Happy Friday!!
I took a little break today for some crafting.  It's been a little busy around here cleaning and baking for the weekend.  I made cute little bunny cookies for Matthew to take into his work buddies.  Figured those guys would enjoy the little sweet treat :)

I found a challenge blog that is geared toward time limit crafting.  Checked things out and decided it would be a fun challenge to join in on. 

Oh man!  That was crazy!  The challenge is to complete a card in 10 minutes.  Sounds pretty easy, especially when you look through the DT cards and some of the entries.  But actually doing it!?  That's another story!  I had stuff flying off my desk while my hands shook and my heart raced!
I didn't make it in time for my first card.  Like I said, it seems easy but really it's pretty difficult.  This was my first attempt:

I LOVE how it turned out!  But it took me 12 minutes to complete...so no go for the challenge.  Plus after I finished it, I realized that it doesn't follow along with the colors specified for the challenge...strike 2 on this card :)

So I tried again...and that one turned out so boring I'm not even going to show it to you :)

Lets try round number 3!

And that, my friends, is my 10 minute card :)  Actually it took me 9 minutes and 25 seconds.
Even though I'm really happy with how it turned out, some how it still seems super boring to me...I don't think I've ever been very good at clean and simple cards...but I've seen so many adorable ones that I'd really like to get into that style.  I just need practice.

But with a time limit, I learned a few things.  Less is better...minimize those layers!  Don't try to add anything that has detailed cutting or multiple layers to put together..that will just waste time.  And have everything right there next to you with your layout thoroughly embedded in your brain so you don't forget how you were going to organize your card...

Overall, it's cute.  I like it even in its simplicity.  I thought about adding something to the upper corners, but I'm not sure what, and I'm afraid it would take away from the focus on the banner/sentiment.  What do you think?
The sentiment is from Stampin Up, bought it at a yard sale.  I just bought the pink washi tape a few weeks ago and forgot it was in my drawer until today.  And the twine is from The Twinery!!

Thanks for stopping by :)  Now go challenge yourself to something new!

I'd like to enter this card (the second one pictured) into the following challenges:
    10 Minute Craft Dash #14
    Incy Wincy Designs-Use Pastels
    The Twinery Challenge-It's Banner Day

Hello!!!  I have another amazing recipe to share with you today!

While my hubby was browsing around facebook the other day, he saw a breakfast recipe that caught his eye.  Of course, breakfast on the weekend is always a challenge, but that is also the only time we really do anything fancy for breakfast.  So this recipe he found would work out perfect!

We ended up sort of making our own little recipe out of what we saw in the FB post since several of the ingredients we didn't have.  But that was the nice thing about it, just throw whatever you want into it and it's good to go!

So Matthew started making up the biscuit mix and I chopped veggies.  We threw our last package of veal sausage links from Costco onto the stove to cook.  Like I said, this recipe was really adaptable and accommodating to anything we wanted in it.

Once everything was chopped, mixed, cooked we sprayed some muffin tins with olive oil.  I think this recipe would work great with any size muffin tin.  We only have the large muffin size, so that is what we used.  Ok, we have the mini size as well...but those might be a little hard to use with these :)

We added a little bit of the biscuit mix to the bottom of each tin, then filled them with our mix of sausage, peppers, mushrooms and spinach.  Top each one with a little more biscuit mix and bake!

Mmmmm...doesn't that look delish!!  It was, let me tell you!  We also made up some country potatoes to go along with our little quiches as you can see in the pic.  You could even top these with a little cheese if you wanted!  But we didn't have any :)

So here's the deets:

This is just the recipe for what we made.  The wonderful thing about this dish is that you can adapt it to anything you want-pizza, cheeseburger, barbeque chicken...anything!  Just mix up the biscuit mix the same as instructed and then fill each cup with your desired ingredients!  Simple!

Give it a shot and let me know what you think!  Tell me what variation you used or if you came up with your own!
This recipe has been linked here:
    Mom's Test Kitchen-Wonderful Food Wednesday 
    Sugar and Dots-What I Whipped Up
    The Frugal Foodie Mama-Marvelous Mondays

Hello and happy Tuesday!
It's new challenge time at Tuesday Throwdown and I guarantee you will have fun with it!  The theme is "What's in Your Basket?" so we want to see something dimensional!  Whether that's a box, a basket, a train or something else, join in and link it up!

