Golden Moments

Fourth of July BBQ

Hope you had a wonderful holiday weekend - mine was full of sunshine (for a change!) as well as family, friends, and lots of CHA work :)  Would you also believe that we had another hard drive failure? and not on our old computer but on my new Mac! grrrr... luckily it was our external backup drive that failed this time, but I've been hesitant to do much with my photos until the new external drive arrived and I could do a proper backup. Now everything is safely backed up, so I felt comfortable uploading my photos from the weekend and thought I would share.

I didn't think to get a photo because once these came off the grill it was hard to think about anything else besides eating - but if you are looking for a fabulous recipe for BBQ baby back ribs I highly recommend this one - yum! They were followed by these for dessert:

Stephen was a big help frosting these babies - and finger licking was kept to a minimum :)

and I finally had an excuse to use my new cupcake holder thingy

After dinner we all checked out the vege garden. I was SO excited to spot my first tomato

it's been so cool and rainy, that I have broccoli sprouting in July!

by the pool the hydrangeas are finally filling in a bit - one of my favorite flowers

July 4th is Bando's birthday - he turned 4. Poor dog...no one wants to play ball when there is a pool to play in

aren't my nieces sweet? they are growing so fast...sigh. Ella is a year older than Elizabeth and had fun demonstrating her superior swimming skills :)

Elizabeth is a much more timid swimmer...but she has perfected looking cute :)

Adorable, huh?

well, that seems to be it for summer...we are now back to cool and rainy weather...and the weeds are growing, well, like weeds.

Enjoy!

Have a great 4th!

Hope you are having a great summer - we have had nothing but rainy days here in Massachusetts - the paper had instructions for building an ark yesterday - it was pretty cute - you can see it here.

Here are a couple of projects I made recently using Karen Foster Design's new Patriotic Collection. 

This was a particularly fun year at "Alfred Day" in Maine as James was asked to be a judge in the Clam Chowder Cookoff (he is wearing his official hat in the photo). From the time James had his first taste of chowder at two years old it was love at first bite and would always ask for some whenever we ate out. He was the only non-adult judge and took his responsibilities very seriously...he was a bit disappointed that his favorite didn't win...the winning chowder had all kinds of seafood and James felt it shouldn't have been included in the Clam Chowder competition (he was so cute that day!)

These are a few photos from a trip to NYC where we visited Ellis Island, Lady Liberty and the site of the World Trade Center.

Hope you have a great holiday weekend! We are just hoping for a little break in the weather...

Best $$ spent on scrapbooking in years!

Happy Monday morning all! Last day of school here - yay! However, Stephen isn't there...instead he is home with flu-like symptoms - bringing him in to the doctor's this morning and hoping it's just a random virus and not the swine flu - what a way to start your summer vacation! Also, Stephen's soccer team won their playoff games this weekend and is heading to the state championships next weekend and I know he'll be devastated if he has to miss...so we are hoping for the best.

Okay, what is the best money I've spent in a long time? and actually not just on scrapbooking, although it will certainly help with that too. I have to thank my friend Sue Neal for this suggestion. I recently have had all of my negatives (two shopping bags full - no I wasn't very organized when it came to this LOL) and all of my slides converted into high resolution digital images. I had checked into doing this a few years ago, but my local photo shop had wanted so much money it was going to be much too expensive. Then I was going to buy one of these and start doing it myself (although it probably would have taken me years to get through all the pictures). Sue told me about having this done at Costco and that the quality was great and the price was reasonable - thanks Sue!

I can't tell you how much fun it's been looking these photos - and how thrilled I am that now I can actually print them, resize them, make slideshows, etc. So many memories have surfaced looking through these pictures - I still have thousands to sort through - and can't imagine doing this without Lightroom - but it is going to be so awesome to finally have all of these easily accessible.

Also looking forward to a bit of this - hanging out by the pool and reading a good book. Those chairs are one of my favorite places to spend a summer afternoon. I created this layout for Me & My BIG Ideas.

Strawberry Heaven

One of my favorite times in the garden is when I first see this

and this is our haul from the other day of our still intact berries (there was probably half this much again which had already been sampled by the birds!)

