Scentsy WINNER announced

email me your contact information at threegscrafts@gmail.com

CONGRATULATIONS

Scentsy Give Away...

A true GIVE A WAY!!!

A super sweet friend Jonnie Mellen is offering up some wonderful Scentsy items for Three G's Crafts to GIVE A WAY!!!  She is offering 1 wall plug-in with 2 Scentsy Bars of your choice! 

What is Scentsy?

Scentsy began in 2003 with the powerfully simple idea of aromatic candles – decorative warmers with wax melted by the heat of a light bulb instead of a traditional wick and flame. Scentsy also carries hanging fresheners for cars, travel tins, and room sprays.

What's so special about Scentsy?

I am in love with lighting candles but once we started having the girls candles became dangerous and strictly decorative. That is what is great about Scentsy they are plug-ins, no open flames. The bars are scented like waxed candles (there are over 80 fragrances). Scentsy bars are not dangerous for children or pets (great news for moms and dads).

Here's how you can enter to win....

**Please note: You must write a separate comment for each entry.

#1. Leave us a comment, go to Jonnie's site and tell us what your favorite burner and scent are (if you have never tried Scentsy tell us which burner you are drooling over and scent you want to SMELL for the first time). This is the mandatory enrty.  Make sure we can contact you through your blog or email (so we can notify you if you win).

Want a second chance to win?

#2. Sign up to "Follow" our blog. Add yourself as a follower on the left sidebar. If you are already a follower, just leave us a commet and let us know. You'll be entered again.

Want a third chance to win?

#3. Post about this giveaway on your own blog or on Facebook with a link to this blog post giveaway (make sure we can find you or you find us) .

This giveaway will run until

Friday, March 26th 9pm pacific time.

The winner will be announced on Saturday, March 27th.

Good Luck...

Instant Gratification

There is nothing better to get me out of a crafting funk than a little instant gratification on a beautiful Saturday!

I started with some old coasters my mother in law purchased for us some 7 years ago. I've never been a fan of their design, but they are really functional. You can see on the bottom one that Madelyn had already begun to pretty them up a little.

I started out by painting one coat of stone colored paint so that the darker colors wouldn't show through my pretty papers. While I was painting I noticed something pretty neat about the paint that was already on the coasters. See it?

Here is the finished set of 4 coasters. I have another set to do, but Chris likes the tractors so I may only do the other two cat coasters (once I find them???). I really like the subtle tones and pretty patterns.

I originally bought these pretty papers for a project re-doing my tv tables from their shabby wood to something glamorous but after a simple coat of stone-colored spray paint I was happy with them. I'm excited to still have these pretties in my daily living space as a little splash of yumminess!

Linking up to:

Monkey skirt!

One really fun thing about having a toddler to sew for is that you can make really fun print skirts! Here is a super easy twirly skirt that I made for my little monkey!



The fabric:



Madelyn contimplating the fabrics for two skirts (the other one is almost done)

Finished skirt!

Vanilla Ice Cream *FAILURE*

When my Mom came for a recent visit we enjoyed one of our favorite past times, THRIFTING.  We like to plan it so we can visit the thrift store on base which has very limiting hours.  I was very excited on the trip to find a Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker for $2.50.  I got it home and seemed to work.  So finally the girls and I sat down last night to attempt to make some vanilla ice cream.

Well it was a FAILURE... I am not sure if it was my recipe, probably because I switched out the cream and tried to use half and half.  I really don't think it was the machine it self because it runs and I did everything by the online insturctions.  So we will try again soon.

Chocolate Layer Cake

I came across this recipe for a decadent Chocolate Layer Cake recipe in the current Rachel Ray magazine and I had to try it.

Here are the ingredients

(I really enjoy setting up ingredient shots)

making the cake....

these cakes smell so chocolaty and look like bownies. 

I forgot to take pictures of the frosting making process and mine didn't turn out looking like the one in the magazine, it might be because the recipe called for heavy cream and I only had half and half on hand.  It still turned out so rich and yummy.

My family has a very top secret Chocolate Cream Pie recipe that I am forbidden to share and it is so rich and so good, this cake... is the cake version of that pie. 

you really need a glass of milk or a scoop of vanilla ice cream to go with this cake.

Fellow bloggers Give A Way....

Lesley over at Homemade Grits is having a Marc Jacobs themed give a way this week....

 go HERE to check it out...

You might win one of these

Good LUCK!!!

Suggestion Saturday - DENISE'S "Loaded Mac & Cheese"

Suggestion Saturday reveal:

The winning suggestion from Jen - bacon, onion and macaroni noodles

( I forgot to take the ingredient shot before cooking the bacon up, whoops. 

I had such a problem snacking on the little bacon niblets... tastey!  

