Scraptastic Wednesdays: 4th of July Banner

I was lucky enough to be asked to be a Guest Designer over at Apron Strings for the month of July, so I was able to get my hands on their Bigger Than a Breadbox kits a little early :)  I whipped up this great little banner just in time for our big 4th of July Bash using the My Mind's Eye American Made collection, my Independence Day Cricut Solutions cartridge, Tattered Angels Glimmer Mist in Blue Frost, and Studio Calico Mr. Huey in Calico White.  Oh, and the alpha is Thickers Sprinkles.  The ribbon is from the $1 bin at Michaels and is the only thing I used not in the kit!

So who's feeling festive?!

Yummy Monday: Banana Muffins

We always have a ton of bananas in our house.  Little Man loves them, called them "Banas"  He's actually eaten 2 in a row, and asked for a third.  Now I'm not sure if you can overdose on potassium, and anything else wonderful that you get in bananas, but we usually limit his banana intake to two a day, just in case.

I digress.  Every now and then, we'll go thru a week where he hasn't devoured every banana in the house.  When that happens, the picture below is what happens to those forgotten bananas.  Now what happened to this fabulous summer recipe I promised you last Friday?  It's here, hidden in something as basic as banana muffins. 

The wonderful thing about banana muffins is their versatility.  Straight up banana muffins, banana nut, banana "crumb" chocolate chip banana, strawberry banana, blueberry banana.  I could go on.  So here's my banana muffin recipe, and below will be some ways to vary it to fit your tastes, and your summer produce buys.

2/3 cups of milk

1/2 cup vegetable oil (*health kick:  substitute 1/2 cup unsweentened applesauce*)

2 eggs

2 cups flour (*health kick: substitute whole wheat flour*)

1 cup brown sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

4 very ripe bananas

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees, and grease just the bottom of your muffin tins (or use liners).  This recipe will make 18 regular muffins or 72 itty bitty baby muffins, or any combination thereof.  For all intents and purposes, 6 regular muffins is equal to 24 baby muffins.

Mash bananas, milk, oil (applesauce) brown sugar and eggs in a large bowl.  Stir in flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.  To summerify (yeah, I just made that word up) this recipe add in:

1 cup blueberries OR

1 cup strawberries (chopped up pretty small)

To make this into a Fall recipe, add in:

1 cup finely chopped apples and 2 tbsp cinnamon

For the chocolate lovers, add in 1 cup chocolate chips

Fill the cups a good 3/4+ full.  I love a good streusel topping, however my waistline does not appreciate it as much.  I create a delicious "fake" streusel topping by sprinkling a little cinnamon on the batter once it's in the tins, and then about a teaspoon or less of brown sugar on top of that.  It gives the muffins just a little extra spice and sweetness.

Bake the baby muffins at 400 degrees for 9-10 minutes.  The regular sized muffins can be cooked at 400 degrees for 18-20 minutes.  In this photo you can see I added chocolate chips to the mini ones in this batch, and 3 of the 6 regular muffins with my faux streusel topping are already gone, mere minutes after I took them out of the oven!  Enjoy!

Free-For-All Friday: First Movie

Now originally I had planned to make the Free-For-All Friday exclusively for those crafty, fun, non-scrapbooking-potentially-papercrafting other hobbies.  And I had a really good one to share with you today, no really I did.  It's just that....well.....I fell asleep. 

Running around all morning with the toddler wiped me right out.  So when we arrived back home around 1pm today, I tucked him into his bed and then went to lay down myself for just a few minutes and rest before I was going to come up here and crank out this great little project.  Except when I next opened my eyes, it was 4pm.  I'm not going to lie, it was bliss.

So off in a scramble I was to get ready for what I'm going to share with you today, which are photos from Finn's very first movie in the theatre experience.

These are our friends Scott & Nicole, with their two adorable boys.  It was their first movie in the theatre as well, and with how hectic our lives are it seems, it was so nice to spend some time with them.

Finn has started to make this face anytime I get close to him with my camera.  I have a feeling this is going to be a long-standing feud, my desire to capture everything and his desire to just be left alone Ma!  At least the husband is still smiling at me.

This face (as were all of the photos taken in the actual theatre) was taken during the previews.  He was totally amazed.

He had begun to lose his sense of humor (we challenged the attention-span of a 27 month old, I do get it) so when the movie was over, I was able to just grab one more quick photo in front of the big display outside.  This kind of sums up the movie, and at least I've got them!  Add in the ticket stub and maybe a few cute graphics from online, and I have a feeling this could be one fun layout!

See you on Monday (if not before!) with a new summer recipe that's a hit with my family, and hopefully will be for yours too!

