Think ahead .....

If you are anyone who knows me ............. I am always thinking ahead. I have never made a calendar for family but I am thinking of doing that for Christmas next year. So, now is the time to be taking those monthly themed photos.

Winter is coming to an end so if you are in or near snow take a photo and I jumped way ahead and made out of a card board box the year 2009 and had my girls hold it in the snow for the Jan picture.

It is now Feb so take a photo of your children in their Valentine outfits.

Have fun with the themes like Green for March ~ St. Patricks Day or Easter and umbrellas for April showers, Spring flowers or gardening in May, the beach for June, red, white and blue for July, back to school in August ...... you get it.

After you take a photo create a folder on your computer and label it 09 calendar and always put those photos in it so when the time comes you won't be searching for them.

There are lots of digital calendar creation sites to use as well like kodak, vistaprint.com, shutterfly.com, snapfish.com, createphotocalendars.com and lulu.com.

Have fun!

Easy Cinnamon Rolls

These are the best quick throw together recipe for cinnamon rolls or sticky buns.

You know when you have that last minute guest stay over or you are running low on breakfast items for the morning or just have a sweet tooth. These work out great and take NOTHING to make them.

** Put this together about 5 or 6pm and they will be ready to cook in the am.

First, I always have 1-2 packages of butterscotch pudding mix (not instant) in the pantry and in the freezer ... a bag of frozen white bread rolls.

Ingredients:
3/4 stick unsalted butter
cinnamon
1/2 cup brown sugar
(optional ) carmelized nuts or regular nuts
approximately 8-12 frozen bread rolls
1/4 pkg of butterscotch pudding (not instant) * you use the powder * save the rest for another time ( 1 package of this will last 4 makings of this recipe)

First, spray a round pan or glass dish with nonstick spray
sprinkle half of the 1/4 of pudding mix all over the bottom of the round pan and then sprinkle cinnamon over that.

Lay in the frozen bread rolls and you can even squish them close together if needed.
Sprinkle the rest of the 1/4 of pudding over top of the frozen bread rolls
(optional) sprinkle nuts on top
now sprinkle a little more cinnamon over top of the nuts or pudding mix if you didn't add nuts.

Melt the butter and mix in the brown sugar and stir
pour over top of all frozen bread rolls.

Put on counter and let sit over night. It will rise. In the morning preheat oven to 350 degrees and put a piece of tin foil under the pan incase it cooks over the pan and cook for about 20-25 minutes.
Take out of oven, set on couter for 5 minutes and flip onto a plate or it will stick to pan.


Glaze:
If you want to glaze them with a sweet frosting here it is.
Mix 1 1/2 cups of confectioners' sugar into a mixing bowl. Add 1 1/2 Tbl of milk, and 1 Tbl of melted butter and a drop of vanilla extract.

Whisk well to blend. The icing should be smooth and flowing, but not overly runny. Add a little extra milk if needed.

Drizzle over cooked buns. YUMMY!! ENJOY!

Memory Scrapbooks for kids that they can do!

If you are like me and like to scrapbook and you have daughters then you may have the same situation I do. My 7 yr old daughter is wanting to scrapbook too and she creates her own pages all jumbled up by herself with my scraps. Don't get me wrong ....... she is very proud of what she made. But when she is done she has stuff hanging off the page and doesn't know what to do and it doesn't fit in her clear sleeve and she gets frustrated. So, I came up with a little idea for ages 5-10.



Make a ziplock scrapbook. Yes! A zip lock scrapbook for the kids to do all by themselves.

First pick what size of ziplock you would like to use. I use the size of a sandwich bag or so. Size 4x6 pictures will fit in them easily with minimal cropping.

I myself pick 6 ziplocks (of course you can use as many pages for baggies as you wish) and then I have the child pick a theme like their favorite winter pics or a birthday party,etc. You will need 11 pictures because they will make a cover page for the front.

Measure and make one piece of cardstock that will fit in each of the ziplocks (they will all be the same size so make 6 of them)

Then have the child crop their pictures and use glitter, scraps of scrapbook paper, stickers, die cut shapes, mini borders and such to decorate each little page of cardstock that you pre-measured for them. They can put the title of what they were doing on a page, their name, age, state, friends, etc......


Now have them make a cover page for their own book.

After the glue is dried on the pages have them insert them into the ziplock bags in any order that they want. If it is a younger child have them show you which one to put in next.


Press the air out and zip them shut tight. Now line them all up with the cover in the front and staple just above the zip closure 3 times along the edge but make sure all zip pages are in there.

Now you are ready to finish the staple edge with ribbon, yarn or scrap printed paper. Measure the zip edge and cut what you will use. Then to cover the staples run a bead of glue ( glue gun works best) along the the entire length over the staples. And press on your decorative binding edge.

Have fun! Now the kids will have their very own easy to make little photo scrapbook. They are great for gifts too!

This and much more is in my very own created A-Z early school years craft kit. It will be available soon at gorage.com and possibly ebay.com.