Scissors & Spatulas - Page 2 of 42 - Crafts, Cooking and everything in between

Itty Bitty Pumpkin Treats (revisited)

I’d like to say happy fall y’all. I don’t know which part of the country (or world) you are in, but I hope you are able to enjoy some fall-like weather. Here in South Carolina it was 87 degrees today. In parts of Colorado, I heard it was snowing. What happened to fall? Did Mother Nature forget about it this year?

Well, besides the weather, fall is showing its colors and everything is apples and pumpkins. This is an old post, but I thought I’d re-share because it’s a really cute idea for a fall treat.

These little guys are “Itty Bitty Punkin’ Treats!” They may be tiny but they are pure deliciousness!

Here is what you need:

1 box powdered sugar

1 small jar peanut butter

1/2 stick of butter

red & yellow food coloring

chocolate chips

Mix powdered sugar, peanut butter and softened butter in a bowl just until combined.

Mix red and yellow food coloring with 1/4 cup of water until you get the desired orange.

This was a good job for Little Man #2.

Add the food coloring, a little at a time, to the peanut butter mixture and mix well.

Roll the dough into small teaspoon size balls. Little Man #2 had fun helping me with this.

Use a toothpick to create criss-cross markings across the top of the balls.

Top each ball with a chocolate chip and you have your little punkins!

You can share or save them all for yourself!

ENJOY!

I should note that the first time I posted this recipe I had a lot of emails asking about the bake time. There is no baking!

By the way, forgive the appearance of my blog! Not sure what happened but something removed the buttons on the sidebar and also the design of the blog. Oops! Anyway, a new design is in the works and I can’t wait to reveal!

I’m Back with a Giveaway from Minted.com

I’m ba-ack! Yes, for real (I think), I’m back. It’s been a long year and our family has been through a lot. We sold the old house, moved to a temp house while our new house was being built, had a baby and FINALLY moved into our new house (one week after baby). Wait, back up. Had a baby? Yes, I did. I know many of you probably never even knew I was pregnant. I never mentioned it here on the blog. I thought about it, I really did. But I just never did it. Let me introduce you to my sweet little girl.

My feelings about continuing this blog have been like a tug of war over the past year. There were days that I thought about shutting it down but those days were often followed by days of missing “Blogland” and feeling I needed to share something. I tried to update the house as much as I could but obviously that didn’t go so well. Yes, the house is finished (Well, sort of. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.), and I promise I will post pictures soon. But first, I have something better. . .

The other night I got an itch. An itch to start blogging again. Totally different than the wishy-washy feelings I’d been having for the past year. Something was telling me it was time to come back. So here I am. And what better way to make a comeback than with a giveaway to jump start it?!!!

I was looking for birth announcements for my sweet Lucy girl and stumbled upon Minted.com. Have you been there? It just might be the best stationary site online! Tons (and really I mean tons) of designs, shapes and color choices. And of course you can customize your cards with your photos and message. Here is what I am creating for Lucy’s birth announcement.

It’s a birth announcement book! Each page has a different photo or photos and your own personal story.

You know it’s about that time to start thinking about holiday cards! Who am I kidding, I don’t start thinking about them until Thanksgiving. And even worse, I don’t usually order them until December! But this year I’m getting a head start! I’m ordering through Minted.com…

Here are two that I created using minted.com. I think it says it all about how blessed we have been this past year.

Check out their other holiday designs minted.com/photo-christmas-cards. They have something for everyone! Here are just a few more cuties.

So are you ready for the giveaway? Minted.com is offering a $75 credit to one of Scissors & Spatulas’ readers! Hooray! What do you have to do? Simply leave a comment below. I will use random.org to pick the winner this Friday.

Happy holidays a little early from Minted.com!

Disclaimer: Winner will be chosen at random. Deadline for entries is 11:59pm on October 4, 2013. Winner will be announced October 6, 2013 and will have 48 hours to claim prize before another winner is drawn. Minted.com is responsible for awarding the prize.

