3 Ingredient Peanut Butter Bars (with free 'fall' leaf cut file!)

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #SpreadTheMagic#CollectiveBias

The good news: we have quite a bit of Halloween candy hanging out in our pantry right now. 

The bad news: all the good stuff is long gone and we're left only with the varieties no one wants to finish off. I'm looking at you, candy corn. Candy corn an embarrassment to other self-respecting candies. I hated it passionately until a college roommate taught me to mix it with salted peanuts . . . suddenly, it was transformed into something entirely different. I gained a new respect for candy corn that day. It is abominable on its own, but can actually be pretty great mixed with peanuts.

If you have leftover candy corn that you don't know what to do with, here's the solution. Turn those awful little candies into some of the yummiest peanut butter bars you've ever tasted--delicious, rich, quick, and easy. And yes, it's hard to believe, but there really is candy corn hiding in there. 

Yep, only 3 ingredients necessary for these yummy bars. You don't even have to turn on your oven, and you'll spend all of 5 minutes getting this ready. (Although, fair warning, you do have to let it cool and harden before you can dig in.)

The best part is, they taste unbelievably similar to some of my favorite chocolate and peanut butter candies. So even though all the best Halloween candy is long gone, its spirit lives on in these bars.

Our 3 ingredient line up for these bars: candy corn (which we'll melt down into a gooey and delectable concoction), chocolate chips for a creamy top layer, and Peter Pan's NEW Simply Ground peanut butter, which I picked up last week at Walmart. 

Now, I have a long-running love affair with peanut butter. I descend from a proud family tradition of experimenting with every nut butter we can find, fighting over who would get the last peanut butter candy, occasionally making our own nut butters at home, and eating it all straight from the jar with a spoon. And this new peanut butter? Well, color me impressed. 

Because creamy peanut butter? Great. Can't get enough. Crunchy peanut butter? Awesome. But I'm not sure I've ever before had a store bought peanut butter living in that perfect middle ground between creamy and crunchy, with a wonderful freshly-ground texture that isn't too crunchy nor too smooth. And it's absolutely perfect for these bars--I've experimented with both creamy and crunchy when making this recipe in the past, and while they've always turned out yummy, neither has offered quite the texture that I wanted. The Simply Ground gives the bars just enough texture and crunch (and without having to stir it in the jar--I hate doing that). Just take a look at it.

See what I'm saying? Love it.

Anyway. Back to the bars. 

You'll microwave a bowl of candy corn, stirring every 30 seconds or so, until it's melted and smooth. Don't overheat it! 

Then stir in the peanut butter until smooth. You'll want to work quickly, as the melted candy corn will start to harden back up quickly as it cools.

Spread it into a 9x9" square pan, lined with foil and lightly sprayed with nonstick spray. I find it easiest to lightly spray my hands and just use my fingers to press and spread it into the pan.

Melt the chocolate chips in the microwave, and spread it over the top of the bars.

Pop it in the fridge to cool. When the chocolate has hardened, use the foil to remove the bars from the pan, peel the foil away and toss it out, then cut into pieces.

I had to get some of this goodness out of the house ASAP, so I packaged some up to deliver to neighbors. I love the festive fall orange color of the bars, so I echoed that with an orange fall leaf gift tag, wrapped around each package with twine.

I love how easy it is to package up a cute tasty gift for neighbors. I designed the tag in Silhouette Studio, and cut them out with my Silhouette. If you'd like to make these tags yourself, you can download the cut file for your personal use and enjoyment HERE! 

1. Just cut the design with your Silhouette and remove the letters.

2. Place some bars in a bag, and wrap the top shut with twine. 

3. Punch a hole in the top of the leaves (I realized too late I could have had the Silhouette cut the hole for me--d'oh!), and thread a leaf onto the twine, then tie off in a knot.

So simple, but so cute!

3 Ingredient Peanut Butter Bars

1 cup candy corn
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup milk chocolate chips

Line a 9x9" square pan with foil, and spray lightly with nonstick spray. Set aside.

In a medium-size microwave-safe bowl, melt candy corn in the microwave, removing to stir every 30 seconds. Don't overheat the candy corn--heat it just until melted. Add peanut butter and stir to combine. If you're having a hard time mixing it in thoroughly, heat the peanut butter and candy corn combo in the microwave for a few more seconds to loosen it up.

Pour candy corn and peanut butter mixture into prepared pan and spread evenly. It's quite thick and sticky, so this could be a bit tricky, but the easiest way to handle it is to spray your hands with nonstick spray and then press it into place.

