Something New...

I'm unveiling a tiny pet project I've been wanting to do for a long time, but I just never got nervy enough. Nervy or Nerdy? Pretty much both. Anyhoo...I have had this frustration lately. I like photography, I'm not a "photographer," but I want a gallery collection of my favorite personal photos that I've been collecting and holding on to for a couple of years...and I feel like an idiot for having a "photography" site. {and I never feel like an idiot, so it's not a comfortable 'place' for me to be, mentally, you know...} So I'm opening up sort of a gallery, if you will. There's no interaction there, just pictures.

Sometimes I think a piece of cake is the most beautiful thing ever, or a piece of fruit, so I'll photograph it and then what? And we all know my own obsession with this lady here who has my dream job! {well, and like a bazillion times more talent} Sometimes I'll see a building and go nuts over it, or a flower, or something very random like this one here. haha. So I blew the dust off of the old file folders, opened up my pictures, (copyrighted them, of course) and now they're up and out in the wide open! I'm inviting you to come visit, take a peek, and enjoy.

That's all I have to say. Now let's have a group hug...

HERE'S THE LINK: Abby Welker PhotoArt

Another Cute Brooke!

Meet my newest friend, Brooke! {anybody named Brooke is automatically beautiful and special...} Anyway, she sent me the cutest email and THIS AWARD! {gaspity gasp} She's a fellow photography nut and I can't believe how much I love her blog and her pictures. She's incredible and I feel so joyful that she would think of me!!! {thanks, Brooke!}

There are always rules with the awards, but I'm a rule breaker.

I'll go along with this one half-way, though, so here goes:

The rules of this decadent award are to:

1. Thank the person who gave the award to you.

THANKS, BROOKIE! You're ADODRABLE!

2. Copy the award and put it on your blog - CHECK.

3. List three things about you

1.) I don't like talking about me...

2.) I come from small-town America and I am so proud of it!

3.) I used to roller skate like it was nobody's business and it's my secret dream to be on a roller derby team.....(aakkk!)

4. Post a photo that you love

Just one? Well.......

This is a picture of the beautiful south-eastern desert valley right near my hometown. This is the kind of rural desert splendor I grew up all around. I can look at this picture and smell the beautiful desert botanicals, taste the Mexican food we grew up on, and be 'home' again. ahhh....

Thanks, again, Brooke, for thinkin' of me! {love her...} You can see her blog entry here where she said the nicest things.

Hey! I'm Jamielyn from I ♥ naptime w/ chocolate sundaes!

I’m so excited to be blog swapping with A Feathered Nest! I love coming to her blog. She has so many cute ideas, and all the pictures she takes are beautiful! Abby is so talented!

Today I'm going to share with you a few of my favorite projects. Click the links to find the tutorials...and please let me know if you have any questions on any of the projects. iheartnaptime@gmail.com

Summer Blocks

Mini Cheesecakes

i hate blogger...

I would give anything for Blogger to be easy to use. I'm trying to fix my post down below...and now I give up. If it's hard to follow, then I'm sorry. At least the pictures are all lined up now - OY~!

Crunchy Baby Tag Toy

Back when I had Brooke, my DEAR, dear, dearest friend Pam sent a package of baby goodies and within her box of creations was a cute baby tag blanket. It's soft, chewy, and Brooke loves it! {love ya, Pamsies!}

Lately, Brooke is obsessed with the crunchy, plastic baby wipe packaging and I can't change her diaper without {carefully} hiding it from her. So I'm making her a *crunchy* tag blanket toy and now we'll have one of each! One for quiet times and one for her to be loud with! Perfect!

This little project was simple - no special measurements, just eyeballing. You can eyeball, right? So go grab some fabric scraps, some ribbon scraps, and join me!

***Note: you don't have to make yours 'quilt style' like I did. You can just use one big piece of fabric, but I happened to like the busy fabrics together like this to add interest.
Now cut six squares of random pieces - five rectangles cut in half. I believe mine were 4 x 7 and then I cut them in half.

I also played with various colors of

trim on the square pieces and loved it! You'll want to sew those onto the squares before you piece them together.

Sew the squares together with right sides facing; press open

Then sew the rows together, right sides facing; press open.

Now I'm not a quilter, I don't have the nerves for it...and you can see why. Even though I measured everything, cut all of my squares perfectly square, they still didn't line up whilst sewing them together. WHY??? I don't know. But who cares, right?! It's still darn cute. (plus, babies don't care.)

Then you square up your lines with your rotary cutter & ruler after your pieces are all stitched together.

Now pin on your ribbons. Get creative, colorful, and have fun! Velvet textures are great, too, but I couldn't find any.

Now on to the crunchy part. This is a piece of the baby wipes packaging I cut up - I probably could have done a better job at getting a larger piece, but it isn't going to matter. The thing will crunch! But because it's smaller than my top and bottom piece, I'm going to sew it onto the wrong side of my fabric before I do anything else so it will stay put.

There! Now it's secure and not going to go anywhere. If you don't want this big of a piece, do strips, circles, or random patches on this bottom piece. That way you'll still get crunch without it being SO crunchy!

Next, you should baste your ribbons all the way around before you stitch the thing shut like I did, that way you can remove your pins. You don't want to turn this right-side-out with pins in it. {durh...wish I would have thought of that sooner...}

Then put right sides together, sew around leaving about 6 -8 inches opening in the side. Clip your corners and trim up the trimmin's - you know the drill.

Turn your fabric right-side-out; press flat.

