Thanksgiving

Looking for the Card Cupids Blog Hop?! Go HERE.
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This has been an amazing year, and I have a lot to be Thankful for! We hosted Thanksgiving at our house this year, and it was a ton of fun. I spent two days in the kitchen baking pies, a cheesecake (crossing one more thing off of my 25 before 25 list) , the biggest Turkey my kitchen has ever seen (24 lbs!) and tons of potatoes.


I wanted to share this recipe for Cranberry sauce with you, because my lands it was Delicious! It's from Epicurious and has 1/3 cup vodka in it, if that helps interest you ;)

I predict it will make a re-appearance at Christmas dinner too.

Cosmopolitan Cranberry Sauce

• 1 (12-ounce) bag fresh cranberries, rinsed, drained, and picked through
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup vodka
• 3 tablespoons orange-flavored liqueur, such as Grand Marnier or Triple Sec (I omitted the liqueur and used mandarin juice-we have a mandarin tree)
  

In heavy medium saucepan over moderate heat, combine cranberries, sugar, and 1/2 cup water. Bring to boil, stirring often to dissolve sugar, then reduce heat to moderately low and simmer, stirring often, until thickened and reduced to about 3 cups, about 15 minutes.

Transfer to medium bowl and cool, stirring often, until tepid, about 30 minutes. Stir in vodka and liqueur. Transfer to serving bowl, cover, and refrigerate until chilled and set, at least 2 hours. (Sauce can be made up to 2 weeks ahead and refrigerated.) Serve chilled or at room temperature.

Read More http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Cosmopolitan-Cranberry-Sauce-240449#ixzz16iygCXUy

Card Cupid Christmas Blog Hop!

Welcome to the first ever Card Cupids Blog Hop! I'm so excited to be a part of this, and to have you join me. You should have arrived from Janel's Blog, if so, you're on the right path! If you are reading my blog in a reader or are just stopping by, be sure to start at www.cardcupids.org so you don't miss out on any of the fun (and prizes!)


Card Cupids is a brand new organization with the mission to provide encouragement and joy by sending Card Cuddle Care Packages to children who are facing difficult challenges in their young lives regardless of their economic background. Each package contains cards lovingly handmade by our Design Team and anyone else that wants to participate, as well as a stuffed animal donated by Card Cupids. It's so easy to make cards and I feel like I'm giving back by sharing them with children and putting a smile on their faces!

We're currently collecting Christmas cards to send to the children's Hospital at Legacy Emanuel in Portland, Oregon. Here is a Christmas card I made to send in:

The best part? The hat jiggles! I love it. If you would like to see how I made the card (and the jiggle in action!) I made this short video for you.




And now for the part you've been waiting for: The CANDY! Each of the Design Team members is donating a piece to the grand prize. I chose to donate this iRock.
I've never used one, but I really want one and thought you might too!

Here's how you can enter to win:

1. Comment on every blog in the hop.
2. Follow CardCupids.
3. for a second entry, mention the hop on your blog and leave a separate comment with a link on the card cupids site.

Winner will be announced on Card Cupids on Wednesday.

So now you're ready to move on to the next blog in the hop, my friend Heather! Have fun!

In case you got lost, here is the blog hop order:

Card Cupids
Stephanie
Christy
Jade
Luisa
Janel
Angela <-- YOU ARE HERE! Heather
Janet
Radwa
Card Cupids again!

Thanks so much for joining us, and good luck with the prize!

Cricut Cartridge Deal PSA

Michaels has the Cricut Cake and all that comes with it on major clearance, so last night I got these three cartridges


for $9.99 each! They can be used with any Cricut machine and each cartridge comes with a font and tons of images. I'm beyond excited to use them and that they were so cheap! Go get you some, quick!

My Cricut cartridge collection is growing :)

This time next week

I will be part of the first ever Card Cupids blog hop! (also, my first blog hop of any sort). There's going to be a big prize to enter for that the entire design team is contributing to, so be sure to come back and hop along for a chance to win! It will be a fun time and we'll all be sharing a Christmas card creation.

Here's a sneak peek at what I've contributed to the big grand prize:See you next Friday!

