My love affair with Silhouette

I thought I would share my top 5 Silhouette projects I have done and posted about!

Birthday Bouquet

 My Favorite project to do with the Cameo Silhouette is to make flowers, So This post was a favorite of my all around, enjoyable to create, fun to write about, and entertaining to see where it leads me! This project would also work well for any wedding bouquet, just add more flowers. Need an impressive hostess gift that will be cherished, you got it! (frugal alert: I buy vases at my consignment shops for about a dollar!) 

Christmas tree stencil card

I am a mixed media artist by Nature, and this project in one of my favorite projects, I like to use what I have on hand, ( use what you got.)  So I came up with a way to make a bunch of Christmas cards that are all unique in a way, that doesn't break the bank but looks like you really spent a ton of time on. I had a lot of fun playing with watercolor techniques, this project is an open-ended one, use a stencil that you find on the Silhouette Desing Store, resize it to fit your card size, and play with watercolor. You don't have to be a seasoned watercolorist to do this card. Instead of Christmas trees do flower stencil, or a geometric stencil, So many ideas!

Santa washi tape

Crafting with the Cameo Silhouette and Washi Tape is a match made in heaven! Christmas can bring out the best in the crafting world, and although this is all about Santa, can't you see the colors and the theme to change for any type of season, Washi tape adds just enough pizazz to make clean designs look amazing! Check out my other post that used washi tape with the silhouette for a fast card

Silhouette Mint and watercolor pairs nicely together, I love that I can design stamps to fit my size, and my style, as always I wanted the mixed media(watercolor and ink) to stand on its own, add a bit of stamping to go with it and you have a really nice card. I loved how both turned out. This project is great for those color challenges that are popular right now!

A flower candle holder is perfect for so many occasions. I like how easy and elegant this project was to make. It's a beautiful piece that makes me smile when I see it in my house. I like it because it only takes two Design Store files flowers and a candle holder to make, and they are both files that I use on a semi-regular basis, both files are very open ended.








As you can see, I am a crafter that loves to use clean and simple design elements to enhance the project, I love watercolor and mixed media to produce a unique piece that doesn't break the bank, or dip into my family's grocery budget! (see my post about why I use coupons and try to save money.) 

Staycation during Christmas Break

My amazing husband took off the week in between Christmas and New Years to spend time with us, we don't usually plan on a trip out of town, it's a staycation and we loved this week!

Is it just me? The fact that Christmas is filled with lots of emotions, food, and things, that you just need at least two days to get back to normal. I feel like it's been two long days to get the house back to the pre-Thanksgiving day. We got Christmas packed up, now it's time to play!

Our family does staycations on the light side of things. I really think that kids don't really care as much about what we do, as long as they get to do it with mom and dad, and together is even better.

Here have been some of our activities that we have done during our staycation:

Build an awesome train track
Build roads and cities using Go Go Smart Wheels, blocks, lego's the sky's the limit.
Go see a matinee kid movie at local theater
have a couple movie nights (it's time to introduce Indiana Jones to the kiddos)
a trip to the Science Center
Play date with cousins and a trip to local Chick-Fill-A to play
Playing kid games like Pie Face. Connect Four, Bug Jenga
Nerf Gun Wars with daddy, and cousins
Story festival (read like 10 stories on the couch in one sitting)
playing in the kitchen with mom, and her new toy(s) precision cooking (sous vide)
And because we can, watch lots of Disney World youtube videos!

playing a freeze game

Most of all of these are simply easy ways to build family memories, sometimes as a family, we are pulled in so many different directions that we need a staycation to just have time to cultivate relationships that need to be stronger. I know this past week my son would come up to me for no particular reason and hug me and say I love you, mom. If we are too busy, we will miss those impromptu moments that fill our lives with the joy we are seeking. I am grateful for this time that we can spend as a family and learn and grow together, laugh and have hearts melted, isn't that what's Christmas is all about!

We had to organize our train tracks, glad we did now they can't get enough time to play with trains!

Happy New Years and enjoy those little moments!

Christmas Baking day 2016

What is it about the beloved baking day we all get giddy about every year about this time? I was able to bake in my kitchen that I love with my sister in-law, in which she is awesome we got a ton of stuff done in the 4 hours she was here, no messing around...

So here was what was on the agenda?

 

Honey Caramel

Peanut Brittle

Peppermint Bark snowflakes

Tiger Bark

Ranch Chex mix

I then packaged them into cute boxes made from my Silhouette to give away to family... it was a fun day and I was exhausted at the end of the day! Totally worth the whirl wind of creating in the kitchen! I can't wait till next year. 

