Baked Potato Soup

So, here it is Sunday again.  I don't know what the weather is like where you are, but here in Michigan where I live, it is unseasonably cold.  It's bright and sunny today, but the high isn't supposed to get past the low 30's, and it got down into the teens last night.  Putting aside the fact that it is officially spring by the calendar, it is looking like a good night to cook a hearty soup for dinner.  If you've read my other posts, you know how much I like to use my slow cooker on Sundays, to keep an easy day simple and stress-free.  Therefore, the soup recipe I'm going to share today is part of my "Slow Cooker Sunday" series.  It's a super hearty concoction that really does taste like a baked potato!  I got this recipe from a good friend at my office, who made it for a birthday luncheon that we had a few months ago.  It is amazingly easy, yet it tastes so good!

Baked Potato Soup

1/2 cup butter

8 oz. cream cheese

1/2 gallon milk

1 can cream of chicken soup

32 oz. bag frozen hash brown potatoes

2 cups cubed ham

1 tsp. black pepper

Parsley

8 oz. shredded cheddar cheese

Toppings:  Bacon bits, chopped green onions, shredded cheese

Melt butter and cream cheese together in a saucepan.  Pour mixture into slow cooker.  Stir in milk and cream of chicken soup.  Add hash browns, cubed ham, and pepper.  Stir well.  Cook on low for 6-8 hours.  About an hour before serving, stir in shredded cheddar cheese and a bit of chopped fresh parsley.  Check consistency of soup at serving time.  If too thin, add a tablespoon or two of instant mashed potato flakes.  Have toppings available in small bowls, and allow each person to add the toppings that they like.  Serve with hot crusty bread or biscuits for a complete meal.

Just a couple of notes.  This recipe is one of those very "forgiving" ones.  You can do almost anything to it, and make any substitutions that you want (including substitutions to lower the fat and calories), and it will still taste great.  For instance, I've made this soup with whole milk, and with skim milk, and it was great both ways.  I've left out the cheddar cheese since my kids aren't big fans of cheese in soup, and it was still great.  I've also cut down on the butter with perfectly fine results, and you could definitely use bacon bits instead of ham or even leave out the meat all together.

I must give you one word of warning, though.  I like my potato soup nice and thick, so I always add some mashed potato flakes at the end.  If you want to add the potato flakes to thicken the soup, start with a single tablespoon, stir thoroughly, and check the consistency.  Add the flakes just a tablespoon at a time, and keep checking the consistency.  I say this because it is really easy to add TOO MANY potato flakes, and if you do, you'll end up with a soup that is more like potatoes than soup.  (Don't ask me how I know this.)  So just go easy on the potato flakes; a few tablespoons should be plenty.  Oh, yeah, this soup is just as delicious left over as it is on the day that it's made.  I love to take the leftovers for lunch -- a couple of minutes in the microwave and I have a nice, hot meal.

I hope you get a chance to try this recipe.  If you do, be sure to let me know what you think!

One-Photo Layouts

Do you ever have a problem with one-photo or one-page layouts?  I'll be the first to admit that I do!  I tend to be a very linear, clean, and simple scrapper, and I mostly do two-page layouts with lots of photos.  Even with "everyday" types of subjects, I like to use multiple pictures on a page.  So when I have a great photo that I want to enlarge and make into a single-photo layout, I tend to find myself somewhat stumped.  A lot of the one-photo layouts that I see these days are in more of the extreme shabby-chic style, a style which I can admire, but am not really very good at imitating.  Or, they have tons of flowers and lace and other girly embellishments, which look great but won't work for pages of my two boys.  And, while I'm sure I could find some sketches that would work for single-photo layouts, I always seem to feel that these pages shouldn't be that hard, and that I should be able to just come up with some sort of design on my own.

