Thursday, April 28, 2011

Blog Hop #12

It's time to Mingle!


Hosted by All About Being Inspired, Happy Go Lucky, and Joy in the Jumble.
Each week we will choose one blog at random to spotlight at the next week's blog hop.
Our guest host this week is The Adventures of J-Man and Millerbug.

Join in on the fun by following the hostesses in the first three spots and our guest host in the fourth spot.  Then, link up your blog's main page.
Have some fun reading new blogs and and making new blog friends.  Remember to show some love and follow new blogs.  We always follow back!!
Grab our button if you want to share our blog hop with others.  There will be a new list every Thursday, so be sure to come back every week.

We hope you have fun and thanks for joining us!  We are so excited to find new blogs, share great ideas, and inspire each other.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Step-by-Step Easter Butter Lamb

The butter lamb is a Polish Easter Tradition that can either be sculpted by hand or formed in a mold. It is a beautiful centerpiece for any Easter table setting and reminds me of why we gather on Easter Sunday. It is because the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, suffered for my sins and died on the cross.

Here, we are featuring the butter lamb that was freshly sculpted by my Mother-In-Law. She was kind enough to take pictures along the way so you can see the exact steps. A special thank you goes to Marlene's Aunt Sally who taught her the art of creating the butter lamb when she was a very young girl. Since then, it has been a Woods family tradition to have this adorable little lamb each year at the Easter table. What a wonderful tradition to start with your family.



INGREDIENTS:
• 2 Sticks of Butter
• Caraway seeds (for the nose)
• Peppercorns (for the eyes)
• Jelly Bean (for the mouth)
• Toothpicks (for making the fur)
• Knife and Spoon for sculpting

Step 1: Start with 2 sticks of butter side-by-side and cut as shown with knife.

Step 2: Cut again as shown with knife

Step 3: Arrange butter as shown and cut as shown with knife.
Step 4: Smooth over the base to join the two bottom pieces together.
Stack one piece of the  first cut of butter from Step 1 on top of the base and on top of that,
stack the piece of butter that was just cut off on Step 3 to represent the head.







Step 5: With the remaining piece of butter that is off to the side,
cut off about 1/3 and place it in front of the head as shown.
Step 6: With the back of a spoon, create a little tail.

This is how your little lamb should look at this point.

Step 8: With a knife, create a leg as shown.

Step 9: Go ahead and make the back leg now.

This is a detail of what your lamb should look like as of now.
Step 10: Begin to smooth over the butter with the spoon
to create seamless edges.

Step 11: Sculpt a snout using the spoon.

Step 12: Adding butter remnant that was unused earlier,
apply to head and create ears.

This is what your little lamb should look like up to this step.

Here is another view of the lamb so far.

Step 13: At this point, place your lamb in the refrigerator to harden a bit.

Step 14: Using a toothpick, create little swirls that will be the lambs wool.

Continue with the curls until the lamb is completely covered.

Here is a photo of the lamb complete with its curls.

Step 15: Add two peppercorns for eyes.

Step 16: Add two caraway seeds for the nose.

Step 17: Cut off a slice of jelly bean and add for the mouth.
Final Step: Give the lamb a little purple bow using curling ribbon, add a handmade palm cross and dress with curly parsley! Keep refrigerated so it continues to stay hard and in shape. 



 BE INSPIRED!










Sunday, April 17, 2011

All I Really Need...An Easter Download for YOU




Just dreaming about the little chocolate Easter bunnies and I was inspired to make this!
Feel free to download this below...I made it for you!

BE INSPIRED!

Saturday, April 16, 2011

A Taste of Ocean Grove

Ocean Grove, New Jersey is one of our many beach towns, however, it is one of my favorites. It boasts the quaint serenity of a place tucked snug between the ocean and the rest of the world. With boutiques, bed and breakfasts, cafes, a cheese shop, and in town bakeries, it is all at your fingertips.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of participating in what is called the "Taste of Ocean Grove, " which is a foodies tour of what the little town has to offer. This is my fourth tasting and it is very enjoyable. For $15 you get a list of about 10 local places in town that serve up some of their most delicious bites. From mini crab cakes to apricot poppyseed scones the palette is sure to be satisfied at the end of the evening.

It is a casual affair at which we take the whole family. My parents, in-laws, nephew, great-aunt, husband and the smallest member of our family attend as we stroll the Main Street with baby-in-tow. All of the local shop and restaurant owners are more than generous with helping to fill up each and every belly. My most favorite stop this time was our first one. It is a place called Cheese on Main. We had the most delicious plate of selected cheeses including a fig preserve, which was really teasing my tastebuds!

