Do you need a good sugar cookie recipe??

Well, I am totally going to give you one. The best ever! Seriously. My mommy group made and decorated sugar cookies for a local nursing home on Thursday. Then on Friday we dressed up the little babes in costumes and gave the cookies to them. It was a lot of fun, minus the fact Ethan absolutely refuses to wear his Spiderman costume. Ugh! Oh well. Hopefully tonight he will. Probably not though. So don't count on any cute pictures of him in it. Darn!

Anywho, These cookies were so stinking good you could eat the whole batch plain. Recipe adapted from this pin HERE. My recipe is slightly different.

Preheat oven to 375

2 cups  all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1stick of unsalted butter, softened but still cool
4 tablespoons of shortening
1 cup granulated sugar, plus ½ cup for rolling dough
1 large egg
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract

Cream together butter, shortening and sugar until fluffy. Add egg and vanilla until just mixed. In a seperate bowl mix together flour, baking powder and salt. Slowly mix into wet mixture.

Roll into 1 inch balls and roll in the remaining sugar. flatten with the bottom of a cup to have perfect circles. Bake for 12-15 minutes. If you want to make cut out cookies you will have to let dough sit in fridge overnight and then rool out on a floured surface.

REMINDER! Tomorrow starts the voting for One Month to Win it!! Yay!!!! Super excited over here! Will you please stop by and vote! I will post tomorrow when the voting starts. Hopefully mine will be your favorite. I can't wait to tell you which one is mine!

Michelle
Also, get your Krylon projects ready because Saturday there will be a link up for YOUR projects.

Trick or Treat Bags

My kids are now officially ready for Trick or Treating! Alexa is going to be Strawberry Shortcake and Ethan is going to be Spiderman (Hopefully, he doesn't like costumes). I thought about making their costumes this year, but really it was just a fleeting thought. Maybe next year. Maybe. So I felt inclined to make them bags. I made Alexa a cute strawberry ruffle bag and Ethan a pumpkin bag. Okay seriously get ready for picture overload! I am doing both bags in one tutorial because I made them with the same steps, just different shapes. Feel free to just scroll down.

 I did the strawbery bag first and had every intention of doing the pumpkin bag today, but when Ethan saw his sister's bag he said "Make my bag!" Seriously he did. I couldn't say no. Could you say no to that cute face?! I think not! His bag was actually pretty fast to make. The strawberry bag however took about 2 1/2 hours. Darn ruffles!

 Supplies for strawberry bag
1 yard of pink fleece fabric
3/4 yard green striped fabric
2 yards of tulle ( I bought 4 just in case. Didn't use even the full 2 yards. Oh well)

Cut out two (of each) strawberry shapes in both the pink and green fabrics

 Measure the top and cut out 2 (of each fabrics) a rectangular shape

 Cut four strips of the pink in what's left over of the pink fabric.

 Attach the green rectangle to the pink strawberry for both pieces

 Do it for the green strawberry too

 Now sew a tube out of the stripes of fabric and turn right side out.

 Cut 6 strips of tulle that are about 12 inches thick and three times the width of the widest point of the strawbery. Fold over and do a long stitch, pull the top stitching to "ruffle" the fabric.

 Attach to top of pink strawberry right below the green portion.

 Repeat, repeat, repeat, why do I love ruffles so much! They take forever!

 Now have both pink pieces facing each other right sides and pin the edges to be sewn. Tuck in tulle as you pin.

 Flip right side out! Almost there!

 sew inside portion together with right sides facing each other. sew around the edges EXCEPT do NOT sew the bottom. This is where you will pull the bage through.

 See! DON'T sew bottom ;)

 keep inside of bag inside out and stuff the outside of bag in it. So both of the right sides are facing each other. Get it?

 Now put straps in there and pin them down. Sew along the outside top portion. Now pull the bag through where you left the hole on the bottom. Sew  up the hole now and stuff the inside of the bag inside the bag. You are done! yay!

 You are going to use the same steps for the pumpkin bag, But different shapes and no ruffles!

 I cut out pieces of black felt and sewed it on before I put the bag together.

 Strawberry's Bag:

 Spiderman's pumpkin bag (He actually clapped his hands when It was done. So worth it!)

 He is ready to go!

Sorry such a long post!

Hope everyone has a great Halloween!

Michelle


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An Unintentional Knock-off

Well sort of. I found this table at Goodwill over the weekend:

(umm don't mind the messy garage. From chaos comes a masterpiece. That's what I tell myself)

So doesn't this remind you of something. Oh are you not a Pottery Barn stalker like me. Well let me just show you. Take a look at Pottery Barn's Newberry rectangular coffee table:

The bottom on my curves a bit and the top is obvioulsy different, but I knew exactly how this beauty was going to be painted when I saw it at goodwill.

So I sanded down the entire top to bare wood. It was pretty beat up on the top otherwise I might have just left it.

 I then slightly sanded the bottom because I'm painting it cream so a little wood stain on it still won't hurt. Just trying to get through the protective layer of poly and get out any knicks.

 I stained the top in Special Walnut (gasp! I went away from my signiture dark walnut. Don't worry you're still my favorite). Then I painted the bottom with Glidden Parchment mixed with a bit of glaze to thin out the paint. Nobody likes brush strokes people! Notice my professional drying skills. I told you all the cool kids do it (Because I'm cool. Duh.)

 I then took a bit of my wood stain and mixed it up with the clear glaze and did a bit of a rub on rub off scenario. Mr. Miyagi would be proud ( I actually took the time to google that name because really who knows how to spell that?!)

I then added several coats of poly to the top and a nice wax finish to the bottom.

Doesn't it look like they could be brothers or maybe cousins. Perfection!

A shout out to Vivienne at The V-Spot for telling me the name of the site that I can do collage photos on.

Michelle


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