Cricut Love

I am loving my Cricut right now! I bought the Sweethearts cartridge at the Michaels Boxing week sale and tried it out last night. This is the first of three cards I made. I will try to get pics in the daylight of the other two, but thought I would post this one for now as I want to get it into the mail.

My dear friend Robin got engaged on December 13th. There are so many wedding images in the cartridge but I couldn`t resist this dress and sweet little hanger. I used my swiss dots folder to give it some texture and added a touch of ribbon, some Maya Road flowers and some rhinestones. The heart is from the same cartridge and the stamp is from Autumn Leaves. CS is (of course) PTI.

Thanks so much for visiting!!

Homemade Gifts

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! We had a nice day with family and my husband cooked an amazing meal. He loves cooking the Christmas dinner and I'm the sous chef. The only problem was we cooked WAY too much and even after sending lots home with our guests we have tons of leftovers in the fridge. Oh well, I guess I won't have to cook for a couple of days :).

Now that Christmas has come and gone I am feeling the need to get the house back in order and might take the tree and decorations down today. My family thinks this is very scroog-ish but at least I waited until the 27th this year. I once took the tree down on Boxing Day! I have already put all my Christmas craft supplies away. Don't get me wrong I LOVE CHRISTMAS and enjoy all the lead up to it, but once it's over my house just feels cluttery.

But before I completely exit Christmas mode I wanted to share with you a couple more homemade gifts that I did. The first picture is of vintage glass snap jars (found at a garage sale) that I filled with scented Epsom salts for my work BFs. The one with the orange tag is fruity bath salts that I paired with some bath/shower gel. The other one is a foot soak that I paired with some peppermint foot cream from the Body Shop.

This next picture is of cookie mix in a jar. I have seen these before at craft sales and have always wanted to try making some. I followed Bakerellas recipe and modified the m&ms. Some had m&ms and choc. chips and some were made just with the choc. chips. One jar contained 3 different kinds of choc. chips. I gave these to my sister and sisters-in-law and some neighbours.

Well that concludes the Christmas crafting for me. Thanks so much for popping by, I really love having a place to share my stuff and am so encouraged by the comments I have received. Now I'm off the take down that tree! LOL.

Christmas Baking

I love baking but when it comes to cookies I usually stick to our favourite three types, and I always leave the Christmas cookies to my M-I-L. Her kids love her date cookies, sugar cookies, and shortbread. She also makes the best tarts....I can't wait.

But this year I decided I wanted to make some Christmas-ey type cookies. When I mentioned I was trying gingerbread to my work pal Lorna she suggested gingerbreadman sandwiches. I found this soft gingerbread recipe online and paired it with a cream cheese/ icing sugar filling. They were really yummy.

I still wanted to try traditional gingerbread so I turned to my Martha Stewart 'Cookies' book. Her recipe makes a TON and unfortunately we don't like it very much. It is a little dark and bitter for our tastes. But I did have fun outlining their shape in Royal icing. This was the first time I have used Royal icing and I used Wilton squeeze bottles to apply it. I think I need more practice though ;).

The last cookies I tried were Martha's sugar cookies, which I have made before and love. I did my best with the icing on these ones. Yep, definitely more practice needed. By my husband was sweet and reminded me that people train for years learning to decorate baking.

I bagged up one of each large gingerbread and snowflakes to slide into gift bags I am giving to folks in my work group tomorrow, which also contain the glitter balls from the post below.

Here are the gift bags ready to go. I love Christmas!!

Well, that's that. Thanks so much for visiting!

Glitter Balls

I first tried this project two years ago with a few girlfriends. It is a simple craft...use re-inkers in clear glass balls with glitter to create pretty ornaments. I tried it again this weekend as a little 'extra' to go with the Christmas cards for my office mates (Charlene - look away!) and some neighbours.

I purchased the glass balls at Michaels. Here they are after applying the ink and glitter:

Here they are once I added a little embellishment and cord/ribbon:

Some close ups (sorry for the poor pictures):

And finally, packaged up ready for delivery:

This is a super easy, fun craft with lots of online tutorials out there for how-to. By my calculations I think they cost about $1.25 per ornament to make, which makes them an affordable gift as well.

Thanks for stopping by....have a great day!

Thanks for visiting!

Loonie Stampers Challenge(s)

There are so many great challenges out there in this blog world but who has time for them all? I am going to try to be more organized and participate in more of and them more often.

The one challenge I do try to always participate in is the Loonie Stampers Challenge, a weekly colour challenge put out by a group of friends, including my friend Charlene. These girls are all inspiring, and I have been playing along for over a year (I think). Unfortunately, I had gotten four weeks behind on the challenges so this weekend I spent some time catching up.

