Teacher, Co-worker, or Perfect Stranger Thank You Mints

THANK YOU MINTS FOR ANYONE

One of my favorite things to do is say Thank you to anyone and everyone since we all play a vital part in each others lives.  Whether you know the person who is helping you or not, they need a THANK YOU.

When I say that we all play a vital roll in each others lives, I mean just that.  Here, let me give some examples:  It is important that everyone pay attention when driving so THANK YOU stranger for not killing me on my way to work today.  :)  THANK YOU grocery clerk for ringing up my stuff.  THANK YOU customer service rep at whatever cable company for at least listing to my rant so that my issue can hopefully get fixed.  THANK YOU sanitation superheros for ridding the trash from our streets every week!  THANK YOU grass ninjas for cutting our grass at the park so that we can enjoy picnics and play (we hardly ever realize you were there)!  THANK YOU Weather warriors for giving us an idea of what the weather might be like...  I could go on and on...

Is there a national Thank You day?  I have no idea, but I do know that there is teacher appreciation day and other such days, which means I am always looking for ideas on how to say thank you to people. 

This particular THANK YOU is for some teachers that were asked to work on Christmas eve.  Can you believe having to work on Christmas eve?  Bummer.  BUT just FYI, the shift was only 1 1/2 hours and was voluntary.  So because these teachers volunteered I wanted to thank them.

I got the exact idea off of Pinterest.   Type in THANK YOU MINTS and it will be the first thing you see (more than likely) so you can go do that.

I am going to tell you how I did it:

Step 1:  Mason Jars:  Walmart 12 for $8.50 for normal sized jars. 

Step 2:  Go to dollar store for mints and hot chocolate*** 

*** That is where it was the cheapest at the time... you may want to look elsewhere for a better deal*** 

I got 4 boxes of marshmallow hot chocolate, 7 bags green mints, and 7 bags red mints.

Step 3: You can either make your own commit'MINT' cards or you can get them free from:
http://www.made2bcreative.com/blog/?p=3258  Just print, cut out, and punch a hole.

Step 4:  Put them together:

-2 hot chocolate packets to fill the middle
-A mixture of red and green mints around the edge to fill the jar.
 Put lid on
-With twine, string, ribbon, floss, fish wire, yarn, or whatever you have around the house; attach the   

  cards to top.

-Just for some extra funness, I printed out their names and taped them on the lids.

So was it a fail or nail?

I would say nail but can easily become a fail if someone does not like mints.  These were spearmint/peppermint, and for me personally?  I hate both.  However,  they are obviously easy to make, easy on your pocket (~$2.25 a jar), and easy to re-gift!

Everyone liked them and wanted to know how to make them.

Piñata AWESOMENESS

For my daughters birthday I wanted a piñata for the kids to break apart since it seems like the kind of party game that every kid is supposed to have.  I had two reservations about having a pinata though:

1)  Will it cost a lot?
2)  Is it going to take a body builder to break it open:  I've seen this happen and the dissappointment
     on those kids' faces were just... so sad.  :(

What do I do?  Look to see if I can make one, of course!

I used eHow.com for my inspiration.  eHow.com had paper mache directions that I used, but then I also added my own touch.  Here is how I did it:

Step 1: Decide what shape you want and gather your materials:

• news paper
• balloons
• flour
• sauce pot
• salt
• measuring cup
• scissors
• tape
• paint
• Tissue paper
• Bowl

I wanted to make a cute bee hive since a honey bee was the theme of the party.  Seems easy enough.

Step Two:  Take some of the news paper and tear or cut them into strips.  It doesn't matter how nice they look cause by the time they dry, you cant really tell any of them apart.

Step Three:  Make the piñata design.  eHow said to use one balloon but that was too small for me.  I wanted something large!  So I used 4 balloons.

• I can tell you right now that this was a pretty unstable start to laying down strips of paper so I took large sheets of news paper and covered the balloons using the tape to keep the paper in place, to shape it into what I wanted it to look like.  
• It didn't take on the perfect beehive shape, but in the end it worked out quite well.

Step Four:  Make the Paste.