Scraptastic Wednesdays: Easter

This is a layout I did a few months back when I was a guest designer over at Apron Strings kit club.  Originally I had done it with placeholder photos from last year, but I was able to print the current photos and place them in the layout, so I figured it deserved another shout-out. 
One of my favorite things about doing Easter layouts is the fact that I can use pink!  The mom of a boy, I rarely if ever have a use for pink cardstock, but I can justify it on Easter, so it's fun for me to take advantage of doing these pastel-y colors that normally wouldn't have much of a home in a little boy's scrapbook.

We spend our Easter morning having brunch at this fabulous restaurant in Lake George.  Not only is the food delicious, but given some beautiful weather (which we've luckily had the last 2 years in a row!) makes for some really nice backdrops for photos.  The Easter Bunny was very generous with Finn this year...

It wouldn't be Easter without little cotton tails and some pink fabric Thickers for the title!  It's hard to tell in this photo, but the fabric is actually ribbed, which just adds to the adorablness of these letters.  Did I mention how excited I was do be able to use pink?!

I'm currently working on a really fun project (my hands are covered in mists!) that I'm hoping to finish up tomorrow night, so be sure to check back in on Friday for a peek at it! 

Yummy Monday: Party Fruit Dip

A series of unforseen events has put a crimp in my plans to wow you with an amazing seafood recipe tonight.  Forgive me, I will perhaps go into more detail tomorrow as to what's going on, but for tonight, let me leave you with the most simple party dip possible.  My friends in Florida turned me onto this, it's absolutely addicting, and absolutely perfect for summertime when fresh fruit it abundant.  No photos tonight, but here's what we've got:

(1) 8oz block of cream cheese
(1) 16oz container of marshmallow fluff

Soften the cream cheese (you can use flavored cream cheese like strawberry or pineapple if you want to get crazy!) and mix thoroughly with the fluff.   I think it helps to use hand beaters to smooth out any clumps.  I always serve mine in this amazing Pampered Chef Chillzane server platter.  I believe they've discontinued this line (which is a MAJOR bummer) but you can still get one here.

Chat later!

Free-For-All Friday: Potty Charts

Short and sweet, because we're on vacation right now!

Nothing fancy about this, but my little 2 year old is starting to potty train.  Now I'm no potty training expert, but I'm pretty sure that the rewards system works.  So off we went to Target where Finn picked out a HUGE package of special potty stickers.  I printed this adorable Lightening McQueen "potty chart" online here for him to put all his stickers on.

Simple a project as it gets.  I just glued the chart onto some cardstock and rounded the edges.  Added some Thickers for his title, a little glitter around the border and some twine to hang it up and we're done!  Cute enough motivation for any little wizzer ;)



A nod to the Cape and all the wonderful seafood here, this upcoming Yummy Monday is going to be of the seafood variety, so see you then!

Scraptastic Wednesdays: Taking A Stroll

The weather is hit or miss for the end of March here in Upstate NY, which is when these photos were taken.  After an amazing birthday brunch for my dad, we all headed to beautiful Congress Park nearby, to walk it off and digest a little.  We had a rough winter, that lasted quite a bit longer than usual, so everything was still really brown and kind of yucky looking.  Luckily, at CKC Manchester just a month later, I had the opportunity to use these Basic Grey papers from the Kioshi line in my 'Think Ink' class.  Very earthy papers were perfect for documenting some pretty brown photos. 

So I broke my cardinal rule in that I photographed this at night with poor lighting, so I apologize for the poor photo quality.  The entire layout though, which I was happy with.  It had more "white" space than I'm used to doing, which is something I should do more often.  Pushed me right out of my comfort zone.

This is just a little close-up detail of a sticker & button detail with some ribbon.  Sometimes it's the smallest things that have the biggest impact.

This is my favorite part of the whole layout.  I bought these fabulous little white pockets in all different sizes from Boxer Scrapbooks.  I inked it a little bit to make it "fit in" with the feel of the rest of the layout, and then gathered up all the other photos of the day that didn't earn themselves a highlighted spot in the layout.  I rounded all their edges, stacked them neatly on each other and attached them together with a brown brad in the corner.  Perfect way to hang onto all those photos that document the rest of the story, without having to put a million photos on your actual layout! 

Well it's late, I've been packing diligently for hours, as we leave for Cape Cod tomorrow night right after work.  I'm going to go pass out and dream sweet dreams of the fabulous Hyannis Scrapbooking store that I'll be visitng this weekend.  Happy Scraptastic Wednesday, and I'll be back with more fun on Friday!