Pyles of Clutter

More crafty fun!

I made some more cards this week.  I love to be crafty! 

My inspiration was this:

I got this from Simply Stamped.

Here's my version:

 

As you can see, not too mch the same.  You know, creativity is a funny thing.  I love it!  I can take anything, look at it, put it through my brain for awhile, and come up with something else that may, or may not, be similar to what I started with.  I think that's just fun. 

Here is my other inspiration:

This is from Ashleypaul Etsy Shop

Here is my version:

 

I'm loving it!

Some card making

I made some cards yesterday....

Here was my inspiration:

found at Stamping & Sharing.

Here's what my finished product looked like:

I think it turned out pretty good!  I just used exactly what I had at home already.  That's the best kind of card!  Some of these little beauties may be coming your way!  

P.S.  As you can see, I've made progress with my picture loading issues.  Still have some work to do in that front, but at least I've gotten one post out of it!

 

Better late than never!

The unveiling of the Christmas New Year's Valentine's President's Day Card!

The front:

The inside:

I loved it!  I hope you did too!

It's coming soon!

Earlier this week, I wrote this as my status on Facebook:

It's lightly snowing, I have goodies baking, I'm working on Christmas cards, and Christmas music is playing.  Yep, it's Valentine's Day!  ;)

So I'm still living in the Christmas mode.  It's actually really fun because there's no stress attached!  No presents to worry about, no traveling to stress over, no house full of extra clutter from the holidays.  This is the way to do Christmas. 

Terry keeps asking me, why are you doing these cards now?  Why don't you save them for next year?  The answer to that is, because I don't want to.  I'll have a new idea for next year, I'm sure, so I want to use this idea now!  And I have all the stuff already.  I just want to.

Consequently, those cards are almost done.  I'm pretty excited with the way they are turning out.  So if you are on my card list, be expecting a Christmas, New Year's, Valentine's, President's day card soon!

And a picture of it on the blog!

Valentine's Day! Mwah!!

So, I love Valentine's day!  I love it, just like I love Halloween.  I love it because it's just a fun day, to do fun things, and to maybe, if you are so inclined, to show the people you are grateful for a little love. 

My morning started off early with me headed to the high school for Kissing Bandits.

(kissing bandits 2009~Lilly's senior year)

Kissing Bandits is always a lot of fun!  The senior girls on drill team, and a bunch of senior boys dress up and give a kiss to all those that were sent a candygram (or a kissing bandit).  Hence the really red lips on this group of kids. 

(kissing bandits 2012)

I got to the school a little early since I had about half the stuff in my car.  I had the Costco cupcakes, some of the cupcake boxes, and the helium.  I wanted to get that all unloaded before a bunch of people showed up.  Thank goodness we have the best parents and girls around, because after about an hour and a half, we had about 380 cupcakes boxed up, with balloon and card attached, divided into hallways and classrooms, waiting to be delivered with a kiss.  I'm so grateful for involved parents!

This is Tessa's valentine for this year.  We are getting into the non-candy valentine mode and I found this idea, on Pinterest of course, and so I made up the tags, folded them, and then let Tess at it!  She put the bags together, and then wrote the to and from on the back, and stapled it all together.  It was sooo awesome to have nothing to do with it!  My future valentines making is looking up!  (Sorry these pictures stink!  Someday, I'm making that homemade light box I found on Pinterest also, to take some awesome pictures that will make my stuff look even better!)

Another Pinterest idea, a roll of Rolo's with a kiss attached, wrapped to look like a pencil!  We did these for the teachers in Tessa's class.  We made these, literally, in 10 minutes.  Awesome. 

And I have dinner in the crockpot, Sweet and Sour Pork Ribs, so I will go do my favorite Valentine (and everyday) activity; wrap up in a blanket and read a good book!  I'm finally getting into Hunger Games!  I'm on page 75-ish after a month of reading!  Not that I don't like it, I just haven't had time.  But no projects due until Saturday!  Yahoo for a break!!

 

 

 

Apple Goodness!

I don't think I've posted this, and it's truly yummy, so I'm going to pass that on to you!

