Monday Made It

My summer is drawing to a close with only 1 1/2 weeks left, so I'm starting to think about school a little more. Specifically, I've been trying to clean up and advertise my store a little better to help promote my products (without driving you all crazy). This week I have two things to share, and both of them are technology related. I'm so proud!

I made a banner for my TPT store! Now when you click on it, it immediately takes you to all of my literacy center packs (which I am slowly upgrading just a little to have more coherence and to have a cleaner look). 

Hover over this image:

Did you notice something cool? I used Megan's tutorial (I Teach. What's Your Superpower?) from her Blog Baby Blog tips to create a pin it button, and here it is! I've been wanting to add one for a while, but I just had no idea how to do it. Megan made it pretty simple. She's amazing!

What have you made recently?

Monday Made-It: Citronella Candles

Three weeks in a row with something to share for my Monday Made-It! I'm so proud of myself! And this week, I actually have something crafty that I made. Shocker. I know.

Wednesday evening was my very first Pinterest party, and we made Citronella candles! I wanted to do something that would be useful for the summer but was still pretty and fun. I found this pin here that had SIMPLE and easy to follow instructions. Sold!

Then I gathered my supplies. A.C. Moore has great coupons every week in the Sunday paper, so I gathered them to get my wax (I bought the 4 lb brick after learning that a lot of people weren't able to come. That was enough to fill 5, maybe 6, mason jars) and candle wicks. I recommend getting the big ones! We already had mason jars and a hot glue gun. Then I cheated and bought citronella fuel instead of the oil because it's (a) cheaper and (b) easier to find. We were sweating it whether that was actually a good idea or not. So far, no explosions!

The funniest part was trying to break apart the stupid block of wax! We tried with a knife first and finally found success after pulling out Steven's tools. We ended up using a flathead screwdriver and a hammer. That worked just fine! If you don't want that extra frustration, I would recommend buying the wax flakes. They only came in 1 lb bags at the store, though. After that, you just melt the wax, take it OFF the stove before adding a very small amount of citronella, then pour it in your containers (where you've already glued the wick in place) and let it cool!

We also added little burlap koozies because I had extra burlap from a made-it I did back in May and still need to share about (maybe next week). My only negative about these candles is that they sunk in a lot in the middle. I'm not sure how to prevent that. It may be because we used fuel instead of oil, and that changed the consistency. I don't know.

And finally, proof that I have in fact tried out the candle and seen with my own eyes that it won't explode. We also didn't get eaten alive, and I felt like we didn't have as many bugs (just flies). That may be just because of the time of day (jury is still out on weather it does prevent them or not), but we at least had a pretty candle!

Monday Made It: July 14

I'm still not doing any huge, crafty things over my summer break because we've been busy making friends and memories by spending time with lots of people from our new church. This has been a huge blessing to all three of us! I have a small "made it" for this week, but I will have something a little more in depth to share next week because I'm hosting (and attending) my very first PINTEREST PARTY!! One of my friends told me about these a while back, and I've been wanting to go to one for a while. So I mentioned it to the girls in our community group, and we're finally making it happen! I'm very excited, but you'll hear all about it next week.

This week's made-it has to do with a certain restaurant that is very near and dear to my heart:

No, I never worked there or anything. I just really love their chicken...and those cows! So every year, they have a Cow Appreciation Day where you can dress up and get a free meal. Seriously, you can't beat that!

Keagan and I have participated for 3 years now, although we're still pretty basic on the costumes so far. Next year I'm determined to actually have something a little better. I'm thinking of getting a pillowcase and sewing some felt spots on. Here's Keagan's costume for this year though!

I was going to use white trash bags and paint the spots on, but Steven has students that work at our Chick-fil-a, and he didn't want to look too tacky. So I just cut out a few quick spots and pinned them to Keagan's shirt. He wasn't a huge fan of that and kept asking me to take them off, but he held out longer than I expected. It helps that he understood it meant he got yummy chicken nuggets!

I also had to look back and dig up the pictures from our previous two years. I can't believe how much he's grown! Last year, he had just started saying "Moo!" when he recognized a cow. This year, he can tell you exactly what the cow is doing and more!

  

What have you been making?

Monday Made It

I'm so excited to finally have something to share for Monday Made It! I really admire those of you who can share something every week, but I'm just not that crafty. I mean, I have a million things pinned and have barely tried any of them. It's bad.

Anyway, I have to give credit to my mother-in-law for even having something this week. We had a family cook-out for the 4th, and she sent home the stuff to make whoopie pies. Steven usually does the cooking and baking at our house (jackpot!), but he was busy Thursday. So I was in charge of making them.

We searched the internet and found this recipe for making them from cake mix (I need my crutch) because we knew they would need to have that certain spongy texture. It also includes instructions for the cream filling, but we just used store-bought whipped icing.

I loved this summer velvet box because it was perfect for the 4th! The blue was so pretty and came out really well. My only complaint was that the two cake mixes had slightly different textures, which made it difficult to get the tops and bottoms to be the same size. I guess that's a perk for using the exact same mix for both sides. Also, I think it would've been better to use an ice cream scoop so they were more round. I got better at pouring, but mine were definitely ovals.

After letting them all cool completely, I just spread icing and topped them with another "cookie". The icing was very thin, so I would recommend adding more (or maybe even trying hers for a thicker filling) if you try this. Still, they were yummy!

Now I just need to finish them off because I've been bad about sweets lately with them around...