Cousins Book and scrapbooking

My family is having a reunion this summer and it will be the first time the Babe will meet cousins, aunts and uncles. To help her not feel like everyone is a stranger I made a book just for her.

Every family has a two page spread and every cousin has an individual photo. It's a pretty simple book and was quick to put together. Some of the pictures are poor quality, but I'll take new ones this summer. I took many photos from the computer where the resolution is 72 dpi and printed them, where the resolution is 300 dpi. But I don't care. The point is to recognize faces, and the babe LOVES the book. It's totally cute how she points at faces. To fill up the book I printed a couple other pages that I had made in the past that I thought might interest her.

As I was looking through digital scrapbook pages I had made over the past two years, I realized how many pages I'd actually made. I make pages for work periodically to advertise whatever fonts we are currently promoting. Some of my layouts I do in a rush and am kind of embarrassed with the final, but many of them I like and they just sit in folders on my computer collecting digital dust. I thought I'd post some of those for rememberance sake.

This silly face layout I printed and added to the Cousin book. The Babe seeks out this page and points at each face and sticks her tongue out. It cracks me up!

Buttery Crescent Rolls

We were invited to dinner on Sunday and were asked to bring bread. I had to squeeze in one more recipe from my Christmas cookbook before we moved so it was a good excuse. These are fake crescent rolls. It's a basic roll recipe that you roll out, cut wedges and roll into crescents. The part that was supposed to be special and make it more like flakey crescent rolls was shredding 1 cup of cold butter on the dough before rolling. Yes, one whole cup of butter. It got messy, both shredding (getting all over the counter) and cooking (melted butter pooling in the pan and basically frying the bottom of the rolls). They were very tasty rolls and extremely buttery, but next time I'll probably just spread soft butter instead of shredding cold butter. It will be less messy and taste the same.

Grandpa Duck

I know what your thinking. What? Another duck? But behold, this one is different! It has a foam head! It's a lot sturdier than my Lucky ducks, which were designed to be flexible with babies in mind. When I started this one I thought it would be neat to make him a Mallard Duck or a Wood Duck with a cool green head. But alas, I don't have cool green fabric and I'm on the verge of a move, so I'm not going to get more fabric. I do like how his wings turned out, though. Notice the feathers?

Creme Brulee divine

One of my best friends recieved a gift of 10 real vanilla beans. What a fun gift! But she had no idea how to use them. Itta Britta to the rescue (DA da-da DA!!! [that's my theme music])! I also had never used real vanilla beans before, but I had watched them used many many times and couldn't resist the invitation to teach (and to get my hands on some real vanilla beans).

I knew in an instant the best thing to make using real vanilla beans. Creme Brulee. Mmmm. We had a fun night of making custard and the next fun night eating creme brulee. Thanks, dear Emily! We will miss you!

The puppets and I were having a nice conversation

I was contacted by a friend from high school who wondered if I would be willing to make some puppets for a friend of hers. Would I!? I was delighted and excited that someone wanted me to specially make puppets! Since I wanted to learn how to make foam head puppets, I decided now was a great time to experiment. Here is what I've come up with.
The whole time I was working on this one, he reminded me of Guy Smiley whom I had fond Sesame Street memories of. I instantly liked him from the moment his green foam head shape was cut out.
This one I wanted to have some glam. I tried to make lips but they all just looked funny, so I made sure she got some glamour in her eyes. I love the eyelashes and the purple eyelids. I think I might make a different dress for her. This on is too big. Glamorous puppet hair is tricky so she got chunky yarn. I love chunky yarn hair for puppets.

I have one more puppet in this collection and it's my favorite: the baby. Unfortunately, I'm not satisfied with any of my current hair options, so I'll be visiting a craft store next week when we go to Kansas City. Photos will be coming as soon as I have her hair done. Hurray!

Make your own cheesy crackers? You bet!

There have been several times I've thought to myself "I wish there was a good cracker that didn't have so much artificial stuff in it." Lo and behold, I found this article on the kitchn and immediately wanted to make them myself. It's SO easy and SO good. I've made this recipe several times in the past couple months and the crackers are always gone within a couple hours.

Cheesy Crackers
1 cup flour
3/4 tsp. salt
4 TBS cold unsalted butter
8 oz. grated cheddar cheese
3-4 TBS water


If you have a food processor this will be a breeze. If you don't have one, like me, use a much less breezy pastry blender. In a medium bowl mix together the flour and salt (and an optional few shakes of pepper). Shred the cold butter into the bowl and with your trusty pastry blender mix it in until it resembles coarse meal. Mix in one tablespoon of water at a time until the dough binds together and can form a ball. Wrap the ball in plastic and chill for at least 20 minutes.

Roll the dough out thin (it will puff up). Using a knife or pizza cutter, cut small little shapes. I prefer triangles. I do this all on a piece of parchment paper that I slide right on to a cookie sheet to bake. I like to space out the pieces a little so they don't stick together while baking, but if you don't most of them will break apart.

Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes, but watch them periodically after 10 minutes.

Hydrangea pretty

I Planted this in my front yard, I'm so sad I won't see it grow big. I even fertilized it with Aluminum Sulfate to keep the blossoms blue. I hope it thrives.
I think hydrangeas are so pretty. Two years ago I saw a photo of a garden in a home decor magazine with a huge hedge of white hydrangeas. It was stunning. I think hydrangeas are one of my favorite landscape elements, and they grow well in mostly shady spots!

First cake

Ah, this cake. I had so many dreams for this cake, but reality grabbed me by the ankles and dragged me back. I think I frosted this cake in ten minutes. I know the Babe doesn't care. Hopefully when she does I'll have more time to make a cake we can all be pleased about.