Layout Monday!

Hi Everyone! Happy Monday!! I had the pleasure of being the Guest Designer at 3 Scrappy Boys in February and I want to share a few of my projects. 3 Scrappy Boys has a super fun forum and there are always great challenges going on. Go check out their kits, too!! There are lots of great new products in their kits.

My first layout is done using their Trio Kit. This kit had papers from 3 different lines and I used some My Mind's Eye papers for this layout. I adore this photo of my daughter and her girlfriends on the last day of kindergarten.

Friendship Is Beautiful:



Such fun colors in these papers!! Perfect for a layout celebrating friendship. I made this card by cutting out flowers using my cricut, distressing them, then layering then. I hand cut the leaves, distressed and then added them to the flower.

Hello Card: 5x5 square


I am still loving my apron lace punch. I use it all the time!! That's it for me today. I am getting my scrappy stuff ready for a girls scrap weekend, I am leaving on Thursday. I cannot wait for some girl time and some scrappy time!!

Thanks for stopping by, friends!

Sweet Melissa Sunday-Toasted Pecan Cake

Happy Sunday everyone!! I am here with my Sweet Melissa Sunday recipe and it was a challenge for me. First, let me confess. I have never made a cake from scratch. Never. I love the cake mix boxes and use them all the time. So when I saw this week was a cake, I was nervous and excited at the same time. Leslie of Lethally Delicious picked this recipe and woah...it was a recipe. Here's the official title: Toasted Pecan Cake with Caramel Orange Marmalade and Burnt Orange Buttercream Frosting. That is a mouthful!!!


So, I am also not a fan of pecans. I don't hate them, but I tend to pick lots of other nuts over pecans. But I made the decision to stick to the recipe and I was so glad I did. Toasting the pecans really took them to the next level. They were delicious!! There are lots of ground toasted pecans in the cake itself. The filling is an orange caramelized marmalade filling and it's covered by a orange buttercream frosting.


The only thing I had problems with was the frosting. It was very buttery, almost too buttery. So after I had whipped it up, I added about 1 1/2 more cups of powdered sugar and whipped it again. That gave it a lighter texture and I liked it more because it didn't taste like a stick of butter in my mouth.

Verdict on the cake???? I LOVED the cake part. It was wonderful, those toasted pecans were amazing in the cake. The filling was...well, how do I say this...TOO SWEET!!!! I don't think i've ever used those words together before. But it was over the top sweet and overwhelmed the whole cake. The buttercream frosting was very very good. I added some fresh orange zest to give it more orangey flavor. But I really couldn't get past the filling being too sweet. I had one piece and was done with it.

My kids liked it. My husband loved it. In fact, he ate it every night for 3 nights straight and said it kept getting better. And he's not a big cake fan. So those were some strong words!


I think the cake itself, plain, would be awesome with a dollop of fresh whipped cream. And the toasted pecans dipped into the extra buttercream frosting was delish. I ran lots of extra miles this week to make up for that indulgence!! If you want to see more, please check the SMS Blog roll call to see what all the other bakers did this week. Thanks to Leslie for picking this cake, I had a great time making my first cake from scratch!!

Have a sweet one!!

A Little Mini

I am so glad it's Friday, Happy Friday everyone!! I am going out with some girlfriends in a little bit for Happy Hour and can't wait for some relaxation and a margarita. Before I go, I want to share this mini album I made using the My Cherry Pie papers from Nikki Sivils. This was the first time i've gotten my hands on some Nikki Sivils paper, I loved working with it!!


I cut 4x6 pieces of chipboard from a big 12x12 piece of it. I covered the pages with patterned paper using modge podge. I love that big Prima flower on front, so fun and dimensional!! I added some Basic Grey bling, Thickers and used my apron lace border punch.

The inside pages follow the same design plan. A photo of a family member on the left and journaling about that person on the right. I find it much easier to stick to a design plan with mini albums.





The design is pretty much the same. Photo on the left, journal box plus border with apron lace punch border plus more prima flowers on the right. Nice and simple!! The last page is one of all of us and the journaling is about the things we like to do as a family.


I am really happy with how this turned out!! I am really loving making mini albums right now. I like the smaller format and how you can complete something really special in a short period of time.

That's about it!! Hope you have something fun planned for this weekend...i'm off for my margarita and a little bit of girls time! Thanks for stopping by!

Avalanche Bars

Hello Wednesday!! It's gloomy and rainy here right now and it's not supposed to get nicer anytime soon. Doesn't Mother Nature know we have track practice and softball games and 10 miles runs to accomplish? Well...maybe this will make me feel better...

THAT, my friends, is an Avalanche Bar. When I first saw these on Cookies and Cups, I knew they were in my future. And what a sweet future it will be!!

Avalanche Bars

12 oz bag of White Chocolate Chips

1/4 cup creamy peanut butter

3 cups Rice Krispies, or "Puffed Rice" if you're buying generic

1 1/2 cups mini marshmallows

1/4 cup mini chocolate chips + 2 Tbsp for garnish.

