A St. Patrick's Day Marshmallow Experiment

With all the hype about our impending "blizzard" earlier this week, I took the opportunity to prepare a little experiment for some St. Patrick's Day treats - Wintergreen Marshmallows.

I used my tried and true marshmallow recipe but this time, instead of adding pulverized red hots, I added pulverized wintergreen lifesavers.  On my desk at work I have a container that I keep filled with these for the staff and at the moment, due to some thoughtful persons, I have a couple of big bags in the waiting at home, so I needed only to grab a handful or so, unwrap them and put them in my grinder.  (I have a dedicated coffee grinder that I use for this alone.)  

What I didn't have on hand was gel food coloring.  I only had the liquid kind and despite adding more than 30 drops, I could only get a lovely pastel green color.  I started these on Tuesday morning while it was sleeting/snowing.  Once in the pan they have to sit for 10 hours, or overnight before you can cut them up. 

Below the entire block is turned out onto a clean counter dusted with a mixture of confectioner's sugar and rice flour.  

Then I use a knife coated in PAM to cut it into strips, cleaning the knife periodically as the marshmallow does still sick a little.  

Then I cut up the strips into blocks and each one is dredged in the sugar/flour mixture on all the raw edges so they don't stick together.  

Thinking about packaging them up for little gifties for a few friends, I searched my stamps and not finding what I wanted, created this shamrock with SU's Swirly Bird stamps and a marker for the stems.  I cut around each one.

I had seen some cute party favor bags at $Tree over the weekend and actually bought some in blue, but wanting these to be green, since HWNSNBP and I had another errand to do on Wednesday, I managed to talk him into another quick trip to the $Tree to pick up some in green.

I just folded the top over a little and stapled the shamrock onto it to keep it closed.   Oh, the marshmallows were packaged in a snack size zip lock back first otherwise they would dry out.

The flavor is very subtle so if I try these again, either I will look for a different wintergreen or spearmint hard candy or contemplate adding a little mint flavoring.  

I hope everyone had a lovely St. Patrick's Day.  

Baby Shower

On Valentine's Day we had a baby shower for my daughter-in-law.  It was a brunch held at her mother's house.  Her mom and sisters made a delicious variety of brunch foods, Rachel brought specialty desserts, and my role was to make the favors - definitely in my wheelhouse.  

Oh, and it also had a book theme.  So looking back on some of the things that I have done in the past, these little punched babies reading books was where I was headed again.  (Can you tell what she's having?)  

I did some searching and found a pattern for a little box that looked like a book here.  Luckily I had a bunch of this scrapbook paper that was perfect.  

Here is the book closed.

And then opened.  I added a two-page spread inside the cover that had a pictures of Michelle and Chris as babies on each side along with their birth dates and labeled "My Mom" and "My Dad" and then across the bottom of the two pages "Thank you for coming."

The box opens and inside 6 Hershey's nuggets fit perfectly.

  

I used the babies on magnetic bookmarks that I made from matching blue and green card stock and repurposed magnets.  I tied a thin grosgrain ribbon around each book box first and then slipped the magnetic bookmark over the ribbon.  Everyone seemed pleased with them.  

The food was delicious, and she was so overwhelmed by all the wonderful gifts that she received. Her mom made her a beautiful quilt (not the one in the picture), my mother had knitted them a baby afghan, and one of Michelle's friends crocheted a beautiful afghan with a sailboat motif.  They have a nautical theme in the baby's room.  This is the card that I made for them which I cased from here. 

She's feeling and looking great and has about 9 weeks to go now.  The excitement is building!

Fall in Love

Fall in Love - that was the theme of the bridal shower that Rachel recently took part in.  Her friend is getting married on New Year's Eve and last Saturday was the shower.  If you remember the piles of leaves from this post you'll now see what I did with them.

Four different leaves of different colors, each stamped with a different pattern and then the leaf veins were embossed with a stylus.  You can't see from the top that they were glued to a 1" circle of cardstock.   I used my computer to print up "Fall in Love" as well as the bride and groom's names and the date of the wedding on Very Vanilla cs and then punched out with a 1 1/8" circle punch layered onto a 1 1/4" circle of black (off-white and black are the wedding colors).  I added a simple bow in Very Vanilla, stuck a dimensional on the back and they were ready to go.

