Fail Soup

:( My mom gave me some hot & sour soup over the weekend. I took some out of the fridge to heat up for dinner...

The good thing is.. my mom is really motherly so she gave me more than one container of soup.

I <3 Christmas!

You've all seen the candy packages that I've been slaving (enjoying every minute of it) over since November. Well, I brought them all to work and distributed them this morning. It makes me very happy and proud how well received they were. I even had one lady at work ask me to make birth announcements and birthday cards. She said she'd pay me but this is a hobby for me so there's no way I could accept! We'll see though.. She mentioned something about Power Rangers for the theme of the birthday cards and I'm not sure if there's even cardstock with that on there! Anyway... I just wanted to share how happy I am with all of you. I love this time of year. Giving is definitely better than receiving :)

KWerner's Color Inspiration # 35

I love these challenges! They actually are quite challenging when you get down to it. You have to work with the materials and tools that you have, trying to create a layout that's cohesive and make all the colors work together. I thought I'd run to Scraplover's Work of Heart in Willow Glen to see if I could pick up some crocheted vanilla colored flowers but they didn't have any. *sigh*... Time to improvise!

Since the picture features the darkest brown, I decided to use that as my base. Now what to do with the rest of the colors? I didn't have any saffron colored ribbon nor embellishments so I used cardstock as well. Since I'm still somewhat new to this, I kept the layout very simple and used one of my American Crafts flair for the focal point. I totally forgot that I picked up some vanilla colored ribbon at Michaels on Monday so I added that to the top of the card since it looked a little bare.

Here's how it turned out! Do you like my Cosmo Cricket paper? I snagged the last one at the store!

Oh yeah, Kristina has mentioned that if people are having trouble with pictures that they should try to take it in natural light. I can't wait that long though! I may retake a picture tomorrow to see how it turns out so stay tuned!

PS - Can you tell I'm addicted to my mat pack, paper piercer and faux stitching? Keke..

Holiday Party @ JTT's

On Saturday, JTT and Cheri invited us over for their annual holiday party.

Here's the spread. The cupcakes... OMG! Soo good. They don't even look homemade do they? One of the girls there had a side business of making cupcakes and I'm very glad that I can actually purchase these. As most of you know, I don't have much of a sweet tooth and I've never had red velvet cake before. Since I'm a huge fan of The Newlyweds (Jessica Simpson & Nick Lachey's reality show) and how big of a fan Jessica Simpson is over red velvet cake (her wedding cake was that flavor), I was curious to try some of it. Back to the cupcakes, wow! The cake itself was moist and had bits of rich chocolate chips floating through it. Mmm...

And another surprise! Santa made a special appearance. What??? He exists!! Hah.. I told Santa I wanted a kitten so we'll see if that actually pans out. Do you like how the doggy is being mean to Santa? He's not getting a nice juicy bone for Christmas!

It was a good time but Justyn and I weren't feeling well so we left pretty early. Thanks still go out to Cheri & JTT for inviting us! Thanks guys!

Alex's Mum Cooking: Borscht

Real. Russian. Borscht. When Alex told me that he wanted to give us a sample of his mum's Borscht, I was thrilled! Justyn heated it up for Sunday's dinner which we ate with some toasted rye bread and sour cream. Alex suggested that we eat it this way since that's how he does it. The sour cream accentuated the flavor of the soup which was already pretty damn good. The beets still had a little bite left to them which went well with the beefy background of the stock. It was pretty chilly on Sunday which made this a perfect meal. It warmed us right up!

Justyn Cooking: Turkey Sausage & Spinach Papardelle

As you know I've been really busy with my other hobby so I really haven't had the motivation nor time to cook. New hobbies are too much fun! Anyway, to keep this somewhat food related, tonight Justyn made a turkey sausage and spinach pasta sauce and served it over whole wheat papardelle pasta. The pasta turned out really gummy and gross but the sauce was good. Not bad for a quick Tuesday night dinner.

KWerner's Color Inspiration # 34

Oh man I struggled with this one too. So many colors but they were the least of my worries. After cooking and eating dinner I only had about 40 minutes to get to the scrapbook store (Scrapbook Island) to gather cardstock (they have a HUGE selection). Then I went to Michaels to get some other miscellaneous items. I ended up spending quite some time there. They have so much stuff to look at!

I had a layout drawn which incorporated KWerner's ribbon flower technique. Unfortunately, the ribbon I got at Michaels was too thin width wise. It came out crappy. I scratched that idea and decided to utilize my new scallop circle punch from Stampin Up. After playing around with the layout, I finally decided on using light colored scallop circles and dark colors circles. I arranged it a way where the scallop circle were the flowers and the circles were the center of the flowers.

It still looked really plain so I used my also new Stampin Up mat set to poke holes in the scallop area and did faux stitching in the circles. Here's how it turned out. It's really plain looking but I know how Kristina likes simple designs. *crosses fingers in hopes of getting top 1o* :D