Introducing: My New Shop!

I guess it's about time I dust the cobwebs off this ol' blog! I have been doing some major crafting lately. Well, to be more specific I  have been crocheting my brains out lately. I do it therapeutically. Studies show it's good for the brain. You can read about my brain malfunctions over at my other blog.

More about my crocheting adventures! I'm nearly finished with a pink camo Corner to Corner (a.k.a. C2C) baby afghan for my friend, Holly's baby girl. That will hopefully go out this Friday. My plan is to post about that in Friday's "Finish it Friday" post! Fingers Crossed!

When I was away at my Mom & Dad's for a two week working vacay, I whipped up the scarves pictured below, which I'm peddling at some up coming craft fairs with my friend, Deb of Phlapdoodles Kids Clothing. You can view her cute wares at her Facebook page.

The name of my store, which is under construction, is Katie Anne Designs. It is named for my Nana (my mother's mom) and my Grandma (my dad's mom). Both were amazing women. I didn't know my Nana as well as my Grandma, but sometimes I feel like I know her pretty well when my mom talks about her and shares her love for her.

In addition to the scarves I will be adding purses, jewelry, and afghans.

It's a Mom Blogger Throw Down Challenge!

My bff, the one and only J.Ho of Mom Rocks Mealtime fame posted about the difference between celebrity chefs and real world family chefs today. Her description of the ridiculousness of umpteen pans on a normal kitchen stove cracked me up. She always gives recommendations for realistic trade-offs when recipes call for rare or hard to find ingredients. If she manages to track down an elusive ingredient (ginger jelly comes to mind), she shares that, too.

She called out a particular celebrity chef, who shall remain nameless (unless you read her blog post, which I highly recommend, and figure it out for yourself) on one of his recipes. She pointed out that everyday folk don't have time for a bunch of extra, not to mention unnecessary steps. With everything else going on at dinner time, we don't have time to create our own vanilla extract, when it is already readily available at our nearest neighbor's pantry. The way Jen says it is WAY funnier.

I highly value J.Ho's blog. I look it up frequently when the hubby comes to me during menu creation. Her recipes are mom tested, kid approved, and rated by all members of her family. When available, she gives the vital nutritional info as well. I always know I can count on Jen's recipes to be affordable and on the healthy side.

She has NOT asked me to do this and would be completely mortified if it actually happened, but here I am, appealing to my meager audience (I don't blame you, I haven't been here in a very long time), to help encourage the nameless celebrity chef and the Food Network to do a Mom Rocks Meals throwdown! Pretty please help me BLOW UP Twitter, Facebook, emails, whatever to ask for a @bflay vs. @momrocksmeals throwdown! I am sure reality will prevail, demonstrating that a delicious, nutritious meal can be accomplished without a dozen pans and 25 ingredients. #dozenskillets

Angry Birds Party Favor Boxes

When Jen told me the theme for her son's birthday party was going to be Angry Birds, I immediately turned to the worldly widely webs for crafty inspiration.

After some discussion about what I could do to help, I settled on these adorable Angry Birds boxes. I used my Cricut and the Sweet Tooth boxes cartridge.

I cut out the bottom part of the cupcake for the tops and bottoms of the red and black birds. I cut the tops 1/4" bigger than the bottom. I used the cake box and lid for the yellow birds.

I used the circles from Plantin Schoolbook to cut out the eyes. I free handed the angry eye brows and beaks.

I tried glue sticks, snail adhesive, and sticky strip to hold the boxes together . Snail was the easiest to work with, but sticky strip held better.

 

One more thing before I go! I can't take credit for this idea, but I totally had to share it! The birthday boy is my Godson. He's also super into action figures right now. What's the perfect gift for such a scenario? An Action Bible, of course! It's a Bible, presented superhero style, complete with amazing graphics.

Pretty Hands From the Pantry

Hello! Yes, I'm still here! Between migraines, and home life craziness, oh and massive work deadlines and 12+ hour work days, I haven't had a whole lot of time for crafting, let alone blogging lately!

I've been feeling like my cuticles needed some TLC lately. Well, more like INTENSIVE treatment. Believe me, I have plenty of cuticle creams, softeners, removers, etc. But nothing seems to be doing the trick lately. I remembered from my BeautiControl consultant days, they had an amazing hand scrub that was really good for my cuticles and my nails.

Not one to pay full price when I can get away with it, I went to eBay. I found some listings but not a whole lot of savings after shipping. Then the light bulb came on.

This is not the first time I had done this. I went to my kitchen, where I gathered the following supplies:

• Vegetable Oil
• Coconut Oil
• Olive Oil
• Brown Sugar
• Cinnamon
• Table sugar
• Table salt
• Kosher salt
• leftover side dish container from Kentucky Fried Chicken

I put the dry ingredients in first, about a tablespoon or so of each. Probably twice that much brown sugar. Then I started adding coconut oil by the tablespoonful. I think that one might be the most expensive oil, so I moved on to the others, adding a tablespoon at a time and stirring it together to a nice, thick, pasty consistency.

