February 14, 2016 by Krista

Happiness is Homemade Link Party 02/14

Hey Friends! Welcome back to another week of Happiness is Homemade! And Happy Valentine’s Day! We’re just enjoying some time together as a family today and we’re pretty excited about the three day weekend… Yahoo! Perfect for a party if you ask me! So, let’s get this going, shall we?!

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Welcome back to another fabulous week at Happiness is Homemade Link Party!! We have loved seeing all the great links this past week and our party is getting bigger and bigger!

Hope everyone has a fun and nice Valentines!

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February 11, 2016 by Krista

Truth or Dare: Couple’s Edition

We don’t do big Valentine’s Day outing plans, because our anniversary is 6 days before, but we still like to do a little something. We like to spend time together and that’s usually the gift we try to give each other. We’ve also been together for (almost) 8 years. While things are still amazing, we like to spice things up from time to time. Something along the lines of intimacy we actually make time for, not a quick encounter we squeezed between homework and dinner preparations or as we’re both tired and crawling zombie-like into bed. Truth or Dare: Couple’s Edition is the little game I came up with for us to play this Valentine’s Day.

TRUTH OR DARE: COUPLE’S EDITION

The preparation on this is incredibly simple. You just have to print and cut. Seriously, that’s all there is to it.

Materials:
– Truth or Dare Download Cards (Disclaimer: You’ll have to click through the link to see the cards. Given the intimate nature of some of them, I haven’t included a photo of them in this post. If you want to check them out, just click the link.)
– Paper Cutter or Scissors

Directions:
– Download the game cards and save the file to your computer.

– Print the Truth or Dare Cards. The link above is to the trial pack of cards. You’ll get 16 cards to try out the game with. If you like it, you can get the full game from my Etsy shop. Not all the cards you see in the photos are included in the free download.

You’ll want to print the cards double sided; and, if you can print them on card stock, that’ll be even better. My printer has a two-side print setting, which eliminates the guess work of re-orienting the paper in the tray to print the back side. If you have that feature, use it! It’ll be so much easier for you!

If you don’t want to print the cards at home, you can have them printed locally almost anywhere you can make copies – I’m thinking office supply and copy stores. After you download the file to your computer you can upload it to whatever site you decide to get it printed from.

– Cut the cards apart with a paper cutter or scissors.

You are now ready to play!

PLAYING TRUTH OR DARE: COUPLE’S EDITION

If you’ve never played Truth or Dare before, here’s the rules. One player draws a card and asks the other player “truth or dare?” The other player chooses if they would like to answer a question in total honesty or perform a dare. The first player reads which ever option the second player chose. The second player then answers the question or performs the dare. Then players switch roles and the second player draws a card and asks “truth or dare?” and play repeats as many times as you want.

Some helpful tips for a game you’ll both enjoy:
– This is something you’re gonna want to set aside some time for. It could be some good organized foreplay.
– Stop whenever you want… to finish other things. The idea is to spend some one-on-one with your sweetie.
– The only change to the original rules I would make would be to encourage you to look through the cards and make sure you’re both comfortable with everything. In the original rules, truths are usually embarrassing and dares are usually embarrassing and/or dangerous. The bedroom is not the place to try to embarrass your partner. Make sure you both feel comfortable with the game or it won’t be enjoyable!

WANT MORE TRUTH OR DARE: COUPLE’S EDITION?

If you want more dares and more questions, I have an expanded version of the game in my Etsy shop. There is a blank template included so you can write in your own questions and dares to make the game totally your own. There’s even a box you can put together to store your game in. So, if you’re looking for a quick and super easy gift idea, check out my TRUTH OR DARE: COUPLE’S EDITION in my Etsy shop.

February 9, 2016 by Krista

Chocolate Dipped Strawberry Sugar Cookies

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #SendSweetness #CollectiveBias

Valentine’s Day has never been a holiday just about romantic love for me. Growing up, my mom always made sure we knew that we were loved and that, in later years, relationship status didn’t matter on Valentine’s Day. It was a day to express your love and gratitude for everyone who was special to you. And that’s something I fully intend on passing on to my kids. We are tightening the budget around here and so that means homemade Valentines this year. Since Valentine’s Day falls on Sunday and we will be going to church, Big J asked if we could make something for his Primary teacher. He’s had the same teacher for the last three years and he adores her. I headed out to Walmart and picked up the new M&M’s® Strawberry and decided to make some Dipped Strawberry Sugar Cookies to show his teacher that we are so thankful for the time and effort she puts into teaching our hooligan son every week and that he really does love her.

