Happy Valentine's Day!

Good Evening Internet Friends!

Hope everyone had a fabulous Valentine's Day.  

Late last evening I decided that I could not possibly make the number of chocolate hearts that my son wanted for his classes for Valentine's Day.  Not one to admit defeat though I opted for something that if I just got up a little early (okay an hour) this morning I could still pull off; marshmallows.

TAH DAH!!!! Two pans of marshmallows were cut up, sprinkles added and dusted for off to school.  As usual they were a hit.  The recipe is from Butter Baked Goods and is my all time favourite marshmallow recipe.  

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day Internet Friends!

I hope you all had a special day and felt loved - as you should every day.

Attempted to go to work this morning but my physician colleagues wrote me a sick note to go home; a joke sort of, but mostly....GO HOME.

No crafting done today, seriously even knitting was too much effort.

I will show you though that my son and I made these from a Paper Pumpkin kit I found in the craft room on the weekend:

We had fun making and filling these with candy on Saturday afternoon and there was somehow enough candy for the bags (and what we ate) and 2 pieces of each left over after filling the bags! ☺

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Awful Waffle Sunday...

Good Evening Internet Friends!

My son woke up this morning asking for Waffles since it's Sunday.  When we make waffles on Sunday we call it Awful Waffle Sunday just because it rhymes!

Yummy.

After breakfast we watched television for a while.  Nothing really interesting but snuggled up under quilts on the couch was relaxing.

After lunch I did a bit of house work and laundry.  Attempted to organize my craft room but failed at that so we decided to make cupcakes:

While the cupcakes were baking I made the buttercream icing and my son added the color to one batch to make the hearts.

I iced the basic cupcake but he drew the hearts and put on the sprinkles.  Two dozen yummy cupcakes waiting to be eaten!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone.

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Valentine's Day Treats

Good Late Evening Internet Friends.

You would think that with the amount of time I have had off in the past few weeks I could have got the treats for my son's class done early.  Nope.  Late yesterday after piano and dinner, guess what we are doing???  

Last month's box of Paper Pumpkin was first of all really cheap and I'm not sure exactly what one was supposed to do with it.  I needed 30 Valentine's treats though so this is what we did with it:

My son misspelled a complicated classmate's name so now were down to 29.  Great \: {

A wander through my craft room and I found these packages from another craft project:

We put the candy and chocolate inside and gave this one to the teacher since it was different.  All done in less than 60 minutes.  YAY us.

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Friday Feature Card

Hello Internet Friends!

It's that time of week again where I participate in Karina's Krafting Crew by making my Friday Feature Card.

This week I chose to use the Mojo Monday Sketch 327 for the inspiration for my submission.

Here is what I made:

Now, off to do some late night quilting for the weekend!

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Valentine's Day Friend Cookies

I took these little cutie packages to work with me for Valentine's.

Inside the Glassine bag, is one of the chocolate heart, chocolate chip cookies that my son and I made.

The Glassine Bags are from Creative Packaging.

The Designer Series Paper is actually a Jolly Holiday Christmas Paper from Stampin Up, and the stamp set is called I Heart Hearts.

I think these look so cute, and I hope everyone loves them!

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Grade 3/4 Valentine's Treats

I bought these little Whoos Your Valentine's Kits from Close to My Heart back around Christmas time with the intention of having them prepared well in advance of Valentine's Day.

Alas, I sent my son to bed, and I finished them off around midnight before Valentine's Day!

We used supplies from the kit, and a roll of the candy ribbon that I bought I don't know when, where and or why, but it seems to work for this purpose!

Pink and Red Smarties  (not to be confused with Smarties/Rockets) from the Bulk Barn filled each of these little tubes.

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Happy Valentine's Day

My son and I made these cookies on the weekend.

They are a chocolate chip cookie that I have been working on for a while to get the taste I want.  We decorated them with chocolate hearts we purchased at the Bulk Barn.

The recipe for these cookies follows:

Chocolate Chip Cookies  

2/3 cup non hydrogenated margarine

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

- beat until smooth, then add

1 tsp vanilla

1 egg

1 tsp baking soda

- beat until smooth, then add

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour 

1/4 cup Bird's Custard

- beat together until smooth, and add

1/2 cup chocolate chips

- Bake at 350 for 10 minutes, rest on cookie sheet for 1 minute while putting on hearts prior to transferring to cookie rack.  Enjoy!

