Christmas Gifts--Candy!

Candy boxes are always a fun holiday treat! Choose from the sliders (Whoppers with snow; Junior Mints with penguins; or Milk Duds with a snowman). Each box of "movie style" candy with the decorations is $3.00. Two more fun choices include the Holly Jolly Christmas box filled with four Hershey's Miniatures for $1.50 or the Embossed Window Box filled with soft peppermints for $3.

Christmas Gifts--Framed Art

Here are the choices for the Framed Art Christmas Gifts. Each of them come with the frame. The Christmas tree of circles is $10; snowman is $8 and the Come to Bethlehem scene is $4.

Think Pink Fundraising Class

These are three of the six cards we will be making at Nikki's Think Pink Fundraising Class. She is trying to raise $2300 to participate in the Susan G. Komen 3 Day Walk. The class is Thursday, Oct. 20 at 10 a.m. or anytime after 5:00 p.m. Cost is $30...a little higher than normal card classes, but that's because it's for a good cause! And, I give 100% of your $30 to Nikki! Please invite your friends and let me know if you can come by Tuesday. We'd love to have a HUGE turnout! Oh, and if you can't come, but want to help...we will make your cards for you. Just let me know!

Quilting: Stampin' Up! Style

Stampin' Up! has come out with some beautiful fabrics that coordinate with their designer papers. I was inspired by the Spice Cake fabric to make some fall leaves. I've never really had any quilting instruction, so I make up how to do it as I go along. I thought it turned out pretty well. I made the first block and then decided to make three more and add some borders to turn it into a wall hanging.

The way Stampin' Up! sells their fabrics is in a package of three extra-wide fat quarters for $9.95. It really is a good deal. My next sewing adventure will use the Holly Berry and Candy Cane Christmas fabrics. I can't wait to try it...we'll see if I can make Christmas trees as well as I can make fall leaves! Such fun...or should I say...sew fun!

Stamped Sugar Cookies Experiment--Final Results

The final results were overall pretty good. Here are the three that worked so you can compare them all together: Clockwise from the top: bag mix, then pre-portioned dough, then Stampin' Up! recipe.

Since I am always honest with you about products, here are the questions I asked myself:

1. Did they taste good? YES, especially the Stampin' Up! recipe. :)

2. Were they easy to make? YES to all three types.

3. Would I go to the trouble to make these for a large party? Probably not...the WOW factor just isn't there.

4. Will I use the other presses that come in the package? YES...I'm thinking about the snowflakes being white with peppermint flavoring and the hearts being pink with raspberry or strawberry flavoring. Next time, I might only stamp half of them and then make sandwich cookies with frosting. In my world, frosting makes everything better. :)

5. If Stampin' Up! came out with more cookie stamps, would I buy them? YES

Feel free to ask me any questions about this process. It was fun to do the experiment. My family was thrilled that I was making four types of sugar cookies all in one afternoon!

Sugar Cookie Experiment--Part 5: Stampin' Up! Recipe

Well, surprise, surprise! The recipe that Stampin' Up! included in the cookie press package worked the best. Yes, it is a "from scratch" recipe, but it is NOT hard! I mixed up and again added the orange color and flavor and then used my small cookie scoop to make the cookies a consistent size. I had a little trouble with the stamp sticking, so I dipped the stamp in a little flour before stamping and it worked perfectly! They baked up very nicely and were delicious! There are two recipes included in the package...one is for sugar cookies (the one I used) and the other is for shortbread. I haven't tried the shortbread ones, but the sugar ones taste a lot like shortbread. They were delicious. Have I mentioned that already?

Sugar Cookie Experiment--Part 4: Mix in a Bag

Since this was the dry ingredients in a bag and all I had to do was add butter and eggs, I decided to add a few extra ingredients: mainly some orange food coloring and orange extract. It at least made it look more like a jack-o-lantern and tasted a yummy orange flavor. These stamped very well and baked up pretty good. You can see the results in the photos. The very first photo is the baked cookies; the second one is the stamped, not yet baked cookies. Oh, one more thing I did was roll them out and then use a biscuit cutter to make all the circles even. It worked very well!

Sugar Cookie Experiment--Part 3: Slice ' Bake

Slice 'n Bake didn't work at all! When I tried to stamp them, they just made a mess. Once they were baked, you couldn't tell anything had ever been stamped...probably because the stamping was never successful in the first place. Slice 'n Bake plus cookie stamps equals complete disaster!

Sugar Cookie Experiment--Part 2: Preportioned Dough

The first kind of cookie dough I tried was the pre-portioned ready-made dough. At first I thought it had good potential; however when it was baked the image was there, but didn't really stand out. Also, the taste was okay...I mean, it's a Pillsbury cookie...of course it is going to be fine, but you can't add anything to the pre-portioned dough and with the image stamped on the top you can't add frosting. Ultimately it was kind of a boring sugar cookie. :(

Stamped Sugar Cookies Experiment--Part 1

Stampin' Up! just came out with the cookie press. Yes, you can stamp your cookies now! I love to cook and bake and thought this would be great fun! I know that not everyone loves to be in the kitchen, however, so I decided I would experiment with all the kinds of sugar cookies out there and see what worked best. Read on for the results...

