The Long Saturday

Last week I told you all that we were trying to enjoy summer before it ends....well we did just that this weekend. After a few hours of working hard in the yard, we headed out for our last Saturday of fun before school starts.

 Our first stop was the beach. The boys played football and Frisbee and got a little too wet considering they weren't wearing their bathing suits:) The played in the sand and even got to check out a crab or two!

 Our next stop was Putt Putt. Always a hit with my golf loving boys. Eli was a trip....he would hit the ball, wait for it to stop, then pick it up and move it two inches from the hole. Needless to say he got a 2 on almost every hole:) Grant {the master golfer} even managed to get a hole in one!

 After a bite to eat, we headed out for a walk over a really big bridge.

 The boys posed for a few pictures, but mostly just ran and raced up the bridge...and then back down.

I got one pretty good shot of all three boys...

 ....then we watched the sun set.

We finished the night off with yummy milkshakes and three tired boys who fell asleep before we made it home:)

Just a Little Thank You

For the past few years, I have been the preschool director at our church's VBS. That basically means I am the organizer and that I have a ton of great volunteers {lots of moms, one dad, adults, and youth from our church} that work with me to make VBS a success. At the end of a  long week of working with cute {but sometimes unruly} preschoolers, I like to let my volunteers know how much I appreciate their help by giving them a little happy! I usually make some yummy cookies, but after my Fluffer Nutter cookie fail I wasn't up to baking any more this week. So when I saw these really cute little hand sanitizers in the school supply section of Target, I knew they would make a great Thank You for my volunteers!

 These little bottles are the perfect size to toss in your purse, backpack, or car but they were just a little too plain.

 I decided to add each of my volunteers' monogram to the front of the bottles just to dress them up a little. I started by pulling off the front sticker of each bottle, then I sprayed them down with this lovely stuff. I've never used Goo Gone before, but after it removed the sticky residue from 40 little bottles in less than half an hour....I am in love!

Then I used my Silhouette to cut out all the letters that I needed out of white contact paper. If you've never tried to use contact paper instead of vinyl in your craft cutter, I highly recommend it. A huge roll of contact paper cost around $6, and it cuts perfectly with most any craft cutter {I've used it with my old Cricut and my Silhouette}! After about an hour of peeling and sticking letters,  I ended up with an army of cute monogrammed hand sanitizers!

 And I even managed to make on for myself:)

Now all my volunteers will know how much I appreciate them, and they will have clean hands!

Cookie Fail!

A few months ago I made these really yummy Fluffer Nutter Cupcakes:

The combination of peanut butter, marshmallow, and chocolate was so yummy that I started playing around with the idea of using those same ingredients in a cookie. I decided on a peanut butter cookie with mini marshmallows mixed in the dough then drizzled with melted chocolate after they were baked.  I used my trusty Peanut Butter Cookie recipe and simply mixed in about a cup of marshmallows at the end.

The dough looked promising, but unfortunately the marshmallows did what marshmallows always do when they are heated up...they melted everywhere. Some of the cookies turned out okay, but the majority of them were weird shaped from the marshmallow melting out the sides of the cookie. Plus a lot of them ended up sticking to the pan too because marshmallows are sticky! They still tasted pretty good, but the marshmallow flavor wasn't as strong as I would have liked, and  I ended up not even trying the chocolate drizzle because I wasn't happy with the cookies.

So now it's back to the drawing board kitchen to figure out another way to make Fluffer Nutter Cookies work...maybe marshmallow creme instead of the mini marshmallows or maybe some kind of sandwich with two cookies?!?

Have you ever had a cookie {or any kind of recipe} fail in your kitchen?