School's Out for Summer!!!

It would seem that I am a little behind on this one but with each passing week everything is taking me longer to get to!!! Thank goodness I have such a great husband to rely on as we head into my last few weeks of pregnancy!

Sarah's last day of school was on Tuesday last week and we put together little stationary packages for her Teacher and the Educational Assistant in her class (Sarah likes to make sure that everyone is treated equally!) These were cute and quick to put together (thank goodness as I made them the morning of her last day of school!!!)

I used my Doodle Alphabet (SU! Retired) to stamp the initials of each of the fine ladies, punched that out with my 1 1/4" SU! Punch, Punched a 1 3/8" Circle and mounted the initial on that. I used Purely Pomegranite, Close to Cocoa and some SU! Designer Paper I had on hand. We sealed the deal with Purely Pomegranite Stitched Gingham Ribbon (it won't be around much longer!) and voila! A gift that I hope the teachers will enjoy using!


Sarah insisted that we make variations on the 2 folders so here they are. Each folder has personalized note cards along with co-ordinating envelopes inside.

Enjoy!
Heather

Berries with Dorie

Happy Tuesday everyone! It seems to me that with every passing week I take fewer photos!!! I am certain I took more than this but I just gave up my work computer and I am thinking that some photos got lost in the translation...seriously put a 36 week pregnant woman under pressure and things fall apart pretty fast some days!!!

Anyway...the main thing is I have that lovely photo of my berries that my DH bought for me when he did an emergency run to the grocery store (he remembered, not me!) I can barely remember anyone's names these days nevermind a grocery list!!!

On to this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe...we had Mixed Berry Cobbler...I used blueberries, raspberries and blackberries...yummy!!! For fun, the kids and I cut out the cobbler dough in different shapes and covered the ramekins with those instead of covering the whole cobbler...they loved that!

We served it up with some ice cream and it was all good! The berries were amazing and the cobbler made a great sponge for soaking up that yummy berry juice!
I am looking forward to next week's Apple Cheddar Scones...I should be able to fit in one or two more recipes before this baby comes!!!

Enjoy!
Heather

Sweet Bouquets!

A good friend asked me if I would make her an edible bouquet (well, 2 actually) to present to her nieces after their dance recital. Traditionally she would bring them flowers but this time around she wanted something a little different. The only guidelines that I was given was that one loves pink and the other purple...so I went shopping...

I found some fabulous ribbon, tied it on my scallop bowls...sweet. Speaking of sweet, then I filled the bowls with chocolate covered peanuts (yummy!) My poor DH has been hankering for these

since my Mother's Day Creative Kids and still hasn't had the urge satisfied!!! Anyway, then I got to stamping and punching the flowers and arranging them accordingly. Each bowl is filled with 12 flowers and packaged them all up for my friend's nieces to enjoy...I hope they like them!!!

Enjoy!
Heather

There's no business like Snow Business!

I know, I know...winter is long over maybe the hot weather we had last week drove me to the snow layout...who knows!!! They are great photos though and they are even fairly current! This layout was inspired by Layout #88 on Pencil Lines. If you are looking for inspiration this is a great page to find it!!! I really enjoy trying to complete a layout every week with their layouts.

Have I mentioned how much I love my Cricut? I love being able to create customized titles to fit my pages with my co-ordinating papers!!! It's just too fun! This week I managed to pull together a second page so that these can go in Sarah's Scrapbook when I am done displaying them. Is it odd to to put up Snowman pages in June? Oh well!

Supplies used include; Soft Sky, Blue Bayou and Basic Black Cardstock, Wintergreen Designer Paper, Dazzling Diamonds, Chunky Sparkles all by Stampin' Up!

Enjoy!

Heather

TWD - Chocolate Cream Puffs

I don't have a lot of process photos this week...it's not something that I excel at especially when it comes to goodies outside of my comfort zone. I wasn't sure if I was going to participate in this week's session first because the Peppermint Cream seemed undauntingly dairy then simply because I am 35 weeks pregnant and tired!