Melt chocolate chips in the microwave, stirring every 30 seconds until smooth and creamy. Spread evenly over bars. Refrigerate bars about 1 hour or until hardened. Remove from pan, remove foil, and cut into pieces.

___________________________________________________

And more good news: if you want to try out new Simply Ground peanut butter, you can grab a digital coupon HERE to save some money on your purchase! You can find it at Walmart in the aisle with peanut butter and other condiments.

(Cute little shopping buddy not available for purchase.)

What peanut butter flavor fits your personality? Take this quiz to find out!

DIY Curious George Shirt (Be a Good Little Monkey!)

My kids are hardcore Curious George groupies. And that's totally fine with me. I think it's such a cute show. Let's be honest, there are some kids' shows that are just awful to watch, or even to hear in the background while you're busy doing other stuff. (Don't even get me started on Sid the Science Kid.) But I think Curious George is as sweet and adorable as they come.

Forrest was the original George fan in our house, and now Darcy is crazy about, too. I love seeing them sitting side by side to watch George together. And it's not uncommon at all to hear Forrest telling Darcy to 'be a good little monkey!' (If you don't watch the show, that's what the man in the yellow hat says to George in nearly every episode.)

So I figured Curious George inspired shirts were in order for my little monkeys.

I'd like you to know that Darcy ate 2 and a half bananas in the 5 minutes it took to get these pictures. Girlfriend is insatiable. They were meant to be props, not snacks! She is indeed part monkey.

Making an important call on his banana phone, I guess? I don't even know.

These cute tanks were really simple to make with my Silhouette Portrait and some heat transfer vinyl.

I started with store bought shirts--I picked these up from the toddler boys' section at Walmart. Then I downloaded a font that was as close to the Curious George font as I could find. It's called 'Wrexham,' and it is free at Urban Fonts.

Step 1: Lay out your design in Silhouette Studio. Make sure to measure your shirt so you know how large to make the words. I made my first line of words just shy of 6", and the second line between 7-8" to fit Darcy's shirt (18 months). For Forrest's (4T), I stretched the text box about 1" bigger. Remember to mirror image the design so that it cuts in reverse!

Load the heat transfer vinyl into the Silhouette and start cutting. Weed out the excess vinyl after cutting is complete, and you'll be left with just the design, cut backwards, on the transfer paper, as shown in picture 1 below.

Step 2: Lay out the design on your tank. The plastic backing is slightly tacky, which is awesome since you can play with the positioning and just press it down when you're ready so it won't slip as you iron. (And you can't see it in my picture there, but the plastic backing is, in fact, still there.)

 Step 3: Cover the shirt with a thin cloth and iron over it (follow the vinyl package instructions). I ironed it a little longer than called for, just to be safe.

Step 4: Slowly peel off the glossy backing to reveal your awesome completed shirt.

Forrest was really excited about his shirt, and eagerly put it on before the fabric had even cooled down from being ironed. And I expected Darcy to put up a major stink about having her clothes changed (because in her world, a wardrobe change is only a baby step away from child abuse), but as soon as she realized that her little shirt matched her brother's, she was frantically clawing at the outfit she was wearing so I could take it off and put this on her. I think she might like matching him. Much tears, many sad at the end of the day when the monkey shirt had to come off so the jammies could go on.

Yes, that picture's blurry and as such is probably not blog-worthy . . . but it was one of my favorites anyway.

Do you have any Curious George fans at your house, too?

Merry and Bright Blocks (Dare to Deck the Halls)

Here we are at our final week of Dare to DIY 2014! This week’s theme is Dare to Deck the Halls--make sure to hop over to Newly Woodwards today to share YOUR handmade holiday décor, and visit cohosts Décor and the Dog and Shift Ctrl Art to see their projects, too!

I always start the Christmas season with all sorts of grand decorating ideas. And every year, reality sets in before I even take a single step forward, and I realize I don’t have the time or the money or the energy to make all my big dreams happen. So we generally keep things pretty simple around here for Christmas. That works fine for me.

A week or two ago, my sister Bekah and I got together to do some Christmas crafts (thankfully, it went better than our Halloween craft day). We each did a spin on a ‘merry & bright’ decoration. Bekah’s project actually came out way, way cuter than mine, but I don’t have pictures of hers, so you’re stuck with my version of merry & bright today. I’ll see if I can take some pictures of her sign to show you this week. It’s adorable.

I found these two pieces of scrap wood in my garage, and thought they’d work perfectly to recreate this pin. I wanted to include a some gold in my Christmas decorating this year, so I started by painting one block white, and spray painting the other gold.

