Making Memories

Lots of Winners!

Today we have lots of winners.  I hope you are one of them.  By the way, thank you to everyone who shared what they are thankful for.  We broke a record with the number of comments that we received.  We are thankful for that, so we are going to give another prize. We are giving nine prizes instead of eight.  Check out the names and click on the links below to see if you are the winner. 

Here are the winners:

Season of Joy Book:

• Leslie Moore
• Michelle
• Pip Prosser
• Karen

Margie's pink parcel loaded with pink product:

• Debee Campos

Package loaded with new product:

• Erin Taylor
• Janna
• Tricia B.
• Jill

Email me if you are one of the winners so I can mail your prize to you.  jweston@makingmemories.com

Pecan Bars

 

Today's recipe comes from Tess. Tess is Making Memories art director.

When I was young, my family used to drive down to my Grandmother’s house in Alabama every Christmas. Visiting my grandmother meant lots of amazing southern food. I try not to eat quite as decadently these days. Then, everything was full of ham, Crisco, butter, Jello and other gooey stuff that is delicious, but may not be as healthy eating as I like. Luckily, I have found ways to make some of the southern foods my grandmother made in a way that makes them just a little bit healthier. So, instead of pecan pie, I make these pecan bars, which still taste amazing but don’t make me feel quite as guilty.

• Crust:

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

1/3 cup packed light brown sugar

¼ cup pecans, toasted and chopped coarse (see below)

1 tsp salt

¼ tsp baking powder

6 tbsp cold unsalted butter, cut into ½ inch pieces

• Pecan Filling:

½ cup packed light brown sugar

1/3 cup light corn syrup

4 tbsp unsalted butter, melted

1 tbsp bourbon or dark rum

2 tsp vanilla extract

½ tsp salt

1 large egg, lightly beaten

2 cups pecans, toasted and chopped coarse (see below)

Crust Directions:

• Heat oven to 350 with rack in the middle
• Spray a 9” square baking pan with non-stick cooking spray
• Place two sheets of parchment paper in pan so each edge of pan has a fold over it
• Spray sheets with non-stick spray

• Place flour, brown sugar, pecans, salt and baking powder in a Cuisinart
• Process until mixture is like coarse cornmeal (about 5, 1 second pulses)
• Add butter and pulse until mixture is like sand (about 8, 1 second pulses)
• Pat mixture evenly into prepared pan and bake until crust is light brown and springs to touch (about 20 minutes)

Pecan Filling Directions:

• While crust bakes, whisk together brown sugar, corn syrup, melted butter, bourbon,
• vanilla and salt in a medium bowl until just combined
• Add egg and whisk until incorporated

• Pour filling on top of hot crust and sprinkle pecans evenly over top
• Bake until top is brown and cracks start to form on the surface (22-25 minutes)
• Rotate pan halfway through baking process
• Cool on wire rack for 1 hour
• Remove from pan by pulling up parchment and transfer to cutting board
• Cut into bars and serve

***Toast all pecans on a rimmed baking sheet in a 350 oven until fragrant (about 8 minutes) stir once while roasting

What I'm Grateful For Challenge - Friends

This month we're working on a month long challenge. We're creating a "Thankful" mini album about all the things we're thankful for in our lives. I hope you're all playing along with us. We've already completed our album cover and our first layout and today we'll work on our second theme.

This week’s theme is being thankful for our friends. What would we do without our friends? I like to think I have a lot of friends. But when it comes down to it I have a small group of "best friends". I think there is something special about each of our friends. I know I have friends that I share more with, that I complain to more, that I go have fun with, that I email with, and that I talk on the phone with. Different friends are there for different things and events in my life. I wanted to highlight a few of my "here" friends the ones that are here in my city and around every day.

One thing I don't have is photos of my friends. But that doesn't mean I can't scrapbook about our friendships. I love all the clear tags from the Funky Vintage collection and I thought this would be a great page to use lots of them on. After creating the base of my page from pattern paper (and a little white cardstock to make all the colors pop) I lined up an entire row of clear tags going across the page. Once I had them arranged I adhered them down. I used mini glue dots to adhere them. I just love the look of silver with the Funky Vintage collection so I added silver brads to each tag. Then I simply added each of my friends names to the tags.