Rachel and her housemates who are also in the wedding party, were responsible for putting them on the boxed cupcakes they had ordered as favors.

They did a nice job, don't you think?  

I've got some additional leaves that I diecut from the scraps I had leftover, but of course I have not done anything with them yet and now they will be put away until next fall.  Someone remind me about that next August, okay?

Have a Drink on Me

The last two weeks of school are crazy busy - I've said that before, I know.  After completing the craziness of preparing for what we call Move-Up Day, I would have liked to celebrate with some of my colleagues, but since I don't drink I teased that I would just go home and eat chocolate and get fat(ter).    No chocolate in the house, but I did have these candies and a stamp that I thought would fit a little project I had in mind to share with them.

The beverage stamp comes from the set Slice of Life, which I stamped in Basic Gray ink and colored with my SU markers, using pearl shimmer paint for the whipped cream.  The sentiment I stamped with my Just-Rite stamper.  I recently purchased a Martha Stewart stamp set that you could make phrases with only because I had a coupon and was that a mistake.  If you need to create a sentiment of your own and don't want to rely on a printer, check out the Just-Rite stamps (I can't link it here).  The background on the die cut box is a stamp from Sweet Summer just stamped in VersaMark ink on the Pear Pizzazz box.  The scalloped border is in Peach Parfait. 

Inside the box are various drink flavored candies and mixes.  The round ones are rootbeer flavored.  So you can see, they did have more than one drink on me!

Watermelon and Flowers

What a mix right?  Well the watermelons are not edible in this case.  I saw this cool little basket on Patti Lee's blog.  It reminded me of something that my mother would bring to the beach when we were children.  I had to give it a try myself using the Tropical Party stamp set to embellish it. 

Doesn't that look like layers of sherbet?  Well, that got me thinking of layers and colors and somehow I thought it might make a good watermelon slice.

I played around with it a couple of times to see which way I liked it most (the top one won out in my opinion).  You can see below that some have black stitching, some have a solid white panel.  Well, what to do with those little baskets?  I filled them with a little bag of cherry, coconut, and licorice jelly beans and brought them to our downline meeting Friday night for the gals.  I'll be showing you the great projects we worked on that night later this week.

We spent quite some time in the garden on Saturday despite the heat.  I have most of my perennial bed done.  Anyone know where I can get glass mulch?  I want to line the path with it and can't find a local source.  

Last fall I found some packets of seeds I hadn't used yet (daisies and bachelor buttons) and HWNSNBP threw them in one of the raised beds we set aside for cutting flowers and guess what? - We got daisies and bachelor buttons.

And here are some petunias I couldn't resist at the Great Swamp even though I usually don't have very good luck with petunias.  The color combination intrigued me - the centers are a solft green that blends outward to a soft yellow and then pink.  Here they are against the water in the pool.  

Ice Cream Anyone?

This is the secret project that I was working on a couple of weeks ago. I was asked by a friend to make some favors for her daughter's engagement party. She showed me a picture of something she saw somewhere and asked if I could come up with something similar.


I knew that Creamy Caramel would make a good ice cream cone. I played around with copy paper in one of the cellophane cone sleeves to make the pattern. After I traced it onto the creamy caramel and cut it out, I ran it through the big shot with the diamond texture plate. I added the red line tape to the side and gently curled it with my hands and around a wooden chopstick until I saw that it would form a cone. Pulling the tape off and adhering one side to the other is a little tricky, but can be done.



After the cone was taped together I inserted the chopstick again and used a bone folder to burnish the two sides together. This is an important step, because without it, even with the red line tape, the sides will pull apart. The burnishing adds heat to the tape making it more adhesive.


The washcloth is folded in half once and then once again. Then roll it from side-to-side gradually lowering it to give the effect of the swirled ice cream. Wrap a rubber band around the bottom portion and stick it into the cone.


Lastly, put the finished ice cream cone into the bag and tie with a ribbon at the top. For the favors I printed the couple's names and the date of their wedding onto copy paper, punched them out with the oval scallop punch and ran them through my Xyron to make them into stickers.

Hey, it's National Ice Cream Month!!! Have a scoop of your favorite!!!