Our fabulous sponsor this week is Creations by AR, which is the perfect pairing to have with this theme.  Creations by AR has the most fabulous templates for just about anything you need!  They have also graciously given our design team a template to work with for this challenge.  I chose the 3 Pocket Caddy and loved making it!

It may look complex, but it so was not!  I was even able to put the file into my silhouette studio and scale it up a little so the whole caddy is slightly bigger than it's originally templated size!

I stuck with a black and white theme for this.  I had wanted to do something Easter related, but ultimately couldn't think of anything to really put in it, or didn't have the right items on hand.  While it looks largeish, it's really only about 4 inches wide by 3 inches long, so it's still on the small side.
My next thought was to make it sort of like a devotional center.  You know, have a small journal in one pocket, a devotional book in the center and small little cards in the front to send to people as you think of them.  But again...the devotional I had was just slightly too large and I didn't have any small note books.

So I stuck with the card idea :)  I had this sweet verse stamp from Verve that I ordered awhile ago and hadn't really found a good card to put it on yet...which is odd because this is one of my favorite verses.  I even had it as my senior quote in my high school year book!

I only made up one card for right now.  I will go back and fill up the caddy with cards once I get a little more time.  Overall, the whole thing is pretty simple.  I used black card stock for the whole base and then used some black and white patterned paper from Michaels to wrap around the sides and on the card.  The border is punched with my MS Lace Edge punch and I topped it with some swirly ribbon from Wal-Mart.  The large daisy is cut out with my silhouette and layered together with a large black brad in the center.

The same details apply to the card, but I added some white and black paint dots just for fun :)

I'd like to enter this caddy into the following challenges:
    Charisma Cardz #11-Die Cuts
    Craft Us Crazy #39-Anything But a Card
    Digi Darla's #55-Flowers
    House of Gilli #51-Anything Goes with Ribbons/Flowers
    Inky Impressions #102-Flowers
    Shelly's Images-Anything Goes

Be sure to join in with us this week!  We can't wait to see what you come up with!

Happy Monday!!
Man what an odd spring huh?  We went from high 30's on Monday to 2 feet of snow on Tuesday last week...and now half of that snow is gone.  Crazy!!
I don't know about you but I am ready for spring!  I love the snow, don't get me wrong...but there is something about March and April that just gets me in the mood for spring flowers and throwing the windows open to get some fresh air.  This snow stuff is getting in the way of that though...so I think it needs to go away now :)

This week we have a fun challenge for you at Digi Makeover.  We want to see some fancy folds in your projects!!  I had a little fun with this one.  Actually, my card started off not working out the way I wanted it to.  I had no clue what papers to use or what details I wanted to add.  Since I've been trying to work through my scraps, I decided on a little bit of a wild pattern in hopes that it would all come together.

I think it did, though it took a little convincing from the hubby...

And he actually contributed a little bit to this double easel card.  Since it's fancy folds, I wanted something a little more than just an easel.  When we were dating (a looonnngg time ago :) ) he would fold up dollar bills into these origami hearts and send them to me.  It was so sweet!  So when he mentioned adding one to this card, I knew I had to include it somehow.

The large frame around the image is a die cut I made from the Paper Makeup Framed Set.  I then used a few of the flowers and grass from the Faith, Hope, Love set.  The grass was printed in color but didn't print so well...so I went back over it with my colored pencils.  I had printed out another set of the flowers and colored/glittered them all out to layer on top of the blank print out, but once the card was all done, I sort of liked the black silhouette so I left them.  What do you think?

While I was putting everything together, I had Matthew make up the origami heart so I could add that as my second easel.  I cut out and popped up one of the butterflies on the paper to help hold the larger easel in place.

I do love this card!  It's bright, bold, and beautiful!  I hope you will jump in on this challenge!  We'd love to have you!  Just remember to use a digi.  And be sure to swing by the rest of the makeup artists and check out their gorgeous creations!!