I've already made Strawberry Shortcake twice - you can see my favorite recipe for that here. I wanted to try something new and went through my pile of recipes-in-waiting and came up with these. I was a little put off by the negative reviews on the MSL site, but I thought I'd give it a go anyway and am glad I did! 

I think the key is using really ripe, sweet strawberries. I have put a lot of effort into keeping my vegetable and strawberry patch 100% organic and I think it has really paid off in terms of the taste of the produce. These strawberries are the sweetest, juiciest berries I have ever eaten - there is just nothing like eating a berry you picked a few minutes before!

I started by making the berry puree in the food processor and getting the other ingredients together.

I found the key was creaming the butter until it was very light and fluffy and then sifting the flour before measuring it. You want everything just barely mixed and the batter should be very delicate and a soft pink color.

Instead of the frosting in the recipe, I decided to use a favorite trick of mine in the summer. My friend Laurie gave me this recipe and it is so easy - and much less fattening than a frosting recipe with 2 sticks of butter! I took a photo of this and am mad at myself for deleting it by mistake - sorry!

Anyway, the "frosting" is really a fruit dip that I thinned with some extra strawberry puree - I love using this as a summer dessert with fresh fruit, or on a plate beside some Angel Food Cake. It doesn't hold up like a frosting, so I would put this on the cupcakes just before serving.

Here is the recipe: 1 container of strawberry flavored cream cheese, 1 7oz. jar of marshmallow creme (here in New England, that would be Fluff!). Mix together with a hand mixer and keep refrigerated - that's it! and so yummy! I added the extra strawberry puree because I had it leftover from the cupcakes, but it would be just as tasty without.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!  (couldn't resist adding one of my favorite Father's Day stamps that I used on this card)

School Concerts

I was sorting through some recent photos and found this favorite from my son Stephen's end of year concert. He has recently decided to switch to the Tenor Sax from the Alto...even though the instrument is almost as big as he is and weighs half as much :)

and seeing this photo made me remember some projects I did for Karen Foster Design's release last September - not that I would send out lots of these invites, but they would make a nice accent on a scrapbook page or maybe be appreciated by a grandparent or other family members. The practice journal hasn't seen much action either...but I have big hopes for it being used over the summer :)

I added some gold Stickles to the sticker -

Have a wonderful Tuesday!

Busy as a bee

Hope you all had a great weekend - ours just flew by between soccer games, graduation parties, gardening, and church...it feels like you blink and here it is Monday morning again. Only one more week of school here for my youngest two - can't wait for summer to officially begin!

I snapped a few pictures from my garden yesterday. I think it might be all the rain we had, but this year my roses are blooming like never before and everything is looking very green and lush. Here are a few of my favorites...

A delphinium I added this year is doing well in spite of the dog's repeated attempts to dig it up!

Some of the roses 

This rose is called Zephirine Drouhin and is wonderful because it can still bloom in part-shade.

and the hydrangeas are getting ready...

And this is also the first year our Japanese Snow Bell tree has bloomed so well

Can you spot the bumblebee collecting pollen?

How 'bout this bee?

This was a little tag I made - not sure what I want to do with it - but it was fun to make. I used some old chipboard to cut a tag shape (cardboard from a cereal box works well for this) and then covered it in VersaMark embossing ink and then embossed with Gold Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel (UTEE). When it was still warm, I sprinkled more UTEE on top and kept heating to make it even thicker then when that layer was still very hot and liquid, I stamped the bee image in the middle. Ink the stamp first to make it easy to release - you can use clear or Honeydew Metallic Encore Ink as I did here. I love the way the embossing got all crackly around the edges. If you want it to crack more, you can put it in the freezer while it is still warm and then when it is cold take it out and bend the cardboard slightly and it will crack.

Now I'm off to do some much needed weeding...

ScrapFest Class Sneak Peek

One of the things that has been keeping me busy over the last few weeks has been designing the two classes that I'll be teaching for Karen Foster Design at Archiver's ScrapFest '09 which is held at the Mall of America in September. This is always such a fun event - people fly in from all over the world to spend a few days shopping and scrapping - there are experienced crafters as well as people that were just shopping at the mall and thought they would give it a try - last year there were even some teenaged boys doing the Make & Take!

