Nutty or Nice? (Freshly Made Sketches 149)

Things I should be doing this morning:
  1.  Mowing the lawn
  2.  Folding laundry
  3.  Vacuuming/mopping all floors
  4.  Changing bedsheets
  5.  Going for a run

Things I'm not doing this morning:
  See above list

Not everyday can be productive, am I right?  Of course I am.  So rather than submit myself to the shackles of slavery that are housekeeping, I am in my craftroom.  I meant to have a bunch of posts lined up before I went on a holiday, but it didn't happen.  Anyways, here I am again with Freshly Made Sketches to start my day off right.

I know.  This guy is hilarious.  He's the Tom Selleck of nutcrackers.  I originally had the card without the glitter, but I figured Tom was feelin' the need for a little glitz so I grabbed my spray glue and sparkled him up a little.  The inside of the card (which I was too lazy to take a picture of) says, "nutty or nice?"  It sooooo appealed to my super corny side that I needed to have this set immediately.  For the rest of you, you can order it come September.

Not-so-Freshly Made Sketches #67

 I woke up this morning with the crafty vibe.  I made a nice big pot of coffee and headed online for some inspiration.  Freshly Made Sketches had a lovely layout this morning, so into the crafty room I went with the sketch on my head.  I've got a bunch of this paper left over from the last annual catalogue so I decided on a manly card.  I never seem to make those just for the heck of it.  Must plan to do that more.

I was feeling pretty pleased with myself after completing this one, however it then dawned on me which challenge it was for.  FMS is a "clean" challenge, and apparently I forgot that as I distressed away.  Whoops!  I'm sure the girls over there won't mind terribly  - sorry ladies!  They're quite a lovely bunch so hopefully this will just slide on by under their noses.....

Still loving Clockworks.  I think I might try and bust out a few cards with this set today.  Tomorrow is the last day of holidays before I go back to work and it will be my only day alone for the past 2 weeks.  Looking forward to putting my head down and getting inky!

Freshly Made Sketches #43 - Be of Good Cheer

It's about 35 degrees outside (95 degrees to you ladies south of the border).  I love the sun and heat, but after baking outside in it for a few hours, a girl needs a break.  Where to I go to take a break?  My craft room - of course.

This week, Tui over at Freshly Made Sketches came up with a great little sketch for us.  The two panels make for a nice DSP display, and I've been stocking up on Christmas cards so I grabbed my Be of Good Cheer paper and away I went.

 

I love to mix up non-traditional colours for Christmas cards, but sometimes I really love good ol' red & green.  I'm not in love with the way Garden Green and Wild Wasabi look with any of our reds, and I got a little sick of always pairing Cherry Cobbler with Old Olive, so the addition of Gumball Green this year really made me happy. It's a fantastic green green.  Like grass green.  It's the green I think of when I think of Christmas.  As I dug through my Christmas stamps I almost cried when I realized that all but three of my sets are no longer available.  Delightful Decorations however is still going strong.  I love dimension on a card, but hate cutting things out, so punches are my friend.  I've gotten a lot of use out of this set, and think I'm going to use this card at an upcoming workshop.

Now for something completely unrelated to stamping, but that I feel the need to share.

When it's hot out, I want a cold drink.  The other day the heat was blazing and it was practically the Kalahari in my backyard.  I'm taking the kind of heat that you can see coming off the road in little waves.  The kind that makes your eyes turn into little swirlies.  I wanted something ice cold and tasty.  Problem there is that I wanted something tasty.  Not water, something with flavour.  The problem there is that I'm trying to cut back on my sugar intake.  Since I had two massive coffees in the morning with some flavoured cream, I couldn't justify drinking iced tea (the bad kind, made from crystals).  I wanted a Passion tea Lemonade.  The problem there, is that the closest Starbucks is a little more than an hour's drive along the highway.  So in my quest for a Passion tea Lemonade I drove into town and got some supplies to make my own.

Imagine my dismay when I got to the grocery only to realize that Tazo teas are $7!  What the heck!  Are you kidding me?  [And for starters, fruity "tea" isn't really tea at all.  It's masquerading as such, but I know better.]  There's no way I was spending $7 on something that I was almost embarrassed to buy, so I headed over to the Western Family selections (basically our grocer's no-name brand).  There I found Cranberry Raspberry, for $2.49.  Much better.  I dropped it in my cart and headed to the coolers.  When buying Lemonade, get the good stuff.  Simply Lemonade.  It's a complete rip off at $5.50 for under 2L, but it's delicious.   I added that to my cart and off I went.  (I realize that I could just post the recipe on here, but how boring would that be?  Plus, you can scroll down if you get bored of my rant.)

