Birthday Bowling League

Every year for our friend Ben's birthday we go bowling. It's a ritual that we all look forward to every year. It will be so sad when Ben is too old to go bowling with us. Usually we bowl boys against girls, but this year we were a small group so we all bowled on one team. Karen was the overall winner this year - beating Ann and Steve. I scored higher than Tim for once.

This first page I made for a challenge on SCS. We had to take a test to see what color crayon I was and then scrap a page with that color and the color opposite on the color wheel. I was a yellow crayon so I had to scrap a page with yellow and purple. Thankfully this great bowling paper had both colors in it. I've used it for the last two years and I'm all out of it - need to go shoping for bowling paper.

After we bowl we go back to the house for presents and cake. This year Ben had a yummy Boston Cream Pie - and 10 candles. He got lots of great presents too.

The pages for this second layout were made by my online friend Sally for a swap we participated in. They were perfect for a 10 year-ols birthday.

Displaying Scrapbook pages

I just want to make sure you all know that I have the best husband in the world. I was showing him some wooden scrapbook page holders that were for sale online. They were only 20 something dollars, but he decided he could make one for me. We went to Lowes and found some pieces of polar ( the online version is made of plywood) and a dowl rod for about 7 dollars. In a couple of hours he made me a fabulous wooden frame to hang my scrapbook pages for display. And he even made one for a friend.

The page I'm displaying here is one I made this weekend. My youngest niece was Tinkerbell for Halloween this past year. The title says "Pixie's Just Want to Have Fun". The chipboard flower is covered in purple with silver, celery, and purple ribbon knots and rhinestones at it's center.

Freddy's First Scrapbook Page

Sally on SCS posted a great sketch challenge that I used for this page. "Play Hard Sleep Hard" -That's our Freddy boy. He loves playing with the feather balls, and once he starts playing the other cats join him. The background is soft sky and I used a stip of old olive and really rust and two cute patterned papers. The I scattered old olive felt flowers across the page. One of the flowers has a paw print brad in the center. And that is Freddy's first scrapbook page. I'm sure there will be lots more.

Some Scrabook Pages from the Summer

If you'll remember, this past August, I took a trip down to Myrtle Beach to meet up with some of my online friends from splitcoaststampers.com. I finally got around to scrapping that weekend.

The first set of pages is four of us, Donna, Darcy, Andrea and I, all scrapping on Donna's kitchen table. We had the best time sharing our supplies and being creative. Donna's oldest son, Duncan, actually took the group picture of us because we couldn't get the camera timer to work.

The second set of pages is of Myrtle Beach State Park. Donna, Darcy, and the boys and I went to the beach for the morning. A thunderstorm was coming up across the ocean and it made the water full of beautiful shades of blue. And I didn't even get sunburned while we were there. It's a beuatiful state park in the middle of an overcrowded beach town.

I used some of the same colors - really rust and cool carribean - and pattern papers from the same group to tie the two pages together.

Lovely Yellow Daffodils

I wanted to share a photo of some of my daffodils. I really need to get out and plant more next year.

I took this picture on February 5th. Last year I took pictures of daffodils on January 14th. This little bunch has a few more blossoms now and I also have a couple of clumps by the front walkway. The camillia tree has also blossomed and so has the lenten rose. I'm sure the tulips won't be up for awhile yet.

I cut all of my lovely daffodils for ceterpieces for my Best Books 2007 Tea at work. They were beautiful in some simple glass vases on top of white table cloths. And they have lasted all week. A few more have popped up in the yard, so I still have some to look at our the front window.

A Made up Recipe

The other evening Tim and I picked up this 3 quart round covered casserole dish at the grocery store. The store has been offering these nice baking dishes as a premium. Earlier, I picked up a 8x8 dish in red. They also have a 13x9 dish, a 3.5 quaert oval covered casserole and a 1 quart coverd casserole that I have my eye on. Hopefully there will be some left after the promotion and I can get a couple more pieces on sale. After all, everyone needs more baking dishes - right.

So, I was itching to use my new covered casserole dish. But what to make in it? Hmmm - somehow I ended up with a bunch of cans of white beans in the pantry that really needed to be used. So I spent some time looking at recipes on foodtv.com and came up with something of my own using ingredients I had or could easily get at our local grocery store. I really would have liked lamb, but I'd have to get that in Charlotte. I bought a few things - like spicey chicken sausage and bacon at the grocery store and a nice loaf of crusty bread - and Tim and I made dinner together. And we have plenty left over for lunches this week.

Here's what I came up with:

White Bean Cassoulet

Four cans of white beans, drained, in a 3 qt. covered casserole.
Add 1 tablespoon chopped garlic and 1 bay leaf.
Cook 5 slices of bacon. Drain and crumble into beans.
Sauté diced onion and chopped carrot in bacon grease, add to beans.
Slice 4 links of spicy chicken sausage and sauté until brown. Add to beans.
Add 1 cup of chicken broth.
Cover and bake at 350 degree for 1 hour.