I love the atmosphere of the whole experience. We toured a restaurant called Bia and were welcomed upstairs to see the guest rooms of those visiting OG. One of the most famous Ice Cream Parlors in town called Nagles offers an ice cream cone as part of the tasting experience. To top if off, we stopped into the Ocean Grove Bakery for a mini cupcake. At that point we were all well satisfied as we walked off while listening to the live band playing on the street corner.

If you are from New Jersey, this is a wonderful stop to make even off season as there is better parking and much to be explored. If you are an out-of-towner,  be sure to visit in the summer to get a glimpse of Tent City, which is a most amazing experience. Tiny little colorful tents with just about enough room to twirl around inside, line the streets. These tents are so popular that there are 10 year waiting lists to get one for the season! Horse-drawn carriage rides and the Great Auditorium are some of the other attractions that make Ocean Grove such a special place.

BE INSPIRED!

Friday, April 15, 2011

Blog Hop #11

Welcome to Mingle With Us Blog Hop

Hosted by All About Being Inspired, Happy Go Lucky, and Joy in the Jumble.
Each week we will choose one blog at random to spotlight at the next week's blog hop.
Our guest host this week is A Girl and Her Craftbox.
BWS tips button
Join in on the fun by following the hostesses in the first three spots and our guest host in the fourth spot.  Then, link up your blog's main page.
Have some fun reading new blogs and and making new blog friends.  Remember to show some love and follow new blogs.  We always follow back!!
Grab our button if you want to share our blog hop with others.  There will be a new list every Thursday, so be sure to come back every week.


We hope you have fun and thanks for joining us!  We are so excited to find new blogs, share great ideas, and inspire each other.

Easter Egg Treats!


These yummy Easter Egg Treats are made from a recipe found here:

After making the basic recipe, these eggs were cut out with an egg shaped cookie cutter then dipped in chocolate and sprinkles!

Super fun and super yummy!


BE INSPIRED!

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Blog Hop #10

Welcome to Mingle With Us Blog Hop

Hosted by All About Being Inspired, Happy Go Lucky, and Joy of the Jumble.
Each week we will choose one blog at random to spotlight at the next week's blog hop.

Our guest host this week is Roller Coaster Ride.

Join in on the fun by following the hostesses in the first three spots and our guest host in the fourth spot.  Then, link up your blog's main page.

Have some fun reading new blogs and and making new blog friends.  Remember to show some love and follow new blogs.  We always follow back!!

Grab our button if you want to share our blog hop with others.  There will be a new list every Thursday, so be sure to come back every week.

We hope you have fun and thanks for joining us!  We are so excited to find new blogs, share great ideas, and inspire each other.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Tacos for Toddlers

Tonight we had tacos for dinner! I am always trying to think up things that my little guy would enjoy eating. With his newly discovered dairy allergy, I have to be a little bit more creative and thoughtful and that's where my wonderful husband came up with the "Tacos for Toddlers" idea!





Here's how it works. We make tacos for ourselves with the ground turkey (a little healthier) and all of the fixin's. For Charlie, our 18 mos. old, we use the Tostitos Scoops (we opted for the baked ones) and we build a mini taco for him that way. He ate 8 of these little tacos and we even piled up some homemade guacamole, onions, and lettuce on top! He didn't even blink an eye when it came to eating the avocado, onions or lettuce! He loved it!

I hope your little one will enjoy this meal if you decide to make it one day soon!

BE INSPIRED!