I think that it went well, we knew what we wanted to do ahead of time and we knew what each other was doing, a lot of the time, one would be string, cooking, measuring, while the other one did dishes, or got the next step in the recipe ready to go, so it really worked out well.  

Home Made Chocolate Covered Cherries (that's worth the wait!)

These are the best cordial, or chocolate covered cherries you will have... and they are easy and therapeutic to make!

For last week's artist's date I chose to make some chocolate covered cherries, I researched the best methods, or the way I wanted to do them, and recipes and found this tutorial helpful from my favorite source, YouTube, cheek it out!

My biggest hurdle for making these have always been that I couldn't eat them right away... I had to wait a whole week, seriously that's like a lifetime away I don't have patience! It was totally worth the wait and they are so good!!!

Cordial Cherries have always been on my"list" for years, so I thought why not? Cherries and sugar aren't that expensive, and I will know right away if it doesn't work out... so no pressure right? I am glad I took this challenge, They are so good! I estimated that with the chocolate and the cherries and sugar I spent about $8-$10 on materials... (so getting at least lest 60 cherries for $10, isn't too bad, and they are really yummy!) So really a decent frugal/economic handmade gift that the receiver would like! Now, as for my labor, it was expensive! We're not counting the time I spent, it's the process right?

I will say that it took longer than I thought it would, I dedicated a whole morning to making these things, and it took me into the afternoon. I do think that next time I will change somethings like having the fondant already to do before I start, would help, that really only took like 5 minutes to make, but I thought it needed to rest and be chilled a bit so it was easier to wrap around the cherry. I also would work in chunks, so do a third,  to get it into the fridge, so by the time I was done with the last cherry to get fondant on in, I could start on the first batch that go put into the fridge to dip the covered sugar cherry into chocolate. The whole process lasted about 4 hours, I think I could cut that down to about 3 hours, now that I have done a batch. It would also help if you didn't have little hands that also wanted to help... I love that my kids are in the kitchen with me, but this recipe was more of a repetitious thing, and having kids in the kitchen with you didn't make it much therapeutic... which is why I was doing this in the first place.

Here's the recipe, I adapted a bit from Laurice's Kitchen

Cherry Cordials
60-90 large maraschino cherries, stems attached, drained (I used a jar from Sams club, and used about half)
12-24 ounces semi sweet chocolate chips
1 cup sweetened condensed milk (not evaporated milk), 237ml 
1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon light corn syrup, 20ml
½ teaspoon almond extract, 2ml, or a splash if you don't like to measure like me...
4-6 cups confection sugar (powdered sugar), approximately 454 grams plus additional if needed ( needed a bit more.)

Mix the milk, corn syrup, extract and powdered sugar, by hand/mixer, until it resembles clay. Do not over mix, but more powdered sugar can be added if the mixture is too soft to handle.
Flatten a teaspoon of the sugar mixture into a thin disk and cover the maraschino cherry, pressing to seal the “clay” around the stem. Set cherries aside on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper. If the clay separates from the cherries, pat the cherries dry.

Melt the semi sweet chocolate in the top of a double boiler until everything is smooth and melted.
Dip each sugar-covered cherry in the candy covering slightly onto the stem to ensure the sugar is completely covered and allow the excess to drip off for a few seconds. Place each covered cherry in a small candy baking cup. Store the cherries in a sealed container for a week. Enjoy after the long wait!

If you have any questions on how I did it, comment bellow, and Happy creating!

Santa's Visit

I love how when I am walking and thinking about my next shindig I plan for my kids, how a budding Idea can become reality, this was the case for me while walking early November, I thought how can I get Santa to come to our house, with a bit of Christmas Cheer I made it happen!

We kept it light, I wanted it to be magical for my kids, and test the waters to see if I could pull off breakfast with Santa, I did! It was just our family, Santa brought a gift for each of the kids, and we sent him on his way with Waffles and Bacon and a plate of cookies. A perfect start to a perfect day!

The How: I asked a friend that my kids didn't know that well, He even had a Santa Suit,( I also had one, it's stored in our attic. I got the Santa suit for like $10 at a garage sale) I knew that most Saturday are busy so I wanted it to be early in the morning, so we chose for 8:30 am. Santa couldn't eat with us, so we gave some food to him before he left,

I told my daughter that I got a text for the North Pole that morning, that said that Santa is gong to be in our area and he wants to stop by to make sure they were being good... So Miss Thing had to wear her Santa Dress.

There is magic in the air when Santa shows up, something about feeling happy and peaceful there isn't a feeling in the world that can describe the feeling of wow! Santa came to visit us!


