Creating Kris ~ a young mom blogs…

KITK: Lemon wreath cookies

Another recipe that I wanted to try out this winter was actually a recipe leftover from Christmas (when it was just too busy and overwhelming to get everything done that I’d planned to do!). These Lemon Wreath cookies were in a holiday issue of Martha Stewart Living…

And like the last recipe we tried from MLO, it was a lot of work with not a lot of “totally worth the work” taste. I know we didn’t make our dough rings thin enough (we ended up making only about two-thirds of the amount of cookies the recipe said it would produce), but I’m much less about the exactness and perfection than about getting to the end result and enjoying the experience. And I prefer recipes that cater to that style, especially when baking with the kids in tow!

My 11-year-old did a pretty good job of the extra things that my littler kiddo can’t manage, like rolling the dough and shaping the rings. Must be all that practice with play dough as a kid. We baked the first couple dozen and then stashed the rest in a container for freezing. We created the lemon glaze for the top as called for, but hadn’t been able to find white “non-pareils” at the store, so we had to improvise as far as sprinkles went… I opted for white and yellow stars picked out of the star mix, and Harmony chose to slather on a whole bunch of sprinkles of all sorts of colours (including chocolate sprinkles).

I would say these cookies are a great choice for people who like a lighter taste and not anything “too sweet”. The lemon glaze is the sweetest part; the base cookie is actually not very sweet at all so you could omit the topping if you wanted. The frozen cookies were baked about 1 month after going into the deep freeze and they turned out super well. The dough itself is actually really tasty too, especially when cold.

Here’s a link to the original recipe we followed: Martha Stewart Living magazine’s Lemon Wreath Cookies.

My First Free Digital Scrapbooking Kit!

Although I started trying digital scrapbooking a few years ago, I had never tried creating a kit of my own papers and embellishments… until this year! And I’m so glad I finally gave it a try because I like the end result! If you like the digital elements used in my December 2009 layout, guess what? I made it myself!

And of course I’m offering it up as a free kit for others to use for digital layouts if they would like! I definitely recommend giving digi-scrapping a try. I have done several layouts over the year that were worthy of printing out and adding right alongside regular layouts in my family albums. If you do end up giving this kit a try, please post a link to your layout; I’d love to see it!

The Iced Chocolate kit includes:

• 7 papers
• 8 brads (4 big, 4 small)
• 4 flowers
• 3 journal boxes (one double-matted with flower & brad)

Click on this link to download the whole kit: Download Iced Chocolate DigiScrap Kit

I do hope to have the whole digital kit available for download on my graphic design site, KStarDesign (Visit this page to read my standard Terms of Use), but for now this freebie is exclusive to the “Creating Kris” blog readers, so enjoy!

scrapbook layouts: Sept ‘08 & Oct ‘08

My “Family 2008″ has been the album I’ve been working towards completing lately. So that book was the one I had in mind while at a crop at the LSS in my “old” neighbourhood. It was awesome to be able to get out of the house for a few hours – with a huge credit given to my DH and my friend Adrian for helping me be as comfortable as possible for the all that travelling and sitting!

I managed to stay for a couple stretches of 1-2hours. Not great (especially when you have to pay for the whole day whether you can stay or not), but not bad considering I haven’t been to a crop there since the accident. My pain was tolerable for the first couple hours but then took a turn towards unbearable after lunch and I just needed to get home to my couch. I’d brought along a couple ice packs, but that only lasts so long…

Anyways, I’m very proud to say that I did manage to get a couple of layouts done at least! September 2008 and October 2008 were both done at the crop, and many of the papers in the layouts were bought right in the store. That’s one of my favourite parts of an in-store crop: being able to bring your photos right to the paper and pick out perfectly coordinating supplies.

Sept. 2008

Oct. 2008

Visit this page of my Scrappy Stampy Gallery to see the pages in more detail. Most of the papers and supplies used to create the pages were either purchased at the Scrapbox, or were from my stash of items (Stampin’ Up, Creative Memories).

Added to each of the layouts were a few “found objects” from the home! My hubby had these small black, orange, and clear rock chips out to do a craft with our son: a nightlight for the kids’ bathroom upstairs. There were some leftover and they were the perfect shades to adorn a tag with on my Halloween 2008 layout. Then there was a blue star lying around made of clear plastic (might’ve been from an earring or something!). That got tucked right into some white space in the September layout.

Just goes to show you that you can really think outside the box when it comes to supplies for embellishing your albums! Might not be the best thing if you’re very concerned about everything being photo-safe, but now that I’ve mostly switched from film photos to digital photos, I’ve been able to be less selective about what goes under the page protectors along with my pictures.

Hope you like seeing the layouts, and happy scrapping!