Nutcrackle and Cookie Swap

My daughters get together with their high school friends during Christmas break while everyone is home from college.   This year, instead of their usual gift game, they had a cookie swap.  One of the friends is such a "Baker", hee hee, her last name too!  Corny, yes, but I like to joke with her about it.

One chose to make pretzels dipped in white chocolate.  Although it's not a cookie, it's something that everyone likes and is swapable (is that a word?).

The other choice was these nutella cookies called Nutcrackle that she found on Pinterest.  We're expanding our nutella use!

We learned to leave a lot of powdered sugar on as opposed to shaking it off before baking.

We also omitted the hazelnuts themselves.

These were slightly crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside.  Due to overload on Christmas goodies, I put the leftovers in the freezer to crumble and use in a crust later on.

I should have taken a picture of the platter they brought home from the cookie swap.  There were a couple of cake mix cookies and a cream cheese cupcake thingy with a mini oreo on top that I had to have a taste of.

I thought the idea of the cookie exchange was great.  It eliminated the shopping stress and was an opportunity to try something different.

Linking with:

Santa Squirrel visits T-town

It's final exam week for my daughters at college.  I am looking forward to them being home for Christmas for a couple of weeks!

But not before Santa Squirrel makes a visit to T-town!   Final exam week is stressful, I can hear it in their voices when I talk to them.  So to give them and a few of their friends a little encouragement Santa Squirrel pays a visit.

This year he is delivering acorns.  Cute adorable acorns, if I must say so myself, hee hee!

(No, I still haven't decorated my tree yet!)

This fall when I saw this post about making acorn coasters,  I knew Santa Squirrel would deliver acorn coasters in Alpha Gam colors, of course.  I hope they like them, they should arrive soon and hopefully not lost in the mail!

Anthro or industrial? magnet board

Seems like these days, a lot of our pictures never make it off the computer.  They remain on the disk drive, cell phone, blogs, Facebook, Instagram, wherever.   So make sure you're backing up your computer or at least the My Pictures folder (or wherever you're storing yours)!

My daughters needed some place to display the Zapps pictures from the events they attended.   A nice big bulletin board or something like that to also add some decoration or interest to the almost bare walls of the house would be great!

I thought those cabinet doors from the Habitat Restore would be perfect for a magnet board for pictures.   There's not a lot of pictures of my DIY here, but hopefully you get the "picture" :).

Just give them a coat of primer first thing. 

Then I painted on the color that I want the trim to be.  The color gray is so popular now and I thought the college crowd would like it.  This is called Elephant Gray. 

Sheet metal can be found at Lowe's in a 2'x3' piece for less than $10.  I took it to a local sheet metal shop and they cut it to the sizes I needed.  The cuts were crisp with no crinkles or bends, nice!

The one on the right has the primer/trim painted.  The one on the left has the metal inside the frame, attached with Gorilla glue.

I sanded the edges of the frame to give them a distressed look.  With the gray color from the trim and the gray/silver sheet metal, it kind of has an industrial look which I wasn't crazy about. 

Adding a few smiling faces using some pretty magnets should perk these right up!

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Unfortunately, when I'm visiting Tuscaloosa, I can never remember to take a picture of them hanging on the wall!

This year my neices have moved to T-town and I had one more cabinet door with sheet metal to fit.  So I finished it as a little house warming gift for them.

After the primer, I spray painted it with "cherry red".  Whoa, was it bright!   Now, I wasn't going for a "crimson" color here.   I'm sure if I wanted crimson, all I have to do is look on the shelves for that color.  And if crimson is not one of the color choices, they're definitely missing out on some sales!  This color was just too bright.

So I started trying to tone it down a bit and washed on some of the elephant gray. 

I took a damp cloth and dipped it in the gray paint and rubbed it on.   I kept dipping and rubbing and letting it dry until I was satisfied that it wasn't too "cherry".

For the magnets, I used some gems from Michael's.  Not the irredescent ones, they need to be clear.  Using Modge Podge, I attached decorative paper or scrapbook paper to the flat side of the gem.

I got a tip from one of my crafty friends about using an old magazine as a work surface for glue projects.  This works great if the project is smaller than the magazine page size.   When you're done, you just tear off that page and have a clean page to work on.

This works great for glue stick projects such as cardmaking or scrapbooking.  When using a glue stick, the glue WILL get off the card and then the card ends up sticking to the work surface.  So you constantly need a "clean" surface.  With a magazine as a work surface, you just flip to the next page to continue with the card or scrapbook project.

Anyway, that was my crafty tip for the day!  

Glue magnet discs to the back of the gems once the paper has dried.

The magnets are ready to go!

Now ready to hang on the wall, here's the cherry-gray-distressed version. 

Hopefully, it has a little more "Anthropologie" look than industrial!

Now just add pictures! 

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Kitchen Invasion

My kitchen was invaded!  

The college crowd around here likes to make cake mix cookies. 

And as you can see, they get pretty fired up about these cookies!