I think I may have started a new tradition for our family... lets see if it continues for the years to follow!

Quick Washi Tape Christmas Cards

Need that last minute Christmas card done like now? look no farther than your Silhoute software (free program even if you don't own a Silhouette) a color printer with card stock ready to go, and washi tape

I used a free Merry Christmas file from the Silhouette Design store, printed it on to card-stock as a the base for my card. I already had the Christmas Trees cut out from a previous card I did. (used the negative part, left the positive part for this project.)  Once the sentiment is printed and the base card is cut to size add your favorite Christmas type washi tape to it as a background, and then add your embellishment (white tree) onto the washi tape back ground you created, and you whipped up a card in like 5 min. Super awesome right? I suppose you could stamp a sentiment too, but I realized why stamp sentiments?

For a non software/printer card, you can still make a cute card, in even less time.. you just need some washi tape, a printed sentiment (usually from a sticker or from a paper pack to help with layers.) 

The key to this is to plan where you want the washi tape at, do you plan on using the whole card base and use washi tape as more of a pattern that is part of the card, or just a couple lines of tape at the bottom?

 I actually sat down on a Saturday afternoon and just played with some washi tape, with out an image/sentiment in mind and just played with the washi tape, but if you are a planner, you could have your printed sentiments out and decide how it would work out. I just love the freedom of playing with your paper crafting supplies,  and seeing what comes from just playing around. 

Keep like colors together, and use the golden design rules when it comes to using washi tape. For example: Use the rules of thirds, a small, medium and large pattern goes well. 

So there you have it some easy last minute card ideas, I suppose these would also work for tags too, if you wanted too. 

I really think that if you were to go out and buy 3 rolls of washi tape, and use your printer for a sentiment, buy some specialty paper that you can cut the sentiments out. I estimate you could get about 50 cards for about $10, which is really not bad!  

Paper Nativity

I love handmade nativities, so when I saw this nativity file from Carina Gardner. I thought this would be a great paper project for a cold morning. So it was, it was a fun easy project to put together. I  used some two tone brown paper for each shadow box with some white and black paper for the accent colors. The project came together quickly, which was a blessing this time of year, I have a ton of projects to do and not enough time to do them so this was a great project to "whip up"
It's a tradition that we display a handmade nativity (partly because I can't see spending money on a nativity when I can "make" one.

To give you a run down of some of the notes that helped me as I went, it's going to take about 2 12x12 sheets for each shadow box.

I bought four of the five shadow box files that she has, I opened them all up in one document on the Silhouette Design software, un-grouped everything, and then grouped all the white pieces together, and all the black pieces together for easier cutting.

I assembled the shadow boxes and I did glued the taps by the slits on the box.

Activity Advent Calendar That Builds Memories

This is how we celebrate the days leading up to Christmas, it's not an elf, or a piece of candy everyday, it's a simple way to share goodness with our family and friends... It's became one of the things we cherish and remember year to year.

I have wanted to do an advent calendar before I was pregnant with my oldest daughter, The idea of counting down the days till Christmas was always something I wanted to do with my kids, so 7 years later we are still doing this advent calendar. For the past week all I heard from my DD (darling daughter) was I can't wait till December 1st I can't wait to do a fun activity ever day, why cant we do this every day of the year? (she's right, why don't we?)  So here is my advent calendar, I will be completely honest, when I made this calendar, I didn't put much thought into the durability of the materials, luckily it's lasted longer than I thought it would.

I designed it to be able to move each box individually, which helps when you are counting down, Each little match box has a small activity on a piece of paper (which I will list at the end of this post.)

I bought some small match boxes from the dollar store, Menards also have them.


Wrap some Christmas scrap book paper (cut to size) around the match box, make sure your seam is at the bottom so you don't see it. You will want at least 6 different 12x12 sheets, you wont use up all the sheets, but I think a variety of patterned Christmas paper works well for this project.

I made up my numbers When I do this project again, I will find a paper pack that has the 25 numbers on it, (that was the most time consuming part, was designing/cutting  those darn numbers. Do your self a favor and use printed numbers that comes with the Christmas paper pack. Glue each number to the wrapped box.

For the activities, I have to be very strategic, for example, we have some activities that we do every year, on a Saturday, and Sunday for example,  the First Presidency's Christmas Devotional is always a set day, or our big family Christmas party for our Grandmother, we know a year in advance when the date will be. Then I add the fun traditions that we like to do, A family picture, make treats, the things we do to make Christmas a bit brighter for everyone. I add the small activities that we would do anyways to those busy nights.

Here is my list: (very doable not super artsy.)