I'm sharing the one-photo layout above because I think it's somewhat successful.  I like it fairly well, and it didn't take me three days to put it together, either.  I should say here that you'll probably notice when I post layouts and cards that I mostly use older supplies.  The reason for that is pretty simple.  I have a fantastic scrap room, and it's filled with supplies, but unfortunately, all three scrapbook stores in my city closed, the last almost two years ago, and now the closest dedicated scrapbook store to me is more than an hour away.  While I do go there occasionally, with gas prices what they are, it's not a trip I can really make very often, at least not just to shop.  So, because I don't have anything close to me but a Michael's store and a Jo-Ann's, I tend to not have a lot of really new product in my stash.  I sometimes buy online, but for me, it's hard to really get a "feel" for whether I'd like something if I haven't at least seen it in person before I order it from cyberspace.

So, the layout above, true to my recent form, uses older supplies, including the patterned paper which is from one of the first My Mind's Eye "stacks" that Hobby Lobby carried.  I split that huge stack with a friend and I have to admit, I still love a lot of the papers in it.  I also forced myself to use a 7 Gypsies tag for my journaling.  I often skip over tags and similar embellishments because I don't handwrite most of my journaling, but I made computer journaling work with this particular tag, and I like the way it came out.

One thing that often saves me when I do a one-photo or one-page layout is what I like to think of as my "default" ideas.  I have a number of techniques, page designs, and embellishment ideas that I use a LOT and that are simple enough that they look good on almost any page.  If I'm stumped with an element of page design, I turn to one or more of my "defaults" and I can usually get the page finished.  One of my most-used "defaults" is matting a photo with extra space to the left, and adding the page title onto that left part of the mat, "facing" the photo.  I used that technique in the Back-lit layout, adding a computer printed title (I believe that title font is called "Rough Draft" and it's one of my all-time favorite fonts for titles).  Another "default" technique is tying ribbon or twine around the bottom of a photo mat.  I tied twine around the photo mat in the layout above, making a cute knot at the side.  A simple vertical border of some kind is another "default" technique for me.  In the layout above, I added the ribbon along the left side of the page.  I find that when most things on the page are going horizontally (including the photo), it looks great to have a vertical element along the side to offset the horizontal elements.

One final word about photos.  Sometimes I enlarge a photo that isn't what someone might typically call a "great" photo.  The photo of my son above is cute, but I could easily have passed it up when I was looking at my pictures on my computer.  But what caught my eye was the back-lighting, and how Brian's cute little face is lit up from behind in such a way that even his little ears look pink.  Anyway, the point is, sometimes photos that don't really have anything special going on, but just have good lighting or a great background, can make super focal-point photos.

    

Masculine Birthday Card

You know, I love to make cards of all kinds, but when I'm creating, I usually find myself making cards that have a distinctly feminine feel.  It's not that I never send cards to men and boys, it's just that I can never seem to come up with any good ideas for "masculine" cards.  Do you know what I mean?  I look through my patterned paper scraps, and I think, is that one too girly?  Is paisley considered feminine?  And looking through stamps or fonts, I end up asking myself if certain styles have a few too many curlicues to belong on a guy card.  And then there are the embellishments.  Flowers are pretty clearly out for most guy cards, but what about eyelets, brads, and paper clips, and what about shapes like hearts?  Argh.  It's enough to send me to the card shop!

So, what inevitably happens is that when I need to send a guy in my life a card, especially a birthday card, I've got absolutely NOTHING that I can use.  This is exactly what happened to me a couple of weeks ago.  A male relative's 60th birthday was looming, and I really needed to send a card.  Inspiration struck when I started leafing through my HUGE pad of K&Co. paper, and I spied some papers that had a fishing theme.  This particular male relative is an avid fisherman, so it was perfect!  Now, normally I use scraps to make cards, but I'm realizing that in the case of "guy" cards, sometimes it's okay to cut up a full sheet of paper and make some cards out of it.  So I picked three coordinating sheets of paper, found some realistic fish stickers in my old, old, OLD sticker stash (don't ask me why I bought those stickers -- I have absolutely no idea), and created this very masculine birthday card. 

