Party Dip

Hi there!  We're so glad you stopped by!  With the summer rapidly approaching that means Graduation parties, BBQs, camping, and many other get-togethers that would require bringing a dish to pass.  This one is my go-to!  I can't tell you how many times people have asked me for this recipe.   

WHAT YOU'LL NEED: 

16oz cream cheese, softened

1 pkg dry ranch dressing mix 

2oz chopped black olives

2 jalapeno peppers, seeds removed and chopped

1 red pepper, chopped

2/3 C. cheddar cheese

In a large mixing bowl, mix all the ingredients together with an electric mixer, and serve with Wheat Thins. 

Spring Topiary

Hi there!  We are so glad you stopped by!

This past weekend my Best Friends and I hosted a Baby Shower, for one of the precious daughters, of said Best Friends.   Breaking news: I love to decorate and make crafts.  So, I was in charge of making the door prizes. Here is one of them that I made.  A Spring Topiary.

Here is what you will need if you would like to make one, too. Clay pot, styrofoam ball, a half styrofoam ball, moss, ribbon, flowers and a dowel. As you see in the picture, I started with white roses.  I bought 2 bunches.   This plan did not work out for me.  You will hear more about that later in the post.

I started by placing the styrofoam ball on the table and pushing the dowel through the middle.  I added hot glue to the bottom of the dowel and placed it in the clay pot.  It fit perfectly in to the hole in the bottom of the pot.

Take the ribbon and add a dab of hot glue to the end and attach it to the bottom of the dowel. Wrap the ribbon around the dowel moving upward, placing a dab of hot glue every now and then, just to keep it in place.  You don't need much, just enough to keep it from coming undone.

Next, add the round styrofoam ball to the top of the dowel.   Again, I put hot glue on the dowel, to keep the ball in place.   A little tip on getting it directly in the middle; take the extra dowel that you have, place the ball on the table and put it in from the top.  That way you can see that you are putting it directly in the middle.

I took the moss and glued it on top of the styrofoam ball, in the clay pot.   I have never used this kind of moss before and was so surprised at how easy it was to work with.

Now you are ready to start adding the flowers.   Cut the flower, leaving about 3/4" of the stem.  This way you just push the stem in to the ball.  As you can see from this picture I started with roses, but that is not what I ended up using.   Let 's just say, I underestimated the amount of flowers, by a LOT.  

I then proceeded to remove all of the roses.  Well, there weren't that many, so this did not take long.  I had quite a few of these other little white flowers, so I thought I was good to go.  No, not so much. I then took all of these out! Then I tried making some flowers out of tulle.  Then I tried paper flowers.   Finally, I jumped in the car and drove over to Michael's. It was 7:30 at night. Michael's is 20 minutes from my house, one way.  I still had 3 more projects to do before morning.  Can you say, "cold sweat"? Off I went!

I found these adorable daisies and loved them more than the roses.  I ended up buying 10 stems, each with 5 flowers on them.  So, this project took 50 flowers.   You can see in this picture how much trauma this ball went through during this project. Thank goodness it was all going to be covered up! Keep this in mind when buying your supplies, unless you like taking a project that would take about an hour and turning it in to a 3 hour project. 

Last, tie a ribbon around the top of the "stem".  There you have it. A super easy, (if you aren't as scatter brained as I was), Spring Topiary. I like it so much, I may just make one for me. Thank you so much for stopping by.  It means the world to us.