VOILA! Ladies and gentlemen, I just saved myself about $27! I now have my very own yummy smelling, skin softening hand scrub! I look forward to fresh, beautiful cuticles in the next few days!

There are SO many hand scrub recipes and tutorials online. The bottom line is, throw together some natural oils, scrubby stuff (can be coffee grounds, lavender, herbs, you name it) and get to mixing! Keep it in small batches. Unless you use something to keep the grodies from growing in it, you want to keep the batches small to keep your scrub from going bad. I think Vitamin E oil would do the trick, but I need to research it first!

Happy Hands! 

March Madness!

The I {Heart} Scrapping Challenge helped some die hard scrappers get some pages done.  Since I still have QUITE a few pages to get done to get caught up and stay on track for 2012, we are going to keep rolling with March Madness.

Usually, March Madness pertains to Basketball. For us scrappers, though, March Madness is our challenge against ourselves to get more pages completed. It doesn't matter if you are a digital scrap-booker, or if you are a fan of paper and stickers, or somewhere in between, all are welcome here!

The daily challenge might have been a bit overwhelming, so this time around it will be weekly. It is a challenge against yourself (until week 3, anyway!)to get more pages done, so here is how it will work:

Week 1: Goal: get 4 layouts done

Week 2: Did you achieve the week 1 goal? If so, this week's goal is 10 pages. If not, this week's goal is double what you accomplished in week 1.

Week 3: Pair yourself up with a buddy scrapper. Do not tell each other what your goal is. Who completed the most pages at the end of the week?

Week 4: This week is more about applying new techniques. Stretch yourself creatively. Get yourself a real life, hold it in your hands, scrap-booking MAGAZINE and apply at least THREE new ideas that you find to whatever you work on this week.

FINALS: You've scrapped it, now what??? If you're a digi-scrapper, get those pages PRINTED. If you go old-school, make sure your pages are totally complete, with embellishments and JOURNALING and get them in the appropriate albums!

To help keep each other inspired, we will continue to use the #love2scrap hashtag! If you're a blogger, feel free to come back and comment below with links to your March Madness posts!

   
Note: I submitted this post to YeahWrite. There are a lot of amazing bloggers who also post there. Please stop by and read what they have to say, then come back and vote for your top 5 favorites (usually you only get to vote for 3, which is really really HARD!)

More I {Heart} Scrapping Challenge Inspiration!

I want to give a huge shout out to Jen for sticking with me, even though I have fallen behind on this challenge.
I am also devising a plan for a new challenge next month! Stay tuned!

Now, on with the show!

Day 21: Turnover Tuesday - Take a layout you have already done, or a quick page, and turn it 90 or 180 degrees. If it's a quick page, I recommend also adding some embellishments. If you are using a former layout, remember it's just the layout you are turning. It doesn't have to have the same papers, etc.

Day 22: Wavy Wednesday - I am a big fan of curves! Create a page incorporating waves/curved lines.

Day 23: Thankful Thursday - This could be a page portraying Thanksgiving, or a collage of pics of things you are thankful for.

Day 24 (yayy! We're caught up!): Froggy Friday! This could be a layout incorporating froggies, or a phrase like "it ain't easy bein' green..." so many ways you could go with this!

Day 25 (whoa! jumping AHEAD here!) - 

And...to help me get ready for next month's challenge, here are the prompts for the rest of the month:

Day 26:  Speed Scrap Sunday - Become a fan of MyMemories on Facebook and join the Speed Scrap Sunday. So much fun!


Day 27: Maple Monday - Fall leaves/colors, pancake breakfast page, pay homage to your Canadian ancestry, perhaps?

Day 28: Welcome Home - Think cozy, comfort food, shabby chic, cabin, quilts...or use Welcome Home as your title and make a page about your new home (this is what I'm going to do once I find the pics from when we bought our house!)

Day 29: Take a Leap of Faith, Leapin' Lizzards (we watch Annie quite a bit around here!), A complimentary page to Day 24, Froggy Friday, include Leap in the layout somehow. It's a Leap Year, after all!

We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Program

Stay tuned for more "back issues" of the I {Heart} Scrapping Challenge! Today, I have something really exciting for  you! I found this super duper fun, easy and free website that lets me make a screen cast of what I am doing on my computer! I thought it would be fun to show you how you can get started with digital scrap-booking using a program you probably already have: Microsoft Publisher!