I can't say too much about the classes yet because they will both be featuring new products which are being released at CHA Summer, but I know they will both be a lot of fun and a good value.

The first one is a Desktop Calendar class - here are a few snippets from the pages:

and the other one is a Christmas Card Class - I absolutely LOVE the new Christmas line that KFD is coming out with and am really excited with the way this class turned out.

So, if you are planning to be in the Minneapolis area Sept 18-20, I'd love to see you in one of my classes!

A few more for Father's Day

Can you believe it's already Friday? wow...this week flew by! I thought I would post a few more Father's Day projects for the weekend. The first two are using the newly released Father's Day products from Karen Foster Design. The stacked statements are really popular - I love that they look like it must have taken you forever to create, but in reality it's just a sticker :)

Here is a gift bag to hold some goodies for dad - I used KFD's tool charms on the end of each banner (and of course Scrapper's Floss to tie them on!)

This is an altered picture frame with a photo of my dad taken when we were in Toronto a few years ago - it features the stacked statement "Father" sticker.

This is a favorite card of mine - it appeared in an issue of Card Creations. I wish I could take full credit for this fun idea, but the lion's share of the credit should go to the talented Jennafer Martin (she used to work with Paper Crafts before taking over as EIC at Simple Scrapbooks and Digital Scrapbooking - I really miss working with her because not only was she incredibly creative, she was also really funny). Anyway, Jennafer had a great talent for looking at a product and thinking of something clever to do with it - and when she saw this fish camouflage paper from Karen Foster Design, she saw a fishing vest. The Orvis catalog gave me the idea for the design and the result of our collaboration is shown below. All of the rub-ons, stickers and brads are also from Karen Foster Design.

This is a photo frame that I made for a Paper Crafts assignment where several of us had to create a project with the same photo - this is a photo of Layle Koncar's husband and boys - what an adorable bunch, huh? The chipboard stickers are all from Me & My BIG Ideas.

and a little tag that uses some leftover travel themed products.

And last, but not least, a layout about one of the best dads I've ever known - my husband, Joe. These are pictures of him with our oldest son who is now 14. Isn't it funny how you never feel like you're getting any older...until you look at photos :)

Hope you have a wonderful weekend!

Summer reading clipboard

I can't wait until school is over - my oldest has his last final today but my younger two aren't out until June 22nd. I love all the unscheduled time and the ability to get up in the morning and decide to do anything we like - I think I almost enjoy the summer more than the kids do :)

One of the reasons I love this time of year is my vegetable garden and the ability to walk outside and see what is ripe - yesterday I was rewarded with the first strawberries of the season as well as a few last stalks of asparagus and a bunch of cilantro for the chicken chili I made for dinner.

Another reason I like the summer is the ability to spend some lazy, guilt-free hours with a good book - it's something that I'm thrilled my older boys enjoy as well. To encourage my youngest in his reading efforts last year I created this family summer reading clipboard and I'm pleased to report that the incentive of being able to place his finished books on the chart really did help motivate him to read more and this summer I know that he will be happily reading right along with the rest of us.

The clipboard is from Melissa Frances, the papers are BasicGrey and the magnetic tape is from Xyron.  A Purple Onion Designs stamp was used to create the circles and I placed them in a clear pocket from Therm O Web - there are strips of magnetic tape under the paper too so the tags can cling to the board without adhesive. To be honest, the magnets didn't hold up all that well between the heavier weight paper and the cardstock circles - I find that magnetic tape works much better with light weight paper. I think this summer I am going to create new circles and just use some removable adhesive from Therm O Web to stick them on. This project was published in Paper Craft's special issue Paper Crafting with Kids.

I'm always looking for some suggestions for good books - let me know what some of your favorites are, okay? Thanks!

Father's Day Card

I've been slowly but surely trying to get all my files and photos converted over to my new mac and organized in a way that will make my life easier...just taking a long time...but I am constantly coming across photos that I had forgotten about - including photos of projects I did for Karen Foster Design's April release. Here is a card I made using their new Father's Day collection. You can see the entire collection here.

In addition to the new papers and stickers, I added some plain buttons tied with Scrapper's Floss. I also added two thin strips of navy blue cardstock along either side of the red paper to help set it off a bit.

I've got a few more projects to share later this week. Bye for now!