Recently, I saw a Downy commercial that talked about the impact homemade quilts have on sick children in hospitals. They partnered with a group called Quilts for Kids, who distribute quilts to children in participating hospitals.

When I saw the commercial I had to jump on board, so I went to QuiltsforKids.org and requested a free quilt kit!

Here it is! This Quilt Kit includes the fabric and instructions to create a beautiful block quilt for a beautiful child in need. I cannot wait to get mine put together and show you all my creation!

As a participant, I get to name my quilt. As you can see, some of the fabric has owls on it, so I thought I would do a little play on words with that. Do you all have any suggestions for what I should name it?

Just FYI, I am not being compensated for this post. I just wanted to share a great cause with all of my fellow quilter and crafters out there. If you’re interested in creating a quilt for a participating hospital, head over to the Quilts for Kids website or Downy’s website for more information.

You can request a quilt kit to be sent to you or you can make a quilt from your own fabric, it’s up to you!

If you’re not handy with the sewing machine, they also accept donations, so consider giving, if you can!

I can’t wait to share with you the finished results!

Cookies.

I heart you.

You make my life complete with your buttery goodness.

You can be pretty much any kind and I will like you.

So, when I found a recipe for mocha cookies, I just had to make you.

With a little twist of course!

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present to you……………………..

Yes, you’ve read it right. MOCHA. LATTE. SUGAR. COOKIES.

Here’s a napkin for your chin to wipe the drool.

So, my mom bought me an electric cookie press and in it was a book of recipes. One of the recipes in the book was for mocha sugar cookies. I just had to make them and put my little twist on the recipe, so I made mocha LATTE sugar cookies.

Let me share with you the recipe.

But before I do, prepare to be amazed, because once you try these, you will want to eat the whole entire batch in one afternoon. Trust me. I almost know from experience (whoops!).

The day after Mother’s Day the hubs and I celebrated our 7 year anniversary.

7 years. Man.

It seems like we’ve been together for a long time, yet only yesterday when we said I do.

If you checked out my DIY Washi Tape post, you would have seen one of our wedding pictures. If you missed it, here it is again:

Awww, weren’t we just the cutest couple?

Anywho.. I wanted to make our anniversary special, so I made the hubs a nice dinner, complete with his favorite dessert- cheesecake. Yum!

I made a delicious dessert with a little spin. I made a pretzel crust instead of a graham cracker crust.

And let me tell you, it was yum! It added a more buttery/salty flavor to the whole cheesecake package.

And we liked it!

So, here’s the recipe, complete with pictures for you to drool over. Enjoy!

Doesn’t that look delicious? Here’s how I did it:

I took about 3 hands full of pretzels and stuck them in a large Ziploc bag. Then I took a can and smashed them down to a smaller size by rolling the can over the pretzels with a little pressure. Be careful- the salt on the pretzels may pierce the bag and cause a hole, so go slow!

Since I wanted my pretzel grounded finely, I poured my crush pretzels into the food processor to the 1-cup line to have them pulverized even more.

With my lovely assistant’s help. we ground those puppies up perfectly. Way to go Big V!

I then added my pretzels to a bowl with 1/4 cup melted butter and stirred it up.

I taste-tested my crust and realized that it was too buttery/salty so I added about 2 teaspoons of sugar to the mix. Much better!

Then I had my excellent helper push the pretzel crust down into the bottom of a round cake pan. She made sure the entire bottom of the pan was covered.

We set the crust aside and blended together a package and a half (12 oz.) of cream cheese, 2 large eggs and a 1/4 cup of granulated sugar until it was nice and creamy.

Here it is all mixed up. Yum!

Then my lovely assistant took a picture of me putting the cheese cake “batter” into the pan with the pretzel crust. What a great little photographer!

Bake at 325 until the sides are golden brown and you only have a tiny bit of movement when you jiggle the pan. This could take you up to 50 minutes, but it only took me 25 as my oven runs very hot. Be careful and keep an eye on your cheesecake so it doesn’t burn!

