November birthday

Woke up this morning to a cold, rainy, blustery day.  A perfect day to stay holed up in the workroom.   Made a quick birthday card for our sweet Angie.  I'd gotten her a gift card earlier and wanted to secure it inside the card.  So I made another of my quick paper pockets from a piece of card stock (see this tutorial) I ran through my big shot in an embossing folder.  Wrapped it around the gift card for a quick measurement, folded it, cut my notches, taped it together, added a ribbon and secured it inside the card. Wa-la.  

She loved it!  It was so nice to see her smile.  Have a great day and I'll talk to you again soon!

Thankful

Today is the beginning of the Thanksgiving holiday for our house.  We are blessed to have this day to decompress and reflect on everything we're thankful for, before the big day tomorrow.  We started off slow with a leisurely breakfast.  Tea in my favorite tea cup and cranberry scones fresh from the oven.   Sitting around just talking and petting the dog as she wanders between us catching crumbs before they have a chance to hit the floor.

These are very quick to mix together and yummy with butter and a little drizzle of honey or just plain (my DH's favorite way).  Here is my recipe.

Cranberry Scones

2 cups flour

2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon of salt

1/4 cup of sugar

4 tablespoons unsalted butter

3/4 to 1 cup milk

3/4 cup of dried cranberries

Mix dry ingredients.  Cut in butter until crumbly, I use a dough cutting tool but a food processor will work too, just don't over process.  Add milk a little at a time and blend well; dough should be sticky but hold together.  Flour a flat surface and knead the dough a couple of times.  Pat it out into a round shape about 1/2 an inch thick and cut the round into triangles.  Bake at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes.

  Makes about 12 scones. 

 Sometimes I add orange juice to the recipe if I have some in the fridge, if you do, cut back on the milk in an equal amount up to 1/2 a cup.  These are great hot from the oven or rewarmed in the microwave.

I hope your holiday preparations are happy and eventful!  I'll talk to you again soon.

Pepperminty cuteness

Just a quick post about these cute peppermint striped clothespins.  They just make me smile!  Have a wonderful Monday all day long.  I'll talk to you again soon.

Paper pockets

 Paper pockets seem to be all "that" lately, at least on several of the blogs that I visit on a regular basis.  I am always trying to figure out a way to keep up with the trends by making it myself.  I am also an instant results kind of person.  I don't want to have to order something and then wait for it to arrive before I can start playing around with the vision I have in my head.  So, this little tutorial is all about my attempt at making my own cute paper pockets.  You could also modify it to make envelopes since you are creating it to the size of your "filling".  My pockets needed to hold 2 recipe cards (see the previous post)  I needed to make a bunch of them and I wanted them to reflect a certain theme.  Here is where serendipity played a part, I was at Target to pick up that universal tool, duct tape, when I happened by the dollar bins.  There I found small rolls of brightly colored holiday wrapping paper.  So I picked up a couple, along with my duct tape.  I thought the paper would be the perfect weight for my pockets.

First I measured the length and width of my recipe cards and added an inch to the length and then doubled the width and added 2 1/2 inches.  This way when I wrapped it around the cards I would have some overlap to glue together.  I took the paper and rolled it out on my large cutting mat and used my rotary cutter and quilting rulers to cut it into strips.

 Next, I wrapped it around the 2 cards and creased the bottom to get my folds.  I unwrapped it and cut notches where the two fold lines intersected on each side.  (see below)

 I added a small square of white text paper to the top edge of the pocket to reinforce the area where I was cutting a thumb notch.  Then punched the notch with a circle punch, just using half of it.

 I folded the two outer flaps on the bottom of the pocket up toward the top of the pocket.

 Then folded the two sides over, making sure the overlap covered the printing along the side of the paper.

 Unfolding the top side I applied tape and then carefully folded it back over.

The final step was to apply tape to the bottom flap and fold it up to create a nice clean looking bottom edge.

Done!  It seems like a lot of steps but I was able to make 100 of them in a very short amount of time.

Hope you found this tutorial helpful.  As I said above, you can modify this to fit any size project and by adding more to your length measurement you can also add a top flap to make it into an enclosed envelope.  Let me know if you try it or if you have any questions.

Have a great week and I'll talk to you again soon.

Cookie Exchange

I am helping with the preparations for a holiday cookie exchange.  I'm making the invitations, yes, 96 of them.  I found this cute wrapping paper in the $1 bin at Target.  It works perfectly with our theme of peppermint candy and candy canes.  I'm planning on posting a tutorial for the envelopes later this week/weekend.  Inside the envelope are two recipe cards.  The first one is the typed up invitation with all the exchange directions and the second is a blank recipe card for them to RSVP with by filling it out with their cookie recipe.  Next, I printed out sheets with "You're invited" and punched them out with a tag punch, a little distressing on the edges, a cute candy die cut and bow and it's ready to be attached.  This is one of the prototypes so I used embroidery floss for the bow on the tag but I found some cute baker's twine that coordinates exactly with the wrapping paper so for the real thing I'm going to use that.  I painted the natural wood clothespin white and then added peppermint stripes to it as well. A little candy cane to finish it off and it's done.  Now, just 95 more to go!

I went back and forth about the closure for the top but decided that the peppermint clothes pin was too cute not to do. 

Do you have any great suggestions for an amazing cookie recipe? Leave me a comment, we could do a virtual exchange, post a pic of your cookies in the comments.  I am looking forward to hearing about your cookie creations!  I'll talk to you again soon.