2015 - Neighbor Christmas Gifts - Free Printable

As I was looking online for ideas for neighbor gifts, I came across the most genius idea! Thank you whoever you are that originally thought of this!

Did you know you can purchase Redbox rental codes? Pretty cool huh!  Go to redbox.com and at the bottom there is a link that says "redbox gifts". That is where you can purchase promo codes that never expire! 

So our gift this year is pretty simple... a bag of popcorn and a code for a free 1 night movie rental.

  

I think this is the perfect gift for anyone! And it's so easy to create!

Step 1:

Print these fun tags here 

Step 2:

Cut them out, and place them on a contrasting background (optional)

Step 3:

Attach them to your favorite movie treat (I chose popcorn).

Step 4: 

Deliver to your friends and neighbors!

Ta Da! Simple!

This also is a perfect way to get the whole family involved and spend some time together. This is going to be our Family Home Evening activity tonight!

Have Fun!

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Snowman Pancakes

This morning I woke up to this view...

welcome winter!  I thought today would be a perfect day to make:

Okay, I admit... these aren't the cutest. In fact the snowman face looks kind of scary ha ha. But they sure are delicious! I made these with my favorite pancake recipe from THE FOOD NANNY cookbook. If you are looking for an awesome cookbook, you can get it here. 

This is the recipe:

1 cup flour

2 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 egg

1 cup milk

2 tablespoons butter, melted

Directions:

1.  Preheat an electric griddle to 375 degrees or place a stove-top griddle or skillet over medium-high heat.

2.  Mix all ingredients in a bowl, and whisk until lumps are gone. 

3. Spray griddle before pouring batter.

4. To make the snowman shape, start with the base, and add each layer with less and less batter as you go.  I usually start the base with 1/4 cup and go from there. Make it as big or little as you want!

5. Cook the pancakes until bubbles begin popping on top, about two minutes.  Turn them and cook about 1 minute. 

6. Once the pancakes are finished cooking, then its time to decorate! Be creative! This morning, I was low on my snowman decorations, so I made do with what I had on hand. But here are some ideas:

-Use scrambled eggs as a sun

-cook bacon and place as the ground, or use it as a scarf.

- Use M&Ms for buttons. (The mini M&Ms work great to make the face!

-Put cotton candy on the base as snow.

 -Let the kids get involved, and create their own masterpiece!

Enjoy!

Follow me on Instagram! @create_this_and_that

How to send a lot of love without spending a lot of money!

Hey everyone!

So this post, I wanted to give you an idea that I thought was pretty cool. So next week is my big brother's birthday. He and I are pretty tight and I wanted to send him something fun for his birthday (he lives in another state). However, I'm trying to be good with money, and so I wanted something that showed him I cared, but without spending a ton. All together I probably spent $3.00. (Sorry bro, now you know how cheap I am!) But I think he loved it! 

Anyways... on to the good stuff... why you are here! 

I saw on pinterest once, the idea of sending a puzzle message to a loved one and having them put the puzzle together when it came in the mail. I don't know where I saw it, so whoever posted the idea, I thank you! So I decided to do the same thing. Send a lot of love with a little bit of money. I got this poster board at Wal-Mart for 0.98 cents I think. Brought it home, and drew the happy birthday message. I didn't come up with the font. To be honest, I googled "Happy birthday lettering." I like to think my ideas are good... and then I write them out and realize my idea is a little bit of everyone else's. haha. Again, I don't know who came up with this font layout, but I say thanks!

Before cutting up the poster, I decided to jazz it up with some balloons. (This was 100% my idea! lol) Since I can't send them blown up, I gave my brother some instructions. 

Then, I cut up the board, taped the balloons on with washi tape (Oh how I love washi tape!) and voila! My brother is a very smart guy, but just to be safe I added some more instructions for him. 

While I was cutting up the poster, I thought it would be fun to add some confetti to the package! I'm sure it made a mess... but it was at least a colorful mess! All I did here was take some colored paper, and my three hole punch and punched a bunch of holes. Super easy! 

