Box Oven (Tutorial) **warning**lots of pics

This coming weekend my Girl Scout troop and I are attending a Camping for Dummies overnight training.  I will earn my Adult camp certification and the girls will learn camp safety. This will prepare us to venture out on our own camping trip later this year (O-Boy!).  In preparation for the training we had to gather A TON of supplies and make a few. When the trainers first explained the box oven to me I had an AhHa moment. Ever been in the middle of baking something in your oven and POOF! the power goes out? Well I have! With this box oven you can cook ANYTHING you’d make in a regular oven: cakes, brownies, casseroles, even a turkey! I watched this video prepared by our camp trainers. I’ll have to get back to you on the how to use the Box Oven…I haven’t used mine yet but I will share when I do!

Materials:                                                                                                          1 Copy Paper Box

1 roll masking tape or blue painters tape

1 roll HEAVY DUTY Reynolds wrap

Stick tape all over the box (even the bottom)

Measure out your foil length wise so the there is an overlap on either side. Making sure shiny side is up.

Fold the foil around the box to make creases in the foil.

Fold the foil along all four creases

Place the foil carefully in the box and begin to unfold. Smoothing out the foil along the bottom and sides of the box to making sure to eliminate the any air pockets.

Unfold the foil completely up the inside of the box and down the outsides.

Add more tape to bottom & sides to apply a layer of foil to the shorter width of the box.

Fold the foil the same as the first layer, put it in the box and smooth up the sides. Then tape the entire inside of the box and add 2 more layers length and width across the box. This will give you a total of 4 layers.

The finished project should resemble this! Tape around the outside of the box to hold the foil down. To use the oven we are going to use four aluminum cans to hold the baking pan up away from the charcoals. I’ll post a video or pics to show how this is done!

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Slumber Party-Hollywood Style

This past Saturday 2/19 my Munchkin turned 11 years old! I’m still trying to wrap my head around that. We started planning her party back in December. She decided she wanted a slumber party with a celebrity/super star theme. So I told her to go research and bring me her ideas. WOW! She came back with a 6 page written plan for her party that included: game ideas, food ideas , diagrams, invitation & goody bag illustrations, and websites for decorations…she had it all planned out!

We got some cool ideas from this blog!

She chose Silver,Black, and Gold for the colors after finding these decorations at Partycity.com

She’d done a Google search to get ideas on how to set up for the party and found these "Popcorn" cupcakes. Too cute, it’s not really Popcorn on top it’s mini marshmallows that you cut cross-wise and spray with yellow food coloring or Wilton  Color Mist in Yellow.

This cupcake wrapper was made with my new favorite Cricut Accessory – Make The Cut software. I LOVE MTC! I will probably never buy another cartridge again! I used Stickles to outline & fill in the stars and 11.

Guess what I used to make this super cute banner?

Right!

Make the cut! Really, this software is Ah-may-zing! If you have a cutting machine!

Most of the decorations I got either on sale, with coupons or at the $1 store!

For the goody bags,I bought plain black paper sacks from Michael’s. I traced and cut out the star shape then glued cut pieces of page protectors inside the bag. I LOVE to embellish so I used a paper trimmer to make the loops on the top of the bag. Munchkin cut out little stars to glue on the outsides and the clapboard tags were made with……….YUP MTC! So was the clapboard on the balloon center piece and the front door.

The party was hit, the girls had a fun, there was pillow fighting, boy talk, movie watching, whip cream smearing, a hi fashion show and they designed their own T-shirts. They were 10 girls in all and they were all very well behaved.

The Pookie Doo has started planning her 7th birthday  with a Pinkalicious theme! Her Bday is in September so this is going to be FUN! My orders were, “Mommy, EVERYTHING has to just be PINK!”

*Sigh* I love planning parties!

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Snow!

I watched for weeks as other city’s in other states around MD got slammed with it. While here in MD we’d gotten a light dusting or two. Until this day! I wasn’t hoping for record breaking snow fall, just enough to maybe cause the base to close for a day so I could go out with my girls and play. It did snow but I still had to go to work. Which isn’t that bad considering my job is right next door. I didn’t have an excuse! School’s closed so the girls stayed home with Daddy.

I love the look of her Bold and Brightly colored coat against the white background.

Love when the snow falls thick n chunky like this it’s so gorgeous!

See, that’s my house with the Red Swagger Wagon, I’m taking the picture from the driveway of the house where I work!

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My Favorite Hot Sandwich

You may remember the post about  My Favorite Sandwich . Well the ooey gooey, crunchy, warm delicousness you are viewing in the photo below is my my favorite HOT sandwich!

