Homemade peanut butter chocolate ice cream sandwiches

Three ingredients, delicious results!

I don't know many people who don't like peanut butter and chocolate together...what an INCREDIBLE combination!! When I saw the recipe for these Peanut Butter Chocolate Ice Cream Sandwiches I knew I needed to make them...and soon!! 

Super easy! Super delicious!! Try them today, you probably have all the ingredients on hand! And if not, use what you have and make your own type of ice cream sandwiches!!

 Spread both sides with peanut butter

 Put some softened chocolate ice cream on top

 Put the sandwich together

 Wrap them up in plastic wrap!

Individually wrapped ice cream sandwiches in a freezer bag, put in the freezer till it's time to eat!!

Hope you have an incredible Labor Day weekend!!
 

Continue Reading ...

Creating a Clipping Mask in Photoshop

Hey there! Been playing some more in Photoshop and today I wanted to share how to make a cool "clipping mask" photo. If you follow my pics on Instagram, you probably already saw this picture. But today I created a tutorial for it. I may have used a different font in the one you saw. 

Anyway...I am excited to share it with you and hope that I can explain it well enough that you understand. And I have to mention, there are probably other ways to do this, this is just what makes sense to me.  Hope it works for you too! I tried to make it as simple as possible. Here goes....

My before picture is already edited in Photoshop. I adjusted the brightness and contrast, added 4 different textures and used the brush tool to remove the texture from their faces. You can visit HERE to see my texture tutorial.

Because I added layers with the textures, the first step is to merge all the layers into one. Highlight all 5 layers, right click and select merge layers. You will now have one photo layer.

Next you want to add your text. In the tools, right click on your text tool and select Horizontal Type tool.

Type in what ever you like. I chose the word LOVE! Make sure you pick a bolder font and adjust the size. The bigger and bolder, the more parts of the photo will show through. 

Use your move tool to place it where you want it on your photo. I liked the bottom left.

Now open up a new layer. It will be transparent to use your paint bucket tool to color it in white.

Time to rearrange the layers. You want the photo layer on top, then below that the text layer and lastly the new all white layer on the bottom. Below is how it should look.

Before we create the clipping mask, you will want to duplicate your photo layer and drag it to the bottom of all the layers.

Your layers will now look like this below.

Go back up to the top photo. Click on it so it is highlighted. Right click and scroll down to Create a Clipping mask. This is the fun part. ;) The magic happens when you click it. LOL

SURPRISE! Your first Clipping mask. Ta Da!!!

Doesn't that look so cool. You can see your picture through the words.

You can crop and save many words with this process and use them as layers on other photos. Very cool!

You ready to make it even more exciting? Scroll below and read on.

Leaving the clipping mask like this on a scenery pic is fun, but with a pic like this, its fun to add the photo back in behind the mask.

Do this by highlighting on the white layer, right click and select blending options. In general blending, change the blend mode to lighten and the opacity to 50% or to whatever % you think looks best for your photo. Click on Ok and you are done!

Here is my completed pic from this tutorial. What do you think?

I love that the photo is faded in the back and the letters have the original color. Plus it is made from the same photo, so nothing is covered up in the photo. You get a nice clean look!

Here are a few more pics I made with this same process.

Ok, I'm off to edit more photos. Hope you like this post! If so, please let me know in the comments below!

Continue Reading ...

Creating an Overlay in Photoshop

So today I want to share with you some Photoshop Fun! OVERLAYS!

Last night I was playing with some of my family photos from last november. You can see more of them HERE. And I have to admit that although I do have the most amazing Photoshop program ever, I do not know how to use all of its powers. LOL So I started playing with some textures and finally figured out how to make an overlay. I am pretty proud of myself. (pat on the back, heehee)

I first searched google for how to turn an image into an overlay and got frustrated because either the tutorials I found were either confusing or vague. Uuuugghhh. And I am sure they are great for others, just not for me. So I just went into Photoshop and started exploring. It didn't take long. I was determined.

Here is what I did! First I opened my family image in one window.

This is my before image.

Next I opened up my texture in another window.

This is my texture image.

You now should have two windows open. One is your photo and the other is your texture. While in the texture window, Click on the background image in your layers window and drag it to your Photo.

You will now have created a new layer in your photo window. 

You will see your photo with the new texture layer on top of the photo.

Now right click your new texture layer. Click on Blending Options.

A new window will open called Layer Style. In the general blending box you want to click on the area that shows "normal". A drop down menu will appear and you want to go down the list and find "overlay". Click on that.

After doing this you will see the texture image change to an overlay image. Then all you have to do is play with the Opacity percentages to the right look for you.

Here is what I did with my Opacity percentages.

I set my Opacity to 65% in the advanced bleeding settings. You can also use the general bleeding Opacity settings if you like.

Click ok to close the layer style box. Resize your texture overlay to fit the whole photo, save and print your new photo for your wall gallery.

Look at the differences

Again here is the photo "before" I added the overlay.

And here is the photo "after" I added the overlay.

Can you see the differences? It's brighter, has torn edges on the sides and some subtle crinkles in the photo. I love it!

Hope you like my lil tutorial today. Was it easy enough or did I confuse you? Any questions, you can leave them in comments below or email me at trendytreehouse@me.com.

More fun Textures can be found at Life N Reflection. I bought some and played with them this morning using her tutorial from last weeks Create and Share link up.


Here is the same family photo using her textures and tutorial.
Her tutorial is great and explains what textures and Opacity she used for each texture. 


I can share more blending options in future tutorials if you like too but today I just shared a quick Overlay option with 1 texture. The below pic has 3 textures and 3 blending options. See below for more.

