Crafting with my mother in-law.

Last weekend we went up to Gillette, WY to spend the weekend with my in-laws. Charlene (Chad's mom) recently got into jewelry making, her best friend owns a bead shop that is located in the lower level of her home. In the past month and a half or so she has made almost 50 necklaces!! They were all very beautiful and she was even able to turn some family heirlooms in to beautiful pieces of jewelry!

She asked me if I wanted to make something so while we were up there I was able to make 2 necklaces for myself! She was excited that I was interested in the same craft as her! The first piece I made I used my moonstone pendant as the focal point.



On the second piece I used some rainbow magnetic beads my mother in-law had! What's awesome is they match my hair! lol! But they were kind of a pain in the ass to work with was having issues trying to make a focal point out of beads and then Charlene pulled out some butterfly pendents! I found the one I liked the best and then went to stringing beads. you cant tell in the picture but the small round beads are metallic and kinda look like that rainbow oil film on the surface of puddles.



I really enjoyed making these but I will wait on making it a actual hobbie b/c it's way more expensive then paper crafting! lol!! And I think Chad would kill me If I spent even more $$ on crafting then I already do!

Circle Journal Rules

Last night I finished the Rules pages for my circle journal!! 4 down 4 to go!! I'm actually having a lot of fun doing this! I think I'm gonna work on pages for my bucket list next and wait to do the sign in pages until I can get to Rose's and use the Cricut and make my bucket tags. I'm also very excited to get the Close to my Heart stamps I ordered from Rose so I can add extra pretties to my pages!



I used watercolor pencils to do the tie dying over the words and smudged it with water. The paper is a Me & my big idea card stock book from
Michael's. Man does that book have some wonderful paper in it! I cut the paper into thirds and then glued and taped them back together to make an 8x8 square. I stamped Paris with a alphabet stamp set I borrowed from Rose, and the flower stamps are Natures beauty from Creative stamping kit-of-the-month club. The green glittered polka dot ribbon is from the dollar bins at Michael's. The sentiment stickers are from a card stock book my friend gave me.






















Chad doesn't like the tie dyeing over the words but I do! Maybe I will figure out something different we shall see!

Let me know what you think about it!






January Cake Frenzy!

I have 5 very important people in my life whose birthdays all happen to be in January. My husband's is on the 5th, my sister's is on the 21st, Tagen my daughter is on the 30th, last but definitely not least Boho Rose and my father in-laws are both on the 31st. Out of these 5 My sister Mariah is the only person I didn't make a cake for (she lives almost 1000 miles away in Reno, NV)

For my husband’s cake I made him a Honey Chai tea cake with a Honey ginger cream cheese frosting! OMG it was to die for!!! No pictures for this cake :( but I will give you the link to the recipe! :) It was supposed to be a bundt cake but I used round cake pans instead and I also used a different frosting than what she did.

Honey-Ginger Cream Cheese Frosting

1 ½ cups of confectioners’ sugar

½ cup honey

9 ounces of cream cheese at room temp.

½ cup of unsalted butter at room temp.

½ cup of honey (any kind as long as liquid)

½ teaspoon of fresh grated ginger

1 teaspoon crystallized ginger

Circle Journal Cover/Sketch Challenge




I just completed my first scrapbook page ever!!! I also just so happened to kill 2 birds with one stone! Not only did I complete the cover page for my circle journal I used the March sketch challenge from the Crazy Crafter's Club to do it with!! I was't quite done being crafty so I decited to make the back cover as well! Now I just have 6 more pages to finish in the next 16 days so I can meet my dead line of April 1st!



Front cover




Back cover
I made the stamps on this page in 3D

Color Challenge

These are the colors we were to use for this months challenge:


Here is what I came up with for The Crazy Crafter's Club color Challenge for the month of March. I was even able to use all 4 of them!!


I have had a lot of fun completing my projects for the challenges! next I think I will do a scrapbook page layout for the last challenge!

