Father's Day

I bought my husband tickets for our local baseball game. He will be picking up the tickets at will-call, but I wanted to have something for him to actually open on Fathers Day.  So I made the following extra large ticket!

I started out by cutting out this baseball wording on my Silhouette.  If you have a Silhouette, you will notice the letters are all individually cut, which I didn't want, so all you have to do is weld them together.

This tickets is cut out at 9 x 4 inches

Layer the player and wording on top and then write out what you want it to say.  Mine says the teams, date, time, section, row and seat numbers.

For the men of our church, we will playing a question game.  The winning fathers will receive a cookie.  I wanted the cookie to feel special, so I cut out the same ticket as above, but these are cut out at much smaller.  I think they are like 2 1/5 x 1 1/2.

Stamp it with a sentiment

Put the cookie in a cd sleeve.  The cookies are from Costco and the sleeves were bought at Wal-Mart

Wrap it in some twine.  This is not craft twine, but what I actually use in my garden.

and tie if off.

Then just attach the ticket with glue dots!

Simple, yummy and masculine.

Graduation Card and Gift

I really like how this graduation card turned out.  My friends daughter graduated high school yesterday and her school colors are brown and gold, but I didn't know this and used black and gold.  The base is a black 5.5 x 4.25 cardstock.  Next layer is 5.25 x 4 yellow cardstock, followed by 5 x 3.75 black cardstock and lastly a 4.75 x 3.5 white cardstock embossed with bubbles and dots.  The graduation cap is cut out at 3 1/2 and popped up with pop dots.

I lined the inside with yellow and white cardstock and stamped Happy Graduation.

For the gift I took a small plastic paint can (found at Michel's) and filled it with rolls of money and butter mints wrapped in $1,000,000 paper.  Hence the statement I wrote in the card All of your hard work has "paid" off!

Bread & Butter Pickles

Vlasic Bread & Butter Pickles have always been my favorite.....until today. That is right folks, I found a new favorite Bread & Butter Pickle and it came directly from my own kitchen!

I took 5 cucumbers (yes, I know there are only 3 in this picture lol)

and sliced them up.  (Note: I am forgot to take pictures of the next few steps) Then I sprinkled them with Pickling Salt, covered them with ice and put it into my fridge for 4 hours.  Rinse them in cool water and add a cup of thinly sliced onions. Toss.

Next, I took all my dry ingredients and put them into a pot

and covered them with the liquid.  Brought this mixture up to a boil stirring until the sugar dissolves.

Add the cucumbers and onion, return to just a boil and then turn off the fire.

Fill your sterilized jars with the cucumber & onions, then pour the brine in and give them a water bath for 10 minutes.

Let the pickles sit for 24 hours and then dig in!  You will thank me when your done....I promise.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 - 2 pounds of cucumbers (any kind.  I used Asian Cucumbers)
1 1/2 T salt
1 cup thinly sliced sweet onion
1 cup sugar
1 cup vinegar
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 1/2 t. mustard seed
1/2 t. celery seed
1/8 t. turmeric

Cherries, Cherries and more Cherries!

I took my kids cherry picking earlier this week and we came home with 17 pounds of cherries. What does one do with that much? Well, you eat them in their natural state of yumminess, makes cherry pie and can them to use in future baking or to just open and eat the taste of summer when it is winter.

My husbands cousin let me borrow this cool cherry pitter. I was able to pit all the cherries in less than an hour.

Here are the freshly pitted cherries.  Lookin' good!

I decided to make a fresh cherry pie last night.  I started by taking 5 cups of cherries and tossing them in 1 1/4 cup of sugar and letting them sit for 20 minutes.

Then I added 1/3 cup flour, put them into a pre-made pie crust and put small pats of butter on top.

Put the top pie crust on and popped it into the oven at 425 degrees for 40 minutes.

The crust started to get too dark, so I placed sheet of foil on top and let it continue to cook.

Here is the finished pie.  I can't wait to taste it tonight after dinner.

Then this morning, I washed all my jars and canning tools in warm soapy water and then put them into this tall pot to sterilize everything.  I did't take a picture of the sugar water, but it was just 4 cups of water & 1 1/2 cups of sugar to every 2 pounds of cherries.  Put the cherries into the jars and add the sugar water.

Here they are getting their water bath.

14 pint size jars of yummy goodness.  I just loved hearing the ping of the tops sealing and can't wait to taste a bit of summer this winter.

1st Harvest of 2012

I picked my 1st harvest today!  Three cucumbers , one yellow squash and 2 small zucchini.

My cucumbers are Asian Cucumbers and I plan on eating part of one and then turning the rest into bread & better cucumbers.  I have two more that I can probably pick by Monday.

These zucchini's are pretty small, but after watching them for a week, I noticed they weren't growing and I was afraid if I didn't pick them, they would end up dying.

And then my yellow squash also didn't seem to be growing as quickly as I think it should, so I also picked it and will grill it up tonight with my zucchini.

Garden at 6 weeks

It always amazes me how quickly plants grow. I mean, the lettuce was just seeds 6 weeks ago and the other plants were tiny! Now they are huge and producing food for my family to eat.  So cool I tell ya!!!

Here is my tomato plant.  I am very pleased with is so far this year.  Last year every tomato split and never got big.  These have not split and seem to be growing nicely.  The key "I think" is not to over water them.

Check out my cucumbers!  I have 3 about this size and maybe 10 more just starting out.  These are going to be delicious in salads and hopefully turned in to pickles.

My cute little bell peppers.  As you can see, I have 3 growing.  My other pepper plant doesn't seem to be doing quite as well.  I had to transplant it, because my squash plants leaves were over taking it and I feared it wouldn't grow well.  Now I am not so sure transplanting it was a good idea, but I shall see.

My yellow crooked neck squash are doing amazing!  I have about 10 growing, but this is the biggest.

My zucchini plant isn't doing as well as the yellow squash.  It is hard to see in this picture, but there are 2 zucchini's.  One is on the very bottom sticking it's head out below the branch and the other it on the top middle; you can see its flower on the very top.  There were 4, but one got eaten by a critter and the other just went bad. I am assuming a critter got to it too, but I couldn't see any markings so I am not positive.

Our strawberry plant produced about 10-15 strawberries.  Non of them got very big, but they were good.  I didn't get any pictures, as the kids ate them up way too fast!  Now it is working on making its 2nd batch.

I will try my best to take pictures when I harvest the food.  Can't wait to eat them!

Just Married

Here is a card I made for a wedding we attended this weekend.  The card base is a black cardstock cut into 5.5 x 4.25 inch.  The white cardstock is 5.25 x 4 in. embossed with a wild flower print.  I used a shimmer gold paper for the window, bumper and cans because I ran out of the shimmer silver.  The car is a sky blue. I  hand wrote the words "Just Married" and "Love".  I used red stickles to highlight the tail lights, pink stickles on the heart and gold stickles on the cans.  The stamp is by My Pink Stamper.

Inside of the card is just white cardstock cut at 5.25 x 4 in and another My Pink Stamper stamp.