Merry Christmas to all of you...AND ME!!

Look what followed me home today.... :) Call it a hunch or intuition but I had that "feeling" I needed to go to one particular WalMart today. 3 weeks ago they had the Black Friday Expressions for $175. So I go in today and see 6 on a shelf for............................

$100!!!! So I finally got one for $108.57. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy Hannakuh
to Everyone!

Geez! I haven't been updating my blog for over a month. That is so bad of me!!!!
Had lots going on...kiddos and us sick. Ethan had croup last weekend so he never got to experience his first Halloween trick or treating. That is some wicked stuff--my dd never got croup so we had no idea what was up...it developed really quick and it is just a freaky cough! After that, it has developed into an upper respiratory infection. So no school for him this week.

Been busy trying to get caught up on 3 scrapbooks and start on a new one for my niece for Christmas. I'm going to try to get new stuff up soon.

BUT...I did get my gypsy updated! (That was the most important thing, right?) I wanted TBBM so bad, now I just need to find a good deal on an expression to work better with it. I LOVE Smiley Cards too. And, I was really wanting a Christmas cart that had a window and door so I could experiment with using the clear plastic from cartridge clamshell to put on the back of a window.

Last thing is to Beth....I hope you are enjoying my birthday blog candy I sent you in September

******Birthday Blog Candy WINNER WiNNER winner******

Random.org number generator picked post 21. That winner is... and I will email you shortly for you to send me your mailing info. You'll have till Wednesday at 9:00 AM to respond to my email or I will unfortunately have to draw another winner.~~~ C*O*N*G*R*A*T*S!!!~~~

Beth said...

Happy birthday!! Great blog candy and thanks for the chance to win. :)

Baby.cowgirl88@yahoo.com

September 9, 2010 3:49 PM

Blog Candy Drawing

Hello friends! Thank you for all the warm fuzzies and birthday wishes. I appreciate you stopping by and becoming a follower and your wonderful posts!

My 44th birthday was great! Got lots of fun scrapbooking stuff--Ott lite, gift cards, Lite Slumber Party and Simply Charmed. Best of all, got to spend it with family and my Mom made my favorite cake.

Never done this Random.org number generator so here goes. I will email the winner. There are 25 posts so...

Birthday Blog Candy

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First of all let me say don't think I'm crazy that the date on this post says September 19th LOL. If you have a blog, you know that to keep a post "stickied" at the top of the page for a length of time, you have to change the post date to a far off into the future date. Just didn't want you to think you slept for the last 13 days and got no scrapbooking done LOL
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**** I'm doing my first blog candy. It's for my birthday. Today is Sunday, September 5th and for the next 13 days you can sign up for my BIRTHDAY BLOG CANDY.****

**All you need to do is**

1)Become a follower
2)Leave a comment below this post before 12 pm midnight on 9/18/2010
3) You must be a follower of my blog and leave a message under this post with a way to contact you in order to win.

Ability to post comments will be turned off at midnight 9/18. I will try to be awake at 12:01 AM on 9/19/2010 to draw a winner. LOL If not then first thing Sunday morning when I wake up

Please leave an email/way for me to contact you. You will have 3 days to respond to my email with your address or I will unfortunately have to pick another winner. Winner will be chosen by random.org


Thank you for participating!

Above is the picture of everything: 1 package of 6 sheets of grungeboard, 1 MS drippy goo edge punch, 1 MS rain drop edge punch, 2 Tim Holtz Distress ink pads(in Barn Door and Forest Moss), 3 rolls of ribbon (3 ft on ea roll--Leaf, Christmas Tree and Happy Thanksgiving), 5 Studio G clear stamps, 2 K&C Company mat pads 4.75 x 6.75 (18 sheets each). This is almost a $40 blog candy.

I did a real simple Halloween card. My dd and I went to M's and she saw this stamp and "We had to have it." LOL

RECIPE:
**This is an A7 card
**The "ghouls" are cut at 3" using PDDU
**The inside of the card is kind of a patchwork design by using the CM square punch (biggest one) and just cutting squares from various papers. Then overlapping and gluing down to make it look like a picture frame with white space in the middle for the stamped message.
**Used Sakura white gel pen to add fake stitching. Inked edges of white cardstock for stamping with Orange Marmalade Distress ink.
**Rubber Stamp from M's and inkpad is black from Stampabilities. I just realized after stamping it that they glued the rubber on kinda crooked.
**Stickled black and silver on the girl monster, used MS orange flocking for the orange monster and a silver sakura pen for details on shoes etc. CM fine tip pens for the face features.

