Tuesday Trigger Card Set

I love Moxie Fab World's Tuesday Trigger but haven't found time to play lately. This afternoon I decided to work through a few more of the 66 card fronts my Crate (etc.) scraps made and used this week's trigger as inspiration. Here it is:

My first thought was that it was a mauve-ish pink but then I looked at the table top and thought it to be a pinkish mauve. So I made a set with a little of both, some yellow, black and white and some opulence, luxury or bling! Hopefully the influences are apparent.

For this one I finally assembled some of the burnt edge flowers I made at least a year ago. They're very fun to sew together and I think it'll mail well.

It's nice to have some feminine, special occasion cards ready to mail.

~~~

This is also my entry into the S.O.S. Weakest Link challenge, my weaknesses shown here are kit clubs, Crate paper and (back in the day) Heidi Swapp bling. I don't know if I'll ever use all those jewels up. 

Scrappy Bits and Pieces Cards

Here's another set of cards I made from my scraps:

These are a great way to use up odd colored card stock as bases. A lot of the color combos are likable, but not what I would instinctively reach for (that would be white and kraft, always).

One thing that really seemed to bring to cards to life is adding a stamped sentiment. All these are from Papertrey Ink's Fillable Frames sets. I love those!!!

Thanks so much for stopping by :-)

Cake 28: Chocolate Zucchini Cake with Brownie Bonus

Do you love zucchini desserts? I can't get enough of them. The kids love them too because they can easily argue that nutritionally speaking, my zucchini brownies are better for you then pancakes and therefore we should have brownies for breakfast. Smart kids :-)

The reason I'm making this a bonus recipe is because you get two desserts for the price of one. The ingredients are so similar that I put my mixer on one side of the recipe book and a large bowl on the other and make them simultaneously. Then both 9x13 pans cook side by side at the same temperature for the same time.

Which is AWESOME!!!

Why would you need two desserts? Ummm... why not? Or the nicer answer, so there is more to share with your friends and neighbors.

Chocolate Zucchini Cake


This chocolate cake is nicely balanced with a touch of cinnamon. It adds wonderful complexity.

½ C softened margarine or butter
¼ C Oil
¼ apple sauce (I buy the snack-sized six packs of natural sugar-free applesauce for baking, each is ¼ cup)
1 ¾ C Sugar
2 ½ C Flour
1 tsp Baking powder
1 tsp Baking soda
2 C Grated zucchini
2 Eggs
1 tsp Vanilla
½ C Sour milk (I use non fat milk with ¼ tsp of vinegar, stirred well)
4 TBL Cocoa Powder
½ tsp Cinnamon
¼ C Chocolate chips (minis are best as they ensure every bite is chocolatey)

Cream together the margarine, oil and sugar.

Add eggs, vanilla, and sour milk.  Mix well.

Add dry ingredients after sifting them together. Beat well.

Add zucchini last and mix evenly.  Put in a 13 x 9 pan. Sprinkle with chocolate chips.

Bake at 350' for 35 minutes or until done.

Then fight with your husband about whether or not the cake needs frosting (It absolutely does not!)

And in the other bowl...

Zucchini Brownies

Cooking Spray
2 C zucchini
1 C all-purpose flour
1 C fresh ground whole wheat flour ( if you don't grind your own, go to Great Harvest, they sell fresh ground wheat, or just use whole wheat or all purpose flour)
1 C sugar
1 tsp salt
1 ½ tsp baking soda
1 pinch baking powder
1/3 C cocoa powder
¼ C oil
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla
½ C chocolate chips (minis are best)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Spray 9x13 pan with cooking spray

Combine all ingredients
Spread in prepared pan
Bake 35 minutes or until brownies are set.

Yeah, you read that right. Dump it all in a bowl, stir and bake. Pretty cool, eh? But... and it's a big but... this recipe will freak you out. It freaks me out even though I know how weird it is. When you start to stir you'll have dry flour stuff clinging to grated zucchini. It looks like something you'd fry in a pan, not like brownie batter. Keep stirring. As the salt charms the water from the veggies the batter will moisten up. I promise. That's why you add so much salt you're sure it's a typo. It's not. 

This is how it looks after mixing, not so appetizing but batter-esque:

And look at how they turn out. Glorious!!!

Be sure to check out the other great desserts in my 52 Cakes Project  :-)

Linked up With:

Whipperberry

Turning Scraps into Card Sets

Go-to Girl and paper crafter extraordinaire, Betsy Veldman, posted a great way to process your scraps of patterned paper into cards and I decided to give it a try while I'm resting.

Check out her post HERE for the details. Basically you cut them into strips, attach them to a base and then cut the completed base into card fronts. She describes it much better and with gorgeous photos so click that link!