Lightly grease a 9x9 pan (or 8x8 if you prefer thicker bars)

1. In microwave-safe bowl dump in white chips and heat on med power for 1 minute. Stir and continue in 30 second increments until chips are melted.
2. Combine the peanut butter with the melted chips

3. Add the krispies.

4. Let cool approx 15 - 20 minutes stirring every 5 minutes or so to help cool.

5. Add the marshmallows and the mini chocolate chips and stir to combine.

6. Dump mixture into the prepared pan and spread evenly, pressing lightly with the back of your spoon, but do not compact too much, otherwise they will get hard.

7. Press the remaining chocolate chips into the top for garnish.


These are chewy, crunchy, peanut buttery, sweet, with just a hint of chocolate. Oh so good, in my opinion. Make some for yourself and let me know what you think!!

And I just wanted to say Thank You for all the SWEET comments about my sister having her babies! I appreciate all the nice things you say and I truly appreciate the time you all take to leave such great comments. You are all DA BOMB!!!

Thanks for stopping by!!

Love Bandits

Today has been an exciting day!! I officially became an aunt again. My sister had her two baby girls this morning, tipping the scales at almost 6 pounds each. They were born 30 minutes apart and I cannot wait to meet them! Molly Rose and Harbour Rose are their names. It's times like these that I wish we lived closer. She lives all the way across the country from us and it's killing me that I can't go visit this very second!! Both mom and babies are doing well and I hope to talk to my sister again soon. In the meantime, I will live vicariously through her facebook page. Hee hee!!

In honor of my new nieces, I have a layout about them! Okay...you can't really see them because my sister is still pregnant in these photos. This was at her going away party last fall. I love these pics of my kids and her!


These are wonderful Love Bandit papers from Bo Bunny. I just love the colors!! I put my circle punches to work to make this fun border and added in some Bo Bunny diecut stickers and buttons.


And I also have a card to share that I made using the same Bo Bunny papers. I tried making one of those trendy accordian flowers, too!


I love it!! It does add quite a bit of bulk to the card...think I can still fit it into an envelope??


I wish I had some photos of the new babies to share, but I don't yet. I am hoping my mom will send me some. She is lucky enough to be there, holding those sweet bundles right now.

Hope you all had a great Tuesday. Thanks for stopping by!!

Baby Girl x 2

Today turned out to be a pretty good Monday...my sister went into labor!! I cannot wait to meet my 2 new nieces. Either late tonight or tomorrow morning I will be an Auntie again. Yeah!!! So with that news, I thought i'd share some little goodies I have made for my two new nieces.

These are so fun to make, stamped onesies! I started with regular cotton onesies, palette ink (I got mine from Papertrey Ink) and a variety of fun stamps. Just ink up your stamps and stamp on the fabric. So easy!


I also made some using the Button Bits sets from Papertrey Ink. I love that stamp set!!



I can't wait to see my nieces in these. I hope they fit. They looked so darn tiny, I have forgotten how small babies are!

I also found these small white frames in the $1 bin at Target (they were 3 frames for $1!). They are about 5x5 in size. I added some Basic Grey Urban Prairie papers to the inside frame and then diecut these big butterflies on my Cricut. I made 5 of these so my sister can decorate the baby's nursery or their bathroom or whatever she wants with them.



I love how the colors are girly without being too over-the-top girly. At least I don't think so!! I can't wait to meet my new nieces and find out their names. We've been kept in the dark about that. Hope you had a great start to your week, thanks for stopping by!

Sweet Melissa Sunday-Sugar Cookies

This week for Sweet Melissa Sunday the recipe was for sugar cookies. I have never met a sugar cookie I didn't like. And even if I didn't like it, I ate it. Ha ha!! So I was excited to try this recipe. I have been making sugar cookies since I was little with my mom and was interested to try a new recipe. Nina from Nina' Cupcakes picked the recipe this week. If you want more info on the recipe, please check out her blog!!

I had high hopes of using this sugar cookie dough for a fruit tart, but time slipped away from me this week. Plus, I really wanted to use a tart pan, but I don't have one. SO...I ended up making these swirled sugar cookies with the dough.



I first saw this idea on Heather's blog, Sprinkle Bakes. I colored half the dough red and kept the other half plain. I rolled out both halves into equal sized rectangles. I placed the red on the white and then rolled it up, like a jelly roll. I them attempted to roll the roll in sprinkles. Um...yeah. That didn't work out too well!!! The sprinkles did not want to stick.


I sliced the roll into cookies and before baking them, I rolled each slice in sprinkles again trying to get more to stick!! They baked up nice and crisp on the outside but soft on the inside. It was a decent tasting cookie, could have been a tad sweeter for my taste. But they were eye-catching and everybody wanted to try one. I think they would have been good with a bit of peppermint extract along with the red food coloring. Just to add a little more flavor.

If you want to see what the other SMS bakers did this week, check out the blog roll call HERE. It was a decent cookie but i'm not sure I will switch over from my tried and true sugar cookie recipe. But it was definitely fun trying something new. And these would be really cute for a kids birthday party or green for St.Patty's day or in pastel colors for spring.

Thanks for stopping by and have a sweet Sunday!!