OUTSIDE of card. I was not feeling creative and I did the outside of the card last. I could not think of what to do on the outside. So, my dd said she knew just what to do. So I let her go with it. LOL She took grey chalk and lightly stamped entire outside of card with it. Then, took MS navy pigment ink pad (the eye shaped ones) and started to do fluffy clouds. She also took a distress ink pad (I think broken china) and put a little different color of blue in the sky. Finally, took Tim Holtz distress ink pad in peeled paint and did some swirls for grass.
Thanks to my creative girly girl!! LOL

So I heard all this talk about MS glow in the dark glitter. Of course we had to get some, bad thing was it was 20% off at M's this week and couldn't use my 50% coupon. I wasn't going to get it because of that but...my 9 yr old is a total enabler and was begging that we neeeeeeded it! LOL. I love the glitter. Only bad thing is, can't figure out how to get it to photograph well glowing in the dark.







RECIPE:

** This is an A7 slider card

** Gypsy Wandering used and the Gypsy

** Pumpkin sized 5.27 x 9.50. Flipped, grouped and welded 1 pumpkin and then used hide/contour for the face. Cut this 2x and in 2 colors--orange and yellow textured paper.

** Used one of my CM circle cutting templates to draw a part circle at top of pumpkin and cut the top/stem part off on the orange paper.

** Cut yellow strip of paper to fit inside of pumpkin for slider and then glued pumpkin top onto the yellow slider card. Inked stem with MS green chalk ink. Inked yellow paper with Tim Holtz distress ink in mustard seed. Then, inked outside edge of yellow card with distress ink in walnut stain. Dried lightly with heat gun. Stamped "trick or treat with $1 rubber stamp from M's in staz-on in black. Colored in the candy with CM distress ink and fantastix.

** With scotch quick dry, glued yellow welded pumpkin together from the inside and then glued yellow pumpkin back to orange pumpkin back.

** Now all you have is an open orange and yellow pumpkin "flap." Time to make the pocket for the card to slide into. Just run a fine bead of scotch quick dry on outside edges of the back of the orange and press onto the yellow paper. DON'T glue the top of the pumpkins together.LOL, Then I used a Tsuniko sponge applicator and applied Tim Holtz distress ink in Spiced Pumpkin to the outside of the orange paper and the top of the pumpkin.

** Now, is where I applied the glowing glitter to the face features. I didn't do a very clean job of it but oh well! LoL I used scotch quick dry glue and just glued inside each face feature (one at a time) and quicky sprinkled the glitter on and pressed in. I applied heat gun briefly. didn't like the thickness of the glitter, so I repeated steps above one more time. It does glow really nicely in the dark !

** Applied some CM candy stickers and some other stickers I had for a while to the top of the pumpkin. Outlined the outside of face features in black ink.

Regrets on this project: I should have outlined the pumpkin features in black ink before applying glitter. Maybe should've only done one layer of the glitter. Should've used more candy stickers.

Ebay

Woohoo! I just had to share I won Stretch Your Imagination for $16.70 on ebay. I know...bad girl, I just said yesterday I wasn't going to buy so much. LOL

My favorite cake recipe

It is a tradition for my Mama to make the below cake every year for my birthday. Thought I'd share the recipe with you. It's moist, oo-ey, goo-ey and chocolaty.

Chocolate Fudge Bundt Cake

1 package Milk Chocolate Cake Mix
1 1/2 cups semi sweet chocolate chips (We've used milk chocolate and dark too)
4 eggs
1 cup sour cream
1 small box chocolate fudge instant oudding
1/2 cup cooking oil
1/2 cup warm water

**Dump everything but chocolate chips in a bowl and mix till smooth, approx 2 minutes. Fold in the chocolate chips. Grease bundt pan and pour in. Bake at 350 for 45 to 50 minutes.

Let cool and remove onto plate. Make chocolate ganache' icing and pour over the top.

All alone......random thoughts

So, if I never mentioned it, I have a 9 yr old dd in 3rd grade and my little man is 2 1/2. Today is his first day in our Church's preschool on Tues and Wed from 9:30 to 2:30. I AM ALL ALONE!!! :) :)

Until 6 months ago, I never realized how different boys & girls are. After going through fertility stuff for our dd, we never thought about the chances of having more children. I was totally into girly stuff. When our dd was 6 and around our 10th anniversary and me being almost 41 SURPRISE--I'm what? LOL. It was a pleasant and blessed surprise. Boys are wonderful and I love having a little man but never realized how active they are, keeping ya on your toes!! I really needed a little me time!

