Layouts!

Hello again!

Am back here sooner than you and I thought! Oh well! Seems I will not be around to either bake or craft for a few weeks so might as well make the most of it now!

My second son has graduated to the middle school as of this month. And a couple of moms requested me to make a card for the class teacher who was with them for three years in a row I decided on a layout rather than a card and here’s what I made

Sorry about the pic with the plastic cover on! Remembered to take a pic just before I was rushing off to school!

Made this for the class teacher. Used PTI seed packet die as pockets for each child of the class to write a small note for the teacher The kids were excited about it and as you can see, some were quite colorful about it! The grateful is the PTI words die and mulberry roses. Base paper is Studio Calico.

The teacher came to me and said that the kids managed to keep the whole process a surprise and she was quite taken in with the whole thing. She actually broke down in class and said she got very emotional and was touched by the gesture Yes!

I also made another LO for the primary Principal and the rest of the staff

 

Used a lovely MAMBI embossed papers (the whole stack of it which I bought more than 2 years back but have not used but a couple of sheets from it! Such pretty papers! ) and left it simple for the paper to take center stage. Again, words die cut and stamps from Darcies’s.

As my dear friend, Priya mentioned, we are having a sale cum exhibition this weekend and so working towards it! Amongst other things So much to do…..lots of crafting to go before we sleep!

Thanks for swinging by and have a great week!

 

 

 

 

 

Baby Saanvi

Yello people! Hope you missed me while I was gone!

Life was crazy these past weeks….tests, exams, school drop and pick ups, holidays (had a blast with an out of town trip too!), thread-thin help at home…..nothing very unusual! But we muddled along all of it and here I am with an album I made for a year-old baby girl. The request was for a month-wise album and so here goes!

Kept the cover rather simple for a baby album I realized Used mulberry flowers from Priya Sivaraj’s store and papers from my stash (Papermania and Echo Park). My new fav die is the chevron die from MFT also from Priya Been used quite a bit in this album as you will see!

A lot of the embellies from K and Company die cuts, most of the sentiments from Fiskars Baby stamp, and the super cute teddies from a paper pack (from Forever Friends) called Hugs and Cuddles

It is soooooo hot here now that it takes a lot of energy just to do something! Will be a bit slow over the next few months also considering summer is now truly set in and the kids will be off school too. Planning some baking and craft classes over the next few weeks so will be busy with that! Hoping the power situation is not too bad…..considering poor souls in other parts of our state having to swelter it out!

Thanks so much for stopping by and taking the time to leave a comment! Appreciate it!

ICR Guest DT Blog Hop

Hello and good morning to you all!

Welcome to the ICR Guest DT Blog Hop! ICR is Celebrating their 2nd year of Awesomeness in the month of February and I am honored as one of their Guest Designers in 2012 to put together this blog hop for you. ICR is having some cool fun activities and challenges as part of their 2nd Anniversary and I hope you stop by ICR to check out all the fun & win a token for every single activity you participate in through out the month.

Please do leave a comment here on my blog post as well as the other Guest DT’s on the Blog hop to win some fun anniversary tokens for the Anniversary celebrations. You can get more information on Tokens on ICR here. The more tokens you earn the better chances of winning a prize. Plus, one random commenter from all the blogs will be selected to win a special prize sponsored by Color Conceptions online store!

Color Conceptions craft store was started with the whole aim of bringing best craft supplies from around the world at nominal prices.We specialize in all the craft materials and we are most people’s favorite store in India!! 

Priya Sivaraj is giving a 6*6 Carta Bella Paris Girl paper pad!

 

If you have come from Priya’s blog, then you are in the right place, if not, please go to the ICR GD POST and start from there.

This is my creation for this special event!

Stayed true to my CAS style and used MME Follow Your Heart stamps for this along with Studio Calico wood veneer banners, which I inked in and added the number 2 to it. The main HB image is from PTI 2012 Birthday Tags set stamped on oval limitless layers dies, again from PTI.

