Remember Mark Montano from TLC? Well, now he has some great, easy DIY tutorials on youtube!  I had a friend over and we tore apart a bunch of my magazines to make some party balls.  (I have mine hanging up even without a party. lol)

Check out the video below!

I tried to find magazine pages that were similar in color.

Hot glue every other notch on alternating pages.  I didn’t listen to this at first, and the ball was not a ball at all.

Leftover scraps from cutting out the notches. Save for homemade confetti?

Mine is the orange one, and the blue one is my friend’s. I need to make more of these.

Hello World!  I had a crafting day with a friend of mine, and we tried to make our own glasses out of old bottles.  A link to the tutorial: HERE. I couldn’t get it to work for me. We tried three times, with different materials.  I think I’ll try again later, after reading the comments on her blog post.

Here are some pictures of the yarn on fire. (Which was pretty awesome to play with.)

This was the second attempt, so we increased the amount of yarn, in hopes that it would get hotter with more area to burn.

As a last resort, I tried a cotton fabric instead of yarn. The flames were so hot and huge with fabric! (I know the edges are not straight) But at this point I really just wanted the bottle to break.

I think it might not have worked for me because:

A. My bottles were too thick.

B. Wrong type of yarn.

C. Nail polish remover too weak.

D. Other

If anyone tries this technique out and is successful, please let me know!  Any trial and error advice would be greatly appreciated. I have so many bottles that are destined to be glasses someday.

Sorry for the hiatus! I was out of town June 25th-July 4th, and had no way of uploading anything to the blog! (And by out of town I mean, driving from the west coast all the way to the east coast!)

I have been trying to mix up my meal plan, so I’m not always eating tacos and homemade pizza. I tried a tomato-cream sauce via allrecipes.com. I changed my version slightly, because I am a lover of garlic.

Here is the recipe (with my modifications in bold):

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 onion, diced
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced 
• 1 (14.5 ounce) can Italian-style diced tomatoes, undrained
• 2 tablespoon fresh basil leaves
• 3/4 teaspoon white sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar (if you don’t want it too sweet.)

In a saucepan, saute onion and garlic in olive oil over medium heat. Make sure it doesn’t burn. Add tomatoes, basil, sugar, oregano, salt and pepper into a blender and blend until consistency is slightly chunky. Pour blender mixture into saucepan. Bring to boil and continue to boil 5 minutes or until most of the liquid evaporates. Remove from heat; stir in whipping cream and butter. Reduce heat and simmer 5 more minutes. Add red wine vinegar, to neutralize sweetness if desired.

Pour over or toss with cooked pasta. Grade plenty of parmesan cheese and dress it up with a fresh basil leaf on top.

If you want to try the original instead click: HERE.