Nihao, Cupcake!

Journal Your Christmas :: December Daily :: Art Journaling in December

Whatever you want to call it, this Art Journal is my way of playing along this December in an almost daily way. When it comes time to fly back to the States and start our vaction and visits with our dearly missed family & friends, there are no guarantees. But I will do my best until then.

The mask that I used on this page is actually cut from a title card from the 2010 Project Life kit. I didn't really like the colors but I loved the branch with leaves so I spent a few minutes doing some fussy cutting and I had myself a mask of sorts. I had fun with my Adirondack Acrylic Paint Dabbers masking the paint and then taking the mask it self, turning it over and using it as sort of a stamp. I then used the clean side and made another masked image and then turned it over again to stamp that image on the opposite side. That is probably old news to you veteran art journalers, but for this newbie, it was quite exciting! Fun! Fun! Fun!

I have another two page spread already started that I will share when it is complete.

My plan is to use Shimelle's Journal Your Christmas prompts and to write about them in my art journal whenever it is convenient for me. Yesterday I wrote about two prompts in one day. Imagine that?! That is the only way a project like this has hope of getting done if I am involved.

I am in the process of planning how I might art journal and work on Project Life while on the road for four weeks. Oh, and we can't forget about TWELVE, Stacy Julian's class that I registered for that starts at the end of the month! I have some ideas of how I am going to try to handle them. Whatever I decide, I better get on it right away or it will be time to board the plane before you know it. And that last short week of school is starting to look busy! DEEP BREATH!

If I can, I will sahre with you my plan once I make a few decisions.

By the end of Tuesday, I will post my Project Life :: 365 photos as well as several completed Project Life layouts. Hurray!

What are you doing to document December?

At Our Thanksgiving Table

I saw this idea on my friend, Kiley's blog, so I am copying it. Check out her cool blog, here.

• Ten adults and thirteen children from ages 1 to 13.
• Americans, Swedes, British, Kiwis, Italians
• Turkey, cornbread stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, lemon broccoli, arugula salad, sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, falafel
• Pumpkin pie (baked in a square casserole dish), pecan pie (made by 11-year-old Nicholas in a proper pie plate), chocolate cream pie (made from scratch because all stores were out of chocolate pudding mix and baked in a square cake pan) & custard cake with pine nuts
• Savignon Blanc, Merlot Malbec, Budweiser (brought by a friend because "Americans drink that on Thanksgiving"), and a variety of yummy wines brought by our guests
• Apple Juice, Orange Juice, Sprite & Coke for the kids  

I cannot say the day went off without a hitch. It was a last minute Thanksgiving and the hour or two before dinner was served was noticably chaotic as we tried to get everything on the table while it was warm. I don't think we succeeded but with all we had going against us, I think things turned out pretty good.

Afterall, we didn't decide to have Thanksgiving at our house until late Sunday night (just 8 days ago). We didn't send out the emails until Monday or Tuesday. My entire week was booked, Paul was in Singapore Tuesday & Wednesday, we have a small oven that barely fits a turkey and a stove with two burners, so the fact that we pulled it off at all is something to be grateful for. 

The plates were borrowed, we didn't have quite enough cutlery for a matching set for all of our guests, we borrowed wine glasses (we only had four), I forgot to plan plates and silverware for all of the kids but luckily I had paper plates, no fancy napkins, and no two coffee cups were alike (they've all broken since we have kids and a tile floor), dinner was served 90 minutes late but in the end the food was tasty and the company divine!

If you celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you had a wonderful day!

Simple Things Sunday - Halloween Cupcakes

My boys LOVE when I make these whimsical cupcakes. For any special occasion at school, I am always expected to come up with something cute & creative. Of course, I don't mind but on those days (like this past Thursday), I was not feeling creative at all and really wanted to slap on some frosting and cover the cupcakes with sprinkles. But my kids actually said, "But, Mom, you can't let us down! We told our friend that your cupcakes are the best. And we have to win." Well, those weren't their exact words but it was something like that. They did say, "You can't let us down!" So funny! Everything is a competition to boys. They did say it was a competition. But I can guarantee you the cupcakes made by the other mom tasted better! (I use a mix & canned frosting - shhhhhhh!) I'm sure mine were cuter, though! Haha! :)

 

To see anything about FUN CAKES & CUPCAKES on my blog, click here.

Even more Halloween cupcake ideas in my photostream on Flickr.com.

