CLOSED!! Kristin's Kreations 3,000 Fan Celebration!

I have finally made it to 3,000 fans on my Facebook business page Kristin's Kreations! I never thought I would acquire such a large fan base in only 2 years. Thank you to everyone who has become a fan of my page and my "yarny" creations. I am hoping to improve on my work and get a lot more done. Of course, children and life in general tends to happen so I may get behind on my work, but thank you for understanding. I started this little venture as a way to show everyone what I could do with a hook and yarn, then sold a few items and decided it would be a nice way to bring in some extra money to help out with household necessities. I hope you will all stick with me to see what new items I will make in the future.

To celebrate this milestone of reaching this many fans, I have decided to host a small giveaway. Granted it's not a huge one, but I have never done a giveaway. Once I reach 3,200 fans I will close the giveaway and pick three winners. If I don't reach 3,200 fans by October 15 I will go ahead and close it then, since the prizes are Halloween-related. One winner will receive a candy corn hat like the one pictured below in their choice of size.

Another winner will receive a candy corn bow attached to their choice of thin elastic for a headband or an alligator clip.

And last, but not least, one winner will receive a coupon code to my Etsy shop worth 30% off any one item.

Here's how to enter:
1. Mandatory entry: leave a comment below letting me know that you are a fan of my page Kristin's Kreations: https://www.facebook.com/KristinsKreations011.

2. Extra entry: become a follower of my blog and leave a comment below letting me know that you have done so.

3. Extra entry: Visit my Etsy shop and let me know what your favorite item is. (This is not what you have to purchase if you win the coupon code since the code will be good for one year.)

4.Extra entry: share about this giveaway and comment below where you shared it.

The mandatory entry is the only one you are required to complete but you can get two additional entries if you do the others. Once my page reaches 3,200 fans I will enter each entry into random.org to pick a winner. Thanks and good luck everyone!

End of August Ready-to-Ship Auction

I just wanted to let all of my blog followers know that I have a Ready-to-ship Auction going on over on my Kristin's Kreations Facebook Page. I would post individual pictures of items up but I'm having to use my husband's laptop since the cord for mine broke. Here's a picture of just a few of the items being auctioned off: .
Everything starts at 75% off of the retail price. So head over and check it out! Auction will stay open until 11:59pm EST on August 31!

The Weekly Hook-up: What's been going on at Kristin's Kreations

So I thought (if I can keep up with it!) that maybe I would try to start giving you a weekly review of my crochet projects. This will give you a little insight as to what I work on, stuff that is for sale on Facebook and things that I have added to my Etsy shop. A couple of weeks ago I made 3 hats in a matter of 2 days. All of them were gifts, though, so I couldn't post them until this week.
The first of them is this newborn owl hat for a friend who is due with her first son any day now. Her and her husband decorated the baby's nursery with an owl theme so I thought this hat would be the perfect gift:

The next was one I made for a friend's daughter who turned a year old the day after my little Bentley had his first birthday. She LOVES Minnie Mouse!

This next hat is for another friend of mine whose baby shower I was invited to. She loves zebra print stuff and since she's having a girl I thought that this hat would make the perfect baby gift:

This next hat is one I tested for the pattern designer Desert Diamond Crochet. This is called the "Save the Hooters" owl earflap hat:
This hat is currently for sale over on my Facebook page along with these two hats made from beautiful handspun, hand-dyed yarn from The Fine Lime.

I have one more hat to share with you this week. This is a customer order. A friend of mine saw the first owl hat that I made and requested one in fall colors. I just love how it turned out:

And finally, newly listed in my Etsy shop is this patriotic bonnet made from some more beautiful yarn from The Fine Lime

Hello, it's been awhile...

I am so bad at this blogging thing. It's been too terrible long since I've posted anything. Today I thought I would do something pretty to my nails. I so rarely have time to do anything like this with a 12-month-old and trying to keep up with my crocheting.

Today I wanted to try the whole water-marble thing since I've only done it one other time. Water marbling isn't difficult, but you DO need a little bit of extra time. I would do a tutorial but there are so many out there. I learned from what I consider the best water marble tutorial: My Simple Little Pleasures. I chose 3 different blues. I believe all of these are discontinued but if you wanted to do all blues just find some that are similar.
Here are the colors I used from L to R: Loreal Wear Extraordinaire in Blue Metal, Nail Fantasies in High Tide, and Revlon Street Wear in Tide.

Here is how my right hand turned out (I still need to clean up the edges):


My husband likes this one the best:


And this was my favorite out of all of them:

Recipe of the Day...cookies!!

