Two cards, three challenges

Dream on... dream until your dream comes true... (beautiful Aerosmith old song)

I love this image from Softpencil, it´s so sweet. I colored the image with chalks and colored pencils, added some gold glitter glue dots and clear dew drops

This card I made it to participate in Aly´s Sunday Challenge and Challenge #57 at Crafty Creations Challenge blog.

A cup of tea shared with mom is one of life´s little pleasures...

this image is from Shirley´s 2 girls and I colored with colored pencils and blended with vaseline. I stitched around the patterned papers with embroidery floss and some glass beads, and placed the image with dimensional tape.

I followed the sketch given at I Love Digi Challenge blog where the theme is to make a card for mum.
In both cards I used Summer Driggs digi papers that I printed out on cardstock.

Kitty bookmark and the very first recipe I learnt

I wanted to make a bookmark for my daughter to go along with a book I´m sending to her. She loves to read and that is something we want to encourage in her.

And then I saw Aly´s challenge this week and right away knew what I wanted to do. This week´s challenge is to show all our Kitty cats and my DD loves cats, so it was the perfect challenge.

I found Dawn Moore blog a few days ago and when I saw her Kitty I knew I was going to use it to make something for Maria. Kitty made the perfect complement for Bee Crafty stack of books that I wanted to use for a bookmark someday. I colored the images with colored pencils as usual and applied some body shimmer dust on the pages instead of coloring them. On the back I used clear stickers for the words and the pencil.

The other day I prepared the first recipe my mom taught me: Risotto. It always brings me good memories... I remember a very young me (13 y-o) so nervous because I had to feed the family that day and it was going to be my first solo in the kitchen... but then once it was done it didn´t tasted so bad... so I remember feeling myself very pleased with the result.

And over the years it´s one of my favorites. The recipe is somehow simple and you can add whatever you fancy at the moment or whatever you have at hand. The best rice to make a good Risotto is arborio rice but here is not easy to find, so I subtitute it with a creamy like rice, use a rice that the grains look rounded like this one. The recipe follows like this: start measuring the rice (I usually have a small glass as the size for a serving) and set aside. Prepare some broth, chicken, vegetable or meet, whatever you like, bring it to boil and lower the heat to simmer but be sure to have 3 times at least in volume the amount of rice. Put some olive oil in a heavy bottomed pan to heat. Chop 2 small onions or 1 medium, put it in the pan stirring well so it doesn´t get burnt. Add to the pan 1 clove of garlic finelly chopped and keep cooking them a few more minutes. Now add the rice and fry it slightly until it gets a light brown shade and it´s very hot. At this point you have to be careful because you can burn everything, so don´t leave it alone. Add the simmering broth at least half of it, stir and when it start boiling again lower the heat and let it simmer covered about 15 minutes, or until the rice it´s almost done. You´ll have to add more broth as the rice cooks, be sure it´s always with some extra liquid so it doesn´t dry. Turn off the heat and let it stand 5 minutes. Add a tablespoon of butter and some shredded cheese (whatever cheese you like) before serving. You can be creative with this recipe, so don´t be afraid to try different kind of rices, add vegetables like mushrooms, sweetpeas... or add some meat, chicken... have fun in the kitchen also!

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.