KiKi Love Creations: February 2013

Monday, February 25, 2013

Show and Tell Tuesday ~ Week 8

We Really want to see what you made this week!

Every Tuesday you will be able to come up and link what you did that week. This is going to be a all craft link up party. Please refrain from posting about sales, auctions, or giveaways. We will also be featuring our favorites from the prior week so make sure you check back to see if you were on that got featured.

By linking to the party you give KiKi Love Creations / Smalltown Dreamz full permission to feature all or part of the linked post on this site or one of our sister sties. All featured posts will be credited to the original author and linked to said post.

2013 Party Guidelines:

1. Please become a follower or subscriber of the blog FIRST !!

2. Please link to something that is relevant to this blogs topics (up to 2 links per blog). For example, before and after, recipe, craft, DIY project, show us what you are working on. Please no businesses or etsy shop links.

3. Link to the specific post, not your homepage!

4. Please grab our button for your post!

5. LAST BUT NOT LEAST ENJOY!!!!!!

Here are our Linky Party Buttons

We Look forward to seeing what you made this week!

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Upcoming March Special Calender Events

I would like to get back to the heart of why we started this blog. We started KiKi Love Creations to share with you all the awesome crafting ideas that you can do through out the year. The projects are ideas for holiday decorations, crafting tutorials, projects that you can do with your kids and SO MUCH MORE!!!!!

There are Many special events and crafty observances that can be done through out each month. These are small fun little projects that can help teach your children as well. I know as a mom that is looking to start homeschooling my son I look forward to many of these. Here is a list of fun things throughout the month of March

Month Long Observances

American Red Cross Month
Irish-American Heritage Month
Music in our Schools Month
National Craft Month
National Noodle Month
Woman's History Month
Youth Art Month

Week Long Observances

1st Week - Newspapers in Our School Week
2nd Week - Bubble Gum Week
2nd Week - Crochet Week

March 1st

National Pig Day
Peanut Butter Lover's Day
Share a Smile Day

March 2nd

Dr. Seuss's Birthday
Read Across America Day

March 3rd

National Anthem Day The Star Spangled Banner was adopted by Congress as the national anthem in 1931.

March 5th

Parachute was invented (By Da Vinci)

March 6th

Dentist Day
Oreo Cookies for Sale (On Sale for the first time in 1912.)

March 7th

Telephone Patent Granted (In 1876 to Alexander Graham Bell.)

March 8th

Working Women's Day

March 9th

Barbie's Birthday (Barbie Doll was introduced on this day in 1959.)

March 10th

Daylight Saving Time Begins (Clocks move forward one hour on the second Sunday in March).
First Paper Money Issued (Issued this day in 1862.)
Genealogy Day

March 12th

Girl Scout Day (Girl Scouts founded in 1912.)

March 14th

Albert Einstein's Birthday (Born in 1879.)
Potato Chip Day

March 16th

National Quilting Day Celebrated the Third Saturday of March.

March 17th

Rubber Band Invented (In 1845).
St. Patrick's Day
Submarine Day

March 19th

Swallow's Return Day ( The traditional return of swallows to San Juan Capistrano.)

March 20th

Big Bird's Birthday (Sesame Street Character.)
First Day of Spring

March 25th

International Waffle Day

Pancakes First Made (First made in New York City in 1882.)

Passover Begins at Sundown

March 29th

Coca-Cola (was Invented In 1886.)
Pickle Day

March 31st

Easter
First Map of the US Published
Tater Day

We love to hear from our readers......What days will you be crafting for?

Happy Crafting

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Changes to Saturday Spotlight Feature

Something that has always been important to us since we started KiKi Love Creations (Other than crafting) was the power of networking and having a close knit blogging community. At the beginning of the year when we started Saturday Spotlight Feature we had the idea of you being able to share your crafting adventures and tutorials with new readers.

Over the past 2 months we have gone on the adventure of looking to fill up these spots by finding some great crafting ideas to share with you. As much as we would like to continue like this, our boys are getting bigger and more active and we are finding less and less time for all the research time that goes into looking for these spots each week. We would still like to feature other writers and creators, but we are going to reduce this spot down to once a month.

For now on we will find one of you and an awesome crafting project to share with you each month. We will post this the first Saturday of each month.

