Little Red Wagon Challenge #39 - Christmas in July

This week its Christmas in July at Little Red Wagon!

So I finally dug into my Heartwarming Creations images and used a new embossing folder to create this card:



So why don't you get an early start on your Christmas cards and join us at Little Red Wagon with your Christmas card. We love to see what you create! And check out all the other creations while you're there.

Christmas Tree One Layer Card

I love the one layer challenges at Simplicity but they are much more difficult for me than I would have thought. One-layer Wednesday 13 is to create a Christmas card. After rifling through my Christmas supplies I created this card:



It uses a Pebbles sentiment I've had for ages along with a Melissa Frances glittered tree, a button and some floss. I'm pretty happy with it.

Papertrey July Blog Hop Challenge!

This month's blog hop is focusing on office supplies! So I repurposed two large paperclips along with some PTI buttons to embellish this card:

Almost all the products used to create this card are PTI and include cream cardstock ,library ledger paper, vintage buttons ,cream twine , fillable frames #5 stamp and die.

Can't wait to see how everyone else has incorporated office supplies in their creations!

PS Forgive any fomatting issues in my post tonight, blogger seems to be acting up!

Pile It On Challenge #29

This week Pile It On is sponsored by Bugaboo Stamps!

We were able to pick one of their images and I loved Stella, so picked this image to create with:



The challenge at Pile It On is to 'stretch that plastic'or to incorporate plastic or some other stretchy material, hopefully a plastic button qualifies.

I also followed the sketch, #65, at Unscripted Sketches and the colour challenge of green, red, white and black as suggested at Our Creative Corner.

Have a good Sunday!

View This Morning

We have had some big rainstorms move through this morning and our normally dry green space now looks like this:





I'm going to spend this rainy day doing the usual household chores and planning for a scrapping weekend away. What are you up to today?

Little Red Wagon Challenge #38 - Case a Girlfriend!

Hello all!

Its time for another Little Red Wagon challenge! This week Regan challenged us to lift a girlfriend's card, how fun is that!

So I decided to lift not one but two cards and both of them are Regans's! Regan's style is so different from mine and I just had to copy a couple.

So first up, here's her card:


And here's mine:



And second, here's her card:



And here's mine:

Broke into my new Papertrey Library Ledger paper for this one!

And as I think you may often fly a kite at the beach for your summer holidays , this second card also fits in with the beach challenge at Creative Corner. And since I also used my PTI cloud die cuts, it also fits in the die cut challenge at A Passion for Papertrey. Oh and one more challenge, I think fits, summer holidays over at Secret Crafter.


So we hope you will get out there, case a girlfriend's card and link it up at Little Red Wagon! We love to see what you create!

The Paper Temptress

A few weeks ago, our Pile It On challenge was sponsored by The Paper Temptress. Unfortunately my paper didn't arrive in time for that post but I did get it and made the following creations with her lovely paper and ribbon too.

The first two cards are made with Sky Natural cardstock(cream) and double duty salmon cardstock. They also feature two ribbons, 5/8 toffee arabesque and 7/8 ivory gold ruffle ribbon.

The first card features a banner(this week's PIO challenge) created with both the salmon paper and ivory ribbon.



This card also meets the OTWC inspiration colours of pink, grey and white(cream).

I love the ruffle ribbon, simply pull the thread and you can ruffle the ribbon as you wish!

The second card follows this week's CPS sketch.



I dug into my gold embossing powder to create the elegant sentiment required to match this paper and ribbon!

The weight of this paper is perfect for card making and the soft colour is gorgeous.

My next creations feature the cranberry,blueberry and kraft brown bag paper.

As soon as I looked at and felt this paper I knew it would be perfect for creating gift tags. And with the two sided colour I was inspired to make the popular spiral flowers to embellish the tags.



Then I made a couple of items from splitcoast stampers, a diaper fold pouch that I embellished with a fan fold flower!



I loved the weight of these papers for folding projects, not too heavy and not too light!

So are you tempted to check out all the other papers and ribbons at The Paper Temptress, I know I am!

A Day in the Port Rowan Area

Last weekend Brittany went down to my Mom's house to tour some of the local shops/attractions. It was a beautiful and hot day and I took a lot of photos! Here's a few:

We went to a garden centre called Heritage Lane Garden, here's some cute bird houses on a barn wall:

And some beautiful flowers:

See the butterflies on this echinacea:
Brittany in the entrance of one of the little gift shops: We had a great lunch at Florence Estate Winery:

Brittany had a hoagie:
I had a yummy panini:


And Mom had Eggs Mornay:


And we went to a local lavender farm where they were holding an arts and crafts fair:
Brittany in the lavender field:
Mom in the lavender:


Handmade lavender soap that smells divine:

And some bird houses:

We also checked out Country Candles and some shops is Port Rowan and of course finished up with ice cream at the famous Twins Ice Cream shop! It was a fun day!

Hope Your Day Is Fabulous

Today I spent a relaxing afternoon cardmaking and will be showing the results of my creativity over the next few days.

This card was made to meet two challenges, I used the sketch at Everything But The Kitchen Sink and the colour/ric rac theme over at Embellish Magazine.



I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, the creative juices were flowing today!

Hope you like it too!