Friday, April 8, 2011

Road Trip to Lancaster





Lancaster, Pennsylvania is a wonderful place to spend some time hopping around from shop to shop. If you are looking for a road trip with hubby or a friend, Lancaster is a wonderful destination! There are wonderful bed and breakfasts there, great food, wonderful antique shops and lots of country roads, farms and Amish people.
This past weekend was spent there with one of my friends while hubby was on a business trip in Boston. We had lots of fun and laughs. Of course, the weather played tricks on us. It was actually snowing on the way up. I guess that was our April Fool's joke! Even Mother Nature knows how to play a good joke now and then.
We stayed at a wonderful little bed and breakfast, called After Eight Bed and Breakfast. Here is the link: http://www.aftereightbnb.com/index.htm. I have stayed there before and it is comfortable and cozy. What I especially like about it is that it has two small cottages that offer two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen and a living room. It was a perfect setup for a "girls weekend away." We had hoped to do a little watercolor painting in the evenings, but we were so tired after a full day of taking in the sites that we were happy to just rest at the end of the day.
There are endless shops in Lancaster. I prefer to visit the off-the-beaten-track kind of places rather than the commercial places. I found such sweet little things, more than I will mention in this blog. I was so inspired when I came back to just start creating! You can see some of the things I picked up along the way in the photos. Once home, I had to start creating. I will post again with one of my projects for my porch.
Here is a sample of our itinerary:
Friday - Drive to Lititz, Pa. There was a really cute sale at an antique house with all kinds of beautiful homegoods and florals. Downtown Lititz is a great place to browse all the shops. There are some good restaurants right on the main street. You can spend the better part of the day there.
Saturday - Just drove around from here to there. Stopped at antique shops, and then the big surprise: Craft and Floral Warehouse!!! That was a bonanza! There were so many great things there to look at. They have an amazing array of crafts and florals, just as the name suggests! If you think the wholesale clubs are big, you have not seen anything until you have seen how big this place was! They had everything! We spent several hours wandering around there. Then we went to a very cool place called Carsons in the Cornfield. They have all kinds of architectural items in the basement that you can paint on. Amazing. But don't be afraid to get your hands dirty! It is old stuff from houses in the area and they don't clean it before they sell it. What fun that was! I have lots of projects now to complete. We ate at a great small buffet called Family Cupboard which was filled with the Amish families and their children. The food was amazing and the entire dinner was only $13.00. What a value!
Sunday - Of course, each day we started breakfast at the After Eight Bed and Breakfast. Robert, the owner, was adept at telling jokes to keep us laughing. We enjoyed teasing him by groaning at his jokes. He was a very good sport and continued telling them in spite of our unrelenting groaning. He made fantastic breakfasts and was a very cordial host. Sunday services were at a lovely church called Keystone Church in Paradise,PA right on Rt. 30 a few minutes away from the bed and breakfast. It was great sermon and great music and a wonderful way to worship God. From there we visited an antique shop and then on to the outlets. There are the Rockvale Outlets and the Tanger Outlets, also on Rt. 30. Most everything is closed on Sunday except for the outlets and antique shops, so you want to save those destinations for Sunday. A final stop at Crackerbarrel was all we needed to get some great sandwiches and goodies for the ride home. Thankfully, the weather was beautiful on Sunday and my GPS was working well! Needless to say, our car was filled to the brim with lots of goodies and projects. We had a wonderful time and it was nice to connect with a friend creating memories that will last a lifetime.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Blog Hop #9

Welcome to Mingle With Us Blog Hop

Hosted by All About Being Inspired, Happy Go Lucky, and Joy of the Jumble.
Each week we will choose one blog at random to spotlight at the next week's blog hop.

Our guest host this week is Just the 3 of Us.

Join in on the fun by following the hostesses in the first three spots and our guest host in the fourth spot.  Then, link up your blog's main page.

Have some fun reading new blogs and and making new blog friends.  Remember to show some love and follow new blogs.  We always follow back!!

Grab our button if you want to share our blog hop with others.  There will be a new list every Thursday, so be sure to come back every week.


We hope you have fun and thanks for joining us!  We are so excited to find new blogs, share great ideas, and inspire each other.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Easy-to-Make Candy Easter Cloche

Feature your favorite Easter candies in these adorable, easy-to-make Easter Cloches! Last week, my MIL came to me with an idea. She mentioned the blog and handed me a package of clear plastic dessert plates and a package of clear plastic drinking glasses. She showed me that when the glass was turned over onto the plate, it mimicked that of a glass cloche! I was already in love with this one! Take a look and see how it all turned out!

If you are unsure of what a cloche is, it is featured below on the right hand side of the page. Mostly, they are used to cover a small display or a decorative item. Sometimes even used in a terrarium-like way.
























The items that I gathered for this project are featured in the basket below. Mostly everything is from WalMart except for the water glasses and plates, which are from the Dollar Tree.



The first step in creating these cloches is to assemble your candies and Easter grass on the plate. In place of glue, I used the Wilton Kelly Green Decorating Icing. I had my own Wilton tips, which fit perfectly onto the tube of icing. Featured on the right, you will see how I used the "grass" tip to add grass in between the eggs and around the bunny.


See the direct image below for what the "grass" tip looks like. The second image below is a round tip. I piped a strip of icing onto the glass right before placing over the bunny and egg decoration to hold it in place.




The final steps include piping more "grass" around the base of the plate and adding a few more eggs or candy to your liking.


BE INSPIRED!

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