Here's what the inside looks like (and please excuse the condition of my 11-year-old's fingernails -- how DO you break them of the habit of biting their nails???):

In case you're wondering, yes, I was pretty proud of myself for coming up with that clever fishing-related birthday greeting.  I did both of the greetings, front and inside, on the computer using the Two Peas Evergreen font, but I could just have easily used stamps for a less personalized card.  I added a couple of neutral doo-dads to the front of the card for embellishment, and the card was finished and ready to be signed and mailed.

While this particular birthday crisis was narrowly averted, I'm determined to make some masculine cards ahead of time and keep them in my card stash so that I'm not scrambling again next time.  I have a few great cardmaking books, so maybe I'll look through those for some "guy friendly" card ideas.  Hopefully I can come up with some additional cards to post in the upcoming weeks.  How about you?  Are you challenged when it comes to making masculine cards, too?

Oscar Party!

Need some ideas for an easy Oscar night get together?  Last summer, some co-workers and I gave a retirement party for a friend of ours who happened to work in the film industry.  We decided to make the retirement party a "Hollywood" theme, and at the time we were planning and getting things together, I thought how great this would be for an Oscar night celebration, as well.  As you'll see, we got a lot of atmosphere with not very many supplies and not very much money!  And keep in mind, all of this stuff would look even better in the warm atmosphere of a home -- our event was held in a conference room so we had the added challenge of trying to make that sterile atmosphere a little softer and a lot more fun.

I was originally going to make cupcakes for dessert and I had the idea of putting little flags in the cupcakes with famous quotes from movies on them.  In the end, I decided on brownies, but I kept the flag idea.  I did a simple Google search for "famous movie quotes" and found several dozen great ones.  I printed them out in two columns on my printer (so each flag would be double-sided), then trimmed them and wrapped each one around a toothpick and glued it in place.  These were the hit of the party, as people tried to remember what movies the quotes were from.  This, of course, got everyone talking about old movies that they loved -- a perfect ice-breaker type of activity.  This could easily be turned into a contest, as well, with the quotes printed out in quiz format on sheets of paper.  I chose a mix of quotes from old as well as newer movies.  Here is a close-up of a few of the flags:

For the main beverage, we served golden punch fit for a Hollywood star.  A friend actually made the punch in this picture, so I don't have her recipe, but I know she used something that had pineapple juice, ginger ale, and orange juice, which together gave the punch that great color.  You could easily find a suitable recipe online (and you could add alcohol if you wanted, as well).  My friend did two other genius things -- she made a "star" ice mold from a simple round foil cake pan (just molding the sides into the shape of a star), and she hand cut some stars from slices of pineapple.  The original idea was to just use slices of star fruit, but for some reason, the store didn't have any, and the pineapple slices turned out to be the perfect touch.  Doesn't this punch look great and totally in keeping with our "Hollywood" theme???

The following photo shows our main food table with the tableware and tablecloths that we used.  To our surprise, we found a TON of inexpensive, movie-related party supplies at the local party store.  We bought plates, napkins, tablecloths and gold plastic cutlery, as well as the cute table sprays featuring reels of film and stars.  We added a few sets of white lights to give the table the right ambiance, and once those were plugged in, the whole table took on a truly elegant feel.

To give the food table and the eating area a real touch of class, we put huge bunches of white hydrangeas in big vases and set them on gold charger plates.  The effect was stunning.  Now, as I mentioned, we held this party in the summer, so the flower were free since they came out of a friend's flower garden.  In February, you're probably going to have to rely on something from the florist, but the important thing is to look for flowers in the right color (white or gold) and to use something with a lot of height.  Tall vases of flowers will really add some impact and interest to your table.

 

Oh, the gal that provided the flowers also happened to own these fantastic sterling silver candelabras, so of course we used those, as well.  Small candles set around the table, or another string of white lights, would do just as well.

Another thing we did (which I think was pretty clever!) was set all of the clocks to "Hollywood time."  As simple as this little touch was, our guests just loved it, particularly the guest of honor.

We also had the idea of buying gold rimmed sunglasses for everyone to wear at the party, but we had around 25 guests so this turned out to be cost-prohibitive.  Again, though, the perfect sunglasses were available in bags of 12 at the party store!  So, if you're thinking of having friends over to watch the Oscars this year, why not try a few of these simple and inexpensive decorating ideas?  Your guests will truly feel like "A" list celebrities!

