PPC-CC #43

Good morning everyone! Hopefully you all have the day off in lieu! I have 2 days of vacation left... Booooo =( But enough sulking. It's time for another Picture Perfect Creations Color Combo! Can you believe we're up to #43 already?!? It's my friend's "21st" birthday and I made a card for her. 

The poor cupcake blends in a bit too much but I didn't want a green or navy blue cupcake popping out! Not appetizing at all! Head on over to the PPC blog to see what the other team members have created! 

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas!!! May your bellies be full of delicious food and your hearts warmed with loved ones all around. 

Boy I'm not very good with this My Digital Studio thing. My projects look terrible right now... Will definitely need to work on this. Have a great day! 

Christmas Stamp-A-Stack

This post is way long overdue. Back a few weeks I had my second Christmas Stamp-A-Stack. The only problem, I spent all night either on the couch nauseous or in the bathroom puking. I felt miserable but didn't want to cancel because I had 6 people coming over and it's so hard to find a date/time that works for 6 people! Everything that came was super. I had typed out some instructions and they managed to complete their cards. Everyone had to help each other out but I'm glad they were all so understanding and I don't think anyone caught the stomach bug I had! Here are the cards that we made that night. 

This card was actually CASEd from a card I found online at Splitcoaststampers. I don't have the actual girl's name that created it though. Love how it uses a simple tree to make it a Christmas card. 

This card was CASEd from one of my favorite blogs, Clean & Simple Stamping. 

This was CASEd from one of the girls in my DARS Stampin' Up team. It's just absolutely gorgeous. I don't have her sample on hand to get her name right now. 

Finally a card that wasn't CASEd from anyone. 

Another card that wasn't CASEd. Off to bed! Have a good night! 

A New Personal Blog!

Ever since I started blogging all my card creations, I've always wanted to share more. You might have noticed that a lot of my posts include personal things like what I was doing that night or what we had for supper. Well I finally decided to make another blog to share my non-card making life. I do have a life outside of card making! I decided to call it Live, Love, Capture. Jamie didn't understand why I chose that name but I think it's quite meaningful. The "Capture" part of it was more related to taking photos but I think even writing posts is "capturing" a part of our life. Feel free to pop on by the new blog if you'd like to creep on what our little home has been up to! 

PPC-CC Specialty Challenge #2

Happy Monday everyone! Is anyone else as lucky as me to have this week off? I love planning vacation around the Christmas holidays and every year I'm so happy I do! Unfortunately Jamie didn't take the week off so next week when I'm back to work, he's off work! I spent the afternoon baking some shortbread cookies. Every year Jamie and I do some Christmas baking for our neighbors and some close friends. This year is no different. Although we have scaled down the variety of baked goods we do. I think the very first year we had like 5 or 6 different types and it was stressful! This year we'll likely just keep it down to shortbread, gingerbread, and Jamie's famous puff wheat squares. Possibly some yummy fudge... and perhaps some oatmeal cookies... LOL that's already 5 again! Darn! Anyways onto this week's Picture Perfect Color Creations Challenge! With it being Christmas, Megan has decided on another specialty challenge. This week is to create anything Christmas related. Not difficult at all right?!? This little card was super fast to create. I actually got 4 of these little cuties from one sheet of 8.5"x11" card stock. Cut it into 4, fold in half and layer on some more card stock! I used SU's 2-Way Glue Pen to outline the antler swirls and just dusted on some gold glitter. Easy peasy. Pop on by the PPC blog to see what Christmas goodies the design team has created. Have a great week everyone! 

Daisy's 30th Birthday!

My good friend Daisy turned 30 this past week and I had organized a surprise birthday party for her. She was totally clueless and it was an awesome surprise because she wanted her 30th birthday to pass without commotion. Being a good friend, of course I couldn't let that happen! So on top of decorating her desk the night before her big day (thanks Amber for the awesome idea!), we managed to organize a dinner and gift for her right under her nose! 

She loves ribbon, buttons and green! Not really knowing what to get her, I decided to just collect donations for a gift. At first I was thinking something along the lines of spa to pamper her aging skin but then came up with a cooler idea. I know she's been wanting a new phone and has been looking at the iPhone4. So the money collected was put into a tin that I altered to look like an iPhone4! Took me till 3 am but it was totally worth it! 

