Inspired By All The Little Things #16

Happy Monday friends! Checking in with a quick card I made inspired by the Inspired By All the Little Things challenge this week. Love the rectangles of the doors and the peacefulness of the green and blues in the photo. Makes me think of European cobblestone streets where people bike everywhere. 

I stamped my Mint Julep card base with MFT Scattered Surface background in Soft Stone and added a few PTI Tag Sale #9 dies on top for a tone on tone look. Sentiment diecut from MFT cut from Simon Says Stamp Island Blue. The 'Sending You' from PTI Thanks All Ways was stamped in Smokey Shadow. 

Thanks for popping in and hope you have a good week. I'll be back tomorrow with this week's new CASology challenge. 

Two on Thursday

Hello -

Things have been so crazy lately I've had very little time in my craft room. But I did get to play around yesterday afternoon to make two cards for two challenges I don't get to participate in very often.

First card is for the Fusion Card Challenge this week. I was inspired by the primary colors in the photo to make a card for the upcoming teacher appreciate week in May.

I used the pencil stamps from PTI Teach & Inspire to create the diagonal design on the card. Sentiment from Thanks All Ways. Think this will be perfect for my daughter's male teacher. 

Second card is inspired by the colorful rainbow at the Curtain Call Inspiration Challenge this week.

I heat embossed the Winnie and Walter 'Do You See What I See' stamp in white and blended a rainbow of TH Distress Inks onto the panel. I matted the panel on black cardstock to make it pop before putting on white cardbase. Added a nest of white thread underneath the sentiment from Altenew Label Love. 

Easter weekend is kicking off here. No school or work tomorrow and my brother, sister in law and two kids are coming to visit from NC for a long weekend. For those of you who celebrate, Happy Easter and if you don't, have a wonderful weekend! Thanks for popping in!

ColourQ Take 3

Last card for this week's ColourQ challenge. Since these colors remind me of water, I used them for thank you cards for my daughter's swim coaches. 

I used streamers from PTI Hooray set in the challenge colors to create festive background while still remaining masculine for her male coach. Sentiment from PTI Thanks All Ways. 

That's it for me. Thanks for popping in! 

Three For Thursday

Happy Thursday! Here today with three cards to share and a fabulous recipe for you to try.

First up is my card for the CASology cue card FRIEND. I made this for a friend that I don't see very often but think of often. 

I heat embossed the FRIENDS from Wet Paint in black and added small scattered hearts in some of my favorite bright colors. I left lots of white space so the hearts were not overwhelming. The white card panel is mounted on black cardstock to give nice contrast to the colorful hearts. 

I'm playing along with the Tag You're It! challenge for the first time. Figure if I play along with every challenge I'll build a good stash of gift tags.

I was inspired by the gold in Heather's beautiful tag and the scribbled circles under her cluster of flowers.  My tag features a favorite color combination - gold and teal (Hawaiian Shores & Aqua Mist). I used some gold Washi tag for the bottom of the tag and stamped gold circle scribbles to anchor my balloon. I scattered the stars on the tag to go along with the stars in the balloon. Finished it off with some Hawaiian Shores ribbon. 

I also used the tag reinforcer circle die at the top - never used it before but just realized the die came with one of my tag dies. It was beginning to annoy me how the hole at the top would always rip when I used ribbon. 

My last card to share uses this week's Make It Monday - Three Panel Card challenge. Thanks Ashley for the easy directions and measurements. Super easy! Got a head start on my end of year teacher thank you cards. 

I stayed away with traditional 'school' colors, the primary colors but opted for bright fun colors like teal and orange. I used one of the edgers die for the flap and stamped a bunch of different THANKS from the Thanks All Ways set. The bottom flap has the dotted lines from Ombre Builders (my FAVE stamp from that set). Love how the orange twine finishes it off. 

For the inside I used the sentiment from Wonderful Words:Teacher leaving lots of room for my daughter and I to write a personal note in there. 

I created a pocket cut out of Summer Sunrise on the bottom panel to hold the gift card and stamped some flip flops in Summer Sunrise for a tone-on-tone look and the sentiment (both from Flipping Out) in Hawaiian Shores to stand out. Can you tell that Hawaiian Shores is one of my favorite colors?? 

Also going to start sharing some recipes here on my blog. One of my New Year resolutions is to cook more and to cook outside the box. I'm going to be trying a lot of new recipes this year since I've got a gazillion food related pins on Pinterest and a hundred ripped out recipes from magazines that I'm determined to tackle this year. I'm a foodie - love to eat, love exotic ingredients, and watch all sorts of cooking shows - but finding it tough to balance cooking for practicality (we all gotta eat right?!) and cooking for fun. So I'll be sharing my successes here - both the quick & easy meals as well as the fancier complicated ones that I may try. 

Last night's dinner was a complete success. I made Slow-Cooked Salmon, Chickpeas, and Greens from Bon Appetit magazine. It was so delicious and even the kids loved it. Well, 2 out of 3 because the 3rd hates salmon so there's no preparation could make her love it.  The chickpeas were creamy and the fried capers....yum. Kinda like popcorn when you can't stop eating them. The slow roasted part threw me a little as I am used to cooking either fast or at a high temp and I was doubtful that 30 min at 250 degrees would result in anything good. But wow, the salmon was moist and perfectly cooked. The recipe is a little complicated as there are four distinct components to be cooked/assembled before the whole thing is put in the oven but definitely was worth the effort. 

I used kale instead of mustard greens and I doubled the recipe because we are big eaters and also love leftovers for lunch the next day. 

Thanks for hanging till the end of this extra long blog post. I appreciate you stopping by and hope you are having a great week.