Inspiration Crew New Year's Card; CFC #124; CTS #58; NBUS #83; SSWC, and My New Baking Blog

Happy Saturday! 

Welcome to a prolix post.  (Great Scrabble word.)

I was asked some time ago to be a guest today of the esteemed group, The Inspiration Crew, for their scheduled New Year's Eve inspiration post!   

Welcome to the New Year’s Celebration Event brought to you by "The Inspiration Crew."  We’re just a group of crafty friends who love being creative. This time we're doing a one-day event to provide you with tons of inspiration to ring in the New Year!

Here is my Happy New Year's card:

I used SU! gold mirror and sparkly silver card.  The NBUS die is from Papertrey Ink.  The stickers are from Mrs. Grossman and the little festive photographic stars are from Kristie Goulet.  To make my scrumdidlyicious drink even more inviting, I traced the sticker onto scratch paper, cut it out, and then traced it with a Versamark pen onto acetate.  I then heat embossed it using SU! Hologram Highlights for lots of frosty blingy goodness.  Cheers!!

 

I am entering my card in the following challenges:

 

CAS(E) This Sketch.  Thank you, N@Ali for a wonderful sketch!

 

CAS-ual Fridays, where the theme is "Happy New Year!"  CFC is teaming up with 10-Minute Craft Dash, so you get a double chance at winning a prize if you can make your creation in less than ten minutes!  My card was quick and easy, but the acetate glass I made took me just over the limit.

 

Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge, where the theme is "Bling It On!"  It is a two-week challenge because of Christmas.

 

 

I hope you get a chance to join in these fun challenges!  The links will provide the details about rules, sponsors, and prizes.

 

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I'd like to take a minute to thank ALL the owners and Design Team members of the many, many delightful challenges that provide us with endless jumping-off suggestions for theme, color, and sketch, and then provide us with a multitude of creative inspiration!  I'd also like to thank the website Paper Playful for providing us with an updated and comprehensive list of weekly challenges and winners. 

 

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Back to New Year's inspiration, I also made a wine bottle tag using a NBUS Avery Elle "Cheers" Die:

It was QACAS using that die.  The die set includes the label and the words "uncork" (which I love, no ambiguity there), "celebration," and "cheers!"  The papers used are unknown from my obscene collection.  I don't mean I have a collection of obscene papers, I mean I have an obscene quantity of pretty papers. 

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Okay, so that's my New Year's inspiration for you for today.  Please do click over to the other very talented members of the Inspiration Crew who are participating in the hop!  Some of them are offering prizes!  Cheers!!

 

Rachel Kleinman

Ceal Pritchett

Libby Hickson

Jennifer Cuthbertson

Ardyth Percy-Robb

That's the end of card talk if you want to jump to the end to kindly leave a comment.  Thank you for coming by!
 

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My New Baking Blog

Not!

 

Okay, so I have to share with you my hysterical baking day on Thursday.  But before I do, I have to show you a photo of the cookies my sister Diana made last week. 

Yikes!  My sisters Donna and Doris also had disasters, but I don't have any photos to share.  This just wasn't our year for Christmas baking!

So.  I finally finished off the last of my cards on Wednesday and with other holiday obligations, I left myself only one day to do any baking for neighbors, the Mister, the office, the Mister, friends, etc.

 

For the first gift idea, I decided to make one of those recipes-in-a-jar. You know where you put all the dry ingredients in a jar and attach a recipe tag?  I got the idea from an old Craft N Things magazine which I cut out in April 2008.  The recipe is for Lemon Coconut Cookies.    I can't find the recipe on the Craft N Things website, but the above link is the exact same recipe.  Well, I didn't want to just put the ingredients in the jar, type up the recipe, and give it away without actually trying the recipe myself to see if it stunk.

 

So I did.  I swear I followed the recipe prezackly.  Well, except for that part about placing the balls two inches apart on the cookie sheet.  Whoever does that?  I don't have all day!  It's never been a problem before, but for this recipe, your balls should be placed THREE inches apart or you get this new and space age ~ scientific even ~ dessert:

 

I called for the Mister to see.  He became quite delirious, knowing that by some magic this lot would become his, all his!  Also, being a science guy, he was very intrigued by the quadra, phrandal, hexa, whatever shape he called it.  I called it something else that I can't print here.  No question, these lemon cookies definitely gave me lemonade!

 

I was raised in Iowa.  In Iowa they wear boots for the snow and for slopping hogs.  They have a saying:  When things go bad, pull yourself up by your bootstraps and move on.

 

I pulled up my bootstraps and moved on to brownies.  No one ever, in the history of brownies, has screwed them up.  Clever me to become famous for doing such a thing, but there you have it.

 

The recipe perpetration was without event.  I had even prepared my cake pan and preheated the oven.  Just as the last stirring was happening, I had a brain storm and remembered that I had these awesome silicon brownie BITE pans!  This would be even better for taking to the office!  Little brownie bites covered in powdered sugar that no one had to cut or bite into!  There would be no trails of chocolate crumbs down shirt fronts or hallways!  Brilliant!

 

I brought out the pans and found that if I used my fancy-smancy cookie scoop, it was just perfect for filling the bite holes without batter plops all over the place.  They cooked up smashingly, like little baby muffins.  Adorable.  I was haaa-pee as I powdered their little muffin tops with sugar.

 

Then I went to pop them out of their little silicon hidey-holes.  Um, no, not happening.  What happened instead was the little adorable muffin-top-like tops popped right off!  Hell-O.  They left their little cakey brownie bottoms firmly stuck to the hoity-toity silicon pans. 

I waited hours in between trying to remove them, hoping with time they might let go; that's why there are three missing.  But, yeah, no.

 

People, seriously, I thought the whole point of the flippin silicon material was that whatever you cooked just popped out without any need for greasing the skids.  Wrong!  So this is a public service announcement.  If you have a silicon bundt pan, or muffin pan, or brownie bite pan, or tart pan sitting in your board of cups that has never been used, ALWAYS grease it before you bake with it.  Always.

 

Did I throw them out?  Oh, slap yourself, no, I did not.  You know how I said I am now famous for screwing up brownies?  Well!  I am also going to become famous for the person who invented Brownie Tops.  They are a treat, lemme tell you! 

 

So the next time you go to the mall and you see a kiosk selling Brownie Tops, you make sure and let me know so I can get the royalties or sue for patent fringes or whatever one does. 

 

Look how cute they are:

They look kinda big in this photo, but they are just perfectly bite-sized. 

 

And the stuck brownie bottoms?  I scraped them out, one by one, into one big cakey blob, added a little chocolate syrup to moisten, and made Brownie Bottom Balls rolled in powdered sugar!  Squee!  They rock! 

(Shall I franchise these ideas?  I wish.  I'm sure Brownie Tops and Bottoms have prolly been invented before only I just never heard of them.)

 

At the end of my, ah, interesting baking day, Mister took me out to dinner.  I mean, it was the least he could do after I made him the world's largest sculptural lemon coconut cookie!

 

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Sorry this is so long when you are so busy, but I just had to share!  I sincerely hope your holiday baking went off without a hitch.  Hitches are on wagons and back in Iowa ... oh, never mind!  I'll save that for another post!

 

Enjoy your day!  No, seriously, enjoy.  LITS!* 

 

As always, thank you for coming by to visit the Playhouse and special thanks to you if you take the time to leave a comment and/or join as a follower!  Please let me know you came by, so I can be sure and return the flavor!  Here's a picture of my card, which I'm sure you've forgotten that I made!

  

 

*Life Is Too Short!