{A Menagerie of Halloween Cupcakes}

Back to cupcakes. My children's school had International Day on Friday. Since Halloween is an American holiday, I thought what better cupcakes to make than a menagerie of Halloween cupcakes! Originally the plan was to make an American flag-esque cupcake cake, but at the last minute I talked my son into these cuties. I get bored easily and would rather make five different types of designs rather than one big design.

I think these are all new designs for us. Many of them are all over the internet but we've never made them before. These were all easy to make and of course are really cute!

I love the little details. Just adding eight little legs on to this mini M&M gives this cupcake a personality.

This Peeking Monster Cupcake is so easy and so cute! He is good for those cupcakes that don't come all the way up to the top of the cupcake liner. Fill that space with frosting and push in as many candy corn as can fit, add two Necco wafers for eyes and with a dab of vanilla icing stick on two mini M&Ms and add pupils with chocolate frosting. Couldn't be easier or cuter!

 

Another super easy and cute cupcake. The teeth are Tic Tacs and the eyes are mini M&Ms. Super easy!

 

These spider cupcakes are a little tricker but with a few tips, they are easy too. To add the black licorice legs, I took a 'naked cupcake' and with a toothpick, poked four holes in each side of the cupcake. With a simple toothpick hole, the licorice laces slid right in. I then frosted the cupcake with chocolate icing, dipped them in chocolate jimmies (sprinkles) and then added red mini M&Ms for eyes. So cute and easy too. No special talent needed!

 

I only had a few cupcakes left to decorate. I was tired of decorating mummies, green monsters and spiders, so I started dotting a cupcake with white spots, added some mini M&Ms and thought they looked kind of like eyes, so added the pupils and ended up with a alien-esque multi-eyed cupcake. Or it could just be colorfully decorated!

 

This one looks even more like eyeballs and it is even easier. It is just white dots of icing topped with a dot of chocolate. A little bit cute and a little bit creepy.

 

Another fun batch of cupcakes made! I'll be doing the same thing next week because it is my son's birthday and I'll be bringing cupcakes for his class. He wants me to make monster cupcakes that look furry and have big bulbous eyeballs (lollipops with gummy candy rings around them) - tune in same time next week to see how those turn out!

This is the 28th post in a 31 Day series: Creative Inspiration. Check out all the posts here.

To see anything about FUN CAKES & CUPCAKES on my blog, click here.

Even more Halloween cupcake ideas in my photostream on Flickr.com.

Adorable Halloween Cupcake Idea - AllYou.com

via www.allyou.com

Look what I found! How cute are these Halloween Cupcakes?! They are cute enough for other occasions too. What about a picnic, summertime birthday party (think boys, bugs, dirt, magnifying glasses and butterfly nets, maybe even a bug house) or a bake sale at school? Just change up the colored sugar and the icing and make them match the theme of your occasion. Maybe yellows & reds or what about blue and orange. Just a few little changes and these can be very versatile cupcake designs.

For all things CUPCAKE on this blog, click here.

 And to find out what Halloween cupcakes I ended up making this year for Halloween 2011, click here.

Even more Halloween cupcake ideas in my photostream on Flickr.com.

National Scrapbook Day, Simple Things & LOAD: Day 7

NATIONAL SCRAPBOOK DAY

So many great places to be today for some fun...

**Shimelle.com - she has already started her challenges - one every hour with lots of give-a-way opportunities. 

**Big Picture Scrapbooking has a free class with challenges and give-a-ways.

**Here is Scrapbook.com's schedule for "Camp National Scrapbook Day"

**A good sale over at JessicaSprague.com.

**A nice sale over at twopeasinabucket.com.

WHERE WILL YOU BE HANGING OUT ON NATIONAL SCRAPBOOK DAY? Leave me a link in the comments so we can check them out.

HAPPY {inter}NATIONAL SCRAPBOOK DAY!

 

A MOM BY ANY OTHER NAME...

This week one of the Simple Things that made me smile was receiving this beautiful rose from my youngest son at his school's mother's day celebration. It was a very special program. I always love attending these and receiving the special gifts my kids prepare. 

His school decided to use the word Mum on the rose tag instead of Mother or Mom. We are celebrating Mother's Day at the same time that it is celebrated in the US not in March as they do in the UK, but they used the British word for mother. Not that I mind. I just find it interesting. I like being Mum too. And sometimes Braden calls me Mum especially after he's been playing with one of his British friends or watching an episode of Kipper.

