e-Cloths: Where have you been all of my life?

I think I am in love.  A couple of weeks ago, I was perusing my daily blog reads and Cathy Zielske had a post about e-cloths.  I was pretty intrigued and decided to place an order for some of these wonder cloths my self.  I ordered this “Home Cleaning” kit.  Shipping was super fast – I ordered on a Wednesday and they were on my doorstep two days later.



Now, I have to admit that I wasn’t as quick to start using them.  I hang my head in shame as they sat on table in the box until this past weekend.  But Sunday morning, we woke up to some beautiful sunny weather and our windows just looked gross.  It was time to pull out the e-cloth Window Cleaning and the Polishing cloths. 

I was a little skeptical that just plain water was going to clean my windows.  I can’t even remember the last time we cleaned the windows on the inside, so they were pretty grimy.  But I figured it was worth a try.  And wouldn’t you know, these cloths worked like a charm.  They worked so well, that I’ve now been on a mission to clean every window in our house.  Cleaning windows has never been so easy and the results are amazing.  I am one happy camper.

I also tried out the kitchen cloth to clean our black appliances.  With just plain water, those came out sparkling clean too!  Amazing.  Curt was pretty amazed as well.  So much so, that we decided to go ahead and order up a second set.

Pinterest - Oopsie Bread

I think it was last week sometime when I came across this “pin” for Oopsie Bread on Pinterest.  It peaked my interest because I’ve started to try minimizing the amount of wheat/gluten in my diet. 



The recipe is really quite simple – just 5 ingredients.  Eggs, cream cheese, psyllium seed husk, salt, and baking powder.  I did have to make a special trip to Super Supplements to get the psyllium seed husk, but once I had everything, it was pretty easy to pull together.

My first batch was a bit of a failure, although still edible.  See, I tried to bake them at 150 degrees as the recipe dictated.  First off, my oven doesn’t even go down to 150 degrees, so I settled for 170 degrees.  But after nearly an hour, they still weren’t fully cooked and definitely did not look like the picture above.  At that point, I decided to check the recipe and realized my mistake.  150 degrees Celsius.  Um yeah, my oven operates on Fahrenheit and should have been set to 300 degrees.  Big difference.

Since the recipe was so easy, I decided to go ahead and give it a second try with the oven properly set at 300 degrees.  All in all, the second batch took about 40 minute to bake to our satisfaction.  They still didn’t quite look like the picture, but closer.



As for taste and whether it really is a good substitute for bread – the jury is still out.  Time will tell.

Under Construction

It's been a long hiatus and I want to say thank you to those that checked in on me.  Life just got a little out of control there for awhile, and I had to let some things go by the wayside.  My blog being one of them.  So, now that I feel like things are more in control, I thought I would look into resurrecting my dear old blog. 

I decided to start off by changing the look and feel - let me know what you think.  I'm also adding a "Garage Sale" page (see link on the right).  The time has come where I throw up the flag and admit that I have way too much stuff.  And I'd love to send my excess crafty goodies off to homes where they will be better loved.  So check back soon.

Back Home

Ok – so technically, I’ve been back home for about a week.  But let me tell you, it took me all of the past week to get back into the groove of things.  Where did I go, you ask?  Well, let me tell you.

The first week I was gone, I went to Dallas, TX to attend my first ever Close to My Heart convention.  What a treat and cool experience – pretty amazing to see 1,000+ ladies (and gents) all in a room cheering and celebrating.  And CTMH never ceases to amaze me with the wonderful products and programs that they come out with.  Let’s just say that I am pretty stoked about the new Fall/Winter catalog that goes live on August 1st.

Here’s a picture from opening day right before everything fully kicked off.



It was a jam-packed couple of days, but well worth the trip.  And Curt and Miss B tagged along for the trip.  It was really nice to be able to kick back with them at the end of each day.



At the end of convention, I had to send Curt and Miss B back to Seattle while I continued on to Atlanta for a week-long work trip.  This back-to-back trip is probably the longest I have ever been away from home.  And I’m not so sure I would do it again.  I like the comforts of home.  And I definitely prefer the mid-70s/non humid weather of the PNW.

With that said, Atlanta wasn’t all work.  We capped the week off with a private outdoor concert with Maroon 5 and Bon Jovi. 