This week's:

I think this is a gorgeous Christmas combo but I am done making Christmas cards so thought I would try something a little different. I was thinking of attaching these tags to some Christmas baking for friends and neighbours. I would have liked to stamp the leaves in Spring Moss but I don't own that colour...yet ;)

Here's last week's:

Love this colour combo. I never seem to have enough birthday cards on hand so used this challenge as an opportunity to make a quick one. Not sure if you can see that the scalloped border is gold.

And finally #66:

I liked the colour map but couldn't seem to get anything going. I don't have any light grey cardstock and got the idea to use a grey copic...but seriously, what was I thinking with grey flowers?? And my sentiment is crooked. This one will NOT be going to a true friend, it won't be going to ANY friend...ha ha.

After the last card I thought I would leave it at that and not even attempt #67, although all the Loonies cards are really something in those colours. I am in absolute AWE of what Char did with that challenge..go see! From Char's blog you can link to the other girls.

Thanks for visiting!

Advent/ Countdown Calender

I haven't been blogging much lately, but I have been crafting. I am finding with the shorter days and lack of sunlight it's really difficult to get decent pictures lately, but I wanted to make sure I got this project posted. I made two of these earlier this week, one for my son (13) and one for my nephew (4). I had a lot of fun and would like to do more of these in the future. I have a 9 month old nephew who will eventually get one and a 42 year old husband who has also expressed interest :).

I used some Basic Grey pp I got on clearance after last Christmas and various Christmas stamps and embellishments from my stash. The box is by Karen Foster and is nice, stiff paper covered chipboard. I am hoping these last the boys for a long time.

Each drawer contains a candy or chocolate of some sort. I also slipped $1 and $2 coins in a few boxes, as well as a bill on the 19th as an extra treat for Jake on his birthday. I have always tried to keep Christmas and Jake's birthday very distinct but he suckered us into buying his b-day present early this year (skis), which is just as well as he has used them a dozen times already this season.

Thanks for visiting!

PTI Blog Hop!

Helloooooooo blog hoppers! Thanks for stopping by. Can you believe we only have one month of Christmas crafting left? Never mind the shopping!! My son has a hockey game tonight so I won't be able to check out the blogs until later tonight :(

I almost didn't post these simple little tags, which were inspired by Niki Estes AMAZING tags using the same stamp from Holiday Button Bits. I love how she stamped a sentiment on her tags but I was unable to do so as I was using 2" x 4" scraps (in various PTI colours) that I had left over after mass producing Christmas cards. I cannot recall the name or brand of the pp I used (my bad). I decided to post after all to show how quick and easy it is to make fun little gift tags with this image and your cs scraps. I stamped the inside with "to and from" and they took very little time. I plan to use these on presents wrapped in simple kraft paper tied with some fantastic ribbon.

Thanks again for popping by...have a fantastic night and enjoy the hop!

My Guys dig PW!!

I have been trying out recipes from the Pioneer Woman Cooks for a while now and my guys love it. I think it is so funny that a 13 year old boy from Calgary even knows who the Pioneer Woman is. But then his mother does spend way too much time on the Internet!

My husband has always raved over my lasagna recipe and shook his head when I wanted to try PWs. I've never made mine since...hers really is the best lasagna recipe ever. Here's a shot of Doug making it the last time we had it.

When I heard about her cookbook I immediately pre-ordered. When I came home from work this past Wednesday these two lovely boxes awaited me:

The box from Amazon contained the cookbook and the box below is a food processor I had ordered from Airmiles. It felt like Christmas!! And the kitchen Gods must have coordinated these items to arrive together...ha ha.

We have all been drooling over this beautiful cookbook, even Jake. On Saturday morning he made his first PW recipe Patsy's Cobbler. He substituted mixed fruit for blackberries and it was fantastic.

Thank you PW! If I work this right I might get these guys cooking ALL the time. Kidding! I love trying my own hand at these fabulous recipes.

LSC #65...a surprise!

The Loonies asked some of Char's friends to participate in a special challenge and blog tour this week for her birthday. Because I see Char at work everyday I gave her the card in the post below on Tuesday. I was sure that if I didn't give her a card it would be a signal that something was up and I am more than happy to make my good friend a second card! Happy Birthday Pal! SMILE!!

Char showed me the card she made for what she thought was this week's challenge. It's amazing and I gasped at the colour combo. I had to use it. I loved the Berry Sorbet so much I had to use it inside as well. The sentiment inside is Elzybells and was one of the first stamps I owned.

Check out all the Loonies cards, including the birthday gal herself, as well as the other participants in this fun challenge.

