Sunday, April 29, 2012

Sunday Funnies

At church this morning we sat behind a young family, as we do many weeks.  After exchanging hugs mom told me that she loves it when we sit by them because she knows we never judge them if the children make noise.  Really though they have the most adorable kids and we enjoy the subtle interactions we have with them.

They have a two and a half year old and a newborn, both boys.  The older boy, M, is constantly making us smile as he stretches his wings and finds his footing in the quiet of Sunday worship.

Today we had a woman at the front doing the Bible reading.  Very quiet, we all followed along in our Bibles.  She finished, and in that quiet you hear the clear as a bell voice of a young boy say “All Done!”  And from where we sat we got to see the accompanying applause that he gave!

There was no way people could keep their chuckles to themselves after that.  :)

The song below is not our church, but it is the last song we sang today.  It is so heartfelt and hard to sing without tears welling up, but it’s one of our very favorites.  The song is Came to My Rescue by Hillsong.

 

** Linking to Spiritual Sundays

Friday, April 27, 2012

Card #2 - Happy Birthday Beloved!

I love stamping cards and because of that I have quite a few stamps in my craft room.  Like, probably too many stamps.  The good news is that most places either no longer sell them on the wooden base or if they do they also offer the unmounted version. So much easier to store.


But what I'm noticing is that when it comes time to make a card I rarely look to see what I have.  Instead, more and more often I turn towards digital stamps and search online.  LOVE cards this way because the only storage is a little digital file tucked away on a hard drive.


This is the card I made for Keith's birthday this year and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.  It says what I feel about him and uses a pun, which we've really come to appreciate through our daughter-in-law.






I downloaded the image from Meljen's Designs and it was only two dollars!  Isn't it darling?  I printed the image on white cardstock, then cut it out using a die cut.  Then I printed it on the green cardstock, cut out the image and put it on pop dots to give it a little dimension.


And yes, we really are the Perfect Pear.  ;)


Supplies used for card:  Stampin' Up cardstock, digital image from Meljen's Designs, Top Note Die from Stampin' Up

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Homemade Fudgesicles

I love making treats for my family and in the past it was almost always baked treats.  But my oven's not working AND I'm trying to watch what I eat, so believe it or not the only baked good this year has been birthday cakes for my beloved.

While perusing Pinterest one day a pin caught my eye for Homemade Fudgesicles and I had to give them a try.  The recipe is from Brown Eyed Baker and can be found here.


They were a hit!  And while all this chocolatey goodness is cooking on the stovetop you'll have a real challenge keeping yourself from dipping a spoon in, you know, all in the name of quality control.


I'm thinking that I should keep some of these in the freezer for any time my butterfly granddaughter stops by (face painting at the Easter festival at our church).



Yep, even the adults loved them.  I have a set of popsicle molds (see the one Brooklyn's holding above), but they actually were rather cumbersome so I think we all decided that going forward we'll stick with the tiny Dixie cups and craft sticks.  We liked the small size and they were easy to remove from the wrapper.


HOMEMADE FUDGESICLES
recipe from Brown Eyed Baker

1/4 cup chocolate chips
2/3 cups sugar
2 T cornstarch
3 T cocoa powder
2 1/2 cups whole milk
1 t vanilla
1 T unsalted butter

Melt chocolate chips in the microwave for 30 seconds at a time at half power, stirring after each time, until creamy.

Add the melted chocolate chips, sugar, cornstarch, cocoa powder and milk to a medium pan and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until the mixture thickens.  Remove from heat and add the vanilla and butter, stirring until well combined.

Let the mixture cool for about 10 minutes, then pour into small Dixie cups.  Place the cups in an 8x8 pan (or similar) and place in the freezer.  Freeze for 20-30 minutes, then insert craft sticks and freeze completely.

To serve - hold your hand around the Dixie cup for about a minute to loosen the fudgesicle and it will pop right out!

Note:  After these were frozen I put them all in a large freezer bag and sealed to keep freezer burn away.