Easy Weeknight Meals -- Take One

It seems like everyone is busy during the week, me included, so it's nice to have a small repertoire of easy main dishes that can be put on the table in a minimum of time.  When I plan menus for the upcoming week, I try to keep in mind which weeknights will be particularly busy or time-crunched, and I pull out a couple of ideas from my "quick and easy" file to cover those nights.  Caesar Salmon, one of my favorite easy dinners, is pictured above.

Before I give you the recipe, a word about salmon.  We LOVE salmon in my family.  Love, love, LOVE it.  But I had kind of gotten away from buying it because it has gotten quite expensive and it rarely, if ever, goes on sale at my local grocery store.  It just seemed crazy to me to spend $8.99/lb. for the main ingredient for ONE family dinner.  But then I started to think about it.  Like a lot of families, we have those occasions when there is NO time to make dinner before we have to head off somewhere, so we've been known to stop for fast food on the way home.  Even when my hubby isn't with us, a trip to McDonald's for me and my two boys always ends up around $15.  Looking at that receipt one night got me thinking ... if it's okay to spend $15 at McDonald's every now and again, maybe it's okay to spend $10 on healthy and delicious salmon once every week or two.  So, while I still love those occasional weeks when salmon goes on sale, I am now back to buying it regularly, even at $9 or $10 per pound.  I've just determined that it's worth it.

My favorite salmon recipe is Caesar Salmon.  It's delicious and easy, and the whole thing is done in the oven.  You know, on those Food Network shows, they always tell you to start fleshy fish like salmon on a grill pan on the stovetop, then finish the dish in the oven.  Yeah, great idea, but that's extra time I have to spend watching the salmon while it grills, and an extra pan to wash if my grill pan can't go into the oven.  No thanks.  On weeknights, I'm all about simple, easy, and as few dishes as possible.  So with that introduction, here's the very simple recipe.

Caesar Salmon

1 salmon fillet, about one pound

1 T. creamy Caesar salad dressing

1 T. butter

2-3 T. seasoned bread crumbs

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Butter a large, shallow baking dish and place salmon fillet in the dish.  (You can cut the fillet up into 4 individual servings if you want to, but I like to cook it in one piece.)  Season the fillet with a little salt and pepper, then brush the fillet with the salad dressing.  Melt the butter either in a small saucepan on the stovetop, or in a small bowl in the microwave.  Toss the bread crumbs with the melted butter.  (If the mixture is too "wet," add a few more bread crumbs.)  Sprinkle the crumbs on top of the salmon.  Bake in the preheated oven about 20 minutes or so, until the salmon is just done the whole way through, and the bread crumbs are browned and toasty.  (The salmon should flake with a fork if it's done.)  Cut into serving pieces and garnish with lemon, if desired.

That's all there is to it, and I promise that it will taste great.  The salad dressing adds a bit of garlicky goodness to the salmon without overwhelming the taste of the fish itself.  And the toasty bread crumbs make this a real kid pleaser.

I like to serve salmon with rice and a steamed vegetable, usually either carrots or broccoli.  I have an electric rice cooker (which I adore), and that baby needs about 30 minutes, so I start my rice just after turning my oven on to preheat.  While the salmon and rice are cooking, I start my vegetables steaming, which takes maybe 15 minutes or so.  Easy-peasy, and a total of about half an hour invested for the payoff of a delicious and healthy dinner.

"Everyday" Layouts

I created this layout last year when I took Cathy Zielske's "Design Your Life" class, but I'm sharing it today because I think it's a good reminder about scrapping the everyday moments in our lives, and also simply scrapping our feelings about things.  My younger son is very photogenic (he got that from my mom, who never, ever took a bad picture in her whole life!), and I try to make a point of taking photos of him every now and then for no reason at all.  (Just for the record, I try to do that with my older son, too, but being a teen, he mostly isn't having any of that.  At all.)  I love using "everyday" photos like this to illustrate layouts that are primarily about my feelings about my kids.  In this case, I wrote about something every mother (especially, moms of boys) has surely felt -- that pang of love you feel when one of your kids is affectionate with you, and the pang of gratitude that follows it when you suddenly realize that the time is going to come, and sooner than you think, when they won't want to be so affectionate with you.