• I was not very precise with this.  I used about 2/3 cup flour
• poured in some water (probably about a cup and a half)
• let it boil till it was a little thick
• threw in a pinch of salt
• stirred it while it cooled

NOTE: Since it thickens when it cools, don't let it get too pasty when it is hot

Step Five:  Run the news paper strips through the past and put onto the piñata.  This is when you use your bowl.  to steady the piñata.

• Make sure your paste is warm and not hot!  I burned my fingers a couple of times.  Silly me.
• Each strip does not have to have paste globed on.  Just a nice even sheen of it.
• I would put one end of the strip in the paste and hold it while with my other hand, put my finger over the paper to make sure that the bottom side of the strip met with the past.  Then with the hand holding onto the end of the strip that is in the paste, I lifted it up so that the whole strip would run under my finger catching past on it.  Did that make any sense at all?  I apologize if it did not.
• After running the strip through the past, I would hold the top with one hand and run my thumb and index finger down the strip to remove any extra paste
• Repeat for the other side to get all pasty
• Apply to the piñata.
• NOTE:  I put on 3 layers of large pieces of news paper and 3 layers of the pasted strips.  The weight of the newspaper kind of made it sag down so I didn't do more than that.

Step Six:  Wait for piñata to dry.  This may take a while depending on how many layers and how much paste you used.  Mine took about 2 days but it was also under an AC unit.

Step Seven:  Paint the piñata.

• It would be best if you got a primer but I didn't have any and thought that 2 coats would be enough.  Wrong!  You can see in the picture that even with two coats, you could still see the newspaper. Super Lame!  I'm not spending any more money on this thing so I've decided to cover it with tissue paper.

Step Eight:  Cut hole at top.  I did mine just big enough to put in toys candy and a child's hanger.

Now... if you did it right... you don't have to use tissue and could just paint it so step nine is not required!

Step Nine:  Put tissue paper on it.

• If I had put primer on it then I wouldn't have had to spend so much time with the tissue.  I could have just cut out squares and pasted them on but because you could see all the news paper, I had to add an enormous amount of tissue paper!  I do believe that it worked out to my favor though.
• Cut out two by two inch squares of tissue
• take one square and wrap it around your finger (put index finger in middle of square and squish the rest of the tissue upwards around it).
• dot your finger (with the tissue still on it) into the paste and place it on the piñata however you want.

This took some time but I enjoyed it.

Every party item I bought was yellow black and white polka dotted

By this point I was about to pull out my hair and you can see the white hadn't been added yet.

Step Ten:  Put in candy, toys and child's hanger.

• I did not fasten the child's hanger to it

I was so nervous to have the kids play with it.  Would it break too easily?  Would it take a muscle man to break it?  Will the hanger break off before the kids can break it?  ect ect ect...

It was perfect.  All the kids got a chance to hit it.  It didn't take an adult to break it open.  The hanger did not break and was perfect for hanging on a pole since I did not have a tree.

I got a lot of compliments (even though I felt it was kind of a fail), and to say that I made it, felt pretty good too.

Yeah, I am kind of a dumb dumb because I never took a picture of it before it got killed by the kiddos.

As for the cost:

News paper - free

Flour - $1.50

Salt $1

Tissue paper $2 (bought it at a store where a bunch of it was only a dollar!  Good Deal)

Paint $2.50 (Home Depot sample size and technically it was left over from when I painted something else)
This does not include the stuff I put in it

Total:  $7

Time it took to make it?  A LOT

Was it a nail or a fail?  

NAIL and FAIL

I would say NAIL because it was only $7 to make but a FAIL when it came to how much time it took.   So if you like to be crafty then I totally recommend it.  If you need something quick and just don't have the time, then buy one cause you can get them as cheap as $15  GOOD LUCK!!

Gnats B Gone! please?

For some reason we were having a really bad gnat problem on our back patio.  After about 2 days, I was so tired of getting my daily amount of protein from accidentally eating bugs that I finally decided to look online and figure out how to kill these things.

After a Google, pretty much every website recommended that you use vinegar, sugar, water and cut the top of a plastic bottle and flip it to trap the gnats in.