To see my other SIMPLE THINGS entries on my blog, click here.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

I was a guest blogger on Saturday as part of a PHOTOGRAPHY series about purchasing a DSLR.

On Saturday I was the guest blogger over at Lorraine's blog, The Vue from Here. Lorraine is in the market for a new camera. She is frustrated with the limitations of her point & shoot camera and wants to upgrade to a DSLR. She has enlisted the help of five DSLR users to share their experiences and knowledge to assist her in making her decision.

To read my article Do you need a DSLR or should you upgrade your P&S?, click! I compare some high end P&S cameras with an entry-level DSLR.

The week has been full of great information. Head over to The Vue from Here today to read Lorraine's conclusion to the series and find out what she has learned about cameras this week. Will she buy a P&S? A DSLR? Which one?

 

To see everything related to PHOTOGRAPHY on my blog click here!

LOAD: Day 7

My son is not too excited to answer my questions any more, so to add some novelty to the process, I created an online survey for him so he would play along. Read this post to see a portion of the survey.

The lined paper is Ali Edwards from a Lisa Bearnson Kit of the Month from a couple of years ago. The grunge frame is Jessica Sprague.

To see everything related to LOAD on my blog click here!

 

Looking for Easter Ideas for Kids...

via www.amazingmoms.com

Any great ideas to make the day memorable? I'm thinking about the Easter Egg Scavenger hunt posted at amazingmoms.com. Click on the link below the photo to read about the details.

As many of you know, I am in China and will be for the upcoming Easter holiday. It's certainly not the same as being at home, so I want to plan a really fun and special day for my kids. But I have some limitations - I have only basic supplies (no Easter stuff for sale here in Beijing except a small amount of candy) and my kids are 6, 10 & 12 which means they aren't easily impressed!

I'd love to hear your suggestions! Thanks for dropping by.

Qing Ming Festival Recap (Beijing)

Living in China, we often get days off for certain Chinese holidays. However, since there is such a disconnect between China's past traditions and its people of today, there isn't much to do to acknowledge or take part in these 'celebrations.' In a way, China is in the process of rediscovering and reconnecting with its past. In fact, it is my understanding that only in the past couple of years have they added back these ancient traditional holidays onto their national business calendar.

Qing Ming is one such holiday. Wanting to do more to participate in the local culture, something I've loved about living abroad in the past, I jumped at the chance to sign up for this class to make traditional Qing Ming pastries, as soon as I discovered it.

It turns out that the pastry school, The Fig Tree, is located only a block or two from our home and is run by the mother of a girl who rides on the same school bus as my two older sons! A good friend of my husband's, who was born in China, wanted to come along and bring his family. He admitted that even he wasn't familiar with this tradition. To his credit its origin is from a completely different part of the country than his hometown. Our Chinese teacher said that she does have a similar tradition in her province.

A LITTLE HISTORY

The following information is from the handout given out at The Fig Tree:

One of the traditional customs of the Qing Ming Festial was that no fire was to be lit on the day of or before Qing Ming and that everyone could only eat cold foods, without being able to use a fire to cook or warm the food. This custom had been traced back to two sources - the Cold Food Festival when people were prohibited from using fire to cook food for the whole month of March. And the story of the Qing Ming Festival. It has been theorized that at some point in history, the two traditons converged to become what we know as the Qing Ming Festival today.

Nowadays most people only know the Qing Ming Festival as a day where everyone is expected to go sweep their ancestor's graves, wherever they may be. Prepared foods including cold pastries have long been part of the sacrificial offereings brough to the ancestral gravew. The types of pastry offered vary greatly according ot regional differences.

 However, in the Shan'xi region, rural families still make a pastry bearing the name of the hero Jie Zi Tui, who died for his principles and values. His admonition to his pupil king to be 'qing' (cliean, uncorrupted, and "ming" (brilliant) became the name of the holiday ordained to commemorate his death.

Here is our class in photos:

Putting on our chef hats.

Weighing and measuring out our ingredients.

Kneading the dough.


Shaping our various animals.

Top view of our classroom.

Our dough shapes ready for the steamer.

Here they are steaming in the steamer.

A close-up view.

After steaming, we painted them with ordinary food coloring.

Then we baked them in the oven for a few minutes.

And here's how they turned out.

  The decorations of dots (sometimes with clusters of five) are the traditional way of painting these breads in our Chinese tutors province.

While mine were still soft, I threaded some string through them by poking a hole (making a tunnel) with a sharp pencil. I now have them hanging in my house for decorations.