Serve with grated parmesan cheese and crusty bread.

Happy Day After Valentines Day

I have to show you the cards I made for Dylan and Tim because I just love how they turned out.

It was hard to make a valentine for a 16 year-old boy and not make something pink and mushy - but I did it. This turned out great - blue and brown and red. I had some great red and cream pattern paper that I'd been saving for something. I used the elephant and the saying from the Wild About You stamp set and a heart from another little set. I liked how this turned out so much that I made basically the same card for an upcoming birthday for someone who will be 10! It's our little friend Ben's birthday this weekend. On'y Ben's card has the elephant holding a present instead of a heart.

I have a small collection of martini stamps to use for cards and scrapbook pages for Tim. The man loves martinis. The colors here are green, blue, red and brown. And I used another piece of the red and cream pattern paper I have. I used a card sketch from Beate over on SCS, and it was perfect for this little stamp. I added some olive colored eyelets at the bottom for accent. Inside is the most adorable sentiment - "Giving you Olive my love" - isn't that perfect? I think so.

I hope everyone had a great valentines day.

Happy Valentines Day

I wanted to post the valentine cards I made. I didn't get them in the mail until Tuesday, so they are going to be late.

For the two oldest girls - Sara and Hannah - I made similar elephant cards. Very pink, with some fun patterned paper and some Stickles on the flower for bling.

The two youngest - Sydney and Matthew - got similar cards, only they got a cute frog. They also got some Stickles glitter for bling. But thier frogs also got googlie eyes. I hope the eyes make it through the mail becuase it is so darn cute.

I'll show you Tim and Dylan's cards tomorrow. Hope you have a good Valentines Day.

Minneapolis in March!

I am so excited! I heard today that I got a Career Enrichment grant from the state library to attend the Public Library Association convention in Minneapoils in March. My wonderful Aunt Julie has agreed to let me, and my librarian Aunt Jean, sleep on her floor and the grant will cover my air fare, food and conference registration. How cool is a "free" trip to see my family and college friends - and go to a library conference. All in March. In Minneapolis. My poor southern blood is going to freeze to death - but it will be so worthwhile. I purchased my ticket this afternoon and I will be arriving in the frozen north on Good Friday, March 21st and leaving on Saturday, March 29th. The actual conference is on the 25th-29th, so I will have plenty of time to visit with everyone. I will miss Tim and the cats, but Julie has a kitty who I hope she'll share with me.

The Kitty Chaise

It's a cute cat post today. We've been buying these corrogated cardboard cat scratching boxes. Every now and then we sprinkle a little cat nap on it and the cats love it. And it does help save our furniture from scratching. This weekend we found the Cat Chaise in Target. It's made of the same corrogated cardboard, but it has curved ends. I've caught all the boys curled up and napping on it. The Cat Chaise - good for napping, lounging, biting and scraching. You notice there's no picure of Fizie on it? She's too refined for such things. But she's not above rolling aroud in some cat nip if it's on the floor.

Sympathy Cards

Thankfully I don't need any sympathy cards at the moment, but it's always good to have some on hand. Tim left this morning to go watch some of his riding friends RUN up and down Crowder's Mountain. I'm using my morning to make some cards for my stash. I took a look at some of the card challenges posted on Splitcoaststampers for inspiration, and I found the inspiration challenge (IC113) and the card sketch challenge (SC161) for this week. The card I made has very little stamping on it - just the sentiment, which I also embossed in white. I used a flower and a rhinestone brad from the Pretties set and some white ribbon. I chose the colors of kraft, barely banana and bashful blue from the inspiration challegne.

Tim's First Trophy

This is a page I made of the first 12-hour race Tim was in. He rode 12 hours, by himself. part way through the race his bike broke and I had to take him my bike for parts. He had to ride a couple of laps with a no rear shock, then spend about 30 minutes or more making the rear shock from my bike fit onto his bike. And he still won second place! This race is called The Cowbell, so now I have a cute little cowbell sitting on the fireplace mantle. Did you notice the cute little cows I stamped on the page? They are from the Very Punny SU stamp set. In these pictures he is hearing his really ugly fish head jersey, so I pulled the colors from the page from the shirt - yellow, rust and black. I added a little ribbon, but no bows because this is a manly page.

Soccer Girl and Combine Boy

I love scrapping my three beautiful nieces and one stinking cute nephew. My SIL in MI kindly sent me two CD's of pictures of the girls. I found this adorable picture of my youngest niece in her soccer uniform. I love the orange jersey with the pink soccer ball. K, if you could email me some information about this picture, then I can finish up the journaling. I used barely banana, pumpkin pie and pretty in pink solid papers and some Basic Grey pattern paper. The ribbon along the left side is something my Mom sent me. For accents there are some prima flowers and one stamped soccer ball.

My parents are also good about sending me pictures and memorabilia. This next page is my nephew - I think this is Christmas 2006 and he got a combine. So if anyone else remembers anything else about this let me know so I can finish up the journaling on this one too. The base of this page is two pieces of Basic Grey Christmas papers. The journaling box is soft sky and ruby red. The little ornaments are from the Ornassortment set and are stamped on soft sky, ruby red, river rock and wild wasabi.

