A Little Bird Told Me....

I got a new Cricut cartridge recently - Just Because Cards. I LOVE it, even if it is a little nerve wracking at first, until you learn how to make the cuts.

With this cart, you have to cut everything for the card at the card size, not at the "real" size you want it. For this, I used a 7" card, so my dial was set at 7" for every cut I made.

I loved the little bird and embossed him a little eye. :-)

Snow White!

My toddler is obsessed with Snow White. I don't have the Disney Cricut cartridges, so I worked with what I have :-) 

So I made a paper doll. Used the hair from the pilgrim (hehe), the headband is the career woman, the dress is the princess.

(All from Paper Dolls Dress Up.)

It's not exact, but she seems to like it :-)

Baking Corn Muffins, WW-Style

I was making a taco casserole and thought a good corn muffin would be the perfect accompaniment for it. I found this recipe on Recipezaar but decided to tweak it to be a low point recipe. My changes are below in red!

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups yellow cornmeal
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour   (white whole wheat flour)
• 1/3 cup sugar (1/4 cup)
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten (1 whole egg, 1 egg white)
• 1 1/2 cups milk (skim)
• 3/4 cup butter, melted and cooled slightly (1/3 cup)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350*.
2. Grease well 9 cups of a 12 cup muffin tin.
3. In a large bowl, mix together the dry ingredients, making a well in the center. Stir in the liquid ingredients until just combined, being careful not to overmix.
4. The batter may be lumpy.
5. Fill the muffin cups about three-quarters full.
6. Bake for 18-20 minutes until lightly golden or a cake tester inserted into center of muffin comes out with moist crumbs attached.
7. Do not overbake.some residual heat will finish muffin.

Here's my mini-me, complete with apron, helping me make the muffins.

Adding the milk..

Stir well!

Fill mini-muffin tin.

I think we got approval :-)  Each corn muffin is ONE Weight Watchers point!

Birthday Card

My cousin's birthday was a few weeks ago. I sent him this card.

I used VersaMark ink to watermark the gold card base (hard to see in these pictures).

The "Happy birthday" and the bird are stamped with VersaMark and embossed. I super puffy heart Ranger extra fine embossing powder for embossing words. The flourish on the bottom is stamped with VersaFine ink.

ABC Book #3

HUGE hurdle crossed this week with my ABC book! All of the pages are COVERED! :-) I had to focus and sit down to do it yesterday, but my goodness, it's done :-)   I also inked all the edges, because I didn't like the glaring white edges around this beatifully colorful book.

These facing pages will be B-C-D and E-F-G-H-I.

These pages are for I-J-K & L-M

N-O-P & Q-R-S

T-V-U & W-X-Y

Z will stand alone on the back cover. It's gets a full page spread :-) Because, you know, it's so easy to come up with things that start with Z.....

Indulge!

This is a birthday card for a dear friend (who used to be a little kid, but is now a beautiful grown woman!) She deserved some indulgence for her birthday this year. And I've been dying to use the "birthday calories" stamp!

RAK #3

This card went to a hard-working friend I have from *middle school*.  She's a dear friend to me and she works herself to death, so I thought she could use a break. 

The orange circle is a purchased card.  I cut the soda from the Doodlecharms cartridge on my Cricut. The foam on top is my favorite -- it's a liquid applique pen!!  You just layer it on and use a heat tool (normally used for embossing) to puff it up! It turns out cute as marshmallows, snow and whipped cream.

Imagine the teal paper is actually a gift card.