Adventures in Quilling

After having this tutorial by Reese Dixon bookmarked for a year, I finally decided to take the plunge and attempt quilling. I'm in a ornament exchange, and that snowflake is just the thing I was looking for to wow my recipient.
Unfortunately, none of the (two) craft stores in my area had quilling tools. So, I took a large sewing needle and clipped off the ends with a wire cutter. You'll see in my snowflake that it didn't work all that well and the ends of my spirals are wrinkled...but that being said, I LOVE my snowflake! I plan to spray adhesive on it and glitter it up like Reese did.
I plan to make many many more of these. It really didn't take me very long (after the initial cutting of the paper strips) and it was surprisingly fun. And you really can't beat the wow factor of quilling.
And you'll be pleased to know I ordered some quilling tools from amazon.com, and they should be here by this weekend, so my exchange recipient will be getting some unwrinkled snowflakes :)

Card for Nina

Nina is an 10 year old foster child with a birthday coming up. I made this happy little pig card to send to her.

I'll be mailing off Nina's card tomorrow, along with these, all for the Children's Hospital at Legacy Emanuel in Portland Oregon.
Want to be a Card Cupid too? Send your handmade cards to

Card Cupids
C/O Stephanie

13203 Overcup Oak Court, Apt 201

Herndon, VA 20171

We're have an ongoing deal with the Legacy Emanuel Children's hospital, and they need cards for any event, so if you have more than you know what to do with, please consider clearing out your stash and making a child's day!

Adding to my stash

I was so excited to pick up my package of cuttlebug folders from the post office yesterday, but unfortunately it was a crazy day at work and I didn't get to play with them. Today after work, they were the first thing I reached for!


I plan to send in a stack of plain Christmas cards to Card Cupids for the hospital, so I made this little card using the snowflake cuttlebug folder, my texture boutique, sandpaper, glitter glue, and paper embellishments.
The little trees came in a jar of paper embellishments that my mom bought me to use for the Card Cupid project :) Thanks Mama, I'm sure I'll find lots of uses for them!

Card Cupids announcement

I'm so very proud to announce that I'm now a member of the Card Cupids Design Team! Card Cupids is a brand new organization that sends bundles of cards to needy children who can use some cheering up, how sweet is that?!

Please be sure to go over to the Card Cupids blog and check out the other talented ladies that make up our design team, and I hope you'll play along with our challenges and participate in any way you can!

Salted Caramel Hot Chocolate Cupcakes

Have you tried the Salted Caramel Hot Chocolates at Starbucks yet? If not, you should probably go get one right now. I'll wait.
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If you're like me, you're now addicted to these tasty treats. I don't know why they're SO stinking good!!
Last weekend we were having friends over for a horror movie marathon, and I knew I wanted to make salted caramel something. I settled on mini cupcakes after finding the beautiful TasteSpotting and sorting the recipes by the "salted caramel" tag.
I made the salted caramel buttercream from this recipe, and I highly recommend! For one, it was really, really easy. For two, it was so good!
For the cupcakes, I cheated. I used a box milk chocolate cake mix, and substituted strong brewed coffee for the water. They don't taste like coffee, but for some reason I felt that it would be more of a hot chocolate tasting cupcake, and I was happy with the result.

Cards for Christina and Riley

These are two more cards for Card Cupids, for 3 year old Christina and 10 year old Riley.



If you look closely, you'll see that the Dog's tag even has a teeny little "R" on it :)




I hope these bring a smile to their faces! I'll be dropping my three cards in the mail, but if you're interested in submitting a card you have until November 10 for Ashlie and Christina and November 17 for Riley.

one card, three purposes

First and foremost, this card is for Ashlie. If you haven't heard of Card Cupids yet, you should check out their blog. It's a very sweet project designed to brighten sick childrens' hospital stays, and I think it's just wonderful. Normally I'd use some glitter glue on a card like this, but since I'm not sure if it would be allowed, I left it off this time.

Second, I'm entering this card in Momo's Tuesday challenge! This week's challenge was to use some sort of embossing, so I used my Sizzix texture boutique and the Sizzix tropical paisley embossing folder to add texture to my purple square.

Third, and finally, I'm entering this card into the MAG challenge! This week's challenge was to use page 45 of the Create a Critter Cartridge, and page 45 only. I was excited to see this challenge as Create a Critter is one of only 3 cartridges I own, so I could actually participate this week! YAY!

While Ashlie was the inspiration to make a card, the two challenges made me use cuts and techniques I may not have. This was a really fun way to create a card, and I really hope it does make Ashlie smile ;)