September 7th, 2010 -- Posted in family, scrappy / stampy |
For one of our family craft activities this summer, we bought and played around with these cool things called Shrinkydinks. My son had tried them out at his daycare and proudly brought home his creations so we thought we should give it a try at home. We bought a combo pack with different types of papers – clear, white, cream, etc. The idea is that you colour on the sheets with some type of permanent marker, then you heat them up in the oven so that they shrink…
What I decided to do with my share of the paper was to stamp images on it with black ink, letting it dry before putting them in the oven I’d just bought the new Baby stamp set from Stampin’ Up too and was eager to try it out.
“Before”
“After”
You’ll actually be surprised how much these things shrink. I have no idea about the science behind how the papers “bake” or anything, but it was quite cool to watch. It happens relatively quickly, right towards the end of the baking time. Here’s a pic showing the size difference: the duckies are stamped on to the paper and that tiny duck is the one that’s been through the shrinking process…
So at the time I just tucked away the pieces I created, to be used at another time. When I later had time and inclination to create a baby-themed card, they were the perfect little embellishment. You would definitely want to stick them on with Sticky Strip or another strong adhesive, because they can be pretty bulky and heavy on your card.
So when it came time to make a baby card, I had these extra little embellishments on hand. They actually made a great centre-piece to build a design around. Here’s how the first baby card turned out…
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August 16th, 2010 -- Posted in family, pain / disability, scrappy / stampy |
Well I haven’t shared a scrapbook layout in a while but it’s mostly because I haven’t been scrapbooking as much these days! I’ve mostly been sticking with the smaller crafts like card-making because they are shorter to complete and therefore less painful. But I wanted to keep catching up with my kids’ albums, so I finally got to the layout with the photos from Harmony’s first day of grade 6 (so just about 1 year ago!).
First Day of Grade 6
Materials: Riding Hood Red card stock & ink, Chocolate Chip card stock & ink, Only Orange card stock, chocolate brown ribbon, white jumbo brads, Chocolate Chip felt flower, orange flower brad, yellow mini brads, red mini brad, fall multi-colour brad, red metal frame, white Creative Memories letter stickers, various-sizes circle punches, scallop circle punch, stamps from various Stampin’ Up sets, and several different patterned paper sheets in oranges and reds.
This is actually a good time of year to do these Back-to-School and School Album layouts because we are very much getting into the Back-to-School mood these days! With about 3 weeks left of summer, we’ve done some shopping for school supplies and I have done a lot of online shopping for the kids’ clothes. I’m glad my son doesn’t mind – too bad little miss preteen is a little fussier about that! She is far more used to getting to go shopping at the mall. It was a yearly tradition that I have really had to give up the past couple years. She says she doesn’t *mind* pushing me in a wheelchair at the mall but it’s just not the same and I just can’t go as far and as long as I used to, so we can’t get it all done in one shot like every other year. Thank goodness I have some fond memories still tucked away in my foggy brain of previous trips and also some pics in her album to show her!
Side Note:I’ve re-organized the albums in my Scrapbook Layouts Gallery to show the more current albums on Page 1 of the gallery. It also made me realize I have not yet uploaded the pictures of layouts from Avery’s First Year scrapbook (one of my fave albums!) so I’ll be sure to do that soon.
Back to this layout… I tried out a new technique for paper-piercing the “6″ on the layout and my trick worked pretty well so I wanted to share it…
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July 26th, 2010 -- Posted in KidsInTheKitchen, family |
So I managed to get my little guy to help me out with another baking project. This one is an old family favourite but I continue to get better at it and keep mixing things up to keep it interesting. The base of this classic Apple Crisp recipe can be changed to include whatever fruit you would like – from apples to peaches and pears and even berrries added in there too!
This time around, we added lots of delicious raspberries to the apples on the bottom. Avery did a great job of arranging all the fruit on the bottom of the dish so that each serving would get a little bit of both fruits. 
Here is the recipe, passed down to me by my uber-baker grandmother, now in her nineties! I can’t promise anything about low-fat or give you the calorie count or anything, but I can promise you that when made right, it is delicious!
Dee-Dee’s Apple Crisp:
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup butter / marg.
- 1/2 to 1 cup brown sugar (how sweet do you like it?)
- 3/4 cup w. flour (add 1 tsp cinnamon)
Directions:
- Cover bottom of a 10″ pan with slice apples (you can add 1/4 cup of apple juice over apples)
- Cream butter, add sugar
- Gradually, mix in flour and rub to a crumbly mix
- you can add 1/2 cup rolled oat if you wish
- Spread crumbs over top of fruit
- Bake at 325 – when brown on top & apples are soft, take out of oven (maybe 25 mins or 30 mins, depends on oven)
I usually do add the rolled oats because it makes a better “cover”. If you have too little on top, the apples and fruit underneath don’t get all sealed in. Also using real butter will of course help the taste as well as the texture. For this size pan, use at least a few apples (more if they are small and less if you are adding other larger fruits).
Our combination of apples and raspberries turned out amazing!! The whole thing is already all eaten up (or I assume so anyways since I sent both kids with a little serving of it for dessert in their lunch bags today!). I will definitely bake it again (if you do too, I’d love to hear about it!). Next time I’d actually like to try peaches and raspberries! Hopefully I can convince a helper or two to work on that project with me.
Happy baking!
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