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Archive for December, 2011

Homemade Peppermint Bark

 

Peppermint Bark is a super simple and delicious holiday treat! It makes a quick and easy homemade gift that everyone will love!

Peppermint Bark Recipe

All you need is 1 pound of white candy coating and 1/2 cup peppermint pieces (or finely crushed starlight mints or candy canes).

 

Melt the candy coating very slowly in the microwave. If  the candy is melted too fast and it gets it too hot it will harden and not become liquid.  Start with 30 seconds and then stir. Continue heating at 15 second intervals, stirring each time until melted. Add in 1/2 cup peppermint pieces.

 

Stir until completely combined.

 

Spread candy thinly out on wax paper and allow to cool. (About an 11" X 17" area)

Once hard, break candy into pieces. This is the perfect treat to keep on hand for unexpected guests and it makes a wonderful hostess or neighbor gift when wrapped in a pretty container.

Believe me, your friends will eat this up! Enjoy!

If you are looking for more homemade gift ideas  you might enjoy browsing my Handmade Gift Guide!

 

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Snapfish “Your Creative Lens on Life” holiday book {Giveaway}

Win $100 giftcard to snapfish just by leaving a comment below!

I think I need to make somewhat of a confession here .  I must admit to you {my readers} that I have failed, at  showing off  my many memories that I have collected over the years.  Mind you I have made them and I have even carefully documented all these events in photo's  yet they haunt me sitting in boxes or on my computer hidden from view.  Does anyone else do this?

Join me {help me} as I take a journey this holiday season with Snapfish.  I am excited {nervous} as I  learn more about this process of making a photo book. Whether you have tons of experienced in making photo books or you are like me with countless of your photo's boxed up or saved in your computer {Shameful}.   I hope this will help you learn more about the process at Snapfish and that we both can find that it's much  less overwhelming than I imagined.

They gave me two options for creating a photo book (and they are available to you too)

 

Option One: Utilize Snapfish’s Professional Photo Book Design Service

This new service is especially great if you’re crunched for time. All
you need to do is simply select the images and pictures you’d like
included in your photo book and a professional designer will put
everything together for you. The service enables you to review and
make changes to the photo book before it’s actually created.

Option Two: Create Your Own

If you’d rather put all of the pieces of the photo book together
yourself, including the images, pages, and décor, you can create your
own from scratch.

While I would prefer to create it all myself, realistically this is the reason all these pictures sit untouched.  So I am excited to see what they can do with my photo's using their professional photo book design service!

Snapfish offers Easy – guided steps to help you make a book in a snap and they are beautiful {making me look professional}.  They allow a lot of freedom to make the book your own and there is a theme for almost any occasion.  I love that you can save time because you can upload pictures directly from websites you already use, like facebook and flicker.

Remember when I said I needed your help?  I want you to help me design my book and we need to be creative!  Have you made a photo book before? Have you seen anything really amazing out there?  What are your suggestions?  What themes work best?
Please help me out here and comment with ideas about creative themes/Snapfish tools you would use to design your own book (and make it the most creative possible).

If you need extra motivation... Snapfish is having a contest, they have selected 10 bloggers (including me) to create a book and then Snapfish will be choosing the most unique and creative book... if I use one of your suggestions and I win -you win too {Cheers}!  In addition, if we win the first 100 commenter's will also win a $100 gift card  to snapfish!  But first we have to be chosen, so comment away!

Disclaimer: I am being provided with a compensation from Snapfish .  The opinions and views of the process and the book are all my own.

Made by you Monday

Happy Monday everyone!

Make sure to pop over to my giveaway and enter to win $125 Vinyl wall decals from Janey Mac.

It is time to link up your crafty goodness! Show us what you have been making. Please don't forget to link back! --- a text link at the bottom of your post, or link somewhere on your blog is okay!

Please link up only your own projects, and link to the specific post, not your blog home page. No Etsy shops or giveaways, please!

 

    If you are placing a Skip to my Lou button, copy the code below in the box and paste where you can edit the html in your blog post.

And stop back next Sunday for my, "Made by you Monday Wrap up"- I just might be featuring you!

Made by you Monday {wrap up}

So many sweet treats!

Blogginess shared these chunky cookies and cream brownies  and they look delicious.

I want to try this Pralines and cream fudge from Something Swanky!

The Farm girl hits the spot with these Peppermint Bon Bon Cookies.

Swamp Hollow designs shared this sweet and salty cashew brittle , Yum!

I hope to see you all tomorrow posting on another Made by You Monday, and make sure to come back next week and check I just might be featuring {you}!

Folding Christmas Stars tutorial {Guest Post}

Please Welcome Rena from The Cheese Thief who is sharing a great tutorial with us today!  

I am going to show you how to fold little stars with cellophane packaging.  Here is a tutorial on how to fold a paper star or a video version here.  With all these cellophane tutorials, it is always best to practice on paper first and get the hang of it before you venture off to cellophane.  Cellophane is much harder to work with because it is more slippery and stiff.

 

These are my pictures, but watching a video on how to do this is much easier.1.  Use a ruled paper underneath as guidelines to cut cellophane into strips. The strips I cut were about .25 in.2. For larger stars use wider ruled paper. Note that length of paper should be at least 30 times of width.

3. Take cellophane and "tie into a knot" and flatten.

4. Fold over the short end and then the long end along the edges

5.  Tuck end into flap.

6. Pinch into star shape.

 


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