Another creative Sunday

Some of my Sundays start a bit late, like 11 am as early... my sweetheart fixes me breakfast: coffe with milk and some churros, and wakes me up when it´s ready. I LOVE churros... they are a deep fried Spanish pastry, and they taste wonderful to my buds

If some day you have the chance to come to Spain, these churros it´s a MUST. Here they are served with chocolate milk that looks like a chocolate pudding where you dip the churros and you eat them... yuuummmmm... I like to have them dusted with white granulated sugar and a pinch of powdered cinnamon instead.
That combination wakes me up and leaves me in a happy state of mind. Ready to take a shower and start crafting.
Today I finished a card I want to participate in Softpencil challenge #17. The challenge was to use bling or brads or both, I put blings here and there, hope they can be seen.

I colored this overly cute Japanese girl with colored pencils, added a flower rhinestone on her flower and gold paint for the details. The papers are double sided wrap paper I got at a gift store. I added a butterfly and letters I cut with my cricut (it reads hello in Spanish), some tiny punched butterflies.

After I finished the card I started fixing lunch, we had some leftovers and a soup. I´ve never tried this recipe before and I have to say it would be my favorite from now on.

This is the recipe I followed: Brocoli Cheddar Soup. If you like a nice cup of soup you have to try this one, you won´t be disappointed. I changed a few things though because I didn´t have them at hand, so I put gouda cheese instead of cheddar cheese and I skipped the paprika.

Cooking time

Yesterday was 29th, and in my country (Argentina) all 29th we have an italian dish: Gnocchi (Ñoquis in Spanish). When I was a child we had them for lunch on the 29th of each month, my mom and grandma used to make lots of them, a huge amount because we were 4 kids and 3 adults at that time in the house. I remember helping by putting the gnocchi on a floured surface to dry a few hours before cooking them, I had to be careful and make sure they were separate from each other to prevent sticking. The exciting thing about the 29th was not only the main dish but also the coins our parents put under our plates. We had to eat them all to get the money. It was a good trick now that I think about it... it always worked! Now a days at my parents homes we don´t have gnocchi as frecuently as we did in the past... maybe because we don´t need to be tricked with the coins under our plates anymore but I miss all that cooking together time... but I try to make them every month in my home. This time I didn´t make the gnocchi just brought them on the grocery store, they are not so good as homemade but they were not bad, and besides I have to make lunch the day before, the 28th and was a Thursday and I had not enough time to make them from scratch.

What I did from scratch was the sauce. I saute a yellow onion on olive oil, added a clove of garlic, sliced half a pound of mushroom, cooked them until they were tender and added a 3/4 cup of evaporated milk and 1/4 cup milk, salt and pepper to taste and I let it simmer a few minutes. At the very end I added 3 chopped dryed tomatoes and basil.
I boiled the gnocchi until cooked (just a minute after they go to the surface), put them in a plate and cover them with the sauce and sprinkled a bit of parmesano cheese on top.

They were really good... but because until march we won´t be having them again I might do myself the gnocchi next time and share the recipe.

Saturdays are usually share-the-load cooking days, so my fiance and I made lunch together .  He made the meat and I did the side dishes

the meat is pork sirloin that we cut and put some bacon and mustard on the cuttings, and added salt and pepper, then we oven roasted until done.

For the first of the side dishes I sautéed in olive oil onion, red bell pepper and italian green pepper. And the second side was just cooked potatoes that I drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled parsley before serving. I love when we cook together, it does us so good....

Three challenges and a winner

I´m overdoing myself... I never participated in three challenges at the same time doing three different things! but I´m enjoying myself a lot!!

The first one is for the Softpencil challenge #16 at PCP, the challenge was to make a friendship card:

I used this cute image Taking care of flowers by Elizabeth Pujalka, colored with colored pencils, papers are from Summer Driggs, sentiment is a dollar stamp that I attached to the card with a brad. On the inside I wrote Like flowers, friends need to be taken care of.

The second one I made it to participate on Challenge #14 at Michelle Perkett Challenge Blog:

 

I called it The Queen of the day, I used Queen of hearts by Michelle Perkett colored with colored pencils and the papers are from Kimberly Lund. The challenge is a sketch challenge and I changed the central oval dedicated to place the image by a heart and placed my image on the side, hope it counts!!

An the third one is an altered plastic box I made to participate on Challenge #1 at Michelle Perkett group on SNR:

 

 

the challenge was to make a project using Michelle´s Dragon Dream image. The box is a box we store paper membranes in the lab I work, we emptied and it was going directly to the trash, sooooo... I couldn´t help myself and I saved it from its painful death for future use, and I did it just this afternoon! I colored the images with colored pencils, put some rhinestones as their heads, and the sentiment I found it here (a wonderful quotes finder).

An last I want to show a card I did for Softpencil Challenge #15 at PCP and I won the challenge!!! WhooHoo!!! Thanks Elizabeth!!!! the challenge was to make a card with our favorite layout:

I colored with colored pencils Three hearts that Elizabeth so generously gave us as freebie, I´m completely in LOVE with this image... I like a lot to color mandalas, so these hearts were whispering to me "color us... color us...!!" as soon as I saw them. Because the challenge was to use a layout of our liking I chose this one because of its simplicity, it fits so well with me... and the main focus is the image, something that I wanted from the start. The colors of the card were chosen to match the ribbon... crazy, right? but that´s what exactly did... I wated to use that ribbon, so the rest of the card have to complement it. I colored the butterflies in the centrar heart with green to break a bit the 2 color scheme I was using and added some glitter glue to make it sparkle a bit. This will be my Valentine´s day card for my sweetheart, I hope he likes it!! (it´s a winner, so he MUST like it! hahaha)

It´s been a long week at work but I´m so glad it´s done, so now I have the weekend to enjoy!! Enjoy yours also!

