A Look Back on 2011…

Staycation

Happy New Year!!! It’s so cliche’ to say, but it really is so amaz­ing how fast time flies. It seemed like 2011 went so quickly! For this lit­tle ‘ole blog here, 2011 was such a big year! I had only launched the blog at the very end of Sep­tem­ber in 2010. So, things didn’t really start falling into place until 2011. It brought with it oppor­tu­ni­ties I could have never dreamed of before start­ing to blog–working with awe­some com­pa­nies, attend­ing fun con­fer­ences, mak­ing spe­cial real life friends. And, I have you to thank! Thank you so much for read­ing, com­ment­ing, pin­ning, tweet­ing, and engag­ing on face­book! :)

After tak­ing a look at the blog stats for the past year, here are the most pop­u­lar posts from Mom Endeav­ors in 2011! I love the diver­sity of posts that made the top 10! It’s a great “snap­shot” of the vari­ety of ideas you’ll find on Mom Endeavors.

#10.…Enjoy­ing Phoenix on a Budget

#9…Train Birth­day Party

#8…Hal­loween Oreo Pops

#7…Framed Starfish Art

#6…M&M’s Candy Corn White Choco­late Macadamia Nut Cookies

#5…Turkey Veg­gie Tray

#4…House­hold Notebook

#3…Dr. Seuss Activ­i­ties Round-Up

#2…Fam­ily Foot Book

And, last but not least, the #1 post which hap­pens to be one of the top 3 posts of all time.…

#1…Snow Paint

I can’t wait to see what 2012 has in store! Thanks so much for reading!!

Perfect Appetizers for New Year’s & College Bowl Game Watching!

Cheese Ball

Whew! We’ve been hav­ing a whirl­wind week with Christ­mas, then Mr. Mom Endeavor’s fam­ily com­ing a cou­ple of days later (includ­ing his brother all the way from Aus­tralia). So, we’ve been enjoy­ing lots of fam­ily time. Hope you have been hav­ing a won­der­ful hol­i­day week as well!

With it being New Year’s week­end, it’s the per­fect time to whip up some yummy appetizers/finger foods–especially with all the foot­ball that will be on in the next few days! :) So, here are 10 yummy ideas for the next few days of holiday/football fun!

Spinach & Arti­choke Dip

Queso Dip

Chili Cheese Dip

Bar­be­cued Chicken Bacon Jalapeno Bites {Domes­tic Frugalista}

Chicken, Bacon, and Cream Cheese Mini Taquitos {“Mommy! I’m Hungry!”}

Cheese Ball {A Crafty Cook}

Bacon Wrapped Jalapeno Pop­pers {Scout’s Stitches}

Buf­falo Chicken Dip

Beer Cheese Dip {Tidy Mom}

Home­made Salsa

What are YOU mak­ing for New Year’s? Hope you have a great week­end bring­ing in 2012!

Merry Christmas!!

Christmas Card

From my fam­ily to yours, wish­ing all of you who cel­e­brate a very Merry Christmas!

Hope you have a won­der­ful weekend!

Thank you so much for read­ing Mom Endeavors!

Dress-Up Toy Bin {Big Brother’s Christmas Present}

Boy Dress-Up Costumes

The theme for this month’s Lowe’s Cre­ative Influ­encers Net­work post cen­tered around toy boxes. When I first heard that, I was sure of a cou­ple of things: I wanted it to be at least part of Big Brother’s Christ­mas present and I wanted to do a dress-up bin! But, I wasn’t sure what kind of toy chest I wanted to do. While many tra­di­tional wooden chests are so pretty, we lack a lot of the tools needed to make it nice–namely the saws. Plus, I wasn’t sure that it would be big enough for all the dress-up stuff. A quick face­book poll revealed that most moms (who answered my ques­tion) like plas­tic bins best for toy stor­age. And, I hap­pen to agree. So, here is the fin­ished product:

I didn’t have to do much! ;) In look­ing for the right stor­age bin, I wanted some­thing that wasn’t clear and that Big Brother could actu­ally open on his own (some of the bins the kids can’t open–which of course is great for some things, but for this I wanted him to be able to open it). And, then, we found  this bin at Lowe’s! At under $25, it was PERFECT! Easy to open, sort of “boy” col­ors, large enough to store a lot of dress-up items, and some­thing func­tional that we can use for other pur­poses down the road! A great find!

As for the items to put in it, after Hal­loween I checked out some of the clear­ance cos­tumes and scored these fun things (plus Daddy’s old Super­man cape handed down from Grandma :) ):He is going to lose his lit­tle mind when he sees the Star Wars cos­tumes!!! We can’t wait! And, because the stor­age bin is so large, there is plenty of room for all of that, plus some of the dress-up stuff we already have. Here’s what he’ll see when he opens to bin:As for spruc­ing it up/decorating it a bit, I didn’t want to do any­thing that was per­ma­nent. Since the bin is so func­tional I wanted to keep our options for it open. But, I also didn’t want to leave it as is. Enter, vinyl. I’ve seen SO many vinyl projects out there, but hadn’t tried one. Seri­ously, I have no idea what I’ve been think­ing. It was AWESOME. I cut out the vinyl let­ters on my Cri­cut and within just a few min­utes had “imag­ine” writ­ten on the top of the bin–in a man­ner that looks really nice, but isn’t per­ma­nent. And around the rim on the other side, I put his name! Although it’s noth­ing fancy, it’s func­tional & per­fect for what we wanted! Now, we just can’t wait to see the look on his face Christ­mas morn­ing when he sees what’s inside! :)

