The first thing that comes to mind when most people think of the Herbalife Nutrition Shop, is high quality herbal supplements, beauty and bath products, and several other products that infuse wholesome herbal remedies with modern health and well-being. Or even the great work from home opportunity that Herbalife offers. However, the holidays are right around the corner, and there are several ways to spice up the gift giving season, while using gifts that everyone will love! –Not only do these crafts look great on the table, and under the tree, but they also look great while being used.

What You Need:

Three small bottles/tubes of Herbalife product (vitamins, skin care, bath and body, etc.)
Rosemary seed packet
Thyme seed packet
Basil seed packet
Three small red clay pot; about four inches in height, and diameter.
Topsoil
A sheet of colorful, or plain plastic wrap
Ribbon
Assorted candy (optional)

Fill the three small clay pots about 2/3 full of soil each, and insert a seed packet into each, pressing them down into the pot, about 1/3 of the way. Next, set each pot and seed packet in the center of a square of plastic wrap. Gather the plastic wrap at each corner, then tie the tackage off tight with a bit of ribbon. Pretty, right? Do the same step for all three pots. Now, just set those in your baskets, along with the Herbalife products, and optional candy. Fans of Herbalife, and healthy living, will absolutely love the gift. For more information about being an Independent Herbalife Distribributor, visit their website!

Using crafts to decorate around the house, doesn’t necessarily limit your enjoyment to making refrigerator magnets, or tissue boxes glued with macaroni, and painted gold. It also doesn’t mean you have to take classes in glass blowing, or making stained glass, in order to really provide worthwhile craft decorations to your home. Floral decor is always popular, but in the fall, it can only be an added expense. The holidays are coming up, so why not make some Thanksgiving decorations for your home?

The best kind of decorative home accents are the kind that actually provide some use to you and your family. So what better decor craft, than the edible kind?! Naturally, none. Try these festive holiday decorating ideas for Thanksgiving or Christmas:

Fairy Food

Garnish baked goods with edible flowers, like miniature roses, or other blossoms, such as dandelions, if it’s warm where you live. You can bake full size rose petals into cakes, or make rosewater lemonade, which includes pink or red rose petals in the glass. Another festive idea, is to make rosy ice cubes, –pressing full size rose petals into each panel of your ice tray then filling, and freezing it will produce beautiful and colorful ice.

Another idea, is to dust wet grapes with sugar, to make them appear sparkly, or frosty. Other creative ideas, are using powdered sugar, or flour to lightly dust other dishes, for the snow effect.

RainCollection.Com is useful if you want to craft beautiful gift baskets on your own, or just to skip the craft part of home decorating. The site has a huge selection of lovely home decorative pieces, –not edible, but still useful for the family, or as gifts for friends.

I had this very nice meal with some friends yesterday at my house… we didn’t have anything in mind when they got here, but we all love Chilaquiles or Nachos (Tortilla chips with chicken, cheese and sauce)… So we just started making stuff without a clear image in mind.  Our final product was amazing! And since I had so many photos I figured I’d share the recipe with you!

What you’ll need:

• Tortillas (If you can get real tortillas you can cut them in 4 and fry them or just use normal tortilla chips)
• Chicken
• Fried beans (I think you can get canned ones at the supermarket)
• Cheese (the kind that melts easily)
• Cheese like parmesan or something similar
• Chunky tomato sauce (something like those sauces that come in jars, we have them in jars here… )
• And a bunch of friends to help you out! (not necessary, but it sure makes it more fun!)

The hard part is to get everything ready to prepare it, once you are done the rest is easy…

1.  Prepare the tortillas (in case you have to fry them), the chicken (I used 4 chicken breasts, some water, salt, a bit of tomato, pepper and onion, you’ll need the broth afterwards), the beans( fry them in case you don’t get canned, already made fried beans).  For the sauce, just use a couple of jars of salsa and add the broth, boil it until it’s a bit thick…

Everything should look like this…

2. Once all that is ready is time to get ready for the good part!

Try to add the chicken to the tortillas, my friend just started adding handfuls of chicken everywhere she could, trying to make sure there was chicken everywhere.

