Proud Auntie

I'm so proud of the accomplishments of my little nieces and nephew. They continue to amaze and inspire me as they learn and grow. What an amazing experience being an aunt can be!

I'm proud of Clara's creativity. When I was home last we were playing a game where I would give the kids a word and they would come up with a random song using that word. She came up with the cutest songs ever. What an amazing gift. I'm proud of Raylin for her streak of independence. Even though not everyone appreciates this gift right now I know eventually this will serve her so well in her life as she learns to never take no for an answer. I'm proud of Bailey for her sense of responsibility. I watched her go on her own to check on her lifestock and report back to her dad on how they were doing.

I'm proud of Ethan for his sense of fearlessness. Even though he has gotten stepped on by the horse and bucked off before he just walks right up to them again and is not afraid.

We could all take some lessons from these little ones and hopefully one day if they look back at this blog and they have taken some hits by life they will realize what one of my all time favorite movies will always tell them....you had it all along sweethearts the power is in you!

Vintage Paper Flowers

Recently I attended a class at Mystic Paper where one of the ladies was kind enough to show us a simple trick for how she creates paper flowers. These paper flowers were created from sheet music that Mandy found in an antique store when I visited Arizona recently. The sheet music is from 1902. I then sewed buttons in the centers and attached them to the ring and pin back.

Lydia's Birthday

Tomorrow is Lydia's birthday and she is a gold girl. I rarely make anything with gold but decided since I've never seen her wear silver that now was as good a time as any. I made up some earrings for her birthday using some vintage crystal that I purchased a long time ago at a show that I went to at Alexis Park Hotel here in Vegas. They turned out really nice and when I gave them to her today she really seemed to enjoy them.

Kitchen Pixie

This weekend I had the pleasure of taking another paper clay class with Jenny Hernandez a.k.a. the Polka Dot Pixie. I just love her classes. She is always so generous with her time and supplies and no matter what the project everyone's ends up looking very different. My pixie is posted on the Mystic Paper blog. My pixie is going to go in my kitchen as I am in the process of redoing my kitchen in vintage colors of red, green and yellow. The class was held at Mystic Paper in Mesa, AZ so I also got to drive down and visit Mandy. We always have so much fun together. I miss her so much. This time we went to a couple of antique stores and spent the day. We found a lot of treasures and I'm so excited to have some new creations to work on to update the look of my kitchen. More pictures will be coming soon!

Black Raspberry Jam

One of the other things that we did when I was home was go and pick black raspberries. My dad has a woods that is over by my parents house. Along the edge of the woods is an entire patch of wild black raspberries that happened to be ripe and ready for picking the week I was home. Amanda, my sister in law, Bailey, Clara, Ethan and I all took the 3 wheelers over along with a gallon ice cream container and picked berries. We ended up filling about 3/4 of the container. My mom then turned our berries into delicious jam! I ended up coming home with a jar of jam and some poison ivy. It was so worth it though. Recently the blackberries have come into season and Amanda and the kids have picked those and made jam into those as well. I am so jealous and although not as sweet as black raspberries I wish I was there to enjoy that too!

Timbales

Bailey, my niece, making timbales

One of my favorite treats growing up were timbales. When I went home this time I asked my mom about the timbale iron and the recipe for how to make them. They were just like I remembered. It was so funny because timbales are kind of touchy to make and my mom was just like I remembered. She is not known for her patience and she freely admits this fact. She gave up pretty freely and left me and my niece alone in the kitchen with the irons. We just let her enjoy the timbales we cooked which is what usually happened with my grandma and I. She really does hate making timbales but I love her for even trying. Here is the recipe if you want to try but you have to order the irons. Our irons are pretty old and are an old holiday making set. They are very light, flaky and delicious!

Pool Noodles

This project really was a joke but turned out sort of cute. My friends Jenn and Dave just bought their first house and requested pool noodles as a house warming gift. Jenn is very artsy and she said wouldn't it be cool if the pool noodles had bling on them. I got to thinking about it and thought pool water and glue just won't mix. I got to thinking though that I could sew beads onto the pool noodles though and that would work out great. I brought the noodles over to their house for the 4th of July bbq and they did hold up in the water!