Wow – what a night! A truly amazing evening. Even when it started pouring down rain. And I do mean pouring. We got completely drenched. But it just seemed perfect.  My only wish is that I had been able to get more and better pictures than what I got.

Just a Couple More Days

Just a couple more days until my first ever CTMH Convention.  I can’t really explain how I feel about going – a little bit of anxiety and excitement all wrapped into one, I guess.  I’m sure it will be fine.  And who wouldn’t be excited about getting a bunch of free crafty stuff?  CTMH always has great products debuting in the Fall/Winter catalog and I will get plenty of crafty time to play with some of the new goodies while I am there.  I’m really looking forward to that part.

Anyways, before I head out of town, I thought I would share one more of the Convention layouts we did.  Here is the sample layout they gave us to follow.



The targeted techniques were:  deleting unneeded photo wells, using text boxes to cover up portions of patterned paper, and cropping My Stickease borders to make ribbon streamers.



I had a tough time trying to stay true to the original paper kit (Lucy) on this one.  Although I have plenty of girly pictures to scrap with, Lucy just isn’t one of my favorites.  So I opted to use Mayberry instead (retired, but available in Studio J).  But outside of that, I was able to keep it pretty close.  I also lucked out that Mayberry had pennants in its Stickease collection – made it easy to piece together the little banners.  Pretty cute, if I so say so myself.

Yet Another Convention Studio J Layout

Here is layout #3 of the CTMH Convention Studio J layouts.  The techniques taught were:  adding a photo mat with a journal box, using letters as embellishments, adding “tabs” of cardstock with journal boxes, creating a title using multiple journal boxes, and using a My Stickease image to create a border.



As you will see, I deviated quite a bit on this layout – but that is the beauty of Studio J.  You can easily start with one thing and convert it to something else by changing out the papers and/or changing the colors.



The original layout was pretty much all cardstock based, whereas I chose to use the Florentine paper kit.  I wanted a little more “texture” to my background.  I think my favorite technique on this layout was being able to use journal boxes to create “tabs” of cardstock. 

All in all, this layout may have turned out to be a little “plainer” that I may have wanted, but I was running out of time to get it submitted and my brain just wasn’t cooperating with ideas for those finishing touches.  I guess I’ll have to wait to see it in person (just a few more days) and then decide if I need to add some additional embellishments to it.

Another Convention Studio J Layout

Here’s another layout from the CTMH convention bundle.  The techniques taught were:  1) Making pleated ribbon out of ribbon tabs, 2) rotating a page, 3) cropping My Stickease images, 4) camouflaging with a text box, and 5) changing the color intensity of a B&T design.



And here is my completed layout.  As you can see, I stuck pretty close to the instructions on this one.

Back with some Studio J

It’s been quite awhile since I last blogged – and almost just as long since I last did anything crafty.  Between going to school/studying for Part 1 of my CMA certification and budget season at work, I just didn’t feel like doing much else.  But I took my exam this past Monday and today is the last day of the fiscal year at work.  So I’m crossing my fingers that things will slow down a bit and I can work on my laundry list of crafty projects.

With that said, I did get some Studio J time in a couple of weeks back.  After 5 years of being a CTMH consultant, I have decided to head to Convention for the first time ever.  As part of that experience, CTMH gave us all a free 5-pack code to Studio J.  They had created 5 layouts for us to recreate that also taught us some new tips and tricks for using Studio J.

Here is one of the layouts that they wanted us to complete.  The three techniques to learn were:  1) Using a My Stickease image to create a border, 2) create a layered ribbon bow, and 3) create a striped ribbon using a text box.



And here is my layout.  I tried to stay true to the instructions, but I definitely took advantage of how easy it is to change the color scheme – going for a little more of a muted tone.



Although I think I still prefer traditional scrapbooking, it was nice to get a few pictures scrapped.  And in the day that I spent working on my layouts, I completed 5 2-page layouts.  For a time-strapped girl like me, it is hard to ignore the convenience and time-saving ease of digital.  I’ll post a couple of the other layouts I did in the next couple of days. 

Baby Shower Gifts

Phew!  I don’t know about you, but for me – today just flew by.  I was up bright and early and out the door by 8:30.  And the next thing I knew it was 5:00.  And I hadn’t even started on the baby shower gifts and treats that I need to take to work tomorrow.  Thankfully, both of them came together fairly easy and things are all ready to go for the morning.

