Make stuff

I've been on a handmade kick lately. I've been busy scrapping, as usual, but I'm also knitting up a storm these days as part of my "homemade holidays" plan (more on this later). I've completed two knitty gifts and started a third project the other night. I've also been really into cooking and baking again. My love of food and cooking has been on hiatus with all the reflux issues, but my body is tolerating more these days and I'm enjoying finding new, better for me recipes. Though I've always been a pretty healthy cook and eater, I'm trying even more to use healthier, all natural items in my cooking and baking. I've discovered several new cooking websites and am loving this cookbook Kellie gave me for my birthday.

Today I made a big batch of steel cut oats using a recipe from the cookbook mentioned above and now have a week's worth of healthy breakfasts in the fridge. I enjoyed my bowl this morning with a huge spoonful of homemade apple butter stirred in. Yum! After breakfast, I sliced up a couple pie pumpkins, setting aside the seeds for later, and while they were in the oven baking, I whipped up yet another batch of banana bread. We have quite the surplus of bananas around here from my Bountiful Baskets order last week. We got like12 bananas in our order and Shawn has only eaten only a couple. I am not a fan and won't eat them in any form other than mixed in a baked good. Next up with my cooked pumpkin, I attempted my first ever batch of pumpkin butter. Let me tell you, it's delicious and I'm so glad I tried this recipe! I finished off my cooking spree with a recipe for some sugar and spice pumpkin seeds that I found on Bethany's blog.

In other news, I'm hosting the Monday Challenge at Scrap for a Cure this week. My challenge is all about using up those scraps you've got lying around. This page was inspired by the last little bits of a well loved Studio Calico kit. I love that I was able to use up even the tiniest bits of paper to make the little frame around the page.


So dig into those scraps and get creative. Play along and upload your creation into the "Up for a Challenge" forum at SFC to be entered into a monthly challenge RAK drawing.

SFC's November kits are on sale now too. There are two kits this month, a "boy" kit and a "girl" kit. They are both full of lots of fun products. I got to play with the "boy" kit and here are the pages I made:






I'm still working on this little mini album, filling it with the little things in my life that make me happy. I'll be sure to post the whole album when it's finished.

This tired girl is going to put some clean sheets on her bed and climb in with her knitting and some TV for the rest of the night.