Custom Digital Christmas Cards

I am creating many different styles of Christmas or Holiday Cards.



Pick your favorite and I will email you the file as a layered Photoshop file, you just drop in your photo and upload to your favorite Photo sharing/printing website. Some I can recommend are snapfish and shutterfly.



Another option is to pick your favorite design, then send me your photo/photos and sentiment and I will create a digital card that you can either fullfill yourself or I can get the cards printed for you.



I will do custom designs as well, and printing on cardstock is available. Check out my store on etsy, and email me with any questions.

Suzanne

Pouch vs. Can

So I just made lunch for the first time using the Starkist tuna pouches. It was very nice to not have to battle with the can opener. I did not have to squeeze out the oil/water the tuna was packed in. This tuna was ready to be mixed right from the pouch with a spoonful of mayo.
Long ago I went to a pampered chef party, and came home with the can opener that would not leave a jagged edge.



What a fantastic idea, until the first time you try and make tuna. The can opener does not leave you the top in the form you need it to drain out the water in the tuna can. So now I have two can openers, one for tuna, and one for everything else.



As you can start to tell, I am not a fan of can openers. I think they are pretty dirty. The memories of the electric can opener,



just crusted with food on a counter for who knows how long before someone cleans it. And it could be cat food, from before they introduced these pop tops.

I know folks don't always clean a can opener after each use, electric or old style hand held. So the cleanliness of the tuna pouch caught my eye. I was very happy, though someone does NOT agree with me. Someone does NOT want the tuna can to be replaced with the pouch.



My cat Daisy, she loves when I make tuna, and will come from under the bed covers at the very first scent of tuna. Today that happened, and well, no can to place on the floor with bits of tuna stuck to the sides for her to sample. The pouch just got tossed in the garbage, with all those tasty morsels still clinging to the inside of the pouch. One very disappointed kitty. Sorry Daisy, I am not going to get all full of tuna trying to open the pouch so that you can get to what's inside. Just like I'll never buy these cat food pouches, for that very same reason.

Pray sweet kitty, that the pouches continue to cost more per ounce than the cans do.

What do you think? can or pouch, and have you tried the flavors?

Suzanne

Little Tikes toys that last and last and last.....

I am a sucker for Little Tikes. I love their line of toys for outside play. We own the pool, which we bought for our dog Blue 11 years ago, and we own this playset the wave climber, that we got at a garage sale for $60.00,

the cozy coupe car we found at the bottom of someones' driveway with a "take me" sign on it,

the picnic table, we have had since Sean was little, and it was given to us by an old neighbor whose kids had outgrown it,

the turtle sandbox we got at a garage sale for $.50, the rocking horse,

and this push/ride on car were hand me downs as well,

and thanks to Grandma and Pa we have recently added the sand/water table. Which in our case is the moon sand table. All three boys have slept in the firetruck bed (actually a competing brand Step 2) which is about to go into storage until Scott moves out of the crib.

We have owned the tool table and some kitchens through the years, and have since passed them on. Currently I am on the hunt for a kichen for Scott.

I remember visiting a friends niece pre marriage, I had no kids of my own. This girl had the coolest dollhouse that was from Little Tikes and actually had scaled down versions of the larger Little Tikes toys. Now that I have kids of my own, they have stopped making that dollhouse. You can still find it and the toys on ebay, and at garage sales. Look at how cute these are, check some of these out. That's our picnic table, coupe car and I have seen that kitchen in many a playroom.

So I can't entertain my desire and easily acquire these toys, though they would be a great investment cause years down the road there will still be a market for the toys. Pending their condition you could turn around and sell them on ebay and probably get what you paid for them. I am just saying...

Lo and behold, I found in a magazine a review of this little diddy. The Little Tikes Turtle mealtime set.

The fork and spoon are a shovel and a rake.
I promptly checked the local retail stores, Target and Walmart, Babies R Us and Toys R Us, with no such luck I could not find it....Until I froogled (Google.com/shopping) and found it on amazon.com . To qualify for free shipping I ordered three, gave one to my neighbor for her first birthday, kept one for Scott and figured I'd give one away. Leave me a comment about your little tikes toys and I will pick a winner at random on Sept.19th at 12:00am.

eta remember to either come back and check to see if you won or leave an email addy that i can notify you at...

Thanks, Suzanne

and the winner is....

congratulations Sharon

email me your address and I'll send this off to you in the mail...

you'll have 5 days to do so or i'll pick another winner at random...

thank you everyone for your comments.