Many thanks to ICR for this opportunity to be part of the second year celebrations! ICR has taken the Indian crafting community by storm and here’s wishing ICR a great year ahead and hoping many more would join this amazing creative movement!

Thanks for stopping by. Next up in the hop is, Vidya Bharat!

In case you get lost, you can always go back to ICR GD Post and start from there.

Have fun hopping and do check out all the other fun activities being planned for this whole month!

All Pink!

Hello there!

Craft seems to have taken some sort of importance here Its been a while since I did some cards and used dies to highlight the card. I got some Memory Box dies and I put them to good use here.

Linking to Less is More Week 104 – Sketch and using the colors at ColorQ #174 

Love this sketch! So versatile but the only catch at LIM is that they requested the band stay at the bottom third of the card.

Used the lovely Tessatina border die and cut it with three different pink shades and filled up the shapes with the different colors. Matted it on a chocolate brown cardstock and sentiment from PTI Damask Designs.

Simple but striking! Left the panel overhang on the sides….will take a decision to cut to size later

Thank you for stopping by!

Washi and Friends!

Yello there!

Good to see you here again….yes…been a while since I posted anything! Not for the want of things to post but just no time! Baked away quite a bit in between and then had a totally mad weekend at our school fete. Made 320 sandwiches for all the teacher and parent volunteers over the weekend and then 250 cupcakes on sunday to sell at the fete! Whew! You can say that again! So all baked out now…..albeit a short while!

Decided that I had too many craft supplies that were not being used. Just been collecting more and more but not making use of most of what I have bought recently! Guess I have many nodding their heads and putting up their hands and saying….yes…same boat! So gave my crafting a go today! And made two cards….

Linking to Less is More LIM 103 – Friends and Simon Says Stamp Challenge – Use Washi Tape

Playing challenges after quite a while and it feels right to start with Less is More. Was a weekly player there but not so anymore Hope to do better this year! And Simon Says challenges are so popular that I miss out every time for some reason or the other! This time too is cutting it really fine with just an hour to go to link up! Without further ado……

Since the LIM theme is friends, and my friend sentiments or images are too few to choose from….I chose to go with this cute tag from W R Memory Keepers. Twine from Hero Arts and washi and the cute wood veneer bird (Studio Calico) from Karuna. So great that we don’t have to wait for someone to come from the US to get craft supplies for us anymore! Thanks Karuna!

Ain’t that the cutest bitty bird ya saw?

Another card I made in the same breath with washi and more wood veneer potty people …as they are called! Just dabbed them with some color and sentiment from PTI Half and Half set. Washi from stash.

As you can see, the wood veneer is my new fav! Just love how they add so much in such little space! Totally cute!

Thank you so much for stopping by! Need to take our German guest out for a walk to show him around our shopping street! Cheerio!

Brown Sugar Cupcakes

Yello! Glad to have you here!

Am back to my pinterest-ing! I had taken a break from it as it is soooooooooooo addictive! But was showing off to someone and now the bug in is my system again! Found this lovely recipe at bakeorbreak.com and found that she has some cool recipes which uses brown sugar instead of normal white sugar. More justification for having sweets! And also some other awesome recipes that I have printed out and hope to try in the coming days Go over and check it out for yourself and leave some love for her too!

 

This was the array of cupcakes made! Colorful eh? Playing with color after a lot of thought! Always wondered what to do with the left over icing/frosting? How much to store and et al….might need a new fridge at the rate I am going and if my youngest gets to choose colors….someone has to fund a new fridge for me!!!! But loving the challenge and learning a lot at the same time. Will just have to figure out storage and other nitty-gritties

You will need -

3 cups – flour

2 tsp – baking powder

1/2 tsp – salt

Sift together and keep aside.

