Happy Valentine's Day!

Hope you are enjoying this day of love and friendship. My husband and I went on a breakfast date this morning after dropping the kids off at school. This afternoon I'll be over at the school helping with class parties. This is such a fun holiday!

I had an extra hour in the middle of the day today and decided that we needed another Valentine banner around our house. Yes, I have many other pressing things to do, but sometimes I just need to make something!

The base of the banner is some heart doilies that I found out in our garage. Love it when cool and useful things make an appearance at our house. 

This was a great place to use up some valentine products. I kept the banner really simple and just layered up a few pieces on each doilie.

All of the cardstock pieces were run through a Xyron machine to make them adhesive. It was a quick way to stick everything together.

The chipboard pieces are self adhesive, so they just stuck right onto the doilie without needing to add adhesive.

Once each of the hearts was finished, I pinned them to the hot pink ric rac and sewed the doilies to the ric rac. It's a quick way to make sure it's secure and not have to mess with adhesive.

Hope you enjoy celebrating those you love today!

Supplies /// Elle's Studio One and Only Strips /// Elle's Studio One and Only Tidbits /// You + Me Kit /// Be Mine Kit /// Craft Store for Ric Rac, Thread & Doilies

Take Twelve: February 2012

Yesterday was the day for the Take 12 challenge on the Ella Publishing blog. The challenge is to take twelve photos on the 12th of the month.

Yesterday all of my photos were taken with my phone. Next month I'm going to challenge myself to pull out my real camera and take a few shots with that too.

This month I put my photos together in a college in Photoshop.

Starting with the top left photo, here's a brief description of the photos.

teaching the 3-year-olds at church /// kicking a football /// bike riding /// shooting hoops /// my sister making the BEST ever veggie pasta /// my brother make focaccia bread /// Sunday dinner at my parent's house /// my parents' house (the place I grew up!) /// me and my valentine /// Hannah and neighborhood friends playing school outside /// playing inside /// the view from my bed while reading a bedtime story with Max

I love this challenge because it encourages me to get my camera out and take pictures when I normally wouldn't.  Looking forward to using these photos on a layout soon!

Make It Sunday @ Elle's Studio

Elle's Studio has invited past design team members to create something and share it on their blog in their Make It Sunday feature.

Here's a peek at my project.

Today is my day and I hope you'll stop by and see what I made!

The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie

There is something just so decadent about a perfectly browned, hot, moist and fresh from the oven chocolate chip cookie. I've made a lot of chocolate chip cookies and I think I've found the perfect recipe. 

This recipes includes the usual list of ingredients, but it is the way they are combined that makes this recipe unique. It takes a little more time to allow the dough to rest in between mixing, but I think it's worth the wait.

(This recipe was adapted by me from the May & June 2009 issue of Cooks Illustrated Magazine)

Ingredients
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 1/2 sticks salted butter
1 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 large eggs
1 1/4 cups semi sweet chocolate chips
1 1/4 cups dark chocolate chips (I like Ghiradelli 60% cocoa)

Preheat over to 375 degrees.

1. Heat 3 sticks of butter in a saucepan and stir until the butter starts to turn brown and have the great browned butter smell.
2.  Once butter is browned, pour it over the remaining 1/2 stick of butter in a mixing bowl and allow the butter to melt.
3. Add both sugars, salt and vanilla to the butter and mix. Add the eggs and mix for 30 seconds.
4. Let the batter sit for 3 minutes and then mix again for 30 seconds. Repeat this two times.
5. Mix in flour and baking soda.
6. Add chocolate chips and mix until combined.
7. Use a cookie scoop (mine is 3 tablespoons) to portion out dough onto baking pan.
8. Bake for 10 - 12 minutes. Wait until the cookies are slightly golden before pulling them from the oven. Allow the cookies to rest on the cookie sheet for three minutes after taking them out of the oven and then move them to a cooling rack.
9. Let cool slightly before eating and enjoy!