Paper Flowers

I am a member of the Crazy Crafter's Club (CCC) and they have a monthly challenge list of 3 different projects to complete each month. I decided to make the paper scrunchy flowers. Since I have a very limited paper supply, 2 books of fancy paper) and no Die cuts or paper punches I had to be extra creative on how I was gonna make these.

I felt the paper stock I do have was to nice to use on making flowers with. Then I remembered I had found the watercolor workbook my husband got me for Yule a few years back. SO I proceed to paint both sides of the watercolor paper in slightly different patters. While that was drying I used a flower cookie cutter as a stamp (this will be for paper crafting only now) and then I cut it out to use as a stencil. I was able to cut out 6 flowers from the water color paper.

I had to steal a few brads and other embellishments from Boho Rose yesterday. She also let me borrow a few stamp sets from her while I wait for mine to come in! I just wanted to toot her horn for a sec here. She is a huge inspiration to me and I consider her my Muse! I know all of this crafty/artsyness lies deep down in me it runs in my blood, both of my parents were amazing artists! (My mother is still alive she just doesn't draw any more) Rose just tends draw it out of me!

Well enough with my rambling, and here is the picture of my flowers! I used 4 yellow brads on the flower on the left The flower on the right I glued together with a glue stick then glued a white crystal jewel in the center. I was quite please with how they turned out! Next time I will make pictures of the steps I did! oh BTW they are almost 3 inches in diameter.

Moon Tree

Yesterday I went to my first Crazy Crafters Club meeting! It was a lot of fun! we ended up just talking about the new changes to the club and an a little bit about our circle journals.. Well before I went to the meeting and while my 3 year old daughter was sleeping I decided to paint something! I haven't painted in almost 8 months or so and it was very nice to feel a brush in my hands again. It has been so long b/c I have issues being inspired and motivated.

I'm more of a landscape artist. I really suck at anything to do with people. I almost always start my painting with some type of color wash for the back ground. I LOVE to make sunset washes!!!! But I decided to go with a night sky this time with a full moon! I don't think I have mentioned I LOVE the Moon too!! I won't drive on nights when there's a full moon, not b/c of crazy people but b/c I would rather stare at the moon than look at the road. OOPS! :-P lol!! Here is Moon Tree!

Wheel of the year stepping stone

On Feb. 28th we had a crafting project for NCCR, we made wheel of the year garden stepping stones. One of the group leaders had told us to find things that reminded us each of the 8 holidays we celebrate. I was having difficulty finding anything small that I liked and could be put into cement, so I decided to make something. I went to Walmart and picked up a 10 pack of sculpey clay (it even came with 2 tools!). I decided I was gonna make 8 "buttons" that represented the holidays. I had a lot of fun making these!

Starting from the top and going clockwise I have. I linked all of the holiday name so you could lean more about each day if you like!

  • Holly leaves for the Yule (Winter Solstice)
  • A candle for Imbolc (Candlemass, St Brigid's Day)
  • A decorated egg for Ostara (Spring Equinox)
  • Spring flower for Beltane (May Day)
  • The sun for Litha (Summer Solstice, Midsummer)
  • Wheat for Lammas (Lughnassadh)
  • An Apple tree being harvested for Mabon (Fall Equinox)
  • A skull for Samhan (Halloween)
When I finished making the buttons I brought them over to Jean's house so I could assemble my stepping stone. I added rocks, and some wooden and glass beads as well! It came out great! I do need to go get some glue to re adhere 2 of the wooden beads. with out further ado I give you my finished stepping stone!!!

Boho Rose is amazing!!!

So I wanted to give a shout out to a very dear friend of mine BohoRose. I LOVE YOU!!!!! She is the one who fully convinced me to start my blog. She even came up with the name and made my header! Man does she do amazing graphics work! I'm very blessed to have such a caring, giving,and loving woman in my life! We still have a few kinks to get worked out but we will get there. Now to decide what to use the links for! LOL!!

