My Newest Holiday Recipe

The blog challenge of the month at ScrapLover's is to share a holiday recipe. I just got this one a few days ago from Kim at Scrapbooker's Clubhouse. It is definitely one to try. It is super easy and delicious. If you try it, let me know what you think.

Toblerone Fudge

(Kraft What's Cooking Magazine)

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup evaporated milk
1 bar (400g) Toblerone Swiss Milk Chocolate, broken into pieces

Line an 8 inch square pan with parchment paper, with the ends of paper extending over the sides of the pan. Set aside.

Place sugar, butter and milk into a large, heavy saucepan. Bring to a full rolling boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Boil 5 additional minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from heat.

Add chocolate; stir until completely melted. Pour into prepared pan. Refrigerate 3 hours or until firm. Remove fudge from pan, using parchment paper as handles. Cut into squares. Store in a tightly covered container in the refrigerator.

Another Term at Imagine, Create, Scrap!

I just got the good news today that I will be serving a second term on the design team at Imagine, Create, Scrap! I'm really excited. Kimber has started a kit club so we will be working with these this term. I can't wait to see the January kit!

This layout was made using my daughter's first birthday pictures. The transparencies were a product donation from Transparent Touches & Tags during my previous term with Imagine, Create, Scrap.

Pick me up, Daddy!

Is this one cute or what?

The Elusive Candy Cane

Would you believe that I cannot find a traditional, jumbo candy cane anywhere? I can find ones in primary colours or a Simpson one that is white, purple, yellow and red. No matter. I got some really cute Santa hat pictures on the weekend and thanks to the help of Rick at Imagine, Create, Scrap!, I put them all into a photo collage. I printed them off today and they will be mailed tomorrow. It feels great to finally start checking some things off the Christmas preparation list. Only a couple of more weeks to go.....

Holiday Photos - Attempt # 2

Well here are my Plan B shots. Since her hat was too small, I put my hat on her. She got the dress from Nanny T for her birthday last month. I know I have some red eye to contend with, but they are kind of cute. I might try and figure out how to do a photo collage with Photoshop. I think I will still try one more time next week with a candy cane. Stay tuned.

Holiday Photo - Attempt # 1

On the weekend, I decided it was time to get a few holiday pictures in hopes of getting one good one to distribute in the Christmas cards I have yet to make. (I am so behind this year.) I dug out the Santa hat she received last year (that was way too big at the time), and tried to put it on her only to discover there was no chance of that ever fitting her now. I set the hat on the top of her head anyway and tried to take at least one photo. This is the one and only shot I got. She is a girl on the MOVE these days and posed pictures are a thing of the past, at least for now. Time to think of a plan B.

Altered Prima Vase

I can't believe that after all of this time I finally got my Prima contest entry complete. When the announcement was made about Prima being sold at Super Targets, I felt as though I was missing out again since I am in Canada, the land of no Super Target, no Hobby Lobby, no JoAnn's... As luck would have it, we got an invitation we couldn't refuse to take a trip to Florida last month. The only item on my shopping agenda was to check out the Target stores for these new additions. Two Super Targets later, in two different cities, with no such thing as Prima products, I gave up. I was home a couple of weeks when a girl from Scrap Lovers offered to pick one up for me in her area and ship it up. It was so very kind of her to do that. I am just thrilled with how it turned out. I absolutley love the colours of the blue spruce and the Basic Grey paper could not have been a better match. Wish me luck!!

Design Team Assignments

I got to work with some incredible sponsors over the past two months at Imagine, Create, Scrap! I worked with SEI in October and Fancy Pants and Transparent Touches and Tags for November. Many thanks to all the sponsors for the wonderful products!


I just love these photos. It was so much fun watching her look at herself in the mirror and make all the funny faces. When I saw the SEI paper, I knew right away I wanted to use it with these pics. The accompanying iron-ons are a wonderful product and made an excellent addition to the journaling. This one was also "Layout of the Day" earlier this month.

Scrap Gala was AMAZING!

I am still reeling from the awesome weekend we had at Scrap Gala. I can hardly believe we had such a big event in this area. Scrap Gala was hosted by the Scrap Shack and Debbie and her team are to be commended for bringing such an event to the martimes and for running such a smooth weekend.

Christy Tomlinson, Carol Wingert, Tena Sprenger, Debbie Hill and Kah-Mei Smith were the instructors and each and every one of them are hugely talented and personable women. The manufacturers and teachers were all very generous with give-aways.

Carol Wingert:












I took two classes from Carol Wingert: an inking class and an accordian chipboard book. I learned many new inking techniques as well as the best glue to use on mini books. Would you beleive it's the UHU glue stick in combination with a brayer? The glitter on this project is also made from glass. It is a wonderful product.

Christy Tomlinson:

I took two classes from Christy: a Faux Paper bag book and Oodles of Doodles. The faux paper bag book was an easy and practical project, one I would definitely make again. The highlight of the doodling class was the doodling genie and would you believe one was inlcluded in the class kit? I don't even think these are in stores yet but since Christy was part of the team who designed these I guess she had some pull. The Scrap Shack also had all of the different styles in stock so I got a couple of extras because I loved them so much. I really like Christy's style and picked up a few tips on using things like decorative scissors, pins and paper clips as inexpensive ways to embellish a project.

Debbie Hill:

Debbie is the Design Team Leader for Junkitz and she ran what I call a Ruler Book marathon class. We used alcohol inks, transparencies, jump rings, ribbon, tons of stamps and inks and created an incredible project that I just love. She really motivated me to make each and every page of my mini books a masterpiece with all the little extras.