Now you can put that last little ribbon in place while tucking the hole back into place.

Sew close to the edge all the way around, securing the opening and finishing the piece.

And that's it! Now go grab yourself a cute little baby and let 'em barf all over your hard work!

Brooke LOVES this, by the way!!! I even think it exceeded her low expectations. haha.

Whatta Day!

You can imagine my joy when I received not one, but TWO yummy awards today after the day I've had!!! {see bloody mess below}

Precious Honey said the nicest things here....and Precious Amy did over here. Thanks, girls, I truly don't deserve all this...but I'LL TAKE IT!! Thanks for making my rough day sunshinier!

And this....oh, well it's one of the occupational hazards of doing the dishes. Apparently I don't know my own strength because I busted a vase whilst cleaning it...going down and around over a razor sharp edge...and it dug into my flesh going ALL THE WAY TO THE BONE! {gasp} It was one of those slow-motion things and I knew when I saw how deep it was...and then seeing bone...that I'd definitely be taking a break to go get stitched up. Awesome. The adorable Kristine took my kiddies and I drove myself to the Dr. {love her!}

All better now - and I don't have to do dishes for a while! YESS! {but between you and me, I could have done it in a less-painful-less-bloody sort of way.}

I was well enough to capture one shot of my baby girl...FIVE MONTHS OLD NOW. Can you believe it?! I'm in denial - but she's pretty scrumptious nevertheless her old age.

Job Jars

Can I tell you how much I LOVE these jars?! My girl, Elizabeth, told me about this great idea and I knew it was one I could do! She saw it somewhere and passed the idea on to me, which I took and did my own thing with it. {'cause I'm a tweaker!} Each task is given a pom pom value - do that job and get that many pom pom puffy balls! Simple! My kids know that every day they're required to do their room and one other big task - the rest is up to them.

I don't follow through with actual job "charts" so this is good for me. They're great, but I'm more inclined to follow something like this rather than rotating a job chart. AND....this way my kids can come up with random things to do, knowing they'll be rewarded for even the little things.

So when they come to me and say, "I'm bored", they can refer to the chart on the fridge for something to do. When they say, "I wanna play the DS...I wanna pack of gum...I wanna play on the computer..." then it's going to cost them. They've quickly found that they really don't want to waste their puff balls since it was so hard to earn them. HA! That's the grand beauty of this idea!!!

Homemade Playdough

It's summertime {yessssss} and I've been hunting for some fun things to do with my kiddies to keep them busy. I found this playdough recipe over at Skip to My Lou and I LOVE it! It's very soft and lasts for a long time if you put it in a container in the fridge.

These little dough balls would be cute to give away as party favors or as an inexpensive gift, complete with little tools to use! Kids love this stuff!

Chocolate Torte from Heaven

If you ever wondered what kind of food they allow you to eat in Heaven, this is it. I'm 100% positive of that and if they DON'T have this there, then I don't even want to bother going. haha.

But seriously, MAKE THIS. This is what my Love Nugget wants for Father's Day tomorrow. (and maybe I secretly planted that little seed in his brain....whispering 'chocolate torte' all over the house...)

We were at Rock-Star Kadie's house a while back and she made this for us and once again, I'm pretty sure I blacked out somewhere because the next thing I knew, after I started inhaling mine, I was laying on the ground rubbing it all into my face. {{embarrassing!!}}

So here's the link - if you REALLY want to taste something good! And that's her photo above ... gorgeous. Makes me want to eat my computer screen. I can't wait to make this!!!

Cooking 101 - Pulled Pork Sandwiches

I'm taking a brief break from snuggling with my little baby marshmallow to share with you the EASIEST thing EVER!!! This is the best summertime dinner to eat out on the back porch. Top it with some yummy cole slaw on some really good bread and you'll be SO proud of yourself!!!

Who doesn't love a good pulled pork sandwich?! (Okay, a lot of people, but they're crazy, alright?)

So this is all you have to do:

1.) Get a pork shoulder, about 7 pounds, with a layer of fat on top. I get a huge, honkin' one at Sam's Club so that I have some to put in the freezer. Tip: When you are looking for your pork shoulder, you won't see the fat layer because they package it facing down, but it's there. (how pretty would that be to package a hunk of meat with a big, white fatty surface?! Not pretty...) If there is a bone in your meat, that's okay. Your meat is just going to fall off of it anyway.

2.) Generously rub salt & fresh ground pepper all over your pork shoulder. Score the fatty surface into diamonds.

3.) Place the meat fat-side-up in a large dutch oven or roaster. Roast at 450 degrees without the lid for about 45 minutes.

4.) After 45 minutes, turn the oven down to 350 degrees, cover the meat with foil or a lid, and roast for about 4 more hours.

After you take it out of the oven, cut off that fatty layer on top and discard it. The meat should just fall apart! It's so beautiful!

5.) With a fork, stir your pork with your favorite BBQ sauce and make it as thick as you want it.

WHAT?! That's IT?!! You just roast it?! Yes. And it's heavenly.

To make some cole slaw: (this would be ideal to throw it all into a food processor)

Shred 1/2 head of cabbage and some carrots, and add some cole slaw dressing. I use that good stuff in a jar in the refrigerated salad section.

Then just assemble your sandwich! Get some really good bread, or make your own, and enjoy!!! I used Kadie's French Bread recipe, added a touch of whole wheat flour, and just made little rolls instead of a huge loaf. It's SO good - you have to try it!!!

Here's my little marshmallow - I could just eat her instead!