Cake or Cards today....i say cards!

Here are my latest creations. Working from the bottom up, the first is my Bellerific Friday Card. I love cooking and I love card making...so I have combined the 2. I tested out my new copic markers on this image. I don't love them....yet. Who would have thought they would have made you an instant artist when using them...ah me! Well not so much. I made due for the time being, but I think I need more colors, of course a bigger investment....yeah investment in markers. Moving on...I needed some masculine birthday cards, so I made the greenish brown one for my cousin Jeffrey who is woodsy outdoors type...looks appropriate, eh? The other one with butterflies although my best intentions were to go masculine...not sure butterflies are a guy thing, maybe if I had a dragon fly. Last but not least is my sparkly 40th birthday card for a dear friend and neighbor. I love the little sparkles a bit time consuming, but worth the PUNCH! Happy viewing!

Sour Cherry Pie will now always remind me of 4th of July. I baked 2 of these pies for our family BBQ. I was a little worried about sour cherries, but you wouldn't even know they were sour when you were eating a piece. I also baked sour cherry tarts with a lemon custard - they were delish and I don't typically like lemon desserts, but they were extremely time consuming to make all the part and put it all together. They were all eaten before I could snap a picture! Email me if you want either recipe.

Birthday Cards

I am getting an early start on my June Birthday cards. I won't mention any names, just in case they are reading! I am pleasantly surprised to have managed to do some much of what I love most today. Cooking, Crafting and Cleaning...although don't love that last task all that much, I do love feeling productive though. Ok onto my cards, when I was making the flowery card, I was cutting out the extra paper underneath all the layering I was going to do (leaves me with scraps for my Daughter's mini mom like cards) and she is the one who gave me the idea of making it look more like a framed picture rather than a layered one! I do love how it turned out. My second card is for this Fridays Bellerific Friday, which is suppose to be a masculine card. I used my new distressed ink stamp to make the gray background circles, my cricut to make all the yellow circles, my bella stamp for the cupcakes, prisma red pencil for the cherry, and crystal effects on the cherry which give them a bit of pop and shine. The ink and paper are stampin' up, I do love how their paper and ink are the same shade! Yes, I am crafty crazy!

DIY - Ribbon Holder for my crafty corner!

My DIY project for the weekend was a curtain rod ribbon holder! With a quick and productive stop to Ikea for these 1.99 curtain rods was well worth it. My original thought was to hang cards off the second curtain rod, but as I stared at the mess of embellishments in a basket, I got a great idea to hang them up, and of course organized by theme! Sometimes, I think I enjoy the sorting and organizing just as much as I love crafting and cooking! My daughter actually arranged all the ribbon in color order and strung them on the rod, while I helped my husband hang of the brackets! She also loved pinning the baggies to the clips. It was too late to make anything, but we will be inspired the next time we sit at our table.

Beef & Bean Casserole with Cheese Biscuits

Try out the beef and bean casserole from the Canadian Living Magazine which was D - LISH. Mine probably doesn't look as appetizing as the link... I am not food photographer, but what counts is my 7 year old even loved it. I did skip the molasses that the recipe calls for, since I didn't have any. I am not sure it needed it! A few other things I did were I used a red pepper (i find they are sweeter than the green). I also made my own buttermilk by adding 1 tbsp of vinegar into 1 cup of whole milk. You let that sit for 5 minutes and use it as buttermilk. I sauteed it all in a large frying pan since I don't own a dutch oven(what a shame)! Let me know if you try it out!!

Father's Day Card

oh my sooo much to talk about and always so little time...I have been crafting, baking, entertaining, gardening, card making, cooking...not sure what to talk about first!! ok, I am going to start with my Bellerfic Card for last Friday...it is a colorless one...meaning I didn't do any coloring! I still need lots of practice working with my prisma pencils, so I decided to keep it simple. This card is for my Dad. I will list out my 10 favorite things I LOVE about him then mail it with lots of time to make it to PA in time for Father's Day. He would be proud to know I have an herb garden planted, we also planted a strawberry and raspberry bush....let's see how much fruit we get!

Some cards in between!

Attached are some cards I whipped up and have already mailed out. I like to make cards with someone already in mind, but it usually leaves me behind :)I need to make a card to do list for the weekends, although with the thought of the sun shinning soon, everyone might get left behind. I hope I will still find time to cook and card create...that is once the sun arrives!

