France - Champs-Elysees

After cleaning my scraproom this weekend I realized I still had a few unfinished pages from my trip to the expo. So of course we had to finish them so most just needed titles and/or a bit of journaling. The laser die cut was another product I was hoarding er saving to use for my Vegas trip when we stayed at the Paris Hotel, but I think I like here much better.  

Trio of Birthday Cards

First off I would like to apologize for the bad photos. I ran out of time yesterday and as it is still dark right now I used my flash and for that I am sorry.

So today I am showing a trio of cards using 1 piece of 12x12 pp. I was actually going to make four but I just don't seem to have enough time in my life right now.

The cupcake stamp is from Magnolia and the Birthday sentiment is from Stampin Up. On the middle and far left card the Banner die, Hexagon Die (background for left card), Star Stamps and Birthday Sentiments are from Papertrey Ink. I was able to use the Fiskars Star punch which coordinates perfectly with those star stamps.



Cake Smash with a Recipe

So I finally was able to do a Cake Smash for my dd for my youngest dgs. We are only a month behind his original birthday but I don't think he'll mind too much. We decided to do a Harley Theme since I bought these adorable tee shirts awhile back and we wanted to have some pictures with him in them.

I decided to make a Peanut Butter cake with Dark Chocolate Frosting and covered it in Fondant..which I am now regretting because we didn't get those full on messy photos we had hoped so much for. This was my first time making a Marshmallow Fondant and I have to say I think I did pretty good for my first time out.

Recipes are below the photos.

Peanut Butter Cake

Makes 2 9" rounds

1 C Flour (you can use cake or reg)
1-1/2 C Sugar
1-1/2 tsp Baking Powder
2 tsps Baking Soda
1 tsp salt
1-1/2 C Graham Cracker crumbs
1 C Peanut Butter
1 C Butter
2 C Buttermilk
1 tsp Vanilla
3 Eggs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Make sure all ingredients are at room temp before you begin

Cream butter and peanut butter with sugar until light and fluffy, add eggs in one at a time and let mix a minute after each addition. Sift flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt together. Add graham cracker crumbs to dry mixture. Add dry ingredients alternately with buttermilk and vanilla; starting and ending with dry ingredients. Beat mixture on low until just moistened (too much mixing will make a tough cake)

Bake 30 to 35 minutes


Dark Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

1 C Butter
1 C Cocoa
1 tsp Vanilla
4 C or 1 lb Powder Sugar
4-5 T Milk

Cream butter with electric mixer until fluffy. Add in cocoa and vanilla, gradually add in sugar 1 C at a time, beating well after each addition on med speed. Scrape side and bottom of bowl often. When all sugar has been mixed in, icing will appear dry. Add milk 1 T at a time beating well until light and fluffy. If need be add in a bit more milk.

Hello My Name is Marshall and I am a Cake Addict

Silly grammy strikes again. I took this photo the other night when my dd and grandkids came for dinner. Youngest dgs is just the cutest when he gets a hold of some cake..so I had to snap some more photos of him and this is what I came up with.

Zombie Walk

I just love to watch Marshall walk, he's so cute the way he takes each little step ever so carefully, using his arms to balance his little body and still stumbling with an occasional fall. My dd calls this his Zombie walk and as soon as she said that and I saw him I thought, yep..he's a cute little zombie.

Using some older chipboard letters with some new Carta Bella PP (but I confess I only bought these two pieces) along with a couple of Glitz Rhinestones and a few Fancy Pants Memories Captured stickers.

Chase Me

So I finally got to spend some much needed time with my grandkids. This is a picture of the middle grandbaby and like most 2 year olds he loves to run and be chased so I just captured the moment. PP is from Bella Blvd and the arrows are Dienamics dies and then I stamped with Papertrey Ink inks and some of their texture stamps. The round me letters are from old old Making Memories letter dies (the negative leftovers) and the Chase was cut from the Silhouette. I also added a couple of enamel dots from Teresa Colllins.

You have been Boo'd

Who could resist this cute little ghost from Papertrey Ink?!? I bought him along with the die counterpart and the banner diecut show on the card. This one went together lickety split. I stamped the image on a chalkboard tag using Memento Luxe Ink. Because the tag was made of a shiny non-porous material the ink stayed fairly wet so I needed to let it dry overnight, but other than this was a simple and quick card. Love those kind.

One more PL spread - Yellowstone

So here is another page I finally finished for my Project Life of Yellowstone Park. I am surprised at how much I remember given that this trip was in 2011 and thank goodness I had planned our trip out so I knew exactly what we had done which was very helpful recreating the journaling.

Bad Mommy

I had been wanting to make this layout for quite awhile but needed my dd to send me a photo after she had cut my dgs hair. She knew it needed to be cut and while he's a wiggle worm thought instead of trying to traumatize him at the hair salon, perhaps she could just do it herself. Needless to say it went terribly wrong and she finally had to take him to get it cut anyways to "fix" what she had already done. I applaud her for letting me capture this moment because it will forever shame her as a bad mommy (insert evil g'ma laugh).

Using pretty much everything from Fancy Pants Memories Captured Line. I did add those nice bits of chipboard arrows, a few star diecuts and some enamel dots. 

Ready for Halloween Anyone?

I won this cute little Witch from TGF in one of their contests, it's digital which I like but dont' like. They are nice when you print them out but I tend to forget they are on my PC and I sometimes forget to resize, which means they are a little bigger than they should be as is this one, thus I created a 5.25 x 5.25 card so I could use the bit larger image.

All the pp is from Jenni Bowlin. I was at the Expo recently and part of your admission to their crops is that you get a free Crop kit, which just means they want to get rid of older product so they pass it on to you and have you pay for it, and I really don't want the crop kits since I have enough older product on my own without receiving more from the Expo but what's a girl to do. Luckily I adore JB stuff so this time it wasn't too painful.

So, if you remember one of my challenges to myself was to use my stamps that sit in drawers and if they aren't my favorite I tend to forget I have them. My solution is to pull 3 stamps out and keep them on my desk so I am reminded to use them. Once I am done, I put them away and pull 3 more. These are my recent stamps. The first one I bought because I just don't have that many guy type stamps and thought this would be a cute stamp to make a card for my FIL..which I did. This will be his birthday card for next year.

The other stamp is from Sarah Kay and I adore her stamps and these were some of the first stamps I ever purchased when I first discovered Copics, needless to say they were long forgotten because I had used them so much. I have a friend whose birthday I missed from all the drama in August so I think I will give this to her. Now on to go find new stamps to use to replace these.



France - Statue of Liberty

I was delighted to be able to see one of the two Statue of Liberties that are located in Paris, France. If you didn't know, the one shown in these pictures was the model or test version to our version in New York. The other one is actually smaller than this version and was basically the model for the other two. I love that you can see both the Eiffel Tower and the Statue on the Seine in one picturesque view.

The laser die cut I ironically had kept for oh 10 years thinking I would use it for my trip to Vegas when we stayed at the NY NY hotel..but I think it was meant for this layout and decided to use it here. Funny the things you hang on to. I am glad to be able to use up all this old stash I have had for years.