Happily Ever Mock

Friday Happenings- There’s a chance there’s tomato sauce in my hair

Happy Friday all! I am thanking God for Friday more than usual today, as this week has been crazy!

Just to give you a taste, I had my hair freshly colored yesterday. I came home to no nap, full toddler meltdown mode while I was trying to make dinner. I was making my favorite Hearty Bolognese sauce and putting out toddler fires left and right.  I went to open a can of crushed tomatoes and our can opener missed several sections along the edges.  So there I was going over and over the same spots to no avail. Toddler screaming as my blood starts to boil with hatred toward the can opener… So finally I tried to puncture it myself, splashing tomato sauce everywhere…including my brand new hairdo!  Awesome. As you might know, one way to keep your color looking intact after a dye job is to go a few days before washing it again. I rinsed the tomato sauce off with water, but there’s a chance it’s still in my hair.  In other news, we need a new can opener.

Since my mishap yesterday, I have been binge eating this delicious coffee cake. You definitely need to try it! It’s the perfect Fall treat to pair with coffee.

Cinnamon Coffee Cake

Ingredients:

For the Cake:

  • 1 1/2 Cups Flour
  • 1/2 Cup sugar
  • 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon of salt
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
  • 1/2 teaspoon of almond extract

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Grease and Flour 9×13 baking dish. Mix dry ingredients first and add in wet ingredients.  Spread into pan.  It will seem thin, but don’t worry, it puffs up.

For the Topping:

Ingredients:

  • 2 1/2 cups flour
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
  • 1 cup melted butter (cooled)
  • confectioners sugar for dusting

Mix dry ingredients then add in butter.  Crumble over cake mixture.

Bake for 20 minutes turning pan halfway through. Cool and dust with confectioners sugar.

So if you need me this weekend, I will be bingeing on this coffee cake and shopping the June and January Fall drop! We are in it for all the twirl skirts and cardigans!! To get 15% off your first order follow this link! The drop starts at 9pm EST so set your alarms! Things go quickly!

Have a happy weekend folks!

The Nursery that Stole my heart

I can remember when I was pregnant with Hallie, before we knew that she was a girl, searching baby bedding and nursery ideas on Pinterest and secretly hoping she was a girl so that I could buy this Land of Nod bedding and paint this sweet Cherry Blossom Tree on her wall.
When I did find out she was a girl I couldn’t wait to make my dream a reality.  My Mom, Mother in Law and I spent hours in her room painting the walls that perfect shade of pink and perfecting all those sweet flower petals, birds and butterflies.
Little did I know then how much that room would mean to me. That was the room we brought our baby girl home to.  So many of Hallie’s baby memories were made in that room including the first time she pulled up to standing.  After my Mom passed, Hallie would obsess over who painted her tree. She would say, “Who painted my tree? Nana. Who painted my Birds and Butterflies? Memi. Who painted my flowers? Momma.”  Over and over.
It’s been a year since we moved from our house, and this is the room I miss the most. Before we moved out of the house, my sweet friend came and took these precious photos of Hallie and her room that I think we will both cherish forever.
  Hallie’s Tia Joyce and I modpodged these letters. The girls I used to Nanny for did the Fingerpaintings.

 Hallie’s Godmother helped me make the mobile.
She also made her puppy quilt.
 My mother made the cross stitchings of those bears
 The madame alexander dolls were mine as a child. The small trinket box was my Mother in Laws

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 This is where she first pulled up to standing
 My parents gave her the cradle and doll for her 2nd Christmas

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hallie’s initials along with mine and her grandmothers

 

 

 When we decided to sell our house, before my mother passed, we had her paint the tree onto a dollhouse to give Hallie for Christmas.  It definitely makes not being able to recreate Hallie’s sweet Nursery right away a little easier.

 

Donut Valentines and Heart Shaped Pizza

I love any chance to celebrate around here, but having a Toddler that gets so excited about anything out of the norm makes holidays even more fun!

Last Night Hallie and I made Heart Shaped Pizza for National Pizza day! She loved it and it was soooo easy! That’s a win/win in my book!

To form Pepperoni hearts, I just used kitchen shears to change the circles into hearts! It was delicious!

Today Hallie and I brought a special Valentine to our Play Group Valentine Party! Each of her friends got a milk bottle with their choice of white or strawberry milk, a cute little straw and some donuts! The tag I created read: “Donut you know you’re my favorite valentine?”

Feel free to print your own Donut tag!

This weekend Hallie, Daddy and I are exchanging Valentines since Daddy will be out of town next week! Hallie and I of course have a lot more Valentine fun in store though, so stay tuned!
Happy Weekend!
<3 Kelly and Hallie

Valentine Crafts for Little Hands

One of our favorite things to do to celebrate Valentines Day is making our very own Homemade Valentines! You might think it would be hard to get little hands (and toes) involved in creating beautiful artwork that their friends and loved ones will treasure, but it’s actually rather easy! Here are 6 fun crafts Hallie and I have tried in the Valentines Days over her (almost) 3 years!