1 cup – unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 1/4 cups – packed brown sugar (press the sugar down in your measuring cup)

4 – large eggs, at room temperature

3/4 cup – buttermilk

Cream the butter till light. Add the sugar and beat well. Add the eggs (one at a time if you are patient or all together if like me!) and beat well till fluffy and well combined.

Add the flour and slowly fold in and can add the buttermilk a little at a time.

Line a muffin tray with paper liners or silicon moulds, as you prefer, and fill with batter 3/4 of the way up.

Bake at 325 F (170 C) for 25-30 minutes. Then cool on racks. Welcome to have it warm though!

 

They have a lovely color and taste pretty much like vanilla cupcakes….just less guilt about eating them! I also frosted them as I have a lovely American girl staying with me and my family, over the winter break. She wanted to learn to frost and so we began this adventure! She piped the blue ones Just so you know! Ha ha!

 

 

I made a normal buttercream frosting (unsalted butter, icing sugar and milk) and not the cream cheese frosting in the original recipe. This itself was heavy, my family said. So go ahead and make whatever frosting you like!

 

I must say my piping is getting better and am quite chuffed with how this one turned out!

Many thanks for stopping by and have a lovely weekend ahead!

Baby K Album

Hello y’all!

A quick post to share an album that Priya Venkat and I made a while back. We got the specifics and other details in person as the lady ordering the album was from out of town. Now, we had not cleared the issue of final hand over. And so we thought we would wait till we heard from the lady. And she called one morning to say she is coming into town, could she please pick up the album?!?!?! Priya and I then sat and worked on this together and it came about in a few hours time! We had a blast spending time together and having my sister also put in her two bits of criticism and supplied us with tea and munchies!

By the looks of it, it is one of the earlier albums we made. It was actually quite colorful and very CAS in style! Considering it got done in just a few hours, it turned out quite nice, if I may say so myself! And the pictures were taken in the car, on the way to hand over!

 

 

 

We obviously did not have the time to embellish it too much and kept the focus on the sentiments. A satisfying project that turned out beautiful in the end! All izzzz well….!

Thank you for stopping by! And have a great weekend!

Strawberry Loaf

Hello!

My tryst with fresh fruits continues with the strawberry loaf I tried today. The best way to use up fruits that are not disappearing at the rate you would ideally like it to! With kids in the house, I always hope for them to have fruits everyday. But such is not the case. Oh well! One can wish and hope atleast!

So. With all the strawberries in the fridge, I found this recipe to be the best and fastest way to use them all up! Went back to my trusted Reader’s Digest 1001 Cakes and made this in a jiffy!

 

Difficulty level – easy

You will need -

1 1/3 cup – flour

1/3 cup – cornflour (I did not have cornflour and so used plain flour so 1 2/3 cups flour with my try)

1 tsp – baking powder

1/2 tsp – baking soda

1/4 tsp – salt

Sift all these together and keep aside.

1 cup – unsalted butter, room temp

1 cup – castor sugar

2 – eggs, room temp, separated into yolks and whites

2 tsp – vanilla

3/4 cup – milk, room temp

5 oz. – strawberry puree

chopped strawberries, optional

Beat the butter till light and add the sugar and beat again.

Add the yolks and vanilla and beat well. Add the puree and beat to incorporate into batter.

(Puree – lightly chop the berries and add a couple of tsps of sugar and process till smooth. Strain through a sieve and keep aside.)

In another bowl, beat the egg whites till stiff and keep aside.

Add the flour to the batter and mix well. Immediately, gently fold in the egg whites till mixed well. Add the chopped berries, if using, and mix well.

Grease a loaf tin and pour the batter into it. Bake at 350 F (180 C) for 45-55 minutes. Leave to cool on a rack.

I made some extra puree and used it as a syrup for the cake. Was low on sugar but we liked the tangy taste You are welcome to add sugar as the cake by itself is a bit low on sugar.

 

Was a lovely touch with the puree and gave a refreshing taste!

 

As you can see….all gone! The texture of the cake is so soft and springy that its amazing!

