homemade peanut butter cups

Hold on to your love handles, because I've got a winner here and you're going to love it.

Actually, not much needs to be said except: homemade peanut butter cups. Those four words together trump most things. I imagine any conversation:

So what are you doing this weekend?
Watching the super bowl. Going skiing. Flying to Hawaii.
How about you?
Making homemade peanut butter cups.
Lucky.

And they are as good as you think they would be. I followed this recipe, and used melted chocolate almond bark to dip them in at the end. They're no bake. They're easy peasy. And they're my new go to. Also, I keep mine in the freezer because I like a frozen pb cup. My mom taught me that and she is a wise woman.

Here's the recipe:
1 cup smooth peanut butter
1/4 cup softened butter
2 T. brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt

Mix all of that together in the mixer.

Then add 2 cups of powdered sugar.

Dump the pb mixture into an 8x8 or 11x7 casserole pan that has been lined with parchment (important!) for easy removal later. Put the pan in the freezer (cover with saran wrap) for an hour until hardened.

Use a cookie cutter to cut your hearts or stars or eggs or even just squares. It doesn't matter. No one is actually going to care the shape once they've eaten one.

Then put the cut outs back on a cookie sheet lined in parchment back into the freezer until hard again (maybe an hour? less?)

Melt your chocolate almond bark in the microwave until nice and smooth. Dip your shapes into the chocolate and lay back down on the parchment paper. (I used a cookie rack and regretted it!) Then I stuck mine back in the freezer once more. But you could also just start eating at this point.

So good.

And! I'm going to make little footballs for Sunday. You should too!

Nancy, come on by any time! I've got one here with your name on it. :)

playdates and possoms

For today's creative project I took a nap. I got Hattie down for her nap, lay my head on my pillow and the very, exact second I did, Alden woke up. So I brought him downstairs, fed him rice cereal and asked Elsie if she would set up a playdate for Alden so that I could sleep.

When I came back up with Alden she had the room all set for fun. So they played and I slept. It was a 20 minute power nap and I woke totally rested. It was awesome. And very creative.

In other news, we caught a possum in our garage this morning in a live trap. So Rory took the trap to a county park a few miles from here. When he got there, he found a friend of ours from church who was sitting in his car having just watched the sunrise. They were so surprised to see each other and chatted a bit asking what are you doing here? "Spending some time with the Lord in prayer." And you? "Oh you know. Just dropping off a possum."

watercolor hearts

Early this morning Rory and I were in the kitchen waiting for the coffee and saw the moon out our big kitchen window. I said, look how odd that is, what is causing that? Is there a cloud in front of it? Why is it that color? We looked at it for a long time and talked about how the heavens are always telling the glory of God.

Then a few hours later, I checked my email and found a blog comment from Martha, a good family friend from my home church growing up who mentioned seeing the lunar eclipse in Arizona. Ha! We were looking right an an eclipse and didn't know it! Hadn't heard it was coming, but are so glad we got to see it.

Anyways, on to more crafts. This was a fun one. Though I did it with my kids, which meant the table was shaking with Alden bouncing in his attached high chair, Hattie cycling through paints, play dough, markers and popcorn and having to comfort a sad daughter because "yours is better than mine!" So we had to stop to have popcorn and talk about what it means to be 5 and 36 and how there are some differences, like painting hearts on paper.

I hope to be able to convince her to keep going, because her hearts would turn out so much cooler, just by being more free form and less precise with her art. And now I'm hoping to find an 8x8 frame at the thrift shop. I believe that is what they call a needle in a haystack...

heart strings #2

Do you remember how huge crafting was a decade ago? Do people still putz and play like this anymore? I remember following dozens of craft blogs when we lived in Nebraska. And maybe all the ideas have been posted already or maybe they've all switched to instagram and pinterest, but crafting blogs seem hard to find. I guess I'm just thinking aloud. Anyway, here's my second creative project!

The first three hearts I made (on the right here) had to be outlined in string because I had traced a heart with pencil right onto the wood. I wished I hadn't made the pencil marks because I didn't actually want to outline the heart, but I couldn't erased the pencil. So today I tried again, nailing the heart outline to the wood and then putting the nails in around the paper, and then removing the paper.

It leaves one nail mark, so I could have used double sided tape or a tape bubble on the paper to hold it in place. Then I tied a good knot and started running my thread all around the heart. This is a really, really fun project. No one way to do this one...

I like how this one turned out, without the outline around the hearts. Both ways are darling though. And the best part for me is that when I was gone grocery shopping tonight, Ivar made his own heart and star. He loved this project and is excited to see what I whip up next. Long live crafts!

it's craft month!

Shout out to Mara and Sonna who told me they read my blog with their friends during school! Hello ladies! So happy to have this little window into your day! I think you're going to like what I'm about to write about, and I have a feeling you crafty girls will join me in this challenge...

To everything there is a season. I say that aloud or to myself probably thirty seven times a day. And I find so much comfort and rest in that truth. There will be a day. If it's on your heart, it's there for a reason. If it can't be accomplished today or this year or next year, there will be many years after that. If there is something plaguing your days, a hardship, a challenge...it too will pass. To everything there is a season.

I'm currently in a season where most of my creative energies go into figuring out what I can make for dinner out of mayonnaise, noodles and frozen corn. But it seems every February, a wave of inspiration hits and I get a boost of creative juices.

So you know what season it is now?!! Crafting season!!! Yesterday I saw a really darling window display at a favorite shop in our town with hearts on string dangling behind the clothes and shoes they are selling. And I decided to stop shopping and come home and get out the valentine's decorations.

Then I got all inspired to make my own heart strings. So last night after the kids went to bed, Rory watched a movie about William Bradford and I started cutting hearts. And I remembered that I love cutting and crafting. So I made a little challenge for myself: For the next thirty days I am going to do something creative each day.

It can be super simple. These will not be complex projects. But they will be darling. And they will probably have some hearts. But maybe not. And it doesn't have to be a new project every day. If I get super excited about heart strings, I could make them all month long. I won't, but the rules say I could if I wanted to. It's good to make the rules. Also, these are my projects. The kids can join in if I have the patience, but these don't have to be group projects. (They made cute shoe box mailboxes today...) In fact, I will likely prep the project during the day and execute after bedtime. Also, I'm going to try not to shop for anything. I'll get clever with my own craft stash.

So who's with me?!! Mara? Sonna? You girls in? It doesn't have to be every day (you can make your own rules too!) but let's get crafty!

Turns out I get crafty almost every February. Thankfully I have this blog to prove it. Check out these Valentines posts.

And here's my pinterest board in case you want to make some of these projects too. I'll be adding as the month goes on...