My Beautiful Blog

People in my family always seem to appreciate calendars at Christmas, so I decided to make my own as gifts this year.

I used a variety of circle punches to cut out the patterned paper, then layered them and distressed the edges.  It was also the perfect piece to use the SU Forest Friends set on.  I love these little characters!  I'm very happy with how they turned out and have reserved two for family and put another one in MY FOLKSY SHOP .

I had intended to continue working on a Christmas project today, but as Mark kept me up half the night, and no, not for anything good, but because of his god awful snoring, I only grabbed about half an hour of sleep and have been good for absolutely nothing today!!

Any cures anyone has found for snoring (not including me finding a new partner, lol), please please pass them on, I'm desperate, lol!

Typically, it's Rebecca's parents evening at school today, so I will spending a couple of hours shortly queuing up to speak to various teachers and I am definitely in no mood for it!  As lovely as it is to find out how she's doing, I do detest having to stand around for ages in a stuffy, stinky school hall (ALL school halls have that peculiar smell, don't they?), just to speak to a teacher for a minute or two!

Ah well, best be off and get ready.  Hope you're all having a better Thursdayxx
 

Here are the new additions to my FOLKSY SHOP that I was working on yesterday.  I've made some of these sheets for friends who have asked, and thought it would be fun to pop some in the shop too!

They're great for adding to cards or your scrapbook projects, and it saves you having to buy the inks and stamps yourself.  I'll see how these ones go before deciding if I should add other designs.  I have quite a collection of stamps now, so many in fact, they'll need their own house soon! 

I've lots of other exciting projects planned, and am going to whizz off now to start another one.  I hope you all have a great Tuesdayxx 

I've been having a really lazy day today!  It's cold outside, so I decided to stay wrapped up indoors with a huge heap of magazines by my side, sorting out all the new recipes I want to try.  Honestly, there are so many there just aren't enough days in the week to make them all, or enough mouths to eat them, lol!

I did make these delicious dishes in the week though.  A real time saver, as you save some from the first meal to make the second.  Great on those days when you want something nice but don't want to make much effort.

Tarragon Chicken

Ingredients

• 6 chicken breasts
• 8 rashers streaky bacon, chopped
• 1tbsp olive oil
• 1 onion, sliced
• 1 bulb fennel, sliced
• 200ml white wine
• 500ml chicken stock
• 4tbsp half fat creme fraiche
• small bunch of tarragon, chopped

Heat the oil in a pan and add the chicken breasts.  Fry for around 4-5 minutes on each side until golden.  Remove from the pan and add the streaky bacon.  Fry until golden and crispy.  Add the onion and fennel and cook for a further 5 minutes.  Return the chicken to the pan and pour in the white wine and chicken stock.  Simmer for 15-20 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through.  Remove from the heat and add the creme fraiche and tarragon.  Reserve 2 of the chicken breasts and 250ml of the sauce for the next days dinner, then serve the remainder with vegetables and potatoes.

Chicken Pie

Ingredients

• reserved chicken breasts and sauce from TARRAGON CHICKEN recipe
• 200g cabbage, shredded
• 150g frozen sweetcorn or peas
• 25g parmesan, grated
• 1 sheet of ready rolled puff pastry

Chop the chicken breasts into bite sized pieces and place in a large pan with the sauce, cabbage and sweetcorn/peas.  Simmer for 10 minutes.  Add the mixture to a deep dish, then top with the sheet of puff pastry and sprinkle this with the grated parmesan.  Cut a small slit in the middle of the pastry to let the air escape.  Bake in a 190C oven for 30 minutes, or until the pastry is puffed and golden.

We really enjoyed both these dishes, hope you do too!

Back to the mag stack now!xx 

Morning all!  A card and a layout to share with you today.  Yep, I finally scrapbooked, lol!  I found these pictures of Rebecca on my memory card and realised I hadn't scrapped them yet.

For this card, I stamped the vase image from the SU Fun and Fast Notes set, first on one piece of patterned paper, then again on a different one.  I cut out some of the little flowers and layered then on with dimensionals, so it looks like a decoupage piece.  I think this might be my new favourite things to do with stamps (although I think that about every new thing I try!).  I will be adding some gems to the centre of all the small flowers, but ran out of glue dots!

 

Finally my new bank card turned up, so at least I can go into shops without wads of cash in my pocket now!  I had completely forgotten how annoying it is to have to queue up inside the bank all the time to get money out, so spoilt are we with cash machines and cashback, lol! 

My new phone arrived too, so I'm busy playing around with all the features, like texting my tweets to Twitter, and probably will still be messing around with it for the next hour or so, when I'll no doubt get bored, lol!  I can recieve tweets as text messages too, so it will make keeping up with my friends easier:)

I hope you all have a wonderful Bonfire Night!  I shall be watching the fireworks from my windowsxx
 

Another card to share today.  I seem to be going through a flower and butterfly phase at the moment, everything I do seems to have either or both on them!

I made these butterflies with the SU Flight of the Butterfly set and the matching butterfly punch.  It's great to be able to stamp and then just punch out your designs after.  What a shame they can't do that for all the stamps, although I guess we'd need an awful lot of punches then, lol!