Once your cheesecake has cooled, take a knife and run it along the edge of the pan to loosen it up. Turn it upside down to release and then right side up to put it on your favorite dessert platter.

Then, feel free to add whatever pie filling to the top or leave it plain. And if you’re feeling really daring, feel free to make your own cheesecake topping from scratch!

I have a ton of cans of pie filling that I got dirt cheap with coupons, so I got lazy and just used that. It was still delicious, and besides, there’s nothing wrong with a little semi-homeade, right?

So, there you have it folks, super easy!

My hubby enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. Big V enjoyed it.

And now it’s your turn. Let me know how it turned out for you!

Click the link for the entire recipe on Ziplist!

Cherry Cheesecake with Pretzel Crust

I love playing games. Whether it’s Candy Land with my oldest daughter or Bunco with the ladies, I always have a blast learning new games and playing the classics.

Today I bring to you an awesome (and compact) way to play one of those classics. Checkers!

Here is a fun and easy way to play this classic game pretty much anywhere and everywhere. Whether you’re at a restaurant waiting on your food or in the car on a long road trip, you can just pull this out of your purse and pass the time!

So, here’s how you make this compact version.

First, you’ll gather the following supplies: An Altoids tin (Or herb teas tin in my case, ha!), Mod Podge, craft brush, paper plate, scissors, two different colors of cardstock, small craft magnets, and checkered scrap book paper.

Measure your tin to determine how big of a piece of the checkered paper you’ll need and then cut your checkered paper out with your scissors.

Cover the top of your Altoids tin with Mod Podge. Make sure it’s nice and coated.

**Feel free to spray paint your tin before you do this step if you want to make it extra fancy. I liked the color and look of this tin so I kept it in its natural state.

Then, center your checkered scrap book paper on the tin top and apply another liberal amount on top of the paper.

Once you’re finished it should look something like this. Make sure all your brush strokes are even and going in the same direction. When the Mod Podge dries it will become clear, so don’t worry about the way it looks at this point.

While you’re waiting on your tin to dry, take your craft magnets and peel the paper off the sticky side.

Then, take half the magnets you’re using and stick them to one color of card stock. Stick the rest to the other color of card stock. Give enough space between each magnet to get your scissors in between them to cut them out.

Cut around each magnet, making the card stock the same shape as the magnet.

Here are both colors all cut out. Sweet!

I covered each magnet with Mod Podge for uniformity, but you can skip this step if you want. I just like it all to look all shiny and purty.

And there you have it! Once you’re done playing, you just put the magnet inside the tin for storage! It will stay in place and you won’t have to worry about pieces getting lost. Woohoo!

And here’s my daughter playing with the finished product. I guess I have new game to teach her. She’s not too young, right?

Speaking of classic games- Another great game that I have always loved playing is Bingo! I played this fun community-style game every year as a wee tween at the Fire Station in the small town we lived in. I guess my next adventure is to figure a way to make a Bingo Altoids tin. In the meantime, I guess I’ll play online. There are some websites out there that you can play Bingo (no tutorial or Mod Podge needed- ha!). One really great website that I know of comes from the UK, called FoxyBingo.com. It’s always fun to gather with others- whether it’s online or in person- and play another great, classic game.

Enjoy! Let me know how your Altoids Tin Game turned out for you.

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So, I was recently talking with some fellow bloggers about where to buy Washi Tape. After our conversation I ran out to my local Target, only to discover that they only had one roll available, and that roll cost $3. Gasp!

And being my frugal self, I couldn’t bring myself to pay that much, so decided to try to make my own.

And oh my goodness. I think I found my new obsession.

Washi Tape is SO SO SO easy to make!

Yes, you can make your very own customizable washi tape! And the cool thing is, you can make it using different materials, like fabric, newspaper, regular paper, etc.

That’s the cool thing about it- it’s so versatile!

So, here’s how you do it.