Our Summer Experiment- who's got the best shakes?

So we are having a contest this Summer to see who has the best milkshakes.



We started at Chick-fil-A cause I was given a gift card by Sean's teacher and well, being a damn yankee, I had never been to a Chick-fil-A before. We truly enjoyed their chicken sandwich and hand spun milk shakes, and the bar was set very high. They have two sizes, and top each creation with an ample dose of whipped cream and a cherry. Sean had vanilla, Jack and Craig each had chocolate and I had to have the cookies and cream...Yum...

So the contest came about as I was trying to replace our outside umbrella and well, boys do not like to be dragged from store to store to shop for umbrellas in this heat unless, you promise them a milkshake! So...off to Burger King we went because I had heard they had a nice size shake on the dollar menu...


The boys liked them well enough, though the vanilla did not taste much different from the chocolate, In fact after the indecision of my four year old, "I want chocolate, no wait I want vanilla, no wait I want chocolate"...well let's just say I handed him a shake and then he asked what flavor it was and I said, "what did you order" and he said, "chocolate", and it was vanilla but I let him believe it was chocolate crossing my fingers and saying a quick prayer under my breath, and fortunately he bought it.

So this one is funny, we stopped at McDonalds to celebrate Craig's success at his first round of swim lessons...and I asked the boys what flavor shake they wanted and they said to me that McDonalds does not have shakes. I was flabbergasted, those were THE shakes when I was a kid.

Shamrock shakes for Saint Patricks Day, delish! Replaced by the McFlurry. But I, up until now was able to convince my kids that they don't even sell shakes. OK I may regret this later, but we ordered them...They are not what I remembered, tasted very artificial. Sorry Ronald, but I do love your new Cafe' mochas!

So now to the place that compelled me to write this post. Another cleverly advertised fast food joint that I have never been to. Until today, Where they not only had shakes, but limeades and java frozen heaven. Yes, you know it well...Sonic

I am not sure if it's the novelty of the old fashioned drive up and order, which I enjoyed mostly cause I was not being barked at like drive thru window operators can be known to do? And we ordered a burger, popcorn chicken, an oreo blast, one vanilla and one chocolate shake and of course, since I have to participate, I ordered a java mocha, frozen. It was heaven! I will gain weight as the result of this experiment, but the kids are really enjoying the comparisons. Sean's even involved in the different costs vs. quality. Sean noticed that Sonic has Happy Hour from 2:00 to 4:00, all drinks (probably not shakes) half price.
Next stop is Steak n Shake....hand dipped, whipped cream and that cherry...

Leave me a comment telling me about where you get your favorite shake, and flavor. I'll randomly pick someone to get a $5.00 gift card to McDonald's. remember to include a way to reach you. Contest will end June 30th at midnight. We have our winner thanks for playing!

Misty...please email me your address and a I'll pop a gift card into the mail for you!

suzanne

Custom Twitter Pages.

Remember when domains came out and people were buying up domain names like crazy, with a "ya never know he could become famous and want his/her name as their home page."

Well Twitter is free, and you should sign up up even if you don't really intend to twitter just yet?

Grab your name in case sending tweets becomes the norm/neccessity like the cell phone.

to all you newbies out there,

here are a few commands to get you started

@username + message
directs a twitter at another person, and causes your twitter to save in their “replies” tab.Example: @ijustine I love that song too!

D username + message
sends a person a private message that goes to their device, and saves in their web archive.Example: d krissy want to pick a Jamba Juice for me while you’re there?

WHOIS username
retrieves the profile information for any public user on Twitter.Example: whois jack

GET username
retrieves the latest Twitter update posted by the person.Example: get goldman

NUDGE username
reminds a friend to update by asking what they’re doing on your behalf.Example: nudge biz

FAV username
marks a person’s last twitter as a favorite. (hint: reply to any update with FAV to mark it as a favorite if you’re receiving it in real time)Example: fav al3x

STATS
this command returns your number of followers, how many people you’re following, and which words you’re tracking.

So go register at http://twitter.com/ and let's take it the next level and let me customize it,

like mine https://twitter.com/suedaisy just visit my etsy store.

twitter image from http://lordofdesign.com

It's a Scavenger Explorer,Treasure Party.

Sean was 9 this year and he is the party monster. Loves the whole party planning, creative games, and the more the merrier. Unfortunately since his birthday falls in winter, we must have a backup plan if the weather is too cold to party outside. First, keep control of how many are invited. Second, control how long the party will last. It's a good thing we do, cause this year the weather was terrible.