Christmas Cards

Good morning everyone! Hopefully no one else is up at this ridiculous hour like I am. It's 3:11 AM and I've been up busy crafting! I'll post my little project tomorrow night and I'll explain tomorrow. For now, I just wanted to post a picture of the Christmas cards I made for all my coworkers. I got the idea for these cut little mitts from a fellow Stampin' Up demonstrator on my team. I forgot to take a picture of who made the card so I can't give the exact stamper credit but please know that I didn't come up with this uber cute card. It uses 3 punches, the wide oval, small oval and scalloped oval. Super easy and super cute. Also, in case you're wondering why the heck I photographed them sitting in a box that says, "Fruit Buddies", it's because I bought Fuzzy Peach flavored candy canes! Hope you all have a great day! 

PPC-CC #42, SSSC96 & Top Tip Tuesday Challenge

Good morning everyone! We're only 12 days away from Christmas! Hopefully you all have your shopping and cards finished. I don't have either so I'll be working on those all week. Megan has another fun color challenge for you this week over at the Picture Perfect Creations blog. I combined it with 2 other challenges today. I used Sweet Sunday Sketch Challenge 96 and it's my very first Top Tip Tuesday challenge! I stumbled onto this blog a few weeks ago and was excited to follow another challenge blog. This week's challenge at Top Tip Tuesday is to use ribbon on your creation. More on that after I show you what I came up with. 

I was just thinking this afternoon that I need to use more ribbon on my cards (preferably on all my cards) since I was organizing my ribbon today. I was at the mall yesterday and stopped in at Deserres. They had a sale on some Craft Mates storage items so I stocked up on 4 of the ribbon holders. After loading in as many Stampin' Up ribbon rolls as I could, I realized I need more!!! So I'll need to stop by sometime this week and pick up another 2 or 3... Here's my new ribbon storage! Any thoughts? Jealous? =) 

Lazy Sunday...

Just wanted to share a couple things on this lazy Sunday. Jamie had a craving for cinnamon buns so decided to make some! I've made them once before and he criticized that mine were dry. I told him he should make sticky buns so it has that ooey gooey yumminess on top. Well I must say, if I didn't tell him to do that, his buns were just as dry as mine!!! So if he brings up my dry cinnamon buns again (which is often does), I'll have some ammo to fire back! 

The second thing I wanted to share before bed. Remember when I made my little garbage container out of scraps? If not, you can see it here. Well something that I learned that night made me love Stampin' Up card stock even more than I already do. When I first started crafting, I did as all beginners do. I went to Michael's and bought a bunch of card stock to get started. I still have about 4 packages of white hanging around. I often will use this card stock as scraps so what better time to use it than now for making letters for my garbage box. After stamping a few times, I kept wondering, "Why the heck is my stamped image so crappy?" It looked as though I didn't ink it up enough. So I decided to change card stock and viola! It was the card stock and not the ink or stamp that was crappy! Stampin' Up's Whisper White just takes ink so much better. Try clicking the picture and enlarging it to see for yourself. 

So the picture above shows the same stamp set and same Classic Basic Black Stampin' Up ink. The bottom row is white card stock from Michael's (Value Pack White Cardstock Sheets by The Paper Company ANW Crestwood). The second row is just white card stock from Staples (Staples brand). The top row is the gorgeous Whisper White card stock from Stampin' Up. Not only does it take ink way better, it's also a nice bright white color and just oh so smooth to the touch. Michael's card stock is rough and kind of dull looking. Really just bleh in my opinion! Do you have a go-to white card stock? 

Color Q #62, 4 Crafty Chicks #14 & Fall To Layout #119

Alrighty this is going be a very short post because it's already 12:36 AM and I need to work in the morning! And you read correctly. I am making another card for 4 Crafty Chicks and Fall to Layout! I had made a birthday card for my friend and posted it yesterday. The colors I chose were very close to this week's Color Queen Challenge. Although it was close, it still wasn't the exact colors and you could definitely tell so I wanted to make an exact replica of the card using similar colors. Here is it along with Clean and Simple's Fall To Layout #119 again. Love this sketch!!! And yes, it again does qualify for 4 Crafty Chick's challenge 14, to make a birthday card. Have a great night everyone! 

PS. I miss my beloved Circle Circus stamp set! I'm glad I busted it out again! 

