Happy Birthday Grandma!

Little Red Wagon - Challenge 9 - Flowers

Its Wednesday and that means another Little Red Wagon challenge! This week it is my turn to set the challenge and that is to use flowers on your creation.

Here's the card I created:



I used flowers in the stamp, in the paper and added a Prima flower for good measure.

And another view:



I also used some buttons, bling and Stickles!

Please take a peek at what the other girlfriends created - check the links on the left sidebar...and please play along if you get a chance, we love to see what you create!

Christmas 2009

Well, its all over except for putting everything away again until next year!

We had a lovely Christmas and I hope you all did too.

Here's a few photos of Christmas this year.

Papertrey Blog Hop - Glitter and Pearls

Hope you all had a lovely Christmas! We sure did! More on that to come.

In the meantime, I didn't want to miss this month's Papertrey Ink Blog Hop though.....this month its all about inspiration! The holiday season will be coming to a close but before we put the decorations away we were encouraged to take a closer look and see if we could gain paper crafting inspiration from any of them!

I actually decided to take my inspiration from this photo I found while browsing the Country Living website:



I love the pearl garland, blue bow and glittery ornaments!

So keeping that in mind, I created this card:



I used the snowflakes and sentiment from the Winter Swirls stamp set.The snowflakes are embossed in African Gold while the sentiment is stamped in Enchanted Evening. I then added some pearls to the snowflakes and a bit more glitter with the edged ribbon. This ended up having a very elegant feel.

I can't wait to see what all the other participants came up with!

A Happy Christmas to All!

12 Tags of Christmas - Day 12

Happy Christmas Eve!

Are you all set for tomorrow? I worked this morning then came home and did the food prep for today and tomorrow, a bit of cleaning and have the packages left to organize to take with us to my Mom and Dad's tomorrow. Then I can relax, I love a relaxing Christmas Eve!

And here's my last tag:



This makes use of one of last year's cards, a cute glittery winter scene. I kicked it up with a chipboard frame, painted in white then glittered with some mica chips. A few more embelli's and voila, an original tag!

I hope you've enjoyed my 12 tags of Christmas and especially the ways to use those cards that are sent to you!

Little Red Wagon Challenge 8 - Man Cards

Regan challenged us to create a man card this week! This is always a challenge! Anyway here's my take, its more of a boy card.



I've used primarily Cosmo Cricket's Earth Love line of papers, the sentiment is Papertrey, ribbon and button are from my stash.

Take a peek at what the other ladies did- check the links on the left sidebar...please play along if you get a chance, we love to see what you create!

12 Tags of Christmas - Day 11

Good morning!!

Here's another installment in the 12 tags of Christmas, these are brought to you by my daughter Brittany.




This is an idea we first used a couple of years ago, she used glaze pens to fill in the outline stickers. Then used distress ink to ink the edges of the tags. Oh and added some rub-ons to a few tags as well!

Great job Brittany!

Last Minute Treat!

Christmas is just a few days away and if you haven't finished your baking here's a quick treat you can make.



It's called Marilyn's candy and is really yummy! Thanks Dianne for passing along the recipe!


2 cups salted peanuts
1 tsp. oil
1 lb. vanilla melting wafers
4-5 cups Golden Grahams cereal
1 cup Smarties or M & M’s

Combine oil and wafers in heavy saucepan. Cook on low until thoroughly melted. Add peanuts, cereal and candy. Stir until well coated, pour onto cookie sheet lined with foil. Flatten and chill. Break into small pieces and enjoy.

12 Tags of Christmas - Day 10

Although there has been a bit of a gap I haven't forgotten that I still have 3 days left of tags to do.

Here's some tags I created fairly quickly using Tim Holtz(Ranger) tickets on which I stamped using Papertrey's Holiday Button Bits stamps and buttons.



The tickets fit perfectly on the quickutz largest tag die cut. I then finished them off with an eyelet and some baker's twine.

Grannie's Maid of Honour Tarts

Today I thought I'd share an old family recipe that I absolutely love!

Although these would be good at anytime of year, we usually only make them at Christmas.

It is a tart recipe handed down from my great-grandmother that combines raspberry jam with an almond flavoured topping, so so good! My girls love them too!



The instructions I worked from aren't as detailed since Grannie remembered recipes and didn't need to write them down! I've added my measurements in brackets.

Line small(mini)tart tins with pie pastery of your choice.

Add a small dollop of raspberry jam to each(about 1/2 tsp.)

Then top with the following mixture:
3 oz. fruit sugar( I used about 1/2 cup icing sugar)
3oz butter,softened ( I used about 1/3 to 1/2 cup butter)
3 oz ground rice flour ( I used about 1/2 cup rice flour)
1 egg
1/2 tsp. almond extract( I like a stronger almond flavour so would add a bit more next time)
Mix these ingredients together well. Put about 1 tablespoon of this mixture on top of jam. Bake at 425 for 15 to 20 minutes until golden brown.

Enjoy!

Cranberry Feta Pinwheels

Its been awhile since I've shared a recipe and I hope to share a couple more quick, seasonal recipes before Christmas.



For the tag swap the other night I made Cranberry Feta Pinwheels and they looked pretty much just like those in the pic above. I found this photo online as I didn't get a picture of the ones I made.

Anyway, I cut the recipe out of the paper years ago and in reading it now I notice it is from Ocean Spray. The sweetness of the cranberries is offset perfectly by the salty feta. Everyone at the tag swap liked them too!

Here's the recipe:

170 g package sweetened dried cranberries
250 g tub spreadable cream cheese
1 cup crumbled feta cheese
1/4 cup chopped green onions
4 large spinach, whole wheat or plain flour tortillas

Combine all ingredients except tortillas, mix well. Divide and spread mixture evenly between tortillas. Roll up tightly, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate at least one hour. To serve cut in 12 slices.

Enjoy!

O Christmas Tree!

Thought I'd share a pic of this year's Christmas tree.



Its not a themed tree but is decorated with ornaments I've picked up over the years.

Like this pretty angel(and reindeer).



And this vintage look Santa.



We always get a real tree, how about you, do you prefer real or imitation?

1st Annual Tag Swap

This week I hosted my first annual tag swap!

Myself and eight scrappy friends created 9 tags each to share with each other.

Here's my tags all ready to swap.

Of course we had drinks and some nibbles then got down to the business of exchanging tags.

A bit of baking.

Yum, taco dip!

And here's the scrappy friends, from left to right, Joanne, Regan, Deanna, Jeannie.


Deanna posing for her pic this time!

Brenda and Kathryn.

Dianne and Avril.


And now for the tags!

Here's Avril's using a a felt snowflake as the tag base, so so creative!

Jeannie's fresh, clean take on her tag, unfortunately the lovely shimmery ribbon Jeannie choose doesn't show well in the pic :( , love the embossing!

Kathryn's Santa tag, so totally cute!

A closer look at one of my tags, gotta love Melissa Frances glittered chipboard.

Brenda's tag on a tag and isn't the glittered paper lovely?

Dianne's house mouse ornament tag, who can resist house mouse, not me!

Regan's holly and bells tag, love it!

Deanna's tag that opens, love the choice of red, blue and glitter!

Joanne's cute stamped, coloured and glittered tag, so sweet!



We all really enjoyed sharing how we created our tags with each one being so individual and creative. Hopefully we can get together and swap tags again next year!