HOWEVER

We will not completely take out Saturday Spotlight Features if you would like to see your work featured then we will still post your work on the other available

A Saturday Spotlight Feature Post may consist of a tutorial or a newly finished crafty item

If you have one of these coming up or recently posted one of the above and would like to be featured here on Saturday Spotlight Feature than please send me: a small description about yourself and a description of what you would like featured. Please also include a link to your blog post and any other links you would like added like Facebook Fan Pages or Shop Pages. Email them to kikilovecreate@gmail.com subject: Saturday Spotlight Feature

We truly wish we could continue on the way we have been but we made a promise to our families that our blogs would not cut into our family life and with our little one getting bigger and more active we now have sports and other activities that will take up more of our time and we still want time to be able to share our own projects and adventures.

We hope that you will understand.

Happy Crafting,

Friday, February 22, 2013

Friday Food ~ Pork Egg Rolls

Who loves egg rolls?? My husband occasionally comes home to find me making eggs rolls, one of his favorite! It's always a special treat since they take a bit of time and after a full day at work and 2 small boys, quicker dinners is normally what I make.

Pork Egg Rolls

What you need:

1 lb ground pork
1/2 cup salad shrimp, chopped
oil for frying
1 1/2 cups shredded cabbage
1-1 1/2 cups bean sprouts
3 cloves garlic
5-6 TBS soy sauce
2 tsp sugar
1 pkg egg roll wrappers
sweet and sour sauce (for dipping)

How to:

Cook pork until done and set aside.
Fry cabbage for a few minutes in the oil.
Add the shrimp, bean sprouts, garlic, soy sauce and sugar. Fry for a few minutes longer.
Add cooked pork and cook for a few additional minutes.
Remove from heat and but 1/3 cup pork mixture in each wrapper. Fold both sides in a roll up. When you get to the tip, moisten wrap corner before completely rolling closed.
Fry egg rolls in 1" of oil until each side is golden brown.

There you have it! Do you have other egg rolls you like to make? We'd love to hear about them!

Feel free to email us at kikilovecreate@gmail.com if you would like to submit a recipe or would like to see something in particular!

Until next recipe....

Monday, February 18, 2013

Show and Tell Tuesday ~ Week 7

We Really want to see what you made this week!

2013 Party Guidelines:

1. Please become a follower or subscriber of the blog FIRST !!

3. Link to the specific post, not your homepage!

4. Please grab our button for your post!

5. LAST BUT NOT LEAST ENJOY!!!!!!

Here are our Linky Party Buttons

We Look forward to seeing what you made this week!

Saturday Spotlight Feature ~ Week 7

OH MY WORD. I know its a couple days late. My little one ended up falling ill over the weekend and I just lost track of things. However I would rather be late than not post at all because I did have an awesome feature to share with you.

So I would LOVE to introduce Alissa from Creative with Kids

In my house we love to paint. A while back I was on pinterest and came across this awesome thing to do for painting on the go for my son during our fishing and camping trips. Well with spring on the horizon most families are starting to plan their spring break vacations and I had to share this great on the go painting activity for your kids.

"Watercolor fun you can take with you! I’m so excited about this simple little idea! These homemade just-add-water paint pages make it easy to say “yes” to painting, and we can take them on hikes or picnics! All you need is some watercolor paper and tubes of watercolor paint.

I used KOI Watercolors but any liquid water colors will do, those are just what I had on hand."

If you would like to read the rest of this post you can read it here

What an neat idea!!! I know I can't wait to do this on our next family vacation. You can also follow Creative with kids on her Facebook Fan Page

Happy Crafting

Friday, February 15, 2013

Friday Food ~ Saute Chicken and Vegetables

A friend and I trade off having dinners at each others houses. We even have soup wars during the winter. You can find my winning soup in one of my previous posts here. But I have to give him a lot of credit, he is an amazing cook and I come home with a recipe or two every time we get together. This weeks recipe came from him and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Chicken Saute with Vegetables

What you need:

1-2 lbs chicken breast
1 cup flour, seasoned with salt, pepper and other spices of your choosing
1/4 cup oil
1 lb zucchini, cubed
medium onion, sliced
1 container cherry tomatoes
1 can mushrooms, sliced
2 cups chicken broth
basil
lemon juice
rice

How to:

Cut chicken into bite sized chunks and coat with flour mixure.
Saute chicken, onion and mushrooms in oil until chicken is golden brown.
Add chicken broth and simmer for 20 minutes.
Add zucchini and tomatoes and cook until zucchini is tender.
Add salt, pepper and lemon juice to taste.
Sever over rice.