They will even go to the store and get the ingredients themselves because I usually don't have cake mix on hand. 

If I said the kitchen was invaded by the cookie monster would that be too preschool?  Nah.  Haha!

I asked for the recipe and this is the response I got.  I guess it's their secret recipe, but you can search for cake mix cookie recipe on the internet and find it if you're interested.

Who doesn't like raw cookie dough?  Me.  Ha ha!

Roll 'em up...

The cookies get two thumbs up!  

Now who's doing the dishes?

Linking with Imparting Grace

College Subway Art

Hopefully, ya'll are not too tired of my college house talk and stuff but sharing this with you has helped my empty-nest-i-ness.  So I'm glad you're here!  And I think I only have 1 more project to tell you about after this one so bear with me please...thank you.

I enjoy all the typography and letter art that many creative bloggers have done.  This was something I could definitely personalize and do myself for the college house!

I used Microsoft Publisher.  Just choose the terms or graphics that you want to include.  Place them randomly in the document using various fonts.   It takes a little attention to get the words to fit together and minimize the white space. 

 
Print it out, put it in a frame and it's ready to go.  On move-in day, we hung it on the wall.  And wouldn't you know, I don't have any photos of it to show you.

So let's just go eat lunch!

See ya!

Kerry

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Par-tay-ing with these fun ladies at Debbiedoo's Newbie Party:

Random Thoughts

 

Side Table Metamorphosis

Trying to furnish a house or even a room by refinishing or redoing old stuff has kept me busy for a while.  I had no trouble finding projects to fill the time in my empty nest! 

This 1980's side table cost $4 at a thrift store.  It was solid and not in real bad shape, but looked like someone had used it as a work table.   Yep, if you've been reading along, another redo for the college house.

My upholstery instructor said he likes to use Cabot penetrating stain, so that's what I'm using.  Hopefully after a good sanding, the dark walnut color will look something like this when it's all done:



Pottery Barn

It already looks much better after just 1 coat of stain!  

I applied 2 coats according to the directions on the can.

Then applied the sealer, 3 coats. 

Seems no matter how thin I thought each layer was, there is still a drip every now and then!



I liked how the stain didn't quite penetrate everywhere.  It left a lightly distressed look without even trying!  I'm not sure if this is because it still had some old sealer that I missed with the sander or if the oak wood just didn't accept the stain. 



I delivered it to the college house and didn't get photos of it in use!   But I was pleased with the way it turned out.  Pottery Barn-ish.  I think a basket with a throw or books underneath would complete the look!

Do you have a favorite Pottery Barn side table?

Kerry

Linking over at Metamorphosis Monday and You're talking too much:

Scurry the Squirrel

Meet Scurry.

And his twin and best friend Scurry II?!   Aren't they cute as can be?

I love the handmade section of Etsy.  It ranks right up there with Pinterest as far as sites that I can browse for hours (make that all day!).    My daughters' sorority mascot is the squirrel.  So, of course, I had to browse Etsy to see what squirrel items I could find.  That's where I met Scurry and ordered his pattern.   He just looks so fun and silly and confused and whimsical and juvenile with that big furry tail!

These little guys had me going to 3 different craft stores to find furry felt plus the various shades of brown and gold felt.   I learned how to sew a long time ago, but I recently learned what a dork I am when it comes to troubleshooting thread issues.  It helps to make sure you put the thread where it's supposed to go like in that little what-cha-ma-call-it on top!  Oh boy, I KNOW that, how did I miss it?!

The cat was stalking the project.

So cute!

What have you sewn lately?

Kerry
(I'm posting about my experience with this pattern and is not intended to promote a particular Etsy shop.  I do think I should mention the shop that it was purchased from.) 

Joined the Blog Hop at

Shabby College Key Holder

Another project for the college house was a key holder.   Of course, it needed to be cute and totally not embarassing to your friends.  So after a nice lunch, the Bassman went with me to Anthropologie to see if I could find something cute and not totally embarassing.   Lo and behold they had the perfect hooks!  And at $2.95 each, I actually could afford to pay for college and make a keyholder!  Here's the Bassman displaying them so I could get a picture to show the girls.

The wood is a cabinet or drawer front that came from the Habitat Restore.    I used paint that I already had since it wasn't going to take much to cover it.  The hooks didn't come with screws so after a trip to Lowes, we had antique finish screws to match the metal hook.  The Bassman helped out with the drill.

This project was done before I started my blog, so that means it was done without making a lot of pictures to show.  

I'm finding that the end result of my projects are "lightly distressed", but the girls are happy with it and that's what matters.  The college house decor has to be "cute", and I may not know what is cute and what is not...just sayin.  After sanding the edges and toning down the bright yellow, I sent it on it's way to Tuscaloosa.   The girls attached it to the wall with 3M command strips since it's not very heavy.

Here's the key holder in use. 

I like it when the college house projects are a success and now I'm linking up below!  

Have a great weekend!

Kerry