, I searched the internet for preschool activities. One of the sites suggested making a tree with blessings. While I'm all for that, I tweaked it some and turned it into a "FALL FRIEND TREE" - a tree that shows us just how many friends we have not only in our hometown, but all over the country...even the world.

At one of our recent playdates, we put our plan into action. Since our fall tree was bare, we decided to start adding fall leaves to fill it out. We traced the hands - both adults and children - of those in attendance, wrote the name of the owner and added them to the tree.

The kids were so excited to see the leaves (hands) up on the tree and started asking when, where and how we'd "grow" more leaves for our tree. Well, again, not to be outdone by my son - who is afraid we've grown all we can - I decided to take the challenge to the net.

We have friends and family all over and we'd love to add your leaf (hand) to our tree. If you want to participate, please trace your hand, write your name and where you hail from, and send it to my kids. We'd love to fill out the tree...make it so full that it looks more like a tree in the spring rather than the fall. If you don't have our address, please comment or contact and I'll get the information to you. (I'm not foolish enough to just put our home address on the net...I know what kind of scaries are out there!).

I hope you will consider participating. What a great lesson in kindness as well as geography for the kids - and showing my son that I CAN make things happen.

Egg in a Basket, Egg in a Hole...whatever you wanna call it!

This week, thanks to Ree on ThePioneerWoman.com, I discovered my favorite new lunch time favorite for my kiddos. She makes these EASY all-in-one egg and bread meals for the Marlboro Man (which if you're not familiar with Ree, you're not in the know!).

They're sooooo easy! Ree has step-by-step instructions on her site, but you're only getting the halfway pic and the end product pic from me!

Start with a slice of bread. Butter it. Then, using a biscuit cutter or a small round glass, cut a hole in the center of the bread. Place the bread butter-side down on a hot griddle. Crack an egg and deposit the insides right in the middle of that hole. It looks like this: (See the little circle I cut out? I toasted it too and tossed it on the kids' plates and they loved having a round piece of toast!)

Let it cook a while, then flip it. It will look like this:

I cooked the kids' until the yolk was completely solid, but mine I left runny. Oh my...LOVE to have a runny egg and dip my toast in it. This way it's all-in-one!

This was quick and my son even asked for seconds. I'm telling ya...you can't go wrong!

Oh, and BTW - Ree's pictures are MUCH nicer and prettier than mine. But, hey, you're following this blog so (to quote my 5-year-old son), "Ya get whatcha get and ya don't throw a fit!"