Happy Easter Cake

Ithought for Easter I would get a little cake creative. I made a yellow cake mix from scratch and ended up with this 13 x 9 start to the bunny and 7 round cakes ranging from 4inches to 8 inches! That was a lot of batter!! For this guy we mixed some food coloring with regular store bought icing to come up with the various colors, and with the great assistance of my 7 year old she proceeded to decorate with mom's help of course. I decided to make homemade vanilla pastry cream as a filling for my 7 other cakes! Cut up some fresh strawberries to add to the cream and layered them up, covered with fresh whipped cream!
I can eat the pastry cream all on its own...yum! I should invest in a dairy farm with all the eggs, milk, and butter I am going to be using!

Happy Easter Card

 

Gosh am I EVER behind in my blogging. I have lots of cards and cakes to update! This is a card I just made this last week for Bellerific Friday. I love the way it turned out. My card formatting is so simple. I just like it that way! Although it is a late Easter card, so it will get put away in my card stash to use...next Easter!

The start to Easter Cards

I inked up my new bellerific Easter stamp last night and colored it with my prisma pencils, while my banana bread was baking (Talk about multi-crafting) I figured I would need a few Easter cards for those special folk on my list who I will be sending these to. This one happens to be a polkadotty card for next week's Bellerific Friday! I love the EK border punches which is what I used diagonally across the back. Thought it added a few more subtle polka dots. My daughter thought my brad flowers were glued pills! Candy might have been a good idea, now that she got me thinking. Kids are so funny! I haven't started adding food to my cards, but I have started adding cards to my food. So, do you think this is enough of a polkadotty card? Well I have until next Friday to perfect my polkadotty card when I get at it again over the weekend. As for tomorrow night, I will be baking another layer cake to decorate in my LAST cake decorating class this Friday. Stay tuned for the pictures!!

Banana Bread!!

Tonight I baked some mini muffin banana bread and decided to make some mini loaves for a teacher snack too!
Here is the recipe:

Mash 3 large ripe bananas w/ a fork
Beat in 1 egg
Add 1 teaspoon vanilla
Add 6 tablespoons of canola oil
Add 1/2 cup sugar and mix all the above.

Mix separately from above - 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1 1/2 cups of flower, and a dash of salt.

Slowly mix flour mixture in with wet mixture. Pour into whatever size loaf/muffin pan you want. Bake at 350 until cake tester tested is dry. Baking time will depend on pan size. A regular size loaf would bake for approximately 50 minutes. Be sure to butter your pan and lightly dust with flour.

ENJOY!

Mojo Monday, but it's not Monday yet.

Am I ready for a Mojo Monday MOJO181? Well it will be my first, so here is a picture at my attempt to follow the mojo template. You be judge and let me know your thoughts!? This is the most layering I have ever done!! I am not sure the springtini and easter theme go, but the paper and colors and patters are all matchy matchy...Spring Easter, works for me!

I have no idea how to create a hyperlink to the mojo monday website, so if you want to check out out go to: http://mojomonday.blogspot.com

Cheers!

Class 7, 3 more classes to go. More flowers! The top row are the instructor's samples, bottom row are my trials. Starting from the left daffodil, violet, primrose, and mums. The daffodils are made with tip 103, once you have pipped it out, you dip your fingers in cornstarch and pinch each of the petals. The center is suppose to look like an upside down beeshive. The violets were pretty, although I wished my purple was more rich and darker in color. I find these look alot like last week's painsies. The primrose were probably my favorite, made w/ tip 104 and tip 16 for the center ( I also think these were the easiest this week). The mums, I personally don't like at all. I don't like the organge color, nor the shape, but if you want to try it out...it's tip 81. Next week we are learning 2 more flowers, daisies and lily of the valley. It's also actual cake decorating time - buttercream icing with the basketweave. Then we get to use all our flowers from the last few weeks. IT's going to look like SPRING!

These sweet flowers are week 6 of cake decorating class. The purple and yellow are pansies with hand painted black food coloring for the accents, the pink with yellow dots are apple blossoms, and the teeny tiny baby blue ones are forget-me-nots. The apple blossoms are made with tip 101, forget-me-nots with tip 101s, and the pansies are made with tip 104. The painsies actually have black food coloring hand painted on with a brush! Wouldn't these look adorable on top of cupcakes?!