See Santa at the Blank Park Zoo

See a Christmas Concert (usually a school Christmas concert the kids are in!)

Bake and decorate cookies (I do a baking day and a decorating day)

Sing Christmas Songs

Christmas Dance Party,( with party lights)

Family Christmas Party 12/12

Visit Santa 12/6

Read Christmas Books with just Christmas lights on

Camp out by the Christmas Tree

Make Treats (the kid kind that take like 2 ingredients)

Give treats to friends and family

Look at Christmas lights around Town

Decorate Christmas Ornaments

Make Thumbprint Christmas art (tree, wreath, candy cane)

Make Gift Tags (Glitter with glue then cut out with dies)

write a letter to Santa

act out nativity/read and watch a video about Christmas or Christ's birth

Watch Christmas Devotional  12/6

Make ginger bread house at the library 12/7

make Chocolate Dipped pretzels

Watch a Christmas movie with popcorn

Pizza Party

Make a gift to give to someone special

Christmas Pancake Breakfast

Go shopping  for family members and get a treat

Carole Bloom's Bittersweet Chocolate-Salted Caramel Truffles

All photographs from this post were photographed by Lisa Christensen at CouponSahmIAm.

You know those recipes that you see and wonder, yeah right, the recipe makes it look easy. Well this recipe really was that way for me. The real title should be Amazing Truffles that any one can make! or Just Double the Recipe Truffle's, They were so good that I only gave away half of them to family, and I kept the rest for my husband and I.

In Carole Bloom's cookbook Intensely Chocolate comes this great gem of easy candy making. No mold, or candy thermometer required, (my kind of recipe.) As always I have to give a shout out to Craftsy, for introducing me to a talented pastry cheif, Carole Bloom!

Ingredients:
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup water
1 Tablespoon of light corn syrup
3/4 cup of heavy whipping cream, NO Substitute
2 ounces of unsalted butter (1/2 stick, another reason to double the recipe)
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract, I used Vanilla Bean Paste (totally worth it)
1/2 teaspoon kosher, or fleur de sel or other fine grained finishing salt. (I used Kosher salt.)
3.5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, 70-72% cocoa, (I used Zoet premium Belgian Chocolate from Hy-Vee.) chopped fine. To be real, I got distracted with my children, and only some how managed to put in half the bar, it was really tasty and it was enough chocolate for me. Zoet, Chocolate is really a great deal for the money, I really like the taste, better than baking chocolate!

How I made them:

Add the sugar and the water into a 3-4 quart pot, don't go with a small pot, you will make a mess! Once you swish (don't stir,) the water and sugar together in a large 3-4 quart pot, add the corn syrup. Let it get hot and bubbly, you want the mixture to turn to a light amber color. Once the mixture starts bubbling, take a pastry brush with clean water, and brush around the sides where sugar wants to crystallize, do that twice. The mixture should start to turn amber color about 7 minutes, keep watch, it turns really fast, and you can't save it from getting a burnt taste.

while the sugar mixture is heating up, heat up the heavy whipping cream, in a small sauce pan. (don't scald it) Once the sugar mixture is at a perfect lighter amber color, add the hot heavy whipping cream together, be prepared to see it bubble up. stir, untill it's incoporated, Then add the rest of the ingredients, starting with the unsalted butter, make sure it's good and melted before adding the other things in, paying attention that your chopped chocolate is all melted together. That's it for the truffle part.

Now you can store the truffle sauce in a covered container in the fridge, for up to two weeks (just another reason to double.) I chilled mine for over night, and the next morning I made the truffles you want the sauce to be cold and pliable.

Shaping the truffles was easy: take a small 1-inch diameter round scoop and scoop out the chocolate, I did one at a time, I wanted them to be shaped in a ball, not a half circle dome, so I rolled them into my hand, the scoop is there to get the same size of ball every time. then I rolled them in cocoa, but you could dip them into your choice of tempered chocolate if you wanted too. Then lay them on a sheet, chill them for at least 15 minutes before serving.  They should keep in your fridge for about 2 weeks covered, or in the freezer for up to 3 months in a freezer safe container.




I plan to make this for some Christmas presents/goodies but instead of rolling them all in cocoa I will roll some of them in nuts, and powder sugar! You could do sprinkles or praline, they would present well with all four different coatings! I can't wait to make some for the Christmas season! Thank you Carole Bloom for your talented chocolate recipes!

Spa Treatment Christmas Gifts

I love making gifts for Christmas, I enjoy it, even more when my daughter can help me. These candy cane bath salts are a perfect gift to make with your pk daughter.  My inspiration came from this website,  of course I found it though Pintrest. 