The Loonies:

Dee - http://www.deespapertree.blogspot.com/

Regan - http://stampymcstamperson.blogspot.com/

Jewels - http://cardfelt.blogspot.com/

Maria - http://mycraftroom.typepad.com/marias_craft_room/

Wendy - http://bondgirlbliss.typepad.com/bond_girl_bliss/

And Char of course – http://willowandpaisley.typepad.com/willow_paisley/

The friends:

Sue Pardue – http://suespapercreations.blogspot.com/

Pam Imhotz –http://paperandribbonsandstampsohmy.blogspot.com/

Char Cundy – http://ccundy.blogspot.com/

Steph Day – http://mycraftydays.blogspot.com/

Carly Robertson: http://carlyrobertson.typepad.com/paper-in-bloom/

Dana White: http://danashouseofcards.blogspot.com/

Jessica Diedrich: http://thewhimsicalbutterfly.blogspot.com/

Michelle Woerner: http://stopandstamptheroses.blogspot.com/

Nancy McKinney: http://cardworthy.blogspot.com/

Christie Ortman: http://littlepinkflowers.typepad.com/little_pink_flowers/

Krissy Day: http://krissylynscreations.blogspot.com/

Ashley Newell: http://ashleynewell.blogspot.com/

Happy Birthday Char!

It's my good pal Char's birthday today! She is a dear friend to me and my partner in crime when it comes to shopping, especially for craft supplies. Charlene and I work together and too often get side tracked during the day with thoughts and talk of card making. We were perusing the November CARDS magazine at her desk yesterday and she pointed out this card that she absolutely loves, so I had to case it as her b-day card. Hope you likey Char...have a great day!

Halloween Treats

Happy Halloween!!


I am hanging out in my craft room watching for ghosts and goblins. We have had 18 kids so far and I'm hoping for lots more as the candy bowl is still very full.





I'm not much of a Halloween crafter but I am now regretting not making some little treat bags for the neighbourhood kids. At the last minute today I decided to do something for my son's hockey team as they had a game this afternoon. Much to his mortification (he thinks they are getting too old for home baked treats at the rink) I made these chocolate and candy covered marshmallows and quickly decorated some tags. I barely got them done in time and left the kitchen and craft room an absolute mess.

Did you know that Michaels sells it's Halloween stuff for 50% off on Halloween? I picked up the two bat punches used above for less than $20 this morning. Score! I also scored big when I got home after hockey and my husband who had left the game before me had cleaned up my mess in the kitchen. Our dishwasher is not working right now and I was not looking forward to what I had left behind.

Sorry my picture is crappy. I didn't have time before we left so took it quickly at the arena.

I hope you are having a fun Halloween and thanks for stopping by!

LSC #64 - Copics

This challenge came at a perfect time. I have recently started purchasing Copics in the Papertrey Ink Trios. I have 9 sets but have yet to try them. After seeing the Loonies cards I realize I have a loooong way to go. But I am anxious to learn as I love colouring.

This card is for my SIL Stacy whose birthday is next week, and it's a BIG one! Stacy is the closest sibling out of 4 to my hubby and is one of my closest friends. In fact, she was my friend before she was my SIL. How cool is that? Stacy actually officiated our wedding ceremony ala Joey Tribbiani on Friends style, but we were married before any nuptials on the show. Happy Birthday Stace!! Sorry my colouring sucks so bad...ha ha.

Thanks for stoppping by. Be sure to visit the Loonies blogs for their truly fantastic copic coluring skills.

LSC #63

Well, it's Monday and back to work after 3 glorious days off. *sigh*. On the positive, I did get some crafting done this weekend including catching up on the Loonie Stampers Challenges. I am not too sure about this colour combo, although I love what all the Loonies did. My card was inspired by this card with the three panels. I'm not crazy about the way it turned out, so maybe I will actually give this one away. Ha ha. (I tend to keep the ones I really like). This one will be handy for an office birthday some time I'm sure.

Thanks for visiting. Be sure to check out those Loonies! TFL!

PTI Blog Hop! - Pink Paislee meets Papertrey

Hi there!

I thought I would put the text at the bottom of the post for those who only wanted to check out the cards :)

When I saw the Pink Paislee line Mistletoe & Co I immediately realized how well it would go with some of my favourite PTI colours: Scarlet Jewel, Dark Chocolate, Kraft, and Spring Rain. I used some True Black in places as well. I love non-traditional colour combinations for Christmas cards.

I had a lot of fun making these quick and inexpensive cards. I did them all in an evening while watching tv in my craft room. It was great to use different background stamps, Fiskars punches, ribbon, and buttons. Everything is Papertrey Ink or Pink Paislee with the exception of the "joy, peace, and love" stamps, which are Ali Edwards. Of the Pink Paislee products I used the Postcards pp, stamps, and rub-ons from the line. PTI stamps used were Background Basics Retro & Text Style, Polka Dot Basics, Damask Designs, and Fancy Flourishes. I love it when I can incorporate so many different elements into a project. It just dawned on me that I haven`t used any PTI `Christmas specific` items, although I certainly have my share of those items after the last couple of releases!! I`m sure the blog hop will provide some great inspiration on ways to use them :)

Thanks for much for visiting my blog.