PPC-CC #41, 4 Crafty Chicks #14 & Fall To Layout #119

I can't believe it's another Monday already!! Have you started our Christmas shopping yet? I've been sick sick sick lately and haven't really done much of anything! First it was the flu for 2 weeks, then numerous bouts of nausea and vomiting. Then on Wednesday night I sneezed a couple times and felt a tickle in my nose. Thursday morning I'm down with a cold. I've been out of commission all weekend. We did manage to go to Jamie's work Christmas party but I went to the washroom every 10 minutes or so to clear my sinuses. Good thing the washroom wasn't too far away. Today I took a sick day from work because with my hacking and green snot, I'm not visiting new born babies and I can't even imagine having to talk to parents for 4 hours on their child's growth and development. Is anyone else having as much illness this winter as me? My manager and Arlie keep telling me to start taking Cold FX. I think I just might. Onto today's card! Boy I haven't done a triple play in a long time. I really wanted to make my friend a birthday card for her 30th birthday and I know she loves green so I decided to combine Picture Perfect Creations #41, Fall To Layout's #119 and 4 Crafty Chicks #14 birthday card challenge. Here's what I came up with. 

I'm loving the ribbon and I think I just might need to do more of that! Works great with Stampin' Up's satin ribbon. And the big ol' button is from the winter mini catalogue's Big Designer Buttons. I might need to redo a card that's more "wintery" for my friend's birthday as I'm not so sure I chose the theme very wisely.... Hope you get a chance to join us at PPC this week and pop on over to see what the other creators have made! Have a great day! 

PPC-CC #40 & Saturday Sketch Challenge #179

I can't believe it's almost DECEMBER!!! Have you started or better yet, finished your Christmas cards yet? I sure haven't! I'm definitely feeling the fire under my butt though! I thought I'd get a lot more accomplished while I was on vacation but all my time was eaten up by wedding planning and renos. We've started using our new shiny fridge and today Jaime finished putting in the new dishwasher (into our old cupboards, so it's not as exciting). We started our first load of dishes last night and let it air dry. Needs a bit of tweaking still because I think the dishwasher door rubs against the cupboard. Minor details right? Now for the real reason you're here visiting. It's Monday and that means another color challenge over at the Picture Perfect Creations challenge blog! This week's colors are out of my comfort zone. I'm still not sure about Poppy Parade but I'm trying! I combined it with Stamping 411's Saturday Sketch Challenge #179. 

I'm really not sure why I chose a Poppy Parade background but I'm too lazy to take another picture. Originally I had a button where the sentiment is but then realized it wasn't Not Quite Navy. Boo. Hopefully you get a chance to pop by PPC-CC and join us this week for a challenge coloring challenge! 

4 Crafty Chicks #13

Boy it's early... 2:12 AM early! Today is the last day of my week long vacation and I'm sad I didn't get in more crafting time. But I am happy to say that we got a lot accomplished still. We managed to book our wedding photographer, our ceremony location, our reception and we bought a new fridge and dishwasher! So all the appliances for our future kitchen are purchased! The fridge and dishwasher were delivered today so I made Jamie help me wipe down the new shiny fridge and move everything over from our old fridge. One thing I noticed about fridges though, the veggie/fruit bins are never big enough. Perhaps we buy a lot of produce but seriously, we needed to make the entire shelf on top of the bins a designated "produce shelf". Hopefully Jamie will be able to install the dishwasher in the next week even though we'll be ripping out all the cupboards around it. I just really hate washing dishes! Such a waste of my precious life minutes. Can you tell it's late and I'm just doing some late night ranting? Onto the purpose of the post! This week over at 4 Crafty Chicks, it's an inspiration challenge. Can you believe it's already week 13 those gals are up to? Here's a CAS card I created using colors from the photo. Hope everyone has a great Friday and pop by 4 Crafty Chicks if you get a chance! 

Wednesday Morning Breakfast!

So Jamie and I are on a little mini vacation this week and I've been sleeping in the last 2 days. We both fell asleep on the couch downstairs last night and woke up with sore backs. So of course instead of crawling into bed upstairs, I decided to wake up at 8:30!!! That's almost unheard of for me on a day off. Jamie's usually the one that makes elaborate breakfasts for me and this morning I wanted pancakes. I remembered my friend, Julie, posted a recipe for pancakes with blueberry sauce on her blog. I made a few changes. 