I used the Life N Reflection Tutorial as an example and the Blending Options Opacity was ~ (legacy b texture) Overlay at 50%, (legacy d texture) Linear Burn at 100% and (legacy a texture) Dark Color at 55%. 
Get the Legacy Textures HERE and search her goodies HERE.


BTW...have you wondered how to make a screenshot on your mac? It is so easy. Just hit "Command, Shift, 3" Your image will automatically save as a PNG file. Go to you Finder and search for screenshots. That's it. It's that easy. ;)

Continue Reading ...

Garden Fresh Spaghetti Sauce

We finally have a bunch of tomatoes to call our own. I give all the credit to the man who started the tomato plants, he happens to have a Doctorate in Agriculture!! We've got three plants with at least 20 more tomatoes that will be ready to pick in a week or so. We've already gotten at least 15 tomatoes from the plants. Along with lots of tomatoes comes a need to use them. My kids can eat them like apples and they do for lunch sometimes, but when you get 10 tomatoes all at once you've gotta do something else with them besides putting them on sandwiches and just letting the kids eat them. 

I decided I needed to make some spaghetti sauce. I did a google search for a good spaghetti sauce and most of the ones I found made their sauce with canned tomatoes. So I looked at a few more and then decided to do my own thing with some suggestions from a few of the recipes I read. So, here's my version of Garden Fresh Spaghetti Sauce. Feel free to add or subtract from this recipe, I just used what I had on hand and it tasted pretty good in the end.

Ingredients:

1 onion

2 green onions

handful of baby carrots

1 zucchini

1/2 tsp minced garlic

oreganodried basil

2 large and 8 small tomatoes

2 tbsp white sugar

small can of tomato paste

dash of brown sugar at the end

I put the onion, green onions, carrots, and zucchini in the food processor and blended till everything was pretty small. I did add a little olive oil just to get things going. Then in a large pan I heated a little bit of olive oil and then added the veggies and cooked them for 10 minutes. This is also when I added the garlic, oregano and basil.

I cut the tomatoes into fourths before putting them in the food pro. I just pulsed it a few times because I didn't want tomato mush. I wanted the sauce to have a little bit of a texture.

Then I added the tomatoes to the veggies that had been cooking for 10 minutes and also added a little bit of white sugar, and the can of tomato paste. I let the sauce cook for about 40 minutes. The longer the better!! At the end I ended up adding a little bit of brown sugar because the sauce still seemed a little acidic to me.

I cooked up some Garden Fresh Fettuccine Noodles and we were all set. I also added a little cooked chicken to the spaghetti to give us some protein. I'm cheap so I buy the big bags of flash frozen chicken breast or tenderloins from the grocery store and then throw a bunch in the crock-pot...some I'll use right away and some I'll save for later in the week when I know I'll need chicken but may not have time to cook it. Saves me a lot of time. Plus it's nice to have cooked chicken on hand for salads and such.

I had plenty of sauce for dinner and I was also able to freeze some for another meal!!

We also had some farmers market green beans! Delicious!!

And no one even knows that I put a whole zucchini (also from the farmers market) and carrots in the sauce...so don't tell them, it'll be our little secret!

Continue Reading ...

Patriotic T-shirts

My sister-in-law and brother-in-law came down to visit over Memorial Day weekend. We put my handy brother-in-law to work...he wired our surround sound speakers, hung three ceiling fans and a chandelier! Yay for crossing things off the list!

Since it was Memorial Day and my niece and nephew are crafty (like my kids) I figured it would be a fun time to make a little project with all the kids. I had seen this t-shirt idea somewhere but now for the life of me can't remember where it was. I think it may have been Family Fun magazine but I'm not sure. If you know where it came from can you please let me know so I can give the proper credit!!?? Thanks!

These hand-print flag shirts were super easy to make! Just paint their LEFT hand to look like the flag. The bottom right corner is blue and then paint the stripes on the rest of their hand. Then put your kids hand down on the shirt with their fingers facing the right side of the shirt.

The blue paint dried too fast on Naomi's shirt so we made sure to get LOTS of paint on everyone else's hands. The white and red did mix on the few of their hands but that's the beauty of homemade shirts!







Hannah watched all the big kids do their hand prints and then she did a REALLY good job of letting me paint and print her shirt!!




Here they are on Memorial Day with their patriotic shirts! The great thing about these shirts is they can be worn for at least 3 holidays and are just a great shirt to show your support of America!


Um...someone did NOT want their picture taken!

Continue Reading ...

T-Shirt Headbands

Thought I'd change it up this week! I have been sharing T-Shirt Scarves for the past 4 weeks. Here they are...Scarf 1, Scarf 2, Scarf 3 and Scarf 4, if you want to check them out!

Well this week I thought I would share a t-shirt headband. As I was making one of my scarves with my mom (@Pine Creek Style), we thought it would be cute to use the same method on a small t-shirt for a kids headband.

I used the same method as the no sew scarf. See Scarf 2 for directions. Just used one of their old shirts. The size of the shirt was a 2T. It will be a little big, so I recommend a smaller shirt because after you stretch it out, well you know, it gets bigger. ;) I would say a 12 mo. shirt would be great.

...Look at how cute it turned out...

She really is happy to be wearing this. LOL I just thought it was a cute pic. Here is one of her smiling and showing that you can wear a clip with this too!

I love it and made a few of them for the girls. They even look cute with pony tails. The one below is another color I made.

And my oldest loved wearing hers too! Perfect for all ages. Mommy's too!

Cute! Cute! Will you make one? Have you made one?

These t-shirt headbands are awesome and a quick way to turn a simple hairdo into a fancy one!

Continue Reading ...