1.) Make your own Heart Shaped Crayons-
Hallie and I did this as her Valentine gift for her friends last year and she LOVED it! She really enjoyed helping me sort the crayons by color and breaking them up to put in the mold! It was really good for identifying colors and fine motor skills!

What you’ll need-

  • A heart shaped mold (we got ours at hobby lobby)
  • Old broken crayons (We also mixed in a pack of dollar store crayons)
What to do-
Peel off the crayon paper. Break them up and fill each tray until it is a little more than half way full.  Melt them at 350 for 10 minutes (or until melted).  Wait about an hour or so until cool, then pop them out! You can sort them by color to create crayons of each color of the rainbow like we did or have fun making multicolored crayons!
2.)  Finger paint Valentines Hearts-
What you’ll need-
  • Kid safe paint
  • Paper
  • Scissors
  • Marker/pen
(OMG look how tiny she is!)
I just dropped a couple drops of paint in “Valentine Colors” on the paper and let Hallie go to town! She loved it! It was GREAT for creativity! We are planning on doing this again this year! Once the paper dries cut out some hearts and write a message to friends and family from your sweet little
3.) Toilet Paper Roll Heart Stamping-
What you’ll need-
  • Toilet Paper Roll
  • Tape
  • Paint
  • Paper
Tape the toilet paper roll into a heart shaped stamp.  Give them some paint and let them use the toilet paper roll as a stamp to stamp hearts on the paper! This one is definitely getting a redo this year! Last year Hallie just wanted to do more finger painting! Lol I say it’s best for a Toddler 2 and up! But it is great for fine motor skills!
4.) Heart shaped mosaic-
What you’ll need-
  • Paper of different colors
  •  Cardboard or Card stock cut into a heart
  •  Glue
Depending on the age of the child, you can either tear the paper for the child or let them help you (its great for fine motor skills as well!)  then let them glue the paper on the Card stock/Cardboard. Hallie is REALLY into gluing this year!
5.) Footprint Heart Plates
What you’ll Need-
  • Inexpensive plate (Dollar store or Target)
  • Ceramic Paint
  • Paintbrush
  • Oven
We did these as a keepsake for Hallie’s first Valentines Day.  We even made a few so she could give them as gifts to her grandparents! It was so sweet! I put her in her highchair to make it easier.  I painted the first foot and stamped it on the plate. Then cleaned her foot and repeated with the second foot.  Then I placed it in the oven at 300 degrees for 30 minutes.  I am so glad I did this!
6.) Button Heart-
What you’ll need-
  • Cardboard or card stock cut into a heart
  • Glue (After doing this I think a bottle of wet glue would have worked better)
  • Buttons
This one is simple! Just glue the buttons onto the heart! Hallie had so much fun creating patterns and choosing which buttons would fit best where! (Good for problem solving skills, patterns, and fine motor) Hallie chose to give Daddy this special Valentine!

 

What crafts are you working on for Valentines Day?

 

Holiday Treats

Hello Friends,
I know it’s been a while. I went from working pretty heavily on Socklings to distancing myself from the brand for personal reasons,  Now I’m back here and ready to blog!

For my first post back, I thought I would share the delicious treats Hallie and I have been baking!
This time of year is so fun now that Hallie is old enough to really help and get excited about all the Christmasy To-dos!

We of course have had so many requests for the special Linzer cookies, that I have been making batch after batch of them.  You can find the recipe here! They really make the perfect Holiday treat!

If jam isn’t your jam, Hallie and I also created these DELECTABLE Brownie Bites, that were really a hit!

INGREDIENTS:
1 package of boxed brownies (prepared according to package)
2 1/2  bags of milk chocolate chips
Sprinkles

DIRECTIONS:
Prepare brownies according to directions on box and let slightly cool.
While still warm crumble brownies into a bowl.
melt 1 bag of chocolate chips in a large measuring cup/ bowl slowly. (I do 30 seconds at a time stirring after each time until completely melted)
Once melted completely, stir into brownie mix and refrigerate for 30 minutes,
Once cold, form balls of dough into bite size pieces. Refrigerate again while preparing chocolate dip.
Melt the remaining chocolate chips using the same method as before.
Once completely melted, dip the brownie bites into the melted chocolate dip until completely covered.  Tap side of the bowl after each dip to remove excess chocolate.  Drop onto plate.  Repeat until all covered in chocolate and top with sprinkles.

These were so easy and so delicious!

What are your favorite holiday treats?

<3 Kelly and Hallie

2nd Annual Glow Stick Bath

Hey all! I know it’s been forever! Well I am back with a lot of great photos from our 2nd Annual Glow Stick bath! Bubbles + Glow Sticks + a toddler = an hour of Splish Splashy fun!

Such a blast! We’ll be doing it again soon! Thanks SweetTurtleSoup again for the great idea!
<3 Kelly and Hallie

Menu Board

Good afternoon friends.  I know I have been a little MIA.  Things around the Mock house are really busy now that I am essentially working 2 jobs and taking care of my crazy 2 year old bean! Anyway, today I wanted to share the going away gift I made for my cousin Karley.  She is moving to Montana and it will be the first time she is going to be living far away from home.  I thought I would make her something functional that she would us every day.  That way, when she uses it she could think of home and of course, ME! Ha!