I have always loved to bake, but with taking care of my children, handling normal household chores, and trying to keep up with my crochet, I rarely have the time to bake. I have all of these great recipes I have pinned on Pinterest and decided to make a goal of trying out at least one recipe every couple of weeks. Today's recipe comes from Zoom Yummy and is for Chocolate Cookies with Nuts and White Chocolate Chunks. Since I want to share some cookies with friends and family, I doubled the recipe. Of course, I got in a bit of a rush to start baking and used the microwave shortcut method of softening my butter. Next time I will be more patient and just let my sticks of butter sit out for a bit. Also, I didn't sift my dry ingredients. I am thinking that either it was the impatience with the butter or not having a sifter that caused my cookies not to spread and flatten like they are in the picture. Even though they don't look as pretty they DO taste great, especially with a big glass of milk. The recipe says you can use pecans or walnuts but with the white chocolate I decided to use macadamias. Also, my grocery store did not have white baking bars with which to make chocolate chunks, so I just used white chocolate chips. Here's how mine turned out:

What a Busy Weekend!

So we had quite a busy weekend. It all started Saturday with my daughter representing her school in the Downeast North Carolina Regional Spelling Bee. I am so proud of my daughter. There were a total of 40 spellers. Kaitlyn made it to the fifth round where the word "jeremiad" stumped her. She ended up in the top 13 out of the 40. Way to go, Kaitlyn!!

After the spelling bee, we came back home to get everything ready for Sunday. My husband had his second drift event since getting the racecar running again. One of the drift series my hubby participates in is the Myrtle Beach Drift Series. MB Drift holds events monthly, with every other month being practice-only events. The practice events are great because the drivers get to go out there and just have fun and sort of do whatever. Here's my husband, Cody doing what he loves best:

Here are a few other pics I snapped at the event:

Oh yeah, I also finished a blanket for a customer over the weekend.

And lastly, my 8-month-old is cutting 4 teeth at once. You can't really see all of them here but you can see one of the front ones:

Funyun Chicken

I'm always trying new recipes and here lately, my husband and I keep seeing the commercials on T.V. with the french fried onion chicken. The other night my husband says, "We should try that, only with Funyuns". So Saturday when we did our grocery shopping we bought a bag of Funyuns for our new creation-to-be.
The first thing I did was cut the chicken breasts in half and pound them out to flatten them a bit. I also crushed the Funyuns, then added some different seasonings to them.

Next I dipped the chicken in ranch. Normally I would dip the pieces in a lightly beaten egg, but we are out of eggs at the moment so my husband suggested the ranch.

I then coated the chicken in the Funyun crumbs on both sides, making sure I covered all of the bare spots.

Then I placed the pieces in a baking dish and baked it in a preheated 375° oven for 25 minutes or until chicken is done.

Just a quick update!

I had every intention of a blog update over the weekend but we got just a bit busy. Well here it is Tuesday and I am just getting to this. Not a whole lot to share except a quick alternative to the way you might cook your salmon patties or crab cakes, a little something we did over the weekend, and some recently finished crochet projects.

So first, the cooking tip. Do you like salmon patties or crab cakes? I love them!! No one else in the house eats them but every so often I will make up a batch of salmon patties to have as a snack. When my mother taught me how to make them, she showed me frying as the cooking method. I don't do much frying, mainly because I hate cleaning up after frying...LOL!! Here's an alternative...baking! I just mix up my ingredients like I normally would. I scoop out portions and put them in my muffin tin and broil for about 5 minutes. After 5 minutes I take them out and flip them over in the cups then broil for another 5 minutes. It's so simple, it's healthier, and is way easier to clean up.

As for our weekend, I have mentioned before that my husband does a type of racing called drifting. Well last May the engine blew up in the car so it has been down all of this time. Well I am happy to say that he has gotten the racecar running again and was able to get back on the track this past weekend. I know he's extremely happy and I am happy for him since I love drifting, too. Here he is doing what he loves.

Here are some pictures of my 8-year-old son and my 7-month-old this weekend. As you can see, the baby is sporting another hat made by mommy and it's quite appropriate for the upcoming holiday this weekend.

As far as my crochet projects, I finished these hats for a customer. I never thought the "boob" beanies would be SO popular, but I have about 6 of them I am going to be working on this week.

Most of my crochet time is being taken up by a blanket for a friend of our family who is going to have a new grandbaby soon, so I have been working hard to finish that up and will post up here as soon as it's done.
Have a great week everyone and thanks for stopping by!

Have you missed me?

Agghhh!! I have NOT been keeping up with my blog as promised. Shame on me! Haha! I have been crazy busy with customer orders for Kristin's Kreations.

Here's some of the projects I finished up (definitely not as much as I wanted to finish due to me feeling a little under the weather)...
First is the "boob" beanie I made for my son. I am going to make a bunch of these to sell for both breastfeeding awareness and breast cancer awareness as well as make some for my breastfeeding mother's group I attend monthly.

I also made this really cute mermaid tail photo prop for a customer...

...some headbands for one of my Etsy customers...

...and a hat for my 6-year-old son who had a birthday this past week (he LOVES Cars!).

I even managed to fit in a neat little breakfast idea that I got from Pinterest. They are just canned cinnamon rolls that I put right in my waffle maker.