Our Texas Playroom Addition

Recently I have been obsessed with something called New Braunfels Mom's Shop 'N Swap. It's like a craigslist for New Braunfels' moms. You can post to sell something and if it's fairly cheap just leave it on your porch and send the address privately to the person requesting to buy. They pick up and leave the money under your door mat.  It works great because being a busy mom I don't have all the time in the world to put together a garage sale, but I can find the time to post a couple items here and there and when they sell just place them on my porch.

I have been obsessed with the Shop 'N Swap because it's a great way for me to find decor and furniture for our house really cheaply. The people on there are looking for a good deal, so the sellers know they need to post it for a good deal or it won't sell. Hence, I get some killer deals on awesome stuff!!

Want to know my latest find?
---Of course you do!

Well, I was browsing one day and came across something that made me smile, something that warmed my heart, something that made me happy to be a Texan.....a roping steer!

Yes, we found a used roping steer for a smoking deal! When I lived in Arizona there was no way you'd find a used roping steer, well at least not in Phoenix. Now though, we have an awesome roping steer set up in our playroom and we are loving it.  Of course this meant I had to shift everything around once again to make room in our playroom for this big beast.

The main reason we got it, besides the fact that it makes my heart happy, is the fact that we have already been blessed with two horses.  So the girls on a normal basis sit side by side on their horses and race each other.  Well, now after we've rearranged the room they can sit side by side and practice roping the steer.

I also plan to put it outside as a fun activity when we host parties. We are always trying to use our house to bless our church family and whoever the Lord wills. Our playroom is set up nicely for the ages of kids we've had in our circle of friends from the church, however this last party we hosted we had a few new families and our age range went up to the teens. So, I thought that if this was set outside with some real lassos then they might have some fun and it's more fun to keep them outside which keeps the parents happy.

Here are a couple more pictures of the roping steer in action:

I used to have the cupcakery where the horses are and on the wall it was the sign for the 'Sweet Sister's Bakery'. Since, we changed it up I created the western show sign below.

Hope you've enjoyed another peek at our ever transforming playroom from here in Texas!

God Bless!
Heather Joy

Welcome To Our Pizza Parlor!

If you've seen my post about our cupcakery then you'll love to see how we've transformed our Sweet Sisters Bakery into our Italian Pizza Kitchen!

Like so many of my posts, I have the best intention of taking lots of pictures and then posting it that week. This one, like so many others just got lost in the business of life. However, I thought I'd take the time to show you what we did even though it's a bit late.

Last Summer we made our Summer Bucket List. If you haven't sat down with your kids ever to make one, I highly recommend it! It was fun just have the discussion and seeing how we could incorporate some fun time with friends, as well as family time. One of the ideas Kara came up with was to make pizza. I thought it was a great idea. Sure. I'll buy a couple english muffins, some cheese, some sauce and bam! Done! Until, we started talking about how maybe we could invite some friends over. And then it progressed into well maybe it would be fun if the kids could make pretend pizzas and serve each other and learn the different toppings and how a pizza is made and then they can make the real thing. How do these things always progress so far?....

Well, here's pictures of the kids making there english muffin pizzas at the party and keep reading to see how I was able to transform our cupcakery into the pizza place.

  

 

Anyways, so our pizza making day became a pizza party with our closest friends the Markley's and I was set on the task of somehow converting our cupcakery in to a pizza parlor.

I went for quickness, rather than quality on this one. The cupcakery took quite a bit of time and I didn't have enough time for that with our Summer schedule being kind of full.  So, I decided to use some plain cardboard as our crust and painted a red circle on one side (if they want sauce) and left the other side blank (if they didn't want sauce).

Next for the toppings I simply cup up the different shapes out of felt. You could always double up for durability but with the fact that this wasn't a permanent switch I just used the regular thin sheets of felt and it's held up fine.

The toppings we included were: green peppers, onion rings, black olives, pineapple, mushrooms (or you can call them marshmallows like my girls if you want) and red tomato slices (or for our non- vegetarian friends you could use them as pepperoni). I also added a old spice container and labeled it Pizza Seasoning.

I used some ivory or cream colored yarn as the cheese and just cut it up into reasonably sized pieces.

For the fun part, I asked a friend who works for Papa Johns if he could get me a couple empty boxes and he gladly did. We have two sizes (the cardboard crusts match the two different sized boxes).

That's pretty much the details so let me just show you some more pictures so you can get the full picture.

 

 

 

 

Oh, and here's a close up of the sign I made for our Italian Pizza Kitchen!

 

I hope you've enjoyed our bakery transformation. Let me know if you have another idea of what we should transform our bakery into.

Happy Pizza Making and God Bless!
Heather Joy

P.S. I recently made some bakery menu's to go along with our cupcakery but I have plans to make a menu for our pizza kitchen as well. I'll post a link when that happens.