Your three main ingredients for making washi tape is masking tape, Mod Podge and parchment paper. You’ll also need a crafting brush, something to pour your Mod Podge on (I used a paper plate), and scissors.

Tear off a large piece of parchment paper and lay it on your workspace.

Take your masking tape and tape long strips to the parchment paper. My tape wasn’t adhering to the parchment paper all that well, so I taped my masking tape to the table. You can see how I did that at the top of the above picture. Taping it to the table worked really well for keeping everything in place.

Cut out strips of your chosen material. Make sure to cut them out a little wider than the masking tape. I used fabric, magazine paper, and I even made my own customizable strips using printer paper and markers.

Take your Mod Podge and brush it over the masking tape. Make sure to use a good amount so your strips will adhere well to the tape.

Smooth out any wrinkles or air bubbles using your fingers or a craft roller if you have one on hand.

Once you have that all smoothed out, take more Mod Podge and brush it on top of your strips of material. I was very liberal with the amount I used. I wanted to make sure that it would stick really well to the masking tape and firm up. Trust me, don’t be shy with the Mod Podge!

Here are all my strips of future Washi Tape coated nicely. The marker did smear a bit when I brushed the Mod Podge onto the strips, but it wasn’t bad. I used washable markers and that may have been my problem.

Let your strips dry. I let mine dry overnight just to be extra sure.

Here they are the next morning. Dry and shiny and oh so pretty! Sorry for the quality of the pic. But you get the idea.

Next, cut your parchment paper into its individual sections and turn them over so you can see the masking tape. Isn’t that cool?!

Take your scissors and cut along the edges of the masking tape. DO NOT remove the parchment paper. It’s keeping the masking tape sticky!

When you’re ready to use your tape, just peel back the parchment paper. It was super simple to peel back. I had no problems with it at all!

And here are some of the things I used my Washi Tape to make.

I used a paper towl roll, covered it with paper, decorated the edges with my fabric Washi Tape and made a plastic bag holder for the car (I found this idea on Pinterest, but I didn’t like the idea of seeing an ugly paper towel roll in the car, so I had to deck it out!)!

Here’s a close up of the tape. It adhered to the paper towel roll beautifully!

Next, I took some old magnets that were on my refrigerator and gave them new life using my awesome new DIY Washi Tape. Are you anxious to see how it turned out?

Ta Da! I love it! I raided my daughters craft supplies and added some foam stickers to two of them to give them some extra personality. So much better than the old magnets!

**NOTE** One thing I should have done before I completed my project was to make a wider Washi Tape. You can totally make different sizes! All you have to do is make your masking tape strip wider using several rows of masking tape, laying them side-by-side. I think I am going to try that soon so I can have a variety of sizes and types!

Try this out for yourself and let me know what you think!

Welcome to another week of blog shout-outs! I scoured the blogosphere this week to bring you some of my favorite blog posts out there in blog land.

There are so many creative people out there, and they deserve nothing more than to be recognized, so holla’!

Now that I am through being a complete dork, let’s get started.

My first favorite post of the week is from Candy’s Clothes Closet. She spray painted some old frames using Krylon and turned them into bright and fun chalkboard frames. I LOVE these! It makes me want to go do some thrift shopping and make some of my own. Great job!

This next post is just plain genius. Holly from My Sister’s Suitcase created these adorable aprons from a shopping bag. I mean, wow. What a great idea! I am going to be making one for me and my girls soon. So cute!

This last one comes from Easy Peasy Grandma. She created a Chevron back splash in her kitchen using vinyl! I absolutely adore the Chevron design, and this just adds so much personality to her already super-cute kitchen. If you’re looking for a frugal way to update your kitchen, this is the way to do it. Awesome!

Whelp, this concludes my blog shout out for this week. If you’ve been featured, feel free to grab one of my buttons found in my side bar. If you love these posts as much as I do, check out these blogs and leave some love. I know it feels great to have someone comment on my blog and I am sure they would appreciate it too.

Have a fantabulous week!