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges:
    Catered Crop-Flower Power
    Charisma Cardz #11-Die Cuts
    Stamp n Doodle-Anything Goes
    Whoopsi Daisy-Use a Digi
    Word Art Wednesday #72-Anything Goes

I've decided to try and start broadening the subjects of my blog.  Cards are fabulous and a major part of why I started this blog, but I want to start sharing other things with you as well.  It may take awhile, and there will probably still be more posts about cards than anything else, but I hope you will stick with me and enjoy the new topics :)

I've been craving sweets lately, but we have tried really hard to cut down on having those in the house.  Which is nice, but it's almost like the less we have of something, the more I want it...

I found a random box of white cake mix in our cupboards and decided I wanted to make something with it...but wasn't sure what.  Cupcakes ran through my mind, but I wasn't feeling really in the cake mood.  I've made cookies before with a box cake mix, but I make cookies often enough that those didn't sound good either.

I decided to start surfing the web to see what other people do with their box cake mixes to jazz them up a little.  I found this fabulous thread Here that has so many good ideas and tons of them stood out to me...unfortunately I didn't have ingredients for a lot of them.  So I kept searching.  I came across the peanut butter bars comment and fell in love!

I've been addicted to peanut butter lately.  We make these peanut butter/oat protein balls that we've been eating after our workouts that are so yummy (I'll share that recipe sometime in the future), and we've fallen in love with making peanut butter/chocolate/banana smoothies on the weekends.  So peanut butter was definitely a good choice to add to this box mix.

A few changes that I've made to the recipe:
It was suggested to use yellow, but I used white since that was all I had on hand.
Instead of the suggested water, I used milk.  Not sure what sort of difference this made with the bars since this wasn't for a cake, but I read that milk will make cakes denser and that was sort of my goal in making these.  So I used milk :)
I'm sure you could use crunchy peanut butter or almond butter in this recipe.  I only had creamy :)
And of course, I added about 1/4 cup of chocolate chips to the batter.  Desserts have to have chocolate!

Here is the recipe:
1 box of white or yellow cake mix
1 cup of peanut butter
1/3-2/3 cup milk or water
1 egg

Preheat oven to 350.  Mix together the cake mix, peanut butter, milk and egg.  Pour batter into a lightly greased 9x13 pan.  Bake for 20 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

These turned out fabulous!  Mine were slightly underdone and I didn't use a 9x13 pan...mine was 9x9 which made them pretty thick, but still delicious!

You can whip up a batch of frosting to put on these too if you want.  I didn't add any as they were pretty sweet already.  Definitely try this recipe out!  You will not be disappointed!
If you do, let me know what you think!  Or if you made any modifications to it!

Enjoy your treat!
<3 Emily

Whoo!  My 200th post!  Crazy how quickly I got to this point...sort of.  Just a year and a half ago I was starting this little blog of mine, diving head long into an adventure I had dreamed of doing for so long.  It hasn't all been smooth, and it hasn't progressed as quickly as I wanted, but I love coming here to share my work and connect with you!

Thank you to all of my followers for being here with me, enjoying my posts and leaving me your sweet comments.  If your not a follower yet and you'd like to be (which would mean the world to me!!!) there are a few options for you.  You can follow me on Facebook where I have my blog networked so everything posts there and you can stay connected easily.  There is also BlogLovin.  I personally love BlogLovin.  It keeps all of the posts from the blogs that I follow in a neat list and emails me each day with any new blog posts.  So handy!  And of course, there is Google Friend Connect where your sweet little pic gets added on the right side over there :)

I'd love to have you here!  And your friends, so spread the love!! <3

So this post is for Digi Makeover's new challenge this week!  We are challenging you to use pastel colors on your creations!  I love pastel colors.  Especially this time of year when spring is just around the corner and you can smell it in the air!  We've had some pretty cold temps this past week which hasn't been very nice, but when the sun shines the spring fever kicks in :)

I forgot that I had this sweet paper in my stash.  It's actually 2 sided and has cute little Easter chicks on the other side...so I guess it's Easter paper...but the soft colors remind me of spring.  I used this cutie from Paper Makeup-Kirsten.  She reminded me of the days when I would sit down by our pond and play with all the weeds and dandelions, just enjoying the sun and breeze.

