Christmas Baking!

I had a spurt of energy this week and decided to do some Christmas baking!

 Melt in Your Mouth Shortbreads

from Allrecipes.com

Donut Muffins

from Allrecipes.com

 Peanut Butter cookies from Epicure

 Chocolate Chip Cookies

 Epicure's Almond cookie bars

Banana choc/butterscotch chip muffins

 

Peppermint Snowballs from Epicure, Butterscotch chip sandies from Taste of Home, which I substituted butterscotch chips for the pecans (since I forgot to pick them up!) & Cookie Jar Gingersnaps from Taste of Home.



I packaged up one of each cookie into a cute container from Dollarama for Amie's sports class teachers as a little Thank You for the last day.

Linked to Friday Link Party at Creation Corner, Simply Link Party at Simply Designing, & Show & Tell Friday at My Romantic Home.

Baby Room on a Budget

The baby room is ready, counting down to less than 2 1/2 weeks now!  Since we had gotten rid of all of our baby stuff after Amie we started from scratch for baby Erica.  Of course we made some thrifty spending choices, and were fortunate enough to know some friends getting rid of baby stuff too!

Curtains from Walmart, recycled rocker and side table from other parts of the house, toys donated from big sis Amie, Martha Stewart shelf and pink fabric drawers from Rona.

 3 drawer Ikea dresser from Kijiji, which we attached a change pad to, decals from Dollarama!, change pad cover from second hand children's shop.

 Crib given to us by friends, mobile  bought from a friend who was done with it, bedding from Toys R Us as a shower gift :)

 Bear from big sis Stephanie, wooden box from Michaels painted by Amie & mom.

 Love this cute pic - it was a vintage picture from a CD/book I got from Chapters a while ago, but you can get lots of vintage images from Graphics Fairy too.  I printed it at Black's photo and popped it into a Dollarama frame!

This beautiful wall hanging was given as a shower gift! It it a growth chart on one side and on the other has spots to write in all kinds of 'firsts'.  A fabric pen was included with the gift. So thoughtful :)

Hope you enjoyed the tour of the new baby room.  Now it's just a waiting game!

Linked to Tip Me Tuesday, Made for you Monday & Too Cute Tuesday, 

Christmas Creations

Yesterday I did an awesome tag class at Scrapbooker's Paradise.  In the spirit of Tim Holtz tags they are doing tag Tuesdays and once again did two beautiful tags!

For the first tag we embossed a Santa image onto a tag, then sponged on some red and green distress inks.  We added die cut, sanded holly leaves, a die cut flourish, a flower and a couple other embellishments, then some mica flakes (so cool) around the edges.

For the second tag we embossed the greenery (Inkadinkadoo) with a puffy embossing powder then used the Tim Holtz distress stains to blot on red and green over the tag.  We then added die cut trees and fence (colored with the stain as well) and sprayed the trees with Goosebumps spray, which is a clear texture spray.  We added some glitter and threaded some leather cord through the edge and added a metal embellishment and then tied with some twine through the top.  I think this one is my fav; I love how the embossed image resisted the stain!

I also made a few more cards and for this one used the Tim Holtz seasonal paper pad and added a snowman cut from the Cricut with the Gypsy Wanderings cartridge.  His scarf is covered with green crackle paint and popped up with foam dots, his arms have brown crackle paint, which actually looks woody, and I painted him and his hat with a shiny paint to add sparkle.  I sponged some brown Distress Ink over the ribbon to add to the vintage look.

I had colored in the scarf with markers, but wasn't happy with it, so added the crackle paint over and you can actually see a bit of the polkadots underneath!

 I embossed these cards with a Sizzix Christmas embossing folder and added a popped up Christmas door cut from a 12x12 page and Stickles to add some bling!

 I bought this plain pressed wood tree last year and didn't get around to doing anything with it (I think it is Making Memories) so I pulled it out and covered it with Christmas scrapbooking paper.  I painted the ornaments, but felt the colors were too bright, so I covered them with decoupage glue and microfine glitter to create a 'sugared' look and then attached them with Glue Dots at the base.  The cards slip in between the ornaments and the tree.

Hope you're having a Merry Christmas!

Linked up to Get Your Craft on Tuesday, Tip Me Tuesday, Too Cute Tuesday, and Hoo's Got Talent.

12 Days of Christmas at Bugaboo Stamps Day 1

Over at Catch the Bug Challenge Blog the challenge for December 1st is to create a card with a tree on it, in the spirit of 'a partridge in a pear tree'!

Lucky me I just created a very cute Christmas card using one of their digital stamps, Old World Santa!

I colored this guy in with Prismacolor markers and then used Liquid Applique to fill in the beard and add some snow below Santa and on the tree.  I used Stickles to add some sparkle around his robe and attached some gems on the tree.  I was really pleased how this guy turned out! I mounted him on a piece of black cardstock and then used foam dots to mount onto sparkly green cardstock.
 

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!!

Wow, another week gone by! Can't believe it's December already. Well, I'm well on my way to being completely ready for Christmas (and baby)!

I found these awesome tags at Momomushy which you can print in color or black and white.  I printed these in B&W on cardstock and colored them with Prismacolor markers.

I love the online subscription of Crochet World Magazine, which I can access from my PC or I-Pad!  This 'Chunky Speckled Neck Warmer' is a super easy pattern in the December 2011 issue - just 45 double crochets in 9-13 rows done in a 6 - bulky yarn with a size 10 hook.  The starting chain really has to be done as loose as possible.