At the end of the day I had emptied about eighteen bags of leftover kit bits and made forty-four card front bases. From there, I added a bit of ribbon, a sentiment, a little embellishment and had nineteen cards ready to send in under and hour and a half. How awesome is that???

I didn't have scraps quite as large as Betsy's so I cut my bases (sometimes out of card-weight patterned paper) to 5 x 4.25. I also included any border strips I had leftover - they added a little flair.

Once the strip-sheets were complete, I trimmed them down to card front size - a little smaller so the card base provides a nice border - and then went through all my ribbon scraps, attaching them wherever they matched. I'm ashamed to admit the enormous amount of four to six inch pieces of ribbon I had saved over the years. Oh my!

Here's a Western Set I made:

It's nice to have a masculine card on hand - they're so hard!

Did I mention the number of stacked and held together with a brad flowers I had stored... for years and years and years... incredible!

 One thing to bear in mind, your auntie won't know if the paper is old or if brads aren't really your thing or if Bazzil paper flowers are something you've tired of. She'll just know that you cared enough to drop her a note and she'll love you for it. So don't stress if some of those scraps are drenched in Chestnut Roan chalk ink. It's no biggie.

I'll leave it at the first ten cards. It's probably enough for one post. LOL

P.S. My health has really stalled on the decline so prayers are appreciated. I'll share more once I figure out what sort of path to take.

Cake #27: Fail! with Delicious Caramel Fudge Frosting

So cake #27 was a complete bust. I would say it was inedible but since only five of the 24 cupcakes remain I think it's more a testimony to the fact that teenage boys will eat just about anything if it's covered in frosting.

So let's skip right over the oatmeal cupcakes and their tragic shortening based frosting and move on to one of my very favorite recipes in the whole world - Caramel Fudge Frosting.

This frosting is like piping brown sugar fudge on top of your cupcake. Yum!

I love the rich caramel taste, the silky texture and how you don't need to soften the butter. Remembering to take out butter is the bane of my existence. Seriously. Plus you only mess one pot and a spatula. Less dishes are always a good thing!

This is great on spice cake, brownies, eaten with a spoon, spread in a pan like fudge - it's just amazing. 

The light was bad and we're all sick again (yes, that 36 hours where we felt good was lovely. Wish it would have lasted a bit longer) so please excuse the horrible pictures. Hopefully you can glean from them the gist of this simple, versatile and dare I say essential recipe that we all love dearly.

Caramel Fudge Frosting

1 C packed brown sugar
½ C butter
¼ C milk
1 tsp vanilla
Icing sugar (amount varies)

Combine brown sugar, butter and milk in a saucepan; bring to boil over medium heat.
Cook and stir for two minutes.

Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.

Cool to luke warm. Now most normal people sit it on a trivet and wait an hour or so for the boiling candy to cool. I'm not a sit and wait sort of gal. Not even a little. So I take a bowl the pot will fit in and fill it with ice. As soon as the two minutes are up, sit the pot in the ice and stir like crazy. The bottom cools and thickens immediately so the stirring is important.

In just a few minutes you have a thick, cool base for your frosting.

Beat in icing (confectioners/powdered) sugar until it reaches spreading consistency. I like to beat it by hand until glossy as you do fudge, but if you like a slightly less silky texture you can just mix in icing sugar until it's thick.

Scrape into a zip loc bag

Pipe onto cupcakes

For anyone who's wondering, isn't she the chick who hates a lot of frosting? What gives??? Let me tell you, those cupcakes were foul, greasy, heavy, unfriendly bad-tasting atrocities. So I piped on the frosting in such a way that a person could pop it off, enjoy a nice little swirl of fudge and feed the cupcake to the dog. 

Summer Fun: Picture Post

With this spring and summer being a long string of illness and injury, I'm happy to report that we have been having some fun. Plain, simple, honest, uncomplicated fun. Hiking, swimming, eating too much ice cream... the good stuff :-)

As you can see, we've been finding and jumping into every puddle of water Utah has to offer.  Which is mainly reservoirs and waterparks.. weird.  My NW soul is perplexed.

I've been doing crafts too and promise to post pics and tutorials as soon as I arrange them in a sensible fashion.

Big Sale at CupCards {to go}

Here's my sketch card for the Summer CupCards {to go} kit:

And I have some great news - they're having a HUGE sale. 

Stock up on your favorite kits and toppings at great sale prices over in our BARGAIN BAKERY.

The sale is going on all month! Once items are gone they are gone!

I know I'll be picking up a few myself :-)