Me + You = LOVE

My very first time playing along with Papertrey Ink's "Make It Monday" challenge!!!!  A few weeks back, I saw Betsy's blog post using this chalkboard technique and I fell in love.  When I was in Home Goods over the weekend, their entire wall decor department was filled with chalkboard style pictures.

For the base of my card I used Pure Poppy and for the chalkboard panel I used True Black (PTI).  The stamps I used were:  Gemstone Alphabet (Recollections), Holiday Photo Finishers (PTI) and With All My Heart (PTI).

Organization - Button Storage

I'm a huge Papertrey Ink fan and have mentioned before that I love they way all of their products match.  My button collection (I know, I know craft supplies shouldn't be collected, they should be used!!) is kept out in the open where I can see them and grab them quickly when working on a project.

Like many crafters, I look to Ikea often for storage solutions.  I use their Rajtan Spice Jar to hold my button collection supplies.  To make it easy to find what color the buttons are, I cut a 1 inch circle of the matching cardstock and adhered it to each jar lid.  I keep my jars in a Memories Makers Embellishment Center which I purchased at Michaels.  I removed the two dowels from the bottom sections of the organizer to keep them as shelves.  This system allows me room to grow!

Since I've already shared my ribbon organization in a prior post, here is a shot of the two shelves side by side in my craft room.

Christmas is almost here!!!

A quick post while we are preparing the house for Christmas dinner with our families.  I'm continuing with the snowman theme and using my Snowman die from Papertrey Ink.  I used this die for all my gift tags and thought it would be nice to keep the theme going onto our table as place cards.  I also added little pom poms to the top of each hat and hand wrote the names on his belly.





To keep things easy I kept the same menu card format as I have in the past (if it works for me, I'll keep it).

As I mentioned last year, I wanted to add a tree in the foyer.  Here she is all decorated and ready to greet our family!  Merry Christmas!    

Puppy Pollyanna

 When my DH and I travel and are unable able to bring our 7 year old Yorkie (Piper), he stays at a local pet boarding facility named Best Friends.  Our local Best Friends offers day camp for dogs and we use this service whenever he stays over night and occasionally when we will be away from the house for an extended period of time on a particular day.  It's a great way for him to interact with other dogs (although when we do spy on him via their webcams, most of the time we see him snuggling on the camp counselor's lap).  He really enjoys the people dogs and we are thankful they take such great care of him.

Piper was invited to participate in this years Puppy Pollyanna (say that three times fast!) for day campers at Best Friends.   Pollyanna is the same concept as "secret Santa".   Piper "chose" little Lucy the Cockapoo who likes toys that are not filled with stuffing for his Pollyanna.  It's a secret who picked Piper!

I cut a few doggy images from the Cricut cartridge Create A Critter and affixed them to a clear paint can.  I wrapped the inside of the can with some sheer ribbon attached with glue dots, tied little bows on each side of the handles, and then filled the can with the goodies.

I sure hope little Lucy loves the items Piper personally picked for her at PetSmart.

Snowman Gift Tags

These snowman gift tags were made using the Snowman Shape Up Die Collection and Snowman Accessories Stamp Set from Papertrey Ink.  I cut the snowman base from white cardstock, the arms from dark chocolate cardstock and the mittens from felt.  I wanted his hat to coordinate with his mittens, and for both to coordinate with the great wrapping paper I found at Hobby Lobby.  First I cut the hat base from white cardstock and stamped a pattern on the middle, using the snowflake label stamp from the Holiday Treats Stamp Set.  Next I cut out the trim of the hat with glitter cardstock.  For the words I used the To: and From: stamps from the 2011 Birthday Tags Stamp Set.  As a finishing touch, I used enamel accents as buttons down his middle. 

A piece of score tape on the backs of the snowmen adhere them to the packages.  

Here's a shot of a few of the packages under our tree located in our foyer!  We now have three decorated Christmas trees in our house: this one in the foyer, one in our living room and another in our family room.  My DH has set them all up on timers.  As soon as it is dark outside they automatically turn on...love that!

Peppermint Candy Wreath

 I'm on a candy wreath roll for 2012!  During a recent trip to a restaurant supply store (I don't own or work at a restaurant - I just LOVE finding great basic house supplies there), I came across a huge 5 pound, 650 piece bag of peppermint candies (Hospitality Mints at the restaurant supply store).  This entire bag cost $6.