The Goldfish were for me

I put in a 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup rice vinegar and 1/2 cup water into a plastic bottle where I cut the top off and put it back on up-side-down.  I put it outside on my patio table.

After two days, I checked it.  Nothing:

Okay, four, but that is nothing compared to the four million that were out there.

I tried it again thinking that maybe the rice vinegar was not good to use so I made the same thing but with normal vinegar and again, set it out on my patio table.

I was horrified.  This time it killed another four gnats and also a Gecko, which I DID NOT want to kill because they eat the gnats and other bugs that fly around. 

I gave up and called the bug guys.  We still don't know what caused all the gnats but next time, I will try it again.   It seems that dish soap is also an ingredient that people are recommending now.

I sure hope that I do not have this problem again, though.  YUK!

FAIL

Cake Bossette

I watch a lot of those food shows where people make those really cool cakes.  I decided that I wanted to have a really cool cake for my daughters birthday party.

As I have mentioned before, her theme was a honey bee so I wanted to have some kind of bee or beehive cake.

I have a friend who makes beautiful cakes so I asked her about it and she offered a cake to make for me but... for $85.  *Le Sigh*  This is actually a REALLY great price for the cuteness of the cake but I had a hard time willing to spend that much on a cake.

Now remember, I am not a baker.  I am an average Joette who has never done this before and seeing if this is something that a regular average person can do!

Where to start?  I started making a list of what I would need if I wanted to make it myself:

• Cake mold
• Cake mix (including the ingredients)
• Frosting
• Food coloring (optional)
• Sugar molds (optional)
• Fondant
• Powdered sugar
• Cake icing tip (mine was called star even though it wasn't five points)
• Cake icing bag (those triangle things you see bakers squeezing frosting out of)
• coupler; the plastic thing that holds the icing bag to the icing tip without frosting oozing everywhere.
• Tall cup/drinking glass/mug

Okay, so now that I have an idea of what I need, what do I do now?  Go to Amazon:

• The first thing I did was go to Amazon.com to see what kind of cake molds were out there.  I found one of a beehive.  $30 hmmm, kind of expensive but lucky me, I have a gift card from my family.  I think I still would have bought it even if I didn't have the gift card.  Now I can keep it for the rest of my life and possibly give it to my daughter for when she has kids!  Saves her money.

• Next, I looked for cute little bee decorations and found that you can buy sugar molds for cheap and in pretty much any kind of thing you want it.  The only problem I ran into was the packaging.  There was one company that claimed that you should be worried about good packaging.  They claimed that if you did not have good packaging that you would receive your sugar molds in pieces.  They were charging $7 for 12 bees.  Another company was charging $5 for 24 bees but did not mention anything about their packaging so I did get worried.  I ordered both.  Once I received the bees in the mail, the first company did an extremely good job packaging the bees.  None of them broke BUT the second company threw all the bees into a little plastic bag and none of them broke either.  So I am suspecting that as long as there are no easily breakable features on the moldings then don't worry about the packaging.   My bees were pretty much a circle with nothing sticking out so they were fine.

• Last, on Amazon, I bought black food dye.  $7 for a huge thing of it so I will never have to buy black dye food coloring again.  EVER.

Then I went to the store and bought 2 boxes of cake mix (classic yellow), 3 containers of frosting (2 white, 1 chocolate), eggs, veggie oil (following cake mix directions) and fondant.  $14.

Once I figured out what I needed (and got it) it was time to go and make my cake!

I used 2 boxs of cake mix.  1 for each side. 

Step One:  Make the cakes.  I  realized that the cake mold I bought was kinda small.  Very small in fact and would only feed probably about 20 people when I was going to have about 50 people at the house.  How do I solve this.... hmmmm...  I KNOW!  I pulled out my 9 inch round cake pans (happen to have them from making homemade pizzas).  It actually didn't really matter to me if they were round, square, 9 inches, 10 inches or whatever.  Just something that would look okay and feed more people.  I obviously had to buy more cake mix and frosting.

Then I removed the excess.

Step Two:  Remove any excess cake.  You can see the picture of what I mean above but when it came to the round cakes it was a little more difficult.  You want your cakes to be flat so if you pull your cake out of the oven and there is a huge dome then you have to cut it off as best as you can so that they are flat and level.