Yule and X-mas food

After the Pumpkin Pies I made for Thanksgiving I decided I would never use canned pumpkin to make a pie with, canned anything for that matter! If I make a pie I want fresh ingredients so it can be the best pie it can be! I was so happy I had found those pumpkins at The Farm at Lee Martinez park in November I decided to to take a chance and see if they had any left. To my surprise and shear luck they still had quite a few salvageable pumpkins left in the middle of December!! I did a little happy dance and jumped the fence to pick threw the pile! :) They were frozen b/c of the week long arctic front we had gotten but they would work. This time I grabbed 4 pumpkins and the lady in the office only charged me $0.50 for them since they were frozen talk about a steal!!!!

Getting started.

Well I have never blogged before and I have had a few people that said I should start a blog about my baking expeditions. I gave in and decided to give it a try. So here is a little bit about me. I'm a 26 year old mother of a beautiful and crazy 3 yr old Tagen! I have been a stay at home mom since July 2008 which is when we decided to move our family from my hometown of Reno, NV to Fort Collins, CO. We wanted to be closer to my in-law's with out moving to WY. (they live in Gillette, WY.)

After a year of being really bored I wanted something to do with my time I'm a sucker for good food and the holidays were coming up so I decided to start dabbling in pie making. The first time I ever baked like most of us was in Home Ec. class in the 8th grade. My apple pie was the best one in the class. :-). After that I baked a few boxed cakes here and there but in September 2009 that all changed.

I'm a member of a pagan group called Northern Colorado Covenant of the River (NCCR) every Sunday evening that holds a pot luck so we can have dinner and discussions together. I enjoy having a lot of people to cook for and I needed some thing to make. The fall was coming on and I had been craving apple pie like none other. So I went and got the 9" Paula Dean pie pan from Walmart and every thing else I needed for the pie. I had tweaked a recipe from www.allrecipes.com I like sweet apples in my pie personally I just cut back on the sugar a bit. I did a lattice top on in as well! It came out perfect! My Pie was devoured and my head was swimming with compliments! I haven't looked back since then!! I made a few more apple pies for NCCR after that!

After getting such good reviews on my pies I really wanted to make on for my in-laws I don't get a chance to cook for them very often so I like to when I can. So on one of our trips up to see them I decided to make them a pie. It was kind of a spur of the moment trip and my mother in-law just so happened to have every thing I needed! She has her own apple trees on her property so we used the ones from it. They produce fairly small apples though, I'm talking slightly larger then a golf ball small here! It took my father in-law and I quite a while to get them cut up. It was pat 9 pm by the time we were done, so I put the apples in a lemon water bath and put them in the fridge overnight. I also let the dough rest in the fridge in the pie pan over night as well. I finished putting it together in the morning and baked it! My mother in-law is not a huge pie fan and is not like pie crust at all normally but she loved mine!! She told me it was the best pie she had ever eaten!!!!

The pie made from tiny apples! :)



I brought 4 doz Pumpkin cupcakes w/ a ginger cream cheese frosting to NCCR for our Halloween ritual. By the end of the night I think there were only 5 of them left! lol!! :) I had found the pumpkins at Walmart but they were only there for like 2 weeks. When I had gone back to get more they were all gone :(

We enjoyed our Thanksgiving dinner with NCCR since my husband was on call that weekend. For our dinner I made quite a few things actually. I knew I wanted to make Pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving but I was hard up to find any fresh pumpkins and I was starting to get a little worried. Then I went to a birthday party at The Farm at Lee Martinez park
and stumbled upon a huge pile of pie pumpkins for $1 a piece in there barn! I got three really nice sized pumpkins. I made 2 pumpkin pies (I had to go get a second PD pie pan) After making those pies I will never again use canned pumpkin!!! lol!! each pie had one pumpkin each in it and it was not qwute enough to fill up the pie dishes. (future note need I an extra pumpkin) I also made a pumpkin/sweet potato/butternut squash soup (fresh pumpkin here as well) I also made deviled eggs half of them had green olives in them and the other half were classic deviled eggs! Oh did I mention this dinner had 31 people in attendance!!! Sadly I don't have any pictures of these endeavors. :( But I might be able to get some from someone in NCCR! :)