What did I make, you ask?  Both were inspired by finds on Pinterest.  The first being this cute motorcycle diaper “cake”.  You can’t really see them in this picture, but the diapers make up the wheels.  Super cute and I’m sure everyone will get a kick of it when they see it.



And because I am the resident baker in our workgroup, I volunteered to bring treats.



Chocolate Cherry Coke cupcakes.  Mine didn’t turn out quite as pretty as the ones I saw on Pinterest, but I’m pretty pleased with how they turned out.  The cake has some Cherry Coke Zero and maraschino cherry juice in it to infuse cherry flavor into the chocolate devil’s food cake.  The frosting is cherry vanilla flavored with chopped maraschino cherries mixed in.  And then I topped the cupcakes with a chocolate covered cherry and coca-cola gummies.  Very cherry tasting – I hope my coworkers like them.

Given how busy we were today, I didn’t get much time to work on my Creative Chemistry tags.  Crossing my fingers that I can carve out some crafty time this week after work.  I really enjoyed playing with the different techniques and I don’t want to lose that momentum.  So stay tuned.

Creative Chemistry 101–Day 3 Tags

I have to start off by saying that Tim Holtz’ Creative Chemistry class was so interesting.  If you have the time, I highly recommend checking the class out.
 
I’ve been pretty much on the sidelines this week – mostly because I was waiting for supplies to arrive in the mail (yes, hard to believe that I need more supplies).  But then when they did show up, I had other stuff going on and couldn’t sit down to play.
 
Tonight, I thought I would share the tags taught on Day 3 of class.  I actually was only able to complete two because the third technique uses Tim’s “Reflections” stamps - which I don’t own.  But the other two techniques were pretty cool.



The first technique is called “Alcohol Ink Agates” and the second technique is called “Archival Resist”.  I really love how working on these tags pushes me out of my comfort zone.  I am usually very methodical and “calculating” in my crafting.  But with these techniques, you just kind of “throw” ink on the paper any which way.  And it is pretty amazing at what comes out of it.

I plan to work on catching up on some of the other techniques/days of class over the weekend.  So I should have more to share soon.

More Creative Chemistry 101

I made it through the first week of Tim Holtz’ “Creative Chemistry 101” class.  I’ve learned so much about the different types of inks/stains and how they can work together.  And even better, is that if you have the right supplies on hand, you can actually create some pretty cool techniques in very little time.
Today, I’m sharing the tags I made using Distress Stains.



The three techniques were:  Stained Kraft Resist, Stamping with Stains, and Marbled Stains.  On the third tag, I also added some stain stamping to help lighten up my background a bit.

Hopefully, my alcohol inks will show up in the mail tomorrow so that I can go back and work on Day 3.  And then I need to order up some reinkers for the Day 4 techniques.  All in all, a pretty cool class.

Auction Dessert Dash

Happy Friday!  Miss B’s school is having their annual auction fundraiser tonight and I am dropping off two parcels for the dessert dash.  Both of these were cakes that I found on Pinterest.

The first one is a “Peep Sunflower Cake”.  For my cake, I used a Pillsbury Yellow Cake mix and Chocolate Frosting.



The second one is a “Kit Kat Cake”.  For this one, I made a Pillsbury Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Frosting.  Definitely a dessert for the true chocoholic.



Both cakes were pretty easy to make.  The most time consuming parts being placing the chocolate chips on the Sunflower cake, and then “gluing” the Kit Kats into place on the second cake.  I will definitely be making these again sometime.

Getting Inky with Tim Holtz

Hi there!  For the past couple of months, I’ve been taking a certification review course and last night was our final class.  Well, at least until we start up again in August.  It is such a good feeling to have it done.  And although I still have to keep studying until I take the exam in June, I now have some time back to hopefully put towards getting crafty.
 
And in anticipation of that extra time, I signed up for Tim Holtz’ “Creative Chemistry 101” class over at Online Card Classes.  Class started on Monday with Tim walking us through our first set of techniques yesterday.  I have to admit that I had/have some mixed feelings about the class – excitement mixed with some anxiety.  I’m not one who usually gets all inky and whatnot.  And we won’t mention my “need” for my artwork to look “perfect”.

But I am determined to keep an open mind and give it a try.  I had a little bit of time today, while waiting for my computer to run a battery check, and sat down to tackle the first three techniques.



