After Christmas Travels


Have you been missing my blog posts?  We are traveling visiting the Grandmas, stretching our Christmas a bit longer.  We spend a few days in the mountains of NC, where 12 inches of snow greeted us!  It was quite lovely.  The photo above and the others like it were taken on the mile drive up to my mom's house.


Currently we are in Chattanooga, TN, dining at Panera Bread, simply because of their Wi-Fi.  I am posting photos because obviously there are no crafts.







We should be home this weekend and next week I will return to a normal schedule.  In the meantime, I will wish you all a Happy New Year!!




Merry Christmas!


Merry Christmas to all!!  

I have mentioned my family's tradition of making the craziest Christmas cookies known to human-kind... I thought it was time to share the photos which bear witness to our insanity!  We begin with homemade sugar cookies, several colors of frosting, sprinkles, etc.  This is a fun family event and while quite hysterical, note the serious faces as the cookies are created.


Edwards children hard at work on their masterpieces!  Aaron (far right) and Ian (center) each had a plan.  Bethany was creative on the fly!


Crissie joined us this year and while she enjoyed the decorating, I am sure she was overwhelmed by the creative insanity around her.


 Doug's cookies were fabulous, but he too has on his "game face" for crazy cookie seriousness!


Doug and my cookies together.  I want to be sure you know that I DID NOT make that bikini clad snow-woman!  I did however create the snowman in the alps outfit. 


Aaron sharing his masterpiece - Two Face (Harvey Dent) from Batman!


Ian sharing one of his ZZ-Top characters!  His ZZ Top guys were great!


Bethany working on her gamer-boy.  See the first photo for a cute close up of the headphone wearing gamer cookie.


Ian's cookies included ZZ-Top, an Alice Cooper tree, Darth Vader, a candy CANE, an exploding star, and a wild tree.


Aaron's cookies included Two Face, Venom (from Spiderman), Spiderman, a cane, Batman snowflake, a vampire snow head, and a mean tree.  I love the mean tree! 

One other tradition, whether intentional or not, is that we tend to eat our least favorite cookies first.  Several of the lesser cookies are gone, but the more fun ones live on!

I wish you much happiness and joy today and in the new year - whether that includes crazy cookies, time with family, paper crafting, or quite reflection!

A few more pages of the Disney Scrapbook

Posing with Nemo

I am going to share a few more pages from the Garland's Disney album.  I gave the album to Ruth yesterday and she seemed to really, really like it.  In fact, she said it made her want to go back again - soon!  I shouldn't admit it, but it had the same effect on me!!  :-)

Smooching at Epcot and posing with Pooh and company.



I am not sure if you can see what the Garlands are wearing - they each have on a Disney hockey sweater.  Bill is wearing the Grumpy Miners.... Hence the cute saying in the lower left corner, "I'm Grumpy... What's your excuse?"


The weather was all over the place during our week in Orlando.  The first half of the week was cold and windy, but the last two days were hot.  It was fun, but crazy. 


This is my favorite layout in the book:  Nice Ears!  The last day Bill and Ruth finally bought the required Disney ears, complete with names.  They were very cute!  

Tomorrow we will officially leave the happiest place on earth and head back to seasonal scrapping!

Guess What I finished? Disney for the Garlands

 Title Page

One of my biggest accomplishments over the weekend (when I was away at the lake for a girls scrapping weekend) was I managed to complete the Disney album on which I have been working. Our friends the Garlands went to Disney with our family FOUR YEARS ago and had not done a thing with their photos.  I decided for their birthday gifts to scrap some of their Disney photos.




MGM Studios

Mr. Garland smuggled the Disney DVD to me and I printed photos.  Since then I have been chugging along on Disney.  The final book contains 24 pages, but really it could have been much larger.  But at least they will have a nice overview of their trip.  (Click on any photo to see the image larger).

@MGM for the evening with Mrs. Incredible and the dancing Christmas light show

Since I have already shared some parts of the album with you I will not share all of the pages.  However, I will share a few layouts over the next few days.

Aerosmith Rockin' Roller Coaster

It Was Totally Grand!


This is the first of my Grand Canyon layouts - there will be many more.  No matter how large I print the photos, I just cannot do justice to the Canyon experience.  The photo on the left page was printed as an 8 x 10 and I used it full size.  The top photo on the right was printed as a 5 x 7 and again, I did not trim the photo.  The Grand Canyon was so completely.... GRAND.... and that is difficult to document.