I colored her in with my colored pencils and added glitter to her wings.  I double layered some ribbons, but did sort of a wave affect with the top pink one.  It's pretty simple.  I just spaced out some double sided tape across the top of the white ribbon, then bubbled up the pink in between so it was waved.  I love how it looks!

The sentiment is printed and layered onto some blue card stock.  The finishing touch was the light purple pearls in the bottom two corners.

I hope you will join us this week!  Just remember to use a digi!  Be sure to check out the rest of the makeup artists fabulous creations!!

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges:
    A Gem of a Challenge #71-Easter/Spring
    Alota Rubber Stamps #103-Springtime
    Color Me Creative #64-Spring Colors
    Craft Your Passion #154-Ribbons/Lace
    Ladybug Crafts-Spring
    Without Words-Time of Renewal (Spring or Easter)
    Word Art Wednesday #71-Anything Goes

<3 Emily

TGIF!!!
Who has grand plans this weekend??  Anyone!?  I can imagine it will include lots of green :)
Our current plans are to sit on our duffs all weekend and play some games with our WA friends.  It will be pretty grand!  And then we are off on a little vacation for a few days next week.  It's just to get away before Matthew starts on his new project at work.

So I wanted to get this posted today before I forgot and got caught up in all the craziness.
It was actually going to be a foodie post...but when we went shopping to buy the parts...yeah that was a disaster.  We only went to Wal-Mart, since what we needed was pretty basic (we thought).  But it turned out that everything on our list either wasn't in the store, or was incredibly overpriced...so I'm sticking with just a card today :)

This card turned out fabulously sweet, it is my current favorite!  I just love it!

OMG what a sweetie!!  This is Shannon from Saturated Canary.  She's new this week for St. Pat's Day and I love her!  I kept my card over all very simple.  I wanted her to really pop off the page, and for the sentiment (from Create with TLC) to stand out right along with her.

How about another pic:

She has been colored with a combination of Spectrum Noirs and Copics.  Since my collection of both is very small, I had to stick with a minimal variety in color.  But I think it turned out pretty good anyhow!  I wasn't too fond of the hair at first, but after I got done coloring her dress, I swiped a few streaks of pink in there which helped.  You can't really tell though :)

Here's my list of colors used:
Spectrum Noir's-
Skin: FS2, FS3, FS6
Hair: TN7, GB10, GB8, TN2, FS3

Copics-
Dress: V000, R81, R85, G000, G28
Bag: R81, R85, RV69
Clovers: G000, G28, Y000, Y15
Blue Border: BG000

I used a gold glitter pen on the coins so they would sparkle.
I understand now why some people say they can take hours coloring an image.  Even with my limited number of markers, this still took me a good long while.
But she's perfect :)

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges:
    Creative Inspirations #205-Good Luck/St. Pat's Day
    Divas by Design-Put on Some Pink
    Fab n Funky #162-Add a Sentiment
    The Sisterhood of Crafters-Make em Green with Envy
    Timeless Tuesday #211-Go Green

Also, if you've heard the rumblings about Google Reader going away and want to switch, feel free to follow me on Bloglovin!  It's a fabulous resource!  I love having all the new blog posts from the day grouped together in my email for me to easily look through.  You can find the Bloglovin link above under the "Ways to Connect" header.
Thanks for stopping by!  And Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

Happy Tuesday!
I completely forgot to post my Tuesday Throwdown DT card today!  Oops :)
So it's a little late...no biggie right?

This week our challenge is paper piecing!  I see so many wonderful paper pieced cards every day, that I wish I was better at it or remembered to do it more often.  But it's one of those things I forget about so often.  And most of my papers have patterns that are too big for paper piecing.  But I worked it out for this card, and I think it turned out pretty darn good.

