Super easy Cinnamon Coffee Cake

We'll with today being Super Bowl Sunday I knew that I needed to have something Super for all my peeps. So instead of blowing up the Internet with another appetizer/or snack food item, I thought I would pass along my Super Easy Cinnamon Coffee Cake that can be frozen for another day.

Super Cinnamon Coffee Cake

1 box butter recipe (or yellow) cake mix

1 (3.4 oz) box of instant French Vanilla pudding

4eggs

1/2 cup of oil

1/2 cup of water

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup of flour

2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 cup margarine

2  9 inch cake pans ( well greased)

Mix together cake mix, pudding, eggs, oil and water in a large bowl until combined.  Pour 1/2 of the cake mixture into each of the greased and floured 9 inch round cake pans. Set aside.  In a seperate bowl combine sugars, flour and cinnamon.  Cut in margarine until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.  Sprinkle half the cinnamon mixture evenly over the batter in each pan.  Bake at 350 for 25 -30 minutes.  Makes 2 round cakes.

** These cakes are easy to freeze and use during the week for a fast breakfast. These can be frozen after they have cooled down for an hour.  Remove the coffee cakes out of cake pans and place in Ziplock bags and place in freezer.  When ready to use. Remove from the freezer the night before and leave out on the counter over night to defrost.**

Happy Baking!!

Stacie

Freezer Fridays ~ Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

On Friday's I will be posting recipes that are freezer friendly.  These recipes can be used in your monthly and weekly meal planning.  My kids love these and are great for packed lunches! Just pull as many as you want from the freezer, put in a zip bag, and put in your child's lunch. These delightful muffins will be defrosted by the time your little one goes to lunch.

                                                   Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins


3 ripe bananas, mashed
2 eggs well beaten
1tsp Vanilla Extract
1/4 cup of oil
2Tbs milk or flavored creamer ( I used Coffemate Hazelnut Creamer in mine)
2 cups flour
3/4 cup of sugar
3/4 tsp of salt
1tsp baking soda
1/2 cup of walnuts (optional my family doesn't like nuts)
3/4 of bag of milk chocolate chips


Preheat over to 350 degrees.  Line 24 muffin tins with muffin liners and set aside. In a large bowl mix bananas, eggs, vanilla, oil and milk. In a separate bowl mix together the flour, sugar, salt, baking soda.  Stir the dry ingredients into the banana mixture. Add the nuts and chocolate chips last. Combine just to blend. Spoon the batter into the muffin tins about 1/2 full.  Bake for about 15 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.  Let these cool on a rack for an hour. You can eat them after they are cooled down or you can stack them in Ziplock bags and place in the freezer to eat later.


Hope you enjoy these yummy muffins!


Stacie

Valentine's Day candle idea for the mantle!

Hi all,


I thought I would share a cute idea for Valentine's Day but could also be used for other holidays.  I have mine on my mantle, to help decorate for Valentine's Day.  This can be used year round using different types of candy and is easy to make and very inexpensive to make!  All you need are 3 items to help add a little color to these dark winter days. 

                                                                 Pretty and colorful........


Things you will need:


 1) One cylinder glass vase..... found mine at The Dollar Tree store for a dollar.  You can find these at any thrift or craft store!

2)  Two bags of candy hearts or Red Hots ( you can use starlight mints for Christmas, Jelly Beans for Easter or even dried beans etc) .....

 3) A pillar candle, you can use any color you want, I just happen to like vanilla.

Now the fun part assembling your candle!

Take your vase and make sure it is clean, so it will sparkle and shine when it is lit ;).  Next open up your bag of candy hearts or red hots and dump then in about half way or whatever you prefer.  Next put in your candle make sure it is centered, so that when you put in the rest of the hearts they fill in around the candle.  Finally you are ready to display your candle and make everyone think your so clever.

Hope you enjoy and happy crafting!

Stacie

Heart Shaped crayon using recycled crayons..........

Here is a quick and easy Valentines day craft or anytime craft you can do with the kiddo's.

                                        Crayon Hearts made from recycled crayons!

 First gather your stuff together: 


 Broken crayon's
 cooking spray
 candy mold( or ice cube mold, or muffin tins) 
what every you have laying around that can hold hot wax.
pot to melt wax in

Step 1:

Peel crayons and break them into smaller pieces and put them in the pot on the stove.  Since I was using a heart shaped ice cube mold I wanted my crayons to be shades of red ( Pinks, red, redish purples, whites) where the colors I chose.

Step 2:

Stir them while they melt I kept them on the stove on low so they wouldn't harden back up on me.  

Step 3:  

Pour them into your mold sprayed with cooking oil so they don't they don't stick.  Let them cool on the counter for about 10 minutes then I put them in the fridge for about 1hr.


Step 4:

Take them out of the mold and use them or do what I'm going to do and give them as gifts to my son's class for Valentine's Day!

I hope you enjoy this fun craft!

Stacie

Healthy Tuesday....

With it being the New Year and one of my resolutions is to lose weight and be healthier.  I thought I would share with you a cool new app for your smartphone and i-pod that I discovered. This App helps keep track of your food and exercise.  The App is called My Fitness Buddy and it is a free App.

This App makes tracking the food you eat and calorie counting to the next level.  Instead of writing everything in a notebook( or if your like me not keeping track at all) now you can keep track of calories, food you have eaten, how much water, and how long you exercised all in on place on your phone or I-pod or I-pad.  You can even get into your account via the computer if you want.  The coolest thing about this app is you can scan the bar code on a food product with your smartphone and it will tell you the calories and other nutritional info that you might need.  This App will be great in helping you reach your fitness goals this New Year.  Happy Exercising!

Stacie

Lesson #1 Contour line drawing

First let's find out what a Contour Line drawing is. The contour is the outline of a drawing, and shows the outer edges of objects. A contour drawing has a clean, connected, and continuous outline of an object. Pencils, ballpoint pens, black markers or sharpies are good tools to use when doing a contour drawing.

In Today's lesson we do a contour line drawing of a shoe (any will do). Practice first by doing several 1-2 minute timed sketches of your shoe. Then do several 2 minute drawings. Once you feel comfortable with your new found skill, you can practice with anything and can even draw several items at a time. I am including some examples of what I did so you can see how to do this. The shoe I used and the line contour drawing I did are above to give you an idea how to do this lesson. These drawings are lots of fun and can be an easy way to ease yourself into the whole art process.

Remember we are only limited by are imagination! I would love to see your finished pieces. Just link up to my post and show us your inner artist!

Happy Drawing!!

Stacie

Happy New Year

Hello Web Friends,

Welcome to my blog and come join me on my crafting adventures. I promise we will have a lot of fun and will learn a lot along the way. I cant wait to share my first post tomorrow. Each Monday I will be hosting a art lesson and I promise it will be a lot of fun. I first need to dust off my art supplies before tomorrows lesson ;). Get ready to get a little messy and throw caution to the wind as we learn something new and have a lot of fun.