The first one shows you how to make a layout using a Quick Page. I used a freebie called Huggables QuickPage from ScrapWow. Do not adjust your sound. There is no audio on these screen casts.
This next screen cast shows how I created a layout using freebie papers and elements I found online. You will notice that some of the elements just suddenly appear. That is because the process is the same as what I demonstrate with the lettering. I cut that part out to save time. These screen casts have a 5 minute limit. My next screen cast will show you how easy it is to convert these publisher files into .jpg files you can have printed for your scrap-book! Stay tuned!

Back in Action!

Wow! 2011 was a pretty crappy year...and here in 2012, I seem to be having a hard time getting my motor running...one obstacle after another. Hmph! You don't want to hear my sob story, so suffice it to say: I'm sorry I've been away, but I'm BACK!

Without further delay, here is some I {Heart} Scrapping Inspriation for you:

Day 17: Freaky Friday - Remember the movie, Freaky Friday? I think it's been remade too. For those not familiar with the story line, a child and parent's bodies are switched on Freaky Friday. So, you have an adult in a child's body, and a child in an adult's body. You can imagine the antics that ensue! I can't wait to see how you apply this role reversal to your layout!

Day 18: This was going to be Sketch Saturday, but since I'm behind as it is and don't want to cause you any further undue delay, let's call it Sexy Saturday! Include something spicey in your layout! Red background and black lace, perhaps?

Day 19: Spiritual Sunday - Scrap something inspirational or spiritual. It could have an encouraging phrase on it, or be a layout dedicated to your spirituality. Hint: the season of Lent and Easter are just around the corner!

Day 20: That's today! Today is Music Monday! Scrap about your favorite song or style of music! Journal about something that's "Music to My Ears..." so many possibilities here! Remember, I posted some cute musical paper back on Valentine's Day!

There you go! Four more fantastic days of scrapping inspiration. Thanks for hanging with me while I got my scrapping/blogging machine back in working order. She's still a little slow, but she gets the job done!

I {Heart} Scrapping Challenge Day 15 & 16

Hello, Scrappers! I am BACK! I hope you missed me! Most of all, I hope you continued scrapping without me. I know a couple of you have and I'm so proud of you. My digi scrapping machine has been at the doctor. She is finally home, but resting (which means I'm so hammered with work deadlines right now, I haven't had a chance to plug her in!).

I also misplaced my notebook with all my inspiration for this challenge. *SIGH* I found it today, so I'm using my backup bloggy machine, Pink. Now, on with the show!

Day 15 inspiration: Wacky Wednesday - Create a layout with wacky colors and shapes. Or, create a layout around a wacky picture. Have FUN with it! After all, if you're not having fun, you're doing it wrong!

Day 16 inspiration: Back to School - Create a layout using a school theme. It could be your child's first day of school, or just work in a chalk board and a chalk font or something. I've seen some great letters that are like a child's blocks that are really cute.

No linky today because I have to get back to work, plus no one was using it anyway. Please do tweet your work with #love2scrap, though! I appreciate your playing along and I will get caught up myself soon.

I {Heart} Scrapping Challenge: Day 14

Happy Valentine's Day, my dear fellow crafters! Thank you so much for joining me on this journey. I hope you remember that this challenge is all about getting YOUR scrapbooks caught up, YOUR way. I know today is Valentine's day, and you are probably doing something extra special with your Valentine(s)! So, no worries, come back tomorrow and make it up!

Haha, I'm just kidding, sorta. If you are the by-the-book kindda person, you will NOT want to miss today's page...so, I have a super duper suggestion for you. Rather than try to go OUT to dinner, along with everyone else in your town who was blessed enough to get a sitter, stay home, and make a delicious, nutritious meal with your family! Don't know what to make? No problem, my dear friend, Jen at Mom Rocks Mealtime has you covered!

Do something fun and create a memory...then go and SCRAP about it! Or wait til morning. Just DO IT! Ok, enough said about rules and lack of them... today's theme is Love is in the Air! Oh boy! What comes to my mind right away:

• Hot air balloons
• Heart shaped balloons
• Chocolate (cuz we're basically talking about scrapping our Valentine's day page, right?) 
• Heart shaped bubbles, which makes me think of bubbles in general
• Music...

Speaking of music...sometimes one though just flows into another for me. Sometimes the results are amazing, some times not so much. Jen asked me if I was including links to free papers on this challenge. I told her I was tossing in a few Freebie Fridays, which she thought was a pretty nifty idea. Well, I decided to incorporate her idea (this whole challenge was actually her idea to begin with!) into today's prompt.

I won't get into all the details right now, but let's just say music is a very big part of my family's life. Our wedding was something of a musical! Before the previously mentioned conversation with Jen even took place, I came across this beautiful paper and saved it for later. Now I'm sharing it with you, and encouraging you to use it in one of your layouts from this challenge. It doesn't have to be today's, though that would be super awesome, in my opinion! Click on either image for more Vintage scrapping inspiration & goodies!

This linky will be open for a couple more days longer than usual...since it's Valentine's day and all!