Embellished Picture Frames

Do you have a "go to" gift that is a great choice for almost any occasion?  I do:  the humble picture frame.  I've found over the years that it you're stuck about what to get for a gift, whether it's because the gift is for a guy (I think in general that women are easier to buy for), for someone you don't know very well, for a person at work (such as a gift for Secretary's Day) or for an occasion where you just aren't sure what to get (such as a baptism or First Communion), a picture frame almost always makes a wonderful gift.  While some frames can be incredibly expensive and easily suitable for things like wedding gifts, one of the great things about picture frames is that they generally won't break your budget.  A nice frame is great on its own, of course, but one of my favorite things to do is buy a frame that comes with a wide mat, and personalize the frame by embellishing the picture mat.

I made the frame in the photo above for my husband for Father's Day.  I found the cool weathered wood frame at Michael's and once I combined a couple of coupons, it was 60% off!  I loved the sage green color of the frame and the mat, so when I took the kids outside to shoot a photo to go into the frame, I told each of them to wear a tee shirt in a muted green color.  I really love the final results.

For the Father's Day frame, I used bold black rub-on letters from Making Memories.  I chose a font that had a somewhat distressed look, because I thought it would go well with the finish on the frame itself.  I was going to put the kids' names along the left side, but eventually decided to just go with "Father's Day" because it was simple and everyone looking at the frame would know immediately what occasion it was meant to commemorate.  I added the date along the right hand side.  For embellishments, I chose a 3-D butterfly embellishment and some grey self-adhesive pearls, as well as a small square acrylic embellishment that I positioned following the date.  I liked the butterfly because it added a note of whimsy and specialness without being too feminine.  All of the things I used to embellish this frame were things I already had in my scrapbooking stash.  I'm sure you have tons of suitable things, as well.

Although we haven't decided yet where to hang the Father's Day photo frame, my husband just loved it.  He's getting to that age where it can be hard to buy him gifts because it seems like he has everything that he wants or needs.  But he always cherishes a nice new photo of the kids.

As I mentioned, an embellished frame makes a great gift to commemorate almost any occasion.  I made a really pretty frame for my son's girlfriend as part of her graduation gift, but naturally, I forgot to take a picture of it before we gave it to her!  What I liked about the graduation frame was that I found embellishments in her school colors, brown and gold, and I used those to decorate the frame.  Below is a frame I finished just yesterday, to present to a woman that I work with on her retirement.

Although she is not technically in my department, we had a little retirement brunch for her in our offices last week, and that's when I snapped these photos.  In case you're wondering about the feather boa, sunglasses and red carpet, the honoree works with people in the movie industry, so we chose a "Hollywood" theme for the brunch that we had for her.  In keeping with the glitz and glamour of our theme, I chose self-adhesive gemstones and glittery flowers to embellish the photo mat.  Here's a close-up of some of the flowers.

The rub-ons I used are from American Crafts, and I chose a font that was bold but also had an element of whimsy to it.  I think it goes great with bling of the rest of the embellishments.  Oh, and another little thing I love to do, if there is an "i" in any of the words I'm putting on the mat, I dot the "i" with a gemstone.

Although you could certainly use stickers or chipboard letters for these kinds of frames, I really like rub ons because of their seamless look.  They end up looking like they were actually printed onto the mat, rather than added later.  Most photo mats are made of smooth, heavy mat board, and rub ons generally go onto these mats with ease.  No fighting like you sometimes have to do with a textured surface.

If you want to make an embellished photo frame, your best bet is to select a frame with a nice, wide mat.  You can usually spot mats that are constructed of actual mat board, because they will "rise up" above the surface of the picture (you can see this in the close-up shot, above).  Really cheap frames will sometimes have mats that are just made of heavy paper, and I would avoid these because they don't look as nice and the surface isn't as perfect for using rub ons.  If you don't want to spend a fortune on your frame, both Michael's and Jo-Ann's carry tons of frames that are reasonably priced, and often on sale.  You're sure to find a frame that will fit the occasion, and of course, you can find tons of suitable embellishments there, as well.

Music Themed Mini Chipboard Book

My older son has been taking private oboe lessons for about four years, the last three of those years with a wonderful young woman, Rachel, who is now a Ph.D. candidate at the university near us.  Rachel has taught Brandon soooo much in the time that she's been teaching him, including music theory.  Because of her influence, he started not merely playing music, but composing it as well.  At the end of this month, Brandon will have his very last lesson with Rachel, as she will be getting her Ph.D. and moving out of state.  Sad for us, but life marches on, doesn't it?

I've been thinking for awhile about a gift for her.  I really wanted it to be something special, to show our appreciation for all that she's done for Brandon and all that she's taught him.  After a lot of searching, I finally found a wonderful print of a snippet of a Mozart musical score, very minimialist but very cool-looking.  Very Rachel.  So I had it framed, and right now, we're waiting for that to be finished.  Along with the print, which is of course the primary "thank you and congratulations" gift, I decided to make Rachel a little chipboard album to sort of remember Brandon by.  Last year, I had taken a bunch of photos at one of Brandon's lessons, so I thought I'd use a few of those to make the album.  Since Rachel has devoted her life to music, I wanted to combine the photos with a few meaningful quotes about music.  I easily located dozens of suitable quotes with a quick online search.

