Kids Mini Book Project for Valentine's Day

The February Kids Kit is now available in the shop, priced at €6.50.


This month's project is perfect as a St. Valentine's Day present for a Grandma, Mum, Dad, Auntie or someone special in your child's life and it's a great way to spend an afternoon getting those kids crafting.

You can do the cutting and let the kids do the glueing!

Page 3 of the book is left blank for the kids to doodle or write a personal message to their favourite someone!

The kit includes:

• a 12" x 12" sheet of Bazzill Lipstick Cardstock
• a 12" x 12" Scenic Route Loveland Scrap Strip
• a 12" x 12" sheet of Scenic Route Background Cardstock - White Blue Grid
• 1 sheet of Doodlebug Loopy Lou Stickers - White
• a full instruction sheet with colour photos.
  
  It's a great alternative to a card and is small enough to be carried around as a keepsake. It's also sturdy enough stand up and take pride of place on a mantlepiece. Don't delay and make sure you receive yours in time to be ready by February 14th. Just click here to take you through to the shop.
  

Kids Crafty Projects

I was delighted to be asked by Kelly, the owner of Mumstown to be their crafty person for 2008.


Starting this month and continuing throughout the year I'll be creating a papercraft project every month which parents and kids can enjoy together. The January Kids Kit is now on sale and includes almost everything you'll need to create a handmade pirate themed birthday card.


The kit contains paper, cardstock, a greeting card blank and envelope, diecut shapes and a printed title and word and all you'll need to add is a scissors, glue and some brown or black ink. Full instructions are provided with each kit.

If you haven't checked out Mumstown, it's definately worth a look. At the moment it covers Drogheda and County Louth, but from next month it's being upgraded to include other counties around Ireland. It's a complete online resource for mums and parents and gives listings of local schools, creches, after school activities, family activities, shops, services and loads more as well as having it's own forum. Each week there's new featured articles packed with useful information, competitions and a fun what's on guide.

ScrapWest Christmas!

Tonight's theme for ScrapWest is "Christmas" and a perfect opportunity to scrap the photos I took of myself and my DD baking Gingerbread Cookies on Monday.

I used Daisy D's Snowflakes and Holly papers and Telling the Story Rubons with some Bazzill Pomegranate Cardstock for the handcut title. I used a sheet of Making Memories die-cut paper as the template for the shape on the right of the layout. The background is a sheet of Scenic Route background cardstock.


If you haven't checked out the ScrapWest blog yet, why not have a look now. Each week the team try to inspire you with a new theme and we love it if you join in a leave a link to your layouts and cards with your comments.

Gingerbread Cookie Recipe

Decided to do something non-paper crafty today and baked a batch of Gingerbread cookies.



If you fancy making some all you'll need is the ingredients listed below, cookie cutters and some flat baking trays:

Christmas Gingerbread Biscuits – Makes 25

Ingredients

1lb/450g plain flour, plus extra for dusting
2 and a half teaspoons ground ginger
1 and a half teaspoons ground mixed spice
2 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
4oz/115g butter, plus extra for greasing the tin
3 and a half ounces/100g golden syrup
4oz/115g light muscovado sugar
1 beaten egg

Preheat oven to 160°C/325°F/Gas Mark 3. Grease 3 large baking sheets and put to one side. Into a large bowl, sift the flour, ginger, mixed spice and bicarbonate of soda. Put the butter, syrup and muscovado sugar in a saucepan over a low heat and stir until melted. Pour onto the flour misture and add the egg. Mix together to make a dough. The dough will be sticky to start with, but will become firmer as it cools.

Knead the dough and then roll it out on a lightly floured work surface to about 3mm thickness. Cut out about 25 gingerbread shapes using shaped cutters. Transfer to the prepared baking sheets.

Bake the biscuits in the preheated oven for 15-20 minutes, or until they become firm and slightly browned.

Leave to cool on the baking sheets for a few minutes and then transfer to wire racks and leave to cool completely. Decorate with icing, chocolate buttons, smarties, raisins, glace cherries or whatever you have to hand.

If you want to hang them on the tree piece a hole in the top of each biscuit with a skewer as soon as you remove them from the oven. Then thread a ribbon through the hole. Make a cup of coffee/tea and pour a few glasses of milk for the children, sit back and enjoy.

Altered Pegs using Love, Elsie! Zoe Collection

Got a chance to work on the giant pegs I got at Scrap-a-Ganza at the weekend. I decided that the new Zoe Collection from Love, Elsie! would work well as it has loads of funky colours and designs. The whole collection is now in stock including papers, rubons, tiny ribbons, embossed cardstock and fabric paper.

The pegs are from Creative Imaginations and the fantastic chipboard frames are from the new range of Big Shot Dies. The alphabet letter was cut from chipboard using the new Big Shot Four Die Alphabet called "Boss O". I definately think I need to invest in a Big Shot especially now that it can cut thick chipboard!