• Christmas,  Gifts,  Recipes

    Homemade Vanilla Tutorial

    How to Make Homemade Vanilla Can you keep a secret? I can…but it’s more fun to just tell someone a secret. Maybe just one person. Well this year, I zipped my lips and didn’t tell a soul about my top secret Christmas project. Now that Christmas is over, it’s no longer top secret and I can spill the beans…vanilla beans, get it?  I love to give homemade gifts and this year I somehow managed to plan ahead early enough that I actually pulled it off! Years ago I read up on making vanilla extract. It seemed pretty straight forward and so I went ahead and ordered a massive amount of…

  • design details from our kitchen make over
    Before and After,  DIY Tutorials,  Kitchen,  Money Saving Tips,  Remodel

    Adding Decorative Details Without Breaking the Bank

    For years (maybe even decades) I have drooled over kitchen magazines. The designs that really made my heart sing were were the ones that featured lots and lots of finishing details. I love classical Roman architecture, so anything with pillars, corbels, detailed molding and carved trims make me very happy. I’m the opposite of a minimalist. I like details and lots of them…but guess what? Details are really expensive, especially in the kitchen. For instance, the corbels offered by the company that made our cabinets were going to cost $300…each. Well, you can’t have just one corbel holding up a counter, so we were looking at $600 just for one…

  • Birthday,  Celebrations,  Crafts,  Dessert,  DIY Tutorials,  Money Saving Tips

    How to Make a Custom Cookie Cutter

    As I was planning for my son’s Pi themed party, I figured I’d be able to track down a Pi shaped cookie cutter with out too much trouble. (Doesn’t everyone have a need for such a cookie cutter?) I did my usual Google searching and came across a really nice copper cookie cutter on Amazon, but at $23, it was priced higher than I wanted to spend. (Edited to add: I have since seen them on Etsy for under $5, but that wasn’t the case while I was planning the party.) After my online search came to a halt, I called around to some local stores who typically carry unique…

  • Birthday,  Celebrations,  Dessert

    Throw a Pi Party to Celebrate the Math Lover in your Life

    When your kid loves math as much as ours does, at some point you’re gonna want to throw them a Pi Party…and what better day to have the party than on March 14, National Pi Day. According to Piday.org,  Pi Day is celebrated around the world. Pi (Greek letter “π”) is the symbol used in mathematics to represent the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter — which is approximately 3.14159…… I don’t know how many people treat this day as an actual recognized holiday, but in our home it is a day to celebrate! We dine on all things circular: Sliced Cucumber Ritz Crackers Doughnuts Pizza Orange…