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.  

Sharing Their Creativity

I had a visitor recently and during the course of our conversation I was telling her all about my interactions with friends that I have made through this blog.  It was when I was showing her my Shabby Charlotte from Clare that I realized that I never shared her here.  Clare makes these adorable little dolls that, as I mentioned she calls Shabby Charlottes.  Each doll is individually handcrafted sometimes with and sometimes without a special person in mind.  Clare names them all and gives them a little story card explaining all about them.

This is Beatrice

"Beatrice is a very special little doll with a wonderful sense of humor and a great smile.  She loves a good cup of tea - preferably in a pretty teacup...and even better if served with fancy little finger sandwiches and pastries...and shared with friends.  Beatrice loves to make things...and is always ready to turn a few simple pieces of paper into a work of art.  She loves nature and sees beauty all around her.  She likes to keep a little bird seed in her bag just in case the mood strikes her to stop and do a little bird watching.  Beatrice is kind, thoughtful, and believes nothing is impossible...why with determination and hope - she even believes pigs can fly."

In Beatrice's purse adorned with a teacup charm is a tiny little folded crane, a little colored pencil, and the tiniest little pouch of tea.

Around her neck is a necklace with a flying pig and around her waist - every at the ready - is a tiny heart stamp.  

She is so special to me.  I am only sorry that I did not share her sooner.  Thank you Clare, and thank you for the wonderful "orange" crane that you sent me to cheer me up during my recovery.  You are so very thoughtful and do know how to cheer me up!

And my blogging friend Sabrina sent me this wonderful card.  I absolutely love this quote.  It says so much about using the gifts that you have - something I feel very strongly about especially when someone questions me about why I spend so much of my time creating.  Don't you just love the sweet little birds!  Thank you Sabrina!

Sabrina had send me some crafting supplies for my birthday and I finally got around to using some of them.  Some little muslin pennants, tiny wood birds, and an assortment of nature printed ribbon.  Hmmm, what to do with these?

I lined the pennant pieces up in this order.....

added some snippets of ribbon to each pennant piece, and stained the little wooden birds with my SU markers to look like bluebirds, then I glued them onto each pennant.  

I tied it around a glass dish that has some plants in it and it looks great (but doesn't photograph well because of the glass).  I'm so pleased with the way this came out.  HWNSNBP even commented that he liked it.  

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!

Itty Bitty Birdie Frames

I picked up these little frames at the Dollar Tree a while back. They came three to a package and measure about 2-1/2 x 1-3/4 inches. They are soft like suede. Tonight they happened to be sitting on top of my tool bag so I decided to do something about that.

The image I used is from a retired SU set called Feathered Hope. Of course, you know that I would be making the bird a bluebird! This is only a portion of the image of this particular stamp which I stamped in Basic Gray onto Confetti White CS. Then I used markers and my aquapainter to color the image.

I've already decided to keep the blue framed one for myself for my desk at work and I'm hoping that if I get to Dollar Tree this weekend that they'll still have these frames. You see, I need a little prize for a few of the teachers that I work with.

Every year they get a certain dollar amount of money to order some classroom supplies and, with the approval of my building principal, and in order to get the orders in on time, I make it a little contest. The first three orders handed in get a prize (this year they got to "shop" in our office supply closet for some of the coveted items we keep there). Then I also give out prizes to those whose order comes to the exact amount of their $allowance. There were four of them. So I'm hoping that I can find at least one more package this weekend.

Oh, and you know what - they fit perfectly into the matchbox die box! More about that tomorrow.

Women's Club Projects

These are two of the "Simple Acts of Kindness" projects that I'll be doing with the Branchburg Women's Club at their monthly meeting tonight. They will be making the magnetic bookmark on the left and using a business size envelope to make the cute pouch on the right. This is my first "big" venue but I think the crowd (if there is a crowd) will be happy with what I've chosen to share. I'll post more about it later.