April Showers Bring May Flowers

Every May our beautiful Hawthorne tree blooms and brightens up the corner of our yard with it's bright pink blooms. It is one of my favorite trees, so I wanted to create a layout that showcased it, along with my daughter playing in the yard. Lately I have been using the Silhouette Paper pack for cards and thought the floral paper would work well for a spring lay out, I used the neutral B&T papers-minus the black accents, as well as the Sorbet, Creme Brulee and Juniper accents from the Botanical Die Cuts Kit. I plan to add some journaling to the right of the blossom title, once I get a a brown archival pen to write with.

This layout was copied from the Sophia Workshop on the Go Kit. Does it look familiar?

The Botanical Die Cut added just the right splash of color to this layout.

Where did my B&T Paper with Sorbet Stripes come from? Check it out. The black stripes were a little too much for this soft layout, but I wanted some stripes, so I covered the black with floral B&T.

Then added small strips of sorbet B&T to finish the look. What an easy and simple way to change the look of your paper to fit your layout.

We are looking forward to May, are hopeful all this rain will help our pretty Hawthorne bloom again soon.

Check out more April Shower and May Flower projects on the Heart to Heart Challenge Page. http://heart2heartchallenges.blogspot.com/

~Amy

Heart 2 Heart Top 10

I was so happy to learn I one of my projects was featured on the CTMH challenge page for the month of March. Below is a picture of one of the shadow boxes I entered in the home decor challenge week. I was pleased with it and was thrilled the H2H team liked it as well. Check out the complete entry at the following link. http://mnmscrapbooking.blogspot.com/2011/03/baby-shower-gifts.html

Although, I really can't take complete credit for it. I was inspired very much by the altered clipboard I made at Creative University. Thanks Denise Anderson Turley for the inspiration and for teaching me to make this awesome piece of artwork at CU. I am sure you can see the similarities.

Make sure you check out all the top 10 by clicking on the badge at the lower right hand side of my blog.

Thanks again H2H!!

~Amy

Heart 2 Heart Dream Card

It is always fun when Heart 2 Heart Challenges (http://heart2heartchallenges.blogspot.com/) incorporate a sketch in their weekly challenge. Here is the sketch for this week. Here is my interpretation using CTMH's Silhouette paper pack, Dream stamp set, black button brads and ribbon. Note: I used an oval instead of a circle to fit proportionately to a regular 7 x 5 inch card.

~Amy

Baby's First Year

It's only taken me more than 2 years to finish, but now it is done! I have made a picture calendar for both my children to capture and remember their first year of life. Here is a glimpse of the calendar I made for my son.
A great way to document special milestones.

See baby grow!

Capture treasured moments.

Silly faces.

Happy times!

Fresh from the bath and already 7 months old.

Holidays remembered.

My favorite layout.

Thankful I won't forget how little his hands were.

Baby's first Christmas.

Fun in the snow.....maybe not.

Big Birthday Boy.

Both the calendars I made for my children are treasured keepsakes. I rotate them and keep them on display throughout the year. It is fun to reminisce about when they were babies.

Check out more "baby" projects on CTMH Heart 2 Heart challenge page. http://heart2heartchallenges.blogspot.com/

TIP OF THE DAY: Use calendars as a way to keep track of special memories, quotes and events. These baby calendars are better than a baby book and are so easy to keep track of baby's growth. Simply jot down a note on the given day and now you have a memory that you will never forget. I use these calendars all the time for journaling on special layouts. My "everyday" calendar has also become a good resource for scrapbook journaling.

~Amy

Baby Shower Gifts

I have been so lucky these past couple weeks, as current projects I have been working on fit perfectly into the Heart 2 Heart Challenges http://heart2heartchallenges.blogspot.com/. This weeks challenge was to showcase a piece of home decor.

Inspired by a clipboard art project I made at Creative University (see post titled Creative University Projects--you will see the similarities), I decided to create shadow box pictures frames as a gift for a baby shower I will be attending this weekend. I was able to make one for a girl and one for a boy and am really happy with how they turned out.

For the baby girl.....

Before being put in the shadow box.

I love the dimensional element of the the ribbon and butterfly.

And for the baby boy....

Pretty simple, but cute none the less. Plus I used really old CTMH papers...Fun Shapes.

Although these shadow, boxes won't be displayed at my home, they will be a special keep sake, displayed in the nurseries of the sweet babies that will soon be here.

~Amy

Happy St. Patty's Day!

I have been on a rainbow kick lately, so decided to make some "rainbow" cupcakes for St. Patrick's Day. I had seen this recipe several years ago in a Family Fun magazine and was just reminded of it again this year. What a great recipe for tomorrow!

It is so easy, just prepare white cake batter and then separate into six individual bowls. Dye each bowl of batter a color of the rainbow. Than pour a spoonful of each color into sprayed or lined cupcake tins. Frost as desired. I used yellow/gold frosting and the the kids decorated them with green sprinkles.