 

To see all of our creatures, go to this post.

They all turned out pretty cute, huh? It was a very fun afternoon and a great activity for the kids.

 

COMING UP ON THE BLOG

*Sunday, April 17 - Alphanumeric Blog Hop for fun! This one is hosted by blog friend, Mel from her blog, I Speak Melsh. Stay tuned for more details. This one sounds very, very interesting...

ONE LITTLE WORD Blog Hop

*May 1 - OLW Monthly Blog Hop (One on 1) - I host this blog hop every month on the 1st. It is a blog hop for students of Ali Edwards' One Little Word class at Big Picure Classes. You can still sign up for the class as well as the blog hop (if you are a student). For the class, go to BigPictureClasses.com and for the blog hop, go to the OLW classroom message boards and there is information on how to sign-up in the Chit Chat section.

FAMILY x 12 Mini Blog Hop

* May 5 I will have a mini blog-hop to showcase my monthly personal project FAMILY x 12. If you are taking a monthly family photo (or would like to start) and would like to join us for a little support, motivation and light accountability, leave me a comment or send me an email and I'll be in touch with the details. (A family photo can be whatever you define as family, even if that is just you and your spouse/partner or you and your cat [dogs count too]!)

Best Shot Wednesday a little late

I have been away from my blog for exactly a month. It was a break for the holidays - the US holidays, that is. Here in China, the holidays are just beginning. That sort of makes things fun when you live in two places like our family does. You get to celebrate (and get the time off) for the holidays at home as well as in the land of your residence - in my case, China.

February 3 is Chinese New Year so the whole country is preparing. The stores are crowded with shoppers buying gifts to bring home. The entire country (just about) migrates to their home town to spend time with family. A few days ago the train ticket office down the block was flooded with customers. They were lined up down the sidewalk. Today it was empty. I think that means all the tickets are gone. No joke. If you didn't get a train ticket, find another way home. I also keep seeing the odd person walking down the street towing a wheeled suitcase behind them. These are the people that have already returned home (or are just starting their journey) and haven't quite made it yet. I saw one woman with her suitcase standing around our outdoor mall next door obviously waiting for her ride to arrive. I feel like I should be taking pictures of all these little things that are signs of the preparation going on.

I'm excited for these holidays because the kids are home and my husband doesn't have to work. He couldn't work even if he wanted to. The whole country shuts down. We have no family obligations beyond feeding our children and hanging out with them, so it is the perfect holiday. A no obligation holiday. I think of it as a rest up from the holidays at home. Who doesn't get exhausted after a 12 hour flight, an eight hour drive, three jet lagged kids, a bad sinus infection, catching up with all the family and friends you haven't seen for half a year, shopping for the things from home you miss, packing, a 13+ hour flight, more jetlag and unpacking? It's the perfect time to reorganize the house (from the move just before summer), visit a few temple fairs, sleep in, watch DVDs, play games received at Xmas, nag about homework given over the break and catch up on sleep! Oh, yes, and stay inside away from the freezing COLD!

Since I've missed the last few Best Shot Wednesdays, I thought I would do a little catch up. These are a handful of my favorite shots that I took during my blog hiatus.

What I love about this photo is that my 12 year old is still more than willing to tell Santa what he wants for Christmas and isn't embarrased by it in the least.

This is my five year olds' very first letter to Santa. Here he is addressing the envelope. It is funny because what he listed in the letter is very different than what he told Santa after hearing what his brothers wanted for Xmas. (Legos turned into an iPad and a computer!)

The rainbow we saw from the car on our way to Arizona from California. It looks like we were near Palm Springs maybe.

The boys checking out the gifts under the Christmas tree to see if there are any for them and if so to shake them and guess what is inside.

Bailey, my in-laws cat, in his special spot right in the middle of the kitchen near the warmth from the bottom of the fridge. He's old now and instead of hiding from us, he wants to be in the center of the action.

Nana helps Braden during his turn in Guesstures. Very fun game for the whole family!

My favorite desert photo from this trip. Taken on a walk in my in-laws' neighborhood in Tucson.

Nicholas using his birthday camera to make his latest stop action animation feature.

On the way out of town, Dad wanted to take the kids to Waffle House. He knew they would love it and he was right! Reece insisted I find the recipe and make their waffles from now on.

