Happy New Years

I just wanted to pop in and wish you all a Happy New Year!  Stay safe!  

Claudette

Think Monday-ATC

The countdown has begun, the clock is ticking, soon another year has past........Think Monday ATC theme is COUNTDOWN this week. What are your thoughts on this theme they ask?

 Stamps: All Night Media, Clear Stamp Paper Studio, Rubber Stampede and Art Impressions; Prismacolor pens

Themed Thursday

Our latest weather inspired me to do this tag for the challenge at Themed Thursday......Merry Christmas.  For those who don't live in the Chicagoland area, its like an ice skating ring on our roadways.  This making travel very dangerous as reported by our State Police.

Material used: Bazzill card stock, hero gems; may art ribbons; Art Quest Dazzle -It; white ink

Wednesday Stampers........A Child Is Born

Wednesday Stampers has an open theme for the last theme of the month. 

Remember this is Reason for the Season  

For Unto Us A Child Is Born!

Merry Christmas Everyone

Think Monday ATC

Challenge this week at Think Monday ATC's is to do a Christmas ATC....Again a simple design using stamps from Penny Black and Rubber Stampede. glitter, sheer ribbon

Gift Wallet and Ruffling My Feathers

Knowing quite well the teenager in the family are only interested in the contents of  the envelope I chose to make simple gift wallets to put their monetary gifts in.  

The stamps are by: Stampendous; Fun flock, stickles and prismacolor and copic pens used.

Occasionally,  I send in things for publication and a few months ago I tried one of the tempting templates that Stampington & Company challenges their readers to do.  To my surprise my entry got published  in the Oct/Nov 08 Stampers' Sampler.  

I just received my artist copy yesterday so I'm just ruffling my feathers a little.  Hope you all don't mind.

Christmas Card

Materials used: Stamps: Hero Arts and Endless Designs, Rangers Embossing Power Silver and Black; Dazzle-it Peel & Stick paper. May Art Ribbon; Stampendous Glitter

Gift Idea

Today I chose to work on another small gift to give out during the holidays.  These water bottle purchased at most scrapbook stores today can be altered by putting seasonal papers between the insides.  I usually enclosed several different sleeves so they can be changed by the recipient. 
Our camper is calling for warmer weather.......

Good Day To Be Creative

This was the site outside my patio doors this morning.  About 3/4's of an inch of ice now covers my deck and patio furniture.  Looks like a good day to craft and bake.  Will post my creations later.

(click on picture to see detail)

Wooden Clip Altered

These wooden clips purchased at most craft stores are fun to alter and show off holiday pictures or cards we receive at this time of the year.  I enjoy placing them around the house, and here is one I placed on my mantel. These also make wonderful gift.

Wednesday Stampers...Shoes

This weeks challenge at Wednesday's Stampers is for one to put their best foot forward and show them our “shoes” or what we think about shoes.

This was a perfect time for me to design a card using this theme for a friend who will be celebrating a birthday soon and is a real diva in the dress department.

Think Monday ATC.....Light

Create an ATC with a lamp, is this weeks challenge at Think Monday.

Lemon Meringue Pie & OBP Card Remembrance

The little candle is an Odd Bird Planet Stamp that was just released this past week.

My son and I decided to make Lemon Meringue Pie today, neither of has ever attempted to make one before. Well our first attempt failed for we got into each others way both trying to take full charge of the kitchen, so I left out a major ingredient. However, after I took a step back and took charge of the crust and the lemon filling we had success. Our family gave us a 5 star review.


Son putting the merinque on the pie and below our finished product.
The recipe we used: Ingredients:
1 cup white sugar, 2 tablespoons all purpose flour, 3 tablespoons cornstarch, 1/4 teaspoon salt,
1 and 1/2 cups water, 1/2 cup lemon juice and 2 tablespoons butter
4 egg yokes, beaten, 1 pie crust baked (9 in.), 4 egg whites, 6 tablespoons white sugar
Directions:
1. preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. To make lemon filling: In a medium saucepan whisk together, sugar, flour, cornstarch and salt. Stir in water and lemon juice. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, until mixture comes to a boil. Stir in butter. Place egg yolks in a small bowl and gradually whisk in 1/2 cup of hot sugar mixture. Bring to a boil and continue to cook while stirring constantly until thick. Remove from heat and pour filling into baked pastry shell.
3. To Make Meringue: In a large bowl, whip egg whites until foamy. Add sugar gradually, and continue to whip until stiff peaks form. Spread meringue over pie, sealing the edges at the crust.
4. Bake in over for 10 min. or until meringue is golden brown.
Cool for 1 hour and refrigerate for 4 hrs at least.

