Pencil Shots

This has alcohol in it.

There I have your attention.

I'm a mom who hates back to school time. I hate that the kids can't sleep in and that I have to get them up EARLY. Plus getting myself ready. From 6:00 am-8:00 am should be considered a full time job. 

I want a nap when I get to work. But my bosses(yes, bosses) tend to frown upon sleeping on the job.

I usually need a drink at the end of the day. But it doesn't work out like that. In fact, I rarely get to drink because I just want to eat dessert and go to sleep. 

This leads me to my pencil shots.“I am entering Pencil Shots in the Creative Recipe Contest hosted by Confessions of a Cookbook Queen and Cookies and Cups!“) This is such a fun contest and I've been thinking about what to do. Well it's back to school time here in Arkansas so I was reminded of Kristan's Pencil Cupcakes. But it needed more. And by more I mean it needed alcohol. In a shot glass.

Pencil shots!

Now I am a horrible blogger. It's been 7 months since I last posted so there are only 2 pictures I took of the process. It's an easy process though.

Ingredients-

Box white cake mix- along with ingredients on the box

Yellow , Red , and Blue food coloring.

Gold sprinkles

Silver sprinkles

1 cup butter

30oz powered sugar

1/4tsp salt

1/2 cup almond liqueur

1 tbsp vanilla extract

1/2 milk

jelly bean

1. Mix cake ingredients together, split evenly between 2 bowls. Add yellow food coloring to one. Then add red to the other along with just a tiny bit of blue to make it dark pink.

 See this picture below. The mix is clumpy. Why? Because I need a blue mixer instead of a silver spoon.....

2. Cook according to packaged directions.

3.  Beat Butter until creamy. Slowly add  half of the powered sugar, salt, liqueur, and extract until blended. Then add the rest of the powered sugar and milk until blended. Add a few drops of yellow food coloring. Keep it covered.

4. Once cakes are done and cooled, crumble.  

5. Put pink crumbled cake in the bottom of the shot glass, next add silver sprinkles, followed by the yellow icing and cake. Add the gold sprinkles and finish off with the jelly bean.

Now you have cake, icing, and alcohol!!!

Recipe adapted from Back to School Pencil Cupcakes from Confessions of a Cookbook Queen. 

Grout paint- Do it!!

My house is sooo builder grade. The people who built our house did everything as cheap as possible.

One of things I've always hated is the dark grout on dark ceramic tile. Yuck! It never seemed clean but what can you do?

Well I was looking at Lowe's one day and found grout paint! Perfect! I got the off white for my floors.

 
Follow the directions on the bottle. So easy. Here is my before and after!

Zulily-My favorite site!

Okay, I must tell you about my new favorite site. Zulily! I bought so many Christmas presents for my kids from this site. Right now they have some super cute stuff that is really reasonable!
Here are some examples! Have fun shopping!

Aqua Elephant  Top and Pants

Smocked Pants and Top!

Painted curtains

2 posts in 2 days! I told you I'd become better at this. So a few weeks ago I realized my plain white curtains were not working in my living room. So I decided to paint them!
I started by taping the curtains 7 inches apart.
Then I applied the paint. I did it every other strip. I used just regular craft paint. Once I was done I removed the tape and hung them up. It was that easy!Linked to Tatertots and Jello

Apple Pie Biscuits with Mulled Cider Glaze

Okay, Listen. I've neglected this blog. Badly. It's not like I'm not doing anything, I just needed a kick to get back into blogging. This is where Kristan from Confessions of a Cookbook Queen and Shelly from Cookies and Cups came in. They are hosting an A-M-A-Z-I-N-G giveaway right now. All you have to do is do a blog post about your creative holiday recipe.

 I mean it sounds easy, right? Well, not so much. I had all these amazing thoughts in my mind. I googled to make sure that these ideas have not been done before. My 1st idea was candy icicles. Already done. 2nd was Hot Chocolate Popcorn. Already done, and by Shelly. Seriously! I was getting frustrated.
So, I decided to think about my favorite thing about winter. It has to be Mulled Apple Cider. It makes me so happy. I remember going to Open Houses in small town Arkansas and each store would have mulled apple cider. Really great memories with my mom.

I decided this needed to be in my dish. That's when I came up with this recipe.I was excited because there is not enough breakfast recipes for Christmas and this would be perfect! I googled and guess what! No one has done this before. So here's my winning dish( well or not because I am a bad blogger and use my iphone for pics!) Please don't judge me for that!

                   Apple Pie Biscuits with Mulled Cider Glaze.

Ingredients for the Apple Pie Biscuits.

2 1/2 cups of Bisquick
1 cup of milk
dash of cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon of vanilla
3/4 cup of apple pie filling.

Directions-
Preheat oven to 400
Mix all the ingredients in a mixer for 30 seconds or until well blended.
Prepare cookie sheet by lightly spraying
Drop by big tablespoon on the prepared cookie sheet(seriously, big)
Bake for 18 minutes(odd time but that's when mine were done so go with it)

While the biscuits are baking, we'll prepare the glaze.
Ingredients

2 cups Mulled Apple Cider. You will need to prepare this by buying mulled spices and cooking them with 2 cups of Apple Juice over medium heat for 30 minutes. Be sure to take the spices out before adding to the other ingredients.
2 tablespoons of butter
1 1/2 cups of brown sugar
dash of cinnamon
drop of red food coloring(optional)
Directions
Melt butter over medium heat. Once melted add all other ingredients(except food coloring). Cook for 20 minutes. Remove from heat. It will thicken as it stands. You can add a drop of food coloring to make it have a red tint to it.

Once biscuits at done, drizzle glaze over them and enjoy!
I am so proud of this recipe. My husband and kids both loved it and it's my 1st recipe I've ever come up with on my own. You are more than welcome to follow my blog and hopefully I will start posting more! Thanks so much for reading and hope you enjoy!

“I am entering Apple Pie Biscuits with Mulled Apple Cider Glaze in the Creative Holiday Recipe Contest hosted by Confessions of a Cookbook Queen and Cookies and Cups!“

Valentine's Day Shirt! With matching headband!

I haven't been sewing very long. A year to be exact. The one thing I have been wanting to learn (besides how to sew a button hole) is ruffles! Well, I found an easy way to do ruffles from HERE. So I thought how perfect this would be for a Valentines Day shirt.

I had this shirt in my stockpile of fabric. I bought it last year for $2.50 at Wal-Mart.

Then I went to Hancock Fabric and bought this for $5.99 a yard. You won't use that much but I always buy extra.

You will want to pre-wash your fabric before you begin. Okay, I did NOT take pictures of the process because at the time I wasn't thinking about restarting my blog again. BUT, I promise in the future I will.

What you will want to do First is cut 2 strips of the fabric. I cut mine 3 by 30. Then you will use the (easy) ruffle technique above to ruffle both of your strips. Once they are ruffled just sew on your shirt. And you are done!

Yes, it's that easy! I also made a matching double-sided headband from THIS tutorial!

I'm back!

I'm back! Well sorta. My work has blocked all blogspot addresses( I know!). So, I have been neglecting this blog. I also don't bargain hunt as much as I use to and hated to just post one bargain here and there.
Sooooo, I decided to make this into a whatever blog. It'll have bargains, crafts, family stuff. Just fun in general.
In the mean time, I am going to try to redo how this blog looks( If I remember how to do this!). If you like what you see be sure to follow me!