And check it out.. My brother got the package in the mail today and sent me this:

Hope you have a great birthday bro!

Follow me on Instagram! @create_this_and_that

Halloween Dinner

Hey everyone!

For all you last minute people out there looking for a fun dinner to do for Halloween, hopefully this will help give you some ideas! 

At the end of September, I had this great idea to do a themed dinner every Sunday of October in honor of Halloween. I was going to pick a fun movie, and base our dinner around that. Then life happened, people got busy, and my dream was never realized. But I wasn't going to give up! I wanted to do one fun dinner before Halloween to really get in the spirit. 

Apparently everyone else had some of the same ideas I did. When I went to the store for supplies, almost everything I wanted was sold out. (That's what I get for waiting so long) Still determined, I changed plans a little bit and this is what we ended up with:

I originally wanted to use spider rings as napkin holders, and have fun printed plates. But the spider rings were gone, and so were the plates. No worries! I just went to the party isle and picked up some good ol' black and orange plates. (I think I like the bug better anyways.)  I made everyone a place card with a fun name on it. You can get these cute FREE name tags here. I also made a menu for the night. Thank you Microsoft Word! You never let me down ;) 

This was my "spooky spaghetti" and "witch fingers". The instructions on how to dye the noodles are on the36thavenue.com or just click here . When I saw this idea on Pinterest, I thought it was the coolest thing since sliced bread! It doesn't stain your mouth or alter the flavor of the noodles either!  Of course, I wanted to make my spaghetti like the dish I saw on the blog... the noodles were black! But was there any black food coloring around when I went shopping? Of course not! (See? I guess other people wanted black spaghetti too!) But, I think the purple spaghetti is still fun!

This is my "mummy bread". When I was at the store I went to the bakery section in search for some french bread. Yep.. they were SOLD OUT. So I got an Italian bread loaf instead. The size is slightly smaller, but I actually like this kind of bread more than french bread. So it ended up being a happy mishap! These are super easy to make! Slice the bread into any shape you want them to be. Then add butter and garlic salt to your liking. Next, take sliced olives and place them on the bread for eyes. For the mummy "wrap" I took pre-sliced mozzarella cheese, cut it into strips with a pizza cutter, then placed it randomly all over the bread. Finally, broil it on high until the cheese is melted. Yumm! 

This was our "night crawlers" dessert. More commonly known as "Worms and dirt". Simply layer chocolate pudding, with crushed Oreos on top, and stick a few worms on top to make it look like they are crawling out of the dirt. Could dessert go as I planned? Nope! All of the regular gummy worms were gone too. But these sour gummies worked great!

At the end of it all, it was a fun dinner, and everyone enjoyed the food! I hope you guys have a fun Halloween!

Kick off to October!

Hello everyone!

I hope you are as excited for the upcoming holidays as I am! It always takes me a few weeks to accept the fact that summer is over and we are going to move into cooler weather. But, as soon as I can start doing fun activities (like the one I will tell you about in a minute) I get over it, and move on with life. 

So I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (otherwise known as a Mormon). As members of the church, one of our top priorities is family. To help encourage family time, leaders of our church have emphasized having family home evening once a week. Basically one night is dedicated for just family time. Typically, people use Monday nights for this, but our schedule is so crazy, it really just depends on the week! 

This last week for family night, I wanted to do something fun to get into the Halloween spirit. I had two activities planned. The first one was to "boo" two houses in our neighborhood. Basically, you buy or make a treat, put instructions on what to do, and doorbell ditch your neighbor. Just don't forget to leave the goodies on the porch! The treat comes with a cute sign you put on your door or window to let people know you've already received a treat. Then, they make 2 copies and give treats to 2 more neighbors. The goal is to have kind of a domino effect. If the first 2 people do it, then another 4 will get treats, then 8, 16, and so on. Am I making any sense? I found a super cute FREE printable to use from happinessishomemade.net. Or click here to get to the website to print your own.