I also like using photos like this for layouts that are about everyday activities that might not lend themselves very well to being photographed.  They are also great for documenting special or age-related characteristics about your kids or other loved ones.  I've learned to get those things down on paper, because you never know when they're going to change.

Here's another layout I created (also for DYL last year) that's along the same lines.  Here, I wanted to document a little game that, for several months, Brian and I engaged in almost every Sunday morning when he and I first got up, and everyone else was still sleeping.  And, just to cement how fleeting these kinds of things can be, I have to note that just one year later, we don't do this anymore.  Would the world come to an end if I didn't have a record of this little game down on paper, and I forgot all about it?  Of course not.  But looking back, I'm glad that I thought to document it, and every time I look at this page, warm and happy memories of Brian and I sitting on the couch on Sunday mornings come flooding back.  And that's what scrapbooking is all about, right?

Oh, and just a note about design here.  Both of these pages were made following basic templates that CZ provided to us in class.  While I consider myself a "clean lines" kind of scrapper, these pages are more simple and spare than I would normally make.  But you know what?  I love both of them.  Sometimes it can be great to take a minimalist approach, and not worry too much about papers and embellishments, but simply getting the "everyday" story down.

 

Gratitude Journal

Last winter, when I took Cathy Zielske's "Design Your Life" class, one of our assignments was to do a page for a gratitude journal.  Cathy provided a template for us to use, but of course we could use the template in a way that reflected our individual style.  Above is the page that I made for the DYL class.  I absolutely loved it once it was finished, but more importantly, I loved the whole idea of a gratitude journal.  A permanent place to record my thoughts about the things in my life that I am thankful for.  What a fantastic idea!  When I finished the class, I had in mind to keep the journal going.  In fact, I asked Cathy if she could possibly "alter" the template for me so that it didn't have journaling lines on it.  Amazingly, she did that and sent me my very own customized template!  (And that kind of attention to her students is only one of the reasons that I am going to recommend to you that if you haven't ever taken a class from Cathy, there is no one better.  She is fantastic.) 

Fast forward to 2011.  Yeah, that gratitude journal never really got off the ground.  Life got in the way and all of that.  But I still love the idea, and I had safely saved that awesome template that Cathy made for me, so I decided that it was better late than never to get my SECOND entry finished for my gratitude journal.  I did the page below yesterday afternoon.

You may spy some VERY OLD patterned papers in this layout -- they are papers from KI Memories from years and years ago.  One of my goals whenever I do a smaller album like this is to use scraps where ever I can.  So I dug into my patterned paper scraps for both of the gratitude journal layouts, and that will be my plan for future layouts, as well.  I also used really old letter stickers for the titles, simply because I had them on hand.  Love using up old stuff from my stash!!!

So, one thing you might notice about both of my gratitude journal pages is that I've not written about the "obvious" things that I am thankful for, such as my husband and kids.  Don't worry, I'll get around to doing pages for them, but I wanted to start out with some subjects that maybe weren't so obvious.  The purple page above is about the sister-owned hair salon that I go to, where I get a friendly smile and fantastic customer service every time I walk through the door.  A key way that I plan to approach my gratitude journal is to let pictures spark my page ideas.  As I scroll through photos on my computer, I may see a photo and think to myself that it would be perfect to illustrate a page about something or someone that I'm grateful for.  The reason I want to approach the project this way is that I don't want to feel like I have to take "special" photographs just for my gratitude journal pages.  I've found that when I take that kind of approach, the photos don't get taken or don't get printed and the project stalls.  I'm determined to move forward with my gratitude journal in 2011, so while I may take some photos with a gratitude journal layout in mind, I'm going to try to use existing photos where I can.

