Healthy Trail Mix

So I have always been a pretty healthy eater but lately it has come to my attention of how bad I've been eating and, coincidentally, feeding my family (yup, that was me who brought it to my own attention!).  It doesn't make matters any better with the fact that I'm pregnant and should be eating extra healthy in the first place (I do have to stick up for myself though and say that my BAD eating isn't even comparable to some people I know!  I'm just an extra health freak sometimes!).  With all that being said I decided to start eating better and feeding my family better.

It isn't an easy task to just switch your entire eating habits overnight so I decided to make it a gradual thing.  I don't think it would have worked for me to just change one meal at a time so I decided to simply introduce new meals (whether that was breakfast, lunch, dinner, or even snack time) over a period of time and hopefully our habits will begin to form on their own.

Today I was at the grocery store and was like "what the heck, just get some stuff already!"  I'm a bit of a procrastinator at times so I have to make myself do things!  My daughter LOVES to snack so I decided to create a healthy and insanely simple snack.  This trail mix is my own concoction.  I haven't given it a unique name yet but hopefully something will come to mind and I can brand it as my own :)  Not that trial mix is anything special or anything!

So here it is!

"Healthy Trail Mix"

The following ingredients were all equally proportioned so depending on how much mix you want simply adjust to your needs.  I started with 1 cup of each and then ended up making it 2 cups of each because I just NEEDED to fill the container I had!

Ingredients:

Yogurt Covered Raisins

Banana Chips

Quaker Oatmeal Squares (any flavor, I used brown sugar)

Craisins

Mini Pretzel Twists or Sticks

Peanuts

Add all your ingredients to a large bowl and gently fold as not to crush anything.

    

Place in an airtight container and enjoy!!

Princess Party Invites

Some of you may not know but I do a little bit of party planning on the side and when it comes to my own family and especially my kids I go way out!  Or at least I try to :)  I can not believe how pricey things are at party stores for birthday parties!  When my daughter started getting a little bit older and having real parties instead of just family gatherings I decided that buying everything from a party store was just way too insane and being the crafty DIYer (is that even a word?) that I am I decided to do practically all of it myself.  First on the agenda, invites!

My daughter is turning 4 this year and is super girly!  She wanted to have a Cinderella birthday party and then it occurred to me, why not have a general princess party and let all the little girls dress up like princesses  and just incorporate Cinderella in there somewhere.  Well I have come up with many ideas for this party and I am so excited about it but I am just going to share in this post what I did for her invitations.  The rest is yet to come but I will be sure to keep you all updated on my progress!

I originally had the idea to use scrap booking paper or a pearl shimmer paper but then after looking over the cost and how much work it would be I decided to wander down the wedding aisle at Michael's and to my absolute joy I came across a pack of all-purpose cards that was going to work perfect for what I was doing.  

(By the way I know some of these pictures go off the edge but I wanted to make sure they were big enough to see the details.)

 Here is what I came up with to use (all from Michael's):

50 Pack of All-Purpose Cards AND envelopes by Celebrate It - only $9.99! (Michael's ALWAYS has coupons to bring the price down even more so I think I literally only paid $5.99 for the pack of cards!)

For an embellishment I got a small pack of stick on rhinestones for less than $3.  SO, I paid less than $10 for custom made invitations that, in my opinion, are WAY cuter than store bought ones :)  Plus, I didn't even need half the box of invites so I have plenty left over for another project that I'm sure I'll come up with.

The first thing I did was jump on the computer to type up the invitation.  I first tried to use the template that they come with but was not having very good luck at all.  I decided to do it my own way and jumped on Microsoft Publisher.  I used the dimensions that it said to use and it worked out much better!

 Here is how they turned out (minus the anonymity of them!  I changed all the private details for this tutorial). Because the cards are perforated down the middle I was able to print two at a time and simply crease and split when they were done.

 I wanted to put a little bling on them since they were for a princess party so I decided to add the rhinestones to the top of the crown (of which I simply downloaded from Google images).

BEFORE

AFTER

I wasn't too attached to the little cross on the top of the crown so I simply covered it up with the rhinestone.

For the final touch I always like to make the envelopes a little special too so I did the same concept with them and created my own template on Microsoft Publisher.  I added the same pink crown to the top of the addresses to give it a little touch so that when guests received them they would anticipate the actual invite (one of my favorite touches I like to add to any event, anticipation!).

(Again, I made it all anonymous for the sake of this tutorial.)  I made sure and added the back of the envelope to the picture as well just as a reminder to make sure when you are creating your template that you print a sample before going all out, printing them all, and THEN finding out you printed them all upside and backwards...UGH!  This will probably require more than one attempt.  I had one envelope with multiple prints on it until I finally figured out which way I needed to feed it through my printer.  Saves a lot of headache though!

And last but not least, the final product!  I hope you liked this tutorial!  It is very simple and you can add different embellishments of your own to make it unique to your liking.  Feel free to use any of my wording but please leave a comment if you do because I would love to know how you liked it and how you used it!

Thanks Again!!

Ode to My First Blog

As many of you know I am currently on maternity leave and have been since July.  With still two more months to go I have been doing everything I can to fill my time.  This typically consists of doing things for myself since I happened to have the opportunity to do so now.

In this time of self renewal I have found myself clinging to the things that make me most happy, my family and arts and crafts (cheesy I know but its true!).  I have discovered a new love, Pinterest!  I have so much longing and ambition to tackle every single one of the DIY projects I discover on a daily basis that I said to myself, "why not create a blog and share with everyone my creations?!  After all, blogs contain more than half the content I discover on Pinterest in the first place and if they can do it, so can I!"

So, this is my attempt to put all my thoughts and ideas down for everyone to see.  Because I have a new baby coming in early November I have every intention of including baby related posts as well as preschool posts from things I implement with my four year old daughter.  I guess I just want to help all the young moms out there feel a little more sane through organization and gratification :)