The left page contains only two Cricut cuts, the GRAND CANYON frame from Destinations and a photo mat.  The GC frame is supposed to have a canyon cut in the middle section, but I used Design Studio and resized the frame to hold my 8 x 10 photograph.  This photograph was taken by "My Friend Kathy" as dh and I took in the AWESOME view.


The right page contains only one Cricut cut - I saved the negative cut from the middle of the left page frame and used it as a background mat on the right page.  Recycle, reduce, REUSE!  The cute little Bucket List was a purchased die cut from Scrap Your Trip, but I created one for My Friend Kathy's layout using the Destinations cartridge.  And speaking of MFKathy, she had the BRILLIANT idea to use the large background matting as a pocket to hold the brochures!!  How BRILLIANT is that?  I was VERY impressed and I am convinced that idea sharing is one of the big benefits of group scrapping!  Especially when your friends are as amazing scrappers as my friends!!! 

Are you getting tired of my Vegas trip layouts?  I have more to share but I do not want to bore you.


Vegas From Above


This layout represents one of my favorite evenings while we were in Las Vegas.  We attended the Fab Four Show at the V Theater then we visited the Paris Casino and went up the Eiffel Tower.  I loved the view from the top.  The lights of The Strip looked wonderful.


We viewed the fountains at the Bellagio from above, then from ground level (which was MUCH more spectacular).  And finally we went inside and viewed the Bellagio gardens. The gardens were almost as amazing as the fountains.


I used the hot air balloon, the Arc, and the wine bottle/glass cuts from Summer in Paris on this layout.  I honestly do not remember right this second if the Paris cut came from SIP or from Destinations.  As you can see I saved my Eiffel Tower tickets - I have dh convinced that we must save all tickets, tags, brochures, etc. 

No BBTB2 Post For Me This Week


Hello bloggers.  I know that I told you that I expected to be back to crafting today and anticipated that I would have a project to post (BBTB2), but I am afraid that laundry and jet lag defeated me.  I will get back in the groove this week, but it is taking longer than I expected.  Sorry about that.

(Taking in the dancing fountains).

In the meantime, just like I am doing on Busy with the Cricky Cake, I am going to be lame and entertain you with some of the Vegas/Grand Canyon photos.  I will add that I ordered 300+ prints today from trip photos.  I see lots and lots of scrapping in my future!


Look!  It's me with young Elvis.  And then I went to Paris and to the top of the Eiffle Tower.


Dh and I at Mather Point.

Totally NOT Papercraft Related: Michigan State University Moves to the Final Four!!


Happy Dance!! Happy dance!!!  My Michigan State Spartans are on their way to the final four!!  I just had to share - Donna Mundinger and I are both celebrating tonight.... We MSU Alumni take our basketball seriously - as does Sparty - just look at the photo above.

Sparty is quite the guy!  Look at him rallying the team during a game!!  I love Sparty... but then he is the ULTIMATE Spartan! 


Too funny - I just checked Donna's blog to copy the link to her site - and she too has a MSU post.  We Spartans take our team seriously!!!!


Spring Steeplechase and Birthday Bash ... What a Saturday!


I have to tell you that I am wiped out today.  Yesterday was such a full and wonderful day.  We attended the Aiken's 44th Running of the Steeplechase, T H E spring event in Aiken, as well as hosted a 50th birthday party my husband threw for me. 


Steeplechase is a day of tailgating, horse racing, sun (!), friends, food and beverages.  We had such a nice time attending with a few friends, my mother, and two of our three children. We took our E-Z up canopy, tables & chairs, and tailgated from the backend of my minivan.


We then came home and set up a couple of round tables with chairs in our backyard.  We served a selection of food, beverages and of course, birthday cake and ice cream.  We finished the night off with funny rounds of Catch Phrase and Apples to Apples.  It was seriously so much fun.


Today is my actual birthday and it has been a slow lazy day... Now that I am 50 apparently I need a recovery day! LOL. 


I just wanted to share some of my birthday weekend fun with you.  I hope that you will stop back on Monday for the BBTB2 new projects (hint - BBTB2 is celebrating with me also).

Chocolate Cake IS Serious Dessert Time!


I have been MIA from my scrap room this week.  Family and work have kept me busy, which was nice.  But I have no such excuses for today. I have spent a big part of the day in the kitchen and I enjoyed every moment (except for the milk splash).  I made a layered salad as a side dish for dinner, which is done is staged steps.  And then I moved on to dessert!   I made this FABULOUS Chocolate Zucchini Pecan multi-layer cake!


For those who may be wondering, I am going to be including an occasional recipe here on my blog.  In addition to paper crafting, I also really enjoy cooking.  I am currently especially enjoying baking, but I will add other recipes as time passes. 


