CSA 2009

I wanted a way to document that we participated in a CSA and why this last year, so I figured a scrapbook page was as good as any.

From Scrapbook Pages

Tire Swing

From Scrapbook Pages

How many girls?

From Scrapbook Pages

It's amazing the fun four little girls can have in one swivel chair!

Beautiful Day!

From Scrapbook Pages

Art

From Scrapbook Pages

Baby Ray

My best friend recently had her fourth child and her first son! I got to see him while I was in Texas over Christmas. What a little cutie!

From Scrapbook Pages

First Person

From Scrapbook Pages

I had to document the first person drawing Eliana really did. =D

Plunger Hat

From Scrapbook Pages

I don't know what's with the out of focus pictures as of late, but I'm too lazy to retake them, and it took me long enough just to get new stuff onto this blog that you'll just have to suffer through. =D

The Demise of the Gingerman House

This is a layout I did over Christmas, and one I'm quite fond of! Just documenting Ellie's destruction of our gingerbread house, or the "gingerman" house, as she called it.

From Scrapbook Pages

Valentine's Day Banner

From Valentine's Day Banner

Since my Cricut has a permanent home now, I decided to use it to make a Valentine's Day banner! It was a quick, fun project using 3 of my cartridges. Sort of plain and simple, but I like it!

The Fashionable Forties

Another heritage layout, this time of my grandfather in WW2 and a couple of his friends. I just love this picture in all of its 40's splendor!

From Scrapbook Pages

Jesse

I did a couple heritage pages recently, including this one of my great grandmother Jesse and her friends. It's kind of fun to scrap old pictures!

From Scrapbook Pages

Craft Night and The Craft Room!

Since I rearranged my Craft Room, we have actually had TWO Craft Nights down there!! I am excited about the return of Craft Night, and I hope everyone else is, too. Here are a few pictures from Craft Night 1 in January, as well as some pictures of the craft room. I have slowly been working on tying together more of the decor (and someday hope to paint that awful cement wall!) so it changes weekly as I do that, but this gives a pretty good idea of the layout...

From The Craft Room

From The Craft Room

We managed to fit 7 people down there crafting!! It was tight, but we had a good time!

From The Craft Room

From The Craft Room

From The Craft Room

You'll notice that my sewing machine and Cricut have permanent, ready-to-use homes. I'm very excited about that! It makes crafting so much easier, and I have managed to keep my craft tables clean, even cleaning up between layouts! Crazy!

So... who wants to come and craft with me now that we can craft without having our backs to each other??

Hello? Hello? Where did you go?

If you are one of the many readers wondering where I am, I am down in my craft room creating! =D I've been spending more time down there, but that means I've been spending less time on here. Hopefully I will put up new pictures of the grand craft room (in the unfinished portion of our basement, lest you think it too grand!) sometime soon, but I've had trouble getting pictures I'm pleased with! Maybe that will be my valentine's gift to you all. Ha ha!

Happy crafting!!!

If Martha were a geek...

... she'd totally make one of these. I LOVE it!

Thank you, Cake Wrecks, for introducing me to this glorious cake ensemble! It makes me want to decorate a cake... and play Mario... all at the same time.

Craft Night is BACK!!

Oh yeah! We're having Craft Night at my house on Monday night if you want to join! 2010 is the year of the crafter!

Christmas Eve

We're spending Christmas Eve day with Leif's family in Roundup. The Christmas festivities have officially begun!! Really, though, the gift giving started earlier this week, with the delivery of homebaked goodies (like the cookies you've been seeing all week!) to our friends. Here's what the finished packages looked like:

The cookies and tags were tied to the handle of the takeout boxes, so when you carry them, they look like this:

The stamps, of course, are PaperTrey Ink stamps. I love them! I think this is the third year I've used them, and I probably will next year, too. They are beautiful! For the labels I used another PaperTrey Ink set and I got to use my newest Martha Stewart border punch. Isn't it glorious? I'm very excited about it, and this is it's debut in my crafting!

The boxes are stuffed with sugar cookies, peppernuts, and hard candies shaped like gingerbread men (and flavored like English Toffee). I had so much fun putting them together! I hope the recipients enjoy them, too!

Happy Christmas Eve to you all!!

Ooh! Pretty Sparkly Snowflakes!

These are what we're using as tags on our gifts this year. Fun!

O, Tannenbaum!

I have to say, I really liked decorating the trees. Didn't think I would, but these are fun!

Impromptu Dessert

Tonight we had friends over for dinner and it was decided that they would provide appetizers or dessert. We didn't really plan anything for either and they brought appetizers. As dinner came to a close, Leif mentioned how good it would be if we had something for dessert. So I set about to find something. I remembered that we had some heavy cream, so I started with that. I pulled out my trusty book of recipes from my mom and discovered that our recipe for Cappuccino Truffles calls for heavy cream. So that's what I set out to make.

I melted the ingredients together, hoping they'd cool in time for us to eat them before the kids' bedtime (aka 'party over' time). While I was waiting for the truffle mix to cool in the freezer, I started making some almond bark cups, using a mold I've had, but never used before. I knew it would come in handy some day! The cups took no time at all to cool, so I filled them with the still-soft-and-runny truffle mix, which was more like a ganache since I was too impatient to wait until I could roll it into balls. =D I topped the filled cups with some fresh whipped cream and some coffee ground sprinkles. Here's the bite-sized end result:

They were rich and decadent, and not bad for dessert on the fly, if you ask me! We had all the ingredients on hand and they took about 20-30 minutes to make, which was enough time for dinner to settle and coffee to steep. Yum! Here's the recipe I used. The rest of the mix I will make into "proper" truffles for a party tomorrow night. =D

Cappuccino Truffles

12 oz. chocolate chips (I used semisweet)
1 1/2 T. instant coffee granules
6 T. butter
3 T. heavy cream

Melt all ingredients together. Refrigerate until firm enough to roll into balls. (This is the step I was too impatient to wait for, so I just poured the cooled, but not yet stiff, mixture into almond bark cups.) Coat balls with powdered cocoa, crushed nuts, powdered sugar, etc. I coat the truffles with almond bark in a candy mold.