So why am I blogging instead of creating something? Well, I'm resting after going for a nice walk for an hour--it was 77 and can't beat that in Oklahoma. I finally came to some realizations yesterday. In 11 days, I will be 44 and I have young kids. I always do for others but I'm the only one who can take care of me. KWIM? Seems I'm running all the time--homeroom mom, PTA, I work part-time, housework, cook dinner....you know the routine....I need to take care of myself and respect my body, not just for me, but for my kids. I know you've heard the analogy of if you are on a plane and the oxygen masks come down--take care of yourself first and put it on and then deal with your kids. Same thing. My kids can't make me eat healthy, they can't make me go for nice walks to relieve stress and keep me healthy. Only "I" can take care of "Me!" So, I have made a promise to myself to walk 2 days per week, use my eliptical that is just collecting dust (do you have one of those? LOL) and eat better. I want to find a yoga class too. Oh, and start back taking my vitamins again.

I also discovered I spend way too much money on craft stuff. I'm going to give myself $50 fun money each month to spend on crafting or my favorite makeup or fun splurge.

Ok, now I'm off to use my gypsy and work on something for Halloween I've been thinking about.

Is Fall here yet? Good Gravy!!! It's been with the heat index 107 in OK and I'm ready for Fall! LOL

Here is a non-cricut/paper piecing Halloween Card. My 9 yr old had the idea so I helped her go with the thought!

*A2 card
*Black jack-o-lantern paper is by and was 2 sided Creative Imaginations/Danielle Johnson
*Purple and green paper was from H/L and I think Paper Studio
*Ribbon is sheer and from H/L
INSIDE:
*Paper is the reverse side of paper
*Stickers inside ?can't remember
*My daughter inked the inside of the card with Tim Holtz
distress ink pad in Orange Marmalade, Tea Dye and Peeled Paint

Christmas Paper Piecing

I decided to get started on some Christmas cards. This one is paper piecing/non-cricut.

This is an A7 tri-fold card.
*The paper pack is My Mind's Eye "O Christmas Tree."
*I just cut the blue snowflake paper with my CM wavy cutting tool.
*Cut striped paper to fit the entire front of the card and then glued down.
*Then glued the blue snowflake on top of that. Wanted to give the effect
of a snowy sky.
*Found some trees that were cute and with my tweezer bee scissors, cut those out
and arranged/glued down.
*Measured with ruler & marked where to set my 1/8 in. antique silver eyelets with my crop-a-dile.
*Ribbon was from Joann's and was cut and taped inside the flaps of the card and then pushed to the front of the eyelet so it could be tied.
* Took a coordinating paper and cut to fit the inside of the card and also to cover up the ribbon taped inside. Cut more trees to add to inside of card. Used white flocking at the bottom to look like snow. Used Memento die ink pad in black and clear stamp from...?? to Stamp sentiment inside.
*Used Tim Holtz distress ink pad in walnut to ink edges. Then used diamond stickles to add extra glitz.

Well, it is hot, HoT hOT her in OK at 105. So ready for Fall and a cool breeze! Thinking about it got me in the mood to do Halloween cards.

Front
Inside

Ingredients:
5 x 7 premade white card. Used Gypsy, Cricut and WIMG for the sign (3.25), fence (3.25), PDDU for ghost(2.50) tree(4.50) and pumpkin (at 5.5), Doodlecharm for the spider (.90)

Papers--CM Blue with stars, Paper Studio green, Bazzil Golden yellow for moon and browns for fence, tree, sign & pumpkin. Inside card the jack-o-lantern paper is Creative Imaginations.
I cut and glued CM blue start paper down, then used a fiskars zigzag tearing tool to tear the green for the grass. Glued that down. With a black pen, I detailed lines onto the tree & fence. Then used colorbox chalk inks in dk browns and chestnut and beige to do distressing. For the moon, I used MS chalk ink in orange to add some extra color.

Can I tell you how many times I had to cut the blooming ghost 4 TIMES!! Somehow I kept washing my hands because I would somehow get black ink on the ghost. I couldn't figure out where the black ink was coming from. So, I glued one ghost down and it had black ink on it. Rather than pull it off with UNDO, I decided to leave it there and go for a shadow effect and apply another ghost on top with pop dots.

Inside the card: I cut the cute Jack-o-Lantern paper and glued down. Then I distressed the brown sign and glued onto the black sign shadow. Stamped "BOO" with black Stampabilities ink and a rubber stamp. The pumpkin was cut out 3 times--once with all details in orange, next in black and used hide/contour on Gypsy to hide the features. Then in green with hide/contour feature. Orange glued onto the black and then cut the green stem and leaves off and placed on top of pumpkin.

Have you heard of cake balls? Well, here is a yummy recipe for cookie balls. A friend gave me this recipe and I made different versions of it. They are sooooo good!

