Baby Boy Cards

It's another baby boom! Time to pull out the giraffe stamp and get busy. I found this cool Noah's Ark paper hidden in my stash that I really like - though I've never seen a purple giraffe before.

Day 2: 12 Days of Christmas

I'm still catching up from the holidays and trying to complete my 12 Days of Christmas class. I'm not going to give up even if it means I finish in July.

Here is Day 2! The challenge was to highlight your Christmas tree. I tend to always use the same font for titles, but one way to jazz up a layout is to mix and match. I need to remember this more often!

Day 1: 12 Days of Christmas

I am in the process of finishing up 12 Christmas layouts using the fabulous handouts from the latest Big Picture Class I am taking - the 12 Days of Christmas. So I am a few days behind.... I am inspired to finish it up soon because my scraproom is a Christmas explosion and you can't even walk into it. You will find me sitting on the floor in the hallways scrapping!

Day 1 was to take a family photo.

Here is my finished layout.

Day 8 Camp Scrap Christmas: Making Cookies

Today over at Camp Scrap, May is all about making cookies. I had a holiday party on Thursday that I needed to make a dessert for so I went with my go-to recipe, Mint Chocolate Truffle Cookies! The hardest part for me has always been crushing the candy canes. In a moment of inspiration I loaded them into a zip block bag and went out to my front door step with a hammer. Concrete+hammer+candy canes=crushed goodness! Worked like a charm!

Here is the recipe:

Mint Chocolate Truffle Cookies
6 squares of Baker's semi-sweet chocolate, chopped
3/4 cup of butter (1 1/2 sticks)
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 3/4 cup flous
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/3 cup chopped candy canes

Preheat oven @ 350. Microwave chocolate and butter in large microwavable bowl on high 2 min or until butter is melted. Stir until chocolate is completely melted. Stir in sugar. Add eggs 2 at a time mixing until well blended after each addition. Add combined flour and baking powder. Mix well. (dough will be very soft). Cover and fridge for at least 2 hours or overnight.

Roll heaping teaspoonfuls of dough into 1 inch balls. Place 2 inches apart on greased baking sheets.

Bake 10 to 12 min or until tops are set. Do not over bake. Immediately sprinkle with chopped candy canes. Cool 1 min on baking sheet. Remove to wire racks to cool completely.

Makes 44 cookies.

and here is the finished product:

I'm Back! And Camp Scrap Christmas Day #1

It has been 2 months since my last blog post - but I have a pretty darn good excuse.

This happy little bundle of love has been keeping me pretty busy. I haven't seen the inside of my scrap room let alone cut a piece of paper. I still keep up reading my favorite blogs though. That is how I discovered that May Flaum was offering Camp Scrap: Christmas. I really really want to take advantage of this. Somehow I found a few minutes today to do some basic Christmas tags. Make the most of 30 min and that is what I did. It felt soooooo good to do something creative. Still a lot of cobwebs I need to dust off, but here are my 3 tags.

The first one is my new favorite Santa stamp.
The second one is kind of funny - my mother-in-law wraps our gifts in vintage 70's wrapping paper. This was a very cute kitty paper that made me laugh. The third one I used my Martha branch punch.
I can't guarantee I'll get another 30 min this week, but I am sure going to try.

Kit-Tastic with May Flaum: Week 1

It is time for another fabulous class at Big Picture Classes with the wonderful May Flaum! Her new class is called Kit-tastic and it is all about helping you create with kits and getting the most from your stash. I always get drawn in to the beauty and one-stop-shopping of page kits, but the reality is, I am horrible at using them. There are many unopened kits taking up valuable shelf space and collecting dust in my room. With this class I am hoping to finally dive into some of them and create some fun pages.

Today, I decided to break into an old Basic Grey Kit from a CKC class that I ran out of time and never finished. I am currently working on a baby girl album and want to make a bunch of pre-made pages that I can use once baby arrives. For this page, I swapped out the recommended blue patterned paper for a pink design. These pictures are placeholder (and are actually my nephew!), but I bet we get similar pictures when baby is born.

 I also decided to hand stitch my title. This was a new technique for me. I had purchased May's Scrapbook Workshop technique book when it came out and then I never did anything with it. This class has inspired me to try new things to enhance my kits. There is an easy tutorial for how to hand stitch. I will say this title took me 2 hours to complete!! But hopefully I'll get faster the more I do.

Big Idea Festival Day 8: Joy

I've been doing my best to keep up with the Big Idea Festival over at Big Picture Classes. I don't have a photo printer at home so I have to work with the photos I have available until I can order more. They don't always map to the daily challenge so I either get creative or have to skip some days. Day 8 was to scrap something that has happened to your recently that brings you joy. I happen to be working on pages for my baby shower album and had some fun photos for this page.