Wedding Happiness!

Today I have a little wedding card to share with you!


I used the super duper cute Costumes from Wonderland set from MFT. I think she's the Queen of Hearts - but doesn't she make an adorable bride??? I don't know if you can tell in this photo, but I paper-pieced her dress with white textured dot paper. The crown is blinged up with a bit of Stickles.

I made this card for my niece Tanya and my brand new nephew Chip. They were married last weekend in Michigan - the main reason for our trip.


The wedding was in a beautiful location overlooking Lake Huron, aka My Mom's Lake. Wasn't it nice of my mom to let them use her lake as the backdrop for the wedding? :-) It was a rainy day, but thankfully the rain let up just long enough for them to have their ceremony outside as planned.

Here's my handsome boy at the wedding:


And my pretty girl!


On all the chairs were rocks, and after the ceremony we all walked down to the lake and threw our rocks into the water, after adding happy thoughts for the new couple to the rocks. This was the first thing that made this The Most Fun Wedding Ever in the eyes of my four year old. He would spend all day every day throwing rocks into lakes if I let him. Oh and two year olds love throwing rocks too, by the way. We took a quick family photo while we were down there.


Another thing that made this The Most Fun Wedding Ever? Bubbles!!


Of course there was also the entire table filled with candy, the cookies with dinner and the wedding cake. Hello, sugar high! But the kids were in heaven.

I loved the beautifully simple centerpieces on the tables at the reception - the rocks were perfect for a wedding on the lake.


They also had candles hanging from the trees - so pretty.


One last photo of me and my sweet boy before I go.


Hooray for fall weddings on Lake Huron! And congratulations to Tanya & Chip!

• Stamps: Costumes from Wonderland from MFT, All Occasion Messages from Hero Arts
• Paper: Kraft notecard (Hero Arts), white & celery cardstock (Stampin' Up), blue & white embossed cardstock (Bazzill)
• Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Copic markers
• Accessories: Nestabilities Labels 8 die (Spellbinders), scallop edge die (Papertrey Ink), StarDust Stickles (Ranger), bling (Amuse), foam tape

Texas Tuesday - oops!

Hey y'all! Today is a Texas Tuesday, a day when I usually try to post a Texas-inspired creation. But so far I've spent my day traveling back to Texas! We were on vacation in Michigan for the past 10 days, visiting family and attending a wedding. It didn't even cross my mind to get a card scheduled before I left, so boo, I have nothing Texas-y to share with you today! Sorry! But a couple of my fellow Texas Tw0-steppers do, so hop on over and check out Mark, Tina & Betty. And I'll be back soon to bore you all with vacation photos, heh heh.

Sweet New Baby

Since you haven't seen an actual card on my blog in quite a while, I thought I'd surprise you all and share one tonight.


I tried making a couple cards to submit to the Paper Crafts call last week. This one was for baby cards in non-traditional colors. I wasn't completely thrilled with the card but I submitted it anyway - figure you never know unless you try! Well of course it was a big ol' reject - surprise, surprise! LOL! But this card was sorta like ripping off the band-aid - I did it, I survived - and now maybe I'll actually try submitting again. I've been wanting to for a couple years now and I couldn't get up the courage. For real. So now I'm good to go! :-)

• Stamps: CL280 Elephants, CL264 Precious Baby Boy, CG139 Cling Dots (Hero Arts)
• Paper: Kraft notecard (Hero Arts), white, red & orange cardstock (Stampin' Up)
• Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Stampin' Up red, white gel pen
• Accessories: red brad, Swiss Dots embossing folder, Spellbinders Labels 8 Nestabilities die

What's Cookin' Wednesday - a repeat for some...

Hi there! Today's recipe is the very first one I shared when I had it in my head to create a cooking blog. I've since come to my senses about that, but this recipe is so delicious I figured it was worth a cut and paste over to a Wednesday post. I apologize to those of you who already read it on the food blog - all three of you...! :-)

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Tonight's dinner was Chicken Tikka Masala. First let me just say, it was YUMMY!


After previewing it at the library, I decided I had to own Jamie Oliver's "Jamie's Food Revolution" cookbook.


It's completely fabby. I've always loved Jamie, but I love him even more after all he's done to try to improve school lunches and get everyone cooking at home. In the start of this book, he asks all readers to take the pass it on pledge - to commit to mastering at least one recipe from each chapter in the book, and then teaching friends to make those recipes. I guess this blog (ETA: Wednesday posts on my stamping blog!) is my own little way of passing it on!