Fluffy Pancakes
original recipe
makes 10 - palm-sized pancakes

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup milk (I used 2%)
• 2 tablespoons white vinegar
• 1 cup all-purpose flour whole wheat flour
• 2 tablespoons white sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon butter Becel, melted
• cooking spray
• 
  
• Directions

1. Combine milk with vinegar in a medium bowl and set aside for 10 minutes to "sour" while you prep the rest.
2. Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large mixing bowl. Whisk egg and butter into "soured" milk. Pour the wet ingredients into the flour mixture and whisk until lumps are gone. This will happen with a few good whisks.
3. Let the mixture sit for a couple minutes so that vinegar gets the batter all frothy. Do NOT re-stir the batter!!!
4. Heat a large skillet over medium heat, and coat with cooking spray.  Scoop 1/3 cupfuls of batter onto the skillet. You almost need to shimmy the batter around to spread it out.
5. Cook until bubbles appear on the surface. I found the batter quite thick and I didn't see the bubbles like I do with other pancake recipes. I flipped with a spatula when I saw the top of the batter start to move. If I let it sit till it bubbled, the bottom would have burnt. 

Blueberry Sauce

original recipe

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup sugar 2 tbsp of sugar
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 1/3 1 cup water
• 2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries
• pinch of salt
• 
  
• Directions

1. In a 2-qt. saucepan, combine sugar and cornstarch; gradually stir in water. Add blueberries and salt; bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Boil for 1 minute, stirring occasionally. Turn the heat down to low and stir occasionally until you're done cooking all your pancakes. Serve warm or cold over French toast, pancakes or waffles.

I wanted some coffee but we didn't have any on hand so Jamie roasted some beans up in our popcorn maker. I tried to take a picture of the steam coming off those hot hot beans but didn't make it in time with the camera. 

 Now for those that know me, know I love my savory foods. Yesterday the Mundare sausage I ordered from this little girl that came around a few weeks ago fundraising finally arrived. We pan-fried that up with some onion as the coffee was brewing. 

The recipe was very easy to make. It would have tasted a lot better with all purpose flour because with whole wheat, it was a little dry and crumbly. I think also omitting a lot of the fat didn't help. I'd definitely go back to this recipe though! I love vacations!! Hope everyone has a great Wednesday! 

Using Up Scraps!!!

I am really not good at using up my paper scraps. So I always just leave them in a little (actually it's quite large!) pile underneath my cutter. You can see from the photo that I had a lot of leftover pink patterned paper. I used a bunch of paper to make a wedding planner for my best friend, Elizabeth. I was left with a bunch of 1" strips so I decided to try weaving them together. After weaving a short panel to cover a box that was used as a "garbage" box during my last workshop, I realized I could weave a huge panel! 

I ended up cutting up all the rest of my pink scraps into 1" strips and made a nice long weave! Afterwards I stamped some letters out and stuck those onto the sides. This will now be my new garbage can for workshops! 

Three cheers for using up scraps!!! Hip hip hurray! Hip hip hurray! Hip hip hurray!!!

Online Spectacular Sale!!!

Now we all know Stampin' Up throws specials at us all the time. This holiday season is no different! Remember last year's Extravaganza? Well this year Stampin' Up! is having an Online Spectacular Sale!! Items are on sale between 30-50% off! You can shop online  or you can email me your order. The perk about emailing me your order is all orders over $200 qualifies for free shipping!!! That's a savings of an extra 10%. The sale ends November 30!!! Happy shopping!! 

PPC-CC #40

Hopefully everyone had a relaxing weekend. I was out of commission on Friday night puking my guts out. I've had a really bad fall/winter so far. Someone suggested that I might be having migraines but minus the actual stabbing headache. I'll need to ask about it when I have my annual physical. But enough about me! A few of you joined us last week for Picture Perfect Creations very first Sketch Combo. We'll be throwing other curve balls at you as the weeks go by. This week at Picture Perfect Creations, we're back to another color challenge. I was very excited with this week's colors and here's why. Jamie and I were over at our friends' place (Mark & Jinnee) yesterday. Jinnee was showing me some of the cards she had made recently and my absolute favorite was this really bold Pacific Point and Real Red card she made using some DSP from the Celebrations pack. The colors matched this week's color challenge almost to a tee. I think she even used something close to More Mustard. Now I don't have a photo of Jinnee's photo to post but I can say that this card is an exact copy of hers! The only difference is I used a scalloped circle punch instead of a star punch. 

I tried adding my blog address to the photo and I have no idea how it came to be so blurry! It was too late to fix though because I already saved it and I have no idea how to reverse it! Hope you all get a chance to play along with us at PPC this week! Have a great Monday! 

Win a FREE Copy of My Digital Studio!

