Sara Jane: Let's try this again...

We have had a busy week here in Oregon.  In the midst of all the busyness, I finally found my card reader so I'm going to try this headband tutorial, again.

Bea modeling the headband....the only way I can get her to stand still is to feed her.  So, excuse the mouth FULL of grapes.

For the first headband, all you will need is a piece of elastic, one inch shorter than the head it is intended to fit.  You can find decorative elastic at any craft/fabric store.  For this headband, I used a simple thin piece.  All I did was, after measuring and cutting the elastic, glued the two ends together using my glue gun.  It's that simple!

After the headband is on placed on the head, you can then clip flowers or bows directly to the headband.  This is perfect for new little babies who may not have a lot of hair.

 Whenever my girls wear these headbands, I always get compliments on them.  Try it!  They're soooo simple!

For the next headband, I grabbed one of our plastic headbands (you can buy then in packs of 2 or 3 at the Dollar Store), an inch of elastic (ribbon works great also) and, again, my glue gun.  First, I glued one end of the elastic to the underside of the headband.

Then, making a loop, glued the other side of the elastic across from the first piece.

Again, so simple!  I have found that these headbands are perfect for my daughter's ubber thick hair.  Regular flower clips don't stay put in her hair very well but when I attach them to this headband, not only does her hair stay out of her face (which is quite remarkable on its own) but the flowers NEVER fall out.  Perfect!

Before I go, I wanted to share one more little fun thing I did this week.  For Asher's birthday, we had lots of family over for dinner and dessert.  We had mac and cheese, lots of different sides including this one and yummy cake for dessert.  After all of my parties, I like to send my guests home with a little gift to say thank you.  I LOVE giving gifts away at birthdays because they are so unexpected.  For Asher's birthday, I made a "Construction Scene" cake that had lots of tractors on it.  Each child at the party got to take home one of the tractors.  It was perfect.  For the adults, I made some caramel, put it in a lovely jar with an apple on top and tied it in a ribbon.  I'm not sure what everyone else thought but I thought it was pretty cute.

The caramel is the caramel used in my caramel popcorn recipe...just in case you don't want to look there, here it is:

Caramel

Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter

2 cups packed  brown sugar

1 cup light corn syrup

2 T water

1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk

1 T vanilla extract

Directions:

Combined all ingredients, except vanilla, in a large sauce pan over medium high heat.  Stir until butter melts.  Watch the mixture carefully as it can burn quickly.

When the mixture comes to a soft boil, continuously stir for 3 minutes to dissolve the sugar.  If it comes to a rapid boil, turn down the heat so it doesn't splash out and burn you!

Take the pan off the heat and add vanilla.  Stir until combined.

Save any unused caramel in an airtight container in the refrigerator.  It saves pretty well for a few weeks.

There you have it folks.  Have a fabulous week!

Sara Jane