Christmas Cards at Last!

Now that we’ve “killed the bird,” I’m finally ready to make some Christmas cards.  My sister came over today to work on packaging up some jewelry for a craft fair and while she was working on that, I made cards.  It was so nice to have another female in the house!  I love my boys, but sometimes I need some girl time.

I started out with some iris folding.  I have a rather large stack of pre-cut, embossed cards for iris folding that need to be used up.

 

When I got done, I thought they looked rather plain, so I added some clip art from PcCrafter.  The snowmen are from the Christmas Snowman collection by Teresa Kogut and the bear is by Laurie Furnell and is included in the Christmas Sampler 4 collection.

I haven’t done any dry embossing for quite a while, so for my next card, I got out my embossing board and embossed the border around the card as well as around the oval in the center of the card.  The star was made with a Coluzzle template and the JOY stamp is from Inkadinkado.

I used a stencil to trace and cut out the ornaments for the last card.  The tops and dots around the centers are drawn with a gel pen. I punched shapes for the centers and added a puffy heart, a jewel and a punched snowflake for decorations.

Peppermint Mocha

A couple years ago I passed the 10-year mark at my place of employment and as a reward, I received a Krups espresso/cappuccino maker.  Last year, at his company Christmas party, my husband won a really nice Cuisinart burr grinder, so now we have all we need for making a pretty decent cup of coffee.  I have yet to make a cappuccino to rival those I was served when in Holland, but I can make a pretty decent mocha.

Last week, my hubby picked up some Millstone peppermint flavored coffee beans for me and some Java Delight Sumatran coffee beans for himself.  I’m not a huge fan of Sumatran, because it has a tendency to be a bit too strong and bitter for my tastes.  Well, last Saturday I was getting ready to fix myself a peppermint mocha and hubby had ground a little too much of his Sumatran so there was still some in the hopper, Rather than try to clean it all out, I just added the Millstone beans and ended up with a mixture of about half and half peppermint and Sumatran coffee.  It made some of the best peppermint mocha yet!  The Millstone coffee by itself was a bit too mild so the Sumatran added just the right amount of punch.  Yummy!  Here’s my Recipe:

• 1 Tbsp finely ground Java Delight Sumatran coffee
• 1 Tbsp finely ground Millstone Peppermint coffee
• 2 Tbsp Swiss Miss instant cocoa
• 1 rounded tsp sugar
• 1/4 cup (or slightly less) low-fat or skim milk

Make the coffee according to your coffee maker / espresso machine instructions (mine takes 2 Tbsp of ground coffee for one cup).  Mix the milk and sugar in the steamer cup for your espresso maker* and steam it until it is frothy.   Mix the brewed coffee and instant cocoa in your coffee cup, then add the steamed milk.

Now, enjoy your peppermint mocha while making cards. :)

*If you don’t have an espresso maker, I have heard that you can heat the milk/sugar mixture and then put it in your blender on high and blend it until it’s frothy.

Christmas Ornament

I was chatting with one of my friends yesterday and we were both commenting that we just weren’t into the Christmas card making spirit yet. We both have blogs (click here to see hers), but neither of us has posted for a while. So I issued a challenge. We both had to post a card by tonight.

She beat me by several hours. I have an excuse, though. My sister stopped by unexpectedly with the cutest little Chihuahua puppy I’ve ever seen. After convincing my cats that she wasn’t a snack they got along fairly well. Yes, I’m pretty sure my cat, Shotput was planning on having a feast. She’s a fairly decent mouser, and the only time I’ve seen her move so quickly was when she is after a mouse. Fortunately, my youngest son was quick enough to intervene or things could have turned out badly.

My sister stayed for the afternoon and I showed her how to do paper embroidery. We had lots of fun. She didn’t finish hers, so I sent her home with needle and embroidery floss so she could finish it later.

Here is the card I made.

You can find the pattern for the ornament on my website at: http://www.handcraftedgreetings.com/embrinst.html

I made the background with my Cuttelbug Holly embossing template. After embossing, I inked it with a green stamp pad. The frame was cut from some poinsettia print paper.

Kaleidoscope Birthday Card

I was staring blankly at my craft table today trying to figure out what to do next when I spotted some leftover tiles from my last teabag folding project.  I only had six, but I didn’t want to throw them away since they were printed on photo paper.

I played with some different arrangements and this is what I came up with.

 

It’s quick and easy and it used up five out of six tiles.

Now, I really need to get busy on some Christmas cards.  I am having a very difficult time getting into the spirit, though.  It’s just too early.