Jun 30, 2015

Camping Is In Tents T-Shirt


You know how I just got back from Girls Camp? Well this shirt was my pride and joy of the camping trip. I have been wanting a Camping is In Tents t-shirt for at least a month. Puns are the bestest. Girls Camp seemed like a perfect opportunity to make myself one.

I literally made this shirt up the day before I left. I probably should have vacuumed or cleaned a bathroom (or two). Instead I made this shirt.


Then I dressed it up with my new Camp Pants (as previously seen on Instagram @larissa_anotherday) and I made my husband take pictures of my stellar camping outfit. All of this done before I actually went camping.

I am pretty awesome like that.

Here is the image I made using PicMonkey. I made my shirts image by using geometric overlay tool to make the tent and the trees. The font is High Tide Sans, from my computer. That is the great thing about PicMonkey, you not only have their fonts to choose from, but you can also use the fonts from your own computer.
Image is for personal use only

Right click on image and save to your computer. You can trace the image onto freezer paper, cut out, and paint on to a t-shirt. Or you can save the image and use it in a vinyl cutting machine. Just make sure to reverse the image before cut it out. 

I used vinyl on a simple men's Hanes t-shirt.

This shirt was ultra dreamy. It was also quite the hit at camp.


We have several more camping trips planned for the Summer, and this outfit will most likely appear at every one of them. Sorry husband (he is not that fond of the pants). I just can't seem to help all that style whilst I rough it in the woods. By rough it I mean sleeping in a camper.

Hope you enjoy the shirt as much as I do. Which, if you couldn't tell is a whole lot. A lot, a lot.

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Jun 29, 2015

Pretty Little Drawstring Mess Kit Bag


I just spent a little less than a week out in the woods camping it up with a fabulous group of young women. We ate. We laughed. We cried. We hiked. We grew. We learned. So basically it was awesome and we did lots of stuff.

When you go camping, word on the street is that you occasionally will want to eat a meal. Since whilst enjoying nature, one should probably take care of nature it is best to have dishes to use that do not have to be thrown away.

That means you need a mess kit.

What is a mess kit? (I know some of you might be asking)

A mess kit is a set of dishes, mostly likely plastic. You know a cup, a plate, a bowl, and some silverware. Then it all goes in a little bag for convenient transporting.


Most of the time the bag is a simple mesh bag. I decided I wanted to go a little more pretty and a little less boy scouty. Oh and by the way, isn't my cute little neighbor/model the cutest? She sure is.

So I bought some plastic turquoise dishes from Target. I also found a set of coordinating napkins. Those coordinating napkins were not for me to wipe up my face. Instead  I used them to make my mess kit.


I took each napkin and right side down and folded over the top down 3 inches. Then fold up the bottom deep enough to make a pocket. One side I let as a regular pocket for my plates.


On the other side, I split the pocket. One side was left as a pocket and the other side was sectioned off for my silverware.


I sewed all the pockets in place. Then I laid the napkins on top of each other, right sides facing. I sewed seams across the sides and the bottom, stopping before the top seam you sewed, the casing seam for the drawstring.

I used biased tape that I had previously stitched up for my drawstring. You can also use thin cording.


 Cut two long pieces of your cord. Using a safety pin, weave one end of one string from one side all the way around the bag. Then weave the other string from the opposite side all the way round. Knot the ends of the cords.


Now you have an adorable drawstring mess kit bag.


I got a lot of compliments on this bag at girls camp. Obviously this isn't a drawstring bag I could send with my boys to scout camp, but I intend to go to girls camp lots and lots over the years. So now I never have to worry about my mess kit again.

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Jun 18, 2015

Southwestern Hamburgers


Burgers are delightful. When we made these a few weeks ago, we ate outside sitting on a sprawled out blanket. One of the things we love about living here is that you can eat outside  practically all Summer.

The heat dies down in the evening. The breeze is cool and refreshing. No humidity. Hardly any bugs. Yep. We are kind of unbelievably lucky. We will not mention that it can snow here quite a lot in the winter. We are not talking about winter. Plus who wants to eat soup outside? Not me. So let's just hurdle over that whole winter topic thing.

Focus on Summer. Glorious eat-out-of-doors Summer.

This burger has been shared on the blog, before the blog was really a blog. I took the picture indoors, at night. There was a flash on the bright blue plate. The hamburger did not look appealing. Which is a shame because this burger is DELIGHTFUL. Delightful I tell you.


While I have shared this burger before way back in the day, we made a few changes per The Husbands suggestion. Good suggestions too. They made this burger SO good. Guess I will keep that guy around.

If you are looking for a new hamburger to try, well this is the burger. We served our burgers with fresh strawberries and Slow Cooker Mexican Corn on the Cob

Print HERE

Happy grilling, happy eating, and happy Summer-ing (totally a word).

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Jun 17, 2015

Watercolor Teacher Note Cards



What is that you say? School has been out for awhile. Your kids have already said good bye to their teachers for the school year.

Yeah, I know that. I meant to share this teacher gift I made early, but alas I don't have an early setting on my personal clock right now. The setting is pretty much set to last minute or lots of minutes after.

I loved these cards and was pretty proud of myself for trying a new skill to get these done.

I have seen several similar projects on the internet. I just love how personal the idea was.


As I thought on the project, I remembered a time when I had done a very simple and basic family tree using watercolors. I remember not being horrible at it and that was years ago. So I thought I would give it a try.

Gosh, I sure had fun. I initially drew the image on a larger piece of watercolor paper. I drew the image with pencil, leaving out some of the design detail, like the stripes on the dress.