It's a card making frenzy. What better way to spend Sunday than in your pajamas! Ok so, working from the bottom up... This first card is for my dear friend Kim. She recently got engaged and bought her first house with her fiance! Of course such occasion would call for some special card making.I really like how this one turned out, probably because I love the sewing detail and the colors. The second card sort of serves 2 purposes; 1) it's my aquamarine color pallet card for this coming Bellerfic Friday - not really a fan of this color and therefore, I had very little paper or embellishments in this color pallet. I hope it's enough "aquamarine" or am I color blind. 2) I need a thank-you card for this Tuesday, when our Brownie troop is visiting an artist at work. So with the appropriate sentiment it serves my 2 purposes. My third card is one I made of scraps. It makes me feel so useful when I can make another card with leftovers...sort of like food...make another recipe that tastes nothing like the first with leftovers...what a concept. This one will be mailed to a dear cousin in Italy whose Christmas card I just received last week. Gotta love the postal system!
I also have some royal icing flowers I made in my Friday cake decoraing class! Gotta get some pictures of those yet! Can you tell I am procrastinating...with iron still on today's to do list!

Well my Tuesday evening consisted of making 145 vanilla pizzelles for International Night, that our Brownie troop is participating in tomorrow. Our unit is representing ITALY. So, we will be selling these delicious pizzelles (without chocolate). The chocolate ones are for the very carefully selected taste testers. I love the look and the taste, but gotta keep costs at a minimum, since we are only selling them for .25 each. Which seems way too inexpensive to me (of course, I think that, I made them!)Well hopefully they will be enjoyed, if they make it home in one piece...otherwise it will make a good cookie crumble for ice cream. SWEET DREAMS

The Valentine Cake outcome....is it pretty...well I would say it is more of a work in progress. Piping is so much harder than it looks and then having to change all those little tips. I probably should have used same color for each of the borders (top and bottem), although I wanted to try the purple...which turned out to look more like blue. The "shell" pink border at the bottem, turned out better than the reverse shell border on top. Well at least my daughter was impressed enough to say I can now make her Birthday cake..oh how I LOVE her! Well I hope your valentine day turned out sweeter than the cake, mine was missing strawberries!

Tonight I made a 7 inch sponge cake and sponge cake cupcakes. I am not sure how the cupcakes will turn out, typically I make this recipe for my strawberry shortcake recipe (picture posted in below)..ah I figured it was worth the experiment. Tomorrow I will get to decorate these in the cake decorating class I am taking...yes on Friday nights. I lead such an exciting life! Stay tuned for the decorated pictures!!

On Fridays I participate in Bellerific Fridays, I started in January. I am inspired weekly of the beautiful cards these women make. This is a rubba stamp store I found at the craft fair a few months back. I love "her" stamps and the scrapbooking products she sells, along with her story. Check out her blog at www.stampingbella.com. This is my weeks submission with the motto being a circular card. This special card is already reserved for my Nan's birthday in March.

As the week comes to an end I have a few things to share. The first is my royal icing drop flowers and roses that I made in my cake decorating glass. Somedays I think piping is for the birds, but today I finally felt like I was "getting it". Next week we will decorate an edible cake, so stay tuned. I had to make a new card for my dear friend Amy. I had orignally made a "Get Well" card, but then realized after the fact, that the sentiment was no longer appropriate now that I learned she is terminally ill with brain cancer. The time spent making this card was special, as I thought back of all the great laughs we had at work years ago. I also have another crafty card, my first commissioned card if you will, for a special valentine...i hope she likes it for her special valentine.

I currently have a dear friend suffering from years of battling cancer. Unfortunately, I can not attend the upcoming fundraiser they are holding in her honor. Although I put together this Get Well card for her where I will include a monetary donation. On a brighter note, I love the EK punches - I used on the side (sort of looks like ribbon, eh) although too expense to buy in Toronto, I have a few on my list for my next visit back home (PA).

Snow Day

Although we had the first snow day in Toronto in over 10 years. I decided I wouldn't spend the day cooking, instead crafting. This is a Valentine matchbox card that I made using eyelets and these new flowers I just bought, but haven't quite figured out how to color, so I just left it white! White is a color, isn't it?

Thinking about an update

Ok to say the least, this blogging thing is very new to me...and not sure if I can stay committed....if you can't already tell. I think I have evolved in the last 6 mths. and I want to talk and explore more than just food...so I am wondering if I should go through a blog name change...