A Black and White Happy Birthday

I copied this card design from a pin I saw on Pinterest - I loved the clean simplicity of the original.

I am slowly working my way through my Card Smith pre-cut card set. The gifts were made from scraps of craft tape. Although it's just black and white, it still manages to be lively and fun!

Bear-y Cute Cards

I was cleaning up my basement the other day when I stumbled upon an old sheet of adorable bear stickers. The glue had lost most of its stickiness but the colours were not faded and the images were still incredibly cute. I decided to whip together this quick set of baby cards.

I used the pre-cut cards from Card Smith as a base. Each one had their own envelope which made for a nice set. 

I love the ombre you get from paint chips! I picked colours which match my patterned card.

I cut out squares/rectangles with a utility knife.

I played around with a few different arrangements but I liked this one best.

I mounted each square on a small piece of craft foam to achieve a 3D effect.

The final product was simple, clean and adorable!

I'm all ready for my next 3 baby showers!

My New Bullet Journal

Yes, I joined the fad. 

After seeing post after post on Pinterest of beautifully crafted bullet journal layouts, I was finally seduced. If you don't know what a bullet journal is, then just type the term into Google and within seconds you will see thousands of meticulously arranged Instagram shots of perfectly organized notebooks. At its most basic, a bullet journal is simply a contain-everything notebook where you draw out your own agenda pages and scribble down notes. However, the DIY community has turned it into a fancy work of art. I'm not convinced that I will be all that more productive with this system. Sketching out layouts is time-consuming. I know that I could just ignore making it look pretty but considering that is the main reason why I wanted to start one...I can't really do that, can I? We shall see how long this lasts. 😉

I chose to use a Blueline NotePro A44C.81 notebook because it has a hard black cover, lies flat, has both grid and regular lines, nifty plastic pockets and colourful indexing stickers. 

I started with basic pencil sketches which I inked in.

I decided to colour with coloured pencils for now. This is just the initial colour blocking. Maybe I'll experiment with markers later on. 

The finished October month-at-a-glance page! 

I made a few other pages too including a year-long overview and a week-at-glance page.

There are so many doodling and lettering possibilities on Pinterest. Over the next few months, I'll be trying some of them out and sharing with you my progress. Until next time! 

Mmm...Nutella

It was a warm Sunday afternoon when my friends and I decided to do some impromptu baking. Our goal: to use up Amy's expired jar of half-empty Nutella. After vetoing various recipes from google for requiring ingredients we didn't have/being too complicated/being questionable (I'm looking at you, Allison. 😉), we finally decided to just make some basic chocolate cake and swirl in some Nutella.

Okay, the swirling in part was less than successful (it tends to glob more than swirl). However, we did get the chance to use the mini-bunt cake pan that my sister and I had given Amy a few years ago for Christmas.

We just filled in the middle with Nutella and I was quite proud of somewhat managing a swirl! (Check out the beauty of that picture up top!)

We also tried stuffed cupcakes and those didn't quite turn out...

The cake is still tasty but the you can't tell where the Nutella is, can you?

We keep saying it but we really should do more baking together in the future. It was a lot of fun!

When You Are in the Mood for Cute

Folding Origami stars is very relaxing. All those available cute designs make it incredibly tempting to just keep making more. 

The One with the Birthday

I have been slowly making my way through all the seasons of FRIENDS. (Almost done!) I saw this design on Pinterest and knew exactly who I wanted to make this card for....

More Babies!

I had almost forgotten about this card. A family friend had a baby boy while I was neck deep studying for my exams. A simple card was all I could manage at the time but it was a nice break from memorizing genes and biochemical pathways. :)

Stamps and Ribbons

Playing around with some crafting elements on pre-cut card sets. Simple, fast and colourful!

A Little Colouring

Picked up a free sticker from the Carp Fair a few weeks back and finally decided to colour it in. I like the boldness of Sharpie colours. It was a relaxing activity and I think I'm starting to understand the appeal of adult colouring books. 

French Toast

Saturday mornings are now my favorite time of the week. Most of the time, I sleep in or spend it lounging around but every once in a while, I end up actually doing something productive. This morning, I decided to whip up a fancier breakfast than usual with my cousins Henrika and Brianna. So behold our French Toast creations!

Ingredients:

Bread (from the freezer - really, our main impetus to make French toast was to find a way to finish it off)

Eggs

1% Milk

Vanilla flavouring

Ground Cinnamon

Nutmeg

Butter

We gathered together the ingredients based on a few different recipes that we found online.

In terms of proportions, we just added as much as we felt like of each item. We ended up using 6 eggs for 7 slices of bread.

Frying them up on a little butter.

Drizzle a little maple syrup on and we have a deliciously warm, sweet breakfast!

As for the first picture...yes, that is a scoop of ice cream (MarbleSlab Cheesecake Ice Cream!). I found the flavour of the ice cream overpowered my French toast though. I think I'll save it for when I try to make crepes!

Onward to a More Organized 2017!

Happy New Year!

I love starting a new planner - I get to indulge in these lovely delusions that somehow, I will be more organized and productive from here on out. This year I'm using a Brownline Daily planner since, sadly, I don't have the time any more to design, print and assemble my own from scratch. However, you can see that I'm trying to make up for the lack in brightly coloured tabs, stickies and pens. I also splurged on Black Friday and bought myself a pack of craft tape and have been extensively decorating my monthly spreads.

I finally understand why crafters like this stuff so much!

Will this result in a more productive year? I guess we'll just have to wait and see...