Tena Sprenger:

The first class of the weekend was with Tena and we made a mini book using a Bazzill kit. The combination of Bohemia paper, the hand stitched binding and the "danglies" hanging from the spine of this book made it a definite crowd pleaser. I really liked using the Fiskars eyelet border punch. It really gave the pages that little extra something that made them great.

If all this wasn't good enough, there was a layout contest judged by the teachers and I got the third prize for my "Thankful" layout.

Top Tips & Techniques from Scrap Gala

Since so many have been asking me to share what I learned over the weekend, I thought I'd post a list of tips and techniques I took away from the weekend.

- Alcohol inks can be used to transform unused embellishments into custom page accents.
- The best glue to use on mini books is a glue stick in combination with a brayer.
- UHU is the best glue stick.
- No mini book is complete without "danglies".
- Pins and paperclips are inexpensive and effective page embellishments.
- Decorative scissors should NOT be left in the back of the scrap cupboard.
- Apply distress inks over masks with a stipple brush.
- Doodle Genies are AWESOME!

Happy First Birthday

Here are some pics from the big first birthday. She was so cute tasting the frosting. She put one finger in at a time and then worked up to three and four fingers. Overall she didn't make a big mess, like I expected. It was really cute to watch her. I don't know where the last year has gone!

We're Back!!!

We had the most wonderful week in Florida. The baby could not have been a better traveler. Noone would have even known she was on the plane. I think her favourite part of the whole trip was the water. She had a ball playing in the ocean, in the sand, and in the pool.

She's doing really well at walking when we hold her hands. I just love this photo of her and her daddy.

The weather was really warm and we only had one day of rain and one really cool and windy day. Since I was the was the only one who had never been to Florida before (besides the baby), everyone made sure I saw orange trees and aligators in the wild. That was an experience. Good thing my husband has a keen eye. We saw three different gators before we finished, several manatees and many, many different species of birds.

On the plane ride back, it was so clear that we could see much of the country side. Most places I did not recognize but we did know the CN tower and Niagra Falls when we got closer to home. On the descent it was really neat to see the shadow of the plane follow us. I took several pics as we got closer and closer to the ground.

Great Scrap News

I got the nicest phone call the other day from Christina at Scrap Lovers inviting me to join her 2007 design team. I am beyond thrilled. This book of cards was part of my submission. It is made from Kraft envelopes and is held together with screw posts. There is one envelope for each holiday or occasion in 2006. I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

I also won a monthly contest at Paws on Scrapbooking for my "Thankful" layout.

October Design Team Assignments

Here are some of the projects I made with the amazing October Daisy D's kit from Nicole at Scrapbooker's Clubhouse.

Since I also had the ribbon technique kit, I made this ribbon book to showcase some of the wonderful American Crafts ribbon.

Piggy Tales was our manufacturer sponser and they were very generous. I just love this line of paper.

Layout of the Day on the Prima Blog!!!

I just got the nicest surprise this morning. "They've only just begun" was selected as layout of the day on the Prima Blog. I used their Eire Collection of paper and a variety of Got Flowers. I just love their products. Check it out!

No Adhesive!?!

I created this layout for a couple of challenges: a colour challenge (black and white plus one colour) and a no adhesive challenge. That's right, the whole layout is held together with thread only. Who knew you could machine stitch chipboard? I'm really pleased with the end result and to top it off, this layout made layout of the day at Create My Keepsake on October 21st. This is a first for me.

I also had a freestyle card chosen as layout of the day on the Imagine, Create, Scrap! message board.

Thanks so much for the recognition!

Cards...my new favourite thing

I was inspired to make some cards this week with the Urban Lily paper I received from Kimber at Imagine, Create, Scrap! I won this crazy countdown game held during the last crop, but that is a whole other story. I especially like the Birthday card with the text written in a circle. That is one of the new tricks I learned this week.

Photo Shoot, Birthday Party & Thanksgiving...what a weekend!

I had the best weekend. My scrap friend, Michelle, her son, her dog, myself and my daughter went out to visit another scrap friend, Tina, and her kids. We all went on a fall photo shoot. What a great time. The weather was perfect and the trees were unbelievably beautiful. I just couldn't wait to scrap this photo when I saw it. I used the Eire collection of paper and flowers from Prima. I just love how it turned out.

On top of all that, it was my husband's birthday on Friday. I invited a bunch of people over to surprise him. (This was after being away all day on the photo shoot.) Luckily the nice weather kept him golfing so I could quickly prepare. He didn't suspect a thing until my sister and her husband showed up. We had a wonderful evening.

On Sunday, we hosted Thanksgiving dinner. This was a first for us and it turned out great. The weather could not have been better and we ate way too much food. It was an all around great weekend.

My First Card Publication

I just got the best news today! I am going to have my first card published in the February issue of Cards magazine. "Time to Celebrate" was made with the September kit from Scrapbooker's Clubhouse. I also got an e-mail from Ginger Rohfls from Imagination Project. She sent me some praise on the layout posted above. I entered it in their Gin X contest. I'm not sure if I'll win a prize or not but it sure was nice of her to reply to me personally and say, "That is REALLY cool! LOVE how you did the fabrix!"

I love fall!

Here is a picture I took today at the local vegetable stand. I just couldn't resist the beautiful display. The owner told me I was about the fifteenth person that day who asked to take photos at his place. I am really pleased with how they turned out. My next photo shoot will be when there are more leaves on the ground. Stay tuned.

My First Post! Woohoo!

I have been tossing around the idea of creating my own scrap blog for awhile and now that I've started it, I can't figure out what took me so long. This layout is one of my favourites. This is the first time I used so many buttons and I'm hooked. This photo was taken at Hopewell Cape on Labour Day weekend, the last unofficial weekend of summer. I used the colour orange on the flower to represent the change of seasons from summer to fall.