One of My Favorite Blogs

I've mentioned this blog a couple of times and I thought I would just take a minute to post about the blog as it is one of the very few blogs I regularly check in on.  Megan has gained a wide audience and I actually found her through a random comment in an article at ew.com.  The author of the article was discussing how boring a particular TV show was and referred to Megan's blog (as an example of the opposite of boring- I certainly agree).  Out of curiosity I checked it out and have been stopping back since.  You can find Megan's blog at http://www.notmartha.org/. 
One of the very first ideas I picked up from her blog was a recipe and idea to make individual portions of blueberry cobbler for a bake sale.  Here's a picture of my interpretation of the idea she posted on her blog.

Megan's blog is very unique in that she doesn't post most frequently with the crafts or projects she's been doing.  Instead, she will post links about ideas and/or projects that she's found throughout the web.  It is a great ideas resource and has become a wellspring of inspiration for me.  I don't always follow through on her posted ideas (she does a lot of baking and cooking that I simply don't have time to follow up with), but from her creativity I catch a spark that might inspire me to take 30 minutes to start a card or sketch out an idea that I might not take time to do otherwise.

I'll leave you with a really cool idea that I probably wouldn't ever follow through on but is a good example of how one can be inspired.  Check out this cool glitter cake http://shaunayounge.blogspot.com/2011/01/kate-spades-glitter-cake.html.

Later... Andie

Update:  Looks like Megan has a new lease on blogging and is attempting to post a picture a day.  Either way, still a great inspiration and now, daily updates.  Yeah!

Homemade Valentines

Just a quick pop in to post some pictures of the homemade valentines we made this year.  I know this is a week late... Arizona winter caught up with us and the whole house has had a head cold this week.  Good thing we made these a couple of weeks ago when my niece, Susannah, and nephew, Michael, were over for the weekend.  We started with an idea that I found at one of my favorite blogs, Not Martha.  She's semi-famous in the blogging world.  I hope to make a post about her someday, but full disclosure requires me to point to her blog since the idea came from there.

We started with some wax paper.  A 3 1/2 inch heart was cut using the Cricut cartridge Love Struck.  I used the simple, unadorned heart.  The Cricut settings I used was a depth of 5 on the blade, speed of 4 bars, pressure of 4 bars.  The blade did collect wax paper "fuzz", so be sure to clean the blade housing often during cutting (I cleaned it about 5 times as I cut out 140+ hearts).  You'll need two hearts for each valentine card.

We used a tapestry needle and some embroidery floss in various shades of pink, red, and purple. 

The two pieces of wax paper are sewn together using a straight stitch.  Leave the top open wide enough to insert candies then finish the stitching to sew it up.  We used the sweetheart candies to fill our valentines, but, you could use M & Ms, Red Hots, etc.

The wax paper filled heart was adhered (we just used a glue dot) to a red paper heart cut from the Cricut with the words preprinted on the page. 

About half-way through the process, my nephew asked me if he could make a homemade valentine as well.  This was a little tricky as Michael is all boy and anything cutesy, fluffy or generally pink wasn't in the running.  How fun when he picked out this heart and wing combination using the Love Struck cartridge?  Simple, yet easy for a young child to cut out on the Cricut and glue together with very little help from Auntie Andie. 

The hearts were the same as the valentines above.  The wings were cut out of white cardstock and I found a scrap of very light pink paper for the little 1 inch heart at the center.  Michael signed each card below the Happy Valentine's Day sentiment and taped a candy sucker to the back.  All done and Mom and Dad didn't have to spend time or money on Valentine's Day this year.

Hooray!