Childhood Portrait card

I have to say that I am completely in love with this new stamp set from CTMH! It is so pretty and it was the first thing I ordered from the new catalogue. I had a chance to sit down and play a little today and this is the card I came up with. I love the colours.

Thanks for stopping by! :)

Everything is from CTMH unless otherwise noted...

Childhood Portrait stamp set, TLC stamp set, Desert Sand ink, Baby Pink pearl button, Chocolate polka dot organdy ribbon, hemp, Colonial White cardstock, DCWV pre-printed card base.

New CMTH fall catty is LIVE!

If you haven't been lucky enough to get a look at the new Close to My Heart Fall catty in person, now you can check it out online. There are so many new beautiful things...I can't say I dislike any of the new paper packs...or stamps for that matter! They are all fantastic! They've changed up the catalogue layout a bit to make it a little more user friendly so things may not be exactly where you expect if you are used to the old cattys. It didn't take me long to get used it and I love the clean, simple design of it.

I know, I know...enough babble from me. Click the image below to go take a look for yourself!

*** This is a link to the Canadian catty. If you want the US version click HERE.

Creamy Tex Mex Noodle Bake

I love finding new recipes...especially kid friendly ones that mine will actually eat!! So I thought I would share this one with you just incase you have picky children at home. If your kids (or husband like spaghetti or lasagna than this is a nice variation on those traditional italian dishes. If you aren't crazy about Tex Mex you can substitute 1 tsp of Italian seasoning (I find you need a lot less of the italian seasoning) in this recipe and it works just as well. I just find this is a nice change from the regular pasta dishes we usually have.

This is super yummy! If you decide to make it for your family, leave me a comment and let me know how it went! :)


Creamy Tex Mex Noodle Bake
Serves 4-6
537 calories per serving
18.1 g of fat per serving

Ingredients:

1 lb of extra lean ground beef
1 can tomato soup
1 tbsp tex mex seasoning (or vary to taste) **
1/3 cup of water
170 g broad egg noodles
1 can low sodium cream of mushroom soup
1/2 soup can filled with 1% milk
1/2 cup of light cheddar cheese
1/2 cup of part-skim mozzarella cheese

** you could substitute 1 package of low sodium taco seasoning in place of the Tex Mex seasoning if you prefer more of a taco flavor instead of a chili type flavour.

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 F


2. Fill a large stove top pot with water and bring to a boil for the pasta.


3. Meanwhile brown ground beef in a large non-stick fying pan over med-high heat. When meat is no longer pink drain fat from pan. Stir in tomato sup, spice and water.


4. Add noodles to boiling water. Set timer for 3 minutes.


5. Whisk mushroom soup and milk together in a large 2 cup measuring cup or medium bowl.


6. When timer rings for noodles, drain in a colander and rinse with water to prevent noodles from sticking together.


7. In a lasagna or casserole dish, layer in this order... 1/2 of the meat mixture, 1/2 of the cooked noodles, 1/2 of the soup mixture, then the cheddar cheese. Repeat layers again ending with the mozzarella cheese.


8. Bake in preheated oven, uncovered, for 30 minutes. Broil for a few minutes to brown up the cheese a little if desired.

Serve with your favourite salad and this makes a perfect family friendly meal.

Colour Me Monday - CTMH colour combo

Each monday Jeanette Lynton, CEO and founder of Close to My Heart, posts a combination of CTMH colours. I am always impressed and inspired by her choices.

***One thing I'd like to note is that the image to the right doesn't show Creme Brulee in it's true colour...it's more yellow than shown in the example. The other colours look pretty good though.

I thought I would share them here to inspire you and to challenge you to use them today in any of your creative projects. I highly suggest you visit Jeanette's blog ( if you don't regularily visit it already!) and check out her amazing examples...she is truly one of the most inspiring scrapbookers/cardmakers I know. Her blog is full of amazing inspiration & artwork that she updates regularily and she posts new colour combinations each and every Monday. So go...check out her blog! You won't be disappointed!

Jeanette Lynton - Make it from your heart.

If I find the time to create something today I will do my best to post the results of this colour inspiration.

Christmas Joy card

I was playing around with some old product...this is all CM stuff. I haven't used anything from them in years. I have a bunch of stuff laying around from when I was a CM consultant and I decided it is time to use it up. So I slapped this card together real quick and was pleasantly surprised with how it turned out. I used some an old vellum diecut pieces (the blocks and the tree) from a Done With One kit (can't remember the name of it) and some of their black lined cardstock. Since the lines on the cs where silver I decided to emboss the word Joy in silver e.p. and I think it turned out nicely. I had some silver cording laying around too and that just jazzed it up a bit.



It really is amazing what you can come up with when you don't put a lot of planning into a project. I get things done quicker and I always seem to surprise myself with the results!




:)

Emporium Keepsake Cube

I held two different workshops at my SWON retreat a couple of weekends ago and this one the one project that we completed. I was so happy with how it turned out. It uses all CTMH product and one of my favourite paper packs of all time...Emporium. I love the colours and they are so easy to work with. I also used the Foundry Bookplate and Designer Brads which I also love. I used some photos from one of my photography class photo shoots...the subjects of course were my beautiful family! I was really please with how they turned out. I especially love the photo of Matt with the girls...and the one of Gracie looking at the dandelion is too cute...well and of course Emalyn is so beautiful and grown up. *sigh*

I hope you like it!

New CTMH!!

Finally! A new post from me. I know...where have I been? I've been busy planning for all of the crazy changes coming to our family this fall. I am going to try to keep in touch more over the next few weeks. I have some things fom the workshops I did at my scrapbook retreat last weekend so I'll do my best to get those posted soon.

For today, I thought I would stop by and let you know that I have the new CTMH catty in hand and it is wonderful! I love so many of the new things...who am I kidding...I love it ALL!! If you are local to me, drop me a line and I'll get a catalogue to you. The catalogue goes live online September 1st so mark your calendar!


But for now, to get your CTMH fix go check out the new Art & Soul webisode.


Card Cache

Bad Blogger...

I am so sorry for not posting anything in the past month. My life has been CRAZY! My husband has been laid off since November and has decided to go back to college in the fall. He'll be attending the University of Guelph at Ridgetown and will be taking the Environmental Management program. Since we have decided to go through the Second Career program there is a lot of "homework" and research to complete in order to qualify. Then because he is going to have to live on campus through the week and we won't have any income coming in, I've decided to run a daycare out of my home so that I am still able to stay home with our girls and make the necessary money to pay the bills. This has also been quite a process. I have had to move my large studio into a small corner of our storage area. It's not exactly a "dream" space but it will do for now so that I have the space to run my daycare. It's been a lot of work setting all of this up and I'm still not quite finished. So all of this along with soccer games, Sparks meeting, homework, photography class twice a week and helping out on the farm we haven't found a lot of extra time for our hobbies. Oh and trying to prepare for my annual summer scrapbook retreat at Elm Hurst Inn...I feel like I haven't put as much of my heart into it this year. It just seems we have SOOO much on our plates right now. I do hope to get things back to normal soon so please bear with me and I promise I will be posting more again soon.