What I've been up to...

Looking at my blog, it doesn't appear as though I've been doing much lately.  In reality, I've been busy with the start of a new school year and....CANNING!

Last year, I canned a few peaches with my friend and froze zucchini from my garden.  This year, I have canned...

• pizza sauce
• peaches
• pickles
• spaghetti sauce
• tomato base for my chili
• apple pie filling
• salsa
• applesauce

I also froze a few small batches of applesauce, pumpkin, a couple of zucchinis (I still had tons left over from last year) and a LOT of sweet corn.

I am hoping to save a bit of money, plus I do find it satisfying preparing that much of our food myself and knowing what's in it.

There are a couple of birthdays coming up in my husband's family and I haven't started on our Christmas cards yet either, so I hope to be back to cardmaking soon.

Summer Sunshine

One of my coworkers lost her brother unexpectedly a few weeks ago.  We passed around a calendar signing up to bring a meal to her family.  Tomorrow is my turn.  I knew that in addition to a meal, I wanted to bring some cookies.  So, the blog hop and challenge at Baking up Crafts was perfect timing.  Actually, I had been planning on making chocolate chip cookies, but on the blog hop, I came across a recipe for easy lemon cookies on The Joyful Stamper's blog and decided to try those instead.  Of course, I had to taste test one first to make sure they were good enough to give away :)

Then, I wanted to make a card to cheer her up.  A smiling summer sun came to mind.  I used My Cut Search to search through the carts to find a good one.  (This site seems faster than using the Gypsy search, and I like that you can see the whole handbook page rather than just the keypad overlay.)  I used the sun from Smiley Cards.  His sunglasses are from EDPD.  The tags on the top of the card and the base of the pedestal are form Tags, Bags, Boxes and More.  The turquoise background was run through the D'Vine Swirls Cuttlebug folder and the white square was run through Spots and Dots.     I also used an Action Wobble for the first time.  I had signed up months ago for a free sample on Momo's blog and was saving them for the perfect occasion.  I thought it would add some extra cheer to this card.

This card will be entered in the following challenges:

Whimsical Wednesdays--Fun with color challenge #11--I used the required red and yellow and also pulled the colors turquoise and white from the provided photo.

Baking up Crafts--project involving baking and crafts

Fantabulous Cricut Challenge #65--summer sun

Cute Card Thursday #170--sketch challenge

More Thank Favors Wacky Wednesday #32--tags

More Than Favors CCCC #22--Tags, Bags, Boxes and More

Celebrate the Occasion #19--Celebrating Summer (must have a sun)

After posting this, I got an e-mail from the Joyful Stamper suggesting I link up my project to her Inspire Me Friday, so that perhaps I can inspire others to do something similar for someone in need.