One item off my bucket list!

Look what my mom and I did this past weekend...

Apparently we both had always wanted to take a glass blowing class, so we found a deal and had an amazing Saturday afternoon!

Besides the fact that it was well over 100 degrees inside the shop (and who knows how many thousand near the furnace), we learned a bunch and made these beauties...

Aren't they amazing? I had so much fun and Im trying to figure out how to manage another visit to the glass blowing shop!

What's on your bucket list that you could accomplish in the next few weeks??

Valentine's Day Craft Ideas

We've done a couple Valentine's crafts so far (mostly with Girl Scouts), and we'll be doing several more.

But I thought I'd share what we've done so far so that you have time to work on them if you're interested!

We made placemats (ignore how lumpy they are... I was doing the sample really quickly!) 2 pieces of Contac paper, a few heart cutouts, and the edging is wrapping paper from Target's $1 bin (ribbon would work too but it was out of my price range to do it for 10 girls!)

These are my all-time favorite quick craft, and it's crazy cheap! Holiday themed bookmarks... Use multicolored paint chips (I cut off the color names and numbers and got 2 per paint chip). Then use a heart shaped hole punch, which was only $4 at Michael's (on sale for $2!). Punch a hole in the end and thread ribbon through it.

My kids have gone nuts with this, we went back and bought several shaped punchers while they were on sale. And Bok Boy made a bunch of them for his teacher to use as prizes in the classroom. Plus, the punched out hearts are perfect for filler for the placemat craft!

Awesome handmade candle that you can do right now!

Before Christmas hubby was walking around the house muttering about making a candle, and I was looking at him like he was crazy. He's definitely never been interested in making candles since I've known him!

20 minutes later we had a wonderful smelling, super cute handmade candle!

Isn't this adorable? I have no idea where he originally found the directions, but you take a tangerine (you can probably do it with an orange), slice it in half through the skin, then very carefully extract the fruit. Leave the white stringy part (that runs between the fruit pieces) intact on the peel.

That's your wick. Very cool, huh?

Fill with oil of your choice (hubby used olive oil). He then tore a piece of the other half and made a top for it.

Now it glows!

I love this idea, and you almost always have the parts on hand. Try making them yourself!

Winter Crafts and Treats

Just after Thanksgiving I discovered Pinterest (thanks to my fellow bloggers!) Since then I've spent WAY too much time doing crafts and cooking!

Here's a few of the fun things we did with winter themes... you still have time to enjoy them this year, or pin them for next year.

Use marbles (or foil balls) to make cupcake snowmen. This also works for hearts at Valentine's Day!

Sorry for the bad pic, but I was rushing to finish them before my Girl Scouts got there. The original pic (in a magazine) had coconut on them, which would cover up some of the flaws :-)

These sleighs are quick to make with a hot glue gun. I stuck money/gift cards in them and gave them as gifts so that people would have more as a gift than a gift card!

These snowflakes were popular with both grown ups and kids! Take a flour tortilla, fold it and cut a snowflake out of it. Lightly butter and cover with cinnamon sugar, then bake until crispy. Taste, edible snowflakes!

To finish it off, here's how San Francisco City Hall dresses up for the holidays:

and my dishwasher thinks it's Santa:

(it flashes Ho Ho Ho while it runs)!