An Irish blessing.

Just a little something I whipped up in Photoshop. Hope you are having a beautiful Sunday!

A birthday card for the kiddos (printable).

I love to give handmade or semi-handmade cards when I have the time, and I try to encourage the children I care for to do the same thing. A few weeks ago, the boys' cousin turned four, and I had them color these cards for him. They had a blast making their cards their own, and the birthday boy thought they were pretty cool too.

Click on the picture to see it full size. Then save it to your desktop, and print it so that the image fills one sheet of card stock (makes 2 cards).

I used a dotted font for the words, so that the boys could practice tracing the letters. You can add the birthday girl's or boy's name to the front using your computer, or by hand after printing. Give your child age appropriate supplies that they will have fun decorating with. We used markers and stickers (the 3 year old opted for mostly markers, and did a nice job tracing the letters and writing his name inside; the 2 year old colored a little, then went crazy with the stickers).

I hope you enjoy these as much as we did :) I link up to these parties.

Where has the summer gone (update)?

Egads! I can't believe summer vacation is almost over! Matt starts classes again tomorrow, and the boys that I tutor go back to school next week. I've been so busy, I just don't know where the time has gone (confession: I still haven't fully unpacked my suitcase from when we went to Colorado back in June). I'm hoping that I will have more free time for blogging and Etsy in the fall, but I'm not sure where it will come from ;)

Now, don't get me wrong, it has been an absolutely fabulous summer, and I've been loving every minute of it (which is probably why it has gone by so fast). We got to spend a lot of wonderful time with family, did a little traveling, and spent lots of time outside in the sun. This month, I've been to the beach almost every day with the kids I nanny, and when we're not there we have the slip and slide out in the yard (I know, I know, it's a rough life, lol).

Matt's mom drove down from LA this weekend, and we got all dressed up and went out to dinner last night at Donovan's Steakhouse (it was seriously the best steak I've ever had!).

With all this fun, I have been seriously neglecting my computer, but there are a few things to note. I'm very excited to be sponsoring a giveaway over on Addicted to Recipes hosted by Dawn in honor of her birthday (did you notice the button in the sidebar?). She'll be hosting multiple giveaways each day all week! Be sure to check it out, I know I'll be entering all the other giveaways!

I bought my domain name (MdoubleMcrafts.com) a few weeks ago. In all honesty, it has been sort of an up and down experience. I was ecstatic at first, and I thought I had set up the blog forwarding, but then I realized the links weren't working (a huge "Thank you!" to Jen from Four Marrs and One Venus testing it out for me). I played around trying to fix it, and just made the problems worse and worse, so I gave up and tried to put it back to normal for the time being. Instead I completely "broke" my blog, and didn't realize it for four days, d'oh! I did finally get it back to normal (as you can see), and for now I'm leaving it like this. It's inexpensive to register a domain name, and at least I know that I have my address and nobody else can use it for the time being (but if I had to do it again, I think I would use GoDaddy, based on what I've heard from other bloggers). Some day when I'm feeling patient, I'll sit down with my laptop and work it all out. For now, I'm happy with how it is. 

What have you been up to this summer? Are you ready for autumn, or do you wish that summer could last for ever?

I bought my blog domain!

I'm so excited to announce that I just bought my domain name! You can now type in MdoubleMcrafts.com to get to my blog :) Don't worry though, you can still find me at mdoublemcrafts.blogspot.com too.

this is me right now

Lemon jalapeño shrimp skewers (recipe).

I made these shrimp skewers when my brother-in-law and his fiance were here last month, and they were a huge hit. They were also fast and easy to make (the hardest part is cleaning the shrimp). This is another recipe from Cook's Country (I am absolutely loving my subscription. Thank you again Grandma!). 

These are supposed to be made on the grill, but we were so busy chatting and hanging out that it was dark out by the time I got around to making dinner. To make life easier, I cooked them on our little George Foreman grill inside. They were delicious done this way, but I suspect they'd be even better done over real fire to get that nice caramelized browning. 

Baked chicken imperial (recipe).

This is another recipe from Cook's Country that I made recently, and it was another winner. Seriously, everything I've ever made from this magazine has turned out fabulous! This dish has a fancy feel to it, but it's very easy to make, and can even all be done in one pan. I made these for Matt and I, so we saved two of the chicken breasts for the next night, and I must say they make delicious leftovers.

I served these with some simple sautéed zucchini, and fresh bread to soak up the sauce. Fantastic! Go make some for dinner tonight - while your busy, I'll be here trying to figure out where the heck July went to!

A day at the beach (update).

It's been busy around here lately! The family I nanny for just had another baby, so I have been working A LOT. Additionally, my brother-in-law and his fiance visited southern California for a few weeks; they came down to San Diego a few times and stayed with us, and we drove up to LA one weekend to see them. What this all adds up to is that I haven't had much time to get stuff done (or to sleep, but that's what coffee is for).

Last Saturday was the first day in a long time that I didn't have to do anything or go anywhere. I took one quick look at my to-do list, and said "screw it, let's go to the beach!" It was the right choice.

At the top of the trail with two cliffs between us and the beach

We were planning on going to Torey Pines so that we could hike and go to the beach, but the parking lot was full. We decided to make an adventure of it, and went in search of a new beach that we'd never been before. I looked at my GPS, said "let's try here," and we did. We had no idea what to expect, but it was fantastic. We still got to hike a little bit, and the beach was almost deserted. The trail wasn't too difficult, but enough to give the day a sense of adventure (it's not somewhere I'd try to take children, that's certain). 

Time for a refreshing swim after the trek

The waves were the perfect size for swimming, and the water wasn't too cold. The sand was soft and fine, and we had lots of space to ourselves. After a few hours of frolicking and relaxing we were ready to head back to civilization. We stopped at Cozymel's on the way home for a late lunch (and a few margaritas of course). I woke up Sunday feeling more refreshed than I have in a long time!

Climbing back up the steps that have been carved into the stone

I'm still going to be very busy for the foreseeable future, but at least my batteries are recharged. I have some awesome new recipes to share, such as Lemon Jalapeno Shrimp Skewers. I'll post as regularly as I can, but no promises ;) Thanks for understanding!