Oh, I should add that even without the benefit of Cathy's template, it would be a simple matter to design a page layout that you could just repeat over and over for a project like this.  You could use or adapt a sketch, or come up with a simple design of your own.  And, although I've left my own pages quite plain, you could embellish yours as much as you want. 

I am typically a 12 x 12 scrapper and, as you can see, my gratitude journal layouts are 8-1/2 x 11.  So, I'm going to try to get myself down to Michael's in the next few days and see if I can find an actual album to house my new journal.  (The "Scouts" page has been sitting in my "Design Your Life" album for all this time.)  Then, my gratitude journal will be a reality, instead of just a great idea.

What do you think?  Do you have a gratitude journal?  Would you like to do one?

Cook Once, Eat Twice

I love my slow cooker.  I just love coming home after a long day at work, and dinner is (for the most part) already made, because I've got a yummy stew or soup cooking in the slow cooker.  Add a salad or some biscuits, and the meal is done.  But you know what?  As great as a slow cooker can be for those harried weeknights, it's just as great for weekends.  Specifically, Sundays.  Sunday is actually my favorite day to pull out the slow cooker.  Why?  Because I try to make Sunday a day where I get to do a few things that I want to do, whether that's scrapbooking, having lunch with a girlfriend, or doing a little shopping.  With dinner all ready in the slow cooker, I don't have to worry about how long that girlfriend lunch lasts, or whether I have time to look at new blinds at Home Depot.  I just love the freedom that my "Slow Cooker Sundays" (as I've come to think of them) give me.  The concept holds, even if you don't do anything more strenuous on Sunday than rifle through the Sunday newspaper in your pajamas.

So what could be better than a delicious meal from the slow cooker?  Well, how about TWO meals?  Yep, for this great recipe, you only have to cook once, and you end up with two hearty meals that your family will love:  Cola Pot Roast and BBQ Beef Sandwiches.  If I make this pot roast on a Sunday, I've got an easy, quick dinner in hand for a busy, upcoming weeknight.  Oh, that's the Cola Pot Roast in the picture above, ready to be served.  Yum.  It's super easy, too.

Cola Pot Roast

1 (14.5 oz.) can stewed tomatoes

1 cup Coke

1 packet fajita seasoning mix

1 cup chopped onion

1 tsp. minced garlic

3/4 cup chopped celery

1-1/2 tsp. salt

3-4 lbs. beef chuck roast, trimmed of fat

2 T. vegetable oil

In a large bowl, break up tomatoes in their juice.  Stir in Coke, seasoning mix, onion, garlic, celery, and salt.  Stir until seasonings are dissolved.  In a Dutch oven, over medium heat, brown meat in oil about 10 minutes on each side.  Drain off all fat.  Transfer meat to slow cooker.  Pour tomato mixture over meat.  Cover, and cook on low for 8 hours, or until meat is fork tender.

Now.  Because I am my mother's daughter, I always serve a pot roast like this with mashed potatoes and sliced carrots.  I don't know why, but those two side dishes are just perfect with this beefy main dish.  Oh, and, not to worry if your kids won't eat the tomatoes, onions and other goodies that the roast is cooked with.  We'll make good use of those in our follow-up recipe.

One other thing.  This recipe, which I adapted just a bit from Allrecipes.com, originally called for an envelope of "spaghetti sauce mix."  Now, I don't know exactly what that is, because I couldn't find it at my store.  When I Googled it, what I found sounded pretty much like seasoning mixtures that you'd use in spaghetti sauce.  I decided to substitute an envelope of fajita seasoning, and the roast came out great.  So, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you can use fajita seasoning, spaghetti sauce mix if you can find it, or any other seasoning mix that strikes your fancy.

After your family has eaten their fill, put the remainder of the pot roast in a large fridge-safe container.  Fish out all of goodies that the roast was cooked in (the yummy bits of tomato, celery and onion) and place them in the container with the roast.  Then, add a few ladle-fulls of the cooking liquid.  Cover and pop the whole thing in your refrigerator for a few days.  Then, when you need a quick weeknight meal, you're all set to make BBQ Beef Sandwiches.  That's the picture right below.  

