January handmade cards

'sup?

I've been busy working on cards for my Etsy shop. When I realized foxes are trending on Etsy I knew I had to make some fox cards. As soon as I put this little guy together the first word that popped into my head was 'sup, as in "what's up?" He reminds me of my big dumb cat, Oliver, except Oliver is white and tan and he doesn't say 'sup,' he says 'duh.'

Happy Birthday ... you party animal

Same fox, different message. This one is a birthday card that says "you party animal" on the inside. Doesn't Mr. Fox look like a real party animal? he he

What's new pussycat?

I'm beginning to sense a theme here with the animal cards! I made this card with a die cut I created from a free piece of clip art I found online (I can't give credit because I got it on some random free clip art site). The song title popped into my head and it's been stuck there ever since.

What's new pussycat? Wooo oooh oooh! 

Is this song stuck in your head now?

Happy Cupcake Day!

And the last one for today is this cute cupcake card. It puts me in the mood to make a batch of chocolate cupcakes. :)

Thanks for looking at my newest cards! What projects have you been working on? Leave your blog link in the comments section so I can take a look!

My Etsy Shop

Amazing Chicken recipe

I have no other word to describe this simple but amazing chicken recipe. It all happened by accident one day when I had no bread crumbs. I used to use a simple, breaded chicken recipe I got from an old cooking magazine. The recipe called for plain yogurt, bread crumbs seasoned with a few spices and parmesan cheese and melted butter. Well, on this particular day I realized I had no bread crumbs after I had everything else ready to go. So I improvised...

Keebler Club crackers, crushed (enough to make 1-2 cups, depending on the amount of chicken)
Parmesan cheese (a couple of tbsp)
6 oz plain Greek yogurt in a shallow container
1-2 tbsp. melted butter
Boneless chicken breasts

Mix the parmesan cheese and cracker crumbs in a shallow container. If you want to add other spices that's up to you. I think this is pretty amazing with just those two ingredients.

Dip the chicken in the Greek yogurt and coat it all over. Go ahead, get it on there nice and thick.

Dip the chicken in the cracker crumb mixture and coat completely.

Put the chicken breasts in a baking dish and drizzle with the melted butter. OMG

Bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes (test for doneness).

This chicken will come out super moist and the coating is so tasty it'll make you say "mmmmm!" with every bite. I usually serve it with rice pilaf and a veggie. I try to bake extra chicken breasts to slice up and put in sandwiches or salads for lunches during the week. I like my salad with this chicken, a hard boiled egg, spinach leaves and bleu cheese dressing. Yum!!

Sorry I don't have a photo. The last time I made this I was doing 10 million things at once and didn't have time to grab the camera.

Let me know if you make this and how it came out. I'd love to know what you think of it!

Valentine's Day cards

I love this simple Valentine's Day card! I whipped this up the other morning. I found the cat silhouette image on google. I created the die cut with my Silhouette by duplicating the cat and flipping the image, then touching their noses together so it's all one piece (it was a little tricky getting it off the mat). The hearts came from a set of die-cut tags that had a bunch of cut-out hearts on them. I saved all the tiny die-cut hearts for future projects. Waste not, want not. :) The words were done with my printer.

Oh look, more die-cut hearts! :) (Did I mention I have a ton of these?) This card was even more simple to make than the cat card. It's one of those projects that I can just sit, chat and not put a whole lot of thought into what I'm doing. 

Thanks for looking!

Both of these cards can be found in my Etsy shop. 

www.piecesofmepapercrafts.com 

New scrapbooking projects

I'm stranded at home today while we're down a vehicle. I let my husband take mine to work while his gets repaired. His new vehicle (that we just got in November) did a little slippin and slidin in the snow yesterday. We haven't gotten a written estimate on the damage yet but at the moment, the ballpark figure is at least three grand (ouch - thank goodness for insurance). We're going to be inconvenienced for a little while longer while it gets put back together. So here I sit alone in the house, just me and my two cats. It's been a wonderfully quiet day. :)

My daughter and I went to our monthly crop at the LSS last Saturday. I was a slacker when it came to packing so I didn't have a whole lot to work on. I did get a few projects done though. It was just enough to keep me busy for the five hours we were there. 

I made the page above using some old school techniques. This was so simple to do! I used a doodling template for the swirls. I just outlined it all in pencil, then took my black Zig marker and colored away. I used  paper punches for the daisies and stars and added silver Stickles to the daisies. The title was done with an old school alphabet template - remember those? We used to outline our letters, then cut them out by hand with scissors. I took the easy way out and, just like the swirls, I outlined with pencil and colored it all in with my black pen. I'm guessing this took me about an hour start to finish. The best part was I was able to sit and chat and not really put a whole lot of thought into it. I just doodled away. :)

Custom Housewarming Card on Etsy

This card is a variation of the one in my banner. I made it to look like my house. My house doesn't have a blue door but maybe someday it will. ;-) I'm going to attach this card to a piece of cardstock (haven't decided the color yet) and frame it as a wall hanging. I tried to find a "Home Sweet Home" stamp to use below the house on the wall hanging but I can't find exactly what I need. Having one custom made is way beyond my budget. If I use a light colored cardstock for the background I'll do it with my printer. 

Thanks for looking!

Bra and purse cards

Back in September I posted this blog post about the awesome acrylic stamps I won at Pamela's World of Scraps. I finally got around to playing with them yesterday (yes, I'm a little slow getting around to things!). 

Check out the fun cards I put together with two of the sets. The bra card above says "Bras are like great friends," then inside it says "You can always count on them when you need a lift." :)

This second card has my favorite subject - purses! The outside says "Birthdays are like purses" and the inside says "the more you have, the harder it is to find your keys." 

I can't decide which I like the most, but I think the purse one is ranking a little higher. I love the paper I used for the purse and the bright circles on the border. 

Thanks for looking! 

www.piecesofmepapercrafts.com

New paper crafts projects

I spent one night last week at my kitchen table making tags and mini note cards with my Silhouette. The mini note cards above are really cute for attaching to Valentine's gifts. They're small (2.5") and make perfect little gift cards.

I also love these little thank you tags. They're pretty popular with Etsy sellers. My new Thank You stamp came from MountainsideCrafts on Etsy. She's up in the White Mountains, which drew me right into her shop!

I forgot to mention that my son gave me a Photo Studio in a Box for Christmas. What a difference it makes for my photos! I still need to do a little tweaking with my camera settings but these pics still came out so much better than my previous photos. :)

All of these items can be found in my Etsy shop. Thanks for checking them out!

Your body is not an enemy

I'm a slacker. 

I didn't do a New Year's post. I haven't made any resolutions. I was too busy enjoying time off from work and our regular routine that I blew it all off. 

I haven't been online much at all day today because I was de-Christmasfying my home. I'm just now catching up on 24 hours of Facebook New Year's greetings. 

I found the above photo on one of my favorite FB pages, Go Kaleo. I won't go into detail on who she is other than to say she makes sense when she says to listen to your body. Check out her blog here and her FB page here. 

My goal for 2013 is to start eating healthy and exercising again. Maybe I'll even lose some weight (I hope so - I'm too cheap to buy new jeans!). I also need to declutter the basement storage room again. It looks like a bomb went off down there with all the boxes and wrapping paper strewn around from Christmas. My scrapbooking area looks even worse. LOL I've heard that losing weight and getting organized are two of the most popular new years's resolutions. What can I say? I like to go with the flow.

Oh and by the way, happy new year!