I used my Silhouette Portrait to cut the words out of vinyl, then transferred them to my blocks to use as a template. I used the gold spray paint to fill in the word ‘merry’ on the white block, and sponged white paint over the word ‘bright’ on my gold block.

After letting them dry (probably not long enough, actually—I suffer from a serious lack of craft patience), I went over them lightly with some sandpaper to give them a vintage look. And to hide the spots where I messed up. Distressing does wonders for hiding craft oopsies.

It adds a little glitz to my shelves for Christmas. Merry and bright, indeed.

Can’t wait to see what YOU made this year to deck your halls! Hop over to Newly Woodwards and add your project to the linkup!

Christmas Tree Wall Art by NewlyWoodwards // Merry & Bright Blocks by Maybe Matilda
Christmas Trees Sign by Décor and the Dog // DIY Mini Tree by Shift Ctrl Art

Dare to Entertain: Peppermint Chex Mix + DIY Favor Boxes

Welcome to week two of Dare to DIY, a holiday DIY challenge cohosted by me, Newly Woodwards, Décor and the Dog, and Shift Ctrl Art! Each week, we choose a holiday-related theme and encourage you to join in by creating your own project that fits the theme, and join it up to a link party hosted by one of us.

This week’s theme is Dare to Entertain—make sure to hop over to Décor and the Dog to join in the link party and share your project, and visit all the cohosts to see what we’ve come up with this week! As a reminder, next week’s theme will be Dare to Give Handmade, and the link party will be Monday, 12/8, right here on my blog. I hope you’ll join in and share your handmade gifts!

Gingerbread Man Place Cards by Décor and the Dog // Truffle Box Place Card by Newly Woodwards // Felt Tree Centerpiece by Shift Ctrl Art // Peppermint Chex Mix and Favor Boxes by Maybe Matilda

I always think Dare to Entertain is the hardest week. I’m not a big entertainer—I like the occasional small dinner party, but I really don’t enjoy putting on big events. And if given the choice between staying home with a book and attending a party—well, it’s hardly even a question.

I was thinking back on past Christmas parties (not thrown by me) to try and come up with an idea for this week, and remembered a Christmas party my sister-in-law Mindy threw a few years ago. She put out a big bowl of the most amazing peppermint Chex mix with white chocolate and candy cane bits, and it’s barely an exaggeration to say I ate about half of the bowl myself.

It’s become a regular Christmas treat in our house since that party, and I think it would make the perfect Christmas party favor for guests to take home after a holiday get-together, or (more realistically for me) a great gift to drop off at friends’ and neighbors’ houses around the holidays. I made my own little favor boxes to pack the Chex mix inside of, and let’s pretend I’m going to throw a Christmas party and hand these out. (I most likely won’t.)

First up, the goodies. Proceed with caution. This stuff is downright inhalable. So delicious and so Christmas-y and don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Peppermint Chex Mix
recipe from my sister-in-law, Mindy

5 cups Rice Chex
12 ounces (1/2 package) vanilla almond bark (or any white chocolate or vanilla candy melts)
1/2 cup crushed peppermint candy canes (5 normal-sized candy canes—I put them in a sandwich bag, wrapped it in a towel, and hammered it into oblivion)

Pour the Chex into a large bowl, and melt the almond bark according to the package directions. Pour the melted almond bark over the Chex, and add half of the crushed candy canes. Stir, stir, stir to evenly coat all the Chex pieces.

Pour them out onto a baking sheet lined with wax paper (or a Silpat) and spread out evenly. Immediately sprinkle with the remaining crushed candy canes. Set aside to allow the almond bark to set (about 20 minutes). When it has hardened, break into chunks.

Irresistible.

The Favor Boxes

I wanted to deliver some of the Chex mix to our neighbors, so I used my Silhouette Portrait to make easy favor boxes.

I used this box template from the Silhouette Online Store, and cut the pieces out of white cardstock. I wanted to use colorful, festive papers for my boxes, but I couldn’t find any I liked that were thick enough to make a sturdy box, so I first cut the boxes from heavy white cardstock, then glued colorful papers to the finished box.

Then I used my Silhouette to cut little gift tags (I used the gift tag that comes pre-loaded in the Silhouette library), as well as some letters that I glued to the tags, and tied them on with coordinating ribbon. (Just a note—I used hot glue to assemble my boxes, but it probably wasn’t the best choice, if you’re a craft perfectionist. It made for some bumpy edges. No biggie, just FYI.)

What did you make this week? Make sure to swing by Décor and the Dog to link up your projects!