I used an inexpensive chipboard tag book I found at Michael's, and covered the pages with some Autumn Leaves papers from my stash. The soft blues, greens and tans in the papers somehow reminded me of Rachel's gentle yet forceful personality.  I kept the page layouts very simple, with one quote and a couple of photographs on each page spread.  I managed to find a couple of great quotes from actual famous composers, and one of those is featured on the page shown above.

For embellishments, I used a package of glitzy, glittery 3-D flowers from K & Company.  They added just the right note to the quotes and photos.  I searched through my stash and found some word stickers in shades of blue and green (also, coincidentally, from K & Company) and I added a few appropriate words to each page, as well.  Here's another page layout:

Because I kept the pages and embellishments so simple, this little book didn't really take much time to make at all.  Tracing the tag shapes onto the back of the patterned paper and cutting the shapes out probably took more time than any other step!  In any case, you can make a book like this as simple or as elaborate as you'd like.  I've done a few small books for gifts where I really went all out on embellishments and used lots of fun techniques.  But this was just supposed to be a little "extra," a kind of "side dish" to the main gift, so I didn't want to make it into to a super complex project.  Also, because this little chipboard book is the kind of thing that Rachel might keep on her desk in a basket, it could potentially be handled a lot, so I wanted to make sure there weren't too many things that could fall off or wouldn't withstand repeated handling.

The photo above shows the very back page of the book, which includes a sweet photo of Brandon and Rachel posing together.  (Yep, at 16, he's a good foot or so taller than she is!)  I finished off the book by tying a few ribbons from my scrap basket onto the binding ring.

I try not to become obsessed with things like finding the "perfect" ribbons or embellishments -- for small projects like this, I like to "shop my stash," as they say.  I like to make use of odds and ends of things that otherwise might never get used up.  I think the project came out very nicely, and I'm really looking forward to giving Rachel both the framed print and the book next week.

The Prettiest Deviled Eggs

I'll bet you are wondering why the title of this post is the "prettiest" deviled eggs.  Seems like it should be the "yummiest" deviled eggs, or the "tastiest," right?  Well, the thing is that pretty much everyone has their own special way of making deviled eggs that their family raves over.  Just like potato salad.  You can share your recipe for potato salad, but when someone else makes it, they are apt to say "Well, this isn't right!  There is no sweet pickle in this recipe!"  Or whatever.  Because every family gets used to their own way of making certain dishes such as potato salad and deviled eggs.  So, if I titled this post "The Yummiest Deviled Eggs," you'd probably harumph (and rightly so) and think, who is she to tell me that her deviled eggs are yummier than mine?  I would never praise the virtues of my deviled eggs over someone else's family recipe.  Deviled eggs are just too personal.  Thus, this post really isn't about a recipe for deviled eggs, as much as it about presenting them.

I love bringing deviled eggs to parties and get togethers in the spring and summer.  Everyone loves deviled eggs, but for some reason, no one else usually brings them.  At a big get together, there might be four different pasta salads and three cheesy potato casseroles and several plates of brownies, but there probably won't be another platter of deviled eggs.  So they make a great party food to bring along.  Also, I have a weird thing about collecting deviled egg platters.  I simply can't pass up a cute deviled egg platter, so I have quite a few of them.  How many?  Well, let's just say that my older son ribs me about how many I have, remarking that no one makes deviled eggs enough to use so many plates.  But, no matter.  The platter in the photo above is one of my absolute favorites.  It's white and a simple rectangular shape, but it's big.  It holds 24 deviled egg halves, which is a great number to bring to a picnic or gathering.

But, of course, there is no law that says that you have to use an actual deviled egg platter to serve deviled eggs.  That's just my preferred way of serving them.  This post is really about the presentation of the eggs themselves, and how to make them look pretty and also appetizing.

Ok, here is my first secret.  Bacon.  You know how bacon seems to be in everything these days, including desserts at upscale restaurants?  Well, turns out that bacon tastes really great in deviled eggs, too!  To the yolks of a dozen hardboiled eggs, I added about six slices of bacon, cooked and then crumbled up.  I did save a few spoonfuls of the bacon crumbles for garnish.  As far as the other ingredients, I mash up the egg yolks with Miracle Whip and yellow mustard to taste, and I like to add a little finely minced onion and celery, as well as a dash of pepper and a dash of celery seed.  I don't ever use salt in my deviled egg mixture, because if you are using any vegetables at all (I'm using the onion and celery), the salt will just bring out the water in the vegetables and the whole mixture will become watery after awhile.  So, no salt.  If you're using the bacon, that will add plenty of saltiness to the mixture, anyway.  Fold the bacon in after you've mixed all of the other ingredients together.

The second secret to pretty deviled eggs is to turn the mixture into a big Ziploc baggie.  I use one big enough to hold the entire batch, but you could also fill and refill if you only have smaller baggies.  Seal the bag at the top, and then cut a SMALL hole in one bottom corner of the baggie.  Not tiny, but not huge.  I'm going to be honest with you here.  In the picture below, the hole in my bag is TOO BIG.  I messed up but had my son take the pictures anyway.  Once he took a few pictures, I actually cut the OTHER corner of the bag using a smaller hole, and finished the eggs that way.  Start small, and if the hole is too small, increase it just a bit.

