And the winner is.....

Cheryl KVD!

Here was Cheryl's comment:
I totally agree with you about blogging! I got addicted in May of this year!! It is so much fun to have so many cyber friends!! My favorite tradition is to open gifts one at a time. For my family of 17, it takes several hours to open gifts, but that way everyone can see what everyone got! Thanks!


Random Integer Generator
Here are your random numbers:5
Timestamp: 2007-12-10 13:27:16 UTC

Thanks to those of you who played. It was fun to read everyone's Christmas traditions.

Holy Cow!

I was about 40 away from 1000 hits when I posted the candy on Friday. (see post below) I thought it would take me a week or two to hit the 1000 mark, but I've surpassed it! WOW! I didn't realize that there were that many people out there reading this. I will keep the goodies open until midnight tonight (Sunday) and draw a winner Monday morning. Be sure to check back to see if you've won. Thanks for stopping by....it makes me happy to share my crafts with others.

Almost 1000 hits!

Well, we are almost at 1000 hits so I think that means it's time to celebrate! (Even though half of those hits are probably me & my friends & family!!) So, here is just a small thank you for coming to visit me. I started this blog to mainly share with my friends and family what I enjoy doing. Can you believe that I had never surfed a blog before I went on bedrest last winter? Now I am 100% addicted!

What you are playing for.........over 30 assorted 6x6 pieces of DP, a alterable 3.5x3.5 frame, over 5 yards of assorted ribbon and 4 flowers. (As I said, it's just a small thank you. I'm just a hobby demonstrator and don't make any money, but wanted to show my appreciation for stopping by.) If you are interested in winning this candy, please leave me a comment and let me know what your favorite Christmas tradition is. My favorite would be when I was younger, I would always get to open a gift on Christmas Eve, which was a new pair of pajamas. I would wear them that night and have new pajamas on for pictures on Christmas morning. Now I have carried that tradition on with my family. This year I have matching pajamas for the girls!

We leave for Florida on the 20th, so if we get to 100o hits before then, I will draw a winner. If not, continue to leave comments and I will draw a winner when we return (Jan. 7th). Thanks for playing and I look forward to reading all of your traditions.

Merry Christmas

Need to get into the holiday spirit?? Have I got the thing for you!
This was too hilarious not to show you all! I hope you enjoy it! Click here.

~Kelley

Food for Thought.....literally.

I know this is supposed to be my craft blog, but cooking is just another kind of craft, right? I've been busy in the kitchen the last couple of days pureeing up food for the girls. Formula and baby food prices have been rising and I am just getting sick of paying the prices. Formula cans went up almost $6 per can (depends on where you shop) to over $26 per can! I couldn't believe it! To save 50% per can, I switched to the off-brand. I talked to the pediatrician and she said that there isn't any difference. They are all approved by the FDA, so I wouldn't be doing Camryn any harm by giving her the off-brand. (Whew! Good to hear!)

So with Emerson always being a finicky eater (when she was born, she only ate every 6 hours! Scary at first and hard to get over what "normal babies do", but kinda nice. It was nice to run errands and not have to feed every 2 hours). Anyways, I saw Jessica Seinfeld on Oprah a few months back when she was talking about her cookbook Deceptively Delicious. I was hooked! I am not a good (healthy) eater myself (I have a texture problem with food), so I thought this book would be good for me and my kids. (My husband will eat anything that is edible, even the healthy stuff!) So I've been busy pureeing squash, potatoes, bananas, pears and today, broccoli. In the cookbook, there is a recipe for Chicken Nuggets using pureed broccoli. So I cut my broccoli into little florets and steamed them according to the directions. Then I tossed them into the blender to puree them. I don't know about you, but I have a hard time feeding something to my child (let alone me eating it) when it smells like fresh cut grass! I was just gagging! I put the lid back on and continued, but I just couldn't do it! I think I'll stick to the aforementioned veggies and fruits and stay away from the green stuff!

It's not always a better deal (money-wise) pureeing your own food. You are giving your kids healthier food and saving the environment (less plastic packaging, etc.), but sometimes it costs you more money. I bought 3 pears (1.69 lbs) for $2.52. Once steamed and pureed, those 3 pears filled 4 of the Stage 1 plastic rectangle food containers. When purchasing pears from the store, you get 2 rectangle containers per package which costs $0.92 each at my store. So that's $1.84 for the same amount that I paid $2.52 for, plus my time and energy to steam and puree the food.

Now, when I pureed butternut squash and a golden Yukon potato (I mixed the two together in the blender) it cost me $2.58 for the two. After steaming and pureeing them, I got about 4-4 1/2 cups of the squash/potato mixture, which equals about 8-9 rectangle baby food containers, which would have cost $3.68 for 8 containers. So in this case it WAS worth it to puree the food. I can also use this mixture to mix in with macaroni and cheese and hide the vegetables from Emerson (and me!)

No time for stamping as now I have to go and clean my kitchen! Thanks for listening!

Baby Announcements - Finished!

I finally finished up with the baby announcements that I was working on. (see earlier post) Since I am only a hobby demonstrator, I have to space out my orders so I can make sure that I have enough to meet my quotas every quarter. Saying that, I have absolutely no white paper left and am running out of many other staple colors that I use. So, I had to be crafty and do a card that I wasn't using too many layers on and had to use colors that I had. I was only able to make 10 cards for my friend....because I ran out of Whisper White paper! Have I said yet that I've run out of white paper???

Supplies:
Paper: SU! Chocolate Chip, Certainly Celery, Groovy Guava, Barely Banana, Cool Caribben, Blush Blossom & Whisper White
Stamps: SU! Bundle of Joy, Punchy Words & Scalloped Frames and Doodles-GinaK Designs
Ink: SU! Chocolate Chip, StazOn Timber Brown, Craft White
Accessories: Cuttlebug Spots & Dot Embossing Folder, Paper Piercer, Crop-A-Dile, Corner Rounder Punch, Word Window Punch, Marvy Uchida Giga Scalloped Circle Punch & Mega Circle Punch, Brown Watercolor Pencil, gamsol, blending stump, ribbon (from JoAnn's)

Photo Tile

I decided to be brave and finally try these photo tiles that everyone is doing. I suppose they turned out okay, but I'm picky and I can do better! There are 101 different way to do these tiles. I absolutely loved these tiles, but mine didn't out nearly as cute! I followed the tutorial from SCS . I didn't like this method as my tissue paper kept getting wrinkled. I've also read of where people use vellum paper (upside down) as well as regular copy paper. I'll have to give both of those methods a try next time. Thanks for looking!