DIPPED STRAWBERRY SUGAR COOKIES

Print This Recipe

Dipped Strawberry Sugar Cookies

Prep time: 20 mins

Cook time: 60 mins

Total time: 1 hour 20 mins

Serves: 3 dozen cookies

Kick up your favorite sugar cookies with a fun chocolate-strawberry twist.

Ingredients

1½ cups sugar
¾ cup butter, softened
2 eggs
4½ tbsp milk
¼ tsp salt
3½ tsp baking powder
4½ cups all purpose flour
1 tsp strawberry extract

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350ºF.
Mix the sugar, baking powder and salt together in a medium bowl.
Add the eggs, butter and milk. Mix until smooth.
Add the flour, one cup at a time, and mix until dough is formed.
This dough can be rolled into 1-inch balls and placed 2 inches apart on a lightly greased cookie sheet.
If you want to cut shapes from the dough, lightly sprinkle the counter top with flour and roll the dough out until it's approximately ¼" think. Then, cut it with cookie cutters and place the dough on a lightly greased cookie sheet.
Depending on the size of the cookie, bake for 5-10 minutes. If you want a chewy cookie, your cookies should NOT be golden anywhere - even the bottoms. See the photo below. If you like a crispy cookie, bake until the tops are lightly golden.
Cool cookies 3-5 minutes on the cookie sheet and then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.

This is my go-to sugar cookie recipe. The cookies are soft and chewy and just perfect. But, what does every great sugar cookie have? A great topping, right? Well, I wanted something easy and delicious. And what goes better with strawberry than chocolate?! So, I dipped those cookies in some chocolate and they were amazing. It was super easy, but they turned out great!

I started out melting the chocolate as it directed on the package in a glass in the microwave, stirring every 30 seconds until smooth. When the chocolate was melted, I just hand dipped my cookies, set them on wax paper to dry and then decorated them before the chocolate hardened to hold the candies on. Quick tip: use a fork to help spread the chocolate around where you want it when it starts to cool enough that it doesn’t move around very easily anymore. You won’t have to reheat as often – which can make the chocolate crystallize.

I crushed up a few of the M&M’s® Strawberry to top the cookies with. They were a little bigger than I had hoped they would be so I crushed them up a bit with a meat tenderizer. I tried some with whole M&M’s® Strawberry too and they were fun, but it was kinda hard to eat them by the time I got my whole mouth around the cookie and the candy.

While I was at Walmart, I found these awesome DOVE® chocolate tins and some super cute American Greetings® cards. There was a great card for Big J’s teacher and one for Mr Napping that was just perfect… A dad of three boys is definitely a superhero! And the way to my man’s heart is definitely through his stomach… and my sweet tooth won out on this one. He will be getting (and sharing!) the DOVE® chocolate tin this weekend. Walmart became my one-stop shop for Valentine’s Day, which was super nice! I loved all the awesome options all in one place.

You can check out even more amazing ideas with M&M’s® Strawberry, DOVE® and American Greetings®! What will you make this Valentine’s Day?

February 7, 2016 by Krista

Happiness is Homemade Link Party – 02/07

Hey guys! It’s party time again! Welcome back on this Super Bowl Sunday! So, confession… I don’t even know who is playing this year… I know, how do I not know this with so much testosterone in my house?! I will be looking up the awesome commercials and we will be eating some yummy food. And I’ll be checking out all the awesome links here on Happiness is Homemade! And that’s what my Super Bowl Sunday is looking like… so let’s get this party started!

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Welcome back to another great weekend with us at Happiness is Homemade!!

Wahoo for SUPER BOWL SUNDAY!! Who are you all rooting for?? Me…I’m rooting the awesome food that will be served…LOL

We are SO EXCITED to announce that Cathy from A Peek into my Paradise will be staying connected to the blogging world! We are thrilled to have her back with us!!

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February 3, 2016 by Krista

How to Create Your Own “Between the Sheets” Bedroom Game

Hey! I’m so glad you’re here! Are you looking for a steamy at-home date night? Who isn’t, amiright?

Well, you’re in the right place, because this date night is all about hot and steamy. It’s perfect for anniversary celebrations, especially if you’re on a tight budget. Hey, romance ain’t dead, even if the money tree is bare.

I had planned to do this Between the Sheets Bedroom Game date night on Christmas Eve, but that didn’t work out. And I had a terrible time getting my hands on a gift for Mr. Napping this past Christmas – three different gifts fell though – and I ended up giving him our Between the Sheets Bedroom Game.

