Valentine's Day is almost here! Are you working on some of your handmade gifts to give? I've designed these "Created Homemade Labels" that you can download for free! You can print them on sticker paper or card stock to attach to mason jars or other gifts you create. Either way they will make a cute addition to your homemade gift!

Be sure to stop by the Share Some Love Link Party to see these and other great Valentine's day ideas! And while you are there, share some of your own Valentine's Day posts!

Created Homemade Labels

Click here for the PNG file

and here for the PDF file

As part of the family favorite recipe challenge, today I am sharing this recipe for Crock Pot Cilantro Chicken. I love to eat this served over riced cauliflower/sweet potatoes topped with avocado. It makes a great week night meal. Just put it together the night before, turn it on in the morning and your meal is waiting for you when you get home from work! Check out all of the other family favorite recipes from the co-hosts of this blog hop!

Meet this month's co-hosts:

Peppermints and Cherries • Stone Cottage Adventures

Purple Hues and Me • Cookies, Coffee, and Crafts

Sum of Their Stories • Coastal Bohemian

Domestic Deadline • Comfort Spring

Crock Pot Cilantro Chicken

Ingredients:

1/2 onion chopped

1 can black beans rinsed and drained

2 cups chicken broth

4-6 chicken thighs - bone in, skin on

Garlic salt

Dried cilantro

Directions:

1. Add the onions and black beans in the bottom of the crock pot.

2. Pour 1 cup of the chicken broth over the onions and beans.

3. Sprinkle about 1 teaspoon of garlic salt and 1 tablespoon cilantro over the mixture.

4. Place the thighs in the crock pot pushing them down into the bean/rice mixture. 

5. Pour the rest of the chicken broth over the thighs and sprinkle with a little garlic salt and cilantro on top of the chicken.

6. Cook on low for 7-8 hours. 

Great served with rice and avocado!

If you are watching your sodium level, be sure to use a lower sodium black bean as well as chicken broth to keep the sodium at a manageable level.  Or make your own chicken broth with no added salt with this recipe. 

 

 

 

An InLinkz Link-up

It is almost July so it's time to get these Free July 2025 Planner Stickers for either your Life or Happy planner. The nautical theme will look perfect along with your patriotic red, white & blue! They are available in both pdf and png format. You can use the pdf format if you would like to cut your own. If you own a cutting machine, download the png format and load it to your cutting software. Just click on the image below to get the free files!

Once you've downloaded the files, you can print them out on sticker paper.

Free July 2019 Planner Stickers

If you would like some free patriotic stickers for this month, you can click here! In addition you can get free July wallpaper for your desktop when you go to this post.

Have a wonderful July and enjoy all of your freebies!

Most of the designs used are from Pixabay. In particular, from the artist Annalise Art - stop by to see all her work!

Welcome to the April Pinterest Challenge Blog Hop! The purpose of this Pinterest Challenge is to motivate all the participants of this hop (and you too) to not just pin, but to make it happen! So this month, I chose to make Easy Sugar Cookie Bars! 

 

To join next month's #pinterestchallenge, click here to sign-up ⇒ May Pinterest Challenge

 

Sugar Cookie Bars

My daughter had sent me a pin last year to make sugar cookie bars for when she came to visit. I didn't get the chance then so I made them for her when she came home for Easter a few weeks ago. The recipe made a 13 x 9 pan so I cut the recipe in half because I was also making an Oreo cheesecake for my son and didn't want a bunch of leftovers since I don't eat sugar. I made them in a 8 x 8 pan and the cookie bars came out fairly thin. I suppose I should have made the whole recipe and just put some in the freezer. But with the icing added on top she said they were really good so I guess all in all it was a success! 

INGREDIENTS:

For the cookie:

1 cup butter, softened
8 oz cream cheese, softened
1½ cups sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2½ cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ tsp baking soda

For the frosting:

3/4 cup salted butter, room temperature
3 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3-4 tablespoons heavy cream
sprinkles

Here is the link the the pin where the original recipe is found. You can find the directions there.

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Now let's see what other things Pinterest inspired! Head over and visit the other hosts to see what they crafted, cooked, built, or tried!

Participants:

Erlene - My Pinterventures • Lauren - Mom Home Guide
Debbee - Debbee's Buzz • Laurie - My Husband Has Too Many Hobbies
Marie - DIY Adulation • Julie - Sum of their Stories
Marie - The Inspiration Vault • T'onna - Sew Crafty Crochet
Pili - My Sweet Things • Debra - Shoppe No. 5
Roseann - This Autoimmune Life • Terri - Our Good Life
Lisa - Blogghetti • Marci - Stone Cottage Adventures
Leslie - Once Upon a Time & Happily Ever After
Rebecca - Simple Practical Beautiful • Cherryl - Farm Girl Reformed
Kelley - Simply Inspired Meals • Joanne - Our Unschooling Journey
Jenny - Cookies Coffee and Crafts • Gail - Purple Hues and Me
Sam - Raggedy Bits
Beverly - Across the Boulevard • Samantha - Little Bits of Home
Kristie - Teadoddles • Shirley - Intelligent Domestications
Kelli - Olympic Nest • Chelsea - Making Manzanita
Cherryl - Farm Girl Reformed • Ola - J'adore Le Decor

An InLinkz Link-up

Would you like to make fabric tags to put on quilts? Or perhaps to use as a clothing label? Well once you learn How To Print On Fabric you can do both of those things! 

