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Jessica Acs. Crazy Happy Chaos

Jessica Acs. Crazy Happy Chaos

A little bit of everything. Life, animals, family, crafts, recipes.

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Crafts

Right now

February 26, 2014 by Jess 1 Comment

  • not enjoying this winter in Illinois. Not. At. All.
  • Did a deep clean of the house yesterday and it felt fantastic. Although now my back doesn’t feel so fantastic….
  • Stayed up way too late last night and woke up way too early. (huge thank you to 2 of my dogs for waking me up to go outside at 3:00am – after they had been out at 1:30am!!)
  • I would actually be very happy if I never saw snow again.
  • I want sushi right now in the worst way.

 

In other news:

I recently got to review a very cool music album over at the Little Lake County Blog

This mini album of mine that was in my book was featured a couple weeks ago in Women’s World Magazine.

friends mini album

friends mini album

 

Over at Homeketeers I did a couple tutorials on some Kids Crafts:

These crayons were really fun to make and they are so easy for Ava to hang on to!

DIY homemade toddler crayons

DIY homemade crayons

the other kids craft is also using crayons: stained glass crayon melt art

stained glass crayon melt art kids craft

I’ve been baking and creating new recipes like crazy. All those cookies that I baked last week took me back to the baking I did for our wedding almost 3 years ago. I baked hundreds of cookies and hundreds of cupcakes from scratch! Right up to the morning of our wedding day (as I wanted everything to be fresh). Thankfully a few of my friends helped and one of my friends husbands came over to finish baking some of the cupcakes for me so I could go get my hair done! Thinking back on it now, I can’t believe we managed to pull it all off!

For old times sake, here are some photos of our wedding baked goods: everyone got one of these Mickey cookies – which turned out to be HUGE so there were 100 of those.

mickey mouse wedding favor cookie disney

wedding favor heart cookies

 

Then we had plates of mini heart cookies on each table so there were probably 300+ of those. And we had a Cupcake Display as well as a cake. My goodness. I think we had about 100 full size cupcakes and 100 mini cupcakes. 3 different flavors and 1 plate of gluten & dairy free for those with special diets. More on our wedding here

wedding cupcake display

wedding cupcake display

white chocolate chip cupcakes wedding

wedding cupcake display

I did create all the recipes myself so I will scrounge those up and post them up here soon. The few months leading up to the wedding I did so much baking, trying to find the perfect recipes. It was a good thing I had 100 testers as not only would my 5 roommates test them for me, but I took everything else to the zoo and let everyone there test them out 🙂 I do miss those days…. Now my only taste testers are my toddler and my pig and neither of them provide very accurate feedback. Ava will eat anything in a cookie or cupcake form and Norman will eat….well…ANYTHING at all. Steve does not like sweets, so he’s out. (occasionally  though he’ll like something, like the cookies I made last week).

So that’s what’s going on around here right now. Feel free to share what’s going on in your world 🙂

 

siggy

Filed Under: Animal/ Zoo stuff, Crafts, Daily Life, Kids/ Babies, Recipes, Scrapbooking/ Mini Albums

Right around the corner

February 12, 2014 by Jess Leave a Comment

20140125-IMG_0154 copy

Once again, Valentine’s Day is almost upon us. I overheard Steve talking to Ava about it yesterday and when he said ” I get to have two Valentine’s – you and Mummy!” – I almost melted into a huge puddle of mush right there.

I have to admit that Valentine’s Day has never been a happy occasion to me until Steve came along. It holds sad but dear memories in my heart as my grandpa died on Valentine’s Day 15 years ago. 15 years. Hard to believe it’s been so long. I can still hear his voice, still see his smiling face, and still feel him holding my hand as he told me he loved me – mere days before he passed away. My grandma lived for many years after but she passed away before I moved away from Canada. I miss them both so much and I’m sad they never got to meet Steve or Ava. I know that they would be sad that I moved so far away from home but they would be happy that I was following my dream. Sometimes I so clearly see my grandma in Ava and it takes my breath away.

So back to this Valentine’s Day 🙂

I have recently posted some fun Valentine’s DIY projects over at Homeketeers:

This Heart Banner is my favorite as Ava helped me create it with her first ever finger painting!

 

I also got out my alcohol inks again and had fun creating these hearts:

These Love Bugs were a fun and quick little project too:

One last one, this is a super quick and easy garland to make using scrap pieces of fabric:

Happy Valentine’s Day!

siggy

Filed Under: Crafts, Tutorials

Halloween Crafty Goodness & Free Printables

October 27, 2013 by Jess Leave a Comment

Looking for some quick and easy Halloween crafts?

First up are the Halloween Bats: Click here for the tutorial. I actually really enjoyed making these and I love how it turned out!

bats

 

Next, I have the Ribbon Wreath: I love this wreath but it took SO long to make it. A lot longer than I expected. I may or may not be making a Christmas one 🙂

(Click on the image below to get to the tutorial)

 

And finally, the quick and easy paper finger puppets:

 

You can download the free printable bat silhouettes here:

bats2

bats

Filed Under: Crafts, Freebies & Printables, Tutorials

Halloween Goodies!