In the end, my stubbornness prevailed and I had to try it...so I substituted chocolate cream for the peppermint cream which meant that I had all the goodies required to make these treats and went to town!!!

Again, the substitutions were limited in the end. For the chocolate I used chocolate chips and melted them and then I used lactose free butter in place of the butter...oh yes, and vanilla soy yogurt in the glaze (it was the best I could do on short notice!)

The taste testers all agreed that this was another recipe worth trying! Please stop by Tuesday's with Dorie so you can see more delightful renditions of the Cream Puffs and check out Dorie's book Baking From my Home to Yours for more inspirational treats!

Enjoy!

Heather

Handy Daddy's Everywhere Unite!

I have been meaning to get this posted all week but just didn't have the chance to take photos! Last weekend we enjoyed our last Creative Kids session of the season. It was our chance to celebrate Dad's with Father's Day just around the corner (of course now that was yesterday!)

Anyway, the kids had a delightful time making "Nuts & Bolts" snacks, a toolbox complete with a hammer and painting and decorating the picture frames. This was one of our more challenging sessions as it didn't all come together until the end and the kids really like completing projects as we go. They did great and were happy to get outside and enjoy the sunshine when their projects were complete!

As a special treat, I do my best to get into our daughter's class when I can. I was recently there to do a Mother's Day craft with the kids (I plan and do most of the prep work for the crafts) and I certainly did not want to leave the Dad's out...so, I took in all the bits to create this card for Father's Day.

The kids really enjoyed it. I love watching them figure out where the pieces go and putting the puzzle together. They also got to use one of my stamps inside the card which was fun for them as well!

Happy Father's Day to all the Dad's out there!!!

Enjoy!

Heather

Rainbow Heaven

Alright, I am not always good at taking photos so I made an extra effort today. Today was Sarah's last 'Special Day' at school and she is a summer baby so as a treat I made cupcakes for the kids and they had an 'unbirthday' celebration for her. How delightful!

I had a lot of fun making these...they were super easy too...wish I could tell you where I got my inspiration from but my head is so muddled with the late stages of pregnancy that it's amazing that I remember anything these days!!!

So, I made Yellow Cake batter, split it into 3 bowls and used Wilton colourant to make my colours (yes, I added yellow to the batter to make the colour nice and rich).

Next, I took a Tbsp of each colour and put them in my cupcake papers. Now to make this extra fun, I varied the order that the colours went into the cups so that they all had different colour tops. Are we having fun yet???

We baked as directed and I was delighted to find that in some cases the bottom colour popped up to the top! Of c0urse you could, as my DH suggested, run a knife through them to swirl the colour a bit more but I did not feel the need to add that extra step.

Still following along? Now the next question was...how do you top these beauties off? I have to admit there was a part of me that just wanted to top them off with a bit of white icing and call it a cupcake. However, that was not deemed acceptable by the 'unbirthday' girl.

Instead we made some complementary icing, through it in a bag together and ended up with these rainbow swirl beauties you see below. The kids loved them and I got a "You're the best Mummy EVER!" out of them so all is right with the world today!

Enjoy!

Heather

A day late and a tart short...well, almost!

Well, it was a close call for us this week...(sorry I didn't get this posted last night but being 34 weeks pregnant and hitting high temperatures of over 40C with humidity sent me into hibernation!)

Nothing fancy here...a lovely summertime dessert that everyone loved! Thank you for choosing this one Marie! It was fabulous...well, what we got to eat of it anyway. You see...I made the tart first thing yesterday morning and set it out to cool. I went to school with my daughter to do a Father's Day Craft with her class (more on that later) and came home to a tart shell that had been ravaged by our 3 year old son!!!

There was still enough for the rest of us to enjoy and I do have to say his behaviour for the rest of the day was quite remarkable!!! ;) Not that I think he will stop himself the next time he feels 'entitled' to a treat but he was pretty sad about not enjoying the tart (with strawberrries) like the rest of us last night!!!

