Pretzel Treats

Have you seen these floating around Pinterest? I have seen a few different ones and they looked delicious. Well, we made some last week and they are very delicious!

What you will need to make these...Butter Snap Pretzels, hershey kisses, m&m's.

...How we made ours...

Start by setting your oven at 300 degrees. Place pretzels on baking sheet. Squeeze as many in as you can.

Next enlist some kiddos to help you peel off the wrappers of your kisses. ;D and place 1 kiss on each pretzel. We used Hugs and regular Milk Chocolate kisses.

Place in the oven for about 4-5 minutes or until the chocolate looks shiny. Watch them because every oven differs. Once they begin to look shiny, they are ready to take out.

Next, immediately after taking them out of the oven, add the m&m's. Place 1 m&m on each kiss, pressing it down into the chocolate. The hugs will be softer than the milk chocolate kisses, so be gentle. LOL Either that or do all the milk chocolates first, then go back to the hugs. ;D We used red, pink, dark pink and white m&m's on ours. Perfect for Valentines day or girls birthday parties.

You can place them in the fridge or freezer to help the hardening of the chocolate or just leave them out. We put ours in the fridge.

We also keep them in the fridge in a container. You don't have too, but they taste good cold. YUM!

I plan on making these for many future occasions. I saw today that they already have mint green out for St. Patricks day. Can't wait to tackle those.

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In need of some Father's Day help!

You may remember this post from last year.
I told you about the shirts I've made for my kids to wear on Father's Day.

2008 - "following in daddy's footsteps"

2008 - "my dad is a perfect ten"

2009- "my dad rocks"

2010 - "my dad is the bomb"
So I'm still trying to decide what to do for Father's Day this year.
I've got three shirts to make...and not a TON of time.

I saw this cute shirt that Jess from Running with scissors made,
and I'm totally thinking about making it.
But my idea includes a personal drawing by the kids
(of which only Naomi can really do)
and embroidery floss on the t-shirt.


My other idea is to have the same words but in the middle do a
Supermanesque "DAD" logo with fabric paint.

The last thought I have is to make the kids AND my husband matching tie shirts.
I was thinking of putting "daddy's girl" on the ties that the girls would be wearing.

So, what do you think? What should I make?
I'm wondering if I should catalog the first idea and wait till all the kids
can draw pictures of them with dad? Hmmm....

Would LOVE to hear your thoughts...and then you can see what I make AFTER Father's Day.
I always like it to be a surprise when they show up for church,
since he doesn't see them dressed before we get to church on Sundays.

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Happy Easter!

He is RISEN!
Alleluia!

I pray that you have a blessed Easter, that you are able to spend time with your family, but most importantly that you are able to hear the GOOD NEWS of Christ's death and resurrection. He loves you so much that he stretched His arms and died on the cross just for you! If you were the only person on the earth He still would have gone through all that suffering, agony, separation from God JUST FOR YOU! You are LOVED! With an everlasting love!!! Praise be to God that Jesus was raised from the dead and that we worship the LIVING GOD!

So, you may or may not know that I am a photographer. As a photographer I try to get my clients to steer away from matchy matchy outfits (and no denim with white shirts...) and go with coordinating outfits, but as a mom, I LOVE matchy matchy outfits for my kiddos. But it's really hard to find matching outfits for a 4 year old girl, a 3 year old boy and a 6 month old girl. So, I get the honor of making the matching outfits (but usually only for big occasions or holidays).

Luckily after we moved I found some time to get this idea out of my head and into wearable clothing for the kids. They LOVE their outfits and it couldn't make me more happy. I dread the day that one of them tells me they don't want to wear something that I made for them! We had a little mini photo shoot yesterday so that I could document Easter and the cute outfits I made. I love it when something actually comes together (and on time is even better!).

Here are some of the photos from the photoshoot!

The headband for the girls came from a tutorial that Kelly at Sewing in No Mans Land wrote!

If you have any questions about anything I made feel free to leave a comment and then check back here for my response...or email me at
purejoycreative at gmail dot com

Happy Easter!!!

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Lunch Bag Bunnies

Need to make a quick Easter craft?

Most likely you already have lunch bags, scissors and markers in your house, if you're like me. LOL So it will be easy to gather up the supplies and make these with your little ones.

What you will need...

Brown Paper Lunch Bags

Scissors

Permanent Marker

Markers or Color Crayons

Stapler

Plastic Grass

Instructions below on how to make these. They are so quick and easy.

Start out by tracing (with your permanent marker) bunny ears on your paper bag. The kids can do this too, but lil ones may make their ears too small. They need to be large so you can get into the bag for your hunt or goodies.

Hand it over to a kiddo for cutting. It's starting to look like a bunny. Pretty cute huh?

Now the fun part. Adding the face and coloring. Let your kids draw on their face. Make sure you give them a few examples so they can get ideas and sizes too!

When you open up your bag, you are going to have some extra material from cutting the ears. Go ahead and cut both sides off so you just have the front and back ears.

I cut one side off so you can see which ones to cut. Next I will cut off the other side.

Now that you cut the sides off and have all the coloring, you need to staple the front and back ears together.

Look at how cute these lil bags turn out! And they can look different by adding different style faces.

You can even make a boy by adding a bow to the bottom of the bag. CUTE! Or should I say HANDSOME!

The girls had so much fun making them, we have more than we need. ;-)

And just look at how happy they are with their bunnies. I love all the different looks and the short ears too!

It took us about 15 minutes to make all these bunnies, including photo taking time. So these will make a fun and quick craft this Easter.

Please share your Lunch Bag Bunnies with us! Link up below

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Valentine Ideas | FEATURES

With | St. Valentines Day | just a few days away, I wanted to feature some great Valentine Ideas I found around the blogosphere. I am also sharing some activity and color pages below too!

Valentine Apron By Flexible Dreams ~ XOXO Wreath By Sumos Sweet Stuff

     

Warm My Heart By Brassy Apple ~ Danish Woven Hearts By Roots & Wings

     

Conversations Heart Wreath By Crafts & Sutch ~ Felt Valentine Cookies By Pure Joy

     

| Valentines Day Trip |

Our Family is spending Our Valentine Holiday in Disneyland this year. We are so excited. So in order to get ready for the long drive and fun activities, I put together a few things.

I found a Valentine Match game at Target. It was only $5. NICE. Thought it would be fun to play in the hotel room when we need a break from the day. I got Valentine cards for each family member and put together a treat bag too. All surprises for them when we wake up Valentines Day! ;-) Each bag includes.... candies, stickers, crayons, new Valentine hair clips and heart necklaces for the girls, Lego pack for my son (didn't think he would want a hair clip, haha), cookies, pencils, drawing tablet and a few other goodies. Oh and I found some Smurfs coloring books for a $1 at Michaels. The kids love the Smurfs.

I also have an activity packet ready to go for the ride. All Valentine related. I am sharing the pages below in case you would like to print them out for yourself.

 

 

Have fun with these Coloring Pages. I found them all by googling Valentine Activity and Coloring Pages

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