All you do is squeeze the filling into the eggs from the bag through that hole, just like you might have done with cupcake frosting.  Using the bag is amazingly quick and easy, and best of all, you get eggs that look like they came out of a professional deli or something.  It's easy to get the perfect amount of filling in each egg, and if you kind of pipe the filling in circles, the filling will look pretty and poufy.  Yes, that's a professional cooking term.  The bag also makes it easy to go back and add a tiny bit more to various eggs to even them all up and make sure that you use all the filling.  And, of course, the other great thing is that bag is then tossed in the wastebasket!  Love that!

Once all of the eggs have been filled, I take a small spoon and just smooth the top of each egg just a little bit.  Then I sprinkle a tiny bit of paprika on each egg for color, and top with a few crumbles of the bacon.  The result is deviled eggs that both look and taste great!

Oh, a final tip.  Only try the bacon idea if you are sure that all of the eggs are going to be eaten that day.  While the bacon tastes fantastic in the deviled egg mixture, the crunchy texture doesn't hold up longer than a day.  By the next day, the bacon (even the bacon on top of the eggs) will get kind of soggy and it won't be crisp and delicious.  So these are definitely one-time-only eggs.  But they are soooo worth it.  You know, I wasn't actually planning on doing deviled eggs for Memorial Day this year, but looking at these pictures is making me consider making a batch!  Why don't you make a batch, too?  Come on, you know you want to!  Happy deviling!

Polka Dot Flower Pots

Aren't these polka dots pots the cutest?  My original thought in making these was that I'd use them as a gift for a neighbor of ours who was moving away.  She is a lover of all things gardening, so a set of pots plus some packets of herb seeds seemed like a nice, useful gift for her new home.  But once I got started and bought all the supplies, I decided I might as well make a whole BUNCH of these adorable pots!  In addition to the set I made for my neighbor, I ended up keeping a few for myself and giving the others away as little Mother's Day gifts for some of my co-workers.  Mother's Day is over for this year, but a set of these pots in pretty colors would also make a lovely bridal shower gift (I'm thinking the pots would make a nice presentation nestled in a window box), end-of-year teacher gift (perhaps with a gift card to a local gardening center tucked inside), birthday gift, or a cheery "just because" gift for a gardening friend.

So here are a few instructions and a few photos on the process I used for making my pots.  Let me start by saying that I got the idea for the pots from Crafts 'n' Things magazine.  I had never seen this magazine before grabbing it off the shelf at the library a few weeks ago.  Once I started going through it -- wow!  I was amazed at all of the cute, easy to make projects inside, including these polka dot beauties.

First, I gathered the supplies I'd need to paint the pots.  I used plain old 6" clay pots with a rim, but you could use any size and shape that you'd like.  I chose these, frankly, because they were cheap!  They were $1.49 each at my local super store.  I also bought a few bottles of regular old craft paint in bright pastel colors, plus a bottle of white.  I used inexpensive foam brushes to apply the paint, because I wanted something that would be easy to clean.  I made sure I had one brush for each color, though, just so I could keep things moving along.

I painted my pots in two "sections," the bottom first, and then the rim and top.  I found that by doing it this way, there was always a dry part of the pot that I could handle and I was able to manipulate the pot easily.  For most of the colors, it took several thin coats (let dry in between each coat) for the pot to really look good.  For the yellow and light green, it took a couple of additional coats.  So just be aware that some colors may need more coats for really good coverage.

Here is what my pots looked like while drying, with just the bottoms painted.  Acrylic craft paint doesn't take long to dry between coats, but I allowed an hour or so (in a bright, sunny area) to be sure the paint was completely dry before adding another coat.

Once all of the pots had their base coats of color, I added the polka dots.  I'm going to admit here that it took a bit of trial and error to find a "tool" that would work really well to make perfect polka dots.  You may have to look around your house for something that will work.  I ended up using the item shown in the photo below, a round sponge dauber that is mounted on a wooden handle.  I think I bought a bunch of these daubers at a stamping or craft show years ago, and I've only used them once or twice.  Turns out they worked perfectly for this project!

While painting the body of the pots, I poured the paint into little cups, but for the polka dots, a paper plate worked much better.  For each pot, I squirted just a bit of the base color onto the plate and then added enough white paint to turn it a few shades lighter than the "base" color.  So, the polka dots on the pink pot are really pale pink (pink mixed with white), on the blue, they are light blue (blue with a few squeezes of white), etc.  This gives a nice contrast against the base color of the pot, but the dots "blend in" better than stark white dots would.  As far as technique, it was trial and error there, too.  I found that what worked best was to get quite a bit of paint on the flat "tip" of the dauber, then apply it to the pot and twist a little bit to get a perfect (well, almost perfect) circle.  You can just stamp random dots all over the pots or, you can do what I did and stamp them on in spaced rows.  I just started out by painting a dot along the bottom, then a dot on the exact opposite side, then I added dots along the opposing sides (so I had four, evenly spaced dots along the bottom edge).  I then filled in the row with a dot between each of the other dots.  I did the same thing for the top row (right under the rim), and then the middle row.  Then I went back and added a vertical row of two dots between each vertical row of three dots.  Finally, I painted dots around the rim (using the same "divide the pot in quarters" technique).  I let the now-dotted pots dry thoroughly.

 

I wanted my gift recipients to be able to use their pots outdoors if they wanted to, so that necessitated finishing the pots with varnish.  The stuff in the photo above is what I used, but any varnish made for outdoor use will work.  Just read the labels.  There are a lot of products made ONLY for indoor use, and those won't stand up to weather.  I also bought a fancy-schmancy fat foam brush with a plastic handle to apply the varnish.  (You'll also need something to clean your varnish brush with if you don't have paint thinner or another cleaner at home.)  WARNING:  You definitely have to varnish in a well ventilated area.  The fumes from this kind of heavy-duty varnish can be dangerous, so do it outside on a nice day, if possible.  I varnished my pots in my sunporch, with all of the windows open so I had a good cross breeze blowing.