COOKIE BALL TRUFFLES

1/2 cup margarine
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
1--14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
3/4 cup of mini chocolate chips, OR chopped Andes mints OR toffee pieces. (You might even try the mini M & M's)
1 bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips or dark chocolate chips (heated in double boiler) and add 1 tsp of cooking oil for smoothness.

Cream together margarine and sugar. Add remaining ingredients, blending well. I use a small cookie scooper and then roll into balls and chill for an 1 hour on a cookie sheet. Melt the chocolate chips with oil. The best way to coat the balls is to just get chocolaty and put on a pair of cooking gloves and roll the balls into the chocolate by hand. Drop onto a waxed paper lined cookie sheet. Refrigerate for 1 or 2 hours.
**NOTE** depending on the flavor of cookie dough you have, you could instead roll in Dutch Proccess cocoa powder or finely crushed pepermint sticks. I may even try to add peanut butter but will probably need to add a bit more flour. Then dip in chocolate....yummy!

RECIPE

Ok, I had to share this because I made it a few weeks ago and it is YUMMY!
*************************************************************
BERRY FREEZE

Makes 18 servings, prep time 5 minutes, Freeze 4 hrs or overnight

1 can (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk
1/4 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
2 cups mini marshmallows
1 can (16 oz) whole berry cranberry sauce
1 can (20 oz) crushed pineapple, drained
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1 container(8 oz) cool whip, thawed

In large bowl, whisk together condensed milk and lemon juice. Stir in marshmallows, cranberry sauce, pineapple,and chopped pecans. Fold in coolwhip. Spread into a 13x9x2 pan. Freeze and cut into squares. Enjoy! Also, I haven't tried this but I guess you could do a graham cracker crust for it if you wanted. It would still be good I'm sure.

Gift Card Holder

So my 9 yr old daughter had an idea for a project. You can tell she's ready for school to start when she says what she's thinking of creating would be a good way to hold gift cards we give her teachers.

Off we go to Michael's and we got a cute painted cup with attached saucer for $2.50 and a $1 wooden picture holder (for 60 cents with the 40% Q). We took the metal picture holder off the wooden part. Then, got some Wilton lollipop sticks, yellow pom poms, florist foam, moss and green florist tape.



INGREDIENTS:
So we used the Gypsy and Cricut and Gypsy Wanderings for the orange, pink and purple flowers. Walk in My Garden for the red and yellow flowers. Flowers were cut in various sizes--2.75, 2.5, 2.25 and 2.0 and layered/glued with Scotch quick dry glue. We cut the lollipop sticks in various lengths and wrapped with the florist tape. Used hot glue to put the yellow pom poms on top of the flowers. The yellow sunflowers and red aster flowers have brown flocking glued into the center of the flowers. We cut and hot glued the foam inside the cup. Hot glued the flowers on top of the sticks and arranged the flowers. Then, glued the sticks into the foam and the moss on top of the foam. Finally, we used florist tape to attach the metal picture holder to a lollipop stick.

So remember I won Elizabeth at 217 Creations first blog candy giveaway? It was all 50 cuts from the Cricut Lite Lacy Labels. Here is a pic I took of all 50. And, I'm starting to think of what to use all this beautiful work for.

My 9 yr old made this one

This I used Tim Holtz distress ink on the edges and a tan and green cardstock

This I attached the label to brown cardstock and then onto silver paper and used My Pink Stamper "Happy Birthday" This I attached the label to the silver paper, then onto aqua cardstock

I decided to do this 12x12 scrapbook layout as a surprise for my 9 yr old DD. She just got back from NY this week. She told me they had a bonfire and roasted marshmallows and made S'mores. And so you have the inspiration for the layout.



INGREDIENTS:
White and dark Brown Bazzil cardstock, tan paper??, Reminisce Smorgyle paper
Angel Hair brown swirl yarn, Dress it Up embellishments, Walnut Stain Distress Stickles.
See full directions by clicking on SCRAPBOOK LAYOUT button above.

Happy Thursday!

Here are a couple of cards I put together.

"You're tea-riffic"

INGREDIENTS:
Gypsy Wanderings cart. Used the Gypsy to flip and weld card. Used hide/contour to hide the design on the cup. Image cut at 5.48 wide x 4.6 high. When welded it is 10.96 by 4.6. Paper is by American Crafts--Blossom Road. Fiskars clear stamp. Use bone folder to fold card


"Thank you a latte"


A2 size card used Gypsy Wanderings again but cut cup at 3" and brown shadow at 3.20. All paper American Crafts-- Blossom Road and backside is turquoise blue. The mug paper is called Sugar Blvd and backside was the brown used for the shadow. Used Fiskars scallop stamp on the bottom. Fiskars clear stamp inside the card. Offray brown ribbon.