Step Three:  Put the pieces together.  I have a total of 4 cake pieces; 2 round ones and 2 halves of a bee hive.  

• I take one of the round ones and frost the top with icing (I used the white frosting).  
• Then I add the second round one to the top (with the cut part facing down).  
• I then frosted those two pieces like normal.   
• Now for the bee hive.  Before putting the pieces on the round cake I frosted the middle parts and put them together before putting them on top of the cake.  
• They didn't really want to stay together so I had to frost the whole thing real quick and then put them in the fridge to chill and that seemed to work with keeping everything together.

Step Four:  Roll out the fondant and make black frosting.  

• RULE:  DO NOT ROLL OUT THE FONDANT UNTIL YOU ARE READY TO PUT IT ON THE CAKE.  I did not do this and let it sit so it dried out and was unusable.  Super sad that I had to buy more.  
• To make black frosting, you need the chocolate frosting and only a few drops of the black dye.   I am an idiot and used white frosting the first go around and couldn't figure out why my frosting was turning out purple.  My cake friend told me to use chocolate.  Duh... I should have figured that one out but I didn't.
• NOTE: if your frosting is too runny then add powdered sugar to thicken it up.
• Now roll out your fondant.  Mine came in a square and I had to put powdered sugar on the counter to roll it out.  

Step five:  Put the fondant on.

• At first I rolled it out too thin and it tore to pieces so I had to ball it up and try again.  Once I got it big enough to where it might fit, but not see through, I knew it was good to go.
• Next I pulled the cake out from the fridge and put dots of new frosting on (since the frosting on it was now chilled therefore a little hard) to act as glue for the fondant.
• Wrap the fondant around the cake like a blanket.  This was a pain in the @##!  I am not sure if it was because my cake was round but after a little bit of time, I managed to cover, cut off the extra and tried to work the seams so that you couldn't tell they were there.  It was not perfect but I figured I would cover them with bees.
• Pat the fondant so that it takes the shape of the mold.

Step six: Add frosting and sugar molds

• Take the cake icing bag and cut the tip off (bottom of the V)
• unscrew the coupler so that there are two pieces
• Take the larger part of the coupler and put together with the frosting tip and insert into bag so that the frosting tip is sticking out of the hole
• Screw the second piece of the coupler onto the first part (over the plastic)
• Put frosting into the frosting bag.  The best way to do this is to get a large cup, insert the bag (with the tip at the bottom of the cup) and fold over the top plastic part so that it is easy to get the frosting down to the bottom without creating too many air pockets
• Once you have enough frosting in it, twist the top and start making little stars.
• I put a little star in a spot where I wanted a bee and found that the frosting was perfect to glue the sugar moulds onto the cake.

I would give it a few practice squirts so that you can get the look that you want

So here is the cake that I made:

Anyone who saw it in person thought it was amazing.  

How much did I spend?  er...   well, lets find out:

Cake mix: 4 boxes @ .99 ea = ~$4

Frosting: 3 containers @ .99 ea = $3

Dye = $7

Bees = $12

Fondant = $7

Total:  $33

Not bad but if I hadn't had the gift card or most of the mentioned items, it would have been:

Same as above = $33

Cake mold = $30

Icing bag, coupler and star = ~$10

Powdered Sugar = $2

Veggie oil = $3

Eggs = $1.50

I hope this is okay but I am going to assume that everyone has a cup.

Total:  $79.50

BAM!!!  Still cheaper 

Remember:  This took me a bit of time and let me tell you it would have been nice to have the extra time for something else AND to have someone else worry about it. At least I have left over bees, dye, cake mold and a better knowledge of fondant for a future cake!

Tutu For You Too

No Sew Tutus that I found on YouTube loaded by Wowzzydotcom.

This is awesome!! 

Let me give you a little background information as to why I wanted to learn how to make a tutu for my baby girl.

I have a friend who is trying to adopt.  She is about to get her kiddos and I am so happy for her BUT the process was hard and there was a lot of money to be spent.

How do you raise money?  But a fundraiser of course!!  They had a few fundraisers and one of those fundraisers was a raffle!  Who doesn't love a raffle?  So I put in a little to help out.

