Lucky Blocks

Last year I posted my Lucky Blocks that I made at my sister-in-laws house about two years ago.  I remember that it was two years ago because my daughter was about a month old or so and had colic really bad.  It was my first experience having a baby with colic and I wouldn't wish it upon anyone.  

I went to my sister-in-laws house and couldn't even finish making the project because of my crying baby.  So my sister-in-laws came to my rescue and finished them for me.  Otherwise, they would have never got done.  :)  Thank goodness for family! 

My sister-in-law got all the materials ready for us to make them.  She had the wood cut and paper and vinyl available.  We even mod podged glitter on the blocks as a finishing touch.  

Such a fun and cute project!

Sponsor Ad Winner!

We have a winner to the Sponsor Ad Giveaway!!!  And the winner is...

#46- Cece

Congrats Cece!!

We sent you an email.  

You will need to respond to the email within 48 hours or a new winner will be chosen.

Thanks for everyone who entered!

We're officially in Arizona!!

I have been MIA for a little while...

But, I think that I had a good excuse! My family and I made the huge move to Mesa, AZ from Amarillo, TX!

We made this move with are 2 diesel pickups, 2 UHaul trailers, and 3 kids (3 and under). Here are a few pictures of the move and our old house.

Stripes and Zigzags Pillowcase

Recently, I showed you the Stripes and Zigzags Quilt that I made for my son.  Well, I had some extra fabric and asked him if he wanted it to make a pillowcase.  He was really excited!  

I gave him a few ideas, and this was the design that he came up with.  It's more of a Pillow Sham than a Pillowcase.  He did a really great job!   And it looks great on his bed with the quilt. 

He wanted me to take a picture of the quilt, pillow and monster.  He made both the pillowcase and the monster.  He has a lot of talent!

Homemade Hot Cocoa Mix

 

I absolutely love this mix and I begged for this recipe a few years ago and finally got it from my Hubby's Aunt. I have been making SO many batches of Hot Cocoa for the kiddos and also adding it to other recipes to enhance them too. Check them out too and enjoy a hot cup while you are at it! 

Warning: This recipe makes ALOT of Hot Cocoa Mix, so be ready to mix some up and share with all your neighbors and friends!

Hot Chocolate Bars

Cinnamon Sticks with Hot Cocoa

Hot Chocolate Cookies

Hot Cocoa Mix

1 box of Powered Milk 8Qt size (I use Morning Moo from Walmart)

1 lbs Jar Coffee Mate Powder (any flavor that you like)

1 lbs Powder Sugar

1 1/2 lbs. (6 cups) Chocolate Drink Powder (ie. Nestle Quick, Ovaltine)

8 oz (1 container) Unsweetened Cocoa Powder

opt. Miniature Marshmallows

Mix well! Store in an air tight container.

 (If you have a flour sifter that would be primo to use to mix it together and avoid any clumps)

1/4 cup = 1 packet of instant hot chocolate

Sponsor Ad Giveaway!!

Have you ever wanted to advertise on Babblings and More?     Now is your chance!!     Today we are giving away a HUGE ad space for one month which includes a Sponsor Post featuring your blog or business!     Let me first tell you a little bit about our blog...  We are 4 sisters who started our blog when we all moved away from each other.  Briana is in El Paso, TX,  Brittany in Thatcher, AZ, Bridget in San Tan Valley, AZ and Brooke was in Amarillo, TX.  We started it to show each other what we were working on and to stay motivated!         Between all of our sisters we have 20 kids with 2 on the way.  Briana is due any day!!!  We will keep you all updated!   Since we have started our blog we have 942 followers through GFC, 1785 Facebook follower, 675  Twitter followers and over 2200 followers in Pinterest between us!   Now on to the giveaway...  Today we are giving away one HUGE add space which includes a post featuring YOU!!!   Just enter below...   a Rafflecopter giveaway

Almost There...

I am officially 39 weeks today!  And any day now we will welcome a little girl into our home!

Everyone is so excited!  In fact one of my 12 year old boys (I had twins first) said that he wants to come to the hospital and stay there for a long time to take care of the baby and to rub my feet with lotion!  What a good boy!  I am making sure to pack some lotion in my bag and take him up on that offer.  :)

 

 

A few weeks ago my husband and I went to Cold Stone on our weekly date.  And come to find out, our Cold Stone here in El Paso, offers half off a Signature Love it size Ice Cream for pregnant women who are visibly showing!  

