Do you ever get the feeling you're being watched?

My daughter asked me to make owl cupcakes for her class.
We had SO much fun making them. Aren't they cute?!
Okay okay, I know you didn't come here to see cupcakes!

Here's my card for today...

Anyone who knows me can confirm the fact that I can be bribed with Starbucks.
I'm addicted.
If I could hook myself up to a Starbucks IV, I would.

The same is true for my friend Wanda, so when her birthday came around I picked up a gift card for her. Of course I couldn't give it to her without a matching Starbucks birthday card to go with it right? SU's "Like it a Latte" set was perfect for my little project.

(I picked up a the Starbucks logo stamp last year from a rude little company with horrible customer service. I won't be advertising for them on my blog, but if you want this image, be sure to read to the end.)

Here's a close up of the frothy goodness on top. I used white liquid applique and heat set it to get the "poofy" effect. Love that stuff...

Here's a peek at the inside of the card.

And a close up of the gift card holder.

Are there any other Starbucks addicts reading this? Leave me a comment with your favorite drink. I'll draw a name on Friday and send the winner 10 stamped images of the Starbucks logo.

Thanks for popping by!
Hugs

A crab and some cake

After my friend Tammy saw the cake I made for my daughter's birthday, she asked me to make one for her sons 10th birthday this weekend. Not only did I see this as an opportunity to make another fun cake, but this was an opportunity for me to make a card too! Any excuse right??

I decided to go with "Crab & Company" and the matching wheel. I used brilliant blue for the base and my "On The Spot" background. All of the patterned paper is from the "Jersey Shore" line. I only had one strip of brown paper, so I used my wheel on it and then tore it into sections so I could layer it.

I colored the crab with my Really Rust and Pumpkin Pie watercolor crayons and colored the hat, gifts and cake with my Copics. Ohh..and I finally had another chance to use one more of those cork stickers that I talked about in this post! After that, I added some Stickles and some google eyes and got busy baking the cake.

Here's what the inside of the card looks like.

Luke is a major Notre Dame fan, so this cake was custom made just for him! I made the "ND" logo out of white chocolate that I tinted blue. I outlined the logo with this glittery gel that's made by Wilton - It's super sparkly in person. The "Rock On Dude" is an inside joke with the family and was MANDATORY for the cake!
Happy 10th Luke!

A 15 pound Hello Kitty cake

What a crazy day....fabulous...but crazy!

I was with my sister-in-law last night scrapbooking, making cards and having some much needed "girl time". Before we knew it, it was 2am, and time for me to head home. When I got home there was a 25 pound box from Stampin Up waiting for me and it was just begging to be opened! After fondling my new SU goodies and organizing all of my customers orders, I finally made it to bed at 3:30am.

Five hours later I was in the car heading back over to my sister in laws to pick her up and check out the "garage sale" at our local scrapbook store. We got some SUPER deals that I'll be sharing with you later this week.

At 9:30am we were on our way to Sacramento (after a MAJOR caffeine fix at Starbucks) to check out the 2008 Stamp Expo.

By 2:00 we were at Chuck E Cheese with my kiddos. (That was their reward for being dragged around to look at stamps all day - also known as child abuse)

On our way to Chuck E Cheese, we passed a Payless Shoe Source and saw that BOGO was going on, so after all of our tokens were gone, we headed over to Payless. Of course my sister in law and I didn't find anything in our size, but the kids each got a new pair of shoes.

By 4pm we were back at my house and it was time to start making my daughters birthday cake. Her party is tomorrow and she requested a three tiered wedding cake with a Hello Kitty on top. My daughter is famous for her birthday cake requests. Last year it was a pirate ship with all of the Disney princesses tied to the mast. So, after 5 hours of baking, cursing at the fondant and lots of smoothing and stacking, here's was I came up with.

The look on her face was SO worth all of the work that went into this. I swear this thing weighs at least 15 pounds!

Thanks for checking in today. I'll have some stamping stuff to share with you tomorrow. I'm off to bed...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DR. SEUSS!

As I'm sure most of you already know, today is Dr Seuss's birthday. My sons school will be celebrating tomorrow by having everyone dress up in their jammies and bringing their favorite book, blankie and pillow to curl up with and read all day. I'm lucky enough to be class Mom tomorrow and how could I possibly show up without green eggs and ham for the kids to eat?!

This was SUPER simple to make. I used two boxes of cake mix and baked them both in loaf pans. Then I stacked them on top of each other and trimmed them to look like a ham. I used a marshmallow for the bone and white frosting that I tinted green. The "eggs" are just sugar cookies with white royal icing and green chocolate melts for the yolk.

Here's my royal icing recipe:

2 egg whites whipped until firm

Then add 1 box of powdered sugar (4 cups) and the juice of one lemon.

That's it!

Super easy - I love that no matter how thick I put on this icing, it ALWAYS smooths out perfectly by itself and dries up firm.

Valentine project #1

So here's the card I came up with for my Valentine workshop. Is there anyone out there who doesn't just love the Crab & Company set from Stampin Up? I thought it would be a unique and unexpected set to use for a Valentine. I had two other attempts before this card, but they ended up in the trash. I'm pretty happy with my end result.

I used eggplant and pomegranate SU cardstock. Inks were SU versamark, rose red, eggplant and creamy caramel was used to sponge over the sentiment. I got the ribbon at JoAnn's for $1. And don't we all agree that everything is cuter with google eyes?

Now, I just need to come up with two more projects for my workshop. I'm still deciding how I want to embellish the Target mailbox and then I think the other project will be a nugget box. I've seen so many cute ones and figured that now is as good as any time to give it a try.

I've decided that for my workshop, I'm going to use totally different color combinations for each project (that's my attempt at thinking outside the box a little). I attended a stamp workshop back in December and we made five different projects, but they all used the SAME patterned paper. By the third project, I was ready to scream!

Oh, I've also added a picture of the birthday cake I made last night. It's a giant S'more and was a huge hit with my kiddos.