 

BBQ Beef Sandwiches

Take the leftover pot roast out of the fridge.  Any fat remaining from the sauce will have congealed, and you'll easily be able to spoon it out.  With the roast on a cutting board, pull the meat apart with two forks.  Place into a saucepan or a small slow cooker (such as a two quart size).  Chop up any large chunks of tomato or other vegetables that you saved along with the pot roast, then add all of the vegetables and sauce into the saucepan or slow cooker with the beef.  (Note:  the broth or sauce may be somewhat thick.  Don't worry -- all will be well once everything heats up.)  Now add about half a bottle of your favorite BBQ sauce, or more, depending on how much beef you have left, and how saucy you like your sandwiches.  Stir everything together and heat over medium low heat on the stovetop until heated through (this will probably take 20 minutes or so, and you'll need to stir it a few times).  Alternatively, you can heat everything up in your small slow cooker for a few hours on the low setting.  When it's ready, stir a few times and serve on hearty buns or hoagie rolls.  I like to make skilled fried potatoes and a simple vegetable with these sandwiches, but coleslaw from the deli is another great option when you're really pressed for time.

That's it.  One recipe, two hearty, delicious dinners.  Why not make this coming Sunday "Slow Cooker Sunday" at your house, too?

Be My Valentine??

I have an enigmatic love for Valentine's Day cards.  I mean, I haven't had a huge number of people to make Valentines for since I was in elementary school.  Yet, every year, I still find myself wildly attracted to all of the new Valentine's Day paper-crafting products available in the stores.  (I'm in love with all of the heart-themed home decorating stuff, too, but that's a whole 'nother blog post.)  And, usually I end up buying a few new things and making waaaaay more Valentine cards than one gal could ever need or use.

As far as this year, let me just say that if you haven't been to Michael's lately, you should definitely go!  They have a fantastic selection of Valentine products out this year, from new paper pads to 3-D embellishments to sparkly rhinestones in pinks and reds.  I went a little bit overboard this year and bought lots of new stuff, so I thought I might as well showcase some of my recent cards here on my blog.

The two cards in the top photo are among my favorites, mostly because I love that green checked paper from K&Co.  It's from a pad of papers designed by Kelly Panacci, and I used the same pad for almost all of the cards featured in today's post.  The green checked paper is already printed with cute swirls and flowers along the sides and bottom of each sheet, so these cards were a simple matter of cutting the paper in an attractive way and adding a few additional embellishments, such as dimensional flowers with sparkly centers and 3-D greeting labels.  Oh, for the card on the left, I used my newest Martha Stewart edge punch.  It's called the Loop Double Edge Deep Edge Punch (say THAT five times in a row!), and I had coveted this great punch for literally months before I actually broke down and bought it.  And now, boy am I glad that I did!  It works great and punches very easily, even through thin cardstock.  It's pretty intricate, so I'm guessing that it won't go through super heavy cardstock, but I'm fine with that. 

 

 Here are a couple more cards, where I incorporated some of my new purchases with some scraps and older things I had lying around.  The bird stamp is from Michael's as well, it's one of their wood-mounted $1 stamps.  The bird's body makes the shape of a heart, perfect for Valentine's Day!  For this particular image, I stamped with waterprook black ink and used regular old watercolor paints to color it.  I used that edge punch again, too, and gave it a different look by adhering a strip of narrow ribbon right down the center.  Below is a close-up of the 3-D key sentiment on the card on the right.  Oh, and I could get away with the circles of green dotted paper (cut from scraps) because that multi-heart paper actually has some pale green hearts in it, although they are difficult to see in these photos. 

 

Above are a couple more cards that feature mostly my new supplies, although the puffy heart embellishments on the card on the right are actually from my stash.  The package has some crazy colors of hearts in it, so up til now, I hadn't used too many of them.  But, as it turns out, they go great with some of the papers in my new Kelly Panacci pad.