Ooops, almost forgot! My only substitution was the butter on this one...easy as pie in our lactose free house!


Now, as an added bonus...we went to a BBQ on the weekend and I managed to scrape together the Peanut Butter Torte. YUMMY!

My husband has been after me to make this one since he saw all of your beautiful photos on-line weeks ago! So, with some help from Donna at Spatulas, Corkscrews and Suitcases I figured out how to create a lactose-free version of Dorie's Peanut Butter Delight!!!


Our substitutions included;

• 1/2 cup PC Brand Chocolate Chips
• 4 tbsps Earth Balance Buttery Spread (rather than butter)
• 4 cups Cool Whip (to replace 2 cups of Heavy whipping cream)
• 1/2 cup Soy Yogurt (to replace 1/2 cup Heavy whipping cream for ganache)

The result? Well, it firmed up but next time I would definitely freeze it rather than keeping it in the fridge. It was rich alright but still amazing!!! If you want to join in on the fun check it out at Tuesday's with Dorie.

Yummy! Enjoy!
Heather

Tears of Joy?

I am so pleased to be getting this uploaded so early in the week! Sometimes it takes me awhile to get my photos developed but in this case the photos were in my box waiting for something to happen! I discovered them after looking at Pencil Lines Sketch #87 and was quite excited about the prospect of working toward completing Sean's first 2 years of scrapping (he is almost 4!)


So, here he is in all of his glory...absolutely terrified of Santa Claus (he was only 16months or so at the time). DH and I had gone out of town for a friend's wedding left the kids with his parents. They took him to a fabulous brunch (where our children were in breakfast heaven...they still love pancakes, waffles and everything else breakfast!)

Then they were lead to meet with Santa and not very impressed by the jolly old fella! Here you can see Sean's genuine reaction and Sarah's wasn't much different (she did manage to hold back the tears...)

I used SU! Dashing papers, Real Red, Mellow Moss Tafeta Ribbon, Real Red 1/4" and 5/8" Grosgrain Ribbon, the tiniest bit of SU! Notebook Paper and my Plantin Schoolbook and Accent Essentials Cricut Cartridges (I LOVE my Cricut!)

Enjoy!

Heather

French Brownies - Tuesdays with Dorie

Hooray! It's Tuesday and time to share this week's Tuesdays with Dorie Adventure with you. This week's recipe French Brownies were chosen by Di of Di's Kitchen Notebook (you will find the recipe on her blog). There was a lot of talk about these ones!!!

The concerns including excessive cracking, the brownies deflating and whether or not raisins belong in brownies! So, we decided to try them as per the recipe to see what would happen in our kitchen...we didn't find the presenation to be altered by the cracking, the raisins were moist and yummy and there was nothing deflated about these little guys!

They were highly rated by all of our kitchen testers!!!


Here you can see our little guy (he insisted that I take a photo of him testing them out) enjoying his brownie and soy ice cream. Ah yes, there were a few substitutions due to his lactose intolerance (I almost forgot!) We used President's Choice Chocolate Chips in place of the Bittersweet Chocolate as there is no milk in them and Earth Balance Buttery Spread in place of the butter. The rest was according to Dorie.

We are really looking forward to this week's Challenge with Marie from A Year from Oak Cottage. She has chosen La Palette's Strawberry Tart. Yummy!

Enjoy!

Heather

How Sweet She Is...

These photos are from just over 2 years ago...it's hard to remember Sarah being so round in the face!!! These photos were a delight to scrap and a great opportunity for me to break out more of my new papers! Since I feel that I often under-embellish I thought I would do my best to go overboard this time!

I used some lace I had kicking around, Prima Flowers that are collecting dust, some bits from my SU! Pretties Kit and some new ribbon from the SU! Fairy Tale ribbon collection. The papers are SU! Spring Fling and super sweet with the end result...

Here it is...Pencil Lines Sketch #86

Enjoy!

Heather