A taste of orange

I don't often use sketches, but I couldn't resist this week's sketch at Random Acts of Creativity

This week's challenge at Ooh La La creations is Orange and Green, and I've used those colours  in the card I made from the skech

Meal Planning Monday April 1st

I've missed a couple of weeks because various comings and goings have made it hard to plan ahead. It felt rather strange to get up in the morning and not have a clue what we were going to eat that night, meal planning has quickly become a habit! So it's  great to get back into a routine again.

The first couple of meals have been inspired by the May (yes, already!) issue of Good Food magazine. Out of all the cookery mags I buy, this is always the one that makes me head straight for the kitchen.

Monday Crunchy pesto and mozzarella baked mushrooms I'm baking rye bread to serve with it and we'll add a tomato and avocado salad.

Tuesday  Mac'n'hock-a-roni cheese Mac and cheese with added ham hock and peas. Brussels sprouts and possibly baked tomatoes on the side.

Wednesday. Game casserole cooked in the slow cooker. Potato swede and carrot mash. Brussels sprouts if there are any left, otherwise runner beans from the freezer.

Thursday. I'm out babysitting all day so it needs to be something quick. If I get time to bake an Alsatian onion tart on Wednesday we'll be having that, and if not, Mexican veggie hash which is also from the Good Food magazine

Friday I keep reading lasagne mentioned in other meal plans and I've realised it's a long long time since we had it, so tonight's the night! I might make some tomato bread, from an ancient Keith Floyd recipe, to have with it.

Saturday/Sunday Mark will probably cook one of the days, on the other I will do a roast chicken and try to get a big enough one to make another meal from early next week. I have a longing for a chicken and mushroom pie!

I'm linking up to Meal Planning Monday with At Home with Mrs M

CD Sunday- Sugar and Spice

This week the theme at the CD Sunday Challenge is "Sugar and Spice". That made me think of girly things, as in the nursery rhyme, but also of baking. And  it was this lovely exhausted bear, worn out after a day of baking and no doubt sampling the results, from the Pickles and Podge section of The Best of La Pashe 2012 that caught my eye.

I made a shutter card - so very simple now I have a Hougie board (I could weep for the amount of card I wasted before I got that!). The blue cupcake  paper is part of the same printout as the image, and the pinky-red cupcake card is a Bazill one that has been lurking in my stash for several years.

My New Year's resolutions - how am I doing?

I finished last year with a post about my New Year's resolutions so with the year now a quarter gone, I thought I'd have a look back to see how I'm getting on with them.

To keep up with the Too Much Stuff Challenge

What can I say? Well in my defence, one of my Christmas presents was a Hobbycraft voucher, another was an electronic die cutting machine that didn't work with my computer set up, so I got a refund and spent it on dies for the good old Cuttlebug, and I've won two bundles  of craft goodies and £250 of vouchers for the Range. Even my tickets for the Make It Show were a competition prize.

So technically I've not actually bought anything have I?

I must be clearing up some of the backlog of unused stuff because today I found I had enough space in a drawer to remove two of the cardboard boxes from the pile on the floor!

To join in with more challenges.

I don't have enough time for every single challenge I would like to join in, but there are now a few I take part in regularly and some more I join in sporadically, so I'm getting there.

To have at least one vegetarian dinner a week.

This is the easiest one - Mark has embraced it wholeheartedly and often cooks vegetarian meals now, and joining in with Meal Planning Monday is helping me to make sure I don't simply forget to have one, so in fact we are eating two or three vegetarian dinners almost every week, and have not yet missed a week.

Did YOU make any New Year's Resolutions? How are you doing?

 

Addicted to scallops

Oooh, I love scallops. With bacon, with peas, with black pudding or as a ceviche.....

And this post is nothing to do with that kind of scallops!

This week's challenge at Less is More is to use scallops while at Addicted to Stamps it is a colour challenge - Regal Rose, Sahara Sand and Tempting Turquoise.

I've used a Spellbinders die to cut a scalloped square - the card is actually a deep turquoise but my husband and I have both tried in various light conditions and no matter what we do it comes out much more blue than it really is, so you'll need to trust me on that! The pink card, too,is a much closer match to the stamped image in real life. The stamp is from a Docrafts V&A collection sheet that has been sitting in my stash for a couple of years and had never seen a drop of ink before.

I'm playing along at

Less  is More - Lucky Dip :  Use Scallops

Addicted to Stamps and More - #38 Addicted to colours

Bundle of Joy

This week's challenge at CD Sundays is "Bundle of Joy"

I don't really make much in the way of New Baby cards, so apart from the rubberstamps I bought when my granddaughters came along, I  didn't think I'd find anything suitable. There are a couple of designs on the Best of La Pashe 2012, but I know lots of us have that CD and thought somebody else is bound to use those images - and probably be far more creative than me with them!

Then I remembered my Hot Of The Press CD "5,400 Tags and Art" which has  artwork from lots of their past collections - and yes, it had page after page of baby designs on it. One of them even included the words "Bundle of Joy"!

I'm afraid the photo is rather overexposed - you can always tell when my husband is working away from home, I'm a terrible photographer! And I had a senior moment - having made little envelopes for the proud parents to keep a lock of hair and hospital wristband in, I stuck them down with the flap side facing the card so they can't be opened!

Less is more 112- Use Beads

This week it's a recipe challenge at Less is More,  with the theme "Use beads".

Now I don't have very many beads, apart from a few very old ones that my grandmother gave me to play with as a child, which I still keep in the tin she gave them to me in. The tin originally contained her favourite peppermint creams and must be around 60 years old.

Some of the beads are from her old necklaces, the others from the bead-trimmed milk jug covers that she used to keep the flies off the milk in the larder - the edges had loops around them with heavy beads to weight the cover down and keep it in place. And these are the ones I've used today, because they happened to be a perfect colour to go with my Broken China Distress Inkpad.

The image I have used is a Kanban stamp, which I've stamped with distress ink and then used a water brush to slightly blend the colour of the sea, the sky and the bands of the lighthouse. I threaded the beads onto matching embroidery thread and have held them in place with a dab of glue. They remind me a little of a seaside storm warning signal.

 

I'm joining in with

Less is More 112 - Use Beads

Kanban Crafts Challenge #1 - Anything Goes