I'm going to be honest here -- the varnishing was the most tedious part of this project.  It has to be applied very thinly so it doesn't run or drip, and of course, it has to dry between each coat.  It takes longer for a coat of varnish to dry than for a coat of craft paint, but still, drying didn't take that long since the coats were so thin and I did the varnishing on a warm, dry, breezy day.  I used three coats of varnish on my pots, and they ended up with a rich, glossy finish.  Actually, I used a semi-gloss varnish, but there are matte and glossy varieties if you prefer those finishes.

The wet varnish, of course, is sticky, and you really have to do the whole pot at once rather than in two parts like I did for the base paint coats.  This required me to come up with a clever way for the pots to dry in between coats of varnish.  The photo above shows what I came up with.  I simply inverted the wet, varnished pots on tall, sturdy acrylic tumblers.  The tumblers were sturdy enough to hold the pot securely, but easy to move around if I needed to.  Following that third coat of varnish, I let the pots dry overnight.  The next day, after turning the pots over, I swiped a little bit of varnish along the top edge of each pot, to seal that little rim of color.  After letting that final bit of vanish dry, the pots were complete.  I decided to include with each pot that I was gifting a packet of herb seeds, but even the pot alone makes a sweet gift.

Here's another look at the finished pots.  As you can see, the varnish really makes the difference in terms of eye-appeal.  It also makes the pots super-useful, since they can be placed indoors or out.  And, as I think I mentioned, these pots were easy on the budget.  I made a dozen or so pots for around $35 total, and that includes the quart of varnish which was about $10.  If your hubby has some suitable varnish in the garage, you won't even have to spend as much as I did.  So, the next time you find yourself wanting to give a crafty little gift to someone special, remember these darling polka dot pots.  Allow yourself a weekend to do all of the painting and varnishing so you don't have to rush.  You'll end up with a usable gift that most anyone with even a slightly green thumb will truly enjoy.

Coordinating Card Sets

If you are at all a creative person and enjoy papercrafts, I probably don't need to tell you that sets of cards make great gifts.  I especially love giving a set of handmade thank-you cards as part of a teacher gift, a shower gift, or a graduation gift.  Teachers, I've learned, go through TONS of thank-you cards, so even if they like to make their own (teachers are generally pretty crafty), it's still nice for them to have a "stash" of cards and not worry about running out.  Brides and new graduates typically receive lots and lots of gifts, so some extra thank-you cards can really come in handy, especially if you toss in a booklet of stamps, too.  But I also like to make cards as "just because" gifts -- to surprise a friend or let someone know that I'm thinking of them.  A set of all-occasion cards can be a great gift for Mother's Day or a birthday, too.

When I make a set of cards, I like all of the cards to have something in common.  Typically, all of the cards will have similar sentiments (all thank-you cards, all "thinking of your" type cards, all birthday greetings, etc.), and I generally like to pull from a common stash of supplies to make all of the cards in the set.  While I love using paper scraps from my scrapbooking to make cards, I generally DON'T use scraps if I'm making a set of cards, because I usually won't have large enough pieces of three or four coordinating patterned papers to made several cards.  So, instead, I start with three full 12x12 sheets of patterned paper that are all from the same line, and that mix well together.  Then I'll make anywhere from six to twelve neutral, but coordinating, card bases (obviously depending on how many cards I'm going to have in the set).  Then I'll pull out some embellishments that go with the colors in the papers and that can be used in multiple ways (stamps, paper flowers, brads, ribbon), and I'll start creating.

As I think I mentioned in my last post, where I raved about the Card-a-Day book, I used to think that all of my cards had to be creative originals.  Now I love to use sketches or ideas for cards I find in scrapbooking magazines for inspiration.

Here are four more cards from the "thinking of you" card set that I made today.

   
As you can see from the photos, for these cards, I chose a light blue floral print paper, a brown paper with light blue stylized flowers and vines, and a paper with a small all-over graphic pattern.  All of the papers are from the new "Best of K&Co." paper stack that I found at Jo-Ann's last week for a mind-boggling $15.  My card bases for this set were light blue and tan.  I also used mini brads in browns, pinks, and blues, as well as a Quickutz tag die, Prima paper flowers, and some 3-D layered embellishments that I had leftover from a mini album that I made (I have a special drawer where I store little leftovers like that).  Then I pulled out a few clear stamps that I recently purchased, and I decided to use the same Quickutz font (mini Blossom, one of my favorites) cut from dark brown cardstock for most of the sentiments on the cards.

Each of the resulting cards is clearly different than the others, but because I used the same papers on all the cards and I picked embellishments from a small, coordinating stash, the cards clearly form a cohesive set and look nice together.  Because these are meant to be note cards, I left all of the insides blank, but if I were making birthday or other "special occasion" cards, I'd probably stamp a sentiment on the inside of the cards.

My favorite way to package up cards, by the way, is simply to stack the cards (half with the folds going one way and half the other), then stack the envelopes underneath, and tie up the whole shebang with some wide, sheer ribbon in a coordinating color.  This makes a really pretty presentation, and it's easy to tuck the set of cards in the front of a gift bag if the cards are only part of your planned gift.