The wreath form I used was Styrofoam.   Although the color was perfect, I dislike getting flakes of Styrofoam all over, so I covered the wreaths with white satin ribbon first.  Next I unwrapped 250 candies and went to town hot gluing them onto the form.  I love this type of project.  It's easy, fun and now my kitchen smells like peppermint!!! 

Thanksgiving Place Cards

Thanksgiving in the US is a little less than two weeks away.  *insert slight panic here*  Our prep has begun:  we gathered and tested new recipes, made the annual card to send to family and friends, and placed the order from our favorite local, family owned butcher for our center of attention - Tom the Turkey.

This weekend I finished making the place cards for the table.  I enjoy having place cards for all of our large family meals, as I think it is just a small way for each guest to feel a little special and everyone knows exactly where they are sitting when they sit down for dinner.

Papertrey Ink came out with a really cute Shape Up Series in their die collection and this year they introduced the Pumpkin Die Collection.  I used this die collection to create my greeting card as well as matching place cards for the table.

Here's what I did.   First I cut an A2 card base and then aligned it with the dashed line on the die, and ran it through my Cuttlebug.  Next, I used the same die on non-folded card stock and cut the pumpkin followed by the stem.  This collection has a companion die called Pumpkin Sections Die.  I used patterned paper and cut each section in a different pattern.  I inked each of the edges of the sections with some brown ink to make them stand out.  I glued the pattern sections and stem to the solid pumpkin shape and adhered that to the A2 card base.  Finally, I cut brown felt letters from the Modern Alphabet Die set.  Although this pumpkin die collection is intended for a greeting card, I think it will work well for my place cards.

Trick or Treat Card

Wrapping up my posts for Halloween, I'm sharing the card I sent out to our family and friends this year.  The card was made with everything from Papertrey Ink!  Since my card was a single layer, it made it easy to mass produce.  I fell in love with the Spider Web Trio Dies and knew I just had to do something with them on a card!  Instead of using the large web as a traditional die, I decided to emboss the front of the card with it!  The sentiment and spider came from the Been Boo'd stamp set.  I heat embossed the scary cute little spider with black embossing powder.

Happy Halloween!

Organization - Ribbon Storage

I am constantly looking online for better ways to organize my craft room.  I'm not sure why but I always feel like there is just some genius way of organizing that I haven't thought of yet and I'm missing out!  I think I've got it perfect with my ribbon storage though!

My craft room is a mix of different furniture from Pottery Barn (the Bedford Collection) and Ikea (the Expedit series).  When we moved into our home in 2006 I purchased this Craft Organizer from Pottery Barn.  (I should probably warn that this item comes and goes every year at PB around Christmas time.  If you are reading this after Christmas, the link may not work).  Thankfully I did not pay full price for this baby.  If you have patience, it most likely will go on sale closer to Christmas (at least it has every year since I've purchased it).  When I originally bought it, I used the lower portion for wrapping paper. The unit includes 4 dowels, but I removed two so that I can perch my ribbon on them.  All of my ribbon comes from Papertrey Ink, I love having my paper, ink, ribbon and button match.  This system allows me to quickly view and grab the colors I need and as you can see, I still have a little room to grow.

Glitter Ornament Balls

I've been showing various pictures of the tea cart in our foyer and the displays I change out for each holiday and season (here, here and here).  Decorating with apothecary jars make it easy, quick and fun to change the theme each month.  One of the jars is usually filled with candy and one is always filled with these Glitter Ornament Balls.

Here's what you'll need to make these ornaments:
clear glass ornaments, glitter, Pledge Floor Finish

Remove the top of the ornament clip.  Pour a small amount of Pledge into the ball.  Swirl (don't shake) the Pledge around the entire inside of the ball.   Shaking the Pledge will cause bubbles and will not cover completely.  Empty remaining Pledge back into the bottle.  (I've been using the same bottle for dozens of ornaments and have only used a small bit).  Pour glitter into the ball and swirl it around, adding more glitter as needed to cover the entire inside.  Empty any extra glitter from the ball onto a folded piece of scrap paper (this glitter can be used for the next ball).  When finished, discard remaining glitter, do not return it to the bottle. Set the ornaments aside to dry before replacing the clip on top.   I use the original container the ornaments come in as a drying rack.  I love this technique because I love the look and the sparkle, but I don't like the mess of the glitter.