 Here is what I did: I doubled the batch, and used red food coloring for just one batch, so I could get the candy cane effect. I did not wait for the soap to dry out a bit, I just put them into the Glad/Ziplock containers. (my containers were from Hy-Vee, about .50 cents a piece- a bit more affordable than other containers.)

DIY Bubbly Bath Salts

Ingredients:
6 Cups of Epsom Salt
¾ Cup of Liquid Soap (I use Mr. Bubbles baby bath (origanal scent)
10 drops of Peppermint Essential oils
3 to 4 Drops of Food red Coloring for one batch
Instructions:
Stir the soap, oils, and food coloring together.  Evenly pour over the salt, and stir until the salt is evenly coated.  Spread bath salt out in a thin layer on a cookie sheet covered with wax paper, and allow it to air dry overnight.  Pack into a glass container of your choice.
Directions:
To use, pour ¼ cup of the salt under running water while drawing a bath. Relax in the tub and enjoy!
Tips:

• Bathing with bath salts stimulates circulation, and hydrates your skin.
• Use mini jars, create a fun pack of three bath salts in different scents.
• Bath salts can open your pores to purify your skin, cleansing away dirt, sweat, and unwanted toxins.
• Enjoy the full benefits of the aromatherapy powers of essential oils.
• Make some lavender bath salt to relax and ease nervous tension.

Sugar Scrub:

I had a dear friend over to help me make this sugar scrub, and I feel in love with it that I had to give it to my other dear friends and family members, This stuff is awesome! Thanks Sarah Day for the recipe.

So generally you use 3 part sugar to 1 part oil, we used half white sugar and half brown sugar, so to make about 3 containers full of sugar scrub this is what you will need:

1 1/2 cups white sugar
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 cup of coconut oil (either melt it or cream it) (I have used olive oil too, but it had to much of a scent that I didn't much care for but it's also really good on your skin)
10 ish drops of Cinnamon Leaf Essential oils

Mix it together and put it into the containers. Decorate containers and put a label on it. I googled search for a label for both the sugar scrub and the peppermint scrub and found two that I loved. Then I printed them out and Cut them out. I am impressed at how easy and affordable both were to make and the results were fantastic! never again will I buy either of these items when they work so good on my skin, and how fun and easy it was to make.

Apple Butter Gift

Apple Butter is so good on home made bread! When my mother In-law said it would be nice to make some for the Grandma's I thought duh of course I can and while I am at it Make some for all the other wonderful people I know! Apples were plentiful this year in Iowa, like double the yield than normal! so every one I knew was making apple treats this Autumn. I am blessed to have a friend that had access to two very yummy apple trees this year.

My apple butter recipe is from pickyourown.org ( I love this website for ways to preserve produce, great tips on how to preserve fruits and veggies, I also like it for dehydration.

now on to the fun part, decorating the cute quilted mason jar.

For the Bow on top I used Silhouette Honeycomb bow Design ID #27126 For the paper I used Paper Studio Christmas gold foiled paper, Red polka dot for the bottom layer and the honeycomb layer I used the gold leaf paper in the paper stack.

For the Tag, I used a simple tag that came with the soft ware, and the Apple Design ID #31555, I used ribbon red and white striped ribbon that came from Hobby Lobby's fabric ribbon section and adhered that to the tag towards the bottom.

I attached the bow with hot glue to the lid, and used red bakers twine to attached the tag to the jar.

I can see this bow working for most things that need that extra something on top of a lid, so enjoy decorating your food gifts!

Home made dipped oreo's

I love giving home made gifts, and anything that is dipped in chocolate is even better, I say. So why not dip Oreo's in melted mint chocolate? The results were amazing! add some sprinkles and they were delicious!. Here is my recipe:

2 bags of mint chocolate chips (mine were Hershey's)
a Tbl. of oil (add when you are melting the chips in the microwave.
2 Packages of Oreo'es (I like the double stuff ones)

Melt the chocolate by adding the oil, in a microwave container (I use my Pampered Chef Micro cooker) at 30 sec. intervals, stirring ever 30 secs. Then one by one I dip the Oreo's into the chocolate with a dipping fork (regular fork also works) and tap the access chocolate off the cookie before laying it down on either wax paper or on parchment paper. I stored these in the fridge for about 2 weeks before I gave them away as gifts and they were fine.

For Packaging, I found some really cute tins at a garage sale for like .10cents, and thought that is a perfect Christmas treat present container! I snatched all 5 up. I cleaned them up, with a damp soapy cloth, and once it was dry I used tissue paper to line the tins.  Here is my finished product.