I have two people I consider excellent cooks! One being my lovely grandmother. The other being the friend I talked about earlier in the post, Marvin. I'll be sharing recipes from both, all them them slightly tweaked for my family's preference!

Do you have food wars?? If so, we'd love to hear some of your winning recipes!

Until next recipe...

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Love Collage

Craft Vinyl Sheets for Cricut Silhouette Cutters

Right Now our Sponsor My Vinyl Direct has a great Valentine's Day Sale going
on right now. Use the code LOVE and get 10% off your entire purchase now through Valentine's Day. You don't want to miss out. You can also follow My Vinyl Direct on their Facebook Fan Page

We recently have been testing out the My Vinyl Direct Matte Finish Vinyl. I honestly just can’t get enough of it. With their amazing color selection there is ultimately nothing you can’t do. I think my husband is starting to get nervous with how long my vinyl craft to do list has been getting. (Oops ha ha ha) Well this week I took all my lovely valentine’s day colors laid them out in front of me and thought to myself…”What do I see when I look at all these wonderful colors?”

Those Reds, Pinks, and Purples!!! It just screamed “LOVE” to me!!!! I Love the colors, I Love to craft, and I LOVE to work with vinyl!!!! So then it dawned on me. I wanted to make a collage of words defining the word LOVE.

I had gone through my box picture frames and found one with great personality it just needed a little TLC. After I pulled the glass out, I gave the frame a fresh coat of paint with some dark cherry pearlescent enamel paint that I had lying around. While the frame was set aside drying I jumped on my design program and laid out my words using different font styles and sizes making sure it will fit the frame size. The frame was a standard 8 x 10 with viewable glass of 7.5 in x 9.5 in. After it was all laid out I was able to cut it out on my Cameo. By using the guides on my vinyl transfer paper I felt comfortable enough to cut my letters out to save on materials. It’s is a little easier to lay out this way when you are confined into one space and you can look over at your pc to confirm where you are putting it.

Making sure that my glass was clean I started laying out my vinyl starting with the outer edge and working my way around into the center. I would look back at the measurements on the pc screen and measure again with a ruler on the glass to assure that I was leaving enough space for the other words. I would say the whole process (besides letting the frame dry over night) took 2 hours. Not bad for a lovely piece of art great for the Valentine season.

We look forward to sharing more of our vinyl creations.

Happy Crafting,

Monday, February 11, 2013

Show and Tell Tuesday ~ Week 6

We Really want to see what you made this week!

2013 Party Guidelines:

1. Please become a follower or subscriber of the blog FIRST !!

3. Link to the specific post, not your homepage!

4. Please grab our button for your post!

5. LAST BUT NOT LEAST ENJOY!!!!!!

Here are our Linky Party Buttons

We Look forward to seeing what you made this week!

Saturday, February 9, 2013

Saturday Spotlight Feature ~ Week 6

This week the Midwest and East Coast have definitely seen their share of winter. As most of us are finally digging out and others are still housebound and now baring down for the freezing cold temperatures. These are the days when the whole family is stuck inside to keep warm and you are sitting around trying to figure out what to do for fun. Well I found something that the whole family can do and it looks like SOOO much fun. I would like to give a big warm welcome to Ashley from Simply Designing with Ashley.

Indoor Snowball Fight Kit

"We have recently had two big snowstorms and I am sure more are coming before winter is up. With the blustery weather and the below freezing temperatures I am always on the search for fun and simple indoor activities to do with my kiddos. This one is inspired by my local Children's museum's Winter Jolly Days exhibit. At certain hours during the day, they bring out these soft and fluffy "snowballs" and let the kids have an indoor snowball fight. It's a lot of fun!

So I decided to set about creating a few soft and fluffy snowballs of my own and here is what I came up with!"

Most of our readers know that for crystal and I Yarn is a huge part of our lives. I think the next time we have a craft and play date with the boys we will definitely be playing this. You can find more awesome ideas from Ashley by going to her Blog Page. You can also follow her on Facebook.

Happy Crafting,

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