Barb Mullikin has an AMAZING give-a-way!!! Check out her blog for more information. To enter, she wants to know why you'd love a copy or love to give it to someone. Now some of you may not have heard about My Digital Studio from Stampin' Up. It's the new way to scrapbook! You can even make digital cards and print them out. I have never used MDS before but things that I know I already love about it are many! The biggest love is of course how everything matches and coordinates! Stampin' Up is known to make everything simple for all crafters. That means all the colors and images are made to coordinate with punches and even the inks/card stock you already own! You can custom create all of your scrapbook pages and add in journaling. What makes MDS different as well from other digital scrapbooking programs is there are always new images/accessories to download! Just like how you would go to the store to buy new accessories, you can go onto the Stampin' Up website to shop for new items! When you're finished, just send in your order from home and it'll get delivered right to your door! And for those that don't scrapbook, you can even create cards and print those as well! Those are all reasons that I'd love to own My Digital Studios. What are yours? 

Color Q #59 & CPS #193

It looks like I'm getting back into the late night crafting. That always seems to happen when winter starts looming. We got some snow today in lil Edmonton and it's starting to finally get chilly. The days get dark at like 3:00 PM. It really is quite sad. Sorta like that Expedia commercial where the girl is at work and looks outside into the dark night, looks at the clock that says something like 4 PM and then starts to cry. Anyways, onto why I'm really posting tonight so I can get to bed! I was out with my friend, Arlie, last week and we ran out of time at the mall so she didn't stop by Bath & Body Works for some little hand-sani. I had bookmarked this cute little project a while back from Pink Buckaroo Designs. it's a cute little holder for those mini hand sanitizers. I haven't participated in very many challenges since I took on the design team position with Picture Perfect Creations. I think summer had a little bit to do with that too. So here's a little combo challenge and those that know me know I almost always combine a sketch and color challenge together. Like I always say, why do more thinking than you need to. Especially for late night crafters! I've combined Color Queen's Challenge #59 and Card Positioning Systems #193. Now those that are Stampin' Up fans will notice that the DSP I used isn't the exact colors listed in the color challenge but they are just so darn close and it matched the stamp set so well that I decided to bend the rules a little bit. And for those that didn't notice, well then... Carry on!

Now you also can't really tell from the picture but I used a new product called Smooch Pearlized Top Coat. Picture a little bottle of sparkly glitter that you can paint onto projects like nail polish or white out. I painted it over the entire flower and in the middle added some Dazzling Diamonds glitter. The Smooch stuff is definitely fun to play with and now I need to buy more! 

For complete instructions, visit Pink Buckaroo Designs. She also has more photos on her blog. Total side note. I decided to try using a patterned piece of paper for the background instead of my plain old white and boy, I'm loving how it looks! That paper in the background is actually the one used on the project, but just flipped onto the other side! That's the great thing about Stampin' Up! The DSP is always double-sided and all the colors coordinate! Thanks for stopping by and happy early hump day! (Hump day still sounds so weird to me....)

Start A New Business?!?!

From November 15 through November 30, 2010, you can purchase the Standard or Digital+ Starter Kits for only $107.50--that is 50 percent off the regular price of $215 for over $375 worth of paper or digital crafting and business supplies! Don't feel like starting a business? It's a great time to start your own crafting hobby! The stamps and inks you get from the kit alone are worth it! There's no penalty if you want to stop being a demonstrator and you can stop anytime! Plus, on your first order as a demonstrator, you can save up to 30%! Feel free to contact me if you have any questions! 

PPC-SC #1 & PDCC #55

Happy Monday everyone! I can't believe November is officially half over! I'm not ready for it to be Christmas quite yet. The weather has been cooperating with that! No snow staying on the ground yet. We've had an entire day of rain though! Kind of feels like Vancouver! 
Today's card threw me for a double challenge and not because I combined 2 challenges together. Over at Picture Perfect Creations, we've decided to start sketch challenges! So this week is the first sketch challenge. I've combined it with the Play Date Cafe Challenge #55. I call this a double challenge because 
1. I do not like using more than about 3 colors on my cards and PDCC #55 uses 5 (and ones that I would never put together)!! 
2. I do not use complicated sketches very often and the very first PPC-SC is more complicated than I am used to. 
I wanted to make a card for someone close to my heart that was recently diagnosed with liver cancer. I don't know very much about liver cancer except for what she has told me. She will hopefully go for surgery within the next couple weeks. She'll be in my thoughts and I'll be praying for a smooth surgery and speedy recovery. Hopefully you don't need to make a get well card for anyone but come pop by Picture Perfect Creations to try out our new challenge and see what the design team has come up with! They did a much better job than me!