A set of handmade cards makes such a nice "extra" for a bigger gift, and even if you don't start with scraps, you can make a dozen coordinating cards for mere pennies each.  So do YOU know a graduate, or bride, or mom-in-law, or teacher, or friend who would love to receive a crafty and useful gift?  I thought so.  So go on, pick some supplies and get going! 

Cards and an Inspiring Book

Shown above are some of the fun cards I've made recently.  I used to make tons of cards back when I did a lot of rubber stamping.  But once my creative interests turned to scrapbooking, I forgot about cards for awhile.  Now they're back on my creative radar, because they're such a great way to use up scraps, especially patterned paper scraps, that I've accumulated from my scrapbooking endeavors.  The funny thing is that while I always thought it was perfectly fine to scrap-lift or use sketches to make scrapbooking layouts, for some reason, I thought ideas for cards should be original.  Cards are small and simple, so anyone even mildly creative should be able to produce a whole slew of original, beautiful cards without much effort, right?

Well, maybe.  But then I discovered that, since my long-ago days of rubber stamping, all kinds of card magazines and card creating resources had come out, jam-packed with awesome card ideas.  I suddenly realized that card-making could be a lot more fun (and I could get a lot more cards made) if I started with cool ideas from some of these resources, rather than feeling like every card I produced had to be a copyright-worthy mini-masterpiece.

The cards above were all inspired by cards appearing in a fantastic book called "A Card a Day," which is pictured to the left.  This is a softcover, very inexpensive volume that is absolutely chock-full of wonderful ideas.  There really is a card idea for every single day of the year; in fact, there are MORE than 365 card ideas shown in this book.  While many of the cards are specific to the various holidays, there are also lots of simple "thinking of you" type cards.  Even better, a large number of the cards, even though created for a certain holiday, can be easily adapted to other themes.  The cards in the book also run the gamut from simple to amazingly ornate, and there are many that are aren't feminine in tone.

In short, I can't recommend this book highly enough, especially given its very reasonable price.  When I first got my copy, I pored through it endlessly, marking page after page of ideas that I couldn't wait to try.  I truly feel that I will probably never exhaust all of the creative possibilities offered in this book!  Oh, and the photography inside is beautiful, with a full color photo of each and every card.  The instructions and supply lists are complete, but they are in the style of Paper Crafts Magazine, which is the publisher of this book.  That means that they don't necessarily explain every technique used in detail, but rather expect the reader to have some basic level of paper crafting knowledge.  It's a knowledge level that every scrapbooker will possess, so don't be afraid to give this book a try.

Now let's look at some close-ups of the cards pictured above.  This lovely card features a couple of patterned paper scraps, some ribbon, and the word "friend" printed on the computer using a number of whimsical fonts:

This card features a vellum overlay that's been stamped all over, and three earth-toned buttons tied on with twine to give the card a rustic appeal:

This card uses a small, frame-shaped transparency as part of the background.  I'm going to admit that I had several package of those little transparencies cluttering my scrapbooking area, and I had never quite figured out what to do with them.  Well, now I know -- they look super cute on cards!

Oh, by the way, almost everything on the card above came from the dollar bins either at Target or at Michael's, including the transparency (four to a $1 package), the dimensional butterfly (a ton of dimensional nature stickers for $1) and the vellum phrase (a whole sheet of different words and phrases).  Here's another card using that same pack of transparencies:

Obviously, this card has a whole different feel than the one above, even though you can see that the basic design of the two cards is the same.  With two boys, I don't always use a ton of flowers on my scrapbooking layouts, so it's really fun to be able to use flowers to dress up my cards.

I hope these cards have inspired you just a little.  Now that I've discovered "A Card a Day," I'm becoming something of a card fanatic!  That's okay, though.  In addition to being fun to send to friends and family, don't forget that sets of cards make great gifts.  I've never met a teacher who didn't appreciate receiving a dozen lovely, handmade thank-you cards, tied up with a pretty ribbon.  Thank you notes would also make a nice "extra" gift for a bride-to-be, or a new graduate.  Just think of the possibilities!

Hot Cross Buns for Easter

I am big on tradition in my house, so an Easter weekend would never go by without the fun of coloring eggs and participating in an outdoor egg hunt (Michigan weather permitting). Well, this year I think maybe I'm going to start a new tradition -- hot cross buns for Easter breakfast. I remember my mom and my aunts occasionally making buns like these when I was growing up, but it wasn't really an every-year thing, and I don't have the recipe that my mom used. But, I've got the next best thing. A wonderful recipe courtesy of allrecipes.com, and one that is also super easy. How can a yeast bread recipe be super easy? Because it uses the bread machine to make and knead the dough! I love using my bread machine for things like this; it enables me to make fresh rolls for a meal when otherwise I simply wouldn't have the time.