 Score!  Needless to say, we have gone to Cold Stone nearly every week since then.  :)  I don't know if every Cold Stone offers this deal, but it wouldn't hurt to find out!

Zigzags and Stripes Quilt

My son has been wanting a new quilt for a while now.  He even had the fabric picked out: Riley Blake Super Star.  It has a great mixture of blues, oranges and browns.  And absolutely perfect for a boy!  Sometimes it's hard to find cute fabric for boys, but we both loved it!

So I bought the fabric without him knowing and I worked on the quilt while he was at school and then hid everything before he came home.  It was actually quite difficult to hide everything because he is such an observant child! I wanted to have it done to give it to him for Christmas.  I also made another quilt for one of my other sons for Christmas using jeans.  You can see that post here.

So this is the quilt that I came up with. I didn't have a pattern, but just went with the flow! I bought a charm pack and then some yardage.  I didn't have quite enough fabric to make a twin size quilt for his bed, so I bought some solid navy blue fabric for the stripes and the back of the quilt.

I machine quilted it as well with my walking foot.  I used white thread and it provided a contrast for the back of the quilt. 

I'm not the best quilter and I'm definitely not a perfectionist when it comes to quilting, but my son absolutely loved it!  You should have seen his face, he wasn't even expecting it and that was the best part!

Bliss Design Studio

We have another fabulous sponsor that we want to tell you about! Bliss Design Studio is an Interior and Graphic Design Company. 

Here is a little information about Brittany, the owner of Bliss Design Studio:

"After 6 years of interior design experience, Brittany was ready to spread her wings and create her own design venture.  After a serendipitous moment of opportunity, she moved to Dallas and created Bliss Design Studio.  She has since moved her studio to Bentonville, AR.  She offers Interior + Graphic Design services to clients around the world.  Her designs have traveled as far as Australia and she is hoping to best that soon!

Brittany is an NCIDQ Certified Interior Designer.  She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Interior Design.  She has a variety of experience in: retail design, residential design, commercial design, brand development, logo design, and stationery design.

Brittany maintains a connection with the latest design trends through a variety of resources: pinterest, blogs, webinars, trade shows, continuing education seminars, and design magazines.

Brittany has an insatiable curiosity for all things design! She is inspired by the great designs of the past as well as the present. She believes that everyone can live designerly and has made that her personal mantra."

Her website is absolutely amazing!  She does Interior Design, eDesign and Graphic Design.  I love looking around her website!   It is so fun and easy to navigate around! 

 

Her designs are beautiful and she is so talented!  You will not be disappointed!  I secretly wish that she was my neighbor and maybe some of her decorating creativity would rub off on me.  :)

Hot Chocolate Cookies

Once a week I get in the cookie making mode and crave the aroma that fills my home when I bake fresh cookies. I have my go-to recipes that are always great, but I also love to experiment.  For Christmas I made a whole bunch of Homemade Hot Chocolate (recipe on the way in a later post). I still have a whole bunch left, so I decided to add it to some cookies along with chocolate chunks, and mini marshmallows, which you are now able to find in some grocery stores. If you can't find them locally, you can get them on Amazon. I provided a link below for connivence.

These turned out very soft and chewy, a new recipe to add to my go-to list! 

Hot Chocolate Cookies

1 1/4 cup Vegetable Oil

1 cup White Sugar

2/3 cup Brown Sugar

2 Eggs

1 tsp Vanilla

3 cups Flour

1 cup Homemade Hot Chocolate or

(4 packages instant cocoa (don’t use sugar free))

1 tsp Baking Soda

1 tsp Baking Powder

1 cup Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips 

1 cup Mini Marshmallow Bits

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Whip in eggs and vanilla.

In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, hot cocoa mix, baking soda and baking powder. Add in flour mixture to butter mixture until well combined. Fold in mallow bits and chocolate chips.

Spoon 1 tablespoon of the dough and shape into a ball. Place on a greased cookie sheet.

Bake for 9 – 11 minutes until edges are lightly browned.

Valentine Subway Art

Valentine's Day is just few days from now and just sneaking up on me.  Yesterday, one of my boys made his Valentine Box for his school party and addressed all the Valentine's for his class.  He is super excited!