This is how mine turned out. The first page has the instructions on what to do, and the second sheet is what you put in your window to let people know you've already been "booed". It was a lot of fun leaving these on the doorstep, knocking nice and loud, then running away before I got caught. My husband was driving the getaway car. Yes, I was close to rolling my ankles a few times, but it was worth it! Now, I'm hoping they will keep the chain going and lots of people can get treats this month!

The second activity I found at my local Micheal's craft store.

I looked all over their website to try to get a link for you guys to see the kit online, but I couldn't find it anywhere! I'm sorry...
After taking treats secretly to some people, we came back and decorated this beauty! I know it doesn't look as good as the box, but it was so much fun! It came with the purple and black frosting, orange fondant, and candy to decorate. the house was pre-assembled which was nice too! It took some team work, but I am very happy with how our house turned out! And bonus, we now have a new decoration we can use this year!

Anyways, I hope this may give you some fun ideas of things you can do with your family this month! Thanks for stopping by!

Follow me on Instagram: @create_this_and_that

Mother Goose Popcorn

This recipe has been a family favorite for as long as I can remember! It is so easy, and yummy too! Growing up, I remember my Dad making this for us kids as a special treat to have while watching movies. So I asked for his help in showing me how to make this recipe so I can share it with you! 

Here is what you need:

-10 cups plain popcorn

-4 Tablespoons butter

-2 teaspoons vanilla

-3 Tablespoons water

-3/4 cup sugar

- Food coloring

For the popcorn, we just used plain popcorn kernels and popped them in the microwave. To do this, add a little bit of oil in a glass bowl, and put in about 2 T. kernels. Cover with a ceramic plate, and microwave for 3 minutes, or until all kernels have been popped. If you have a traditional popcorn popper, use that instead. Or use any kind of popcorn you think your family would like. 

1.  Pop 10 cups of popcorn, and place in a large bowl. 

2.  In a sauce pan, over medium heat, melt butter

3.  Once butter is melted, add the vanilla, water, sugar. Mix together, then add food coloring until desired color has been met. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly so the sugar doesn't burn. Let mixture boil for about 1 minute, or until the sugar has dissolved.

4. Take mixture off of heat and pour over the popcorn. Stir popcorn and sugar mixture until all popcorn is evenly coated.

5.  Let stand for a few minutes to let the sugar cool down. 

Enjoy!

DIY Sunflower Card

Hey there! Wedding season seems to be winding down as fall fast approaches, but an in-law of mine recently got engaged, and is getting married in October of this year. As the happy couple was busy with wedding plans, the family immediately jumped on planning the bridal shower for our new sister. My assignment was to make the invitations. They were doing a sunflower theme, so immediately, I hop onto pinterest to see what everyone else has made, but didn't find anything that caught my eye. I don't have any software on my computer where I can design an invite, nor do I have any cool cutting machines that cut out fun patterns on paper for me. So I had to find something that I could accomplish with my good old scissors and glue stick! So, I came up with my own idea... 

The cool thing is... this is exactly what I had in my head. After much trial and error, I finally got it right. Once I got the pattern figured out, then came the fun part... making 30 of these bad boys! Here's how:

First, download the printable template here and here so you have the right pattern to make the card. As you can see, there are 3 different pieces to cut out. You can change the color to make it your own too! 

To add a little bit of contrast on the petals, I took a small ink pad and used the side edge to draw a line. The nice thing about doing this is you don't have to be perfect at it. Each stroke should be different and unique like a real flower would be. And don't worry about the ugly lines in the middle of the flower, once you add up all the layers, you won't see it.

For the center, I happened to have the random dot stamp on hand with some white ink. If you don't have a stamp like this, be creative! you can use the back of a paint brush, a pencil eraser, or even a q-tip to give you the little dots in the middle. Try a few different things out until you find what you love the most. 

All that is left to do is glue them all together, wrap it up in some baker's twine, raffia, ribbon (or nothing at all), and send it to someone you love!