So to break in my new cookbook I turned to the chapter on curries! If you don't have the cookbook (but you should!), the Chicken Tikka Masala recipe can be found HERE. Please note, it's not the same as the Chicken Tikka Masala recipe he has on his website, that one looks more complicated. This one was rather simple to make, and I really loved how it turned out. Jamie says you can make your own curry paste, or just buy a brand from England called Patak's that he says is quite high quality and good. Happily I found this brand in the international aisle at my local grocery store! A couple other differences for me - I used light coconut milk rather than full-fat. In the recipe he says to keep a close eye on the curry as it may get too dry - mine wasn't even close to drying out but completely soupy, I'm not sure why? Maybe the light coconut milk made a difference with that? Jamie wants you to add "red chiles" to many recipes - he loves his chiles! Well I can't find "red chiles" here, so I just used a serrano instead, cut up with seeds and all. This recipe is from a British site - for conversion, I used a 14oz can of diced tomatoes and 14oz can of the coconut milk. And I used peanut as my base oil. It was served over rice and topped with plain yogurt (I used Greek, yummy!), sliced almonds and cilantro.

If you try the recipe let me know what you think!

Funny Photos

Do you all read The Pioneer Woman? If you don't, you really should. Beautiful photography, yummy recipes, hilarious writing. So this week she's having people submit their funny photos. Be sure to check it out on her photography page, it will make you smile for sure. It reminds me of this favorite old photo of Courtney, hee hee.


Happy Friday!

What's Cookin' Wedne...errr.. Thursday!

You know what's pathetic? Trying out a recipe a week ago... taking all the photos... and then not managing to get a silly little blog post scheduled on time. Doh! I guess I'll never win Power Blogger of the Year. Oh woe is me...

Anywho - I have an incredible recipe to share with you today. In fact, it's so delicious and sinful I'm fairly certain it's illegal in some states! ;-) You all know my friend Lydia, aka understandblue, right? Well this is her recipe for... TOMATO PIE!!! Yeah, baby.


Someday I will share recipes on here that don't make you gain 5lbs just reading about them. But today is not that day. I was able to buy fresh, local tomatoes and basil at the farmer's market for this recipe, which of course made this all the yummier.

Start by lining your pie plate with a crust. You can make your favorite crust from scratch. Or you can do what I do and buy an already made one...! Here's a little secret tip from my mama, brush a little egg white on your crust!


It helps to reduce the sogginess. After brushing I baked off the crust for about 5 minutes at 350 to seal it a little. (By the way, on my bucket list? To someday learn how to make my pie crust look more pretty than wonky...)

Slice ~6 tomatoes, and it's best to use a firm drier variety, like Roma - the juicier, the gushier it gets in the pie. Lydia recommended squeezing out all the seeds and moist parts around the seeds, so I did that too. Layer them between paper towels to dry. This is my stack of 'maters after all the squeezing. Next time I think I'll be even more obsessive about this step!

Sprinkle a little flour onto your crust, then put your first tomato layer. Sprinkle with flour, salt & pepper then add fresh basil leaves. Repeat until all tomatoes and basil are used. Mound it up a bit like apple pie, because they cook down.

In a large bowl, mix equal parts mayonnaise and shredded cheddar, and spoon it over the top of the pie evenly, all the way to the edges of the crust. I used about a cup of each to cover my pie. And now a direct quote from Lydia: Top with more cheese, because that's what God wants. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes, or until lightly browned.

Sooooooooooooooooooooooo goooooooooooooooooood.

Happy Cookin',

Texas Tuesday gone batty.

Hey y'all, it's Texas Tuesday time! Today I have a card featuring one of the coolest things about my town Austin - our Mexican free-tail bat colony!


It's the largest urban bat population in the world. At dusk a million or so bats fly out from under the Congress Avenue bridge downtown. People gather to watch and cheer on the bats, who are off to rid our fair city of 20,000 or so nasty mosquitoes (and other bugs) each night.


I adore this beautiful stamp from Texana Designs honoring our dear bats. And I adore Jimmye Sue, owner of Texana Designs, who sent me this stamp for my birthday! She is one of the nicest ladies around. This stamp is so Austin and I absolutely love it!

Last night I was in the mood to watercolor. That's about all there is to this card!

I've added a list of my Texas Tuesday friends to my sidebar - click around and see what other fabulous Texas creations were shared this time around. Definitely make sure and visit Mark today at Deadbeat Designs - he has a new Texas ornament stamp that I am LOVING!!

Happy trails,

• Stamps: Bats and Bridge by Granny Heifer for Texana Designs
• Paper: Hero Arts Kraft, Stampin' Up purple, watercolor paper
• Ink: StazOn Black, Watercolor crayons
• Accessories: black embroidery floss, scissors for edge distressing

WSC with MFT!

It seems I went a little nutty with the colors on this card...


Kinda fun though, isn't it? And doesn't that message rock? hee hee Oh, if only! I played along with the latest Wednesday Stamp Club challenge in the My Favorite Things forum on SCS, this time a sketch:


I stamped the spoon & cake "background papers" with the stamps from this Lovin' from the Oven set from MFT, and of course paper-pieced WTG's apron. Love this set!!