How I Made My Vintage-Style Groceries Sign

Last week, I showed off my new farmhouse kitchen table (if you missed it, you can see it HERE). The love burns on—I’m crazy about it and think it’s perfect in our kitchen. Big purchases are scary for me. This one worked out; no regrets. (So far.)

Seeing the new table in our dining space gave me a push to take on a project I’ve been thinking about for months and months. And since I love the modern farmhouse look ( <—is that a thing?), I thought a banged up, vintage-style sign could be perfect above the window. I waffled for months and months, wondering how it should look and what vaguely food-related word or phrase could go up there, then wondered how on earth to make the dang thing. But with the dual arrival or my new kitchen table and new Silhouette, it seemed like the time had finally come to go for it. I loved the look of this sign I found on Pinterest, and used it as a model for my own. So here’s how I made mine.

I started with a piece of scrap wood that’s been sitting in our garage for at least a year. Who knows where it came from. I bet it’s happy to finally have a purpose (other than having me occasionally run over it by accident with my car). It’s about 12.5” tall, and it was quite long—I had Jeff cut it down to about 54”. I gave it a very light coat of white paint and left it to dry while I set up my design for the Silhouette.

I planned to use vinyl to create a stencil, and I wanted to cut the stencil all in one big piece, but the Silhouette cut mat is definitely nowhere near the size of the wood I was using for my very long sign. A little googling revealed much coolness: you can tell the Silhouette that you aren’t using the cutting mat, and just feed the vinyl straight into it. You can adjust the height to anything you’d like and cut a gigantic design. Super cool.

In page settings, I set the height to 67” (which was way longer than I needed, as you can see——I scaled it back after I finished designing). I also selected ‘none’ for the cutting mat, and just inserted the vinyl right into the machine, straight from the roll.

I downloaded a new font that I thought had a great vintage look (I got it from Dafont.com and it is called Market Deco), and set up my letters just how I wanted them to look, then cut them from the vinyl.

My original plan was to lay the entire vinyl piece over my board, all in one go. This turned out to be way more difficult than I had anticipated. I believe Silhouette makes a transfer material so you can easily move vinyl pieces where you want them to be—I don’t have any of it. My solution was to cut my letters apart, then place them on my board one at a time, lining up the cut edges like puzzle pieces. I still think this worked better than cutting the letters individually—even though I laid them one at a time, they were spaced exactly how I’d designed them, so I could line up the cut edges perfectly. It worked great, although some letters were a bit finicky (I screwed up royally trying to save time by doing the C and E together, and ended up having to recut those two letters and do them again). I applied them all to my board and ran my finger over all the edges one final time before painting, just to be sure they were pressed down tightly. Then I used a sponge brush to lightly sponge black craft paint over the letters.

I wanted this sign to look old and worn and battered, so I didn’t worry about getting it perfect. My paint job was thicker in some areas and thinner than others, and I liked it that way. I didn’t go back over for a second coat or try and make sure everything was evenly coated. After painting all the letters, I peeled the vinyl off. A little tip: a seam ripper works beautifully to get into tight areas or to pull up smaller pieces.

At this point it was almost midnight, so I went to bed and let everything sit overnight. In the morning, I gave the whole thing a go-over with some sandpaper. I considered dry brushing some watered-down black paint around the edges to give it more ‘wear’—I still may. Our walls are technically gray, but they came out so much lighter than I’d planned and basically look white. And the sign is white, so maybe a little extra wear/color around the edges would help it stand out more. Maybe I’ll go back and change that someday, but I’m not sure if I care enough to re-start a finished project. Either way, here are the sanded-down letters up close:

I attached some photo-hanging hardware to the back of the board, and Jeff helped me hang it up above the window. I sure like it.

If you wanna see more of our kitchen renovation:

‘Before’ house tour
Initial kitchen changes
Adding color
DIY farmhouse table

DIY Marauder’s Map Shirt (and free Silhouette template)

You’ll never guess what audiobook I’ve been listening to this month.

Go on, guess.

The correct answer is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and no one saw that coming at all.

The words needed to open the Marauder’s Map seem extremely appropriate for a certain someone I know—and I don’t want to embarrass anyone, so I won’t name any names, but it starts with a 4 and ends with an ‘est.’ This child is never not up to no good.

I’m still learning all the ins and outs of my Silhouette Portrait, but even with my beginner-level knowledge, this was still a very quick project to put together. And I wasn’t sure how well it would turn out, so I didn’t take any progress pictures, but it’s a simple enough project that hopefully you don’t need them.

