Tasty Thursday: Macaroni and Cheese & Review

This week's recipe for Tasty Thursday is a comfort food that might not seem appropriate for this time of the year. However, I received an item to review and thought this would be a great recipe to try it out with. Please check out this post for the review on this wonderful set of Rachel Ray stoneware.



After browsing many recipes for Mac & Cheese, I decided to try this one by Alton Brown because it includes a crispy crust which is essential in our house. He achieves this crust by using a combination of panko breadcrumbs and breadcrumbs. The crunchiness is a great compliment to the creaminess of the mac & cheese.



Even though turning the oven during the summer isn't always ideal, this recipe makes it worth it! And the leftovers are great the next day!

Proudly linking to Tasty Tuesday Parade of Foods, Tuesdays at the Table and

iPhone Case

After tons of research we finally decided to get the iPhone 4. If you have followed the news at all, you will know that they are giving all customers a free case. What they don't tell you is that said case takes 3-5 to arrive, so I decided to make something to protect my new phone from little paws until the case gets here.



A couple of months ago I found this nursing cover for a $1. Even though I am pretty sure we are done having kids, I had to get it because I loved the fabric. It came in handy for this project because it had a pocket (sorry no picture!) that was lined in terry-cloth that I used to make the cover for the iPhone.



I basically cut the pocket off, sewed along all sides leaving a small gap to turn it around, and then folded it in half and sewed along the long side and one short side. The phone fits so snugly in the cover that I didn't need to add any type of closure. I had planned on using Velcro.



The terry cloth interior gives it the necessary padding and I love the playful fabric! I still have the rest of the nursing cover to play with. My daughter has requested I use it to make a blanket for her American Girl doll- we'll see. For now I am happy with my iPhone cover, especially since it cost way less that any others I have seen.

Proudly linking to Works for Me Wednesdays, Thrifty Thursday, and:

Play Pool! Cupcakes

Today was my husband's birthday and I wanted to make him something fun. The kids and I flipped through our favorite cupcake book (Hello, Cupcake!) and thought he would really like these since he loves playing pool.

Instead of using the real triangle from the pool table I made one out of chocolate covered pretzels. This is where the kids got involved and they had a blast! It was a messy process, but I was glad to let them help me and they loved it.

We used vanilla cupcakes which I baked last night in order to make the decorating easier today. The toppings included vanilla frosting, colored decorating sugar, white chocolate circles and dark chocolate numbers.

These were really simple to make and a blast to present to our billiards lover! Apparently they tasted good too since they disappeared within hours :)

I really wanted an eight ball but couldn't find black decorating sugar. I tried making my own but it looked more like grey sugar. Our local stores only carry the black around Halloween. I think I'll stock up on it this year just in case.

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Construction Theme Birthday Wrap-Up

My son's second birthday party was a success! It was very small, but we all had a great time. I feel blessed to have been able to make so many things for the celebration. Here is a quick wrap-up:



Construction Birthday Banner



Kid's Tool Belt Favors



Birthday Applique Shirt



Bulldozer Birthday Cake

Thank you for joining me on this journey... it's been a blast and I can't wait for the next birthday party!

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Note: This is a re-post to fix the links.

Children's Chef Hats

These chef hats were a huge hit with the kids this past Christmas. They were part of the accessories I made to go along with the pretend kitchen that they requested from Santa. I used this pattern from You Can Make This. It is a great tutorial that not only includes detailed instructions, but also the pattern pieces. And it's free!!!

My mom was kind enough to hand-embroider each of their names on the chef hats. She did a really neat thing and had my daughter write out her name so that it would be in her own handwriting. I thought that was a very cute personal touch!

The pattern includes 4 sizes (extra-small, small, medium and large) ranging from 15"-25". My son should have been an extra-small but I decided to go with a small so that he could have it a bit longer. In order to help with this, I placed a larger Velcro than called for in the pattern and it works great. This is one of the times that I wish I wasn't against posting pics of my kids on the blog because I would really love for you to see how cute they look in their chef hats.

They wear these 90% of the time when cooking in their kitchen, which equals to about 90% of the day. I am in the process of making them more accessories since it's where they spend most of their play time. They recently have requested that I make additional chef hats for when their friends come over. Here are the chef hats in their natural habitat, the play kitchen.

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Frugalicious Friday, Sunday Scoop,