At Long Last, an Update!

Did you think the house building had come to a halt? I know, I know, it’s been far too long since my last post. And it’s quite ridiculous as well considering all that has been done since my last post!

Here is what you saw…

And here is what the exterior looks like now…

The siding went up. This took forever! Like three weeks which seemed like a long, long time.

But it was finally finished and in just a few days, it was painted…

And my favorite part of the exterior? My “haint blue” porch ceiling! If you aren’t familiar, historically they painted the porch ceilings in the lowcountry blue to keep away insects and ghosts.

So that is where we are with the exterior. So let me show you a few of the interior. Since I haven’t shown you any photos of the inside yet, I’ve created collages of the progression since framing.

The front entry and staircase (view from family room)…

The family room…

The back wall of the kitchen….

Other photos of the kitchen (P.S. I LOVE my kitchen cabinets!)…

And finally, our master bath shower. The cabinets are in as well, but I don’t have a photo yet…

So that is about where we are today. They have primed all the walls for painting and I’m hoping that will be done this week. We are getting close and I’m getting very anxious. We are being told three weeks until move in. My fingers are crossed, but I’m still a bit skeptical.

Everything looks amazing so far! I can’t wait to see it finished!

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It’s Looking Like a House!

I know, I’ve been slacking again on posting. However, a lot has happened since I last posted when I showed you the beginnings of the framing of the house {read here}.

Very shortly after this picture from my last post, the framing was complete. It was crazy how fast it went and it was so fun to drive by every day and see the changes and progress.

Within a few days after the completion of framing, we had a roof!

And a couple days later, we had windows!

Here is the back view of the house.

It’s starting to look like a house, huh?
Well, all that exciting stuff is over (for now). For the past week and a half it’s been plumbing and HVAC. Not that it isn’t great progress, it’s just not as much fun to watch! But we have our plumbing and HVAC systems in (I’ll spare you the details and pics of that!) and electrical starts tomorrow. Once all that is done, the drywall will start going in and it will really start looking like a house inside!

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Foundation and Framing

Has it really been almost a month since I last posted about our house? Sorry about that! It’s been a pretty busy month! You’re going to be shocked by what I have to show you.

When I left off they had just poured the footings (see previous post here). The foundation came next and we were thrilled that we finally got to see something coming up from the ground!

I absolutely LOVE our brick choice. It’s the first one my eyes were drawn to when we walked into the brick. It’s Statesville Tumbled Oversized Walnut Creek Brick.

I love even more this beautiful brickwork!

This is the foundation for our front porch. Isn’t it gorgeous?!
While the foundation was being finished, we got this delivery.

Who knew a shipment of wood would be so exciting?!
They quickly laid the floor.

This was the first time we got to “walk” our house! Finally! After looking at it on paper for over six months, we were actually walking on it!

Then this…

It was one of the happiest days of my life! It might sound silly, but my dream house was coming to life.

And it went up fast!

At this point we were able to walk through the house and actually see the framing of the rooms downstairs. It was wonderful to finally get a real-life view of the house we had worked on creating for so many months.

The back…

The roof…

The porch…

And this is where we are today. They put some makeshift stairs in so we were finally able to go see the upstairs today as well. It’s unbelievable! It puts a smile on my face just thinking about it!

I do have some pictures of the inside and I’ll post those soon. Stay tuned…

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A Last Minute Decision

So last week I shared with you the progress of the land preparations that were done for the new house. {If you missed it, you can read about it here.}

Although it was exciting to see things changing, even if it was just dirt being pushed around, we were ready for more! So we were very excited the day the surveyor came out to plot the house. That is, until we saw where the house was plotted!

You can’t tell very well from the photo, but the house took up pretty much the entire width of the lot. And, because it was so wide, the only way it would fit was to move it really far back (our lot is skinnier in front, wider towards back) leaving us no back yard.

