day 3

The boy and I saw "We Bought a Zoo" tonight and I'm going to steal this little girl:

Also, I'm making decorations for my kitchen counter/bar area because my silly pink tree needs to be replaced when I get back to Tuscaloosa in a week-ish.  

So this doesn't look as cute without the other kitchen counter decorations, but I love yarn and cheap crafts!

wrap wooden letters in yarn

paint a thrift store frame ($1.29!)
the frame was a little larger than I would have liked...

fasten the letters to the frame

imagine this with apothecary jars, burlap and a cream background!

day 2

Today, I made trees!  But not just any trees, friends.

JoAnn had these trees (but not as cute as mine...) for $35 each yesterday and that is NUTS.  The styrofoam trees cost me $4-5 each and the yarn, rafia and pom poms were so cheap.  It took about 2 hours to do 3 trees, so you do need some patience but I really like them!

i love how they turned out!

falalalalalalala

When I'm at home, I'm not creative.  Do you know why?  Because none of my crafty stuff is in May-retta.  So there's my explanation, but I'm going to post 1 thing a day for the next 3 days!  That's a big deal.

Here's what I did today: shop.  I hate to shop (I know.) unless I'm shopping for home decor.  AfterHolidaySales are my FAVE.  I spend way too much money but it makes me feel like I got a good deal, and it's always a great surprise when I pull out a new treasure 330 days from now that I forgot I bought!

Target, Hobby Lobby, JoAnn, HomeGoods, Outrageous Interiors and Ulta (...not home decor, but I love buying makeup) owe me.  Big Time.

Here's my creative little thing for today (actually a month ago and I'm just now getting around to posting it):

Christmas Countdown Calendar!  I don't like the cheesy little felt ones and I love cheesy little clothespins, so ta da!

wood, paint, puff balls, clothespins.  so easy!

incidentally, it makes a great christmas card holder, too!
say "feliz navidad" to elizabeth!

this was my impulsive buy at target on black friday.
merry christmas to meee!

roll tide, friends!
see you in NOLA!

Tomorrow? Shabby Chic Trees.

the messiest pan ever

So I love Mac 'n Cheese and I love muffins (basically I love carbs...).

I decided that I would put mac 'n cheese in muffin cups and see what happened.   Let me tell you, it was GOOD.

YUM.

how are you going to say no to that?

I made real mac 'n cheese, instead of out of a box, added bread crumbs to hold it together a little more and added more bread crumbs and cheese on top.  It made for a super messy pan but it was unbelievably delicious.  Next tailgate, I'm going to make them in mini muffin tins!

Coincidentally, the boy and I made Mac 'n Cheese pizza the next night... no complaints here!

catholic school muffins

As this semester is coming to a close, I am finally finished with my student teaching at the Catholic School! Wahoo! I do miss those kiddies, but I don't miss my free time.  8 hours of school + 5-6 hours of class + endless hours of work = a really long day and a really tired Katharine.

For my last day of school, I decided to make Blueberry Sour Cream Muffins for the Teacher's Lounge!  They were so delicious and I was hoping that, by handing them to my teacher with my grading forms, it would ensure an A!

The good news - I got a perfect score on all of my evaluations!
The bad news - It was "Bring Breakfast to Work Day"for the faculty, so my muffins were not the hit of the party haha!

Here's the recipe from Eat at Home:

2 cups flour

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. baking soda

1 stick butter, softened

3/4 cup sugar

2 eggs

3/4 cups sour cream or plain yogurt

1 tsp. vanilla

1 cup frozen or fresh blueberries

Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Grease 12 muffin cups. In a mixer bowl, cream the butter and sugar together. Add in the eggs, one at a time. Mix in the sour cream or yogurt and the vanilla.

In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda and salt. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry, just until moistened. Stir in the blueberries and divide the batter between the muffin cups. Bake for 15-20 minutes.

I have a closet full of unfinished projects right now, so expect something creative soon!

"Did you find this on Pinterest?"

No.

I don't know how to work that thing so someone's going to need to show me what's up over Christmas break.  I do, however, still use StumbleUpon and it works just fine, thank you very much!

I went to Athens this past, past, past weekend to see literally all of my favorite people in one place- what a blessing to be surrounded by such encouraging and hilarious friends! I love you all more than you know!  Anyways, I figured I needed a host/hostess gift for everyone we visited but it ended up sitting in Chris' kitchen all weekend.  I'm so glad he got to enjoy the majority of it because it was DELICIOUS.

Just picture this:  Brownies, on top of Oreos on top of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough.  It's the most appropriate threesome EVER.

layer 1

layer 2

layer 3

it was so thick, it needed 2 pans!

seriously, it was amazing!

Here's the recipe (which I don't feel bad stealing because literally everyone I talked to about this recipe asked if I saw it on Pinterest, so apparently it's pretty common...)