So here's what I did to make my very own just-as-delicious-but-homemade-so-better Passion tea Lemonade (okay, it's Cranberry Raspberry Lemonade, but tastes exactly the same).  First, separate your lemonade into thirds.  Keep one third in the bottle and store the rest for later (or make a huge batch if you have a big container).  Boil 1L of water and steep 7 "tea" bags in it for about 5 minutes.  Remove the tea bags and stir in about a tablespoon of sugar (I did this in a mason jar).  Then, wait for it to cool and mix it with the lemonade.  (To speed up the cooling process because I'm impatient, I poured it into a large baking pan and threw the lemonade container in the freezer.  It was ready to drink in about 20 minutes.)  The "tea" really cuts down on the sugar level of the lemonade, and gives it just the right amount of refreshingness (that's not a word, but bite me if you care).  I got three batches out of my one box of "tea" and container of lemonade. 

Now, I'm not one to always be looking for ways to save money, but it ended up costing me less than $8 for about 5L of tea.  I'm thinking each batch is about the equivalent of 10 ventis, so it seems like a pretty good deal to me.

Maybe tomorrow I'll make a batch of black tea lemonade and see how that goes.

Freshly Made Sketches #42 - Morning Cup

What's this bright thing filling the sky making it all bright outside?  I think it rhymes with 'fun'.  Did you know that the sky could be blue? I had forgotten that.  While those of you back east have been enjoying a heat wave, we westerners have developed webbed feet to accommodate the wet.  Seriously.  It's been raining FOREVER.  The last nice weekend we had was back in May.  The sun made an appearance around 1:30 yesterday (amidst clouds, mind you, but an appearance nevertheless) and seems to have stuck around.  This is the first morning for like 6 weeks that the sky's been blue.  And I have to go to the Farmer's Market.  Boo!

 

But I digress.  Yesterday morning I saw the sketch on Freshly Made Sketches.  [I feel the need to add in here how much I like these sketches.  I usually distress the heck out of my cards in one way or another, and wasn't a big fan of "clean" until I started following this blog.  It's still not my trademark style, but I have grown quite fond of it.  So a big thanks to the ladies that work so hard every week to bring us a new sketch.]

I like this card for a number of reasons.  1.  It's got steaming cups of (insert favourite hot beverage here) in adorable little cups.  2.  It uses Stampin' Up's Morning Cup stamp set which is a really great set if you like colouring.  3.  I got to put my new In Colours to use.  4.  The strip of DSP is from a new series that I really like, Birds of  a Feather, and it gives the card something funky and narrowed my pallet.

I meant to post this yesterday, but the battery on my camera was dead, and then I got lost in the time-warp that is my craft room.  THEN the sun came out, so I had to get my book and proceeded to spend the next three hours reading in the sun.  (Anyone read George RR Martin's Clash of Kings?  Loving it!)  Then it was dinner time, and I still hadn't gotten everything together for the market today.  Speaking of which, I got up early to do that, not to blog....

Have a great day!

Freshly Made Sketches #41

Today was the LAST DAY OF WORK!!!!!!  Yayyy!!!  That means I now have 2 months of during which I can go to my craftroom allll day, and not be bothered by anyone.

I was peeking around for some inspiration and found this sketch on Freshly Made Sketches.  As soon as I saw it I knew which set I'd mount (lol...) and off I went.  Tallyho!  (Insert corny noise here.) 

Horse Frontier is one of the new sets from the 2012 - 2013 Stampin' Up catalogue and I knew I had to have it.  I live in a ranching part of BC, so this set is perfect for folks around here.  The stampede is this weekend so it really was a natural choice for this card.

Freshly Made Sketches 27

I am attempting to do three challenges a week.  This means that I needed to find challenges for each day of the week, and today Freshly Made Sketches came out with this one.

I like distressing.  Change that - love distressing.  This week I decided to change things up and try a "clean"challenge.  I'm not sure if it really cuts the mustard when it comes to being "clean", but here's my attempt!

Tool Shed is a great masculine set.  I've only got two other sets that are manly, but one has a ship on it (not every man is a sailor) and the other one has a plane (less specific, but still...), so I find that I run out of masculine cards to make.  This was a good sketch for this set, using it in a different way than I usually do.

I love this combination of colours, and I'd be lying if I said I haven't used it on quite a few man cards.