We played one night shortly after he got it and it was a magical night, indeed. You can check out how I set up our date at the link above. Today, I’m going to walk you through making your own Between the Sheets DIY Bedroom Game.

Disclaimer: If hot and steamy is not what you’re looking for, you might want to skip this post ’cause we’re about to fog up the windows…

BETWEEN THE SHEETS
DIY BEDROOM GAME

Materials you need to create your own Between the Sheets Bedroom Game:

Fitted Sheet – it should fit your bed and be a light color
Fabric Markers – these are the kind I used
Plastic drop cloth – a precaution in protecting your mattress
Something you can use as a template – I traced a dinner plate and a saucer on pieces of cardstock, cut them out and used the cardstock templates as my pattern to create spaces on my game board.

Directions for creating your own Between the Sheets Bedroom Game

1. Lay out the plastic drop cloth on your undressed bed. This will protect your mattress from any bleed through from the markers. I didn’t have any issues with that, but I figured I’d take a better safe than sorry approach. If you don’t lay down the drop cloth, and the markers bleed through onto your mattress, I’m definitely gonna say I told you so.
2. Pull the fitted sheet, over the drop cloth, onto your bed.
3. Decide what to use as a template for your game board spaces. I just traced one of our dinner plates and a saucer onto pieces of paper. You can get fancy if you want, but I just went with simple circles.

4. Use the fabric markers to trace the template on to the sheet, creating a path from the top of the sheet to the bottom. I had four rows of spaces on my board. I made a little trail of dots from one space to the next so we didn’t get lost.

5. Now comes the fun, and hard, part: filling in the spaces. This is where you can personalize it to your relationship. Get as risque and steamy as you are comfortable with. Shortly after we got married, Mr. Napping and I discovered that both our love languages are physical touch. So, I focused on that in our game board. If you don’t know which love language you and your mate speak, I highly suggest you find out. It has helped so much in our relationship to know how to make the other feel loved and appreciated. It also helps that we are both the same, but we just got lucky there!

The best part of the Between the Sheets Bedroom Game

6. This was what really made the night! I included bonus spaces in our Between the Sheets Bedroom Game. They were the large circles and each was labeled “BONUS BOX”. If one of us landed on those spaces, we got to choose a box; in which I had little mini-games for us to play. You can get some ideas for these if you click that yellow button below. I had a box for every space, but we were allowed to choose any box we wanted. That was fun. Seriously, don’t skip this part.

** I had a reader send in a suggestion with an alteration they made to their game. She says:

“I also included a “finish” bonus. Something fun for him and something fun for me, depending on who ‘won’. Obviously this had to be tailored to us personally, but I added extra fancy wrapping to this one for the big finale.”

I love this idea! What a fun way to celebrate your win, especially if you’re both competitive. Thanks for the suggestion, Jessi! **

7. Then I wrote out the rules. I didn’t want to have to make up rules as we were playing, because the focus was supposed to be on the two of us during game play. Having the rules already written out made it so we could focus on us, not how to play the game.

The rules included:

set time limits for each activity
who was the giver and who was the receiver
described game play and what happened when one of us landed on the BONUS BOX spaces.

Our rules were:
1. Players roll a dice and move along the board in turn.
2. Players have 2 minutes on each space they land on until the next player gets a turn to roll. Everything must STOP at the end of 2 mins.
3. If you land on a bonus box you get to open a bonus box! Follow the directions inside the bonus box to complete the task.
4. The winner is the first player to land on the finish space. Both players are then obliged to ensure their opponent finishes in a satisfactory manner.

What I would do differently next time I create a Between the Sheets Bedroom Game

That’s all there is to making the game. It’s pretty easy and, truly, the difficult part is coming up with things to write in all the spaces. You could leave some blank if you wanted, but I decided I wanted lots of intimate opportunites. Follow the directions on the fabric marker packaging to set the ink. I waited 48 hours and then washed and dried our sheet, per the directions on my fabric markers.

Having played it once, I can say now, I wish I would I have put in a few more spaces that weren’t so physically involved with more sensitive areas of the body. It was awesome and I loved it, but it wasn’t something I could have enjoyed again the next day. We ended up on “Twin Time” far more often than I expected and the girls were a bit tender the next day… Maybe consider a few “skip a turn” spaces to give yourselves a little break and make the other spaces more enticing! Despite that though, I absolutely can’t wait to play again. In all honesty… the sheet is still on our bed… Oo-la-la!

Don’t forget to download your Bonus Box ideas! Hit that button below for the download page!