A week or two ago, my friend came over and we used my Silhouette to cut a bunch of vinyl.  She found this really cute Subway art at the Silhouette store, so we downloaded it and cut out three of them.  

 

She was so nice and put it all together for me.  She cut, sanded and painted the board, applied the vinyl and then mod podged over it.  Doesn't it look so cute!  I love the way it turned out.  My board has dark pink vinyl.  She did her's and another friend's in dark red vinyl.  

My house is starting to feel festive and ready for Valentine's Day!  How about yours?

  

Valentine's Day Giveaway Event!

*********The Giveaway is closed and the winner is:  Andrea Morrison ***********

The Life of a Not So Ordinary Wife | Design Eat Repeat | Pharr Away | Postcards from Rachel

Little Country Girl | A Complete Waste of Makeup | Pure Joy | Konjo

This Little Light | Babblings and More | My Beautiful Crazy Life

With Valentine's day nearing I wanted to do a little something special to celebrate in the name of love as did the ladies above because they were so gracious to contribute to make this giveaway even possible. Seriously without the ladies above this giveaway wouldn't be happening so a big thanks goes out to each of them! With that being said, we are giving away a $90 Target Giftcard to one lucky person in honor of such a special day. :)

Giveaway Details:

+You MUST be a My Beautiful, Crazy Life reader

+This giveaways will end on February 15 at 11:00p.m. so get your entries in before its too late!

+Winners will be verified, so make sure your doing what you say you are :) 

+Winners will be contacted via e-mail & need to respond within 24 hours or a new winner will be chosen.

Good luck :)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Smart, Blonde and Crafty

I wanted to introduce you to one of our sponsors!  Smart, Blonde and Crafty is an amazing new website, blog and magazine that we absolutely love!  The content is great and very clean and organized.

They feature different blogs and crafters.  It also divides projects into different categories.  I like how it's easy to navigate and find things. 

 And they are also offering a giveaway right now.  If you comment on their blog about what you like, or don't like about it, you will be entered to win!

Here is a little info about the ladies behind Smart, Blonde and Crafty:

"Hi there! It’s so great to meet you.

My name is Amanda and this is Kelly, my best friend, business partner and designer extraor- dinaire. Together, we own and operate a graphic, web and publication design company called Smart Blonde Creative. We’re always out looking for creative inspiration which is how we dis- covered this whole, wide world of blogging. And it’s amazing.
 
It all started a few months ago when we became OBSESSED with all of you creative ladies out there. We like to think that we were creative people, but all this blog stalking kicked our creativ- ity into high gear and inspired us to leave our desks and do some real-life designing, using tools and glue instead of our computers.
 
Reading through our favorite blogs is empowering. These women (yes, I’m talking about you) manage full time jobs, raise children, cook gourmet meals, decorate their homes and hand craft all kinds of goodies. THEN they write about it. They share their secrets with us, tell stories about the craziness that is their lives and make us laugh. Who wouldn’t want to be part of this won- derful world? We certainly do. We’ve never even met these ladies and we look up to them. We understand their hectic lives. We mentally high-five them for completing a project and give them a hug when their toddler is driving them insane. They’re our friends.
 
And so Smart Blonde and Crafty was born. Every two months we will bring you a roundup of all our favorite projects and the wonderful women and blogs that gave us the ideas. We’ll fol- low their tutorials and tell about our experiences. We’ll tell you which blogs to visit for the best recipes or where to go for a quick DIY holiday decoration.
 
Why is it called Smart Blonde and Crafty. Because. We’re blonde, we’re smart (although we still have our moments) and we’re crafty too. If you have black hair, you’re a brunette or a red head, we hope this title doesn’t discourage you. If it weren’t for these highlights, we wouldn’t be so blonde. Also, the title compliments our other ventures. Smart Blonde Creative, our graphic de- sign company and We Are Smart Blonde, our blog that follows us as we run our business, raise our children and all life’s chaos.
 
If you haven’t already, check out our BLOG.
 
And more importantly, tell us about YOU. Are you pretty crafty? Do you run a DIY/Craft/Life blog and have some creativity you want to share with us? We want to meet you. EMAIL HERE.
Thanks for stopping by. We hope you enjoy and leave feeling inspired."

So don't delay and click on over to Smart, Blonde and Crafty and check them out! You will love what they are offering!

Chocolate Caramel Pretzels

I love Valentine's Day!  I especially love the colors of Valentine's Day.  Reds and Pinks!