Silent Auction Boxes

I was so excited to be asked to bake something for the Fall Festival at my church! I had almost as much fun making the boxes to display my baked goods as I did baking them! Both of these started out as plain 10" by 10" cake boxes. I used my Coluzzle and cut out the giant openings and taped a window sheet in from the back side. Then I made the borders and tags and added the letters. I thought the decorated boxes would add value to the items...it was a silent auction. I made two sets of each item and thankfully they all did get bids. :) Chris thought about bidding on the apple pies...my mom's recipe is FABULOUS. If I were going to bid, I would have definitely gone for the lemon cupcakes!

Cards in the Mail--Out on a Limb!

Out on a Limb is such a cute stamp set from the Holiday Mini! I'm using it for my Cards in the Mail card kit for the rest of Sept and early Oct. You order the stamp set and for an extra $10, I will provide all the consumable ingredients to make 8 cards (four of each of two designs). I will have your card stock cut to the right size and textured if necessary (you can see the web design behind the owl and the dots under the witch). You need to own just a few basic stamping supplies. If you are a beginning stamper, this is a great way to get started on owning some basic supplies and being able to complete a project right away! Please let me know if you need more information.

10 Minute Cards Class--Wednesday, Oct. 12

Create 10 cards, each taking 10 minutes or less to recreate! These are a variety of occasion cards, with a fall theme. If you'd like more than one set of cards, just let me know when you RSVP. This class is on Wed., Oct. 12 at 10 a.m. or anytime after 5 p.m. The cost is $20 for 10 cards. The RSVP date is Oct. 10.

Halloween Class--Oct. 4

No tricks, only treats at this class! Create four Halloween-themed cards, three treat containers, one double page 12" by 12" scrapbook layout and a 12" by 12" home decor item. (The frame is not included.) Cost is $20 and the class date is Tuesday, Oct. 4 at either 10 a.m. or anytime after 5 p.m. Please RSVP prior by Sunday, Oct. 2 so I can have all your supplies cut and ready for you! I'd love for you to join me for some Happy Halloween stamping!

Designer Paper Wreath

Stampin' Up! has a new product called the Simply Scored Scoring Tool! It is AWESOME! It is marked every 1/8" for easy scoring and comes with three place markers and a stylus. It is $29.95. I used the new scoring tool to make these rosettes to put on this wreath. I have to give my good friend Paula credit for the design...didn't she do a beautiful job?!?! I have plans to make more of these wreaths for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Once you get them scored with the new scoring tool, they go together so quickly! It does take a lot of hot glue, though...see post below. :) My wreath is not entirely finished...I still need to add the bow and two more 5/8" Very Vanilla brads. I was so excited about having made it that I wanted to post it right away. I'll have another post when my order comes in and it is truly complete!

Crafting Tip of the Day

Here's some free advice: When you are crafting and you have covered all table space, take some time to clean up! No matter how tempted you are, DO NOT (I repeat DO NOT) use your knee as a surface to hot glue on. :) Yep, ask me how I know!!

Whoopie Pies!

We always do a fun treat for the teachers at the girls' school for the end of the first week. This year for something new and different we tried Whoopie Pies. They were a hit! We made five different kinds. I believe the red velvet with cream cheese filling was the favorite at the school. My personal favorite was the lemon cream!! I made the sign so everyone would know the flavors. It was fun to use the Bright colors with my Simple Letters alphabet dies and to make the border with my Tasteful Trim die cut for the Big Shot. If I had to take only one die cut to a desert island, it would be Tasteful Trim...I love it! It can take the place of most ribbons or can be a whole border on a 12" by 12" page. Thankfully I don't think I will be doing any desert island stamping anytime soon, but at least you know what I'd pack if I had to. Oh, and it would be nice to have a lemon cream whoopie pie on the island too. :)

Summer Scrapbook Pages

Here are some pages from a recent scrapbook class. I used stamps from the Summer Mini. I love to design pages and then find photos later to fill in. I actually have already filled these in, and it is very rewarding to just trim a few photos and have a full layout done! I'll post the finished pages soon...they look so cute with photos on them!

Back to School

It's been awhile since I've posted! I always have good intentions of posting daily, but I always fall short! The girls are back in school and I'm back to having quiet days around the house to craft. I've been busy...I've gotten lots of projects done lately...I'll go ahead and say that I'll post them on my blog and then I probably won't...ha ha!! Trust me, time passes so quickly that when I go to the blog and see that the last time I posted was several MONTHS back, I just can't believe it!





Enough about my shortcomings. Let's talk about these awesome photos from my good friend Mary Morris. She came up with the chalkboard/speech bubble idea. I made them, and then she took the photos. I got the best end of that deal! And, she's the ONLY one who can make Ellen smile like that! LOVE these photos!!