Overall, I don’t think they turned out too bad.  I only have a handful of the Distress Inks, so I was kind of limited in my color combination.  But not to worry, I’ve got more on the way and thanks to Randy at Oozak, I should have them by the end of the week (Randy rocks when it comes to shipping – and he has good prices too).

Anyways…I now need to go watch today’s lesson.  So I’ll be back later this week to share more of what I learn.  Have a good night!

Take 12 in 2012–February

I finally got all of my “Take 12” photos from the 12th uploaded to the computer and into a collage.



It seemed a little easier to get my twelve pictures this month – I’m thinking because it fell on a Sunday and I/we had quite a bit going on that day.  So it really was a matter of just remembering to pull out my camera and snap away as we went through the day.

Similar to last month, I took a snapshot of my makeup selection for the day, my Kindle, my calendar, and current gas prices.

• Kindle – whenever I finish a book, I archive it into a folder called “Read”.  So looking back at last month’s snapshot, I can see that I finished 5 books in the past month.  Woo Hoo!
• Gas Prices – ignore the Safeway price because I don’t buy guy there.  For a better comparison, look at the Chevron price of $3.67.  Last month, Chevron was $3.47.  So prices went up 20 cents.  And we won’t talk about what the prices are now.

Other items of note from the day:

• Curt and I took advantage of having a little “date time” in the morning and we headed down to Coulon Park to grab a bite to eat at Ivars.
• And the rest of the day included domestic things like laundry and baking cookies, in spite of feeling under the weather.

Knock, Knock! Anybody Home?

And just like that, it has been almost a month since I last posted to this dear, old blog.  It started with a somewhat planned hiatus as week took a long-weekend vacation to Palm Springs.  For obvious reasons, I didn’t want to post that we were going to be gone.  And then when we got back, life got the better of me.  It started with the usual catch up that happens after vacation.  Although, for the life of me, I can’t figure out how I got so behind when we were only gone for 4 days.  But then, I also started a certification review course – which is twice a week in the evenings.  And lastly, we all got sick.  And my version of the cold lasted well over a week before turning into a sinus and ear infection.  So needless to say, blogging hasn’t exactly been at the top of my priority list.

Anywho…. I’m taking a little stay-cation time next week and have big plans to get some things caught up.  Like 4 weeks of Project Life (I have all my pictures – just need to do some journaling).  I also hope to get a little bit of scrapbooking done.  I had big plans to go away for a weekend retreat in March.  But a family commitment has come up that means I have to cancel out.  Major bummer because I was really looking forward to hanging out with some girlfriends catching up – and hopefully getting some pages done.

So stayed tuned.  I should have plenty to share over the next week.  Thanks for hanging around.

Project Life: January 15-21

I had some fun with my Project Life layout this week.  As you may have heard, we had a major snow event here this past week.  Which means we spent most of the week stuck at home.  I can’t even tell you how good it felt to get out of the house on Friday to go grab some lunch.



A couple of comments about this week’s layout.

• First off, I decided to deviate from my standard issue turquoise edition inserts – substituting in some “Winter Park” by Echo Park.  It seemed only fitting to use some winter themed papers.  I also used some Thickers for my “Snowed In!” title.
• Secondly, which isn’t quite as obvious by the pictures, but in spite of the below freezing temperatures outside, Miss B ran around the house most of the week in sundresses and swimsuits.  And getting her to dress in layers to go out in the snow was a bit of an event, in and of itself.  She clearly is not a wintry kind of girl.

It feels good to be trucking along.  When I started, I certainly didn’t foresee myself stepping away from the standard inserts.  But let me tell you – I’ve had a little too much fun this weekend scoping out some papers and journaling cards to use in future weeks.  I may even try to make up some of my own.  Go me!

Hope you had a great weekend!  It’s back to the grindstone and normal routines for us.

Digging Out

Phew!  It’s been a long week, cooped up inside.  We finally got a reprieve from the snow and freezing rain and I was able to dig out my car and go out for a bit.  As pretty as the snow is, and as much as we seem to like it when it first hits – when it locks you in for more than a day or two, it gets old pretty darn quick.  So getting out and being able to drive around ends up being such a treat.  Now we just have to wait for it all to melt and go on its merry way.

After running out to grab some lunch, Miss B and I took a stroll through Target to pick her up a couple of new swimsuits.  Kind of funny that on the tail end of a snow storm, we would actually be able to find swimsuits instead of snow pants.  Go figure.  Anyways… after we got back home, I jumped online to check on work and then took a few moments to put together another Studio J layout.



