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DIY Under $5 {Oreo Recipe}

July 13, 2011 By Michelle Barneck 10 Comments

With summer comes BBQs and potlucks, so it is always nice to have an easy recipe that is always a crowd pleaser. I have always loved homemade oreos and they can be ready to go in a snap. Add a few sprinkles really takes them up a notch.

Oreo Recipe

Devil’s food cake mix
2 eggs
1 stick of butter softened
Your favorite white frosting
Sprinkles

Mix ingredients together and roll in to one inch balls. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Cool on rack. Place a generous amount of frosting between two cookies. Put sprinkles in a bowl and roll the edge of each cookie in the sprinkles until coated.

I love how the sprinkles add a little extra crunch to the Oreos.

Total cost: about $4

Now it’s time to link up your $5 projects!

Please remember:

Only link to your own projects that cost you $5 or less (price does not have to include items you had on hand)
You can link past projects that fit the dollar limit, but please only link each project one time to one DIY Under $5 party. Do not link the same project week after week.
No linking giveaways or items for sale
Please link back so others can join the party and so you have the opportunity to be featured on Saturday!

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What’s Your Favorite Handmade Creation?

July 12, 2011 By Michelle Barneck Leave a Comment

Summer is here and you know what that means, spray painting season! There is nothing I love more than personalizing, whether that means painting or adding little handmade touches. Summer is such a great time to get your creativity flowing and create something beautiful! There is something about the sun pouring in a window that is energizing and motivating, besides being great for pictures!

With the kids home during the summer we love making fun things that can either involve them or be displayed in their rooms like these: bean bags from socks, teddy bear hooded towel and toddler pillowcase.

Thanks to BlogFrog, I found the Home Made Simple site that has some really cute summer crafts for kids along with other fabulous ideas for the home.

I was also excited to find the Home Made Simple Marketplace where I can buy handmade items (like those requiring advance sewing skills). Combining Facebook with a handmade marketplace was ingenious! Social media meets women’s small business is as close to awesome as you can get.

I have not sold my creations in any way, but if I did this would probably be a great way to start where I could list just a couple of items.

So, how about you? Have you had your creative juices flowing this summer? Have you taken advantage of the prime painting weather or made something special for a party? I would love to hear what fun projects have been occupying your time!

A Little Tipsy is inspired by your creativity! Share your favorite handmade creation with us and get entered to win a 300-page hardcover copy of the book,“Home Made Simple: Fresh Ideas to Make Your Own”.

Three Ways for Readers to Enter & Win
Each entry requires a separate comment:

1. Tell us about your favorite handmade creation.

2. Join Home Made Simple Marketplace on Facebook, explore the fabulous finds and handmade items, then come back to share your favorites.

3. Have handmade items or fabulous finds to sell? Post them for sale with Home Made Simple Marketplace via Oodle and tell us about it.

The time is now to sell, shop & idea swap in the Home Made Simple Marketplace via Oodle!

Disclosure: This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Home Made Simple. The opinions and text are all mine.

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Make a Memory {Mystery Dinner}

July 11, 2011 By Michelle Barneck 7 Comments

Here we are, week 6 of the Make a Memory series. Each Monday now through the end of August I will feature a special family tradition from one of my favorite bloggers. It is so important to create lasting memories with our families and this will be a fun way to get ideas for fun traditions we can start with our own families. So let’s dive right in and see how Kendra from My Insanity and her family make a memory!

Today I’m sharing a memory-making event that my mom did for us and that I have now shared with my own children. We did this for April Fool’s Day, but it would be great to spice up a summer evening, or would work well to be adapted for a birthday, Halloween, or most any party!