Then I went to work painting. I had fun recreating different outfits I may have seen the teachers wear. I also added a special little touch by painting the book to match one of the ones they read that year in class.




I took my originals to Staples and had them shrink down my original image and then copy them on heavy cardstock. Not only did they print them out so that I could cut them down to a 5x7 card, but the girl who copied them for me also cut them down so I didn't have to. Man is that kind of wonderful

I bought some brown craft paper envelopes to go with the cards. I tied them all up with a cute ribbon and delivered them to my boys' teachers on the last day of school.


I might just make some every year. Spoiler alert future teachers-you might be getting some of these next year.

Jun 16, 2015

Mother's Garden Lunch


A few weeks ago, you know back when school was still in and the kids were occupied 6 hours of the day, I threw a little lunch for a few moms. A little way for us to enjoy that last day of peace.

My favorite way to decorate for something simple like this is to use 80% of what I have on hand and 20% bought. Those statistics are totally legit. You know what they say about stats you find on the internet.

But seriously, it is the best way to throw something together.


I used a combination of my dishes. I know you are all shocked that my dishes are all white. I pulled out my dining chairs and mixed them with my favorite folding chairs. Mason jars, white serving dishes, mixed-matched silverware, and a giant piece of fabric rounded out the decorations that I already had.

I basically just added some flowers.


Some of them I was even able to plant in planters on my front porch.

We had a light lunch.


There was lemon infused water, chicken salad sandwiches, and homemade pita chips.


Good lunch. Good friends. Good times. It was a good way to say hello to Summer.


We will probably have to do it again.

Jun 15, 2015

Family Camping: Redfish Lake


Not only have I slowed done on blogging, but it has also been awhile since I have shared a family post. Several times over the last couple of weeks I have revisited old blog posts. I have come to a couple of conclusions. I will spare you the ones that effect my self-esteem. I will share with you the positive "hey I miss that" and "why don't I do that anymore" thoughts.

First. I was a little more personal and a bit more witty. I am not sure why I have gotten away from being more personal. I had trouble deciding what people really wanted to read and questioned if I should be more profesh and less personal.  I obviously didn't really enjoy it too much, because I have really not blogged consistently for a year or more. Come to find out it is hard to share oneself when you are not really sharing about yourself.

Second. With the lack of that whole being myself thing, I have steered away from sharing with you the things we do in our everyday life. Adventurous and otherwise. Right there is another contributing factor to my lack of blogging. My life has been a lot more full of the day to day. I still do lots of creating, decorating, cooking and all of the stuff I used to blog about. I just don't always have time to document it or blog about it (AKA stay up late to write. I have become a lot more fond of sleep.).

That is a long introduction to this post. Basically, today I am sharing some family adventures. In the past I have called these kind of posts In a Nutshell or At a Glimpse. When we moved here we decided that eventually we wanted to become a camping family.

Several years later, older kids, and one pop up camper we are finally brave enough to embark on the wonderful world of camping.

Last week we went camping. Like camping for more than just overnight.


From a recommendation, we settled on camping in an area of the Sawtooth Mountains. A lovely little piece of paradise called Redfish Lake.

I was really nervous to venture on almost a full week of camping. With some list making and a whole lot of prep, the camping trip was an easy peasy success.


There is pretty much something magical about sitting around a campfire either early in the morning or into the night. So magical that you can almost overlook the lingering smell of campfire on all of your clothes.





Campfire is not only magical to sit by, but we found it can also cook up some pretty good food. Breakfast was by far our most successful campfire meals. I am not much of a breakfast person and so that means that I don't really cook a lot of it at home.

I busted out all the stops for this camping trip. Man the eggs, hash browns, and sausage were glorious. I pretty much inhaled them.


No matter how good that breakfast was, there is just no comparison to the next morning of campfire donuts.

Donuts. People.


I have made campfire donuts before and simply dusted them with cinnamon sugar. They were DELIGHTFUL. Someone who should remain nameless (ehem...me...) forgot to pack the cinnamon sugar. So I thought a little outside of the box, and rummaged through what we had. 


Pie filling and melted chocolate go a long way on a donut.

They filled our bellies and got us all ready to spend a day on a boat. Our boys were so excited to rent a boat. Someone also thought it would be alright to let all the boys drive the boat.

Sometimes with assistance.





Sometimes with out said assistance. Did I mention I was not the someone who okayed all this boys-drive-the-boat nonsense?




There was plenty of time to stop the boat and enjoy the shoreline.


Not so much the actual water. It was a little overcast and chilly. Well Oldest got in. The rest of us chose to only flirt with getting in.

We flirted with danger by walking on this log.



Don't worry none of us fell in. We have skills like that.


Mostly we just enjoyed hanging out and eating lunch in the boat.


Since we could only rent a boat, we spent more time on land than on water. Good thing the land around us was spectacular.

I pretty much love hiking in a green and glorious forest. Especially a forest surrounded by a little bit of water.



There was one whole day of rain. We stayed in the camper or really close to it. We played some games. Bean even took a little nap.


Then the skies cleared.

Amazing.

We played. We hiked. We were loud. We were unplugged. We were dirty. We were a little tired at the end. Some more than others.


Six pair of happy, tired feet headed back home. There were many declarations of happiness. All of the boys requested that we come back to this place every year. We even drove around the campsite looking for other sites we might want to reserve for next year.


On the way home, Bean requested that we go right back to camping. My lack of showering for three days immediately vetoed that. I am not sure I have ever gone that long with out showering. No one else seemed to mind. So I let it go.

That is what camping will do for you. Let things go. Let schedules go. Let manners go. Let it go.

Let it go and make yourself some memories. Go camping.

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