Our fabulous sponsor this week is Fred She Said, and they have provided some adorable images for us to use on our cards.  I chose Emma Blowing Bubbles.  She looked so cute and springy, I just had to use her.

I used my scallop scissors to cut around the image and added glitter to all her bubbles.  Wrapped a light blue ribbon and bow around the card and then finished it all off with some purple liquid pearls in the corners.

Be sure to check out the rest of the DT's cards as they have done an absolutely fabulous job paper piecing on their cards!  Gorgeous work!

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Monday!
What a morning...I never like time changes and today was no exception to that...so hard to get out of bed!  And of course, now I seem to be behind on everything this morning!
But I hope all of you had a fabulous weekend!  It was gor-juss here in Montreal!  Like open-the-shades-throw-the-window-open gorgeous! 

We went out for a nice long walk/run yesterday around noon down by the river.  I really wanted to run out on the ice but hubby wasn't so keen on that idea.  Don't you think it would be fun!?

We also went out and looked at a new apartment that we fell in love with, and just might be getting!
Yeah, it's been an exciting couple of days, and this week will bring lots more excitement that I can't quite talk about yet.  But I'll share it with you later! :)

Onto this weeks Digi Makeover challenge!  The weather is getting warmer, the flowers are popping up, and every store in the neighborhood has those fun plastic eggs stocked!  So why not make our challenge Spring/Easter!
Now, honest truth here...Easter cards have not been going so well for me.  This is year 2 that I have not been able to make a decent Easter card to save-my-life!  I mean...how hard can it be to make a cute card with bunnies and chicks!?  I keep trying, and I see so many adorable ones out there, but when it comes to my turn...nothing...so I chose the spring theme :)

 I love how this card turned out!!  Caliope is just the sweetest monster from Paper Makeup and he goes so well with my girly paper :)  The daisy print paper is actually all sparkly and such, but you can't tell in the photo.  I love that paper pack!  So much glitter on the pages!

I colored Caliope in with my pencils and then used my copics to add the dot shadows around him.  I imagine those dots being like little flower pollens swirling around him as he inhales that flower!

The sentiment is also from Paper Makeup and I felt went along with this image beautifully.  I punched the mat layer around the image with my MS Lace Edge punch.  Then cut out a layered daisy to fill in some of the space on the flag.

The final details were the little dots in the corners that I covered with tiny beads to match the center of the daisy.

Come join us this week, just remember to use a digi!

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges:
    A Gem of a Challenge #70-Floral Frenzy
    Daisy Doodles #79-Spring Time
    Fussy and Fancy #84-Flowers
    The Squirrel and the Fox #39-Autumn or Spring

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Wednesday!!..right...it's Wednesday?  I swear I woke up this morning dreading that it was Tuesday...again...I mean, I had a nice day yesterday, but I much prefer to be moving toward the weekend instead of away :)  Are you with me on that?

So we had a pretty big event happen in our family last week.  Matthew's brother and wife welcomed their second little girl into the world on Wednesday!  I can't believe it's been a week already!  She came a day earlier than planned, but she is gorgeous in every way!  We can't wait to meet little Clara Annabelle in June when we finally get to go to MI again.  As I mentioned, this is their second little girl.  Natalie is their oldest at almost 3 years old in May.  It is going to be so much fun loving and snuggling with these 2 little sweeties when we visit!

Little girls always make me think of playing dress up!  For this past Christmas, Matthew's mom made Natalie a dress-up box and filled it with costumes!  It was so adorable watching her try on every single one of them and prance around the living room!  So now that she has a little sister, I can only imagine the fun they are going to have some day!

That was the inspiration behind my card today.  Sweet little sisters playing dress up together and dreaming of being in a fairytale.  Take a moment and remember all those times you wished you could be Belle or Cinderella...ahhh...
Ok, back to my card :)  A little picture heavy...but I love this card and want to show it off...heavily :)

The sweet image is Queenie and Princess from Saturated Canary.  This is one of those images that I have had for a long time and never got around to using it.  It was one I just longed to have in my stash so I could look at it and remember being young again.  But I figured it was about time I used it!
I used some pretty rich papers on this card.  Even though it's inspiration was fun little girls playing dress-up, I didn't want to use bright or goofy papers.  I wanted it to more reflect the royalty of what they are representing.  Thus the dark purples and black.

