Our Grand Finale!

By Lindsey Riley, Britny Burton, Mallory Jordan, and Mandy Whitaker (The Current Craft Staff)

With the fall semester at Ball State coming to an end, our blog will also be ending. We enjoyed sharing craft ideas and news with you and hope that you found our information useful and entertaining.

For our final post, we got together at Britny's house and made some gifts for our classmates from the sports blog Around the Huddle. We decided to make them decorative sports balls (a football and a few soccer ones). And to make sure all of us got to do one, we made an extra one to give to our professor.

What we did was go to our local Dollar Store and purchased the sports balls. They ranged between $1-3. Afterwards, we went to Hobby Lobby to purchase various sequences, hot glue guns, paint, and other elements to decorate them.

After getting our goods, we went to Britny's and got our crafting on! We decorated them however we wished, making all of them different from each other.

We had a great time together crafting and watching ABC Family's "25 Days of Christmas." Once we finished, we wrapped them up in various wrapping and tissue paper.

Let the gift giving season begin!

Anniversary Road Trip

By: Mallory Jordan, moderately crafty

November is a very exciting month for me. Not only because I celebrated my birthday with my last post; but, because exactly one week later I have another personal news story to blog about. Today is my 1 year anniversary with Mr. Justin Tillery. I am very giddy today because we are both celebrating our longest and most meaningful relationship. So, bear with me with the self-centered posts. After this week, I will go back to being more news worthy with my crafts.

Men are sometimes hard to buy for. Women have stereotypical gifts that most of us like such as perfume, lotion, candy, flowers, jewelry, a nice dinner and the list goes on. Men tend to be slightly more picky in the gift department. When I was struggling with what item I could get Justin that is both meaningful and something he would like, I remembered one of my mom's many mottos: sometimes the best gift is going and actually doing something to make new memories on a special day.

 Last spring semester, Justin was in London for a study abroad program for 3 months. During that time, he visited Germany and the famous Hofbrauhaus. He bought his dad a Stein  Maß beer mug and he has wanted one every since. Lucky for me, not only is there a Hofbrauhaus now in Chicago (a 4 1/2 hour trip), but now there is one 2 1/2 hours away in Newport, Kentucky! Although I knew the one in Kentucky would not be as awesome as Hofbrauhaus in Germany, I took a chance. The Newport Hofbrauhaus still has great reviews and we loved it!

There are a lot of fun things to do around the Newport Hofbrauhaus, so I made a small Google Map to chart out where our anniversary adventures could take us. That way, we could make a nice day out of our trip.

 

I took us there on Saturday and bought drinks and Justin his own beer mug. Naturally, I had to use my crafty skills to make the trip a little extra cute and special. For some reason, Justin loves trying to guess what his gifts are. So, I made a game out of it. The 1 year anniversary is the year of paper gifts. Although there are many different ideas for 1 year gifts, I had my own already planned.

Justin knew we were going on a special road trip, but I didn't tell him where. I decided to make 9 clues that got progressively easier. He got one every 12 miles of the trip to help him guess where we were going. I wrote the clues in cursive and added some heart details to be mushy about it.

Wait, this picture is missing something. You need to seal it with a kiss!

 

The first clues were very vague clues about the city we were going to. For instance, the first clue was that we were traveling south. The last clues were more specific about the place. I made sure to seal each of the envelopes with a kiss and number the outsides accordingly.

 

Overall, it was a great day. Not only did Justin get a present, but we got to make more memories together and he had the fun of guessing along the way.

DIY mugs and coffee cake before winter sets in

By Britny [self-proclaimed craft freak]

After  being sick for almost two weeks I am just about caught up on everything except of course this blog. I'll be putting up one for this week on Thursday, but to apologize to you all I'm including two crafts- yay you! First thing is first though, some daily knowledge to go with the craft.

Last year in America we had one of the weirdest winters in a long time. It was oddly warm and barely snowed in some areas that usually get a pretty decent amount of snow. It was the fourth warmest winter in recorded history and one of the least snowy according to ESPN Action Sports. Forecasters are predicting El Nino to set in this winter which would cause the northern and western areas in the United States would have milder and drier than normal weather while the eastern and southern areas will have colder and wetter weather according to Mike Steinberg, meteorologist for Farmer's Almanac. Some meteorologists are also forecasting for the winter-like weather to hit earlier than normal according to an article by the Huffington Post. Just like the weather changes though, so do the predictions.

To prepare you for the cold, or at least somewhat colder weather, I've decorated some lovely mugs that I'd like to share with you along with an awesome recipe for single coffee cakes!

Decorative Mugs

      Materials:

• mugs [I bought some plain ones from Goodwill]
• Sharpies
• ID: solid stick [I got this from Hobby Lobby for about $4.]

      How To:

• Pick a mug and set your oven on 400*F.
• Using Sharpies decorate your mug.

• Use the ID: solid stick and lightly go over your decorations. This is like a coating for it. Don't wipe it or it'll smear.
• Put the mugs on a cookie sheet bake for 15 minutes. Let them cool once they're done.

 Coffee Cake

I got this recipe off of Pinterest from Prudent Baby. The only thing I added to her recipe is the cinnamon sugar because I felt like it needed more cinnamon.

      Materials

• A MUG [maybe the one you just decorated :) ...hint hint]
• 1 tbsp butter
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 tbsp sour cream
• vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 2 tsp cinnamon sugar

AND for the yummy topping you'll need the following:

• 1 tbsp butter
• 1 tbsp flour
• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• 1 tsp cinnamon

• Place the butter into the mug and warm it for 8 seconds, just so it's softened.
• Add the rest of the ingredients. You don't need to use all of the egg, only about half so maybe make another single coffee cake for your significant other!

• Mix all the toppings in a seperate container and then put it on top of the mixture inside the mug.
• Put the mug in the microwave for 1 minute and 20 seconds and ta-da, the best coffee cake ever is now all yours!

Lindsey: The Crafting-Challenged Blogger

 (By Lindsey Riley)

Hello everyone! My name is Lindsey Riley and I am not the most craftiest person you will ever meet. I am better at creating with words than I am with textiles, ingredients, and all that jazz. I am, however, open to giving things a chance.

My goal with this blog is to keep you up-to-date with the latest and coolest craft ideas while sharing something new and news-worthy with you. It sounds like a challenge, but it's a challenge that I am willing to face. I don't think it will be that bad because I am fortunate enough to have Britny and Mallory to work with me on this blog.

Some ideas I have right now to share with you include recipes for my grandmother's holiday fudge and my mom's amazing pumpkin bread. As far as crafts go, I know we will be making a t-shirt scarf for sure, and I think we'll be making some cool inexpensive things to give as gifts at Christmas. Let's face it: the holidays are about three-ish months away. No time like the present to get started on presents! :D

Be sure to follow me on Pintrest. I plan on making various pin boards as they relate to what I blog about and what Mallory and Britny blog about, as well.