Thanks for stopping by,

• Stamps: Lovin' from the Oven from MFT
• Paper: Stampin' Up green, GP white, American Crafts DP
• Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Copic markers
• Accessories: Star Dust Stickles, buttons, embroidery floss

It's beginning to look a lot like... Halloween!!!

Yay!! I love Halloween. All the creepy crawly goodness. It's such a fun holiday! I like to collect Halloween stamps - I don't know why, it's not like I ever really send Halloween cards to anyone. But I can't help it! I LOVE THEM!! And this month's theme over at the Hero Arts blog is Everything Autumn, so it was the perfect excuse to break out some of the cutest little Frankensteins I've ever seen!


Frank and the background bat stamp were both little clear stamp singles from a pack called Stamp It: Halloween. I was inspired by a sketch from Taylor, but that challenge is already over. I thought I was playing along with the current Play Date Cafe colors, but wow, I don't think I got it quite right! On my laptop last night the color looked more purple, but now on my desktop computer it looks completely magenta! Oops!


The sentiment from Monster Fun went perfectly with Frankenstein, I thought. I cut the little shape around it freehand, that's why it's a bit wonky, LOL! The fun pumpkin stickpin is last year's Making Memories, and the little sparkly black trim is Making Memories from this year! I love their Halloween stuff, it makes me squeal every year! And I thought the way I knotted that trim made it look a little like a bat, and that made me happy. :-) I also added a little Glossy Accents to give Frank some shine:


So how much do you know about the Hero Arts blog and the Hero Arts Flickr group?? Every month on the blog there's a monthly contest - you could win a $50 shopping spree! Here's the info about this month's Everything Autumn contest, check it out! And Hero Arts also has a group on Flickr. The people there are all so nice and fun and supportive! You really should check it out if you haven't before! And as a matter of fact, this card is part of a little Blog Hop of cards from members of the Flickr group! Head on over to the Hero Arts September HOP thread to check out all the links!! Or if you've been hopping, that means you got here by way of Karen and your next stop is Anita! Have fun!

Thanks for stopping by today,

• Stamps: CM004 Stamp It - Halloween, CL391 Monster Fun from Hero Arts
• Paper: Bazzill, Stampin' Up card stock
• Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Palette Noir, Copic markers
• Accessories: Glossy Accents (Ranger), circle punch, embossing folder (Swiss Dots - Provo Craft), purple ribbon, Making Memories stick pin & trim

Johnny says "Happy Birthday Sankari!"

Yesterday one of my favorite people in all of Stampland, Sankari, celebrated a birthday! As many of you know, she's the cohostess of my favorite challenge blog, Cinema Saturday Creative Challenge! Yesterday her best blogging buddy, Brooke, had the fabby idea of posting cards for Sankari. Well I'm a day late, but I hope this will still make Sankari smile! Of course I had to make her a Johnny Depp card, since I understand all too well Sankari's love of this brilliant actor!


For those of you who don't know Sankari - I photoshopped her face in there. hee hee!!! Hopefully she'll think that's funny and not creepy. :-) I grabbed a photo from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow to use, because that also happens to be this week's Cinema Saturday challenge!


Of course Sankari would pick a Johnny Depp movie on her birthday weekend! YAY! This is actually one of my fave JD movies, he's so cute & funny in it. The rule for this week was to add a Halloween tree, so I just cut one out of cardstock. I also decided to add little paint dots all over the card, since that's one of Sankari's favorite things to do. Yikes! Turns out I should leave that to the professional! Now I am even more in awe of how perfect Sankari's always look - and that she doesn't smudge them!! I guess I'm way too impatient to wait for paint to dry...! I used my good old snap stamps to spell out Johnny's birthday wish to his 2nd favorite fan (me being his favorite, of course!). ;-)

So... A VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU SANKARI!! I hope you like your card. :-)

• Stamps: Karen Foster snap stamps
• Paper: GP white, Stampin' Up teal, black
• Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black
• Accessories: black mesh trim from Taylored Expressions, red ruffled ribbon, pearl pin, heart punch, Adirondack dimensional pearls (butterscotch)

Little girls...

Some day I'll land in the nut house

With all the nuts and the squirrels
There I'll stay
Locked away
'til the prohibition of
Little girls.

Nice, aye? Would you believe that lovely verse inspired this card...


LOL! I'm a couple hours late, but tonight I played along with the latest Cinema Saturday Challenge, which was the musical Annie!


I was inspired by Carol Burnett's lament about how much she despises everything about little girls. But of course I don't despise little girls. Actually, I'm quite found of them, especially a certain two year old little girl. :-) So I decided to make mine a happy card about enjoying the "little things" in life and pulled out my super cute Hero Arts Girl Holding Flowers. And I have to admit, the idea to make a card about enjoying the little things was my sister's! Thanks Laura!

