Jelly Bean Tree

I'm not sure which we get more excited for~Easter candy~eating or decorating with it!

How could we resist to play with Lifesaver's Easter Jelly Beans again,

this time we made a Jelly Bean Tree!

Remember our fun Jelly Bean Topiaries we did a few years ago?
We were so happy with the fun colors that we knew we needed something
a little bit bigger to display them on.....

Every Spring we end of doing a lot of pruning in both our yards, but in mine I have the most beautiful Apple tree branches that were perfect for this project.

After stabilizing your branches into a vase or pot of your choice

all you have do is get out your glue gun and start gluing those little guys on.

Try to refrain from eating them up as you go!

My daughter was very unhappy that there weren't enough pink ones for her to

gobble up....I'm thinking there are some missing on my tree.....

You're going to end up with a ton of glue strings.

Don't you just hate those suckers!

Best tip I learned this year was from Craft Wars~

they recommended using a hot hair dryer to melt them into oblivion.

Ya know what?

It totally works~AWESOME!

We had to make another one just to show the difference in pots.

I'm down at the farm feed store all the time getting stuff for my ducks

and this metal pail seemed to be a perfect fit.

                         

Stay tuned this week for our Easter themed Wood You Like To Craft!

There's guaranteed to be some fun stuff!

Happy Sunday Friends!

Love Floats

It's been so cold here the last couple of weeks that we haven't been very motivated to craft.  The only thing I've been motivated to do is drop off my kid at school and crawl back under the covers to watch episodes of Psych!  Just kidding, while Candace sorts toys in her bonus room I've been catching up on all my touch up painting.  Sounds thrilling huh.  Definitely not blog worthy stuff.

I've seen this idea around for a while where you can use Cherry 7UP instead of root beer for a float.  I thought it looked so cute that I did it for my church Activity Day Girls last week. They looked great but Cherry 7Up left me wanting....it just wasn't strong enough to balance out the vanilla ice cream.  So since we are busy preparing Science Project experiments in our house- we thought we would try an experiment of our own.  My daughter was all too happy to be the judge!

We tried Shasta Raspberry Creme Soda 

                                                           

and Barq's Red Creme Soda.

                                                   
Both are pretty tasty but I think the Raspberry Creme might be a tad better.
They were so easy to make for my girls~I pre-scooped the ice cream and stored them in the freezer until ready to go.  Add a couple of cute Valentine straws and who can resist?

Now if you really want something tasty you'll have to try these Italian Creme Sodas~
Head over to Butter With A Side Of Bread for an easy and delicious recipe for homemade Italian Sodas.  Yum!
                                         

Valentine Candy Bouquet

 This is what happens when I am stuck in the house recovering from being sick with limited access to crafting supplies...I get creative with candy! I didn't have the energy to hit the craft stores, so my major shopping trips were to the grocery store. It's amazing what you can find if you look hard enough!

I have a hard time passing by the Valentine bulk candy without stopping to fill a bag.  Red and pink gumdrops, jellybeans, red hots....I can't help it!  They are just so darn cute.  I also found Valentine candy corn. Gross to eat, but they make perfect petals for flowers.  

  

For the base of the candy flowers, I used Styrofoam discs that I painted red with craft paint.  I poked the small dowel into the Styrofoam disc and added a bit of hot glue to stabilize the foam. 

Each piece of candy was added with a hot glue gun. I made sure to use a low temp gun to avoid some serious burns to the fingers!

I also grabbed a bag of gummy ring candy (Peach O's) at the store that fit perfectly around the large gum drops. 

For the heart shapes flowers, I used heart shaped cookie cutters to cut into the foam. The cookie cutters worked surprisingly well on the foam!  

I gave it a good crunch with the cookie cutter and then cleaned the rest up with a knife.  I think the red hot hearts are my favorite.

Painting the Styrofoam the same color as the candy helps to hide the gaps.

 Nicole and I have made candy topiaries a couple of times, like the Jelly Bean and Halloween topiaries.
(I missed Nicole this time...she didn't want to catch what I had!) In those cases, we used Styrofoam balls, which are easier to place candy around.  You have to get creative with candy placement on the discs. 
I filled the edges of these flowers with red hots to avoid getting too bulky.

I hot glued layers of Styrofoam into the glass vase, making sure there was room for the jellybeans to fit along the side. Next I added the flowers, then filled the vase with pounds of jellybeans. I used heart lollipops to fill in the empty spaces. All of the stems were wrapped with green floral tape and the heart leaves were made from scrap paper.

It's nice to know I can still enjoy Valentine's candy without having to eat it.  It's also a lot less tempting to eat when there's gobs of hot glue on each piece! :)