Then, spread the friends beans over that… don’t worry, you don’t have to get chicken everywhere like with the chicken just over the whole thing…

Next, put pour the sauce over the tortillas, try to make enough sauce to get sauce everywhere, you’ll want your chilaquiles nice and moist… then just add the grated cheese…

Since our entire planned changed when we were making them, and ended up with one big pan of chilaquiles I figured we should put them in the oven a few minutes to get the cheese to melt a little… so, just turn on the oven at 350 degrees and leave them there for about ten minutes… And you’ll get something that should look as yummy as this…

Give it a try, or improvise… You really won’t regret it!

Oh, and if you are in a desperate need of a really quick dessert just take a couple of boxes of jello (any flavor really) and a can of sweetened milk.

Make the jello like directed on the box/Pour the sweetened milk in the blender with the jello and blend! :-P/Pour it on a pan, you can add some fruits, but they are not necessary and take it to the fridge… Just let it set and enjoy! (I don’t add a photo, because mine suffered an accident when I was going to serve it…

Who doesn’t love graham crackers?

Well, I do. I use them all the time for pie crusts, quick breading on chicken cutlets - goes great with a peanut sauce :), and for quick snacks (grahams and cream cheese - like a mini cheesecake). They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery - so here is my imitation of the unsung hero in my kitchen:

The Graham Cracker.

You will need:

felt in 2 colors - cracker brown and a pink of your choice for cheeks (I prefer all wool felt not the poly-acrylic craft felt. The wool holds together better, the p-a pulls apart very easily, but use what you have. )

cotton embroidery floss in 3 colors - cracker brown, pink to match the cheeks and black for details

sharp scissors, pins, sharp embroidery needle and  a bit of patience

Cut out four rectangles from the brown felt, I used an actual graham cracker as a template and it measured 5″ by 2.5″. Cut eight circles for the cheeks from the pink felt at about .25″ in diameter. I used the cap of a pen for a template for the circles.

Fold one of the rectangles in half width-wise and mark this with pins. Place two cheeks in each square and pin in place. Use your pink embroidery floss and stitch each cheek in place using blanket stitch. Each strand of embroidery floss is made up of six individual threads, I only used three for the cheeks.

Now using only two strands of the black floss add some facial features, eyes,  mouth, noses if you please.

I used a comics “how to draw” book for inspiration on the eyes and mouths, but use your imagination Repeat this process on a second rectangle.

Once these two pieces are finished set them aside. On the third and fourth rectangles mark your middle with pins, just the same as with the first two, and beginning in the very center place a running stitch up the lengthwise center to the edge. This divides the half into the familiar quarters. Now we’ll work french knots to simulate the impressions in a real graham cracker. I use a three wrap french knot, but do what you are comfortable with.

Work four evenly space knots about .25″ away from the running stitch. Work three more knots .25″ over and staggered from the first four and then repeat the first four along the outside edge.

Repeat on the other side of that square, turn the piece, add another running stitch and repeat the french knots. Work the same steps on the fourth rectangle.

Pin one french knotted rectangle to one with faces, wrong sides together, and place a running stitch along the width-wise center. Now work a blanket stitch around all four sides and your goofy graham is done!

You could easly make some sassy saltines, cheesy cheez-itzs or any of your favorite crackers. 

Toots

I think that baking is a craft unto itself.  And now that summer is here, there are plenty of recipes floating around the web for the fresh food in your garden and farmers market!  I’ve tried quite a few so far, and some I have even changed up a bit to make them my own.

For starters, there is a great recipe at Angry Chicken for a rhubarb hand pie…and I do love rhubarb pie!  From the pictures, it looks like she got some really sweet rhubarb (the redder it is, the sweeter it is) but I have found that boiling rhubarb in sugar water before using it makes the green rhubarb so much sweeter!  Plus, I found that you can substitute other fruits with this same recipe…I took out half the rhubarb and replaced it with blueberries for a tangy mix.

I made a pineapple rhubarb pie for the county fair last month using this recipe from Cooks.com.  It was kind of fun, I hadn’t entered anything in a fair since I was in 4H as a kid.  It did pretty well, but I think I could have made the top crust look cuter!

Just today on the Craft magazine blog was a link to a yummy looking recipe for blueberry crumb bars from Smitten Kitchen and I’m thinking I might have to try that one out tomorrow!

Our cucumber plants are growing like crazy, so I need to learn how to properly can pickles.  But until I do, I found a recipe for refrigerator pickles here.  And another great way to use up cucumbers is to mix them with your ranch dressing and some fresh dill to make a dip.

If anyone have any other great recipes to share, please leave them in the comments!