 

Tulle Halloween Wreath

We are still in the process of decorating for Halloween, and I decided to make a wreath to hang on the door that leads to our basement.  I purchased three spools of tulle, a spool of orange ribbon and an 8 inch green Styrofoam wreath form.  When I purchased the wreath form I thought about painting it black, so that the green would not show through.  Then I remembered that I still had black Duck tape left over from my Candy Corn Wreath.  It worked perfectly.

First I covered the entire wreath in the black Duck tape.  Following that, I cut the tulle into strips of 32 inches long with pinking shears, then folded each strip in half length-wise and in half width-wise.  I tied the strips around the wreath using double knots, and bunched each tightly together with the next.  In total it took a little more than two spools of the tulle.

While this wreath is on our basement door, here's a shot of our foyer decorated and ready to greet trick or treaters!

Candy Corn Wreath

Autumn is officially here in Pennsylvania!  That means it's time to start to get ready for HALLOWEEN!  I just love, love, love Halloween!  I've started to bring out my Halloween and Fall decorations from storage.  For me it is a two step decorating process; I decorate for Halloween as well as putting out a few items that are a general Fall theme;  I leave those general items out until the day after Thanksgiving (November 22 this year) and then switch the others on November 1st, the day after Halloween.

I decided to take a page from my Easter decorating and attempt to make a wreath out of some type of candy.  I picked candy corn to be my choice of edible goodness to highlight.  I purchased a 16 inch Styrofoam wreath from Michael's (using a coupon, of course) and used Duck tape this time to cover the form versus ribbon.  I love the way the Duck tape turned out and it was super easy to cover (and much less expensive than ribbon).

I purchased 3 pounds of candy corns from my local food store which sold them in packages of 1 pound each, and ended up using a total of 2 pounds for the project.   Since I had left over, I used that candy to fill one of the apothecary jars on my grandmothers tea cart in our foyer.  I hot glued the candy to the wreath alternating the direction of the corns every other row.  I think it would also look good if they were just placed on the wreath whichever way they would fit to fill up any of the open spaces!    I used some black ribbon and bow to finish off the wreath.  I have to admit, I did sneak a few candy corns while making the wreath and watching television at the same time - um, I did the same thing with the Peep wreath too.  

Thought I'd share with you the view I had making my wreath!  This is Piper, my 7 year old Yorkie and my crafting buddy.

Bridal Shower Gift

My very dear friend is getting married at the end of the year.  Her bridal shower is tomorrow!!!  I have made stationery gifts before for brides-to-be and I believe that is all because of this friend!  Twelve years ago (gah, 12 years already?) she co-hosted my bridal shower.  One of the (many) gifts she gave  me was a pack of Thank You cards and envelopes which she had addressed and stamped for each guest who attended my shower.  I remember thinking how clever and thoughtful that gift was.  All brides write tons of thank you cards before, during and after the big day.  It seems like a never ending task as there is always a thank you note to write.  Every little bit helps!   I knew right away I'd love to repay her for the kind, thoughtful gift she gave to me!  

Along with other gifts from her registry, I will be giving her a Thank You card care package.  First I ordered a custom stamp from The Stationery Studio with their name and address on the stamp.  I've purchased from this site in the past;  they are super quick with processing orders.
I made 20 very clean, one layer cards using Botanical Silhouettes stamp set on Vintage Cream card stock, included 20 Vintage Cream envelopes and packaged them in a 4 inch deep clear box.  For the label, I  stamped the background with Background Basics: Text Style in Fine Linen ink on Vintage Cream card stock cut from the Layerz Mat Stack 4 Die and knew I just had to use the Handmade Stationery stamp with this project, which was layered on top of Classic Kraft card stock cut from the Mega Mat Stack 4 Die.  I wrapped the clear box with Classic Kraft satin ribbon (all Papertrey Ink except for stationery box).

