Snowmen Hershey Bars

I'm in the process of creating a gift basket of sorts to give to all of Drake and Lincoln's preschool caregivers (I'll post it later once I have all the parts assembled). Anyway, one part of it is a Hershey's chocolate bar wrapped up like a snowman, which of course I totally stole from was inspired by a pin on pinterest.

Too cute, right? It's not exactly like the pin but I like my take on it. I think it would have looked even cuter if I had some black round brads for the mouth and eye dots, but alas the craft supplies in Germany are sorely lacking.

To create this incredibly simple snowman wrapped Hershey's bar, you'll need sheets of white paper (I used cheap printer paper), a pipe cleaner, clear tape, orange construction paper, glue, a black pen, three scrapbook brads and of course a Hershey's chocolate bar.

What You'll Do:
Cut a sheet of standard US paper into half, while holding it landscape orientation, cut top to bottom. Each sheet of paper will make two snowmen. Place your Hershey's bar on top of the piece of paper to get an idea of where the middle is. Once you have the middle, punch three brads into the paper right in the middle for the buttons. Then draw in two eyes up top and five dots for the mouth. You could conversely use small black round brads, but I had none. Cut a triangle from orange construction paper for the nose, and glue it onto the face. Lastly, wrap a pipecleaner "scarf" around the chocolate bar, meeting up the ends in the front just off-center. Let each end hang down to be the ends of the scarf and trim as necessary. That's it! Very easy and very cute.

Weekend Wanderings - Town Fair

This past weekend our little city had a Christmas market. I love European Christmas markets and since this one was within walking distance, we of course had to go. This year it was about a third the size of the one last year so I'm not sure what was going on, but we still had lots of fun.

This is the far end of the fair, as you're walking along the main road.



The town square with its Christmas tree

A typical booth. There were several food vendors, along with clothing and home decor booths but the selection was much more slim compared to last year unfortunately. I also just randomly snapped photos because I felt like a creeper taking photos of people's merchandise.

A small four man band played holiday classics. They also played some oompah type music that Germany and Bavaria are famous for. No, I'm not sure it's called oompah music, but that's what I'm going with since that's what it sounds like they were playing.

Drake's favorite part of any fair: the rides!

He even got to go twice, this time Link's in the back of the fire engine, crying. He was tired, poor little fella. The weird part about this fire truck is that it's supposedly American (see the words in English) and also the Texas license plate?

Certainly doesn't look like a Texas license plate to me, but you have to give it to the Germans; atleast they tried to make it look Texan with the cowboy.

Yummy and adorable Santa Claus gingerbread cookies.

We also tried to get a decent photo of the family in front of a Christmas tree in the town hall. Unfortunately this is the best that we came up with.  Yeah, it was that bad. One tired toddler, two balloons that kept getting in the way, and a headstrong preschooler does not make a great photo opportunity. And I'm also wearing my son's hat rather than carrying it along since he decided not to wear it. Oh well. Atleast we had a great time, even if we don't have photos of us enjoying it together. Hope you had a wonderful weekend too!

You Capture - Blue

This week's You Capture theme hosted by Beth at I Should Be Folding Laundry is Blue. With two little boys in this house, you'd think I'd have an overkill of blue. But alas, the photo that I settled on has very little blue in it at all. It's mainly orange in fact. But the fact that it's next to the blue and they're complementary colors I think makes it pop more. It's the last hurrah of fall around here. I took this almost a week ago and already the leaves (and the color) are gone. It's starting to look a lot like winter over here.

Gone are the days of the baseball diamond (until next spring of course). Now it's all about football, hot cocoa, and snow sledding. Well, we're still waiting on that first snow but I suspect it'll be any day now.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I know I have way too many blessings in my life to give voice to, but I am thankful every day for my life.

Happy Birthday Drake!

I can hardly believe that four years ago my oldest son made me a Mommy. I feel so blessed to have him in my life and it's amazing just the depths of love that I have for him. He's been here just four short years, but it seems like I've known him my entire life. He makes me want to be a better person, one that is deserving of such a sweet little boy. On this his fourth birthday, we celebrated.

Can you guess where we went?

Bowling!

Anxiously watching the ball go down the lane (be it ever so slowly).

I'm so disappointed I wasn't on him for this shot. Still really cute of the moment when he knocked all the pins down.

Link's turn!

Eagerly awating the results.

Woohoo! I hit them!

Way too cute. Love this expression on his face after he knocked the pins down.

Today, Drake is FOUR!

Mommy helps Link and Drake bowl.

Cupcakes!

Blow out the candles...

Relight the candles, and this time sing Happy Birthday, and THEN blow out the candles. 

Every present was, "WOW!"

From his Uncle back stateside. He loves building.

Link doing what he loves: shovelling food into his cute face.

We had a wonderful day and I'm so thankful that I got to spend it with my two boys and my sweet husband. Happy birthday, sweet baby Drake!