As I was sorting through my pictures for today’s layout, I found myself starting to be selective about what I scrap.  I’ve always been one who wants to scrap them all.  But maybe I’m starting to finally get it – that it is okay to just pick out a handful.  Maybe with this approach, I can make better progress in getting caught up.

What about you?  Are you a minimalist or a “scrap ‘em all” kind of scrapper?

Scrapping Christmas

Another one of my goals for this coming year is to scrap more.  Ideally, I want to use up some of my stash in the process, but if I can get it done faster digitally, then that is okay too.  The point is to start getting things done and albums put together.

Right now, Close To My Heart is having a Studio J special – buy 9 layouts, get the 10th free.  So I have a little incentive to do some digital scrapping.  And since we just wrapped up Christmas a couple of weeks ago, the timing is fitting.  All in all, I think I ended up with 5 2-page layouts (4 that I completed in Studio J and 1 that I completed traditionally).  A pretty good start to the year, if I do say so myself.






The first two layouts are pictures from Christmas Eve at my sister’s house.  And then the last two layouts are from Christmas Day at our house.  It is kind of funny to see them all laid out like that.  I’m usually a pretty traditional Christmas color girl – sticking to greens and reds.  But I obviously was drawn to this more muted color scheme for some reason.  Oh well – I like how it they all tie together.

If you are interested in trying out Studio J and taking advantage of the “Buy 9, Get the 10th Layout Free” campaign, just click on the Studio J badge over there in my sidebar.

Project Life: January 8-14

When it looks like this outside…



…it ends up being a good day to stay inside and get a little crafty.  I’m working on scrapping some pictures from Christmas and I worked on finishing up this week’s “Project Life” pages.



I think the pictures of my layouts turned out better this week.  But I can’t say that I really did anything different - maybe it was something as simple as the time of day.  Outside of my need for 12 pictures on Thursday, keeping up with the rest of the pictures was pretty easy.  I didn’t get to all of the journaling until today though.  I just wasn’t in the mood earlier in the week.  It turned out okay though – I think because I printed my pictures off as I went through the week.  It was pretty easy to remember why I picked the pictures I did and the story that I wanted to tell.

So – on we go to another week.  Based on the weather forecast, something tells me I might have more snow pictures coming up.  If you live in the PNW, hope you are staying warm and enjoying the snow.  I know I love looking at it – it is so pretty!

Take 12 in 2012 - January

The first month of “Take 12 in 2012 is officially in the books.  And let me tell you that it ended up being quite a bit harder than I thought it would be. 

I started off on a good note, taking pictures of our morning routine.  And I even took my DSLR to work with me - because I had every intention of going outside at lunch and snapping some pictures.  Umm… yeah, that didn’t happen.  Not by choosing per se, but because we were working on a presentation and worked through lunch.  So by the time I got home, I had to be a little creative to come up with the remaining pictures I needed.  And don’t tell anyone that I actually snapped the last one today (although I did think of it yesterday).



I won’t go into all of the details for each photo, but there are a couple that I ended up really liking.

• End of the middle row – I found this cool weather app for my iPad.  And I thought it would be kind of cool to capture what the weather forecast is on the 12th day of each month.
• My Kindle start up page – not a great picture, but thought this would be a great way to keep track of what books I’ve currently got in the hopper, as well as keep track of how many I have read from month to month.
• My Bare Escentuals – I’m not a complete makeup junkie, but I do like a little variety.  So I though it would be fun to capture what combination I choose for the 12th day of each month.
• And lastly, current gas prices is an easy one.  This is the picture that I had to snap today since the gas station wasn’t on my path home last night.

It took me quite a while to figure out how to get a collage of all of my photos.  I was trying a bunch of different things, not successfully getting what I wanted.  Until I did a Bing search for “4x6 Photo Collage Maker”.  One of the results was an eHow article on how to create one in Picasa.  Ding, ding, ding!  Super easy and it gave me exactly what I wanted.  Just a little note though – ignore where the article says to use your photo editing software to resize it to 4x6.  When I printed the resized version, the pictures ended up blurry.  Not sure what the deal is there, but my original from Picasa printed perfectly.  And I love how it looks in my Project Life album.  Now that I know about this cool Picasa trick, I may just find myself playing around with collages more often.