Celebrating on New Year's Eve with the pulling of some Christmas crackers. I love that this British tradition has found its way to the US. My first encounter with the Christmas cracker was in 1991 at my work Christmas party when I worked at Debenham's (student work visa) in Cambridge, UK. Such fond memories!

Reece playing Step Mania (just like Dance Dance Revolution) in his feety pajamas. I LOVE that my 12 and a half year old still LOVES feeties. He's in now hurry to grow out of his childhood favorites - thank goodness!

I plan to enter this final photo in Rebecca Cooper's weekly challenge, Simple Things, this Sunday on her blog.

Thanks for stopping by. Come back soon for some exciting things coming up. This Monday, January 24 I will be participating in a LOAD (Layoutaday.com) Blog hop. We will all be sharing how we prepare for LOAD.

What is LOAD? It is a month long challenge in which participants make one scrapbook layout a day and post it in a Flickr gallery. I love it because I work very well under deadlines and it is my most productive scrapbooking time. This will be my 5th or 6th one. Wow!

On Tuesday, February 1st I'm organizing a blog hop for the participants in Ali Edwards' class ONE LITTLE WORD at Big Picture Classes. We will be sharing our project for January and any other reflections on our word from the month of January. Please come by and join in the fun.

If you are a member of Ali's class and would like to participate in the blog hop, please leave me a comment in this post and I'll get back to you with more details.

Other things that I have been working on:

*Cleaning up my hard drive, my external hard drives and refining my back up system.

*Downloading and editing photos from the holidays.

*Creating my photography website.

*Helping kids with homework!

*Studying up on Lightroom & Photoshop 5 (I bought both of Scott Kelby's books when I was at home).

*Planning two birthday parties - first thing tomorrow morning I'll be decorating one of the cakes (a cupcake cake - camping theme, extra cupcakes will be mad scientists). I'll post pictures sometime in the next week.

*Transfering old Hi8 video tapes to digital (so excited about this) using the Canopus ADV110 - couldn't be easier (with the right cables).

*Catching up with Project Life 2010.

*Recovering from jetlag.

OK, I better get some sleep. Thanks again for stopping by and come back soon!

Lovely Advent Ideas

ADVENT CALENDAR IDEAS I'M LOVING (Please excuse the full urls but Typepad has a bug and none of my links are working).

I'm a sucker for cute advent ideas. What I love even more are super easy and simple and basic advent ideas. I also love traditions but there are so many super adorable ideas out there as well as products, I can't seem to stick to one idea. So not only can't I stick to a tradition, it also means we usually have more than one calendar going at the same time.

Over kill? Likely. Over indulgent? Probably. Fun? Absolutely! So why not? You only live once.

This year I am keeping it simple and using a pop-up calendar by Eric Carle, but I still love the following ideas, and wish I and been prepared enough to do them this year:

Elf Countdown (http://tarawhitney.com/justbeblogged/2010/12/bernard-the-christmas-elf/) This one is really involved but is so cute and adorable, I just had to feature it. We had an elf visit our house one year - we followed the Elf on the Shelf model (google it as I don't have a link), but this idea is absolutely adorable too. I love the letter idea. The year we did it our elf left notes often too and our kids loved searching for the elf every day. The only problem with using hte elf doll (elf on the shelf includes a elf doll that hides in a different location everyday) is my kids were very disappointed when they found out it was 'just a doll'. They were 8, 6 & 2 at the time. The letters alone makes it more magical for all ages becasue there is always a question for those little ones that still want to believe.

Matchbox Advent Calendar

I saw this over on www.gogovivi.com 's blog, a fellow expat in China. She gives some detailed photos of how she did it. It is adorable and unique.

Mitten Advent Calendar

I read about this some time ago on Lain Ehmann's blog - I'm not sure which one, either scraphappy.org or layoutaday.com. You simply find 24 small mittens and string them up on raffia using little clothes pins. If I had found the right mittens this year, I was going to make this to give as a gift. I think it would be so simple to stitch on or glue with fabric glue some cute felt letters and maybe add some glitter too depending upon your mittens. This one takes the cake for being uber simple and uber cute! I'm keeping my eyes open for super cute mittens so I can do this one next year.

I should also mention that WriteClickScrapbook.com has a post dedicated to very cute advent calendar ideas which also includes a Linky to readers' homemade advent calendar projects.

 #Reverb10 Thoughts

I do plan to participate in #Reverb10 but have decided to do it privately and not post on my blog. Thanks for stopping by if you were looking for a #Reverb10 - sorry to disappoint.