For my sketch, I did something a little different than I normally do.  I took the sketch from Sweet Sunday sketch

 and made it into an easel card!

It just seemed to work perfectly that way!  And once I thought of that idea...it seemed to be all I could think of, so I rolled with it :)
Here's some side views:

In this one you can see that I tucked a small tag behind the sentiment so that there was a place to write a message if desired.
The flowers are all cut with my Cameo.  The very small centers of the smaller flowers are a little tiny flower punch I have that worked well to fill the space under the pearls.
I used my MS Lace Border punch for the easel stand and tucked my flags under that.

The card came together pretty quickly once I got it all worked out, and I'm so extremely happy with it!  Thanks for stopping by and reading my long post today :)

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges:
    Cupcake Crafts #232-Sparkle
    Eclectic Ellapu-For a Child
    The Paper Shelter #102-Punches and Dies
    Pattie's Creations #62-Fancy Folds
    Saturated Canary #38-Good vs Evil
    The Squirrel and the Fox #38-Fairytale or Fantasy
    Sweet Sunday Sketch #179
    Sweet n Sassy Digi Challenge #94-Girl Time
    There She Goes #197-Black Cardstock
    Whoopsi Daisy-2 Patterned Papers
    Word Art Wednesday #70-Anything Goes

Happy Monday!
Today is a fresh start for me.  After such a nice weekend, I decided to put the struggles of temporarily losing my creativity and drive last week behind and push forward.  I can't give up!  I need to keep trying :)

So I started small.  I posted a sweet little card last night that I am really proud of.  It was my second (well...5th) card for the night after I made up my Digi Makeover DT cards.  Since I started with my DT cards, the creativity hadn't quite been flowing long enough for me to pull anything together myself, so I took a little inspiration from former makeup artists and cased a set of cards by Anita Hovey.

Oh right!!  The challenge this week is Take Flight!!  Almost forgot to tell you that :)  Use something that flies, and remember the only requirement is a digi!

I used images from the Tweet Things set from Paper Makeup.  It is a very cute set, and perfect for almost any type of card.  I colored them all in with my pencils and then cut them out with a spellbinders die.  The stamps are from Verve and fit perfectly in the frames for these images!  I love little sentiments.  They fit anywhere and are right to the point :)

The heart punch border is from MS that I received for Christmas.  I haven't had the chance to use it yet, but it fit perfect with these cards.

Be sure to stop by the rest of the makeup artists this week and check out their flight cards!

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenge:
    Designed to Color-Birthday Bash Tic Tac Toe (Purple, Ribbon, Bling)
   
Thanks for stopping by!

Good evening everyone!
Hope your weekend was well.  We took a little adventure last night and visited the Snow Village.  It was pretty awesome to see a hotel completely made of snow and ice!

Today was filled with crafting for me, which was nice...though lately my creative side hasn't been shining through very well.  It's been a bit frustrating...I don't like the feeling of being stuck with my creativity.  But I think today's cards turned out pretty good.

I've been eyeing this sweet little turtle from Whimsie Doodles in my birthday folder for quite awhile.  He's so cute and I really wanted to put him on a card, but couldn't seem to get it to work.  Until I saw this weeks Deconstructing Sketch!  It was perfect!

I matched up some aqua paper with the star paper that I love, and some red to add a bit of brightness.
The little stars in the corner are just a simple punch that I added some small gems to.

It turned out so cute, I'm really happy with it and hope that this will help break this non-creative streak.

I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges:
    The Corrosive Challenge #169-All That Glitters
    Deconstructed Sketch #91
    Designed to Color-Birthday Tic Tac Toe (Bling, Aqua, Presents)
    DigiStamps4Joy #61-Birthdays
    Digital Tuesday #199-Birthdays
    The Sisterhood of Crafters-Birthdays
    Timeless Tuesday #209-All That Glitters
    Sassy Studio #166-Stars In Your Eyes

Thanks for stopping by!!