I'm running out of storage space for stash now, and have been really eager to make lots of cards to use some of it up.  Now though, I'm running out of space to keep all the cards!  It's a bit of a vicious circle really, lol.  Hopefully, sales will pick up at FOLKSY and I might sell some, only one item has found a new home at the moment, which is a bit disheartening.  Either that, or we need to move!

Yesterday, Rebecca left for her school trip to Butlins.  They have a whole week of activities there, most of which are learning based, but they have use of all the facilities and evening entertainment too.  She rang me yesterday evening to say she'd arrived safely and was looking forward to dinner, rofl - that's Rebecca for you!  

Anyway, off to do a bit more creating:)  Have a lovely Tuesday, and I hope the weather is a bit brighter where you are.  Rainy and cold here.xx
 

Another card to share today.

I love how this one turned out:)  Hope the recipients do too!  I gave the card some depth by using felt on it, there's also ribbon, gems and my favourite santa image from SU.  I made a matching tag to go on a present too, as I think it looks nice when things go together.

Yesterday was like a wasted day here.  I was waiting for my shopping to arrive in the morning when I got a call from Tesco to say my card had been declined.  Knowing I had money to cover the bill, I rang my bank to see what was going on, only to find they'd put a stop on my card again due to suspected fraudulent activity.  Believe it or not, this is the third time they've done this this year!  The first time, I had a basketful of shopping in Sainsburys that I then couldn't pay for, the second I was trying to pay for things in Next, and obviously couldn't, now this. 

To say I was livid was a bit of an understatement!  Before, there was nothing fraudulent on my account, but this time, they are saying there was and they read out a couple of companies that I didn't have any dealings with.  Somehow though, it didn't ring true, as they were legitimate companies and I can't see why they would flag them, also, nothing fraudulent has actually gone through my account!  Why on earth they can't just contact me beforehand and ask if transactions are correct or not I'll never know.  The first couple of times they lied, said they'd sent a letter (never ever received) and the second that they'd rung and spoken to me (hmm, think I would have remembered that).  This time, the guy didn't have an answer at all!  Anyway, the long and short of it means I now have to wait for a new card to arrive (fun hey, with the postal strike!), and can't do anything online:(  I actually had to traipse all the way into town to physically get money out of the bank so I can get some shopping ( would have been nice if they hadn't closed my local branch grrrrrrr!)

Well, rant over, lol!  I hope your Friday is going well:)xx
 

Time ran away with me yesterday and I never managed to post this recipe.  It's really delicious though, and if you like butternut squash, I bet you'll love it!

Stuffed Butternut Squash

INGREDIENTS

• 2 butternut squash
• Jar of green pesto
• 1 onion
• 250g cherry tomatoes
• 6 rashers of streaky bacon
• 80g baby spinach
• 80g feta cheese
• 2tbsp pine nuts

Cut the butternut squash in half and scoop out all the seeds with a spoon.  Make crosses over the cut sides and brush with some pesto.  Cover with foil and bake in the oven for around 1 hour, or until they are tender.

Peel the onion and cut it into chunks.  Add it to a roasting tin with a teaspoon of olive oil, and the rashers of bacon, cut into pieces.  Cook for 20 minutes, then add 2 tablespoons of pesto, the cherry tomatoes, halved, spinach, pine nuts and crumbled feta. 

Remove the squash from the oven, and scoop out a little more of the flesh, adding it to the roasting tin.  Mix together, then stuff the mixture equally into the squash halves.  Bake for a further 10 minutes then serve.

This really is an easy recipe, and I'd definitely use it for feeding lots of people as it's so easy to double or triple the quantities.

Off to get on with some housework now, a neccessity as we have visitors due tomorrow.  Is it awful to say I'd much rather be crafting?!

Have a great Thursday!xx 

I gave up on trying to keep the house tidy today. It's completely pointless when the children are marching their friends through every 5 minutes (and, it puts paid to me having a pyjama day too!).  Instead, I made some more cards.

This one is a gift card holder, which I'm always in need of at Christmas as that's all people seem to want nowadays.

The inside has this pocket to hold the giftcard.

I made a few of these so I'd have a supply handy, although the way Royal Mail are going it'll probably be quicker to send things by pigeon!  Isn't it the worst thing ever to be waiting for post?

Back tomorrow with a delicious dinner recipe. Have a lovely afternoon:)xx 

I thought it was about time I joined in with some challenges to help keep my mojo flowing, and I found this one called CUTE CARD THURSDAY.  I particularly liked this site, as there are no sketches to follow, just a theme.  This week, the topic was candy/sweet based cards.  I decided to use an icecream on this first card, very sweet!  Then decided to make a second and used a cupcake - even sweeter!:)

The first is for the challenge.

I can honestly say I'm having sooo much fun making cards that I'm wondering if I'll ever go back to scrapbooking!  Instead of piles of layouts everywhere, there are now piles of cards, lol.  Still, I'm using up my vast stash supplies, so I suppose that's the main thing.

Anyway, lots and lots to do today so must dash.  Have a great day everyone:)xx  

These are the items I have been working on this week.  Well, there are just six of them, 3 in this style and 3 in another, which I haven't quite finished yet.  You might remember I made similar ones for the Creative World site a while back.

I really enjoy making them and handstitching the design on after, but 6 in a week is probably my limit!  I uploaded this design to my FOLKSY shop today.

Back on Monday with some more crafting.  Have a lovely weekend:)xx