My New Blue Door

My Girls have been at VBS all week and I've had a project of my own. Painting and Stickering the Front door.The color I went with was a color match to Martha Steward Living Azurite.

The sad part is that I bought a quart and probably could have gotten by on one sample, which is only like 3 dollars. I also found a DIY blog that did a Moroccan privacy screen with contact paper on Pinterest so I thought I would try it. Heres a link http://7thhouseontheleft.com/2011/08/window/#.UcxVg_m1EfU They also have a stencil pdf on that site that I used. http://7thhouseontheleft.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/7hl_windowstencil.pdf The first day of VBS I did a lot of cutting.

Like two movies worth of cutting. Until I had about 72 patterns cut out

I tried it out on the door because I wanted to see what they looked like.

I don't know if you can tell but they had a lot of bubbles. So I decided to wait until my husband (Who does vinyl stickering at work) to come home to help me out. His suggestion was to use soap and water under it so that you can move it around and a vinyl squeegee thing to smooth it out.

WARNING DO NOT USE SOAP with CONTACT PAPER! It doesn't seem to work as well as with vinyl. It left soap drips

So if you decide to do it that way try with just water and let it dry for a couple hours and see if it drips. I do like the overall design with the stencil though. When I get the gumption again maybe I will start cutting.

Heres the stencil from inside the house, much more privacy.

Before:

After:

Our New front door

Our Growing Potatoes Update

A little over a week ago we planted some carrots and 1 potato from our compost. In this post http://gettingbacktorandom.blogspot.com/2013/06/green-girls-and-their-favorite-outfits.html
The carrots all died after being transplanted and went back to the compost heap. The potato on the other hand seems to be doing very well. (Its probably GMO)

Our little potato on the first day. I put it on the very bottom of the pot. I was told that as they grow, you put more and more dirt on it, till it gets to the top.

The potato plant in the middle of the week with some added dirt.

This is our potato today. The dirt is almost to the top of the container. I've never tried to grow potatoes before but they grow a lot in a week.

Our New Door Project

We got a new door! Our old door had a dog door on the bottom and we haven't had a dog for 4 years.

The Dilemma is that the new door is glass (Privacy) and needs desperately to be painted. 

Its a lovely light purple with cream trim door which coincidentally almost matches our gate door (which we cannot change.)

 I think for the color I want blue.  The two I like are

I really like this Robin egg blue, but it is also almost the same color as my bathroom. 

I like this royal blue. The color will always remind me of Kate Middleton's Engagement dress

Our other problem is the Glass. You can see down our whole hall.

Of course this invites silly smashed faces on the glass.

My husband actually works for a vinyl company and they make window decals etc. So my first thought was to get some frosted glass vinyl and cut out some sort of design like this. 

The other option is getting curtains, but that seems like too much work.

Any Ideas of what you think I should do?

Lazy Mom's DIY outdoor doll craft

I spend quite a lot of time in the summer outside in our shared backyard. It has really old trees perhaps even 100 yrs old I don't know-Any Arborists around?

We don't have much toys outside just a couple of yellow buckets and Frisbees, that's all we really need. Sometimes I also make the girls little dolls. 

The Grass is hair and the leaf is a dress (use your imagination)

I poked a small hole just at the intersection of the veins of the leaf and made a knot. Instant Dress

Put the head side in the grass and twist. Instant hair...if its not windy. 

Then the dolls are bald.

I also made one with arms which was a little less lazy because you have to find a green bendy branch. 

The girls playing with the dolls, TURN THE SOUND OFF its really loud because of the wind.

Gluten Free Red Velvet Cupcake Mix Review- Heartland Gourmet

I got a new Gluten free mix to try. You can get them at TJ Maxx, Marshalls or Amazon http://heartlandgourmet.com/products/gluten-free-red-velvet-cupcake-mix.  It looked delicious I'm always up for some chocolate.

As with a lot of gluten free mixes, there are some pretty weird directions. 

I preheated my oven to 350 degrees and also put the cupcake liners in.

I put the water into the pyrex to boil in the microwave. For me it took 1 min and 30 for my water to boil, and steam up the bowl.

Then I added the mix.

It did a red bubbling volcano thing, which was fun. I mixed the mix with my mixer :) for the recommended 30 seconds. 

Then Added the eggs and the oil.

Then mixed again for 30 seconds. I was a little worried that the eggs might become scrambled with the boiling water but they didn't. I don't know if it had just cooled off enough by then or if the mixing helped them not to cook.  Also wash the beaters, you'll use it for the frosting later.

I filled the muffin tins,some a little too full because they are exploding out of the container later. I'm used to the Betty Crocker cake mix that you put almost to the top and it doesn't rise very much at all. This one does rise, you were warned :) 

Now to cook in the oven for 20 mins, plus an added 5min because the toothpick came out sticking the first time. 

While those were cooking I made the frosting recipe on the pkg.

I think it was different that they put 2oz of butter on the pkg. I know that a Lb of butter is 16 oz/4 sticks is 4oz a stick so I deduced that it was half a stick. Yay math.  I creamed together the cream cheese and butter in a bowl.

Then added the sugar and gluten free vanilla, took out the washed beater again, and go to town. That sugar flys everywhere if your not careful...which I'm not. Now I recommend if you make cupcakes a lot you should get one of these kits. I got mine at target. 

Please excuse the crazy nails,  I always seem to use the tip that looks like this...

I have tall cups so what I usually do is get a plastic baggie or if you still have wilton bags that come with the kit use those, cut off the end and put the tip in the bag.

I set it in the cup and fold over the edges, cause I don't want frosting on my fingers.

Add frosting.

Lift the bag out of the cup twist the top and squeeze the frosting down to the tip. 

Then I just put the frosting back in the cup and through it into the fridge to cool down because its basically a buttercream, and if you've watched Cake Boss you know buttercream must stay in the fridge. 

So this is how they turned out. A little bit exploded but not too bad. I let them cool on a rack for about 20 mins while I entered giveaways on twitter.

They cooled a little bit indented on the top, but that seems to be a gluten free theme for my cupcake endeavors. It can be remedied with a little cream cheese frosting and Red sugar of course.

Now For the taste test. We had my mom and niece over to try the cupcakes at a tea party. 

Kairi had the first response. She said "Yummy!" My niece said they were "awesome."  I thought that they were better after a night in the fridge. My mom said that they taste more moist than a regular gluten free cake.The frosting tasted like cheesecake, and was not as heavy or dense as other gf cakes. When my husband came home he said that they were dense, but pretty much tastes like a regular cupcake. (He is not gluten free). He was not a fan of the frosting.

Flower Donated by our Garden friend/Neighbor Nancy.

Joke of the day: Someone said "Why is it minty?"  Response  "Its Min-ty because its Mint-tea" get it? 

Can your kids entertain themselves when nothing is around?

So my girls.... I think they are inventive but I don't know if this is a common thing or not. They make animals out of their hands when there is nothing to play with. Which is not very helpful when they have done something wrong to get their toys taken away. But in a waiting room, oil change shop or at an adult event-like a wedding when there are no toys around it is very helpful. The one that stick in my mind the most is the bird. 

They make a bird with the index and middle finger, I'm guessing as the feet and the outlying fingers are the wings. When they are playing birds, someone is always the mom sitting on the eggs (fist) and getting worms. 

Another more obvious animal is a spider

A spider which mainly just crawls on things and tickles people.

Do your kids entertain themselves when nothing is around?