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Valentine's Package

On the weekend my son and I were home alone and had two extra days of fun as it was also Teacher's Convention, so we had what we like to call BIG FUN!

One of the things we did was make cookies (recipe will follow likely tomorrow).

Then we realized that these cookies were just too tasty, and fun to keep to ourselves, so we made treat boxes and gave them away.

The plastic boxes are from Creative Packaging here in Edmonton.

The ribbon is from my stash (craft - not cookie), and the red glitter paper I picked up at a scrapbooking store at some time.

I lined the boxes with parchment paper to keep the cookie from sitting on plastic.

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

What's For Dinner????

Cake of course!!

You see, earlier in the week my son was ill at home with some sort of gastrointestinal malady.  For almost two days the poor little guy puked up everything, including his much beloved milk (which I had already switched to Lactaid).

As he was starting to feel better yesterday evening I asked him what he would like for dinner and his response was "cake with sprinkles".  

Well, since he had not eaten food in a couple of days, and this is some form of quick and easily digestible carbohydrate, I let him have cake with a glass of Lactaid for dinner.

I baked the cake and he iced and sprinkled it just the way he wanted!

Seems to have worked, it has stayed down for several hours now : )

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Valentine's Sugar Cookies

I decided to clean up my craft room yesterday (hooray for me).  While I was doing this I came across a recipe that I had put aside with good intentions to make some time ago. 

Well, last evening seemed like a good enough day to make them, especially since I even had all the ingredients in the house and they would make an excellent on the way to skiing road trip cookie!

I used my Kitchenaid to mix the dough, and it worked out really well.

So, here's the recipe:

Sugar Cookies

1 cup butter

2 cups sugar

2 eggs

3 tsps vanilla

1 cup sour cream

2 tsps baking soda

6 cups all purpose flour

Chill in refrigerator for 30 minutes (the dough is very easy to roll at this stage).  Roll out and bake at 350 F for about 10 minutes.  Enjoy!  

I will likely be making more of these and icing them for my son's class on Valentine's Day!

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Coffee Talk Swaps

Last night was Coffee Talk at Karina's.  It is a monthly meeting that Karina hosts for her downline and friends.  We get together and stamp, eat and catch up.  It's lots of fun.

These are my swap for last night.

 I think that they are fun now (however, putting the owls together by the end of 12 of these was exhausting)!!

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Oh S"Crap"! It's Monday...

Alright, I am back with another s"crap" project!

I took a store brand chocolate bar, wrapped in Designer Series Paper (like probably three years ago) and  used my Paper Crimper to seal the ends.

The stamp set is from the p.s. I Love You stamp set from Stampin Up (also likely retired), a random red button (because it is pretty and I like red almost as much as purple), and a scalloped circle punch.

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Oh S"Crap"! It's Monday

Yesterday while at my least favorite "big box" store I came across some chocolate bars that they sell under their brand name.  Since the price was right, I bought 3 for the purpose of wrapping up for quick gifts.

I did just that today!

I used left over Sweet Shop Designer Series Paper, ribbon from Sale-a-bration last year, and stamped the heart from the p.s. I Love You stamp set (probably retired).
Quick and easy, but kind of fun too, and the recipients of these (yes, there's another one) almost seemed to think they were cute!  Purpose served.
Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Oh S"crap"! It's Monday...

This task I have given myself of using up all of my scrap pieces of card stock and Designer Series Paper is getting harder every week.

If it were fabric I would make a rag quilt or better yet a hopscotch quilt and large amounts of fabric would disappear quickly and into a usable format.

However with paper this is not the case.

I hate to be defeated by anything, yet I might have to take this into a local school or play group and see if the kids want it, as alas I am getting no where fast.

This is today's creation made very early this morning.

It is nothing like what I had originally intended, but it is what it is.

The card stock base is Calypso Corral, with a piece of Designer Series Paper from the Spring 2012 Mini Catalogue.  I cross stitched the border with Bakers twine, and colored the You are Loved design with my Stampin' Write markers.