For whatever reason, I am still loving banners and flags on both cards and scrapbook pages.  I suppose they've been done to death, but I'll confess that I'm not tired of them yet.  I saw the basic design for the card on the right in the January/February issue of Paper Crafts magazine, and what caught my eye was that the flags were different shapes and sizes.  So I played around with the design a bit and came up with these two cards.  The sparkly flowers are Jolee's, and they are currently one of my favorite card embellishments.  They seem to go with everything!  Oh, and the red rick-rack is a leftover bit from a sewing project that I'm currently working on.  I hope to show the finished item here on my blog very soon.  

So, let me know.  Are you as crazy about as Valentine's Day as I am?  In parting, I'll tell you one thing that I do that actually helps me use all of the Valentines that I make almost every year.  I don't stamp or print any sentiment on the INSIDES of my cards.  Instead, I leave the insides blank, so they're more like notecards.  I have a couple of people in my life that I send snail mail to on a regular basis, and making my Valentines into notecards allows me to get a lot more use out of them.  And since I'm trying to be more frugal these days, along with everyone else, that makes me happy. 

Too Much Chocolate Cake

Hmmm, I probably shouldn't be posting a chocolate cake recipe in mid-January, should I?  I mean, everyone is trying to lose weight and get healthy, and all of that.  Ok, so maybe this isn't the best timing, but the next time you NEED to make a chocolate cake for some occasion (like, maybe, Valentine's Day?), I highly recommend this one.  It's truly delicious and the name says it all.

Too Much Chocolate Cake

1 package devil's food cake mix

1 6 oz. package instant chocolate pudding mix

1 cup sour cream

1 cup vegetable oil

4 eggs

1/2 cup warm water

2 cups mini semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  In a large bowl, mix together the cake and pudding mixes, sour cream, oil, beaten eggs, and water.  Stir in the chocolate chips and pour batter into a well-greased 12-cup bundt pan.  Bake for 50-55 minutes, until top is springy to the touch and a wooden toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean.  Cool cake thoroughly in the pan for at least an hour and a half before inverting onto a plate.  Glaze with Satiny Chocolate Glaze.

Satiny Chocolate Glaze:  In a double boiler over hot, but not boiling water, combine 3/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips, 3 T. butter and 1 T. light corn syrup.  Stir until chips are melted and mixture is smooth, then add 1/4 tsp. vanilla extract.  Let glaze cool a bit until it has thickened, but is still warm.  Spread warm glaze over top of cake, letting it dribble down the sides.

I love bundt cakes (even though they are kind of dated) because they are easy to tote to another location, and they are super easy to slice.  Thus, they are the perfect type of cake to take to a work celebration.  Now, truthfully, you can use any good glaze recipe for this cake, you don't have to use the recipe that I gave.  In fact, this cake would be delicious with a different flavor of glaze, such as vanilla or raspberry.  Notice how, in these photos, the glaze has dripped perfectly down the sides of the cake, stopping before it made messy puddles on the cake plate.  There is a trick to getting glaze to do that.  The trick is that the glaze has to be fairly thick when you put it on.  Remember that it's going to be dripping down a surface that's close to vertical, so you want whatever glaze you make you to be just thin enough that it will drip somewhat, but not so thin that it will make it the whole way down the side of the cake.  Experiment with one section of cake, and if the glaze isn't thick enough, either wait til it has cooled a little more, or if you are making a glaze that uses confectioner's sugar, simply add more sugar to make the glaze thicker.

I like to top the cake with chocolate sprinkles (as I did here), chopped nuts, or something along those lines.  Again, not completely necessary, but it really adds a nice, finished look to the cake.

 

If you'd like, you can serve this cake with fresh berries, such as raspberries or sliced fresh strawberries.  Because this cake is sooooo chocolaty, the fruit makes a nice contrast in taste and texture.  But, however you serve it, enjoy!  And no, you don't have to tell anyone that this fabulous recipe starts with a BOXED cake mix!  Oh, I should probably add that this recipe originally came from allrecipes.com, which is one of my favorite recipe sites ever.  If you haven't ever checked them out, I highly recommend that you do.