Sweet Melissa Sunday...

Hi Everyone!!! I have been a Sweet Melissa Sunday slacker these last 2 weeks. This week the recipe was Pistachio Linzer Thumbprint cookies. It sounded sooo good! But it's been crazy with school almost ending and all the end of the year activities that go along with that. I didn't think I would have time to bake this week. But I squeezed it in...and then realized I baked the recipe for NEXT week!!! AHHH!! At least now I can say i'm ahead of the curve for next week. Ha ha! Please check out Tracey's blog, Culinary Adventures for the recipe and more details of this week's delicious sounding cookie.

I will share with you one baked goodie. I made these cupcakes for my daughter's choir performance this week. I made the music notes by pipping chocolate candy melts onto wax paper. Under the wax paper, I printed out some clip art of a music note and just followed the lines. I like how they turned out!



Happy Sunday Everyone!!

3 Scrappy Boys in June...

Happy Thursday!! I have some projects to share today using the 3 Scrappy Boys June Add-on kit. It contains some yummy October Afternoon Thrift Shop paper. Oh, I love this paper!! So much fun, the colors are wonderful! The kit also has a Jenni Bowlin banner sticker sheet (oh, I love banners!) and some really fun Phrase Thickers. These Thickers pretty much make your titles a no-brainer. I loved them!

Here's my first layout...we took this family photo last summer in Vegas at The Mirage.


Didn't I say I loved banners?? LOL!


The kit also included some of these great butterflies, Jenni Bowlin again!


I really liked the Maya road kraft envelopes. They are a great accent and great for journaling!


Okay...I think this whole kit is great!! And I have one card to share with you today...


What a fun flower!!! It's by Prima and it's very unique. Everything is from the kit except the bling flourish.


Stay tuned...I will have more projects from this kit soon. I love short work weeks...tomorrow is already Friday! Hope you are having a great week and thanks for stopping by!

Strawberry Cheesecake

Hi Everyone! Happy Tuesday!! How was your Memorial Day weekend?? We had a great one filled with good friends, good food, good beer and great weather. I did alot of baking and tried quite a few new recipes. Strawberries are in season and our local fruit stands are bursting with the beautiful, red, sweet, fruit. We had a BBQ on Saturday and wanted to try a cheesecake. Not mini cheesecakes (which you can see HERE and HERE) but a big one. Big cheesecakes scare me because you have to be so careful of the temperature in the oven and all sorts of other things so it won't crack or fall or explode. But I decided I was ready for the challenge. I am a BIG fan of this blog, Annie's Eats. She has all sorts of awesome recipes and I decided to try her Strawberry Cheesecake. It did not disappoint!!!


The recipe called for reducing fresh strawberry juice and then adding that plus fresh strawberry chunks to the cheesecake. It's topped with a semi-sweet chocolate ganache. And I did a graham cracker crust (instead of an almond crust like she suggests).


I topped it off with sliced fresh strawberries. And I do have to say this was delicious. Amazingly delicious. The cheesecake set up perfectly and I followed her instructions to a T. It calls for baking your cheesecake in a water bath set-up in the oven. I think that helps it cook evenly?? Whatever it did...it was perfect!


I don't have a photo of the inside because it disappeared too fast at the BBQ. Even my kids loved it and they will usually choose a store-bought popsicle over anything I make for dessert. LOL!! I hope you had a great weekend. Did you bake anything tasty or new???

Thanks for stopping by!

Balloon Cards

Happy Saturday everyone!! I'm on vacation and it's awesome. It's only a 3-day weekend vacation, but it sure puts a smile on my face having an extra day to play. Whee! We are having friends over this afternoon for a BBQ and the weather is wonderful right now. My kids are already bugging me about filling up water balloons!!

Speaking of balloons, I made these cards for a challenge over at Croppin' Paradise to make 2 similar cards using different sentiments.



I used the Man of the House papers by Bella Blvd and the Button Bit stamp set from Papertrey Ink. The sentiments are also from the same stamp set.


I cut the ballons with my Indie Art Cricut cartridge and added some stickles. Just to bling it up a bit!!



I think the sentiments are perfect for sending a card to someone you haven't seen in a while. I can think of a few people who will be getting these cards!!

I hope you are enjoying your Memorial Day weekend. Any big plans??? As long as the weather is nice for us, we will be spending it outside, BBQing, testing out my new cocktail recipe book and hopefully hitting the beach! Have a GREAT weekend everyone!

Softball Treats

My daughter really enjoyed softball this year. She improved SO much and really was learning the game and was paying attention on the field (well...MOST of the time!). It was such a joy to watch her play this year!!


They were the Orange Tigers this year. Don't you love the bright orange uniforms? Bright enough to stop traffic!! We had our pizza party last week and I really enjoyed making the treats for the girls on the team. First up...softball cupcakes!


Super easy and they were a hit!! Next...uniform cookies. My MIL got me this t-shirt cookie cutter and I put it to good use making customized uniform cookies for all the girls.


Please excuse the old crusty cookie sheet!! It's been around forever. I put each girls name and number on their own cookie. I loved doing this!!


Coaches like cookies too, right????


It was a great season for my daughter and all the Orange Tigers! Until next year...

Wild Card + MME

Happy Wednesday everyone!! Halfway to the weekend...and a 3-day weekend for me. Yiipppeee!! I just hope the weather improves, it is supposed to rain today. I have one more My Mind's Eye project to show you. And it involves my new favorite Cricut cartridge...Wild Card. It has this one awesome cut that makes a doiley card. And it's so cool!!


I just love this scalloped doiley circle card!! I used the So Sophie Graceful papers for this. I cut this flower on my Cricut and layered it up, added a button and some bling.

The coolest thing about this cartridge is it cuts a matching envelope too. Did I say this was sooo cool???


The card fits perfectly. It will probably need extra postage, but well worth it! Now I just need about 8 more uninterrupted hours to explore all the other card cuts on that cartridge. There are sooo many COOL ones. LOL!!

Thanks for stopping by! Are you looking forward to a 3-day weekend, too???

My Mind's Eye goodness

Happy Monday everyone! Today I am going to show you some delicious new papers from My Mind's Eye. These are from the So Sophie collection and they are beautiful!! I had the pleasure of working with the Graceful line from Croppin' Paradise.


I loved the purples in this line. I thought it went so well with the purple in my daughter's shirt. This was her birthday Disneyland trip and she used her own money and gift cards to buy her very first, very own pair of ears!


Almost everything is from My Mind's Eye, except these great letters from Cosmo Cricket. I like the black against that beautiful purple!


I cut the flowers on my Cricut and cut the leaves by hand. I just crumpled them up a bit to give them some more texture. And I like the journaling spots from MME!!


If you haven't checked out Croppin' Paradise lately, you should! They are getting brand new product every day. My Mind's Eye, Jenni Bowlin, Fancy Pants and Bo Bunny just to name a few. And we have some really fun plans for scrapping this summer. So join us over in Paradise!!

Thanks for stopping by!