October 27, 2013 by Jess Leave a Comment

How can it be right around the corner already? We haven’t even been to the pumpkin patch yet…

Here are a couple quick and easy (and of course yummy!) Halloween recipes for you:

 

halloweencupcakes

candycornkisses

I’m also working on 3 tutorials for Halloween crafts and I’ll have those up later today, but here is a little sneak peek:

20131024-IMG_0111

One last pic for now: this is still one of my favorite projects (a Halloween Canvas I made several years ago)

halloweencanvas2

Filed Under: Crafts, Recipes

Just one of those days…

September 15, 2013 by Jess 2 Comments

You know, just one of those days when things just don’t seem to go right at all. Yep, that’s today.

It started out being a miserable rainy day from the moment I woke up. I planned to clean the fridge out for today’s Organization Challenge at Homeketeers so while Ava had her morning nap, I cleaned the entire fridge top to bottom. I also scrubbed the stove, the sink, the counters, basically the whole kitchen as I was suddenly on a cleaning spree.

I was going to make waffles for everyone so I went downstairs and found the waffle iron only to discover that someone must have dropped it as a large piece on the top was broken – right over the main electrical box. I plugged it in and turned it on and it immediately shut itself off.  Not repairable, so into the garbage can it went. No waffles today.

So I tried a new recipe for Ava for her lunch so while that was cooking, I put together (what I thought would be) a fun activity for her to do when she woke up. Finger painting! I know, I have a 1 year old, but don’t worry I’m not that stupid. I know she can’t really finger paint as it will all wind up in her mouth, her hair, her clothes, and everywhere else she can reach. So I made her a mess free type of finger painting (see the post I did on it here). I was so excited and had it all ready for her when she woke up, which was minutes later.

 

Well, she was not enthused with this new recipe and promptly threw all the food on the floor after one bite. *sigh*

Next up was letting her play with the finger paint. That amused her for maybe 5-10 seconds tops. I think I had more fun with it showing her what to do. She was not impressed.

Then I thought well lets not waste all the finger paint, so I opened one of the ziplock bags, put her hand in it and tried to get a nice imprint of her hand on this little canvas I had bought awhile ago. Yeah right. You can’t even tell it is a hand imprint! So I stamped her fingers on it again in a few places and voila – here is Ava’s first “finger painting”.

photo (62)

I also had found (while I was looking for the finger paint), a couple of those hand print plaster kits that I was saving for her. Perfect timing, I thought. I will get an imprint of her hand in the smaller one and her foot in the larger one. I read the instructions and mixed together the plaster, then poured it into the tin. Perfect, now all that was left to do was place her little hand in the wet plaster, pull it out and I’ll have a cute little hand imprint, right? WRONG

She wanted to grab the plaster. We must have tried 10 times and every time I lowered her hand into the plaster, she would either curl all her fingers up or grab the plaster. I gave up so this was our end result:

For the other one, I added too much water to the plaster and it was way too liquidy. I figured we’d let it harder for a bit and then I’d put her foot in it and at least she couldn’t grab the plaster with her foot. So I left that on the counter in its little tin to harden up.

Meanwhile Ava was fussing so I cut up a nectarine and let her have that for a snack. She normally loves all fruit and ate about half of it, then promptly grabbed her tray and threw the entire thing on the floor. So then I did what any mom would do. Any mom with a pig in the house that is. I called Norman over so he could eat all the food off the floor. Wonderful. While he was “pigging out” (haha), I took Ava to wash her hands and then I got her busy with some toys in her room. An hour went by, then we came back into the kitchen to get her some milk and I notice Norman rummaging around in my purse. He had knocked it down off the table and was searching for snacks. I had completely forgot I left him alone in the kitchen! Then I see one of Steve’s new work boots – all chewed up!!!! Now there is a story behind this as well. Steve read somewhere that a good way to stretch out new work boots is to fill a bag with wet oats, then stuff it into the shoe, and put them in the freezer. So apparently he had taken them out of the freezer this morning and put them on the floor in the kitchen. The oats in the bags are still in the boots as you have to wait for them to defrost before you can remove them from the boot. Norman found the oats and figured it would make a good lunch. So he chewed up one of Steve’s boots trying to get the oats out. He succeeded as I found no oats but about 20 pieces of the ziplock bag strewn about the kitchen. Now there is one completely ruined boot, and it’s totally my fault for not watching the pig.

I clean up the mess of the boot and walk by the counter where I left the other plastic thing for her foot imprint. I feel it to see if it’s gotten any harder. Yep, sure has. Completely hard. Darn. So that one is ruined.

I give up.

photo (63)

Filed Under: Animal/ Zoo stuff, Crafts, Daily Life

A week of tutorials!

March 7, 2012 by Jess Leave a Comment

I just wanted to post up links to the first week of tutorials over at Homeketeers. There will be a new tutorial up every day for the entire month! Also don’t forget they are giving away a cricut machine each week as well so be sure to enter!

Here are all the tutorials that have been posted so far:

 

Filed Under: Crafts, Scrapbooking/ Mini Albums, Tutorials

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