I was a little worried it after baking, the rainbow would be more of a pastel rainbow, but the colors stayed so vibrant and bright. It almost looks like a tie dye shirt.
Here are the number of drops of food coloring I used for each color;
Purple- 9 red and 6 blue drops
Blue- 12 drops
Green- 12 drops
Yellow- 12 drops
Orange- 12 yellow and 4 red drops
Red- 18 drops
I think the kids would agree that is was pretty tasty too!

YUM!

~Amy

At the End of Every Rainbow....

There is said to be a pot of gold. Will you find your pot of gold this St. Paddy's Day?

Using Hershey Nuggets, I made these cute "pot o gold" boxes as a gift for the Moms in my MOPS group.

They were cute little packages and the Moms loved them. I was really happy with how the stamped image of the shamrock turned out. I didn't have any shamrock stamps, so I created my own using a heart stamp.

Now if only my kids could catch that darn leprechan that plays tricks on us on St. Patrick's Day, everything would be perfect;o)!

Whooooo Loves You?

With spring just around the corner, there are lots of new babies on the way. I made several of these 3x3 cards to have on hand whenever I need them. I used the CTMH "Love you Forever" Stamp Set and the "Sweet Pea" paperpack. I usually prefer solid stamps to line stamps, but by cutting and layering different cardstock and B&T papers, it really made these little owls pop.
It just happens that this card can also be used for this week's Heart to Heart Challenge http://heart2heartchallenges.blogspot.com/. The challenge was to use at least three stamped images to create a scene. These little owls, the saying and the button flower made the perfect baby card.

A mom in my MOPS group just had a baby, so am able to use one of these card immediately. Tomorrow everyone in our group is to bring some type of frozen meal/treat to deliver a care package to her. Hopefully it will make the first few weeks a little bit easier. I made a chicken tetrazinni casserole (see recipe below) that can easily be frozen and heated at anytime. I also got a little something for the baby and his siblings to make my gift complete.

I think the bow and cute card make this boring casserole seem a little more special.

Tip of the Day: When bringing dinner to a friend and/or neighbor, make sure to put your meal in a disposable dish, so the person receiving the gift does not need to worry about returning your dish.

Chicken Tetrazinni

(A family recipe that I grew up with. Don't know where my mom got it, but it is so easy to prepare and tastes great...I don't think it is low fat though.)

4 chicken breast boiled and cubed into pieces

1 can cream of mushroom soup

1 large can of evaporated milk

1 cup chicken broth

2 T. cooking sherry

Dash of pepper

Dash of nutmeg

Dash of garlic powder

1 small can of mushrooms

1/2 pound of grated cheedar cheese

Parmesean Cheese

1 pount of spaghetti noodles

Stew chicken, save 1 cup of chicken broth, remove chicken and then cook spaghetti in remaining liquid. Make sauce by combining all the ingredients except, chicken, noodles and parmesean cheese.

Layer spaghetti, chicken cubes and sauce. Sprinkle with parmesean cheese.

Cover and cook in a 350 degree oven for 30 minutes. Remove cover and cook for another 30 minutes.

Casserole can be frozen before cooking. Defrost throughly before cooking.

Enjoy!

~Amy

Creative Clean-Up

What kind of mother allows her children to play in packing peanuts and make a ginormous mess? Me!?!

I received a package in the mail the other day and it was full of packing peanuts. The kids could not resist getting their little hands in the box. I tried to be responsible and said, "keep the 'snow' (what my kids call packing peanuts) in the box." Funny thing is we had just come in from playing in the snow. Before I knew it, the entire box was empty and our entryway was a disaster.

My heart began to beat faster, as I am not one who likes messes and I began to feel overwhelmed and down-right grumpy. It was time to fix dinner, give the kids baths and get ready for bed, now I had one more thing to do on my list of night time chores. I remembered a trick I had used early this month to get the kids to pick up small counting bears they had scattered on floor. Clean them up with dump trucks. Perfect! The kids could still play while helping to clean up too. Genius!

So I equipped them with several dump trucks, shovels, and a little bucket and the kids happily when to town.
How do so many peanuts get in one box?

I was able to fix dinner while the kids played and cleaned up. They tried to beat the timer for dinner. Voila! A clean floor and two happy children.

Tip of the Day: Get creative with kids to encourage them to clean up. Use toys, have races, pretend. Sometimes my daughter will pretend she is Cinderella and I am the evil step mother. Hey, whatever it takes to get the job done.

~Amy

Wishful Thinking!

After a week of snowy weather like the Studio J layout below.....

I am hopeful warm weather will be here soon.

I just placed my 10 for 9 layout order from Studio J and can't wait to get my layouts to add to my scrapbooks. They are so easy to create and will blend in perfectly with my "regular" layouts. These digital layouts are so versitile and can be created using any color scheme. In the "snow" layout, I used the "Magnifique" pages. I liked the "snowflake-like" pages and was able to change the B&T and card stock paper to Chrystal Blue, Outdoor Denim, Buttercup and White Daisy to fit the color scheme I wanted. The "summer" layout is just the basic "Oh Happy Day" papers, but looks cute with the "stickease" embellishments and other additions.

~Amy