Baking & Thrift-Store-Hunting

I made some min Guinness chocolate cupcakes for a St Paddy's day party. They were a hit! At one point my friend called me so that she could point out who had made these lil cupcakes and the girl shouted "Shut the front door! These are *fabulous*!" I was happy she enjoyed them so much and happy she didn't swear. ;-) So, my friend Tami has renamed these the "Shut the Front Door" cupcakes. Tami's sister owns a gorgeous women's boutique clothing store with fabulous pieces. She held an open house/sale recently and Tami asked if I could make those mini cupcakes and so I did!

I also made some mini blood orange cheesecakes, but they didn't turn out as the mini Oreo cheesecakes I've made before; I think the mini cupcake liners were too small and so there wasn't enough cheesecake filling in them.

Chocolate Stout Cake

Recipe source: Smitten Kitchen

Note: to make the mini cupcakes, I baked them for 15 mins.

~*~*~*~

Blood Orange Mini Cheesecakes

Recipe source: Kraft

2 pkg. (8 oz. each) cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 tsp. vanilla

2 eggs

12-ish Nilla wafer cookies
juice & zest of 1 blood orange

Heat oven to 350°F.

Beat cream cheese, sugar and vanilla in large bowl with mixer until well blended.
Add eggs, one at a time, beating on low speed after each just until blended.
Place 1 cookie on the bottom of each of 12 paper-lined muffin cups.
Pour cream cheese mixture into each cup.
Bake for 20 minutes.
Cool & refrigerate for at least 3 hours.

~*~*~*~

I went to my favourite thrift store today; I love trying to find interesting pieces to repurpose. I found 2 big, wooden pillars to hold candles I'd like to paint white. I'd love to make these music sheet pillar candles featured on Purple Onion Designs to then place on top of them. I also found some vintage hankies with interesting patterns and a tea cup & saucer with birds! The vintage hankies I want to use as a background on a scrapbook layout and I'm not sure what else. I *love* these hankie wedding invites by Bird & Banner. *swoon*! And I love tea & birdies so I was pleased to pick up these 2 pieces.


Thanks for stopping by!

Winner & cupcake b-day card!

My apologies for the delay in announcing the winner of the goodies courtesy of Paperworks Co! I'm back home in Canada after a wonderful trip to Seattle for a wedding surrounded by amazing friends! FYI - Seattle = stamp heaven!!! I was lucky enough to be there for an annual sale at Impress...I will have to play with those goodies and share a card!

Firstly, thank you for all your sweet, kind compliments on my projects! It was an honour to be a guest designer and part of the Rachelle Anne Miller for PWCO stamp release blog hop! I truly had fun playing with these new images! Also, thank you for sharing your last-wedding-you-attended moments!

Now on to the winner....

Congratulations to Kathy!!! I'll send you an email asking for your name and address and I'll get your goodies on their way to you! Again, thanks to Peggy for supplying the blog candy!!! =)

*.*.*.*.*HAPPY 30th BIRTHDAY, PEGGY!!!*.*.*.*.*

This was a double challenge; part of the PWCO Sunday Sketch #30 (cupcake theme in honour of Peggy from PWCO's 30th birthday) and CPS sketch #164.




I loooooove this Basic Grey Cupcakes paper from the Nook and Pantry collection! It's very colourful and I love the vintage look. I had fun colouring the oh-so-cute Birthday Parade image (Rachelle Anne Miller for PWCO) and choosing my colours from the fun and pretty patterned paper.

I wanted to use these pins I had found as well as a button, so the CPS sketch was perfect for this card! The tissue flower was super easy to make and there's even a tutorial on SplitCoastStampers *here*. I didn't use a flower die, I just roughly hand cut 3 flowers of the same size and 2 smaller ones.

I used my *favourite* glitter gel pen (Uni-Ball Signo - "Sparkling") to add some sparkle to the 'Happy Birthday'.

Thanks for visiting! =)

PS Yes, this card is huge! *lol* I simply folded the brown 8 1/2" x 11" cardstock in half.


::Supplies::
Cupcake Birthday

• Stamp: Birthday Parade -Rachelle Anne Miller for PaperWorks Co
• Paper: Nook and Pantry (Basic Grey), Bazzill 'Brown', Prism Simply Smooth white cardstock, white tissue paper
  
• Ink: Copic Markers (B0000, B52, BG72, E00, E33, E39, E47, R0000, R89, RV29, RV34, T0, Y00, Y38, YG67, YR01), Versamagic - Pink Petunia, Uni-Ball Signo 'Sparkling' glitter gel pen
  
• Embellishments: Bazzill Petunia tulle ribbon, Spellbinders Nestabilities Labels Eight, button, hat pins, string