And speaking of baking, I love chocolate cake.  Chocolate cake is the stuff of serious dessert time!  And this cake is better than most.  The layers are sweet and moist.  The zucchini cooks nicely so that it is not screaming "veggies hiding here".  And the nuts are a nice flavor and texture addition.   And the frosting.  OH MY GOSH!  Fluffy, sweet, and creamy.


I am including the cake recipe below, include my adjustments.  This cake would be great with several different types of frosting.  I went with flour paste based frosting, one and one-half batches of my recipe (posted previously).  Yummy.

Chocolate Zucchini Pecan Cake
Ingredients:
• 3 1/2 cups sifted cake flour
• 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1.5 teaspoon baking soda
• 1.5 teaspoon salt
• 3 1/2 cups sugar
• 3/4 cup (1.5 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil
• 3 large eggs
• 1.5 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup buttermilk
• 3 cups grated unpeeled zucchini (about 2 1/2 medium)
• 1 1/4 cup chopped pecans

Preparation:
Preheat oven to 325°F. Prepare three 9-inch cake pans with butter and flour.
Sift flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt into medium bowl; set aside.
Beat sugar, butter and oil in large bowl until fluffy. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla extract. Mix in dry ingredients alternately with buttermilk in 3 additions each. Mix in grated zucchini. Mix in chopped nuts. Divide batter evenly into prepared pans.

Bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 35 minutes.  Cool cake completely in pans.
-Prepare frosting-
Remove pans and bring to room temperature. Frost each layer as you add it to the cake plate.  Spread remaining frositng on the sides of the cake.

Cake and Frosting Recipes - From Last Weekend

The cake I made last weekend is just crumbs in the platter now, but I was asked by a few of you to share the recipe.  I changed the original recipe in that the recipe called for seedless raspberry jam filling, but my dh prefers strawberry so I used strawberry preserves.  Otherwise I followed the recipe exactly.  This is my version of the cake recipe (Name changed to reflect our preferred filling). One more note, the frosting recipe is for a two layer cake.  I would suggest making 1.5 batches of the frosting for better coverage on your cake.

Strawberry-Laced Vanilla Cake

1 1/2 Cups of Butter, softened
1 1/4 Cups of Sugar
3 1/3 Cups of Cake Flour ( or 3 cups of all-purpose flour) * I used cake flour
2/3 Cup of milk
1 Tbsp of Baking Powder
1/2 tsp of Salt
1 1/2 tsp of Vanilla Extract
1/4 tsp of Baking Soda
4 Large Eggs
1 12 oz. Jar of Strawberry Preserves

Frosting (Recipe below)

Grease and flour three nine-inch round cake pans.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl with mixer on LOW speed beat butter and sugar just until blended.  Increase mixer speed to HIGH and beat for ten minutes, scraping bowl often.  Add to the bowl:  flour and the next six ingredients (though the eggs).  Mix on LOW speed until well mixed.  Increase mixer speed to high and mix for two minutes, occasionally scraping the bowl edges.

Spoon the batter evenly into the three prepared pans.  Bake for 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.  Remove from the oven and cool in the pans for 10 minutes.  Remove from the pans and cool on a wire rack to cool completely.

Make the frosting (recipe below). 

Using a serrated knife, cut each cake layer in half horizontally to make six cake layer.  Assemble as follows:

Place the bottom half of a layer with the cut side up on a cake plate.  Spead 1/3 jar of strawberry preseves over the layer.  Top with the cake top half layer; spread with frosting to cover.  Top with the second cake bottom half and agains spread with 1/3 of the jar of preserves.  Top with the second top half layer and again spread with frosting.  Repeat for the last two layer, ending with frosting on the top of the cake.  Spread the remainging frosting around the sides of the cake.  Enjoy!



Whipped Frosting
1/4 Cup of Flour
1 Cup of Milk
1 Cup of Butter
1 Cup of granulated Sugar
Dash of Salt
1 tsp of Vanilla

Prepare the flour paste:
In a small sauce pan combine 1/4 cup of all purpose flour and 1 cup of milk.  Whisk to blend.  Over medium high heat cook mixture until thick and smooth.  Set aside and cool completely.

Prepare Frosting:
Beat 1 cup of butter for four minutes.  Add 1 cup of granulated sugar and beat for an additional four minutes.  Add the cooled flour paste and beat again for four minutes.  Add a dash of salt and 1 tsp of vanilla and beat to mix well. 

Frosting will be light and fluffy, like whipped cream.