Wow, the week went really fast! I was Photo Shopping away last night when I realized that tomorrow was Sunday and I hadn't even figured out what I was going to blog about! So a quick decision and away I go.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! So what are you thankful for? That's a typical question at this time of year. I would reply with all the normal things like my grandkids, I love them to death. We're all healthy and the kids are all employed and getting steady paychecks etc. etc. but I think one thing that really comes to mind is I'm thankful for my memories.

At this time of year thoughts of my parents seem to really come to the surface. They are both gone now and have been for quite some time. But this time of year seems to always bring the memories to the surface. As a child, our house was always the gathering place for the holidays. I'm really not sure why it was that way. My mom was a great cook and maybe that's the reason but I can't really say for sure.

We would spend days preparing for the feast. One whole day was always devoted to pie making. Her pies were one of her signature items and she made lots and lots of them, pumpkin and mincemeat and apple and cherry oh I can smell them now.

But I think one of the things she made that all of us kids really really liked was her little pinwheels. She always had pie dough left. I don't know if that was by design or if she could just never get it right. She wasn't a measurer when she cooked. She never had the time to bother with it. It was always...oh that looks about right... a little more flour...little more Crisco.. And her dough always turned out, just amazing!

But anyway, back to the pinwheels.. They were made from the left over pie dough, so sometimes there were a lot and other times there were just a few, so us kids used to just wait and pray that there would be plenty of dough left. She'd roll the dough out like she was making a pie.

Then came the cinnamon and sugar, which was usually my job. It was sprinkled all over the dough and you can be sure it wasn't spread evenly. :o) Then we'd add little pats of butter, strategically placed though out the dough.

Starting on one side, the pie dough would be rolled up like a sponge cake roll or cinnamon roll. Then sliced into about 1/2" slices and baked on a non-greased cookie sheet until crispy.

Oh how we loved them! They would be gone before you could blink an eye! So if you have a little left over pie dough give this a try and I bet the kids in your life will love them!

This week I'd like to talk a little about the sentiments/verses that are on each and everyone of my CDs. I don't know about you but I have a really hard time coming up with a catchy phrase for a card. So I love the fact that I have all of these to choose from. I've used the verse image itself, I've retyped it and used different fonts, I've cloned it so that it lines up different, I've added cloned embellishments to give it added dimension. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that the verse images can be versatile and as dramatic as the front of the card if you want them to be.

This week, I've included a verse image for your use. I've used my favorite friend Photo Shop (smile) to create the final product. I loved the verse and the font but I didn't like how wide it was and it seemed to me to be really scrunched together. So I wanted to narrow it and add just a little pizzazz! So for your use... here's the before and the after.... Feel free to use the image if you so desire.

Here's the original image for the sentiment:



Here's the modified image. I found a candle image with dogwood flowers and holly with berries and I thought it complemented the verse.

Using Photo Shop, I cloned the verse first getting it just the way I wanted then I saved that. Just in case I had to scrap what I was doing and start over.

Then I cloned the candle image on to the verse. I started with a 50% opacity level but I thought that was too dark and made the verse too hard to read. So I started over - thank goodness for the saved image - and dropped the opacity to 10% and cloned it again. I really liked the way it looked until I printed it and it turned out the candles were too light. So I started again and settled on a 20% opacity. I think it turned out pretty good, what do you think?



This is another original image:




Jerilynno says

So glad that your son is home and you can relax a bit now. Thank you for the cute Christmas Cheer image. Our Church usually goes to the Veteran's hospital every Thanksgiving and Christmas and we provide the holiday meal and serve it but this year we are not aloud to do that because of the flu problem so we have been asked to donate new packages of tube socks for them and make 200 Thank you note cards for them. Your image will be perfect for that. I was going to make 50 cards to donate. If this is something you won't allow to be done with your image, please let me know and I will not use your image, but if it is, Thanks for the great easy to put together idea for me.

Jerilynno, sure you can use the image for your soldier cards. Have fun!

I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving and a week full of smiles!

Peggy

New Digi Vintage Paper Sets and Remember our Soldiers

Hi Happy Sunday,

I hope everyone has had a great week!

Today I'm so excited to announce a new product that will be making its way to all of my shops. I'm starting a new line of digi papers. Each set contains six sheets of digi paper. One sheet contains the primary pattern and the other 5 sheets are complimentary to the main sheet.

At the moment, I have 3 sets ready to go and they'll be posted in the shops very soon. One set is very girly - Roses and Violets, one set is for babies - Teddy Bears and Rattles and the last set is Christmasy - Poinsettia's and Snowflakes.

My digi papers are all inspired from my Vintage Greeting Card Collection. Of course Photo Shop was my favorite friend (smile) while I was creating these wonderful papers.

Take a peak at them by clicking on the below image and let me know what you think!



Be sure and visit one of my shops, listed over there on the right, the digi papers will be showing up soon.

My youngest son gave 5 1/2 years of his precious young life to the Marines. He spent a lot of time in Iraq and Afghanistan and thankfully he came home safe and in one piece.

As the end of his tour approached, we anxiously waited for the news that he was on his way home. If you’ve had someone close to you in the service and deployed you probably know that their movement is kind of hush hush. They can’t give you specific information about their return to the states, just round abouts.

Well, I’ll never forget the day when I received an email from him with an attachment Ozzy’s song “Momma I’m coming home”. Needless to say, I cried buckets and silly me I still cry buckets every time I hear the song. Isn't he just a most handsome devil!



With Vertern’s Day just over and Christmas coming it’s time to remember our troops and if possible participate in one of the community Troop Christmas projects. Locally there’s a project to collect Christmas Cards and other goodies to send to them. So I thought I’d include a vintage image in today’s post just in case anyone would like to create a special card and participate in their community project.




