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! 

Unscripted Sketch #80

Good afternoon everyone. It's Remembrance Day here in Canada today so I hope everyone takes some time today to remember those that have lost their lives fighting for us. I've got a quick post today of a card that my friend, Viv, asked me to make for her boyfriend. He's a big Vancouver Canucks fan so she wanted a card with that theme. Here's my attempt using Unscripted Sketches #80. I couldn't figure out how to add something to that top right corner so I had to skip that little bit there. Somehow a button or ribbon just didn't lend so well to this card. I made a little jersey prototype before trying to construct the actual one on the card. Hopefully he likes it. I have a really hard time making masculine cards so it was a good challenge for me. Guess boys need to receive cards too sometimes. I'm off for a walk with my pup. 

PPC-CC #38

Good morning ladies! Can you believe it's already mid November? Time really does fly! Megan is always so great at pairing up unusual colors or at least colors that I never put together. This week is no different! I combined this week's PPC challenge with a birthday card I was supposed to make. My coworker is turning the big 5-0 and I wanted a little card for her. Hopefully she likes it. I know it's a little simple but if you've been a follower of my work you'll know that I like CAS (clean & simple). Hope she (and you of course) likes it! On a side note, I haven't been very good about my No paper/product Buying Challenge. I've made a purchase over at Papertrey.com and I must say, I am loving my new stamp sets from there. Although I've caved and made some buys, I'll still count down to 100 projects! Have a great day everyone! 

PPC-CC #37, Fall To Layout #114 & 4 Crafty Chicks #9

Good morning everyone! Can you believe it's almost Christmas?!?! Ha ha, right? Hope everyone had a safe and fun All Hallows Eve. I managed to find some time to do some crafting this busy busy weekend. Can you believe we're up to Picture Perfect Creations #37? Wahoo!! I definitely didn't think these colors would look good together but I'm actually happy with how the card turned out. I combined the colors with Clean & Simple's Fall to Layout #114. I have a really hard time with single layer cards and I'm not sure if this technically qualifies as one because I didn't just stamp onto the card front. Those that know me, know I love layers. I love those little flowers and I'm so glad I have the Big Shot and punches for them. Can you imagine cutting those little suckers out?? Over at 4 Crafty Chicks, this week's challenge is to "Roll with the punches!" so I did just that! Anyways, the stamp set is Stem Sayings. Big Shot accessories include the Floral Fusion sizzlit and the Little Leaves sizzlit. The punch is from the Itty Bitty Shapes Punch Pack. Uber cute right? Hopefully you get a chance to play along this week. Both challenges are will definitely require you have some creative juices. Have a great week!