Cards for Co-workers

These are the mini-cards 2"x3" that I use business cards for. The top card is for a new friend. I pressed the edges of the blue paper on an ink pad. The A has pink stones on it (although hard to see the color). The bottom card is also for a new friend that I got to work with earlier in the week. I just did simple squares and wrote out her name with my favorite font.

Another co-worker asked me to make a card for her to send to her grandmother for Thanksgiving. She gave me some ideas of what she wanted and the phrase. I used materials that I had already at home and this is what I came up with. I had a die-cut of a leaf that I traced on the orange paper. The edges ended up being white so I went back with a marker and traced the edges.

Pumpkin Pie Bread

This is not a picture of my bread, but how can you do a post without a picture?! I had so many good comments on this bread, that I thought I'd share it.

I thought that it would be a yummy, fall recipe to try, so I looked around at a couple places to come up with a good recipe. You can find the recipe I used (for the most part) at allrecipes.com. Check it out here. I made one change which was a suggestion in the comments -- instead of 3 cups of white sugar, I did 2 cups white and 1 cup brown. It was delicious!

Since it made two loaves, I also decided to do one loaf with nuts. It was a success too!

Calligraphy Project

Using a light box is the easiest way to do a large project. You just have to make the templates and then set each envelope on top. It's way easy!

You can see the lines through the paper so that I can write, but then it's gone once you take it off the box.

Here's the template and my calligraphy pen. This pen's been with me for almost 10 years! I took a class my 2nd year of teaching because I needed an outlet and had very few friends. It's been a profitable skill!

Here's the interior envelope.

My poor fingers are sore as I've been cranking these out this weekend. I had only 2 weeks to get the 83 done so it was very tight. Hopefully they are just what they wanted!

Look at these savings!

We had an awesome shopping experience over the last week or so and I had to share how great we did! I was specifically looking for items to donate for a food bank. My office was taking up $5 in cash or in a donation of food and then you could wear jeans to work. I decided to try my best to maximize the product I could buy with $5. Guess how much I got?!! I spent just over $5 and got almost $20 worth of items!!!

Out of these four receipts, there was a total of $140.83 in products and a savings of $85.14. That means that we saved 60% on these purchases.

The best savings were on the Kroger receipt --67% savings -- spent $20.49 for $60.87 worth of items.

Hope this is an inspiration for doing a little hard work in gathering coupons and staying up on the sales!

Trunk-R-Treat

Our church, for the first time ever, had a Trunk-R-Treat on Saturday, Oct. 30. We had the walk in the morning and then had our afternoon/early evening filled with setting up and helping out at the event. Our best buddy Judy was the one responsible for the idea for our trunk, but was not able to be there because her mom was ill. We tried our best and this is what we got:

Aren't I just the cutest?!

Barry doesn't seem too excited to be here.

We also had a chili cook-off and some games for kids to play. There was a jumpy thing, too. All in all, it was a pretty good time and we had lots of kids show up.