Well...  I actually won something!  I couldn't believe it.  I never win anything!!  I was so excited, I won a $20 gift certificate to a super cute little business that makes tutu's.  I thought it was a great win until I looked at the prices.  

Please don't get me wrong.  I support mom and pop businesses because I grew up on the income of a self employed parent that relied solely on those who support those kinds of stores.  So, instead of buying from this store, I supported the mom and pop store in my area that supplies the items needed to make a tutu.  As for the gift certificate, I let someone else win it.

The first thing I did was google 'How to make a tutu'.  The first thing that came up was the video on YouTube I mentioned above.  "Julie Figueroa shows you how to make a tutu for a little girl. This method can also be used to make an adult tutu." Wowzzydotcom.  It's great!  Super easy instructions and it's not hard to do.  It does take time though.

My daughters birthday was coming up when I was making this.  Her theme since she was born has been honey bees.  So, for her birthday I made a tutu that was white black and yellow.  I then made a headband that had two antennas and used the scrap black and yellow pieces of tulle for between the antennas. 

Just to reiterate the instructions that are on the video:

1. You need the following items:

• Ribbon
• Tulle
• Scissors
• Ruler (if you want to get that technical which I did not)
2. Measure out the length of ribbon needed to go around the little girls waist.
3. Tie a knot at each end of the waist measurement and add 20 inches to each side.
4. Cut your tulle.  You may have to work a little bit differently than Julie shows you so, let me give you some tips:



You can see the spool there on the left.  10 pieces that are each 10 inches long and in as even pile as can be.






Roll the tulle starting at the short end so it looks like this.






I did not make my pieces 3" wide but 2 inches.  Worked just fine.

• Cut out 10 pieces that are 10 inches long unless you want them longer (If you want the tutu to be 6 inches long then you will want to cut out 12 inch pieces)
• Evenly stacked them
• Rolled it up (short side not long ways)
• Cut off the edges
• Cut the middle.  This will give you 20 pieces of tulle to put on your ribbon
5. Next you will attach each piece of tulle to the ribbon.  You do this by:
• Folding the piece of tulle in half
• Tie it to the ribbon by making the folded part a loop and putting the two end pieces through the loop
6. Do that with all the tulle pieces till you have a tutu!
7. I also trimmed the edges to make sure that all were even.

The tutus are really cute and when my daughter wore hers to her birthday party, she got a million compliments.  I am sorry but I was so busy at the party that I never got a moment to take any pictures. Boo.

This is how I used the scrap pieces:

Butt Wipes

My daughter is not one yet so I have been trying to save money on all sorts of things that she requires.  I want to focus on one item that I see quite frequently on Pinterest.  Homemade Baby Wipes.  

I found the pin on Pinterest back in March and have been working on perfecting this particular baby wipe.  It is from Homemade Mamas.  You should check out their site.  It is full of awesome ideas.

So, according to Homemade Mamas all you need is:

1. A round plastic container with tight-fitting lid
2. Thick strong roll of paper towels (Viva is the best)
3. Sharp, Serrated knife to cut paper towel roll in half
4. 2 cups water, boiled and cooled to room temp
5. 2 Tbs. baby shampoo or wash
6. 1 Tbs. baby oil

Well that sounds easy enough.  So I tried it.

I did not know that I was going to be doing this blog so I didn't take pictures when I made them for the first time.  I just made mental notes of what I liked and didn't like.

Things I liked:

• Paper towel rolls have lots of squares.  That times 2?  Awesome!
• Baby wash or shampoo sounds good to me since you have to put it on your baby anyway.
• My friend Lisa and Christie gave me a bottle of Burt's Bees honey baby oil for my shower so my babies bum smelled so sweet after using my homemade wipes.

Things I had to change:

• The paper towel roll!  When you cut it, it makes a huge mess.  Also, all the towels are connected so it can be a huge pain to get them to come apart but you will find this for ALL baby wipes.  I mean all of them (I have found anyway).
• Less water cause when the towels sit in the water for too long they disintegrate and then you have a mess and it gets pretty gross.
• Again the paper towel role.  It was not easy to just pull out a piece.  They started ripping constantly when they sat in too much water and the roll started sagging.