Hope you have had a great start to the new year! Tks for stopping by!

 

Blueberry Muffins!

A very happy new year to all of you! Wishing you a year full of smiles and satisfaction, in whatever you do!

Its been a busy couple of months for me….guests and crafting and baking….anything left?!?! Managed to bake lots of christmas cakes but did not have time to even take pictures! All disappeared all too soon! That’s good news though! Also did some cakes for friends and their families….will post those pictures and recipes too shortly! I don’t know about you but anything I bake and leave out to cool on the table….vanishes when I turn my back!

Today, I wanted to share this blueberry muffins with you as I have not used these fruits in my baking so far! Was very excited when my sister went to Bangalore and picked up three boxes for all of us to consume. Only I decided that baking muffins was the best way to use them up fast!

In all their glory!

And it came out so well that I am so excited to use more fruits that I have not used before! If only we could source them more easily….sigh! Not a great fan of canned fruits so will bide my time to get my hands on fresh ones!

The recipe is from my trusted Reader’s Digest 1001 Cakes – so much to choose from! I bet there are better recipes or versions of these muffins but this one sure came out wonderfully soft and light!

Difficulty level – easy

Makes 18 muffins (original recipe says 12)

You will need -

3 cups – flour

1 tbsp – baking powder

3/4 tsp – salt

1/2 tsp – cinnamon powder (nutmeg powder is optional as an addition to cinnamon powder – I chose not to add it)

Sift these together and keep aside.

3/4 cup – butter, room temp

1 1/2 cups – castor sugar

3 – eggs, room temp

1 1/2 tsp – vanilla

1 1/2 cups – milk (I used 1 cup milk and 1/2 cup hung curd)

1 1/2 cups – blueberries, fresh pref (I quartered them – however big or small in size – more in each muffin!)

Cream the butter well till light and pale. Add the sugar and beat well. Crack the eggs in and beat till well combined. Add the vanilla and milk (and curd if using) and beat. Might be a bit curdled at this stage. Don’t panic.

Add the flour and fold in gently. Add the fresh fruits and fold in gently. Batter will be a bit thick.

Line a 12-try muffin tin with whatever liners you want to use. Spoon the muffins almost to the top – does not rise THAT much. Bake at 350 F (180 C) for 25-30 mins. Even though I used a dark pan, it took me 30 mins.

Leave to cool on a rack and serve warm. If serving much later, zap it for 20 seconds and it changes the taste considerably!

Yum!

Was totally delish and the taste of blueberry was just amazing! Juicy and yummy!

yumminess!

The batter is thick enough that the fruit pieces do not sink to the bottom so more to enjoy in every bite!

Have a great year ahead and hope to see you more often here!

Holiday Cards – Take 4!

Hello!

The weekend has started for me and it is looking like a crazy one! Have to catch up with my near-empty stash of Christmas/New Year cards that I am getting worried. Plus there is baking to be done too….aarrrggghhhh! I salute all those amazing women who manage work+kids+house+hobby+life++++++! Here’s to all of you!

Anyway. I did manage SOME cards this week Linking this card to Papertrey Ink’s Make it Monday #94 – detail glitter technique and to Young Crafter’s Unite #16 – Happy Holidays

I love glitter and bling and anything that sparkles and shines! I have all kinds of bling and love to add just that little bit to jazz up my project So this technique was not new to me but at the same time called to me too!

A simple card using paper that Priya Venkat shared with me so no idea what line it is! Bells die and stamp from PTI Bells and Boughs set, sentiment from Stylish Holiday sentiments stamp, snowflake stamp from Inkadinkado’s Warm Holiday Wishes stamp with PTI spring rain ink, PTI glitter, ribbon from stash and shiny bell is a 3-D embellie set

A closer look perhaps?

Used a glue pen and added the glitter. A little shine never hurts eh?

So there you are! Happy crafting and have a lovely weekend! And many thanks for stopping by to leave me awesome comments! Totally appreciate it!