Spe­cial thanks to Lowes who pro­vided me with a gift card to pur­chase my toy box sup­plies and also donated $100 to the char­ity of my choice–Make-A-Wish Foun­da­tion! #LowesCreator

Linked to: *Get Your Craft On

Mini Christmas Desserts Bar

Christmas Mini Desserts

What kind of desserts are you hav­ing on Christ­mas? We tend to change things up every year and last year, my mom & I were inspired by the mini pump­kin pies I made for Thanks­giv­ing! So, for Christ­mas, we opted for a whole dis­play of assorted “mini”/bite-size desserts! :) YUM! On this plat­ter right up front, there were brownie bites, candy coated oreos, pret­zel tur­tles, and choco­late cov­ered pret­zels! Then, there was some candy in the boxes, cinnamon-sugar pecans in the bowl on the left, and white choco­late chex mix (aka Christ­mas crack) in the bowl on the right! I really should get all those recipes posted! Those were all yummy, but the fea­tured attrac­tion were the mini pies!!! My mom made mini cheese­cake bites (up top), mini cherry pies, and mini lemon tarts ( I think those might be store bought with just fresh rasp­ber­ries added to the top)! Then, I made mini pump­kin pies and mini apple pies! For all of them, we used the same process I did with the mini pump­kin pies. But, an issue with the mini fruit pies is leak­ing juice & then the crust stick­ing to the muf­fin tin, which I dis­cov­ered when I made the apple pies. So, my mom had the awe­some idea to put the crust in a cup­cake liner (notice the creases on the cherry pie crust) and then pull the lin­ers off. It worked great! So, often, every­one wants to sam­ple the dif­fer­ent desserts any­way! And, with serv­ing dessert this way, peo­ple could do just that! :)

What desserts are YOU hav­ing for Christ­mas? Do you change it up or does your fam­ily have dessert traditions?

Linked to: *I’m Lovin’ It

Holiday Gift Wrapping with Elmer’s! #ElmersHoliday #GlueNGlitter

Wall of Elmer's Products

Have you started wrap­ping gifts yet? Or, are you one of those orga­nized ones who are already done?! We’ve started some of the wrap­ping and been using some of my Elmer’s prod­ucts! There are SO many great prod­ucts to choose from that are per­fect addi­tions for your gift wrap­ping sta­tions! :) Here’s a glimpse at just the Elmer’s Mem­ory Keep­ing & X-ACTO sec­tion at Wal­mart! (For more, you can see my Google+ story here)

Once home from my lit­tle shop­ping trip, I set up a wrap­ping sta­tion com­plete with the following:

First up, we had to get the fam­ily cal­en­dars wrapped & shipped off to fam­ily mem­bers! The gift has become a tra­di­tion for the last 5 years (since Big Brother was born). Before any­thing else though, I had to use my white Elmer’s painters marker to cor­rect an error on the front of the cal­en­dar (next year is 2012, NOT 2011. Oops!)So, after that was fixed, we needed to wrap them! No fancy direc­tions or tricks with that–just your stan­dard wrap­ping. But, a few Elmer’s prod­ucts, like the Craft­Bond Per­ma­nent Tape Run­ner and Craft­Bond All Pur­pose Glue Stick, work great for wrap­ping adhe­sives! Over the years of ship­ping gifts, we’ve found that fancy bows & things unfor­tu­nately don’t trans­port well. But, I decided to at least make some cute gift tags!

I used an X-ACTO craft knife to cut out the shapes using the tag shape from the X-ACTO Dec­o­ra­tive Shapes Tem­plate! And, I was SO glad to have the X-ACTO craft mat to cut these shapes out on! I had those cute snowflakes cut outs from the fam­ily snow­men orna­ment & thought they’d look great on the tags! Just use a pop-up glue spot to stick them on! Then, I used my Painters marker again to label the tags. Once they were made, I put a bit a curly rib­bon on it–and helped to hold the rib­bon down with a Glue Spot & some glue using the Craft­Bond Flex­i­ble Dual Tip Glue Pen. After get­ting those done, I used the large gift box I made from Elmer’s tri-fold board (you can get all the direc­tions to make it here) for my sister’s gift–and it was per­fect!!! I can’t show you pho­tos of the whole thing (in case she hap­pens upon this post), but you’ll notice, that yes, it’s a lamp shade. I know, ran­dom right, but she’ll love this par­tic­u­lar one. For awhile I was SO stumped as to how I was going to wrap it, but then real­ized that the gift box would be per­fect! :) I stuffed the open part with white & red tis­sue paper. But, it still needed some­thing. So, I took a wide red rib­bon and wrapped it up each side. I used one glue spot on each side just to help hold the rib­bon on & keep it from slip­ping. Then, I tied a big bow using the two rib­bons. I love the out­come! So pretty! :) Now, I just need to tackle the rest of the pile hid­den in the closet! :)

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Inter­ested in win­ning some amaz­ing prod­ucts from Elmer’s? Click on the badge below and see how you can win an entire wall of craft­ing sup­plies from Elmer’s & X-ACTO! Sweet!

Check out more from Elmer’s here:

Dis­clo­sure: This project has been com­pen­sated as part of a social shop­per insights study for #Elmer­sHol­i­day #glu­englit­ter #col­lec­tive­bias #cbias. As always, all opin­ions and expe­ri­ences are my own.