For the second page I created a pocket page. Simply repeat the base of the pattern paper and ribbon from the first page but only apply adhesive to the sides and the bottom. That way you have a pocket to which you can add a fun tag for each of your friends. I added a few fun embellishments to the top of each tag and then added a little journaling about each friend to their tag.

Instructions:

1. Cut a 6" x 9" piece of turquoise pattern paper for base of page.
2. Cut a 3" x 9" piece of kraft striped pattern paper and distress edges using MM edge scraper. Mat with white cardstock and adhere to page.
3. Add a 9 inch piece of decorative tape across top of kraft pattern paper.
4. Adhere orange ribbon under decorative tape.
5. Arrange clear tags along page, tucking them just slightly under the kraft paper. Once arranged, peel off backing and adhere down to page
6. Add a silver brad to each tag.
7. Adhere a clear photo corner to bottom right side of page.
8. Adhere a transparency title strip to white cardstock and trim. Adhere to bottom of page.
9. Add typed names of friends randomly on tags.

I look forward to seeing what you create ... you can share your layout by uploading them to the MM Idea Gallery. I'll see you next Thursday when we create a "thankful for creativity" challenge layout!

Laura Vegas

A Day of Giving

Today is a day of giving. As our way of saying thanks to all of our loyal readers, and for the wonderful years we've experienced with you, we're giving away a cornucopias worth of freebies. Tell us what you are most thankful for at this time of the year.  Make sure you post your comments on our blog to participate.

On Friday, we're going to select EIGHT names at random who will win either the new Season of Joy book, a "pink" parcel, or a loaded package of our most popular embellishments.

Start posting now because the prizes are simply delicious. And Happy Thanksgiving!

Inspiration from Joey

Art and architecture is all around us, but unless you live somewhere with buildings over 100 years old, sometimes it's difficult to be inspired by them. For this month's inspiration, I decided to take just the simple geometric shapes of some of the buildings that I see on a weekly basis and incorporate them into a layout.

Here I found a Mexaplex building by my house that has a very appealing and balanced feel. The bottom third is a different color, helping to anchor the three rectangles at the top. This was very easy to use as inspiration for my layout.

Take a look around your area and find buildings and architecture that could be used for your inspiration.

Joey

Our Trip to Clipper Street

Making Memories found its way to British Columbia, Canada and we found some wonderful people there. We scrapped the weekend away at a local scrapbook store called Clipper Street and interacted with people from Coquitlam and Langley.

We made played with products from the Halloween, Christmas, Noteworthy, and Travel collections. We also learned how to use such tools as the Tag Curler and Tag Maker to make some great projects.

Thank you to everyone that we met for showing us such great hospitality. We love coming to your city to hang out at such a great store. Clipper Street Scrapbooking offers an excellent selection of products. Make sure to check it out if you are in the area.

Thanks

Jodi and Gail

 

Apple Crunch Bread

Today's recipe comes from Patty Smith, MM's Sales director.  Patty is a great cook so you will love this recipe.

Ingredients

• 7 TBS unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup self-rising flour, sifted
• 2-3 TBS milk
• 1 1/2 cups thickly sliced tart apples

Topping

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 6 1/2 TBS unsalted butter, chilled and diced
• 1 cup all-purpose flour, sifted

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350.  Beat the butter until creamy, add the sugar and beat until light and fluffy.  Gradually, add the eggs and then the vanilla.  Fold in the flour and enough milk to make a soft mixture that just drops from the spoon.  Pour the mixture in a greased and floured loaf pan.  Arrange an even layer of apples on the top.

Topping:  Mix all the ingredients together with your fingertips until the mixture becomes course crumbs.  Sprinkle evenly over the apples and press down slightly. 

Bake for 1 hour until golden.  Let cool until lukewarm, then serve from the pan or cool completely on a wire rack.

What I'm Thankful For Challenge - Family

This month we're working on a month long challenge. We're creating a "Thankful" mini album about all the things we're thankful for in our lives. I hope you're all playing along with us. Last week we created the album cover. And this week we'll create our first page to add to our "Thankful" album.

So this week's theme is family. I think we're all thankful for our families over anything else. I know my family is the most important thing in my life. Sure, my kids and my husband all drive me crazy on a daily basis. But that's what families do, right? As much as they annoy me to no end  They add so much love and laughter to my life. I am so thankful for all that they've brought to my life. So of course my family is going to be the first page in my album.