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

February Quilt Calendar

 HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!  xoxoxoxoxoxo
This year I have decided to participate in the Block of the Month Calendar program offered by Sew Divine.  These monthly blocks are part of the Patchabilities Monthly Mini's set.  The main reason I chose to do this set was because they have a Canada option for the month of July.  GO CANADA GO!!!! (I digress.....).

These blocks come with the pattern and fabrics but what makes them "Top Drawer" in my world is that there are seasonally appropriate top banners for the frame to coordinate with the months (this month has the hearts at the top, however, my son pointed out that they look like fish skeletons drawn next to cats or racoons in books - and they kind of do), and additionally there is a stick of a white oil based painted that was used to stencil in the "hugs & kisses".

Now, there is a brush included in the kit for which you are supposed to brush the oil paint into place, but I have a hard time following directions - way too over rated I think.  So, I took the paint stick and rubbed over the stencil until the letters were as white as I thought they should be.  Instructions stated to dry over night before appliqueing the next day which seemed reasonable since this was of course a red eye craft.  Next day, still wet, and same for the next week!!!!  Note to self, start earlier next time, as I have no intention of spending the better part of my day applying paint stick with a brush.

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Oh S"crap"! It's Monday.

Into the scrap box again!

This card uses basic black for the card base, some left over Love Impressions Designer Series Paper (Stampin Up Spring Mini 2011), a left over red glitter X from the Valentine's Day Frames I made (this one was in the Roly Poly font from the Cricut, but was too wide to go in the frame), and a small piece of silver glitter paper that I found in the box.

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Card/Gift Boxes

I simply LOVE my Simply Scored Tool.

All over the craft world I see people making boxes, and I wonder how do they do that???  Most offer patterns for these boxes for a fee and since I am cheap or as a colleague used to say "tight with your pennies, not your affection", I refuse to pay for something that I can make.

Well, thanks to the Simply Scored Tool, I am now able to make these box items.

The intent of this box was to hold 6 cards along with envelopes.

The base of this box is 7 7/8 x 6 1/2".

Score at the 1" mark on all four sides.

Note that I have cut the seam allowance differently for the bottom and top of the box to decrease corner bulk (just like in quilting). 

The top of this box is cut at 8 x 6 5/8" and scored at the 1" mark on all four sides.  

I used double sided tape to secure the corners.  

I used the new heart framelets in the center of the top of the box to cut out the heart shape prior to cutting anything.  I learned from someone along time ago when using the Spellbinders dies that sticky notes work to hold these dies in place and they do!!!

Six cards along with envelopes fit easily inside.  Probably chocolate too!!

TAH DAH.  Two little boxes filled with cards, perfect gift for your friends that appreciate this kind of thing!

If you have a Simply Scored Tool, I really do encourage you to use it!

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

X O Frames

Back when I made my semi-annual trip to Superstore I found these frames and thought that for the price they were a must have item that would come in handy some day.

Today is that day! Now, I am very excited about these frames (not just because of the price), but when I turned them over to take off the packaging I found that they were Made in Canada!!!!!  I was so excited!

The frames are 5 x 7 in size so I cut the paper from the Mocha Morning Designer Series Paper (DSP) collection from Stampin Up.  Once that was done I loaded the Red Glitter Paper in the Cricut and cut the "X" and "O" at 4" and glued on to DSP.  Still looked like it needed something, so I used my heart punch and quickly cut out a heart for each frame.  

TAH DAH!!  Quick and easy and pretty "Top Drawer".

Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy

Coffee Talk Swaps

These are the swaps that I have made for Coffee Talk at Karina's last night.  We usually meet the first Friday of the month to find out "what's up",  do some stampin', catch up on new gossip, and eat too many decadent treats.  It's a lot of fun, and if you want to join us contact Karina.

My cards tonight are 4 x 4 in dimension and use Pretty in Pink cardstock, along with Pear Pizazz Designer Series Paper and Whisper White Card stock.  The stamped heart image is from the Filled with Love stamp set, and the other heart image is made from DSP with the heart punch and a foam pop dot behind to elevate it.  The whisper white card stock was fun through the Polka Dot embossing folder.  Now there is not really anything special about these cards (I know), but I did try to make this a "top drawer" project by making the envelopes to coordinate with the cards!!  I will post the directions for the envelopes tomorrow.  Hope this inspires your own creativity...

Kathy