Merry Christmas to me!

This is what my sweet husband got me for Christmas! I finally got it today and I can't wait to play with it!
So many exclamations marks in one short post!!!

This is one of the craft things I kept telling myself I didn't need...just like the Cricut and the Martha Stewart Scoreboard...and then I get anyways. Hopefully I'll end up loving it as much as I do my other "do not need" items on my desk!

Bake Sale!

I mentioned in my last post that I organized a Bake Sale earlier this month at my work to help raise money for our Christmas family (and we raised quite a bit!! YAY!). I wanted to share the bake sale signs that I made using my Cricut because, well, I'm pretty sure they were the cutest Bake Sale signs EVER. By the time I finished them it was something like 11:30pm, so my picture is a little dark, sorry!

The font is from the Elegant Cakes cartridge (and it's not even the prettiest font on there!), the cup of cocoa is from the Holiday Cakes cartridge and the happy cupcake is from Simply Charmed.
And here are the goodies I made and packaged up. I'd never made either Rice Krispie Treats or Peanut Butter Blossoms before, but both turned out really well and sold quickly.

Peppermint Nutella blossoms

A while back I asked my imaginary friends on a message board what to make for a bake sale, and Sarah said I needed to make peanut butter blossoms. I used her recipe and whipped up a batch. They seemed to be a pretty big hit and I've made them three times since then (and the bakesale was only a few weeks ago!)
Well, I bought a two pack of nutella at Costco a few weeks ago, and with DH trying to lose 10 lbs, it was not a good combo. One of them had to go. So I decided to try to substitute Nutella in the Peanut butter blossom recipe. Nutella is softer than pb, so I added at 1/8 cup of cocoa powder for good measure, and omitted the vanilla.
They spread out a lot more than traditional pb blossoms, but with a candy cane kiss on top and their chocolately goodness: omg om nom nom. I'm sure I'm not the first person to think of this, so I'll check the interwebs and see if I can find a recipe that holds it's traditional blossom shape a little better before I make these again.

Nutella Blossoms

2 cups Bisquick
3.4 cup Nutella
1.8 cup cocoa powder
1 can sweetened condensed milk
white sugar
kisses of your choice

mix ingredients, roll into balls and roll balls in white sugar. Bake for 10 minutes at 350. Remove from oven, let sit for 1 minute, then press unwrapped kisses into top of cookies. Remove from cookie sheet and cool.
Makes 4 dozen

Tomorrow these will be off to a friend who asked me to make her Christmas cookies. How could I say no? :)

11th hour Christmas Cards

I didn't think I had Christmas Cards in me this year, but at the last second (meaning this morning before I left for work and tonight when I got home) I pumped out these:

yeah, so I've only made 6. And so they're going to be reciprocal cards (I'm sending them to people who've already sent us cards!) and so, they may not be there by Christmas. BUT I made them, and they're done and they'll be in the mail tomorrow!
This is one of my favorite designs from when I was making cards earlier this year, most of which I sent to Card Cupids, so I decided to re-create it. The lovely wreath is cut from the Holiday Cakes cartridge, and to save time I skipped cutting the berries and used glitter glue instead.

And, it's only 7:40 right now, so I have a few hours to make more. So I may even get to making reciprocal cards from last year, when I didn't send out cards at all.

I feel so alive! (not really.)

Hobby Hopping Contest

My friend Christy over at Hobby Hopping is having a pretty awesome blog contest! If she gets to 50 followers by Christmas, she'll draw a name and give the winner their choice of 5 Copics, 10 Spicas, a Glitter Ritz/Peel Off starter kit, a set of hand-made cards, or a big box of candy.
Any of those would be amazing to win! She's only 14 followers away, so, go, follow and if you haven't seen her blog yet, you're in for a treat!

Christmas Boxes

With only a few days left until Christmas, I think it's safe to say I've given up on making my Christmas cards this year. I just don't have the time.
BUT I did make these adorable boxes to fill with homemade candy for my coworkers! I used this box tutorial, and cut the reindeer from Create a Critter. I used the fill page feature to cut as many from a page as I could at 5 inches, and I had 10 boxes done in no time (less than an hour). I used my paper cutter to score the boxes, which worked okay, but I bought a Martha Stewart Scoreboard a few days later. If I ever make these boxes again, the scoreboard will make it a much faster process!

I made them while the peanut butter button cookies were baking and cooling and it worked out really well. I forgot to take a picture after I added the gift tags, but I cut small tags with the Plantin Schoolbook cartridge and tucked them near the Reindeer's head with a sentiment and the recipients name. They really turned out cute.I added peppermint bark to these after the picture too! I almost forgot to put it in there.

So, if I don't post again before Saturday, have a Merry Christmas!

Use Your Stash: Card Cupids Challenge #2

This weeks Card Cupid challenge is so super easy, it's a use your stash challenge! The only requirement is that you can't buy anything new for this card.
We're sponsored by Heather Ellis Co. this week, so we each chose one of her adorable digi stamps to use. I chose this girl in the bathtub stamp, and then remembered that I had bubble print paper in my stash. From 8th grade. Yeah, this stuff is OLD.

The pink stickers are also really old, I've had them for about 7 or 8 years. The pink and the blue card stock and the corner rounder have been in my stash since this summer. I was a little mad at myself for forgetting to round the bubble paper before sticking it down with my very unforgiving ATG gun, but it doesn't look that bad.

What did you come up with? You have until Sunday to enter and win three Heather Ellis digis!

Cheesecake

For Thanksgiving dessert I decided to try to make a cheesecake. It's on my 25 before 25 list, and my mother in law doesn't eat much gluten, so I thought it would be the perfect dessert (to go along with the traditional walnut, apple and pumpkin pies that we had!).

I found my recipe on Tasty Kitchen, and it was very simple and easy to make. I added a chocolate ganache on top to make it richer, and I used chocolate Graham crackers for the crust.

Also, I didn't have a springform pan and I didn't want to invest in one until I knew if this was something I was willing to attempt again, so I used a tart pan. It meant the cheesecake was very thin, but with the ganache topping it was the perfect size because it was so rich!

I'll definitely be investing in a springform pan, because this cheesecake was awesome!

Christmas Cards

A few weeks ago, before I joined the Card Cupids design team, I made a generic back ground to use for all of my Christmas cards. Then, after I joined Card Cupids I learned that we would be sending Christmas Cards to 200 kids at the Children's Hospital at Legacy Emmanuel. Now, I work full time and have an additional part time job, so I thought about it for about a second, then decided to use my backgrounds for Card Cupids cards instead. My family wont notice if they don't receive another piece of mail, but that piece of mail could make some kids day. Easiest decision ever!

So, here is the batch of cards I sent off to Card Cupids last week. I love them all! I know I should be mass producing them, but I can't help but make each one different. It's a sickness.

The Rub-ons are by American Crafts, and I found them at Ross (package of 10 for $3!!)

New Card Cupid Recipients

Happy Monday Morning! Actually, i despise Monday mornings. I'm like this guy:



But, regardless of my feelings of this day, we have some new children needing some cheering up over at Card Cupids, please go over and read their stories, and consider sending in a card to cheer them up! These three stories really tugged at my heart strings. I can't wait to make them something special.

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 :)