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That should be my title! Here are some of my latest projects.

The theme for my MOMS Club End of the Year Banquet was "If you give a Mom an M..." based of these books by Laura Numeroff. We had door prizes of movie tickets and a manicure gift certificate. I made these marshmallow pops as the party favor. They were a big hit!

Molly saw me dipping the marshmallows in chocolate and asked if she could dip her pretzels in it too. Good idea, Molly (and a great way to use up the rest of the chocolate)!

My dad always has a book with him, so I made him these scrap fabric bookmarks for Father's Day.

And I sent a few more pillowcases to ConKerr Cancer. I had received the wrong fabric in an order, so they let me keep it and suggested donating it. So, that's what I did.

On Monday night, I made cupcakes for a combined early birthday/Mother's Day celebration for my sister and mom.

There was a yummy surprise inside these cupcakes - chocolate chip cookie dough! My BIL said they were possibly the best cupcakes he'd ever had!

Michelle was excited to finally get some homemade vanilla extract after waiting months for it to ferment.

And by special request, I made these kitchen owl towels for her birthday.

For my mom, I embroidered all the granddaughters' handprints as a Mother's Day gift.

You can see a lot more pictures from our trip on Flickr starting here.

As I've mentioned before, I am a staff liaison at my church. I wanted to make a birthday treat for one of the staff members, so I tried my hand at English Toffee. Our friend, Eric, made some using this Cooking for Engineers recipe a while back and it was so good. Mine got a big thumb's up in our house too.

I also brought some to a few of my girl friends who happen to be in our own Biggest Loser club. Chad asked if I was trying to sabotage, but since I'm not trying to win this time, I called it "A friend bringing treats." Right?!

Molly's teachers asked parents not to bring in cake or cupcakes for birthday celebrations since preschoolers + icing = a big mess! So, in an effort to follow the rules yet still sneak in a bit of birthday cake, I made Mickey Mouse Cake Pops.

You've never heard of cake pops, you say? It's cake mixed with icing and covered in chocolate. How can you go wrong? It's not the most healthy treat, but oh it's yummy goodness! Check out all the amazing cake pops at Bakerella.com.

If you decide to make some, here are a few tips from a rookie:

• I melted my candy melts in a double boiler. When melted, I removed the boiler from the stove, but left the bowl of chocolate over the warmed water while dipping. This kept the chocolate warm and thin.
• The chocolate coating cracked on several cake pops during my trail run. After much googling, I realized that the cake balls were too cold before I dipped them. So, when I made the Mickey ones, I let the balls sit at room temperature for 15 minutes before dipping. I'm happy to report there were no cracks the second time around!
• I inserted the chocolate dipped lollipop sticks while the cake balls were sitting out. The coolness of the cake balls set the chocolate quickly so they were ready to dip.
• I had some streaking showing up while dipping my Mickeys. I thought it was because of the 2 Tablespoons of shortening I added to thin out the melted chocolate. But I realized it was from the ears melting! I used milk chocolate candy melts for the ears, and dipped in dark chocolate. So, if you make the Mickey Mouse cake pops, I'd suggest using the same kind of chocolate for the ears and dipping.

Now go make some of this yummy goodness for yourself!

For the third year, I hosted a Mardi Gras celebration with my MOMS Club. I enjoy sharing this New Orleans tradition with my Maryland friends!

The party favors were made...

And someone was very excited about eating king cake with her friends! I made a cream cheese filled, with cream cheese icing. Mmmm...

Molly welcomed everyone at the door saying, "Happy Mardi Gras Day!" The kids decorated their own king's crowns...

then donned their hats and enjoyed a piece of cake.

Each child left with Mardi Gras beads and a bag of cookies. I hope I lived up the the hype, as according to one friend, "It's the best event of the year!" I had to laugh when another friend said she'd been waiting years to come and was "starting to feel like [she] should camp out for tickets!"

This weekend, I helped host a "Sip and See" for my friend, Emily, and her baby girl, Camille. Sip and See's are not common here, so it was a great way for us to bring a little Texas to Maryland for Emily.

I volunteered to make these monogrammed cookies. (And unlike what some may have thought, the C was not for Chad or Christy!)

The guests were offered lots of tasty sweets while waiting to see the sweet baby!

Christy, myself, Kathy and Helen with the honorees, Emily and Camille.

I also made a bubble outfit and matching headband for Camille. Hopefully, it will fit her when the weather is warm. The pattern ran a bit bigger than I was expecting.

This week, Molly and I embarked on Operation Cookie Bake. I volunteered to bake cookies for both our MOMS Club Valentine's party and Molly's preschool Valentine's celebration - 6 dozen in total! I decorated half of them, and found inspiration here, here and here. I had a great time creating all my mini masterpieces!

February 3rd was Elmo's birthday. That evening I brought dinner to my friend, Emily, who recently had a sweet baby girl. I decided to make them a fun dessert in honor of the furry guy. They were a hit with the 3 year old big brother!

And don't worry, I did make cupcakes for my own 3 year old, just not quite as fancy. Though she loved them just as much!

I made homemade pure vanilla extract for my Mom, Mother-in-law and myself. Chad and I do not drink alcohol, so I got several funny looks when my family realized that I had to go to the liquor store and buy the vodka to make it!

If you are interested in making this too, I bought Madagascar vanilla beans and 8 ounce bottles from Beanilla.com. I made larger bottles than in the link above, so I used 4 beans per 8 ounces of Ketel One Vodka. The instructions on my tags were, "Use ½ amount called for in a recipe. Refill with Vodka as needed. Allow to ferment 6 weeks."

And there you have it, folks. My "Twelve Days of Christmas {crafts}" is complete. If you missed any of them, here's the list again for your reading enjoyment!

Appliqued kitchen towels
Monogrammed clipboards
Reusable travel lids
Coffee cozy
Number bean bags
Felt bracelets
Buttercup bags
Superhero cape
Knitting needle roll
Ribbon tree shirts
Dignity robes

This week I hosted a Drop In & Decorate party for my MOMS Club. The idea is simple: decorate sugar cookies, then donate them to a local non-profit agency. The kids had a great time using squirt bottles to decorate the sugar cookies.

The kids also painted icing on the cookies.

The moms joined in on the decorating fun too!

Decorating is serious business!

Throughout the day, over 40 kids and moms came to the house to decorate. Molly loved having so many friends to play with!

We had some creative designs created on the cookies.

Everyone had such fun decorating that before I knew it we were out of cookies! In the end, over 200 cookies were decorated. The dining room was so colorful and smelled heavenly!

The cookies dried overnight and the next day we wrapped and boxed them for donation.

I delivered 125 bags of sweet treats to the Grassroots Crisis Intervention Center.

The party was a huge success! Several moms talked about hosting a party with their Girl Scouts and military wives groups. The great thing about these Drop In & Decorate parties is that you can have 5 people or 40 people. If you are interested too, all the information and resources to do so is on the Drop In & Decorate website.