Sunday afternoon we were all in the mood for some sweet treats.  So I whipped out the pretzels, rolos and M&M's.  They were a big hit!  If you have never had these, then you are missing out!  They are the perfect blend of salty and sweet, crunchy and smooth.

The recipe is really easy and my kids (and husband) loved making them!

Chocolate Caramel Pretzels

Bag of Pretzels

Bag of Rolos

Bag of M&M's

 Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Spread Pretzels on a cookie sheet.  Unwrap Rolos and place one on each Pretzel.  Bake for about 3 to 5 minutes.  Just until the Rolos become soft.  Remove from oven and place one M&M on each Rolo.  Allow to cool.  You can speed up the cooling process by placing in the freezer.

Fast and easy!  Isn't that what we all love!  Enjoy!

In Or Out Media Giveaway Winner!

Thank you to everyone who entered our latest Giveaway from In Or Out Media!

The winner is.... #127 -  Carie Austin!

Congrats Carie!!!

I just emailed you, if I don't hear a response within 48 hours, a new winner will be chosen. Thanks to all who entered! And for those of you who didn't win and would love to buy something...take a minute to stop by and visit In Or Out Media!

Last Day to Enter!

I just wanted to remind all of you that this is the last day to enter the

 In Or Out Media Giveaway! 

 

So take a minute to enter, rafflecopter makes it quick and easy! Good luck and the winner will be announced tomorrow!

Hot Chocolate Bars

The other day I had a house full of my kids and neighbor kids. They were starting to search my cupboards for snacks so I quickly pulled this recipe out to make for them which is fast and easy. These Hot Chocolate Bars have a soft, thick sugar cookie crust that you smother with hot chocolate homemade frosting that melts into the cookie. Then I topped it off with miniature marshmallows for the perfect look for the kiddos. 

Hot Chocolate Bars

Sugar cookie crust:

1/2 cup Butter, softened

1 cup Granulated Sugar

1 Egg

1 Egg White

1 Tbsp Sour Cream

1 tsp Vanilla Extract

2 1/2 cups All-purpose Flour

1/2 tsp Baking Powder

1/2 tsp Salt

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

 Butter a 13″ x 9″ baking dish, set aside. In a mixing bowl combine flour, baking powder and salt, set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer, whip together butter and sugar until pale and fluffy about 3-4 minutes. Stir in egg and egg white. Add sour cream and vanilla and mix until blended. Slowly add dry mixture and stir until well combine. With buttered hands, gently press (so gently almost patting) mixture into buttered baking dish. Prepare Hot Chocolate Frosting. 

Bake 16 – 19 minutes until toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean and edges are lightly golden. When warm, smother the frosting onto the cookie crust. Sprinkle mini marshmallows on top of the frosting. Cut into squares, and enjoy while still warm. 

Hot Chocolate Frosting:

1/4 cup Softened Butter

2 cups Homemade Hot Chocolate Mix or 1 cup Powered Sugar + 4 bags instant cocoa mix

2-3 Tbsp Milk

1 tsp Vanilla

In a mixing bowl, with an electric mixer, whip together butter and Hot chocolate mix.  Slowly add milk and vanilla until fluffy.

Valentine's Day Ideas from Pinterest

Don't we all just LOVE Pinterest!? I know I do! There are always so many great ideas. Even my kids get on and start pinning crafts they want to do, recipes they want to make and ideas of how they want their rooms to be. 

So I gathered a few different ideas, new and old, for Valentine's Day.  I hope you like them all as much as I did.

These Old Fashioned Sucker Molds from Western Hospitality would be so cute to make for Valentine's Day!  My kids love homemade suckers and the hearts are perfect!

The gals over at Eighteen25 outdid themselves again!  The color of this printable are perfect and I can't wait to print it off and put it in the perfect frame!

 

Mommy by Day, Crafter By Night put together such fun ideas for 14 Days of Valentines, and included all the printables.  I would love to do this for my husband!

 DecorChick has a beautiful Valentine's Day Mantel that I just love!  The colors are great and I love the wreath and old window!

These Valentine's Day Buttons from TastyKitchen look so cute and I bet they taste so good!  Salty and Sweet is the perfect combination!

 

Then She Made created this cute Rosette Framed Valentine, perfect for hanging on the front door.

And don't forget about our Love Blocks that we posted earlier this week.