Hot Cross Buns

3/4 cup warm water
3 T. butter
1 T. powdered milk
1/4 cup sugar
3/8 tsp. salt
1 egg
1 egg white
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 T. active dry yeast
3/4 cup dried currants
1 tsp. ground cinnamon

Egg wash:
1 egg yolk
1-2 T. water

Glaze:
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
1/4 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. milk

Add water, butter, milk powder, sugar, salt, egg, egg white, flour and yeast into bread machine in order recommended by manufacturer, and set program for dough. When about 5 minutes of kneading are left, add currants and cinnamon (many bread machines will beep when it's time for "add-ins" such as these). When dough program is complete, punch dough down and turn out onto floured surface. Cover and let rest for 10 minutes. Shape dough into 12 smooth balls and place in greased 9x13 pan. Cover pan and let rise in a warm place til double, about 35-40 minutes. Mix egg wash and brush onto tops of unbaked rolls. Bake rolls at 375 degrees F for 20 minutes, until tops are golden brown. Remove from pan and cool on wire rack. When cool, make crosses on buns: mix glaze ingredients and using a clean paintbrush, brush an "X" on each bun.

I did a couple of things differently than the recipe. Even though the recipe calls for regular flour, I opted to use bread flour. Bread flour is high in gluten and it generally gives superior results in the bread machine. Also, I didn't have any currants on hand, so I substituted raisins. Another thing I did that this recipe didn't specifically say to do was that I slashed small crosses in each of my buns BEFORE I baked them in the oven. You need a really sharp knife to do this, and you don't have to slash the bun all the way from side to side; medium-sized crosses in the tops of the buns will do fine.

Here is a picture of my pan of rolls ready to go into the oven, with the crosses slashed into the dough and the egg wash applied:


The reason for slashing the rolls before baking is that it produces a pronounced and somewhat indented "X" or cross in each bun, once they're baked. Having that indentation makes applying the glaze a simple matter -- I just used a clean paintbrush and filled each indented cross with the glaze. As you can see from the top photo, the finished buns are really beautiful!

Oh, and they taste pretty good, too. The dough is wonderfully cinnamon-y and just sweet enough that you know this is a breakfast bread, but not so sweet that you couldn't slather a bit of butter on your bun if you wanted to. The crosses on the buns are, of course, intended to recall religious crosses, particularly fitting on Easter. But I encourage you to give these yummy rolls a try, regardless of your religious leanings. They are one Easter treat that I think we're going to make into an every-year tradition at my house.

Banana Muffins (and Some Tips)

I am a banana snob. There, it's out in the open. It's true. I love bananas, but I am uber-picky about their ripeness. In short, for me to eat a banana out of hand, it has to be PERFECT. It has to be perfectly yellow, with no weird areas on the skin, and NO black spots. I know those are called "sugar spots" but I don't care. To me, they mean the banana inside is too ripe for my tastes. Oh, and as bad as my banana snobbery is, I've managed to pass it down to my children. Neither of my kids will eat a banana with a black spot either. My husband is a little more flexible, but even he doesn't like overly ripe bananas.

So what does my "true confession" have to do with the picture above? Well, because no one in this house will eat a banana that's less than perfect, we tend to have a lot of leftover bananas, no matter how carefully I've shopped for them. Despite being a banana snob, I can't just throw the overripe ones out. (I can pretty much hear my mother whispering in my ear "Why, that would be WASTEFUL!") So, I try to use up the reject bananas in recipes, and probably my favorite thing to make with them is the banana muffins pictured above. In fact, these muffins are so good that my family never really gets tired of them, even though I make them pretty often.

Before I share the actual recipe, I thought I would tell you where the recipe came from. The only problem with that is. . . I have no idea. The recipe card in my recipe box is in my own handwriting, circa 1985 or so. The white index card the recipe is written on became so covered with grease spots and other food spills that I finally laminated the thing about 10 years ago. I'm thinking that it's possible that I got the recipe from my mom. I remember once, when I was visiting at her house, I got out her recipe file and copied down a bunch of my favorite recipes from when I was little. The others I have are on white index cards, so it's possible that the banana muffin recipe was copied down during that session. But, I can't really say for sure. All I can say is that these are really great muffins!

Banana Muffins

3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 cup mashed banana (1-2 med. bananas)
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)

In a bowl, combine flour, salt, baking powder and soda. In another bowl, combine sugar, eggs and oil. Beat hard til frothy. Add bananas and nuts and blend well. Fold into flour mixture until blended. Spoon batter into muffin cups. Bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes, until muffins are golden brown on top. Makes about 16 muffins.

If you want, you can make the batter into a loaf of banana bread instead, which I promise is equally delicious. Just pour the batter into a regular sized loaf pan, greased, and bake the loaf at 325 degrees until the crust is brown and the loaf tests done with a toothpick, about 1 hour.


Doesn't that muffin in the picture above look yummy, split open and spread with a little bit of butter? I promise, these taste as good as the picture looks. And one thing I especially love about this recipe is that I can make it when the mood strikes. Since it calls for vegetable oil rather than butter, I don't have to wait around for a stick of butter to soften. I do use canola oil rather than regular vegetable oil for its more-healthy aspects, but either works fine in this recipe.

Ok, I'm going to finish up this post by giving you my two very best muffin hints. The first is to use a scoop to get the muffin batter from the bowl to the muffin tin. For many years, I did not do this, and of course I would spill bits of batter on the muffin tin, no matter how careful I tried to be. Worse was that my muffins wouldn't all be exactly the same size, so they wouldn't bake up the same way. Using a scoop is the perfect solution. For regular sized muffins, what you need is a #30 scoop, which holds 1 ounce. Rather than trying to figure out whether some scoop you find at Wal Mart is the right size, go to a restaurant supply store or food service store and get an actual "size 30" scoop. Restaurants use spring loaded scoops in various sizes that hold standard amounts of food. As mentioned, a #30 scoop holds exactly 1 ounce. It will have the number 30 right on the scoop somewhere, and probably also the 1 ounce measurement. A scoop purchased from the restaurant supply store will probably be a little more expensive than one from the discount store (about $10 or so), but it will last a lot longer and never rust, due to the better materials that it's made of. So it's a worthy investment. A #30 scoop will yield muffins like those in the photos -- rising just a bit over the top of the muffin cup. All of the muffins will look the same, and your muffin tin will be a breeze to clean!