After several sessions tinkering with my baby wipes, I feel that I have finally come up with something that is still not perfect but better.  I will always keep trying to make them inexpensive and easy to use.

Here is a list of items that I use:

• Baby shampoo ($2)
• Baby oil (regular baby oil is about 70 cents for a bottle about the same size as shown)
• Kleenex 2 ply dinner napkins ($1 for one package of 50)
• Scissors 
• 1 Tbs and 1/2 Tbs
• Container (shown is Ziplock)
• Baby wipe container (not needed but not bad to have)
• 1 and 1/3 cup water boiled and cooled (I don't know why but I think it has something to do with purifying)

This is what I do:

1. 1 Tbs of baby wash and 1/2 Tbs of baby oil into container with 1 and 1/3 cup water- MIX
2. take about half the package of Kleenex table napkins and cut in half
3. fold napkins into each other (pictures below)
4. lightly dunk each side into mixture.  There should be JUST enough mix to get everything wet enough to use but no extra water for it to sit in
5. Put into container

$3.70 for 50 wipes does not sound very good BUT you have enough baby wash and baby oil to get you through at least another 5 rounds.  So let me break it down mathematically:

• $1 per Kleenex.  That means you need to buy 3 packages for 6 rounds = $3
• .70 cents for small baby oil = .70 cents
• $2 bottle of baby wash = $2
• hopefully you already have a container

Total is $5.70 for 300 wipes AND you still have enough baby wash/shampoo to get you through even more wipes without having to buy a new bottle.

THINGS I WANT TO POINT OUT:

• if you are a military ID card holder with privileges to the BX, NEX and so on... then you can go to the Navy Exchange website and get a box of 432 wipes for $4.50.  
• If you do NOT hold a military ID card and have to buy at the store then a store brand may be just as inexpensive.
• I have had no problems with diaper rash since using these homemade wipes.
• Having the baby wipe container helps pull the pieces apart better than the ziplock container.
• Add a little food coloring to the mix and you can have your wipes match the room!

After several tries I feel that I have NAILED it!

Nifty Nails

I was looking at my nails last week and thought to myself 'It's time you fix these, Bri'.  I always see those awesome nail pictures that are on Pinterest where they are holding a little jar of finger nail polish or something to show off their super pretty nails.  Nails that you don't think that you could ever possibly have BUT you CAN!

Check it out:

Now it's not as beautiful as the pics that you will see on Pinterest but gosh darn it, it's pretty darn close and the best part of it is that I only paid $4.50 for this and people thought that it was professional!

Usually I am not a fake nail kind of girl nor do I ever mess with the press on nails because they obviously look retarded BUT I was going through my BX (Base Exchange.  My hubbs is in the military) and found these Sally Hansen Salon Effects Real Nail Polish Strips.  Basically it's like a sticker but it's a nail polish sticker.

I have a basket full of different colored nail polishes and I'm sure that you probably have one too since that stuff kind of accumulates over time.  I just happen to also have a white and black bottle of polish which is awesome cause they will go with pretty much ANY of the designs that the Salon Effects offers.

This is what is inside of the small box for $8.95:

You can see that there are two containers with nail strips.  Once you open the container, you have to use them!

This is how I only paid $4.50:

1. Open only one container
2. There are 8 strips inside.  Pick one strip that will fit over the nail of your choice on your hand.  That one will hopefully work for the finger of your choice on both hands.  If not then that is fine, just use another strip.
3. Place the strip on your nail so that any extra you don't need is sticking up from the top.
4. With pressure on the strip over the nail, pull the extra down and off so that you have another piece to use on another nail.
5. By doing this I was able to do my toes too:

When I took the picture, the pinkie toes were drying from a first coat of polish.  They were just as white when I finished as all the other white nails.

     6.  Then save the other half the package for another time!

Other things to consider:

• The strips last longer than the nail polish
• The strips are super hard to get off.  It took a while to wipe them off with nail polish remover.
• If you do not use the strip, it will dry out!  I waisted half a package not realizing that.  Duh, right?