Next time I will have to fry up two pounds to compensate for such snacking)

My added ingredients to make the dish MINE, butter, half and half, bread crumbs, spinach, nutmeg, gruyere cheese, extra sharp white cheddar, parmesan cheese

I cooked up the bacon unitl crispy, removed it from the pan to drain on paper towels.  In about 2 Tbs of the rest of the bacon fat I melted butter to satue the onion until translucent.  I then added the half and half until bubbly seasoned it well with salt, pepper and freshly ground nutmeg.  Next, I added the shredded cheddar and gruyere cheeses until melted (smelled so yummy).  Meanwhile, I  boiled my noodles til aldente, strained them and put them back into the stock pot for mixing purposes.  To the noodles, I added the bacon and two handfuls of fresh spinach.  Once my cheese sauce was complete I poured it over my noodle, bacon, spinach mix.  I stirred until combined and then poured it into my greased baking dish. 

Then sprinkled the bread crumbs and  parmesan cheese over top.  (pictures below on left)

Here is a HUGE hit in my family, including my Mom and brother whom are visiting for the weekend.

Denise's Loaded Mac & Cheese

Oh, next time I make this, which I will, I will add atleast another handful of the spinach, just wasn't enough for me.  :) 

ENJOY, now go start cooking...

Don't forget to check out KATRINA's take, you know it will be good.

Suggestion Saturday - Katrina's Chicken alfredo w/ carmelized onions and bacon.

Warning! I cannot be held responsible for any damage caused by drool on your keyboard after looking at all of these scrumptious pictures! When you are done here, go look at Denise's and then head to the kitchen to whip up one of our creations on your own!



With the required ingredients, I made a chicken alfredo with carmelized onions and bacon over cellentani pasta.

Here is our cast of characters: Cellentani pasta, alfredo sauce, thick sliced bacon, chicken tenderloins, and an onion. Not shown is the pat of butter I started it all off with.

I like to work on building flavors so I wanted to start with a base in a skillet that would handle everything. So in goes the butter!

and the thick sliced bacon that I cut into smaller pieces.

Then the chopped onion. I only added half of the onion at this point and in hindsight would have waited on the bacon to crisp a little more before adding it

mmm...bacony, oniony yumminess

After the onions carmelized and the bacon crisped up enough I set them aside and threw the chicken tenders in to cook. I sliced them into slightly larger than bite size pieces.

I added in the other half of the onion at this point and let it sweat a bit. Again, layering up the yumminess!

I added in the jar of alfredo sauce. I would have tried to make my own sauce, but I have not had any luck with cream based sauces in the past and I wasn't going to try my luck tonight. I just wasn't feeling like losing a meal to scorched cream.

I kind of took artistic license with the "macaroni" portion and used a heavier, heartier macaroni pasta rather than the traditional elbow. I wanted something that could hold it's own with this heavy sauce.

Served all up in a bowl, with a grind of black pepper and yum yum!

I will be making this dish again. Next time I will add bell peppers and mushrooms to the sauce. The heartiness can handle a few more flavors and definitely more veggies. Any suggestions on others to add?

Welcoming Bonnie to the wonderful world of sewing.

**edited to add picture**

Today we welcomed our good friend, Bonnie into the wonderful world of sewing. We started out our adventure at our local drug, I mean fabric, supplier, JoAnne's. We started our innocently enough, looking for old lady fabric for Bonnie's girls, and Denise going on her own mission for applique something or other. Bonnie found some super cute fabric, one of which she stole from Denise, and we got our numbers for the cutting table. That's when I realized that we were no where near ready to be cut! So we laid our numbers down and headed to the ribbon, ruffle, and button aisles. So much fun! Bonnie kept asking me what kind of ribbon to use and I was absolutely no help because I had no flipping clue how to make what she was planning to make, so I kept running between Bonnie and Denise asking questions. I felt like a translator, I'm sure I drove them nuts. Then we found a cute ruffle and some cute buttons and headed over to the notions. This is where Bonnie said the words she never should have said. She said "get me whatever I will need" and I think I went a little crazy just throwing things in her cart, but we found out that she used everything we bought, so it was all good.

Pins, scissors, measuring tape, pin cushion tomato, bobbins, and 4 spools of thread later we moved to the patterns and looked at the rotary cutters. This is where I got jealous. Bonnie bought the self healing mat, rotary cutter and straight edge pack that I'm drooling for. I have the self healing mat though so it's just a little drool. We had fun looking at cute little girly things because if we ever get our full clans together (does my one child count as a clan?) there are 9 girls in all. I think that warrants lots of ruffles, glitter, and pretties.

Bonnie got her fabric, elastic, and ruffles and we headed to the checkout after 2 hours of shopping! I would like to interject here that the kids were wonderful! Madelyn was at school and Emmalyn just rode around so sweetly in the shopping cart, Paige stayed with us and Claire was as sweet as sugar in the stroller! I'm beginning to wonder if it's my daughter that's the heathen?

Anyway, at the checkout we made Bonnie sign up for the mailing list, laughing about how we had bossed her around the whole store.

Bonnie headed over to my house to get started and after winding a bobbin and figuring out her machine, she made a dress for Emmalyn! It is so beautiful and I can't wait to see her two girlys being so sweet and matching! For a beginner, Bonnie is an awesome sewer! Even if she does that crazy measure and cut straight lines thing. ;)

SO sorry... very late! The WINNING Suggestion is.....

Since I am late posting this to be fair to Katrina we will now do our

Creation Reveal by Sunday night at 9pm. THANK you followers.