Family Surprise/Mystery Dinner

To make this memory, you turn your kitchen/dining room into a “restaurant” for the night. Everyone gets menus and is served a multi-course meal. The basic premise of a Surprise Dinner is that you order your dinner in courses, but the food all has mystery names, so you really don’t know what is going to wind-up on your plate and in which course. My mom used to have anywhere from 20 to 30 different menu items, including a main dish, bread, butter, various fruits and veggies, a few small desert items, the utensils, drink, napkin, toothpick, and even an ice cube. She’d usually enlist one of my older sisters to help her, then she’d hang a sheet to cover the kitchen entry so the meal could really be a surprise. She would have all of the food set out and labeled with the appropriate number for quick serving. Then she would give us menus similar to what you see here and we would order our courses making the best guesses that we could as to what the items we were ordering, really were.

My kitchen is a bit too open for curtain hanging, but I did put up a foam core poster blockade and moved the table in to the front room so no one could see what was happening in the kitchen. I created these menus in publisher, and had a great time watching my family try and figure out what each item might be. The key is to have everyone order all four courses (or how ever many you serve) at the beginning of the meal, before anyone has been served anything. I had a mix of menu items that I thought were pretty simple and some that were rather obscure and difficult to guess. I was fun to see the orders come out. I was afraid BSB would have figured it out and have a normal boring meal, but that may have only lasted for one course. He was having to scramble like everyone else when his course came out looking something like these…

This course consisted of The Titanic’s Demise (ice cubes), Idaho deconstructed (mashed potatoes), colony builders (ants on a log), sugar transporter (spoon), and perfect coin place (mint–really it should be a mint mint per my clue). This one isn’t too bad, because you can use your spoon for the mashed potatoes, but there is nothing to do with the ice cubes since no water or soda was ordered, you might want that spoon for another course, and what will you do with the gravy that didn’t get ordered.

Here are some other sample courses…

My son had to figure out another way to eat his vanilla ice cream, since he didn’t order any utensils with that course.

Oh, but my daughter has a knife for her ice cream in this course. Much better!

Here’s a generic version of the menu I made. If you want to use all of my menu items, you are welcome to print this for your personal use on an 8 1/2 x 11 paper–landscape orientation. Cut the paper in half and then cut the side with the courses into fourths. (Right click to save image).

Answer Key:

1. Ice

2. Deviled Eggs

3. Mashed Potatoes

4. Gravy

5. Jello

(Utah consumes more per capita than any place else).

6. Goldfish

7. Cucumber Wheels

8. Ants on a Log

(Raisins on Peanut Butter on Celery)

9. Ham slice

10. Corn

11. Fork

12. Spoon

13. Knife

14. Toothpick

15. Water

16. Napkin

17. Ice Cream

18. Chocolate syrup

19. Mint

20. Lemon-lime soda

If you don’t get any of them. I’d be happy to explain. My husband took issue with a few of my clues. You might have more fun creating your own menu, but hopefully this will at least get you started. My family had a great time with this dinner–even if they did have to eat their corn with a knife or slurp the gravy off of their plates. Each course that was brought out to each person was a great surprise for everyone at the table! Watching each other figure out how to eat each course, was highly entertaining!

My sister blogged about a few different adaptations of the mystery dinner that she has done for particular events with different themes. They did one menu based on the states of the US and food that each state is known for. That could be a great educational tool. There are countless other ways to customize it or adapt it for your circumstances. You can get my April Fools menu here and my sister’s Book of Mormon mystery menu here.

A few pointers: My mom is notorious for making everything from scratch. I didn’t have all day to spend in the kitchen, so I used a few more ready-made or easy to make menu items. To keep your shopping list simple, you might want to look in your pantry for snack foods or other items you have on hand. Things like raisins and marshmallows are big hits with kids, and could lend themselves to some fun mystery names. Also, filling all of the orders and serving everyone is a big/busy job. You might want to enlist a partner in crime to server or help work in the kitchen, if you attempt one of these dinners.

I’ll never forget the memories I have of my family’s mystery dinners from when I was a child! Now my own kids have their own fun mystery dinner memories!

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Fabulous mystery dinner idea Kendra! Those clues are hilarious! I remember doing a Christmas themed mystery dinner with menu items like Snowman’s nose and Santa’s beard. It was so fun! Thanks for sharing another great way to make a memory!

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