{orange cranberry bread}

Well it was snowing here for about 15 minutes and that put me in the mood to bake. I had some dried cranberries and orange extract on hand so I thought I'd make orange cranberry bread, one of my favorites. It's no longer snowing but hopefully it will pick back up soon.

Orange Cranberry Bread

1 6 oz. packaged dried cranberries

1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour

1/3 c. butter, melted

1 c. sugar

1 tbs. lemon juice

2 large eggs

1 ts. baking powder

1 ts. salt

1/2 c. milk

1/4 ts. vanilla extract

1 1/2 ts. orange extract

2 tbs. organic sugar for topping

Preheat oven 350 degrees. Grease loaf pan.

In large bowl beat together butter, sugar, lemon juice and eggs.

Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. Add flour and milk alternately to butter mixture, beginning and ending with flour.

Mix in vanilla and orange extracts.

Fold in cranberries.

Pour batter into loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour and 10 minutes or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Let sit for 10 minutes before removing from pan to cool.

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{baby shower gift & cookies!}

Last Saturday I went to a friends baby shower, I've had this gift ready for a couple of weeks but haven't been able to post it just in case she saw it. They don't know the sex yet but the nursery theme is Lion King on Broadway so I made the basket safari theme. I took a plain basket that I found for 50% off and decorated it with some ribbon and a wood Giraffe that I found in the dollar bin at Michael's. I think it turned out pretty cute. I then filled it with a lion blanket, safari receiving blankets, elephant snugglie and a tile that I made on an easel. The idea for the tile is courtesy of Courtney at http://courtneyscrafty.blogspot.com/. You take a super cheap tile from Home Depot and mod podge a piece of scrap paper to it, this one I wrapped the piece of paper around and taped it to the back for extra support, the next one I do I will cut the paper to fit the tile and not wrap it around. Then you cut your letter or whatever you want on the tile, I don't have a cricut so I just printed out the letter on cardstock and traced it onto my paper and then cut it out with an exacto knife, it really didn't take much time at all. I don't know the name yet so I did a "B" for their last name and did upper and lower case to make it look alphabety, yes I just wrote that. Finish off with 2 or 3 more layers of mod podge (let dry 10-15 min after each layer) and that's it. I thinks it's super cute and personal. For this one I just had to hunt down some papers that worked but I found them all at Craft Warehouse.

I also made the card, it's just comprised of a pre-cut natural paper card, some felt letters, scrap paper and a wooden magnet I found in the dollar bin at Michael's and colored with my Bic Mark-it's. My friend seemed to like everything so I think it was a success. Sorry for blurry pics I'm working on the settings with my camera and didn't see that these shot as blurry.

I can't wait to share all the things I'm doing for the shower that's coming up in two weeks.

Also my mom sent two big bags of Hershey kisses for Valentine's day, so today I made some peanut butter blossoms. As I went the balls kept getting bigger so I wound up with extra kisses and added some extras to the bigger cookies, oh well. =]

Worth the climb

It's a warm day here, not sunny but warm enough for an outside run. Usually I run on my treadmill because it's too cold out. Today I decided to take a diffferent road on my normal run and it ended up having this huge and I mean really steep hill which I powered up, first I was running, then jogging and then power walking to make it to the top, the hardest part was the breathing but it was worth the effort when I turned around to come back there was an awesome view of Mt. Hood. I love where I live! I can't wait to see it on a clear day. I also had two ladies tell me good job which was nice encouragement. Today I felt alot lighter on my feet than my last outdoor run, I'm pretty happy with myself.

I logged my distance on gmaps pedometer, I love this thing and found out I ran/walked 2.41 miles, around 40 minutes and I burned around 386 calories, I'm saying more though because of that hill. One of the best things though about running outside is that my 9 month old usually takes a nap, she loves it.

Well now off to get some lunch.

Husband's birthday card

This is a late post because my husband's birthday was on January 27th but I just realized I never posted the card I made for him. It's simple but it's something he loves. His favorite old car and 50 something (I forget the actual year) Buick. His favorite part is the grill and it's my favorite thing about the car too. So I wanted to have something that he really likes. I spent more money than I should have on the Chinese dinner and ice cream cake I got for that night so my gift to him was a certificate saying that next time he wants something on Craigslist (his favorite site) that I would drive to where ever it is and not complain. Pretty much anything he ever wants is somewhere far away and I never want to go. Of course the price had to be reasonable. So guess what he finds, the Buick, but for $1000 I had to say no. After a couple of days he finally dropped it, lol. I was thinking under $100 not $1000. So anyway here's the card.

You can't tell from the picture but there are two layers of the car one on the card and the other car pops off of the card with some foam stickers. I then used a classic car font for the wording. It's very simple but very personal.

Learning to sew and shower invitations!!

I've had a sewing machine now for probably 8 years and never did more with it than open the box and look in. Now that I have the time to craft and such I want to learn everything there is to learn and sewing is a big one. My mother-in-law was nice enough to come over this morning and go through the basics with me, threading the machine, the different knobs and actually sewing. I bought a few quilters quarters on sale the other day to play around with. Below is my creation, it really isn't anything  but I'll call it a place mat because it resembles one. It's really rugged but I was just getting the feel of the machine. Pretty happy though, I can't wait to make all kinds of things.

I also have been super busy with baby shower stuff. I finally got all 43 invitations done. Here they are. There are a few variations because these are true scrap invitations. 12 people got added after I bought the supplies so I had to improvise so 9 or so people get a double sided card that you just flip over for the info and most people get a card that flips open. There are lots of layers and details.

Well that's it for now. I'm just excited to finally be able to post these. I have to get back to work on more decorations and other things and a gift I'm making for someone elses shower that I will post after I've given it to her. For now have a great day and fun crafting.