And No Snow

Tim and I waited all day Saturday for the 4-6 inches of snow we were supposed to get. It rained all day. The few flakes we saw were too wet to stick around. I did make a few cards. One is a wedding card for a friend of mine who got married in Little Rock this weekend (I'll post the card after I get it mailed). The others are some simple thank you cards.

Since we were preparing for a snow day, Tim made a loaf of bread in the bread maker. The house smelled wonderful. And I made a pot of soup. I tried a new recipe, and it's a keeper.

Beef Barley Soup

1/2 lb. ground beef

2 1/2 cups cold water

1 can diced tomatoes

3/4 cup sliced carrots

3/4 cup sliced mushrooms (or 1 can)

1/2 cup quick-cooking barely, uncooked (I used regular)

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp. dried oregano

1/2 lb. (8oz) velveeta, cut up (I used 2 cans of condensed cheese soup)

Brown the meat; drain. Stir in water, tomatoes, carrots, mushrooms, barley, garlic and oregano.

Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low; cover. Simmer 10 min. or until barely is tender.

Add velveeta; stir until melted.

I added the soup at the same time as the other ingredients and adjusted cooking time for the barley.

Snow

We woke up Wednesday morning to a little snow. It rained the rest of the day, so the snow melted quickly. The forecasts say we should get more snow today.

What I did last Saturday

Last Saturday I packed up all my (and my friend Judi's) scrapping supplies in the Forrester and we went to an all day crop. We had a blast. I only got 7 pages completed - I was hoping to do more - but I had to eat and visit with people. In the process of having all of this scrapping fun, I hurt my back. Probably had something to do with lifting a bazillion tons of supplies into the car and dragging it into the event center and then all back home again. I still need to take pictures of the pages I did so I can share them with you. I have a goal of 20 pages this month, so I need to get scrapping.

Birthday cards

Last Sunday I had some time to sit down and make some birthday cards. I was able to make all the cards I need for January with a few extra.

I used the same design for some big girl birthday cards and little girl birthday cards. I used an older set, Love Ya Bunches, because I love the saying - Happy bird-day to you. Isn't that cute? The first card is turquoise and old olive to match the ribbon with a splash of purely pomegranate. The second card is real red with turquoise and celery.

I also made a few guy cards - enough to get me through the year. I used my newest stamp set, Winds of Grace and manly colors of sage shadow, chocolate chip, close to cocoa and bordering blue. Now I need to make a bunch of boy cards - for little boys and teen boys.

Today I've been busy creating page kits so I am ready for an all day crop on Saturday. My friend Judi and I will be scrapping from 9am to 8pm. I am so excited to get some scrapping done.

For the New Year

Last week when I was at Target I picked up a couple of journals that I've covered. Both of them have a hot pink binding so I picked pattern papers to go with the binding. The large one will be my journal for the year. I think it still needs some embellishments - just don't know what yet. The smaller one will be for the books I've read. It should hold 2 years worth of books. I like to keep the title, author, copyright date, and date I've read the book along with a few notes on what the book was about. I also keep some lists of books to read, books to buy as gifts, books that have won awards, and books my book clubs are reading.

Cards

I got most of my Christmas cards sent out on Monday. I had the day off so I headed to the PO on their busiest day of the year. The line wasn't too long and the clerk was cheerful. I had to put extra postage on some of them, so I hope they all got to everyone all right. I have a few stragglers left to send out but I'm out of stamps at the moment.

I made two designs this year since I didn't have enough of the wild wasabi green paper to do them all in green. I used a new SU stamp set, Season of Joy, for both designs. The white card is made with some great linen texture paper that Tim brought home. I love making our cards every year so I hope everyone enjoys receiving them.

I also made a few gift tags to put on the few presents I have to wrap. I just used some scraps of card stock and the Season of Joy set and Ornassortment set from last years cards.

A New Holiday Tradition

Last year I found a easy microwave recipe for peanut brittle and have added making peanut brittle as my newest holiday tradition. I will confess that I tried making a batch on Sunday after I made the peanut clusters, but I burned it. Burnt sugar can sure stink up a house. I was off on Monday and did the last of my Christmas shopping and candy making. The bad part about having this yummy stuff in the house is that Tim just doesn't eat it and it's too cold and dark out to do much walking.

Peanut Brittle

1-1/2 cups of peanuts

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup white corn syrup

1/8 tsp. salt

1 tsp. butter

1 tsp. vanilla

1 tsp. baking soda

In a large microwave proof dish, stir peanuts, sugar, corn syrup and salt. Cook 8 minutes on high. Stir well after 4 minutes. (Be sure to keep an eye on it.)

Stir in butter and vanilla. Microwave on high 2 more minutes.

Add baking soda and quickly stir until light and foamy.

Immediately pour onto a lightly greased sheet and spread out thinly. When cool, break into small pieces.