Sour Cream Apple Bars

1 C butter, softened

1 C firmly packed brown sugar

2 C cooking oats

1 C flour

1 C chopped pecans

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp allspice

FILLING:

1 C sour cream

3/4 C sugar

2 tbsp flour

1 egg

2 C peeled, shredded apples

Heat oven to 350^. Combine butter and brown sugar in lg. bowl. Beat at med. speed until creamy. Add remaining crust ingredients and beat until well mixed. Press HALF of crust mixture onto bottom of ungreased 11x13 pan. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until light golden brown. While crust is baking, combine filling ingredients. Mix well. Pour over crust. Crumble the crust mixture over the top and press down lightly. Bake for 25-30 minutes and golden brown and center is set.

ENJOY!!

Tasty treats!

I've been doing a lot of baking again!  I love baking.  I love the feeling of creating I get when I see something go from just a bunch of individual components to something really yummy.  Love, love, love!

I'm a banana buyer.  Every time I go to the store, I come home with bananas.  I don't know why, since the only person that really eats them is Terry, and he only eats one a day for the potassium.  Consequently, I usually have more "going bad" bananas in my house than a person should.  So I'm always looking for new and fresh ways to use up those three, or six, bad bananas.  In my quest, I found the most yummy new banana bread recipe!  I had to share!

Banana Sour Cream Bread

1/4 C sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

3/4 C butter

3 C sugar

3 eggs

6 very ripe bananas, mashed

16 oz sour cream

2 tsp vanilla

2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

3 tsp baking soda

4 1/2 C flour

1 C chopped walnuts (I don't like nuts, so didn't use these)

Preheat oven to 300^. Grease four 7x3" loaf pans.  In a small bowl, stir together 1/4 C sugar and 1 tsp cinnamon.  Dust pans lightly with sinnamon and sugar mixture.  In a large bowl, cream butter and 3 C sugar.  Mix in eggs, mashed bananas, sour cream, vanilla and cinnamon.  Mix in salt, baking soda, and flour.  Stir in nuts.  Divide into prepared pans.  Bake for 1 hour, until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. 

I baked mine in slightly smaller pans, and they only took 45 minutes.  The bread stays moist for a long time, and is just the right balance of cinnamon-sugar-banana goodness. 

Enjoy!

Truffle tidbits.

Since we spent the good part of last week working on truffle making, I thought I'd share a couple of the recipes we used.

I'd like to show you a really pretty picture of how awesome these truffles looked, but this is all I've got:

Yes, those are just empty cake plates.  Awesome, huh?  I guess beggars can't be choosers, and I asked Terry to take pictures but wasn't very specific.  Like, take a picture after the treats are put out.  ;)

It did look great though, along with the mini doughnuts and mini cheesecakes my sister made.  It was beautiful, and yummy!!

Cake Batter Truffles

by The Girl Who Ate Everything


1 ½ cups flour

1 cup yellow cake mix

½ cup unsalted butter, softened

½ cup white sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/8 teaspoon salt

3-4 Tablespoons milk

2 Tablespoons sprinkles

Truffle Coating:

16 ounces (8 squares) almond bark (or white candy melts)

4 Tablespoons yellow cake mix

sprinkles


Beat together butter and sugar using an electric mixer until combined. Add cake mix, flour, salt, and vanilla and mix thoroughly. Add 3 Tablespoons of milk or more if needed to make a dough consistency. Mix in sprinkles by hand. Roll dough into one inch balls and place on a parchment or wax paper lined cookie sheet. Chill balls in the refrigerator for 15 minutes to firm up.


While dough balls are chilling, melt almond bark in the microwave in 30 second intervals until melted. Stir between intervals. Once melted, quickly stir in cake mix until incorporated completely. Using a fork, dip truffles into almond bark and shake of excess bark by tapping the bottom of the fork on the side of your bowl. Place truffle back on the cookie sheet and top with sprinkles. Repeat with remaining balls until finished.

Chill cake batter truffles in the refrigerator until serving. Makes around 24-30 truffles.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Truffles

Makes approx. 3-4 dozen. Recipe from Love and Olive Oil.

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup milk or soy milk
1 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips

14 oz dark chocolate candy coating

Directions:

Beat butter and sugars in large bowl with electric mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy. Add milk and vanilla. Stir in flour, baking soda and salt and mix on low speed (or stir by hand) until incorporated. Stir in chocolate chips.

