Monday Evening Ramblings

Hello,

I love Monday evenings because it means Monday is over with! I'm enjoying a quiet night at home watching the snow coming down. Yes, snow, on the second day of spring (I guess we didn't get quite enough this winter - not). Also looking forward to watching the premiere of DWTS tonight, which is one of my favourite shows.

I didn't get up to much crafting this weekend but do have this card to share with you. I made it for my cousin's birthday, which is on Wednesday. She loves purple.

Also sharing a pic of the carrot loaf I made yesterday. Recipe found here. I brought this into the office today for my co-workers. I hope it helped to ease the pain of a Monday morning.

So now that Monday's over with....is it Friday yet? lol.

Thanks for peeking.

Happy Canada Day....eh!

Well, it's Canada Day! Probably my second most favourite day of the year. We have plans for a BBQ with family and friends later and will try to catch the fireworks in the evening.

I am so truly proud to be Canadian and so blessed to have been born in this beautiful country. Yeah, it's freezing 8 months of the year, but whatever.

2010 has been such an incredible year for us with the Vancouver Olympics too. It was amazing to hear our anthem so many times with all those gold medals!

Soooo...in honour of Canada Day I made the little card above, which has a twist on our flag. I couldn't resist the eh! stamp in the $1.50 bin at Michaels. I cut the maple leaf with my Cricut and Gypsy (first time I have used the Gypsy in months).

In my festive mood I also added a few flags out front...

And made a little cake (may need to make another - that really is little!!). Please forgive my dark-night-before pic.

Now it's time to enjoy some Canadian Beer and great company.

HAPPY CANADA DAY!!

LSC #87

It's been a while since I played along with my very favourite challenge...the Loonie Stampers Challenge! My dear friend Char and her very good friends, some of who have become super supportive blog pals of mine :), put this one on every Friday and it's awesome!! This week was no exception. However, I have a confession to make. I made this card BEFORE I knew the challenge colours and really, the only "black" is the ink. So I felt it only right to make another card (but I pretty much just copied the first one).

Thanks girls for another great colour combo...keep 'em coming!

I also included a couple shots of the banana cake with (very droopy) cream cheese icing I made last night. I'm embarassed to say my family of three has finished it already. But in our defense we did have a guest last night for dinner and I did take a big piece to my mom today. Isn't that blue bundt pan fun? This is the first cake I have ever made in a bundt pan and I see many more in my future.

Thanks for stopping by!

Loonie Stampers Challenge Catch Up

I don't know how I get so far behind on the LSC challenges. I used to do them weekly and will try to start doing so again. But I did catch up on 2 out of the last 3 challenges and also participated in this weeks. I kept it pretty simple, as usual.

This week's (#73):

These colours were a real challenge for me. I hardly ever use Berry Sorbet. I knew I wanted to do a cupcake but once that was done I had no idea what to use as a base or background so I followed Maria's faux stitching. I used the Ranger Inkssentials opaque pen. The cupcake is cut from the "From my Kitchen" Cricut cartridge. I think it's the first time I have used this cartridge but when it came out it was one of those "must haves" for me. Hopefully I will get more use out of it soon. The glitter on the card is Martha Stewart Brownstone and Garnet. Man I love that stuff.

#72:

Such a pretty colour map but when I pulled out the colours I had nothing, zilch, nada inspiration. I found this rub-on and thought I would make a little card for my husband Doug.

And finally #70 (I skipped #71 as it was Christmas):

I made another little note card type but with a real stitching border. It's almost straight too! lol. I used some of the crocheted flowers I have been hoarding for close to a year. The pp is Basic Grey but I can't remember what collection it is from.

Well, that's it for cards today. I'll leave you with a shot of the apple crisp I made for my son and his friend this morning. My mom gave me that beautiful deep dish pie plate and stand for Christmas. She knows I love to bake which makes it such a special, thoughtful gift to me.

Thanks for stopping by!

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!

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!

Cinnamon Sticky Buns

I made these on the long weekend for Jake and a friend he had over. I normally make cream cheese icing when I do cinnamon buns but we were out of cream cheese. Instead, I made a simple glaze out of butter, brown sugar, vanilla, and icing sugar. They turned out more like 'sticky buns' but still oh-so-good. In fact, my husband said he preferred them with the glaze. Not that he got a chance to have many, the two teenagers ate most of them for breakfast!!

Blueberry Mini Tarts

Despite the fact that it is snowing out right now and not looking good for tomorrow, we are going to a lobster party tomorrow. I had planned on bringing a fruit pizza on shortbread crust but due to the weather today I didn't get to the grocery store. I had to come up with something with ingredients I had on hand. I had pastry for a half a pie crust in the freezer and some fresh blueberries. These are what I made:



I was only able to get 16 tarts from my pastry so had to do the rest with ready-made Tenderflake. I have never made fruit tarts before and was a little too generous with the filling, as you can see in the "after" picture below. Oh, and this handy device was awesome to use. I didn't even have to roll out my pastry...just formed it into balls and squashed each with the tool. The filling is simply blueberries tossed in sugar, cornstarch, and lemon juice (exact filling recipe here). Easy peasey!



And yes, there ARE a few missing in the after picture ;) Soooo yummy.

Thanks for visiting!

Sweet Treats

Well, it's back to work today after a glorious 3 day weekend spent at home crafting and cooking. It's rare to have an entire weekend at home as my son usually has us running all over for hockey, but that's over now and it's another week or so before his spring sports start up. Between work and sports I never seem to have enough time to play myself so I do my best to squeeze it in when I can.

And the only thing I enjoy more than playing in my craft room is playing in my kitchen (although crafting is better for my waist line!!). I like to bake on Sundays so we have goodies through the week, but they don't always last that long! These cinnamon buns were made by special request of my son. The chocolate macaroons weren't a big hit around here so you know what that means...they are headed to the office.

Have a super Monday!