I want to explain my idea behind this album before we start. I started out with the idea to do single pages. As much as I love the 6" x 9" size of these albums, I decided I wanted to add more photos to a lot of my pages. So I choose to make two-page spreads for each theme. I use my main page to highlight a great photo that really represents what I'm thankful for and that page also gets all the fun embellishments! Then my second page is used for adding smaller photos, photos that give you a little more insight into what I'm thankful for. Those second pages are super simple and really easy to add if you want they're really just pattern paper and photos. But you can also choose to just do the one page. Either way will look great in your album.

I used my Slot Punching Tool. I just love scalloped edges lately. So I used the crescent-shaped slot to make a scalloped border on my floral pattern paper. I found it was helpful to position the top of the crescent right at the top edge of my paper and just go right down that edge, that way they all lined up pretty straight. I also used the large slot punch to create a slot in my definition sticker to thread my ribbon through. I added a fun tag using the Tag Curler to secure the ribbon in place.

So you'll see that I have one strong focal photo on this page. Unfortunately we don't have a family photo of the 4 of us so I decided on a favorite photo I took of my girls last week. Then on the opposite page I added smaller photos of myself, my husband, and more of my two girls. If you had a larger family you could even add a few more pages if you wanted to fit everyone in! I kept my journaling short and sweet and to the point but feel free to add more journaling if you want.

Instructions:

1. Cut brown pattern paper to 6" x 9" to use for base of page.
2. Cut a 3" x 9" strip of turquoise pattern paper and mat with white cardstock. Adhere to page.
3. Using Slot Punching Tool, punch scallops on the top of a 9" wide strip of yellow, floral pattern paper. Adhere to page.
4. Adhere "family" sticker to white cardstock and cut out circle. Using Slot Punching Tool, punch out a large slot for ribbon to go through.
5. Insert pink ribbon through notch in sticker and fold the ribbon over. Add a metal "together" tag using the MM tag curler.
6. Add pop-dots to sticker and adhere sticker and ribbon to page.
7. Add clear scroll to corner of photo and add heart mesh brads.
8. Add a 3 1/2" x 4 1/2" photo to page.
9. Add journaling strips.

Remember to share your layouts with us by uploading them to the MM idea gallery. I'll see you back here next Thursday as we create our "thankful for friends" challenge layout!

Laura Vegas

Joey's studio

We just recently moved into a brand new home this past July so I got to design my scrapbooking studio from scratch! I had a basement room in our old house and insisted that my new space would be upstairs, in the middle of things and out of the cold, dark cave! It was actually a nice room, but I felt very disconnected from the rest of my family.

My new studio is the bonus room above our garage on the 2nd floor along with all my kids' bedrooms. I can see and hear what they are doing, and still enjoy having my own space. The furniture is all from Ikea - gotta love that place! The desk is perfect for stashing a page in progress underneath the glass when something else comes up. I keep my Making Memories precision trimmer right next to me as I work - it is so convenient and accurate.

The two bookcases are perfect for holding 12 x 12” papers. The baskets that nest so nicely inside the squares, hold and hide the other stuff that we as scrapbookers accumulate over time. And I have absolutely fallen in love with the MM plastic storage jars for all my ribbon - they look so happy and cheerful lined up on top of the bookcase.

I sort and store most of my small embellishments like brads, metal tags and clips by color. As with the ribbon, I find that sorting by color helps me use and find these yummy little tidbits for my pages and projects. And since their packaging is clear, I can find exactly what I'm looking for quickly.

I found this nifty document cabinet at Ikea as well and it is perfect for holding things like paper punches, ink pads, scratch pieces of paper, and other stuff I use often. Plus, my sewing machine fits perfectly on top!

My studio is almost complete, but one thing is missing and that is where I need your help. I love inspirational quotes and sayings, and have been struggling to find the perfect one for my studio wall. I will be facing this wall every time I work, so the words I choose to put up must inspire! Share with me your favorite, inspiring quote. It doesn't need to be scrapbooking related either. And if I choose your suggestion, you could win a Making Memories idea book and some other fabulous goodies. I'll post a picture of the quote once it's up and announce the winner! Thanks in advance for your help! 

-Joey

Making Memories Giveaway with Donna Downey

Donna Downey is going to do a Making Memories giveaway on her blog. She is giving away MM's Noteworthy goodies.

Check out her blog for a chance to win.

Good Luck!