Do you need a napkin, your drooling! It doesn’t have an official name, we just call it a hot sandwich. It is so good on a cold day with a cup of soup. But not only is it ridiculously delicious it’s also super easy to make!

                     

In my opinion what makes these sandwiches soooooo yummy is the sour dough bread and BBQ sauce. And I will tell you, you can’t just put any ole’ BBQ on there. I only use the Sweet Baby Ray’s Hickory and Brown Sugar Sauce. Other’s seem to ketchupy (yes, that’s a word!)

So what’s your favorite HOT sandwich?

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Hot Bliggity BLOG! 10 of my favorite blogs

These are in no particular order but are blogs I stalk checkout on a daily basis to see if there is anything new or sometimes I checkout old posts for anything I may have missed. I stole this idea from my bloggin' buddy Angie so let's start with her!
The House of Reeves Angie is just plain fun! She blogs about food, crafts, and everyday life!

Kevin and Amanda Amanda is my blog hero! Cool giveaways, photography tips, reviews, reciepes....I mean the list goes on and on!

Picky Palate If you LOVE super easy reciepes Jenny is so crafty in the kitchen I first fell in love with Jenny and her blog ever since I tried THE MOTHERLOAD LAYERED COOKIE BAR She even has a recipe for  mini snickers cheescakes! delicious!

Thirfty Decor Chick is really awesome! I love her thrifty diy style. Sarah's blog is where I learned about "linky" parties! And remember my NOEL craft, I saw it orginally on her blog!

The Pioneer Woman OMG! I luvs me some Ree, she is like the bloggin' equivalent to Oprah. Her blog has so much GOOD information and tips. Talk about cool give aways, this lady gives away KITCHENAID MIXERS, NIKON CAMERAS, FABULOUS CLOTHING, she homeschools her children, herds cattle, and....well you'll just have to go see!

Art is the Imitation of Life Taj White is a ridiculously talented woman. I adore her scrapbook work!

Adventures of An American Mum Racheal Durik is an amazing photographer, I love her blog and her photography

The Idea Room the name says it all, this blog is full of really great diy crafts and projects.

Oh the places you will go! Here is a fun blog by my dear friend Tina. She tells of her families traveling adventures while being currently stationed in Germany. (which I hope to be joining her there soon)!Cutie

Cutie Booty Cakes I started following Renee's blog because of her weightloss journey. I've been a weightloss journey since 2000 (but that's another blog another post) Her blog is very inspirational and fun to read.

So that wraps it up! Enjoy. Pin It

Red Felt Roses {Tutorial}

It’s all most Valentine’s Day! No, I’m not a real big fan of the day but it does inspire cool crafts and scrapbook LOs. Here is a SUPER EASY tutorial for felt flowers. I’ve made them before. CLICK HERE to see them.

You’ll need to cut your material into squares, then pick  corner and start cutting around and round. Leaving a nickle to quarter sized piece in the middle.

You can make wavy edges for a different effect. I don’t have piking sheers but I bet they’d be cool to use!  Once your done cutting, start rolling. Starting from the outside in….roll, roll, roll…

Now smack on a big dollup of glue…gahead don’t be scurd!

Fold the rolled part over to the center and let it dry for about an hour and you’ll have a beautiful flower. Playing with the edges and width of the cut will give you a different flower. I plan to turn these into a hair accessory for Pookie Doo. Maybe to hair ties or a headband! I’ll be sure to post a pic so you can see!

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I have one more Valentine’s Day inspired craft. Remember my NOEL letters craft try to guess what I did with those for Valentine’s day!?

Excuse the poor quality fo the photo's I was using my cell.

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Christmas Card Photo Shoot LO

Hey there friends! Just wanted to share a layout I completed with the Christmas Card photo shoot pictures.Materials used: Echo Park-Everybody Loves Christmas. I LOVE LOVE LOVE Echo Park’s Paper collections. They are so bright and whimsical with lots of color and cute stickers.

 

Look at the little penguin, ain’t he keeeeyooooot!?

This LO was fun to create, I haven’t done a 2-pager in a LONG time! But I really wanted to include a lot of the pictures.

This page has a bunch of embellishments: Pom Poms, a real candycane, border punching, bows, sticker accents, felt hearts. and pearls.

The journaling was done on my computer using Word.

Here is the photo I would’ve chosen.

Thank for looking and I hope your inspired to create! Happy Scrapping!

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Crazy Domestic!

What’s up friends? I’ve been itching to share my news with you all since last week! See, I got an email from Megan over at Crazy Domestic that my $75 Curtain Rod done for less than $15 will be featured on her blog today 12/30/2010! I am so excited for my first feature. Please click on the link below to leave a comment and check out some of the other fabulous crafty ideas featured on the blog!

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