The final tip is about storing muffins. I put mine in a shallow plastic container, but I DON'T USE THE LID. Instead, I cover the muffins loosely with a clean kitchen towel. Why? Because enclosing muffins in a plastic container, top and bottom, makes them sticky and sort of "wet" on top, after a very short time. Once the stickiness starts, the muffins still taste okay, but they are rather unappealing. Covering your muffins with a clean towel keeps them reasonably fresh, but it's not airtight storage, so the muffins will never get sticky or "wet" on top. They won't last quite as long as muffins stored in an airtight container, but frankly, that hasn't proven to be much of a problem in my house. The muffins are usually gone after a day or so.

So, even if you aren't a banana snob, the next time you find yourself with a couple of overripe bananas on your hands, I encourage you to try this recipe. Hopefully it will become one of your "go-to" recipes, just as it quickly became one of mine.

Journaling First

Ok, here is another layout that I recently did for my DYL class. The challenge this time was to use black and white photos, and a color scheme based on our favorite color. Last time, I wrote about how DYL has forced me to learn a ton of cool things (like printing photos in smaller sizes) that I otherwise probably would not have taken the time to learn. Well, here we go again. The photos on this layout were originally taken in color, and I frankly had NO IDEA how to convert them to black and white. I frequently take black and white photos with my camera, but up to this point, I had never converted color photos. But, in this case, I didn't feel like taking a bunch of new black and white photos just for this assignment, so I opened up a Corel photo editing program that I have on my computer and have rarely used. At first, I couldn't figure anything out, but after exploring for a little bit, I was able to convert my photos to black and white and I even saved them as new files, so I've still got the color versions to play with at another time. So, once again, yay for DYL, for "forcing" me to learn something new!

I've always liked black and white photos, but I find it interesting that they aren't as easy to scrapbook with as you'd think. Since ANY color combo is open to you when you're using black and white, the possibilities almost become overwhelming (for me, anyway). What I realized in doing this layout was that ... I have no favorite color. I'm not kidding. I really don't. I have quite a few colors that I like, but I don't have a single "favorite." So I ended up choosing colors for this layout by finding a scrap of patterned paper that I wanted to use, and working from there. We were experimenting with color combinations based on the color wheel for this assignment, so that's how I ended up with the purple and yellow color scheme.

But, the REAL reason I wanted to post this layout wasn't because I wanted to talk about color schemes. It was because I wanted to talk a little bit about journaling, and my process for doing it. I know that a lot of people have trouble with journaling, or don't like to do it, but for me, it's always been one of my strong suits. I was once told that I could probably write a page of journaling about an empty Coke can. That comment was said in jest, but it still stung a little bit. However, it's probably true. I can find a lot to say about pretty much anything!

On this layout in particular, I feel like I really scored with the journaling. These photos are just shots I took of my older son with his girlfriend before they went out to dinner on Valentine's Day. There wasn't any "event" associated with these photos other than that. So when I sat down at the computer to think about what I wanted to journal with respect to these photos, the kinds of things that I'd call "typical journaling thoughts" started entering my head: "Brandon and Liz look so cute together!" or "Brandon and Liz had a great time when they went out to dinner on Valentine's Day." You know the drill. Or maybe I should say, you know the drivel. It's so easy to get caught up in "surface" thoughts like that, and to end up with meaningless journaling on layouts.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm NOT saying that every layout has to have meaningful journaling, or even that every layout has to have some journaling on it. But, the thing is, when you do want to tell a story, it's nice to be able to come up with something better than "Everyone had a wonderful time!" So I will share with you the tip that I think probably helps me in the journaling department more than about anything else: journal first. Yep, it's as simple as that. Journal first. I implement that "tip" like this. When I get my photos back from the place that I have them printed (I typically print large batches every few months), I spend an afternoon deciding which photos I want to scrapbook, and organizing them roughly into layouts. Each group of photos goes into an acid-free envelope, on which I note the subject of the photos, the date they were taken (approximately), and what album the layout will go in. At the end of the afternoon, I may have 10 or 12 or more "packets" of photos. I file the envelopes in chronological order in photo boxes, and I have a separate box for each album or type of album that I keep. Then, when I feel like journaling, or I feel like doing something scrappy but I don't feel like actually scrapbooking, I'll pull out a few packets of photos and head off to my computer.

At the computer, I open my word processing program, pull the photos out of their envelope, fan them out in front of me, and simply think for a few minutes. In deciding what to write, I try to get past the "Everyone had a wonderful time!" stage of thought, and go a little deeper. Usually, it takes nothing more than really looking at the photos for a couple of minutes. I've found that if I follow my train of thought, it will usually take me somewhere interesting. For example, with the Brandon and Liz photos, my eye kept being drawn to the two photos that are more playful than the others, the ones where Liz, especially, is goofing around. I remembered how surprised I was that she seemed so relaxed and casual during the photo session, when she had barely been around me at all. I liked that -- it said something to me about the kind of person that she is. Then I started thinking about how the two of them talk to each other, and it occurred to me that their relationship was very different than the one Brandon had with his last girlfriend, a young lady who was sweet and intelligent, but extremely high drama and high maintenance. Then I remembered Brandon telling me, before he and Liz had gotten romantically involved, what a good friend she was and how they were so much alike that he felt like they were the same person. And all of a sudden, it was easy to find the "no-drama relationship" focus for writing about the photos -- the words practically wrote themselves. And I can tell you that I like the layout a lot more than I would have if I had stopped with the "typical" journaling thoughts.