OBP card & A Treat to Share

Card made with newly released stamps from Odd Bird Planet.....I'm having so much fun creating holiday cards with these stamps.
Seldom a day goes by that I'm not found in the kitchen baking something. Today I chose to make Nut Cups and package them as shown above to give out to family and friends this holiday season.

       All the pecans that filled these cups were hand picked by hubby and I while down in Alabama this Thanksgiving.                                                                      

Recipe for NUT CUPS

Dough:

Blend together 1/4 lb. butter, 3 oz. cream cheese, add 1 cup sifted four and blend.

Divide dough into small balls and press into tiny muffin tins

Filling:

3/4 cup chopped nuts (pecans), 1 egg, 3/4 cups brown sugar, 1 tablespoon melted butter, dash of salt, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla.  

Mix all the ingredients together and fill each of the dough cups with the filling.

Bake in 350 oven for 15 minutes and then 300 oven for 10 min.  

Carefully remove each cup with done, cool and sprinkle with power sugar.

Naughty or Nice

Another new OBP stamp to be released soon.

Below are two cards I created for "card sketch a day" and can be seen with other samples of todays sketch.  If you would like to participate in creating cards for this blog check out the site:

http://cardsketchaday.blogspot.com/ 

Thank You Nicole

Don't you love when you go to your mail box and find a package. Well yesterday I got one of those packages from Nicole and it contained 3 of her handmade tree box ornaments filled with candy.
She held a small contest not known to her readers to see who would post on her blog several times in a months period. Well I was one of her faithful readers who won a prize. But prize or no prize I recommend her site for her creativity is non-ending: http://madebynicole.blogspot.com/
 Thank you Nicole, and I already tasted the delicious candy you included.

Wednesday Stampers.. Bows

Theme this week at Wednesday Stampers is bows, its one of my favorite theme's for I love putting bows on cards.  The image used on this card will be a new release of OBP stamps coming out soon.

Preview of New Images by OBP

The images on the cards below represent some of the new images to be released by Odd Bird Planet.  Many of the other images can be seen at www.oddbirdplanet.com

Oh Christmas Tree !

Sitting on my kitchen counter is a Santa holding some ginger bread cookies that set off the theme for this years decorations.  I started collecting ginger bread men last year with little success.  A dear Internet friend sent me a large stuff ginger bread man as a gift last year, when she heard about my plight of doing a Ginger Bread theme.  So as we traveled around the country this past year I search for those little men and ornaments that related to my theme.  I had a lot of success at the Cracker Barrel stores and antique stores.  

The culprit who started it all.....Santa image
Note the stuffed Ginger Bread Man sitting to the left, he started a full blown plight on my part.
Close up of the tree and some of the ornaments that are my favorite

Family Gifts

This was a new experiment and I'm so excited how it came out.  I compiled all the photo's I  took during the past year and created a book for each of my children .  Above is the book I created for my son with the boys.  Its a hard cover book, that has about 22 pages of pictures of the boys and their parents. 

 My signature on this is Grandma One Door for that is the name my grandsons gave me.  In case your wondering why..... its because we only have one garage door, while the other set of grandparents have 3 doors and yes they are know has Grandma & Grandpa 3 doors.  :)

Below is the other gift I've made for the kids........


Highlights of this year family calendar includes, not only family photo's but art work and photo's I've done or taken throughout the year.  Above is the cover page and two of the months

that are included in the calendar.  (November and December)

Thanksgiving in Selma

I just returned from celebrating Thanksgiving in Selma, Alabama. Since I wrote about the plantation in previous post I'll spare you and just share a few pictures from this year event that 52 family members attended. Some of my husbands cousins and their family members.

Husband bring out one of the many desserts that were offered this year.


Main house on the plantation that the family gathers in. It has a full wrap around porch that this year we were able to sit and eat outside for the weather was beautiful.
To make us feel at home when we arrived a personalized name plate hung from one of the storage buildings that we hook up our camper too.
The little ones love seeing all the animals on the plantation.
Here I'm not only playing with the cats but trying to picking up pecans after hundreds fell after a windy night.