I used a Gable Box from Uline to hold the care package.  I use them when ever I can, it appears I have a never ending supply since their minimum order is 100!  I covered the box with Fine Linen Stripe paper and wrapped Classic Kraft grosgrain ribbon around it.  I then cut Classic Kraft card stock with the Mat Stack 4 Die, Vintage Cream card stock with the Layerz Mat Stack 4 Die and layered them.  I cut a 2 1/4 inch circle and used a circle border stamp from Simply Stationery in Classic Kraft ink.  In the center of the circle I placed their new monogram using Fresh Alphabet and Simple Alphabet stamp sets (these are my go to stamps when creating monograms).

Finally, I made a card that I can give to her at the shower using the design created by Nichole Heady using the Sweet Life and Think Big Favorites #5 stamp sets.  I love the way the envelope turned out for that card!

I'm so excited for my dear friend.  I wish her nothing but love and happiness.

Kitchen Pantry Overhaul

We successfully tackled the garage back in May (Garage Overhaul), and now it's time for our kitchen pantry.  I knew right off the bat we'd be taking out the old shelving and replacing it - that was the easy part.  Then I started to think about actual storage containers and different ways to make it easy to find things and to know when items need to be replenished.  I found these jars  at Ikea and use them for baking items like flour and sugar.  These OXO Pop Containers will be used for non-baking items.  I think we will stick with only two different types of containers for now.  I needed to label baking jar contents, so I decided to use Chalkboard Contact Paper.  I used the Mat Stack 4 die from Papertrey Ink and ran them through my Cuttlebug.  I looked at different Cricut cartridges for a pretty label, but the one from Papertrey is my favorite, and honestly it was just easier to use my Cuttlebug!  I love the way they turned out.   Next it's on to the work of the actual closet!

Our builder installed very basic wire shelving everywhere in our house - all the bedroom closets, linen closets, laundry room and in our pantry.  I don't like this shelving because items fall through the wires and just looks plain.  When we first started redoing all the bedroom closets we found a great custom closet company online,  Easy Closets.  Their name suits them!!!!  The first closet we did was our master bedroom closet which measures 7 feet by 13 feet.  We designed it to include drawers, shelves, and double hanging.  We maximized the space and it has really worked out well for us.  We also installed a double hanging with shelves in one of the spare bedrooms.  So when it came time to do our oddly shaped kitchen pantry, we knew we'd go right back to Easy Closets!  First, let me tell you we ordered on a Sunday and the shipment was at our door on Tuesday.  That's something to be prepared for.  The pantry closet came in 7 boxes and shipping is free.  Have I mentioned how much I love free shipping?

Summer Cocktail Party

I thought I'd share some details and a few recipes from the cocktail party we hosted for our friends a few days ago.  The actual gathering was on July 5th but I still stayed with the patriotic theme.

We served assorted sandwich wraps, California rolls and sushi, tomato pie, artichoke and spinach dip, macaroni salad, vegetables and dip, shrimp cocktail, and mini soft pretzels.  For dessert we offered brownie bites and mini pies served in half pint Ball jars.

The mini pies were a huge hit, some people even took them home.  The recipes below can make about 12 pies each.  I found a few recipes online for the mini pies and sort of combined them all together.  For the crust I used  Pillsbury prepared crust versus making my own.

Cherry Pies in a Jar
filling:
14 oz. can tart cherries, with juice
1/2 cup sugar
2 T. cornstarch
1/8 t. almond extract
2-3 drops red food coloring

1. Place cherries (and juice) into a small saucepan. Stir in the sugar and cornstarch. 
2. Bring to boil over medium high heat, continuously stirring. (The sauce will be thickened after about 8 minutes.) Turn off heat and add almond extract and food coloring. Stir well. 
3. Place hot filling into a medium size bowl and let cool.

Blueberry Pies in a Jar
filling:
3 cups blueberries
zest of 1 lemon 
2 T. lemon juice 
1/4 cup sugar
big pinch salt 
1 T. ground instant tapioca (I used Kraft instant) 

1. In a medium saucepan, heat 1-1/2 cups blueberries, zest and juice over medium-high heat. Stir frequently, and allow the sauce to reduce a bit, until it coats the back of a spoon. Cook for about 10 minutes. 
2. Remove from heat and combine in a medium bowl with the fresh berries, sugar, salt, and tapioca. 
3. Set aside while you prepare the jars.

