Holiday, Life

Mother’s Day

I am one of the most fortunate people on the planet because I have not one, not two, but three wonderful mothers that I get to celebrate each year on Mother’s Day.

This weekend was a fabulous celebration of my three moms, starting on Saturday with a dinner for my step mom, Jill.

We had the family over for chicken kabobs on the grill and we played a new game, Swish, until the power randomly went out. You’d think that would have ended the fun, but instead we all gathered in our dark living room and played Name That Tune from songs on my dad’s phone. It must be in our genes, because Emily and I are way talented at Name That Tune. We sometimes know the song from one note only.

I didn’t take any photos because we were super busy preparing for our dinner, and then we lost power. Oh well.

Sunday morning Emily, Brian and I headed over to mom’s house to give her a fancy, new ice cream maker! We all hopped into the car and drove to Annapolis to have brunch on the water of the Chesapeake Bay.

Mother's Day

Mother's Day

Mother's Day

Brunch was DELISH! If you live anywhere near the Chesapeake Bay, I highly recommend trying out the Severn Inn. It was a beautiful place to celebrate my wonderful momma.

Once we finished with brunch, the hubby and I hurried home so I could start making homemade pizza dough for dinner with his momma. I’d never tried it before, but using my handy dandy bread maker, I put in all of my ingredients and it did the hard work.

Two hours later, and we had some fresh dough!

Homemade Dough

The pizza was delicious — we covered half of it in pepperoni and half in tomato slices. I was too excited to eat it and forgot to take a photo, but it was super yummy. I’ll do a post next time I make it detailing all of the ingredients and steps because it was way easier than I anticipated.

Mother’s Day was great this year and I hope all three of my moms feel loved and a little spoiled. They are all amazing people and I am lucky to call them all my moms.

Christmas, Craft Projects, Holiday

Painted Salt Dough Ornaments

Remember the salt dough ornaments from Sunday? Well, if not, let me refresh your memory.

BAM!

IMG_2205

Carrie, Amy and I made a bunch of these ornaments at our last craft night of 2012 and I hung a few on my tree right away. I also saved a bunch to paint. And, amazingly, I painted all of them on Tuesday night after work! I guess when no television shows are new it’s much easier to motivate yourself to work on crafts.

I broke out my Martha Stewart metallic silver paint that I used like a crazy person this summer (silver mirrors, silver chests, silver everything!) and a teeny tiny paint brush and started to paint different ornaments. I made three snowflakes out of the silver, adding ribbon to hang them on the tree by. I also painted a few with reds and greens. I painted a lot of ornaments last night.

IMG_2328

I accented this snowflake with red dots using the tip of a small nail head.

IMG_2310

Then I painted this little mitten. So cute!

I’d show more, but they are all gifts for people who might be peeking! You get the idea anyway.

One last thing… if the world ends tomorrow, nice knowing ya! 😉 Happy almost Mayan Apocalypse and happy Thursday.

Christmas, Craft Projects, Holiday

Salt Dough Ornaments

Our main craft from last weekend’s craft night was salt dough ornaments. Carrie, Amy and I followed an east recipe for the dough so we could make our own ornaments.

IMG_2147

All you need for the dough is 1 cup of flour, 1/2 cup of salt and 1/2 cup of warm water. I mixed ours together in my KitchenAid using the dough hook attachment, which worked great. When the dough was a little too tacky to roll out, I added a pinch more flour.

Then we set up these awesome SilPat mats and began to roll our dough.

IMG_2148

When the dough was an even thickness, we stamped our shapes into it. Then, we removed the excess dough and put a hole in the top of each one before putting them into the oven.

IMG_2149

I started to bake the ornaments at 200 degrees, but after a while I bumped up the temperature to 250. That worked great and the ornaments hardened in about 2 hours.

IMG_2151

Once they cooled down, I hung them on our tree using silver and red string.

IMG_2205

Here’s one for Remmy!

IMG_2202

And a little tree for our big, fat tree.

I saved a few to paint, but I haven’t gotten around to adding color to any of them yet. I don’t think they need it either. They look very pretty on our tree just as they are.

IMG_1963