Card Boxes

I will never be a teacher.  I have a stamping group that meets at my house - just for fun.  We make cards and bookmarks and STUFF.  Our extras go in a box and we give them away to a homeless shelter in Milwaukee.  I recently have made some boxes for my cards for a craft sale and was showing them off.  You always have to take the consequences when you show off.  The ladies decided they wanted to learn how.  I made the boxes from cereal boxes, backs of legal pads and whatever kind of cardboard I can find to recyle.  Remember I am the Recycle Queen.

So today was the planned day to make boxes.  I really stressed making samples of Step one, Step Two etc. and we dug in.  I don't know how you people who teach a class do it.  Maybe doing a class in front of a camera is different, but 8 ladies who all go at different speeds, is really HARD for me.  I am not complaining as I enjoyed every minute, but when we finished, I ate lunch and then took a nap for an hour and a half.  THAT tells me it was hard.  The picture is of the sweet girls who all made a box under my direction.  Hard to believe.

These boxes are covered with everything from designer paper, old sheet music, brown paper bag (on back of the sheet music box), page from Penneys Catalog and wrapping paper.  The wrapping paper is the butterfly box on the right.  I think they did a wonderful job.  (Clap  and hoot please)

The most important part is that we all had fun recycling.  Enjoy your weekend.

Yum! Sweet Pickles

Another canning day today.  Well, sort of.  These are wonderful pickles that don't have to be processed.  You just keep them in the fridge.  I never really liked sweet pickles much until I tasted these.  They are awesome.  I must have cut the recipe out of the newspaper - somewhere - years ago as it's awfully yellowed.  I tried it last year and watched Bob eat them all.  So this year I thought I would taste them myself.  I decided immediately that he would have to share, so I made another batch today.  There is nothing 'fancy' to learn.  Just throw all the ingredients in a bowl and mix them up.  I have reused some old lids here, but I DO STERILIZE the jars and lids.  It's just that no seal is necessary.  I will share my recipe.

6-8 cups thinly sliced cucumbers

1 cup onion sliced thin

1 green pepper sliced thin

2 T. salt

2 cups sugar

1 cup vinegar (white)

 1 T. celery seeds

I also found a recipe that is almost the same on cook.com called Never Fail Refrigerator Pickles (sweet) and they add alspice.  Check it out!  The recipe makes two quarts or four pints.

Corny Corn

Hello again,  Besides tomato soup, we did up some corn.  I was kind of worried we would not get any this year and we were lucky and found a farm stand on the way home from church last week.  We stopped again today and bought some corn that turned out to be wonderful.  I wanted to freeze it so asked Bob to help.  We used this method of microwave cooking to blanch the corn.  I didn't cook it the full 8 minutes.  But don't take your life in your hands and copy me.

With two of us, it went pretty fast and we now have corn in the freezer.  Next on my list is spaghetti sauce, and the bowl of tomatoes you see here is the beginning of what I will probably really get into tomorrow.  Today I need to just sit for awhile.  Oh!  Sitting is a great position to make a greeting card.  And I sure need to start sorting out what I will take to the craft sale in Sept.   Can you see my mind is going faster than my body?  Toodleoo...

Ahhhh! The Harvest

If you've been wondering why I have not put many posts on here lately, it's because it's Harvest Time.  At Harvest Time, my house becomes a wreck.  The floors are sometimes sticky.  The trash is always full.  The compost pile and the worm bed gets fed really well and I get stuff on the shelves in the basement and freezer for next year.

This year with the bad drought, I was starting to wonder, but I think Harvest has exploded and it's my favorite time of year.  The weather is wonderful.  You can sleep with the windows open - if you can stand the tree frogs around here, and you even get a surprise shower once in awhile.  We just got one that lasted about 5 minutes.  The drops were so big they looked like huge snowflakes.

Friday night our son and daughter-in-law came over with their tomatoes.  We combined them with some I had and made tomato soup.  Gramma's recipe.  This is it...
1 peck of tomatoes - 16 lbs. We weighed it AFTER we juiced them
6 small or 3 large onions - We used two large
16 cloves - these get put in a muslin bag and taken out after it's "soup".
1 hot and 1 sweet pepper - We have anti green pepper people so used one hot pepper
1 small bunch celery
We added basil too
Cook all together.  Run through food mill.  Return to stove and add some of hot soup mixture to mixture below (rue)

1 small cup sugar
1 c. flower
1/8 c. salt - 1/3 cup was just way too much.
1/2 c. butter.
Rub together.  Cook soup til creamy.  Pack in jars and process.

First let me tell you that I had added more words to this than there were.  It was basically notes of Gramma's to herself I think and I worked with it a lot to get it right.  My experience in making it with too much salt, too much sugar etc. and my son's modern ideas and a lot of "tasters" made the very best soup ever.
 I wish I had a beautiful picture of all the jars of soup sitting on the counter, but I was efficient this time and they are in the basement on the shelf already.  Here's the proof.  And anyone who uses the recipe takes their chances.  :)

Brown & White Plus One

Hi Everyone,  This is my card for the upcoming Victorine Originals Challenge.  I'm a little ahead of time, but wanted you all to know that there is only ONE MORE DAY of a Back to School Sale on Victorine Rubber Stamps online website.  Vicki is offering 30% off ALL rubber stamps AND  if you spend over $40 you get free shipping.  Get the heavy ones NOW Ladies.  This is a great deal!  And it ends tomorrow August 19, 2012.  www.victorineoriginals.com gets you to the site and to the Online Catalog.  Isn't this just the cutest vintage Santa!

CAS183 - Sunset Sailing

Hello Everyone,  I have had a really BUSY streak that I can't seem to get out of.  It's Harvest Time and I can't pass up all the good stuff out there, so I have been finding some to put in the freezer whenever I get the chance and it takes time.  I am even thinking of canning some things but that takes more time.  Anyway today I got some free time and did the CAS challenge on Splitcoast located  here.  It's a wonderfully easy sketch by Tenia and I used a sheet of Basic Grey Designer Paper and a PSX sailboat stamp.  I stamped the boat on the dp and then stamped it again on white CS and cut out just the sails and glued them on top.  Easy Paper Piecing!  The waves are run through the Cuttlebug and the top is cut.  Sentiment is Victorine Originals.

DTGD12 - Mistake

Good Morning, I need to show you all this card as I am embarrassed big time that I didn't follow all the directions on Splitcoast DTGD12 challenge.  It was a sketch that needed to be tall and thin.  I got the tall and thin part, but totally missed the sketch.

Did you ever have so much fun making a card that you forgot what you were doing?  I have to say it happens to me on a regular basis, but usually before I upload.  This time I realized it afterward.  Too late.  So I figured out how to delete the photo, but could not for the life of me fiture out how to delete the rest of the upload.  Now I don't want to show my face over there.  Don't worry.  I'll get over it, but today I'm hiding.

This is a long, tall card and will probably fit well in a #10 envelope.  The top butterfly is popped up and the bottom one is just glued on with three black pearls on the left side.

Now I'm going back to cleaning this craft room.  I always seemd to get distracted and it never gets done.  You would be amazed at how many cards I get made while cleaning.  I did find a missing stamp, so life it good.