How To Print On Fabric

Materials:

Freezer Paper
White Fabric
Printer
Iron
Vinegar
Shallow Bowl

Steps:

Cut a piece of freezer paper to fit in your printer. You can use a piece of printer paper and trace around it to make sure you have the correct size. 

Iron the freezer paper onto the white fabric (one side feels more waxy, that side will go on the fabric) then trim the fabric to the same size as the freezer paper. Make sure there are no frayed ends on the fabric to get stuck in your printer!

 

Take the freezer paper and put it in your printer. For my printer I put the side I want printed on face down. So I put the fabric side face down.

Go to your computer and print the design you would like. 

Occasionally it will come out smeared. Just try again. The picture above took me 2 attempts! After it comes out, carefully peel off the freezer paper from the fabric being careful not to smudge the ink. 

 

Fill a shallow bowl with vinegar - just enough to cover the fabric. Set your printed fabric in the bowl and let it sit for 5-10 minutes to set the ink. 

 

After you take it out of the vinegar, rinse with cold water to get out the vinegar smell. You can either lay it flat to dry or you can use a hair dryer to speed up the process. 

I use some pinking shears to cut around the picture then I sew it on to my project. If it's a quilt I usually use my sewing machine but if it's clothing I hand stitch it on.

There is nothing like the smell of gingerbread baking! Clove, ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon is such a wonderful mix of spices! Get them all in this gluten free gingerbread muffins recipe which is adapted from If You Give A Blonde A Kitchen. 

Recipe for Gluten Free Gingerbread Muffins

 

 

• 1 ¾ cups almond flour
• 1/4 cup coconut flour
• ▢1 teaspoon baking soda
• ▢2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• ▢2 teaspoons ground ginger
• ▢¼ teaspoon ground cloves
• ▢¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
• ▢¼ teaspoon salt
• ▢½ cup unsalted butter, melted
• ▢½ cup sugar free brown sugar (or make your own - see below)
• ▢½ cup molasses
• ▢1 large egg, room temperature
• ▢½ cup water, room temperature

• Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a muffin tin with paper liners. 
• Stir together the almond and coconut flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, and salt in a medium bowl. 
• In a large bowl mix together the melted butter, brown sugar, molasses, and egg on medium-high speed until light brown.
• With the mixer on low, add one third of the flour mixture to the melted butter mixture, then 1/4 cup water. Repeat ending with the flour mixture. Mix just until the flour is moist.
• Fill prepared muffin tin with batter until each cupcake liner is two-thirds full. Bake for 18 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of one comes out clean. Remove the muffins from the oven and cool in the pan for 5 minutes. Transfer them to a rack to cool completely.
• *To make your own sugar free brown sugar mix 1 cup of xylitol with 3 tablespoons of molasses

Fourth of July Dress

This dress makes the perfect outfit for Memorial Day or Fourth of July. The pattern is the Tigerlily from Boo and Lu. The pattern comes in sizes for baby, child or adult. 

Tigerlily Pattern

The red bodice fabric come from Purple Seamstress Fabric. It is the dark red twinkle glitter in a cotton lycra base. 

The red, white and blue tulle comes from Tulletastic. This is some of the softest tulle I have ever sewn with! I bought it on clearance last year so I don't believe it is still in stock. However this is very similar Red White & Blue Ombre Tulle

My granddaughters absolutely love their new dresses!

Do you have a new little one in your life this Christmas? Then this easy yet beautiful Baby Girl Christmas Ornament will be the perfect gift!

Baby Girl Christmas Ornament **sponsored post**

Thanks to DecoArt for providing the paint for this project!

Materials:

1-3.25" translucent glass ornament
Extreme Sheen DecoArt paint in Rose Quartz
Small jewel stickers ( got mine at Dollar Tree)
Pink, white & silver ribbon in various widths
Sheer white/glitter ribbon
Pink and white feathers
Hot glue gun
Small paper plate

This ornament is so easy to make and looks just beautiful with the Extreme Sheen paint! I was provided with a set of Extreme Sheen paint from DecoArt for this project. I chose to use the Rose Quartz color as it is the perfect "baby girl" color!

Directions:

First, make sure your ornament is clean on the outside. I cleaned mine with an alcohol wipe. Then I used a yellow sharpie (so it wouldn't show through afterwards) and drew the initial "E" on the outside. Using the stick on jewels, cover the monogram. I also used the jewels to put "19" on the back for the year.

Take the top hanger part off of the ornament. Shake the bottle of paint to make sure it is well mixed. Then pour a little at a time inside the ornament around the edge. Start to swirl it around so it covers the inside of the ornament. Add a little at a time until you have enough inside to cover the entire ornament.



Turn the ornament over onto the paper plate so that all of the excess paint will drip out. This took several days for mine so I occasionally moved the ornament around on the plate so it wasn't sitting in the drained out paint. If you have a heat tool you can use it to speed up the drying process.

While the paint is drying add the decor to the ornament cap. Tie one piece of ribbon around the top for hanging. I used a piece of white/glitter sheer. Take some strips of ribbon about 8" long and stack them together. Then tie them in a knot around the metal hanging part. Put a couple of small feather stems inside the knot. Add a little dab of hot glue to hold the knot and the feathers. Take 2 pieces of sheer ribbon and tie a bow. Glue the bow to the front of the knot.

Once the paint is dry inside the ornament, put the cap back on the ornament. Don't you think the metallic paint gives this ornament a beautiful finish!