I just set up the text in Silhouette Studio how I wanted it, then grabbed a stock image of footprints online and added them to the design. After cutting the design onto vinyl, I peeled the letters out and tossed them, then used the rest as a stencil. I mixed craft paint with textile medium and sponged it onto the stencil to create the letters and footprints (with a layer of cardboard inside the shirt to make sure you don’t get paint soaking through to the back, of course). I’ve seen people do painted t-shirts without using the textile medium, so I’m assuming it holds up fine without any issues, but I’ve always used the textile medium. In my experience, it gives a very smooth finished product and holds up beautifully in the wash. After peeling up my stencil piece, I just let the shirt air dry overnight, then ironed it to set the paint (your textile medium will give instructions on how to set it).

I’m happy to share the Silhouette Studio file here for anyone to use to make their own shirts (personal use only, please!)—I hope I’ve done this right. Please tell me if something doesn’t work properly and I’ll work on figuring it out :-)

Get the file for the template as shown HERE.

And get the file for the REVERSED template HERE.

10-Minute ‘Boo’ Sign + My Fall Decorating

I can almost hear my mom and sister laughing at the post title already—10 minute ‘boo’ sign!!! We got together last week to do some Halloween crafting, and I’ll just give you a quick run-down of our day . . .

Number of hours we spent together: 5
Number of projects Bekah planned to make: 4
Number of projects I planned to make: 0
Number of false starts and do-overs on just 1 single project: 50382
Number of pumpkin scones consumed: 6
Total number of projects Bekah completed: 0
Total number of projects I completed: 1

As a reminder, peek back up at the project plans—Bekah wanted to make 4 things, and I wasn’t going to make any. Yet somehow I ended up with the only project of the day, even though we spent 4 or 5 hours together. We are slow, easily distracted, very hungry crafters who take frequent snack breaks.

But—but! If we had actually had a plan for this sign, and known what we wanted it to turn out like, and just made the dang thing instead of fiddling around, changing our minds over and over about how it should look, messing things up and trying them again a different way, I bet it would have honestly been about a 10 minute project. So I’m just going to call it that. It’s just too embarrassing to title this post ‘My 4 hour ‘boo’ sign.’

At any rate, it was a very fun 4 hours (although there was minimal crafting involved), and I love how my little sign turned out. I used my brand spankin’ new Silhouette Portrait, and guys. This thing is fun. I have so many things I want to use it for, and so many ideas I’ve been hoarding and imagining for, quite honestly, a few years now. This is an exciting moment. But I figured I’d better start small while I get to know the machine and learn what it can do, and this sign was a great little intro. It’s a simple, fast, very basic project that turned out so sweet.

All I did was lightly paint a store-bought plaque (purchased from JoAnn with a 50% off coupon, so it came to about $4), then used spray adhesive to mount the letters on it (which I typed up and resized for my sign, then cut from cute paper with my Silhouette Portrait). I added two of these little spiderwebs in the corners, resized to fit perfectly behind my letters without too much overlap. A thick layer of mod podge over the whole thing, plus a little watered-down black paint sponged around the edges and flicked with a toothbrush over the front, and it was good to go!

For the little pumpkins, I just grabbed some cheap plastic pumpkins from a dollar store and slapped a few layers of white chalk paint on, then added some black dots with the non-bristled end of a paintbrush (for the small dots) and my fingertip (for the bigger dots). Makes for a cute little Halloween display, if I may say so myself.

Elsewhere in the house, I’ve stuck more to a fall theme instead of Halloween.

The window, lamp, Scentsy warmer, and wreath are always in this spot, so I just added a few little things to make it look a little more ‘autumn.’ I made the Halloween paper garland a few years ago, and am sort of amazed at how well it’s still holding up. I added candy corn to my DIY hurricanes (made with this tutorial), and tossed some moss and pumpkins (which I already had) into a planter that migrates throughout my house all year. A little burlap as a table runner and a leftover wood slice from my sister’s wedding this summer, and it looks all sorts of autumnal.

Outside, I got rid of my summer flowers in my planters (they were well past health anyway) and added some mums. I’m hoping they’ll fill out soon and look a little more lush. I think a fall wreath would look a little more appropriate on the door, but I haven’t seen any I’ve fallen in love with yet. The search continues.

If budget allowed, I’d have like 4 times as many pumpkins as you see here . . . but dang, those puppies add up fast! I’m now doubly impressed by porches that have dozens of pumpkins set out. Impressed once because they look so cheery, and again because they must have taken out a second mortgage to pay for them. Between the mums and the pumpkins, I spent about $20 out here. Inside, all I purchased was the plaque for the Boo sign, so my total money spent to decorate for fall is about $24. Not bad, I’d say.

How do you like to decorate for fall?