So what does journaling first have to do with journaling well? In the first place, there's no pressure to come up with anything in particular -- you are just letting your mind go. Somehow, when you have an almost-completed layout in front of you, the idea that you "have to" journal something meaningful can become crippling, leading to decidedly UN-meaningful journaling. When it's just you and your photos, the words are free to come out however they come out. Many times, the journaling I end up with is very different than what I thought I might write, and frequently, it steers the entire concept for the underlying layout. The other reason that journaling first produces better journaling is that you can write as much -- or as little -- as you want. You may get on a roll and find that you really have a lot that you want to say. When you're not trying to fill a pre-set journaling space on a layout, your focus will become the story, instead of filling up that box.

And finally, the other really great thing about journaling first is that you can print out your journaling (save it in case you want to change type size or font later) and tuck it right in with your photos (or other page elements if you are the type to make page kits). Then, when you sit down to work on a layout for those photos, your journaling is done and you know that you have everything you need to complete that layout. That's why I make an extra-special effort to have journaling completed for every planned layout that I hope to get done when I go to an all-day crop. Trust me, it's a great feeling to come home from a crop and have COMPLETED pages, right down to the journaling, ready to pop into albums or show your kids.

Go ahead, give it a try. Journal first, and see if it doesn't help you produce journaling that you're much happier with.

"Magazine Style" Layout

I'm sharing this recent layout for a couple of reasons. For one thing, I am just crazy about it! I haven't actually scrapped most of the photos from our trip out West this past summer, so it was really fun to showcase some of them in this layout. By the way, like other layouts I've been posting lately, this one was done for my Design Your Life class through Big Picture Scrapbooking, taught by the fabulous Cathy Zielske. Cathy provided the sketch that we used for this assignment.

Cathy calls this type of layout a "magazine style" layout, and she's right on with that description. If you look at the magazines in your own house, you'll quickly see that it's pretty common for magazine articles to use a fantastic full page photo in this way, to sort of draw you in to the piece, with the text actually beginning on the facing page. Now, I've certainly enlarged pictures in my scrapbooking career. One of my favorite sizes to do is an 8x12 (most places can make an enlargement this size, you just have to ask), because it makes a fantastic 12x12 scrapbook page when I have a really wonderful photo to showcase. And I've certainly used my share of 5x7 photos, as well. But I'm going to confess that I've never before used a photo that took up the entire page. It was an eye-opening experience.

Cathy is definitely right about how the large picture draws you in, and encourages you, the reader, to look at the other photos and read the story. But it's also the juxtaposition of the super large photo next to the smaller photos that makes the large photo that much more emphatic. And that brings me to another reason that I'm posting this layout. Before taking the DYL class, I rarely fooled around with printing my own photos, or printing them smaller than 4x6. I prefer the ease of taking a CD down to the grocery store, ordering regular old 4x6 prints, and coming back in an hour or so and picking them up. Previously, if I wanted to use smaller photos on a layout (and I use small photos all the time), I'd just crop them down from 4x6 prints. That sometimes presented some problems, though. I tend to take a lot of fairly close-up photos, especially of people. It's a habit I've gotten into ever since I first read anything about photography. You're always told "Fill the frame!" and for good reason -- it generally makes a better picture. But a "filled frame" photo doesn't really lend itself very well to being cropped down, unless the photo contains a detail that I want to emphasize.

So, although I did use smaller photos, I'd say that generally I didn't use photos smaller than 3-1/2 x 3-1/2. After taking this class, however, I feel like a new world has been opened up to me. Because we had so many assignments using small photos (REALLY small, sometimes 2x2), I realized pretty quickly that cropping just wasn't going to cut it. I needed a whole new approach. So I started experimenting with printing two photos, each wallet size, on one 4x6 sheet. All of a sudden, those small photos worked on my layouts! I'm not going to lie -- for me, it took some trial and error and messing around with a couple of different photo manipulating programs. But it turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be. And, most importantly, I love the effect so much that I know I'm going to be printing photos in different sizes in the future.

Man, writing that, I feel incredibly old fashioned. I know that tons of people print ALL of their own photos at home, and many, many scrapbookers print photos in all kinds of crazy sizes -- whatever suits the layout. And, of course, there are legions of totally digital scrapbookers who can manipulate lots of photo attributes with a few clicks of the mouse. But, even though I've had a digital SLR for quite a few years, my goal has always been to keep the scrapbooking part of it pretty simple. But through this class, I've learned that some simple photo manipulation -- basic re-sizing, either bigger or smaller, in order to make an impact -- doesn't take that long, and the effects are TOTALLY worth it.

Every time I look at the Yellowstone waterfall layout at the top of this post, it takes my breath away, and the feelings and the sounds of actually being there come rushing back. I love it, and I can't stop looking at it. Isn't that exactly how a scrapbook layout, a layout showcasing your own memories, is supposed to make you feel?