I decided on a Menu Board because she had admired mine, and we were going to make one together before the move but ran out of time.  Here’s how it turned out:

I just got a bunch of scrapbook paper and glued it down to a magnet board. I made a pocket with stickers and more scrapbook paper and glued magnet to bottle caps and decorated them with stickers! Karley liked it a lot and I think it turned out super cute! 
<3 Kelly 

Saying Goodbye to the Mural

It totally breaks my heart to think about the mural in Hallie’s room now. Many of you know that before Hallie was born, My Mom, Mother in Law and myself painted a beautiful tree mural with birds and butterflies on Hallie’s wall.  By now it is probably covered with a fresh coat of white paint getting ready for new tenants as an investor bought our home.

A week or so a before we moved out, I had my good friend Whitney, come and take some photos of Hallie playing in her nursery before we boxed things up.  Photos I am sure to cherish for the rest of my life. Photos I will be sharing with you as soon as we get them back!

The last day we were in the house I took Hallie into her room, just the two of us.  I sat her down on the bare floor as all of the furniture and her toys had been packed away in boxes and moved already. I told her “how happy Mommy was when I found out you were girl”. I told her “I knew immediately the vision I had for the nursery where we would bring you home for the first time.” I explained to her all of the people who had a hand in helping me make my vision come to life. “Tia Joyce helped me make your letters, and Auntie Jennifer and I made your mural. Daddy and Pop put together your crib which was given to us by Ms. Marie and Sophie. Daddy, Uncle Adam and Aunt Kate built your changing table which was given to us by Nana and Bapa.  But the most special gift in your room was the mural. Mommy, Memi and Nana spent hours getting the tree, birds, butterflies and flowers just right.  We talked the whole time we worked about how excited we were for your arrival. We wondered what you would look like and how your personality would be.  We were so proud with how it turned out.”

“Then when the room was done and you arrived Nana continued coming over to add “finishing touches” to your room.  She was so excited! She made you curtains, cross stitched bears for your walls and painted a peg board for us to hang your ballet shoes on! Eventually we had no room left to put anything, but she wanted everything to be perfect for you.”

After I told her all of of that, I took her over to the tree and we took a couple of photos and said goodbye to her room, goodbye to the mural, and goodbye to Nana. It was a sad sweet moment, but one I am so glad I took the time to have.

Mom will live on in the photos, and Memi and I will make sure Hallie’s room is just as special as the first!

<3 Kelly

M&M Blondies

These were some of the very best Blondies I have ever tasted, and I knew when I was done eating them that I would HAVE to share the recipe with my readers!

INGREDIENTS:
1/2 C Unsalted Butter
2 Cups of Light Brown Sugar
2 eggs
1 ts Salt
1 ts vanilla
2 ts baking powder
2 Cups of flour sifted
1 Package of M&M 11.4 oz bag

Steps:
1. Cream the butter and brown sugar together
2. Add eggs, Salt and Vanilla and mix until well blended
3. Slowly Add the baking powder and sifted flour until batter is smooth
4. Stir in 1/2 of the bag of M&M candies by hand so that you don’t break them
5. Pour batter into a greased 9×13 baking dish then add the rest of the bag placing them on top of the batter. (I didn’t use the entire rest of the bag…I had a small handful left over which I shared with Hallie) Also the batter will rise in the oven so don’t worry if it doesn’t look too full,
6. Bake at 350 for 24 minutes.  It will look undone when you pull it out of the oven, but will set as it cools.

Once they are completely cool, cut them into bars of your desired size and share…or not!

<3 Kelly
PS this is the last day to enter the giveaway!

This year’s Valentines

Happy Friday Folks! Today Hallie and I are so excited to be going  to our Play Group Valentine’s Party! We are bringing our homemade Valentines to share with our friends, but I also couldn’t wait to share them here with you! Here’s what we did:

We got a heart shaped silicone mold at Hobby Lobby.  Bought some Dollar Store Crayons and gathered up our old crayons.  Peeled off the paper. Broke them up and filled each tray until it was a little more than half way full.  Melted them at 350 for 10 minutes (or until melted).  Waited about an hour or so until cool, then popped them out! It was so simple and so fun!

 Hallie loved helping me break the crayons and match the colors in the trays

On Wednesday we passed some out to her friends at Ballet Class
 And today we can’t wait to give them to our little playgroup buddies! 
Here are some  photos of Hal from Last year’s party:

 It’s so crazy to see how much she has grown in one year…also look at those baby blues! They are now green!

This weekend Hallie and I will celebrate Valentines by taking goodies to our family and then having some mommy and baby time.  I will of course share what Hallie get’s for her special treat from Mommy and Daddy, but for now, here are some of the cards I have made for loved one’s this year:
Can’t wait to give them all out! 
We hope everyone has a fantastic Valentine’s weekend!
<3 Kelly and Hallie