Are you wondering why I went a little nuts with the buttons on this? I also played along with a fun little challenge from over on Twitter - Teri suggested we make a card with 23 items on it. Yes, 23!! The item I chose was buttons. I thought for a minute about tying thread in each button to finish them off. But then I decided I'd rather stick a fork in my eye and didn't do it. HA! I like them all just hanging out there on the bottom of the card anyway.

Before I go, if you're curious, here's Carol Burnett's performance from the movie, circa 1982!

Happy Stamping!

• Stamps: H5330 Girl Holding Flowers from Hero Arts
• Paper: Kraft (Hero Arts), White (Georgia Pacific), Black (Stampin' Up)
• Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Copic markers, black Glaze pen, white gel pen
• Accessories: Buttons, Cuttlebug Swiss Dots folder, scallop edge punch, ribbon, staples

What's Cookin' Wednesday!

Hello hello! Do you remember last Wednesday, I introduced this new feature and told you about my spaghetti pie entry into a Hatch chile recipe contest at my local Whole Foods Market? Well guess what... I WON!!!! Woohoo!! Happy dance!!! I'm so very excited! But I have to admit, it wasn't truly a recipe contest. It's not like anyone taste-tested my recipe against the others and decided mine was the yummiest. I was just the luckiest as far as getting people to vote for me via "retweet" on Twitter. So - if you're one of those kind people that did vote, I thank you! But even if that's the way the contest worked, I will admit - my recipe *IS* super duper yummy! :-) Did anyone try it??

Today I thought I'd share with you the other yummy recipes in the Whole Foods contest! They all sound fantastic, and I'm especially impressed by the ones who thought to make a dessert with the chiles! So cool! Here's the list:

- Hatchorizo Pizza by @Sir_mXe, recipe and photo
- Hatch & Butternut Donut Holes w/ Hatch Drinking Chocolate by @sawiff, recipe and photo
- I SCREAM (with delight) SANDWICH by @rachellenaustin, recipe and photo
- Lobster, Bacon, Hatch, Fontina by @baconator, recipe and photo
- Hatch Chile & Roasted Corn Polenta Cups w/ Goat Cheese & Maple Bacon by @natanyap, recipe and photo
- Hatch Green Chile Apple Pie by @madisoncraig, recipe and photo
- Enchiladas Veracruzanas w/ Hatch Tomatillo Salsa and Grilled Sirloin by @maxparfait, recipe and photo
- Shrimp Cocktail Stuffed Avocados by @jessesco, recipe and photo
- Gluten Free Sweet Potato Biscuit w/ Goat Cheese & Hatch Chile Jelly by @jennahiller, recipe and photo
- Hot & Boozy Hatch Bread Pudding by @cmvara, recipe and photo
- Panko Crusted, Hatch Chile Infused Chicken by @BostonGarden, recipe and photo
- Healthy Southwestern Eggrolls by @AustinDirtyDog, recipe and photo
- Hatch Chile BBQ Sloppy Joes by @Recessionrecipe, recipe and photo

And of course mine:
- Smoky Spicy Cheesy Yummy Hatch Spaghetti Pie by @stampinlibby, recipe and photo

I hope to make my way through the list and try them ALL, but I started with @AustinDirtyDog, aka Blair, and her Healthy Southwestern Eggrolls. Thanks to this contest, I've got to chat with Blair on Twitter and I like her - she's fun and just really nice. She owns a local Austin business - Dirty Dog Self-Serve Dogwash - if you're in the area, get yourself a clean puppy!!

I love the idea of these eggrolls! I never think of making eggrolls, and they are so easy! And this recipe helped me see you can fill them with whatever you like, and then bake them in the oven - no need to deepfry! My husband is a picky eater so he wouldn't care for the beans & corn she included (but I do, yum!) so I think I'll make these again for dinner sometime and maybe use hamburger, mushrooms, onion, cilantro, etc. This recipe is a great base to get your imagination going in the kitchen!

Rolling eggrolls may seem tricky, but it's super easy - just like rolling a burrito. Just start with a little filling in the center:


Fold up the bottom:


Fold in the two sides:


And sort of roll it over to finish it, placing the seam on the bottom. Mine doesn't look perfect. It looks homemade. :-)


Here's the lot of them on my baking sheet, ready to go into the oven! (Note to self: get a nice, new baking sheet if you're going to display photos of your cookware on your blog! Eek!)


And the finished product, yum!


I had some extra "dip" and used it for quesadilla filling the next day, along with some cheddar. Super yummy. Thanks for the great recipe, @AustinDirtyDog!

Until next time,