Friday Favorites and Freebies

Happy Friday!! Enjoy these great Freebies and Favorites for this week!

If you love to make cupcakes as much as I do, you will love having this cute wrapper template on hand from Domestic Goddess Adventures.

If you are lucky enough to travel with your kids again before school starts, check out these great (free!) downloadable travel games from Prepared Not Scared.


Here's a fun site for kids to explore and learn all about the weather.

I love the idea of this make-in-a-day kids picnic table!

And finally, here is a great line-up of online ways for your kids to practice those typing skills (and have fun!) from Five J's.

Have a WoNDerFuL WEEKEND!

Learning to Tell Time

Right now Joci is learning to tell time. She loves to wear her watch around the house and continually checks it to see if it's time to go do the next fun thing. To help her with her time telling, I made a few worksheets to practice with her. I really appreciate it when other mom's share their worksheets and templates as I get to enjoy their Little Projects with the click of the button and a little printer ink. If you're working on telling time too, you can give these a try and let me know how it went.

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Time for a {Little Project}!

Super Flavors for Homemade Ice Cream

For easy ice cream flavors, I recommend buying several different bottles of extracts or flavorings at the grocery store and mixing it up to see what you like.

My favorite is Mint Chocolate Chip
To the basic ice cream recipe I add
3/4 tsp mint extract
1/4-1/3 cup chocolate chips I've chopped up into little pieces in my food processor
wait until the last 10-15 minutes to add the chocolate chips. Store leftover chips in your freezer.

My husbands favorite is orange creamsicle
add 1 tsp of orange extract - yum!

Another favorite is banana coconut
add 1tsp each of banana and coconut extract

You can get creative and put ice cream toppings in your ice cream rather than on top. Add chocolate syrup, caramel sauce, sprinkles, food coloring, etc.

I love peanut butter so I'll make peanut butter ice cream by adding 1/2-2/3 cup peanut butter to the milk and then stir until dissolved. (Don't add the cream until after you've added the peanut butter or the extra stirring could give you buttery ice cream). You can also add Nutella or chocolate sauce to make it chocolaty.

I have two suggestion for people who are in the mood for ice cream, but have no cream in the fridge:

1) put chocolate milk in your ice cream maker.

It will make a Wendy's-type Frosty

2) make sherbet

Basic Sherbet Recipe
3 cups milk
1/2 can of juice concentrate, thawed
1/4 cup sugar
This is very good with limeade as it makes a very tasty lime sherbet.

When fruit is in season, we'll make fruit ice cream. Before making the ice cream, (several hours before you make the ice cream is best although it works if you just do it first too) slice fruit and put in a bowl with 1/4 cup lemon juice and half of the sugar. Stir together and let macerate in juices. Add to ice cream in the last 5 minutes of freezing. Depending on the fruit you may need to adjust your sugar to up to a cup.

If you LoVe to make ice cream treats too-please SHARE your ideas with a comment. We love to try new flavors!

National Ice Cream Month

Did you know that July is National Ice Cream month? There are still plenty of days this summer to enjoy this treat-we eat it pretty much EVERYDAY around here (including homemade three-berry tonight)!

In honor of celebrating, Elspeth and I will share some of our favorite ways to make homemade ice cream. It's one of our YUMMIEST Little Projects!

We both have this ice cream maker that has a freezable bowl.

It's great because it makes 1-1/2 quarts of ice cream in about 30 minutes and you don't have to keep salt on hand (so you don't have to plan ahead.) You just keep the bowl in the freezer and pull it out when you want to make your ice cream. With ice cream I guess I tend to be impatient. I want to enjoy it as soon as possible!

The basic ice cream recipe we use is:

2 cups milk

1 cup cream

1/2-3/4 cup sugar

1 tsp vanilla

You can replace about 1/2 cup of milk with yogurt to get a thicker ice cream. It's also softer to scoop if you freeze your leftovers.

After the basic recipe it's fun to use your imagination and see what flavors you can dream up!

We use whatever milk that we drink and have on hand rather than whole milk in the ice cream. Also, Elspeth likes to use table cream rather than whipping cream because if you stir the heavy cream too much it gives the ice cream a buttery texture. (Also, table cream is cheaper).

Jay doesn't handle milk well, so we also make sorbet. It's heavier on the sugar though than ice cream is :( We start by making a special sugar syrup (see below).

To make Sorbet:

Use your blender to puree about 4 cups of fruit in the blender along with 1/4 cup of this special sugar syrup.

add 2 Tablespoons of orange juice and 1-1/4 cups more of special sugar syrup (depending on desired sweetness) to ice cream maker-and freeze according to manufacture's directions.

special sugar syrup recipe for sorbet: 2 cups sugar, 2 cups water. Bring to boil in saucepan. Reduce to simmer about 5 minutes until sugar has dissolved. Cool to room temperature. You can use this syrup immediately or store until needed (makes 2.5 cups)

If anyone has great sorbet recipes, please share!

We make mostly fruit flavored ice cream at our house, but Elspeth makes all kinds of fun flavors. She will be back to share her favorites tomorrow. In the meantime, chip in a comment if you have a favorite flavor or would like a tip on making homemade ice cream. Enjoy making your own ice cream!

Friday Favorites and Freebies

It's time for more FAVORITES

to celebrate it being FRIDAY!

If you have a little one who loves to play in the kitchen, check out this FREE pattern for an apron and oven mitts (I can't wait to make these!) at Living with Punks.

Make a sailor's knot bracelet for a friend with this tutorial from Etsy.

We all know that ruffles are super cute on babies-check out this tutorial for adding them onto your favorite baby onsie at the Homemade Diva.

I want to put these vintage labels on everything! Print them out and pretty up and organize something-pantry jars maybe?

And finally, I LOVE tetris and so when I found a way to work on geography too I was thrilled. Here you can play states and countries too-tetris-like. It's different but fun-and great for kids!

Happy Friday! I hope your weekend is Fantastic-and that you find time for all your Little Projects!

Passing on the Crafting Bug

A lot of our projects and crafts we do around the house start out with a request or idea from my daughters. When Joci asks me to make a cape for her cat, I go to my fabric and ribbon scraps excited to see what will emerge. Apparently Joci has caught on and last night after we brushed her teeth she requested a toothbrush for her bunny. We were getting ready for bed so I declined, telling her I'd do it tomorrow. She then asked if she could make a toothbrush out of her toys. I wanted to see what she came up with so I let her run into her play room. She came out with a popsicle stick and requested a cotton ball and a piece of tape. I was impressed.

She then decided she needed a flosser for her bunny, and this time excitedly informed me she was going to find something from her toys to make a flosser. She ran into the other room and a few minutes later came back with a chenille stem requesting a little help shaping it into a flosser. I'm definitely going to include her in my brainstorming next time she asks for a little project!

What little projects do your little ones do?