I wanted a cute tag I could attach to the top of the neck warmers, so I used this digital penguin stamp I had previously downloaded and opened it in Microsoft Word, added my own font underneath and put 4 on a page of cardstock to print out and color.  I then cut them in rectangles and punched a hole to add a ribbon in the corner.

Of course, Christmas cards! This cute snowman is a digital stamp from Hero Arts that I downloaded from Two Peas in a Bucket and layered on sparkly pink cardstock, which I embossed.  The scarf is a separate stamp (included) and layered over top the snowman with foam dots.  I colored this little guy with Prismacolor colored pencils using a great tutorial on colored pencils.

These cards were made with a cute 12x12 cardstock of doors, which I cut out and embellished with Stickles and popped up with foam dots over embossed cardstock.  On some I added ribbon and stamped a sentiment.

 Inside sentiments -

mounted on black cardstock

from Inkadinkadoo stamps.

Hope you are having a good holiday season so far - having fun and not stressing :)

Shared with - http://creationcorner.blogspot.com/, http://www.simplydesigning.blogspot.com/, and http://romantichome.blogspot.com/.

Week in Review!

It feels like I've been up to so much over the last 10 days! I'm really focusing on getting ready for Christmas and have also been trying to get as much crafting time in as possible before baby arrives! Counting down to 6 weeks :)

 From the December 2010 Create and Decorate magazine I stitched up these cute felt bells with appliqued details.  The felt flowers were cut freehand from felt and layered 2 together with a brad in the center.

 I used the Gypsy and Cricut with the Wall Decor and More cartridge to  make these two cards.  The top was for a little girl's birthday and the bottom was for Thank You cards for a baby shower (which my awesome sister and oldest daughter surprised me with!!) I was able to easily make 10 cards assembly style this way.

inside sentiment

As always Scrapbooker's Paradise had another awesome Toonie Thursday project- they made a really beautiful, super easy Christmas card with Smooch ink spread on a tree stamp, an embossed image at the top of the card and some cool Shimmer spray along with an envelope cut from 1/2 of a regular, long envelope with a piece of coordinating paper glued on the edge.

I made one with a 'Smooch' stamped flower image on brown cardstock, which I embossed with a sentiment and sprayed with Shimmer spray.

I also finished a pair of mittens for Amie from the Crochet World Babies and Kids issue.  They were super easy and are going to be really warm!

Also wanted to share a crafty website: http://www.wileycraft.com/
and a really good scalloped potato recipe: http://www.canadianliving.com/food/classic_scalloped_potatoes.php

Well, tomorrow's a scrapbooking day and then I've got a few more projects to finish up (and maybe address my Christmas cards!)

Linked up to Creation Corner's Friday Link Party, Simply Designing Simply Link Party, and My Romantic Home Show and Tell Friday!

Tags, Tags, Tags!

For last Toonie Thursday and on Tag Tuesday this week, Scrapbooker's Paradise has focused on tags... Fun!!

Dianne's Tag last week was so cool! We sprayed the tag with glimmer sprays after embossing gold snowflakes in the background.  We then stamped a great window stamp from Inkadinkado and covered it with Sookwang tape and then micro glitter to make it all sparkly and popped it up with foam dots over some sprayed leaves, fun twisted wire and fuzzy rickrack.

Below, are my two versions of this tag using some different colored glimmer sprays and silver embossed snowflakes on the yellow/pink tag.  Can't wait to dress up my Christmas packages with these!

Yesterday for Tag Tuesday we were shown how to make these awesome tags.  The snowflakes are punched from Spellbinders Dies, layered over some neat embossed paper (sold in a 12x12 sheet) which we used Distress Inks on.  We added a sentiment, torn around the edges and highlighed with some white ink and some rhinestones.

The Dream tag is layered over a plain black tag, then we added a die cut butterfly, some twine, a silhouette and a sentiment and tied a ribbon around the bottom.

Great tags! I'm going to see what I can do with the Cricut to make these :)

Scrapbooker's has some amazing tags featuring the Tim Holtz techniques starting next week!

Hobby Dough

My mother recently sent my daughter a 'Robin Hood' Hobby Dough book with a recipe for salt dough and instructions to make several different ornaments and gifts.  I actually remember this book and making these dough ornaments with my sister when I was younger!  We had lots of fun molding the dough and then baking it or air drying and painting our masterpieces.  Funny, some of the cheapest crafts provide the most memorable entertainment!

One of the best parts - mixing the dough with your hands!

Ready to bake

The finished product!

Recipe for salt dough:

2 1/2 cups All Purpose Flour
1 cup Salt
4 tablespoons Vegetable Oil
1 cup Water

Mix dry ingredients, add vegetable oil and stir in.  Add water a little at a time and stir until it holds together.  Knead 5-10 min's until dough feels smooth.

Store in airtight container or ziploc bag to prevent drying out leftovers.

You can air dry for 48 hours or until dough is hard and white in appearance or bake at 325 degrees or lower (if pieces are thinner than 1/4") on a cookie sheet, allowing 1/2 hour baking time per 1/4" of dough.

You can varnish or use acrylic sealer on both sides after painting to protect dough from absorbing moisture.

This post was shared with Tip Me Tuesday, Made for you Mondays, Get Your Craft on Tuesday, Too Cute Tuesday, and Tuesday Time Out.