Easy Oreo Cheesecake Cupcakes

So I found this recipe online, yes at Pinterest again (it's not like I'm addicted or anything...). You can find the original recipe and post here at Handle the Heat. Their photo of the cupcakes looks so much better than mine as well. Here's their photo:

Here's mine:

Okay, so mine isn't nearly as pretty, but trust me, they were tasty. I took some in to my coworkers and I was told that they were pretty bad@$$. And they're incredibly easy to make, the only hard part is that you have to refrigerate them for awhile.

What You'll Need:

42 cream-filled sandwich cookies (read: Oreos), 30 left whole and 12 coarsely chopped

2 pounds cream cheese, softened

1 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

4 large eggs, room temperature and slightly beaten

1 cup sour cream

Pinch of salt

What You'll Do:

1. Preheat the oven to 275 degrees. Line your muffin tin with regular paper liners (the foil doesn't peel as easily away, learned this one the hard way). Place one whole Oreo cookie in the bottom of each lined cup.

2. Beat cream cheese until it's smooth with an electric mixer. Slowly add sugar and beat until combined. Add in vanilla and beat again.

3. Add eggs one at a time, mixing thoroughly. Beat in sour cream and salt. Then add the chopped cookies in and stir by hand.

4. Divide batter evenly amongst your lined cups, filling almost to the top. Bake, rotating the pan halfway through the cooking time, until the filling is set (about 22 minutes). Transfer to wire racks to cool and refrigerate atleast 4 hours (up to overnight). Remove them from the tins just before serving so they hold their shapes.

Voila. Easy peasy and very delicious!



Santa Free Printable Advent Countdown

Inspired by yet another pin on Pinterest, I've created a free printable. This time it's a Santa Beard Advent Countdown. It prints on two sheets of paper (make sure you set your printer to borderless printing) and I recommend printing on heavy cardstock or heavy resume paper (it'll hold up better than your regular printer paper). Link to free download below.

The poem explains it all:

"Santa's beard is very bare. On his chin there is no hair. So each day add one puff so white, and when they're all on, He'll come that night!"

Every day during the month of December, have your little helper glue with tacky glue (or you can use scotch tape balled over) a cotton puff onto the beard area. Once you get to 25 Santa will be on his way! I'm keeping mine on my fridge this year where my little guy can reach it. I'm going to store the cotton balls in a ziplock baggie next to the fridge as well so he knows how far he has to go until Christmas.

Due to convenience's sake, I've created the printable to print on two standard sheets of US paper (8.5 x 11) since I know most people don't have 8.5x22 paper sitting around. You can turn the sheets over and attach them together with a simple band of clear scotch tape along the seam. The file saves as a pdf file, and you can download adobe reader for free from http://www.adobe.com/.

DOWNLOAD SANTA'S BEARD COUNTDOWN HERE

You can see my original inspiration HERE at Oopsey Daisy..

Linking up at: Tatertots and Jello, One Artsy Mama

You Capture - Fall

This week's You Capture over at I Should Be Folding Laundry is fall. Fall is my absolutely favorite time of the year. Fall to me means the smell of wood burning, beautiful fall foliage, hot cocoa and warm snuggles. I love fall. Here's some of my favorite fall shots from this past week. The fall here in Germany was absolutely stunning and it was such a joy capturing it. Hope you enjoy it too!

Digital Silhouettes

Recently, okay maybe not recently, a dear friend of mine sent me a care package in the mail. It was absolutely wonderful and thoughtful and amazing. It absolutely made my day week. I wanted to reciprocate the favor, but while I'm crafty at times, I know she has me beat in that department. I wanted to do something I knew she didn't already have or didn't have the time for. So I created some silhouettes of her children for her. These make lovely gifts. Here's how I did it.

Step 1: Find a photo of each subject, preferable a side view or profile view of that person. Enlarge that photo file to fit the size of your template (I'm going to frame mine in 5x7 frames so I wanted to make sure they fit and filled the 5x7 frame). You can size them in anything from photoshop (expensive program) to free programs like picasa, picnik, or GIMP.

Step 2: Once you have each subject scaled to the size you need it, you can go ahead and either remove the background to make it easier on your printer ink or leave it as-is (definitely the easier option). Print each photo on regular printer paper (you want it to be thin and easy to cut through).

Step 3: Find a bit of black poster paper or cardstock and place it underneath your photograph(s). Using a sharp knife, like an exacto blade, slowly and carefully cut through both your photo and the black paper beneath it. Voila!

Step 4: For an added personalized touch, create a 5x7 print with the child's or person's name in a fancy script along the bottom of the print. Adhere the silhouette to the 5x7 print. I used scrapbook squares to attach mine and they worked really well, plus they're acid free. Frame and you have a great and personal gift that any mother would love.

You Capture - Halloween

This week's You Capture challenge is Halloween. I only took about two hundred photos on the day we went trick or treating so this was an easy challenge for me. Here are a few of my favorites:

Linking up to You Capture at I Should be Folding Laundry