He wanted a scavenger hunt, spy type, explorer theme. We went with it and my Aunt Pat made this pinata.

We called him Pedro. So from there we got these pith hats at Michaels,

I hid them downstairs once the kids arrived and I knew how many there were, I wrote a number on the inside of each hat that when they added them together it would equal 415. This would be for a riddle later.

On the kitchen table was the first riddle. Go to the room under the house and look under the book about a mouse. They flew down the stairs. Earlier I had taken the book , "If a Mouse Ate a Cookie" and put it in the basement on our coffee table that lifts open. Inside were the the hats. They quickly figured that first clue out and were sporting their hats.

Inside one of the hats was a clue to go to another part of the basement where they had to figure out a secret code. Each child got a strip of paper with a series of colored dots and dashes that represented a letter and they were instructed to look at a chart and figure out what their code stood for. I used rocks and minerals, like sapphire, topaz, and diamond. Once they figured out their code they brought it to my assistant Miss Mary Beth who gave them each a lanyard with two different shapes and colors on it. Then we directed them to the mine which was our turtle sandbox filled with sand, and these self stick jewels from the scrapbooking aisle.

They had to pan for their matching jewels on their lanyards. To have control we allowed two at a time, the other boys played darts and fuzz ball to keep them busy. Once everyone found the jewels,

we did more riddles, including adding the numbers on their hats which led them to our mailbox (415) that had a riddle sending them back to the kitchen. We sang happy birthday and ate a cookie cake we decorated as a compass. We then opened the presents and finally, the last riddle lead them back to the basement and the destruction of the pinata.

Pedro held out for a long time and there was plenty of candy for everyone.

We all had a fantastic time.

suzanne

It's a Tiki Beach Party

Ok so since we've been in the new neighborhood, we went from one of the greenest yards to one of the least enviable yards on the street. So after hiring a lawn service, and doing some research on leveling lawns, we had 5 yards of sand and 5 yards of top soil delivered. So what do I think of?

A theme for Craig's fourth birthday party. Backyardigans Tiki beach Party. Kids love sand. Let's build a party around the need to improve our yard.
Invites went out of our plan. We purchased sand buckets, bubbles and trucks from Big Lots. I found some hula hoops, and some shells at Walmart.

And my Aunt made a Pablo pinata. We had a blast. Sun was out, we used our water tables, filled one with water and one with Moon Sand and played Hulabaloo.

And the next day, my husband spread the sand and topsoil, and we are that much closer to a nicer yard. Think outside the sand box.

You can do this, Cake Pops.

Here's my attempt at cat cake pops. But i have to admit that the pink cats look like pigs? I love this site Bakerella, she came up with these ideas for cake balls on lollipop sticks and her creativity and imagination and execution is enviable. Here's a link to her blog, and the actually video of her demonstrating how to make cupcake pops on the Martha Stewart show.

I decided to try and make cat pops for Craig. as he's in the Cat class at his school. I figured blue for boys, and pink for girls. Here's how I made these kitties. Visit Bakerellas' site for more ideas for decorating.

Bake one box of cake mix according to directions and let it cool completely. A lighter cake mix works well with a lighter candy melt, as the darker cake mix will show through.

Break the cake mix up into smaller pieces into a bowl. Add one can of frosting and mix together. Think meatballs.

Once it looks like this. cover and place in the fridge to cool somewhat before rolling into balls.

Line a cookie sheet that will fit into your fridge with wax paper. and make your balls. I made 42 from this batch. Place back into fridge to set.

Here I melted some pink and blue melts and dipped the stick into the melt before placing into the balls. Then get a Styrofoam block and stick pops into the block so they don't touch. I added the ears which were white chocolate morsels, by dabbing a tad bit of the melts onto the morsel with a toothpick and then stick it to the ball. (sans the toothpick)

You can see them take shape now. Melt enough melts to completly cover the pop and dip the entire head in at once and tap lightly to remove excess. Place back into foam.

Here the pink is setting up...

I added eyes with white icing writer and nonpareils and the noses are mini M&M's. Aren't they cute? They each have their own look.

Package them with a cellophane bag or Saran wrap and a ribbon. Just to cute, great idea for a bake sale.

And they taste as good as they look.

(baby used for demonstration only, I did not let him actually eat the pop...teeth are required.)

enjoy and leave me a comment about how crazy I am to do these.

Sue daisy