Brittany's Summer To Do List

Last summer Brittany created a list of things she wanted to over the summer. While we didn't do all of them we did accomplish a fair number. So she created another list for this summer:

( ) Have a picnic.
( ) Make root beer floats.
( ) Go camping.
( ) Maket strawberry crisp.
( ) Go to the movies.
( ) Go out for lunch/dinner.
( ) Go shopping in the US.
( ) Have a sleepover.
( ) Make raspberry lemonade.
( ) Make smoothies.
( ) Go to the beach.
( ) Get books at Chapters to read throughout the summer.
( ) Visit Gramma and Great-Grandma.
( ) Play board games.
( ) Go to a play in Stratford.

I think it looks like a pretty reasonable list and we've done a few things on the list already!

( ) Have a picnic.
( ) Make root beer floats.
( ) Go camping.
( ) Maket strawberry crisp.
( ) Go to the movies.
(X) Go out for lunch/dinner.We had lunch out yesterday in Stratford.
(X) Go shopping in the US. Brittany and went shoppiing in Buffalo for the day a couple of weeks ago.
( ) Have a sleepover.
( ) Make raspberry lemonade.
( ) Make smoothies.
( ) Go to the beach.
(X) Get books at Chapters to read throughout the summer.
(X ) Visit Gramma and Great-Grandma.Brittany visited Gramma last week.
( ) Play board games.
(X) Go to a play in Stratford. In June she saw As You Like It with Steve.


I'll update our progress on Brittany's list through the rest of the summer. There's lots of fun things to do on it!

Little Red Wagon #37- Trees

Hello all!

I'm back with this week's Little Red Wagon creation! Avril challenged us to create something with a tree. So I broke into my Stampin' Up Lovely as a Tree set and created this card:



I took my colour inspiration from Papertrey's Green Boutique paper and also followed this week's CPS sketch.


If you can, please join us at Little Red Wagon, we love to see what you create!

Tonight's Dinner

Fresh mixed greens sprinkled with berries, cheese, nuts and drizzled with poppyseed salad dressing!



Soooooo yummy!!

Pile It On Challenge #27 - A Holiday Twist

Hello!

Are you enjoying this gorgeous weekend? I sure am!

But on to important card business, this week Pile It On is being sponsored by the Character Cafe. They have wonderful digital images, with very different styles, so there is something for everyone!

This week The Character Cafe is going to be giving one lucky winner a $15 gift certificate to their store! Sooooo you need to know what this week's Pile It On challenge is all about...... it's a holiday twist ... we want you to use a holiday color combination on a NON holiday card.

I decided to use traditional red and green along with this gorgeous image of a mum, to create this card:



And it incorporates these challenges:
Pile It On: holiday colours
Little Red Wagon: use nestabilities
Cuttlebug Challenges: use doilies or lace
Friday Sketchers: sketch
Shabby Tea Room:embossing


If you can, please do join in the fun at Pile it On!

Radish Salad

I'm back with another recipe I tried out of the early summer Food and Drink magazine featuring radishes. I think radishes are an acquired taste and I certainly don't mind them if they are not too hot! So if you're adventurous and/or like radishes, do try this recipe, its quite good and quite simple to make too!




2 lbs radishes
1/2 cup radish leaves, washed, dried and torn(I used extra arugula as the radish leaves didn't appeal to me)
2T thinly sliced chives
2T grape seed oil
1T mirin or rice wine vinegar
1/2 tsp coarse sea salt
4 oz shaved parmigiano-reggiano(I think I was heavy-handed with the cheese and freely grated it on!)
2 cups arugula or watercress

Trim radish roots leaving just a bit of the stem. Wash well, drain and towel-dry. Slice thinly, crosswise or length-wise, put into bowl. Toss with torn leaves, chives, oil, mirin and salt. Arrange on platter and sprinkle with cheese and arugula. Makes 6 servings.

Asparagus Salad with Mediterranean Salsa

If you live in Ontario you're probably familiar with the LCBO's Food and Drink magazine. It has fabulous recipes and other entertaining ideas and I often wish I had more time to cook as so many recipes appeal to me.

Recently I did get the chance to try out two new recipes,one of which features asparagus with a yummy salsa by Lucy Waverman.



Although recipe calls for white asparagus as well as green I didn't like the look of it in the store and used only green.



I really liked how it turned out.The salsa would also be a great accompaniment to other roasted veggies. I'll be making this again!

Here's the recipe:


1 lb (500 g) green asparagus
1 lb (500 g) white asparagus
1 tsp (5 mL) salt
1 tsp (5 mL) sugar

Mediterranean Salsa

½ cup (125 mL) chopped shallots
½ cup (125 mL) chopped green olives
¼ cup (50 mL) chopped roasted red pepper
1 tbsp (15 mL) chopped capers
¼ cup (50 mL) chopped parsley
2 tbsp (25 mL) lime juice
2 tbsp (25 mL) orange juice
¼ cup (50 mL) extra virgin olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper


1. Peel green asparagus if stalks are thick. Peel white asparagus.

2. Bring a large skillet of salted water to boil. Add green asparagus and boil for 2 to 3 minutes or until still slightly crisp. Remove with tongs and run under cold water until cool. Pat dry.

3. Add sugar to boiling water and add white asparagus. Boil for 2 to 3 minutes or until slightly crisp. Drain and run under cold water until cool. Pat dry. Place green and white asparagus on a platter.

4. Combine shallots, olives, red pepper, capers and parsley in a bowl. Stir in lime juice, orange juice and olive oil. Season with salt and pepper, spoon salsa over asparagus across the centre.


Serves 4