Assembly for both recipes:

Cut a circle out of the dough for the bottom of the jar.  I used the inside of the jar top ring as a guide.  Cut strips of dough as tall as the jar and work from the bottom of the jar up and wrap the dough inside the jar.  Fill each jar about 1/4 of the way with filling.  Use the tops of the jar rings as a cutter for the top of the pie.  Cut a few slices in the top of the dough disc to allow steam to escape.  Crimp the top dough to the side of the jar.  Sprinkle with sugar.   Place jars on a cookie sheet.  Bake at 400 F for 20 minutes.  Turn oven down to 350 F and turn cookie sheet.  Bake for another 10 minutes (until crust is lightly browned)

A few tips:  I found that buttering the jars helped the dough not stick to the sides when eating.  Working with the dough at its coldest makes a flakier crust.  I worked in batches of 6 jars, any more would have taken too much time and let the dough get warm.  I also cut a few mini stars from the remaining dough with a cookie cutter and placed them on top of each jar prior to baking.

Here is a good picture of the pre-party controlled chaos!  I learned a little party organizing trick from one of my favorite aunts who is a pro at throwing huge, well planned parties.  She is just amazing to watch and I try to learn from her each time!  We start with a menu and then create post-it notes for each menu item.   Then we place the notes onto each serving piece to help us (and you know that person who always asks "what can I do to help?") right before the party when running the final checklist through our heads.  This makes certain we have all the menu items covered and that there is a serving dish for each item!  I do it for every holiday and event we host!

Another good recipe I found was Rachael Ray's White Sangria.  We basically multiplied the recipe by 8!  It was well received by our white wine drinkers.  We transformed the dining room into the beverage area, and had all of the food placed in the kitchen.   This virtually assured that people would make it into the dining room!

Searching through Pinterest (by the way, find me here on Pinterest) I found the idea to serve 'Drunken Gummy Bears".  Who knew!  I found red, white and blue gummy bears on Amazon.  I divided the bears into different containers and covered them with vodka for 5 days.  Each day I gave them a check to see if they were covered completely.  The day of the party I used a slotted spoon and put one gummy into an individual plastic shot glass.  Believe it or not, these were a huge hit.  Personally I did not try one....not a shot type of person, but they sure were cute and they had people talking about how large they became by soaking!

Fourth of July Wine Charms

We are getting ready to host a cocktail party for our friends who moved to Chicago last summer.  They are passing through our area for a few days over the Fourth of July holiday.  I've mentioned these friends before - these two are our 'travel buddies'.  The four of us go to Disney World at least once a year together (one year we went three times!) and about every other year we plan a non-Disney adventure.  We've hit New York, Dublin, Rome, Venice, Florence and Hawaii together.  My DH and I have traveled places with other couples and sometimes it works and other times not so much.  It's great when you find travel companions and it just clicks.  Since our friends moved most of our mutual friends haven't seen them since they left, so it's time for a get together for sure!

I'll be sticking to a red, white and blue theme for the gathering.  I pretty much use these colors the entire summer when entertaining.  I keep my "Fourth of July" decorations up from Memorial Day (at the end of May) until Labor Day (beginning of September).

Now on to the wine charms.......
I used the same techniques I used in my St Patrick's Day Wine Charm.
I again used shrink film and a trusty Cricut cartridge.  I found my images on the Stand and Salute cartridge.
I cut the dog tag images at 3.25 inches and the Liberty Bells at 3 inches.  Then I colored them with a marker, punch a hole in the top and baked them in my oven.  After they came out of the oven I coated them with glossy accents to make them, wellllll...... glossy.  The dog tags gave me two shapes: the actual tag and the cut out from the center.  I used those extras as accents on other charms.

The last time I did wine charms I posted a picture of the tea cart in our foyer, so I thought I'd do the same again.

The apothecary jar on the left contains a few altered ornament balls which I coated the inside with glitter; the middle jar contains some red, white and blue wire garland; and the right some coconut creme Hershey Kisses.

I'll post about other items for the party after it's over (I can't make everything weeks in advance).

Fourth of July Themed Candle Holders

Nice weather and spending evenings out on our deck are finally here!  Two years ago we had a large deck built onto the back of our house.  Since the weather has warmed up and the days are getting longer, we enjoy spending a hour or two after dinner out back on our new area, listening to music and just spending time together after work.  

One thing we do not enjoy are the bugs!  I found the Conceal candles from Yankee Candle work well.  These candles do not have a typical citronella smell to them, are DEET free and at the end of last year they were on sale for buy one get one free - so I stocked up!