All Michelle Perkett

I want to show today what I did so far with Michelle´s images, she is so talented, her art work is incredibly beautiful and on top of this she´s been very generous to all her group members at PCP and SNR giving for free lots of wonderful digi stamps. Thank you Michelle, for sharing your work with us and for being such a wonderful person. This is what your images inspired me:

• Holly Fairy: Holly the Christmas friendship fairy colored with colored pencils, white puff paint for the snow, and the swirl was made with photoshop
  

• Christmas wish: Wishing star angel colored with colored pencils and the papers are from Summer Driggs. This was my first participation on a blog hop!

• Farfalla: Arianna colored with colored pencils and the papers are from Summer Driggs  

• Holiday treat: freebie colored with colored pencils, paper pierced and papers from Summer Driggs

• The gift of your heart: Snowman with heart colored with colored pencils and eye shadows, papers from Summer Driggs

• Arianna Ornament: dollar store ornament embelished with Arianna colored with colored pencils and shimmer body on her wings

• A gift for you: freebie digitally colored with photoshop, papers from Summer Driggs.
  

• Peace: Harmony goddess colored with colored pencils, papers from digital blog train Afternoon Delight and lots and lots of glitter
  

• Peace and love: Holly the Christmas friendship fairy colored with colored pencils and the papers are from Summer Driggs
  

• Sofia 1: 15´s invite step ladder card I made for my niece using Spring. I colored the image digitally to match the papers colors, the papers are from Helly and I modified the colors a bit.
  

• Birthday sprite: Magical birthday sprite colored with colored pencils blended with vaseline, papers from Summer Driggs
  

• Believe in mermaids: Tutti-Frutti colored with colored pencils
  

• Fairy in a jar: Magical birthday sprite colored with colored pencils, embellished with rhinestones and glitter, the sprite stands on a bed of moss

I´m almost done with another card I´m making to participate in Michelle´s challenge blog, I´ll show it as soon as I finish it. I didn´t realize until now how many I made using Michelle´s images... and I have a few more waiting for me to be colored!

Showing a craft and a challenge

Before starting I want to thank all comments on my first post, you are helping me to get over the scary feeling about my blogging new life. Thank you so much!!
As Michelle so nicely suggest me I´m starting to post today some crafts I made to share with everybody. What a nice idea! because I didn´t know how and where to start...
So first I´m sowing the entry I made to participate in last weekend challenge "under the sea" that Michelle set for us at her PCP group.  Michelle´s images are so great! but I´ll dedicate my next post to show all I did using her art work.
This is the whole piece:

it´s an altered cardboard box that I papier-mache to give it texture and after it dryed I sponged it with acrylic paint. I colored the Tutti-Frutti Mermaid from Michelle Perkett with coloring pencils and suspended her with a fishing lane on the middle of the box. Here is a picture of Tutti-Frutti before gettting into her fish-box

I put as a background an assembly I did on photoshop with some digi-scrap freebie I found a long ago, printed it out and glued it on the inside of the box. I finished the project with Michelle´s sentiment "Believe" and some embellishments. I have to mention also that I won that challenge, such an unespected thing!!! but sooo pleasant! thanks so much Michelle!!
And second, I´m participating in a challenge also at Aly´s Sunday Challenge (Aly is a 11 y-o creative little lady that I found a few days ago). This card has a history of its own... one day I was feeling inspired and I doodled something that I wanted to use as a background for an image. Here is what I drew

I colored the image with my coloring pencils using a color combination at another weekend challenge posted by Michelle: orange, pink and red. I couldn´t participate that time and the color combination was something I´d neved used myself but I wanted to see what could I do with that

then I liked it so much how it turned out that i could use it as a background, so I made a card using Aly´s sketch #9 and Maggie from Digital Delights for my daughter

I added some details with glitter gel pens, some words I wrote myself and a ribbon to follow the sketch.

Very first post

Hi there! this is my first post on this blog... soo scary... I have a blog for me now!! I don´t know exactly what to say (or write) but just to welcome you to my place. Here I intent to show all things I like to do, where I find inspiration and what I do with that. Before saying anything else I´d like to ask you to forgive my english spelling and grammar, it´s not my mother languaje and though I´m checking all my spelling before writing I know I´m full of mistakes. Thanks for your undestanding.
I didn´t do any crafting so far this week... I´ll start after I finish this post, but I did some cooking instead! I love to cook, for me is another way of art, where you start with some ingredients, combine them in a predicted way  sometimes (and not so predictable way others...) and you find at the end something that not only can be enjoyed with your tastebuds, but also with you eyes. But what I believe the most important feature while cooking is that it always has a part of me. This time I did a recipe following Heidi´s wonderful appetizer Baked sweet potato falafel. A few years ago I found Heidi´s blog and I started turning my cooking more in the healthy way as she shows with her delicious and easy to prepare recipes. Here is what they looked like before getting into the oven

and this is how they turn out

I baked them following the recipe´s directions and we had them with a modified alioli (oil, garlic, mayo, plain natural yogurt, salt and pepper). This is the second time I make them and they are always a success.
For not knowing what to say I said a lot.... that´s me!