Cover and chill dough for 1 hour.

When dough is firm enough to handle, form dough into 1″ balls and arrange on a baking sheet lined with waxed paper. Place sheets in freezer and let chill for 30 minutes.

Melt chocolate candy coating in microwave according to package directions. Using toothpicks as a dipping tool, dip cookie balls into candy coating to cover. Tap on side of pan to remove any excess coating, and return to waxed paper-lined baking sheets. Chill until set. Store, chilled, in an airtight container for up to 1 week.

 

We used a fork and a spoon to dip the truffles.  We put the truffles on the fork, and spooned the chocolate over it, then put it on a wire rack.  I'm not sure I would recommend the wire rack.  It's kind of hard to get them off it.  But be sure to tap, tap, tap the side of the bowl so the extra chocolate comes off the ball while it's on the fork.  And make sure the truffle is very chilled.  I didn't freeze ours, not that much room in the freezer, but just left it in the garage, which is cold enough this time of year.  You could tell when the truffle was getting too warm because it would lose it's shape. 

I also had to add flour to some of our batches of cake batter dough, and sometimes it was fine.  I'm not sure of the reason, but if it's too sticky, just keep adding in flour until you can roll it without sticking to your hands. 

And those are my truffle making tips. 

Love,

me

Oh man...

What a week!  Are you feeling it like I'm feeling it?  Just everything going on this week.  Crazy.

My projects are coming along! Here's a little catch up on projects:

I made these conference notebooks for the girls to take notes during the talks.  I found the tabs online (thank you Pinterest!) and then covered a composition notebook, and wa-la!  SO cute!  The only thing I wished I had done was make another tab that says other and given some pages for the talks that weren't by the apostles and prophet.  Other than that, this is a great idea and I would highly recommend it.  I gave each apostle about 6 pages so if you aren't a prolific note taker, you could have this book for a couple of conferences.  I ended up making my own book too, only mine didn't get covered yet.

And just to be fun, I made all the girls their own quiet books for church.  I found some color pages, crossword puzzles, word searches, etc from Friend magazines on line, copied and pasted, and printed them out two to a page.  Then I cut them down to size and glued them in these notebooks on random pages.  There are lots of empty pages too, so that you can also make note of any impressions you get.  I bought the notebooks at Craft warehouse on a sale for $1.00.  Nice.  Lest you think she got left out, Zoey got one too.  I love being crafty. 

Our ward has decided to do Christmas Jars for our Christmas celebration.  Did you read the book, "The Christmas Jar"?  It was a tear jerker.  Just in case you didn't, Christmas jars used to save change for a year, (or in our case, a couple of months) and then you give the jar, change and all to someone that is in need, at Christmas time, to try and ease their pain.  So remember all those jars?  Well, I washed them all, and then made  a label, and a tag, and a letter to go inside to explain all the hoopla.  And there you go, Christmas Jars, off my list.  This was the project that Terry was threatening me with, because the jars sat in our living room for about four weeks before I got to them.  He was mighty irritated.  But....done now!  So there!

And then there are the wedding projects.  And you're going to have to wait until the wedding to see those.  ;)

But I will take some pictures of the dolls I'm making for the Nutcracker when I get them done.  Right now, I'm about 1/4 of the way done.  Moving along on them!

Getting it done

Remember how I was getting a little crafty?  Well, here is the card I made:

 

I love this! The picture is a Mary Englebreit that I saved from a daily calendar.  I'm goin' have a lot more of these....

I also made Tessa's valentines already!  Sheesh!  I've had the stuff for about three weeks. 

This year we went candy-less, and instead bought pencils, put toppers on them, and a tag that says, "You're all "write" valentine!"  Yep, we're that corny.  And Tessa loves it, so it's all good. 

I also made a special valentine for adults in Tessa's life:

Close up, they look like this:

Toilet paper tube, shorten a little, covered in pink scrapbook paper, filled with Hershey kisses, folded on the ends, wrapped in cellophane, tied with ribbons, added tag and wa-la!  Cute and sassy present for adults in Tessa's class. 

Done before Valentine's eve!  It's a v-day miracle!