Notes:

*** Once all of the ingredients are mixed the dough will be very soft and shiny. Don't be tempted to add more flour!

*** This recipe will make around 5 dozen cookies. I usually bake a couple dozen cookies and then freeze the rest of the dough in cookie balls in freezer bags so that we have cookie dough ready whenever a craving hits.

*** I use my Kitchenaid mixer with the paddle attachment to mix the batter. Your could also use a hand mixer to combine the ingredients before adding the flour. Once you add the flour, you could mix by hand.

Let me know if you give these a try!

Project Life 2012: Week Five

The first month of Project Life 2012 has been successfully completed. This project is perfect for me right now. It's a great place to collect the little stories about our family that would otherwise go untold.

Each week it is a challenge to narrow now the photos for the pages because these are so many I want to share.  I'm trying to keep a balance of photos, journaling and space for a few creative elements.

This week I used paper from the new Basic Grey PB & J line at the filler for the non-photo pockets. I was lucky enough to get a sample pack of all of the new Basic Grey papers at CHA, so I'm sure more of it will be making an appearance in my projects.

This page features two of this week's highlights which was my CHA trip and our family going to a Suns game.

One of the CHA photos is a screenshot of texts with my husband while I was away plus there is a photo of our design team at CHA and a photo of kit designing back at the hotel. 

We mainly went to the Suns to hear Audrey sing the national anthem with the Chandler Children's Choir. Luckily the Suns pulled out a win. They have been a bit of a disappointment lately.

Of course, the pages would not be complete without food photos. We took the kids to Kokomo for yogurt one night. Although the photo of the three of them wasn't the best, it was all I had, so it went in the book.  Ward and I tried out a new restaurant with my sister and brother call Italian Restaurant and it was pretty good, although I thought it was overpriced for the amount of food. Not sure that we'll be going back.

My Silhouette was put to work on the bottom half of this page. I cut the "today" tag, the & sign and the honeycomb pattern with the Silhouette.

Have I mentioned that my Silhouette is getting ungraded to a Cameo?!? While at CHA, the Silhouette booth had a drawing for a new Cameo and they drew my card. There was only one winner, so I was feeling very lucky. Now I'm just impatiently waiting for it to arrive.

Thanks for stopping by today. Hope you have a fantastic day.

Project Life 2012: Week Four

Four weeks into Project Life and I'm still enjoying it. Only 48 weeks to go!

This week I had my Remember This kit out on my desk, so I reached for those items to embellish this page. The aqua and yellow combo is one of my favorites right now.

One of my favorite things in the kit is the chevron print bags. Here I used the yellow chevron bag in one of the pockets and it fit perfectly. 

We made chocolate chip cookies using our favorite recipe this week and I decided to include the recipe too. The secret to the recipe is browning the butter. It's seriously so good.

This was a busy week with a science fair, trip to CA for me which included a night at Disneyland and the Pinewood Derby. I'm happy I have a place to document all of these stories for our family.

Phone Photos

My photo taking habits have changed so much since I've been able to take photos on my phone. Since I almost always have my phone by my side, I'm much more likely to take a quick photo right while we are doing something.

A couple of nights ago Hannah and I were reading on the couch and she looked so cute reading to me, so I snapped a couple of pictures. Thanks to my phone for being nearby, these photos were taken. One of these photos was filtered in Instagram. On the other photo, I used the Pioneer Woman action "seventies" in Photoshop so that the two photos could have a similar feel.

The read tag was made with kraft paper cut in the Silhouette. I loaded a tag shape into the Silhouette program and then added the text to the tag.

The journaling is on the yellow tag that it tucked inside the notebook style bag. The tag started out white and I colored it with Tattered Angels Sunshine Mist.

The printable in that goes with the Remember This kit has a bunch of photo frames. It's a fun way to add a may to a photo.

One last thing to share tonight. I put a card together this week to give to Diana when we went out for her birthday lunch.

Layout and card supplies are from the Remember This and Be Amazing Kits. 

 Hope that you have a fantastic weekend!