That’s all for now… Hope you have a great week that’s full of smiles!

Peggy

Cinnamon Apples and Vintage Images Yum!

Wow! Thank you all for such a warm welcoming. I’ve had such a great time this week reading all the wonderful comments from everyone. If you’d like to send me a picture of your project that you’d made with the cutie Snowman, just send me a link or an image via my email address, which is over there on the right somewhere, and I’ll post it on the blog.

One post I’d like to talk about

Sheri said

Thanks so much for the darling snowman and puppy but for preserving the past. I LOVE all of your images and would buy them in a heartbeat if I had a pc. nope - just a MAC. I drool whenever I stop by. I wish you had a place where you could sign up to get updates into your mailbox so many do. Can't wait to play with this cutie. Thanks again!

Sheri, I have great news for you, my CDs do work on Macs, so stop your drooling girlie. I’m not a Mac user, so my knowledge base is very limited but I’ve had some great Mac helpers, thanks Lana and RubySlippers. The one thing that may not work for you is the autorun application that is on each CD. You’ll have to go with the manual access to the folders using Finder. I do believe that there is a Mac utility that runs a Windows app but if you don’t have that utility, no big deal, just use Finder and you’ll be able to get to the folders and images. I’ll also see what I can do about setting up the blog for automatic update notices.

So some of you might be thinking, what is she talking about, what is an autorun? It’s a little program that’s added to each Vintage Greeting Card Image CD and it automatically starts up when you put the CD in the drive. My autorun app displays a cute image that has icons that you can click on and it takes you right to the folder of images via the Windows File Manager application. Once you’re in File Manager you can select an image, copy and paste, move up or down in the folder, print an image or any of the other File Manager activities. Sometimes, the main image displays kind of low on the monitor and you can’t see all of the icons. If that happens to you, just left click and hold it on the image and drag it up just a bit.

Ok.. now some fun stuff, my sweet sis sent me an email on Halloween and she wanted Mom’s recipe for popcorn balls. Well… I couldn’t remember how Mom made them (sigh) but I do have Mom’s handy dandy recipe book that she used for everything, so away I went looking for the recipe. Mom’s recipe book is the wonderful Betty Crocker’s Cook Book that has everything under sun in it. By the way this makes a wonderful Wedding Shower gift, it has all the basics and will pretty much teach someone how to boil water. (smile) I couldn’t find a date anywhere but I’d guess it’s from the early 50’s might even be from the 40’s but I’m not really sure. Well Mom’s cook book is kind of ragged at the edges. It was well used and has definitely seen better days. The back is off and the index is long gone so I had to page through the different sections to try and find the popcorn ball recipe. What a hoot! I haven’t looked at it in quite a while and had a few chuckles as I perused the different sections. Anyway, here’s one recipe that made me chuckle:

Red Cinnamon Apples with Tiny Pork Sausages

Beautifully colored apples with little sausages sticking out at perky angles. Marian South (now Mrs. Russell K. Johnson of Davenport, Iowa) perfected the recipe as a Christmas Eve Supper specialty when she was on our Staff.

Boil together 5 min ….
1 cup sugar
½ cup water
1/3 cup small red cinnamon candies
Place peeled-side-down in the hot syrup and cook 5 min ….
6 cored firm apples (peeling removed from top halves)
Meanwhile, brown in skillet ……
18 little pork sausages

Remove apples from syrup and place peeled-side-up in individual custard or muffin cups or in 1 large baking pan. Place 3 browned sausages in center of each apple. Pour red cinnamon syrup over all. Bake until tender. Serve hot in leafy green wreaths of watercress or lettuce … accompanied by fluffy rice with hot Cheese Sauce.
Temperature 350 (mod. Oven).
Time: Bake 30 min.
Amount: 6 servings

So there you go…try this recipe for the cinnamon apples with perky little sausuages and make sure you have a modern oven.

Have a great day and I hope it’s full of smiles.
Peggy

A Fresh Start and a Free Vintage Greeting Card Image

Everybody needs a fresh start once in a while, so here's mine. I started this blog quite a while back but quite honestly didn't really keep up with it. It seemed like there was never enough time to get an entry into the blog. Well, I've made a resolution to make sure I update it at least once a week.(smile) I have some big plans for the future so be sure to check in and see what the future holds.

Depending on how you arrived here, you may or may not be aware of my Vintage Greeting Card Image CDs and Cut Outs. I just love working with the Vintage Greeting Cards and have collected quite a large number of them. I am in heaven when I get a new vintage scrapbook and can spend time pouring over the collected cards, letters and mementos. Each scrapbook gives just a little insight into the life and times of the author and their families. The scrapbooks are created with such care and loving that you just know that it was very important to them to save all the tidbits and memories.

I try and take this love and care right into creating my Vintage Greeting Card Image CDs and Cut Outs. Sometimes, I'll even include something from the scrapbook, like a wedding picture of the couple or a sweet little handmade heart from a child to their mommy.

So many times, the scrapbooks are torn apart and the individual pieces sold or thrown away. It just breaks my heart! So all of my scrapbooks are kept together and the CDs are organized by the families not by the grouping of image types. Maybe it sounds silly, but I feel like I'm honoring the scrapbook maker and keeping their collection in tact for at least another generation.

Enough of that for now, I'll provide more insights on my Vintage Greeting Cards Images and CDs and Cut Outs in the future.

So to kick off my newly updated blog and get it off to a great start, I've decided to have an Image give away. Just right click on the following image and save it on your PC. Use it for creating scrapbook pages, greeting cards, fabric transfers, decoupage or any other kind of craft project you may be working on. Have fun and if you're so inclined, leave a comment to encourage me to keep on updating!

Take care and I hope you have a great day full of smiles!
Peggy