Heirloom Rubber Stamp and Paper Arts Show

This past weekend was the Heirloom Rubber Stamp and Paper Art Show.  I wanted to go but was worried about bringing the kids to this show.  I knew in my mind what I was setting myself up for; "I'm bored" and "How much longer?"  I could see it already.  My hubby said that we would just give it a try and see just how things went.

We have never been to a rubber stamp or paper art show so we didn't really know what to expect. I have to say we were pleasantly surprised.  We spent just over two hours there.  There was so much to see and do that it kept the kids occupied.  I think they did every make and take there was. They had a blast. Thank God they're crafty kids.

 My youngest is a touchy kid so the make and takes were a great way for her to have her hands busy and involved.  The oldest gets tired and cranky fast but we had none of that until the ride home. I was so impressed on how good they were and by what they made. It just made me beam with happiness. :)   

The first stop was the roughest. We stopped by Endless Creations and Everyday Cards.  The lady at the booth was a saint. She worked with the kids to explain how to use the different stamps and the basic how to's of card making.  My youngest got frustrated right of the bat because the words she stamped in her flags were not straight.  Needless to say it took a lot of talk from my hubby to convince her to go on and that every card is different. I have to say the cards came out so neat.

After this we sent them off on their own with money to do the make and takes. Their next stop was at Local King Rubber Stamp.  There they tried out some marker on stamp techniques.  I have to say they did a good job.

Next they headed to Stamp on It where they used some 3D crystal lacquer, glitter and foil stickers to make a card.  These came out amazing. I loved how the 3D crystal lacquer and glitter work so much so that I picked up some acetate and a kit that they had with the lacquer in it.

Somewhere along the line they found a place to try out the Winks of Stella.  

Lastly it was off to Craft Fantastic where the girls each made two necklaces.

They did all this while we shopped and walked around spying some great tags, cards and demos.

Here is two amazing demos from Impression Obsessions both on the Pan Pastels. These are a must get!

It's been a long time.

Like the title of this post says, it's been a long time, to long, since I posted last. A lot has happened. I've been super busy and life just kind of took over for a bit but things are starting to look better.

Let's see...where to begin...right after my last post I lost my father and my kids finished school. I miss my dad dearly. It's been very hard for me, it was unexpected and sudden. He was and amazing person and I'm still trying to figure out what to do with out him around and missing him all the time. 

Surprisingly the kids were amazing all summer long. I think my dad was poking them and making them behave for me. I've never seen them go that long with good behavior. Now that school is back in session the kids are back to being themselves. Good thing, is I finally get some time to work, bad thing - since being back to school I have had each kid home at least once for being sick and one of them twice and it's only been a month. Hopefully that is not a sign of what this year is going to be like.

We adopted a new puppy, Stormie, from a shelter out here. We're not quite sure what kind of dog she is but she is a riot. The vet said she is definitely basinji and the trainer thinks she a little bit of shepard but she also has webbed toes, so who knows. She's been amazing. She was already semi-house broken (she goes outside on schedule but will not let us know via barking or such outside of the schedule), crate trained, sits and has already started playing with our older dog. She started puppy training classes and went to puppy play time, she had to sit outside the gate for that one. She's more of a people dog than a dog dog but the trainer will work with her on that.

We started construction today on our house. The upstairs bath is getting completely remodeled. Today began the demolition, so it's been super loud between the banging and the dog barking. Shouldn't be long though.

So things are moving along, I recently took the Copic certification classes, both the standard and intermediate ones. Look for a blog post about that coming coming soon. :) 

Day 52 - A Day of Food

Today I enlisted the help of the kids to make some cavatelli like my hubby's grandma use to, similar to Nana's video below. Though my pasta dough this time was 2/3 white flour and 1/3 wheat flour.
It took the kids awhile to get the rolling down right but they eventually did. I had them make about a pound of it before hubby and I took the rest of the pasta dough and made ravioli with it. The ravioli was interesting to make. It was my first time making it. I use a mixture of ricotta and seasoning for the filling. I first started off by making a sheet of dough, putting spoons of filling on it and covering it with another sheet of pasta before cutting them. Then I realized it was much easier to make a sheet, place the spoons of filling just off center and fold it over to make half round ravioli. You'll see in my picture some of each and in one of the pictures you can see the bag of cavatelli, my pasta machine, the bowl of filling and misc. goodies. It was a fun experience. We froze all the pasta but 12 ravioli, which we made for dinner. We had them in a brown butter and sage sauce, with a Montreal encrusted fillet....So good.

Days 49,50, & 51 - So far behind

So I haven't had much time for blogging the past few days. It's been absolutely craziness. Non-stop going, and I have still been doing my creative day thing every day even if I didn't post it. I'm going to take today's post to catch back up on everything.

Day 49 - My creative thing for the day was deciding to try to make something else with wonton wrappers. Yep I'm going try to fill them with everything I possibly can. Today was for a late night movie snack with the hubby. We wanted something spicy so..wonton wrapper jalapeno poppers it was. They came out really good, so good I'll be making them again very soon. Here is what I did:

You need: 3 oz of cream cheese
                  about 5 diced pickled jalapeno rings
                  1/2 tsp of sour cream
Mix it all together in a small bowl or ramekin till everything is together. I took the cream cheese mix and put about a half a tsp - one tsp in the middle of the wonton wrapper, wet the edges with a little water and folded it into a triangle pressing the edges together. Bake at 350°F for about 10 - 15 minutes until they start to brown.

Day 50 - Today I made a musical ornament. Not musical in the sense that it plays music but musical in the sense that it has to do with music..sheet music. I took a wood ornament painted it, decoupaged on some musical paper, added some musical notes, painted the edge with some gold dust and viola:

Day 51 - Today was all about the kids. I helped the oldest finish up her painting for the art show. Taught her how to make "snow" on the top of the mountains using a white marker. I then framed them and attached some hanging wire to them and took them to the gallery so they could be hung for the kids show. :) I love that my kids like art and I'm proud that their art will be shown in a gallery at such young ages. <3

Day 12 - Simple Family Mailboxes

One of the great things that we have going on around our house is our mailboxes. These mailboxes allow us to write notes back and forth asking each other questions, leaving reminders for things or to just tell each other that we love one another. We use handmade note cards and one of my kids even has a little note book that we write back and forth in leaving it in the mailbox each time. Yesterday's post was on making the note cards today I'll go over how we made the mailboxes.

It's really easy so that the kids can do their own and personalize them. All you need is a sheet of construction paper/decorative paper, stapler, hole punch and some things to decorate your mailbox with.

To start off you with the construction paper with the short side facing you. Fold up the bottom one third of the paper, as if you were starting to fold a business letter. Staple the sides of the fold together.

This pocket that you just made is going to be where you place your notes to each other. What you do from here is all up to you. We took ours and punched holes in the upper corners so that they could hang from the door knobs. One kid decided not to do that and has theirs just taped to the font of the door. That is your choice...for this one I punched holes in it and strung some yarn though the holes to hang it.

Then it's just a matter of putting your name on it and decorating it. Here's one all decorated:

Have fun. Hang them up and leave notes to your family. :)