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 Tablespoon pure vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups (12 ounces) milk chocolate chips
1 pkg Double Stuffed Oreos
1 Family Size (9×13) Brownie mix
1/4 cup hot fudge topping


Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Cream the butter and both sugars in a large bowl with an electric mixer on medium speed for 3-5 minutes. Add the eggs and vanilla and mix well to thoroughly combine. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt, then slowly incorporate into the mixer until the flour is just combined. Stir in chocolate chips. Spread the cookie dough in the bottom of a 9×13 baking dish that’s been lined with wax paper and sprayed with cooking spray. Top with a layer of Oreos. Mix together brownie mix, adding an optional 1/4 cup of hot fudge topping to the mix. Pour the brownie batter over the cookie dough and Oreos. Bake at 350 degrees F for 45-55 minutes.
this specific recipe found here!

Also, meet my new best friend, Marsha the Mixer:

She was found at a garage sale and then, coincidentally, sat in a garage (ours...) for a long time and now she is mine and I LOVE her.

Welcome to the fam, Marsha!

crafty cupcakes

Recently we had a super precious office party and I decided to get ambitious and make lots and lotsa cupcakes.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the inside of the really creative one, so I stole one from this blog.  I saw the idea in a magazine a few months ago and couldn't wait to try it!

Here are my candy corn cupcakes:

nothing special, right?

wrong-o! this is the picture I stole but mine actually did look like that!
she took the bottom out of her cupcake and I took the top out.
tomayto, tomaaato

cut a pyramid shaped hole in the cupcake

fill with icing, starting with white, then orange, then yellow

give a little squirt of chocolate on top...

ta da! so delicious and so easy!
time consuming and messy, but easy.

Then I made acorn cupcakes! These were much less time consuming once all of your acorns were finished!

take a mini nilla wafer and chocolate-glue it to a hershey kiss! voila! 

I will definitely do these again! Also, someone needs to buy me a corkscrew because this is unacceptable...

delay of game

So I had the best intentions of posting this a loooong time ago, but this little blog of mine is way down on the bottom of my Priorities Totem Pole.

Here's an update on my life:

I'm in the middle of one of my student-teaching semesters (first of three...)!  I'm at a local Catholic High School with eleventh grade students.  From what I've heard about others' experiences in other schools, I'm livin' the dream and it's awesome.  Very fulfilling and rewarding! More to come about being a pseudo-Catholic...

The Homecoming Parade........ I know.

Threw Mama a surprise party for her 28th birthday... Never saw it coming!

It was a "Hat Party"... So Susan-ish

I just finished my service learning hours at a local Middle School where I had lunch twice a week with an ELL 7th grader and she was PRECIOUS.  She taught me a lot of Spanish and was really impressed that I could keep up with her when she spoke Spanish (take that, Señora Cordell...).  Her English was perfect but she has a sad backstory so please pray for her family and home life, she is so amazing!

Our office just had a bonding night/Harvest Par-tay, more from that later because the cupcakes were too cute not to share the recipe!

We are a silly bunch

I just got back from a trip to beautiful Laramie, Wyoming, to see my sweet friend Sarah!  More pictures are on Facebook, but I promise they don't do it justice!

Vedauwoo Park

Flying over the Rockies

just one of the natives

Alabama is now 8-1 after a pathetic loss to LSU last night... the game was a blast though, I couldn't have asked for more (except maybe a better kicker)!  Our day started on the quad with a crazy man in a wheel chair who invited us to some hoity-toity tailgate with an open bar (yes, please!), then we went to stand in line to get in, only to find out that our friend got in the game 15 minutes before the gate opened so we didn't have to stand with all the crazy people! Then, we had a friend bring us free drinks while we were outside of the stadium and concluded the day with some hilarious people commentating the whole game.  AWESOME.  Win or lose, we will always win the party!

precious.

priorities, people.

Now that you know all about me, here's my final Halloween craft! I only posted projects two on here, but my room was full of hot glue, fabric, etc. because I just love Halloween!  I also love sale prices so November 1st my Halloween stash doubled- $57 later and I'm set for next year!

This Halloween-y Wreath Cost me $3.  For Real.  Everything came from the Dollar Store and the structure of the wreath was just a wire hanger...

all my cheap-o materials

ta-da! 

seriously the best part of any holiday... am I right?!

Boo, y'all

Happy Fall! I just love Halloween crafts and decorations (seriously, it looks like Transylvania threw up in my living room) so I decided to get started on some stress-relieving creativity!

All I used to make these super-cute frames (that I saw on someone's website, I can't remember which ones...) were scrapbook paper, googly-eyes, scrapbooking stickers and hot glue!

almost exactly 4 years ago! i made Michael's costume...

too cute not to make extras!

Happy Halloween!