It also left us very little side yard on either side.

I was completely devastated. We all knew the house was wide, but no one had anticipated we would have to plot it so far back on the lot. We also didn’t expect it to take up the entire span of the lot.

There was only one logical thing to do to solve this problem and it was not something I was very happy about. In order to get our back yard, we would have to switch our side load garage to a front load. So right there, on the spot, I had to make a decision. I wasn’t happy about it, but it didn’t seem we had much of a choice, so we said go for it. So our plans have changed from this…

to this…

I REALLY didn’t like this idea at first. I didn’t want the garage to be the first thing people saw when they looked at our house. I didn’t want it to be a distraction from our huge, beautiful front porch. However, I realized that our garage does not sit in line with the front of the house, it’s a good bit back, so attention will not be drawn to it too much. It’s grown on me and I”m ok with it now. It’s moved our house up a lot and given us much more of a back yard. It’s all good.

So then we were ready for the footings to be dug and poured. Ready and waiting. We waited because of sleet and ice (Remember, we are in SC and that doesn’t happen EVER!) and we waited longer because mother nature decided that after a summer and fall of drought, it was finally time for it to rain.
But we finally had a couple days of beautiful sunny weather and have our footings!

It was cool to finally see the footings because it really gave us an idea of exactly where the house would sit on the land and also we could get a better idea of the size.

We were so thankful that this part was complete because we knew that now they could really get started on the building! Not only was it exciting to finally see the footings complete, but I found this on the lot too.

The bricks for our foundation!

Until next time…

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Progress

Yes, I realize it’s been a month since I posted “I’m back!” after a long, much-needed break. Sorry about that!

After finally breaking ground on our dream house at the beginning of January {read about it here}, we were so excited to watch the trees being cleared, the dirt being moved and anything else that reminded us that we were finally doing this!

By the way, this will be our view from our front porch…gorgeous!

So things were moving along but then we ran into a couple delays that have slowed the progress of the house.

We hit rock…
Not just rock, boulders. Lots of them. These were all removed from our lot and this is about one third of them.

After removing those rocks there were a couple in the ground they had to break.

These guys were being difficult! So difficult a special machine had to be brought in!

But Mr. Mike (Our builder. Yep, that’s him running that machine up there) got through them and the grading of the land could finally move forward.

Next we had the big hill. I am not sure where all the dirt came from, but the boys loved it!

They climbed it…

slid down it…

and thought they were on top of the world!

It was fun while it lasted, but then the hill was bulldozed away.

The boys weren’t too happy about that!

So the land was prepped and we were ready to for the surveyor to stake the perimeter of the house. That was until the surveyor came and staked the house. I’ll tell you all about that next time!

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I’m Back with Great News!

I realize I’ve been gone for quite a while. Much longer than I anticipated! But a lot has been happening over the past couple months and things have been pretty busy around here.

First, we sold our sold our house in just four days and then we had only thirty days to pack up and move out. Needless to say, we spend those thirty days packing morning, noon and night! It was a whirlwind, but we were very thankful to have sold and closed so quickly because that meant we could get started on our new house!

If you are a follower, you probably remember that back in May we were beyond excited to have purchased land to build a new home. Our dream home.

We thought we already had the perfect plan. It was one of Southern Living’s most popular “Idea House” plans, the Abberley Lane. I had torn that house out of Southern Living Magazine years before. I loved it! But I never in a million years thought I’d have the opportunity to build it!

I absolutely love the look of this house. It reminds me of a lowcountry plantation home. Hubby and I met in Charleston, and we used to love to walk around downtown and look at the gorgeous homes and architecture of the historic city. This one caught my eye immediately when I saw it because it reminds me of one of those homes.

Although it was the perfect plan, there were a “few” things we wanted to change. I know I have shown you these before, but it’s been a while so I thought I’d briefly refresh.

We wanted to extend the porch so that it wrapped around both sides of the house. This meant moving the garage to the back.