I have found that whenever I use tea light candles outside in a regular tea light holder, they tend to blow out from even a light breeze.  I decided to see if I can create a fun little holder using rice and pint size Ball jars.  

I purchased a 10 pound bag of rice (way more than I'll ever need), a case of Ball pint jars, red and blue food coloring, and used the Conceal candles already in my stash.  I worked in batches of two cups of rice each time.  That filled about 4 jars (two cups of blue, two cups of red and a little less than one and one half cups of plain white).  It took a lot of food coloring to get the colors the way I liked them - about 40-50 drops for each.  After I mixed the colors I filled each jar about a third of the way with each color.  I did a mixture of color arrangements, some started with the red rice, some started with the blue.  

I do have a few dozen boxes of the Conceal votive size candles.  I decided to use them as well for this project.  I placed the votive in a clear glass votive cup first and filled the pint jar with as much rice as was needed for the height of the votive to match the height of the jar.  I don't think using the votive is very practical, since it will be difficult to replace the candle without mixing all the rice.  I think for this project the tea light size candle is the way to go for easy changing of the candle.  We plan to use these for the rest of the summer season.  I've already made about ten of these and have given a few away!  

Here is a little view of where my DH and I spend our evenings together outside.  

Garage Overhaul (non-crafty)

The past month has been very busy for my DH and I.  We made our springtime journey to Disney World to celebrate Cinco De Mayo.  Ole!  We had a blast.  The weather was HOT, just the way we love it.  Our travel buddies decided to meet us there at the last minute, so that made this trip extra nice.

When we came home we decided to do a little DIY project on our garage.  I don't think we expected this project to be as big as it turned out (or for my muscles to hurt days after as they did), but I think our end result is pretty spectacular, if I do say so myself.

Our garage is a standard two car garage with a small storage area off to the side.  It's about 495 square feet total.  I know the square footage because I've measured, remeasured and checked it again when we ordered the tiles for the floor.  I didn't want to come up short and didn't want to waste money ordering way too much.  We placed the order for the interlocking PVC tile back in March when the company was offering free shipping.  The two little words I just love to hear is "free shipping", especially when it comes to ordering 30+ boxes of tile.  Little did we realize until the freight company called to set up the delivery time that we would be responsible for unloading the 915 pound shipment from the truck!!  After going back and forth with the delivery company to set up a date when my DH would actually be in town and I could take off from work to do said unloading, our tile arrived.  It actually arrived the same day our painters came out to paint the garage.  If there is one thing we have learned in the past is that we dislike painting very much.  It doesn't matter the room size or if the room is completely empty we just don't like it!  Hence, we are not very good at it.  We've been very lucky to find a painting team who are great at what they do, nice to deal with, clean, and pretty reasonably priced.  Sold!  We (they) painted the walls with Benjamin Moore Silver Dollar.  They were done in no time! 

The following week we were off to Disney World....so our new tiles sat.  After we returned, we got right to it.  First we emptied and vacuumed the garage.  Next we found the garage center by measuring and snapping a chalk line.  We started the tile in the center of the garage.  (Prior to ordering, I did a drawing on Visio to plan out our design.  This also helped with ordering the correct amount of tile)  We used a rubber mallet to tap the tiles into place.  The 'field' section went pretty fast.  Our design is a checkerboard pattern with a border of black tile all around the room, and the border area took much more time.  Each tile needed to be measured and cut so all areas would be equal.  We didn't want to have a full tile on one side and half a tile on the other.  If the design was just all one color, the project would have gone a lot faster, but I am very happy with what we decided on.

For a storage system, we decided to go with  Gladiator Garage Works.  This will be a work in progress for a few months.  We decided that we need to live with it for a little bit before going out and purchasing everything at once.  This system is good for growing in stages because once you hang the tracks, you can easily move and add things as you need to.  When we purchased the first set of cabinets, Lowes was having a sale - buy a tall Gearbox get a wall cabinet for free!  We may wait to see if that sale comes back around!

The windows are also a work in progress; I'm not sure what to do with the treatments.  Prior to the make over, I had black window panels hanging.  My DH didn't like them because they blew around whenever the doors were open.  I'd still like to stick with black for the color.  Currently we have those black Redi Shade paper shades for privacy.