We wanted the kitchen and family room to be more open to each other.

We wanted to eliminate the two story family room to allow for more square footage upstairs.

We also didn’t need the formal living space in the front of the house so we borrowed the front entry and stairway from another Southern Living plan, Wentworth Heights (shown below). It allowed that extra room to be hidden behind the stairs. Perfect for my messy craft room!

A “few” modifications became many changes and many drafts, but we finally had the perfect plan. Thank God for our architect who was so patient and accommodating! (KC Home Designs).

She is currently working on the most recent (and final set), but this is pretty close. We only made a few changes after picking out appliances and choosing bathroom cabinets.

After the plans were complete, it was time to choose a builder. We decided on Olde South Homes, a very impressive husband and wife team. We are thrilled that they will be building our dream home and have been very impressed with everything so far!

After weeks of waiting to close at the bank and a couple more weeks of waiting on permits, etc, we have finally broken ground!

I’m sure these pictures aren’t too exciting for y’all, but for us it was HUGE! So we are finally, after months of patiently (and not so patiently) waiting, building our house! Stay tuned, I plan on posting about the house often!

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A little time out…

Ok my friends, I tried. I really, really did. Over the past several months I’ve tried to share new, creative ideas with you. But for me, these lame posts just aren’t cutting it. I miss (and I’m pretty sure you do too) refinishing furniture, re-decorating rooms, coming up with new, creative home decor. But to be honest, there is not a whole lot I can do right now.

For those of you who follow my blog, you know that we are in the process of selling our current home in order to build our dream home.

southern living abberley lane floorplan

Our plans have been under construction for several months now. I’ve shown y’all on a couple different drawings of our version of the Abberley Lane shown above. Well, even though I said it was finished, I fibbed! Or maybe just changed my mind a few more times. We are in the final stages of detailing and we made a few minor changes since the last time I shared with you the elevation and floorplan. I’m excited to show you, and I will, as soon as I get it back from the architect! And, we have chosen our builder as well! I’ll announce that soon too!

The good news is that after less than a week on the market, our house is under contract! Not only that, but we have less than one month until closing! While this is all very exciting, it is also terrifying to know that I have to pack up my entire house (and I got a lot of stuff people) and find somewhere to live while our new house is being built! Yes, I’m freaking out a little bit!

(source)
So back to the point of this post. I’ve tried, I really have tried to make things as interesting as they used to be. But since I knew we were moving it seemed sill to re-decorate, I was afraid to paint furniture because I don’t know what my colors and decor will be in the new house, and frankly, I just didn’t have any creative motivation. But I did try my best to post some things. And I planned on continuing to do so, until today.

I stressed all day (while packing) about getting a post up. You see, I get anxiety if I don’t post frequently enough. It used to be that I had to post every day. But then when I started my business I learned to relax and that it was ok to skip a day or two here and there. But lately, I’ve been skipping more days than posting and it’s causing me major anxiety. (I found this little comic here and thought it was funny.)

Then today I had this moment where I realized that I needed to take a break. Not a permanent break. Oh no, I’m going to be sharing with y’all the building of the new house! And then I get to share decorating it!!!! But I am going to take a temporary break for the next few weeks while I pack the house up.

So I hope that you don’t mind. I might still post here and there. But I want to do it because I have something to post or because I have a few spare minutes to do so. I don’t want to feel pressured or anxious about it. But please don’t leave me! I promise that when I come back, I’m going to have way more to talk about and to share than I’ve shared in the last year! I promise! I’ll be back soon…

A Winner!!

Oops, forgot to announce the winner yesterday of last week’s giveaway!

The winner of the Designed Beginnings $40 store credit giveaway is…

Diana! Somehow she left a comment within a comment but technically it was the third comment. Congrats Diana!

If you didn’t win or if you didn’t enter, please stop by Designed Beginnings shop. She has some adorable vinyl wall decals!