Fresh Blueberry Muffins

I went to the 99cent store and they had some amazingly good looking, 99cent berries!


I bought 3 packs of blueberries and set to work.

To make the best muffins you need these ingredients

* 2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
* 1 cup and 2 tablespoons white sugar
* 3/4 teaspoon salt
* 1 tablespoon baking powder
* 1/2 cup vegetable oil
* 1-1/2 egg
* 1/2 cup milk
* 2.5 cups fresh blueberries
* 2-1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon

First mix together the eggs, milk, and oil.
Then mix in baking powder, salt, and sugar.

Next, slowly mix in the flour. Dough will be thick!
Fold in 2 packs blueberries (about 2 cups).



Pour them in a muffin tray!

Finally, once they are in the mold you sprinkle cinnamon and sugar on top. I also placed extra blueberries on top of the mix.

You can make the traditional crumb topping, but I opted not to to keep it more healthy. This makes a perfect 12 muffins.



YUMMMMMM!

Stamp from a Photo

For the Other One's birthday I knew I wanted to make my own card. I decided to stamp him on the card.

I found a photo that I wanted to use. I opened it in photoshop and took out all the color. I adjusted brightness and contrast until I had an almost all black and white image.

Then, with a pencil, I traced the outline of the image that I wanted to use, and also traced over details that I wanted to transfer onto the stamp. Then I transferred the pencil onto the stamp.

I carved out the places I wanted to remain white when I stamped.

And here is the stamp!


Here is the front of the card. I drew on a birthday hat for this card.

Birthday Doughnuts

It's the Other One's birthday today. I spent last night and this morning making him doughnuts from this recipe :

Krispy Kreme recipe.

I've been terrible at documenting my cooking lately. Not enough photos or the step by step process. I've been busy with the end of the school year coming. Also, I'm going away for 4 days (New Jersey) and I've been trying to wrap things up with my craft projects because my mom is staying at the house to watch The Wild Thing.



I'll be missing the last two days of the school year which I am VERY sad about. I love this time of the year because I often reflect about the things I've learned over the year. I think I've learned to be less serious about things. I've learned to recognize when I'm getting stressed out and stop it. I've learned to observe more. Mentoring someone has really helped me become a better teacher. I think a lot more about what I'm doing because I'm trying to teach someone how to be a good teacher and sometimes I feel like I don't even know how to be one. I think I've become a much better person this year at least. Today was the last day of teaching with my final Winkle (a person I've come to know as one of my best friends) and that makes me sad too.

On to the Doughnuts!
Like I said - Terrible documentation

The dough rising a first time
After I cut them. They rose again.

After frying
My favorite looking doughnut hole
After decorating
If I was to do this recipe again, I would let the dough rise more much longer than I did. I would also buy a doughnut cutter instead of using a knife. Overall, 3 out of 5 stars.

Bike and Bird

A couple new ATC's that I've worked on.

I had to do a bike. I made it raining. I love this one. I wanted to keep it.

And a quail!

Happy 4th

Its my little's friend's birthday coming up and we can't go to the party, but we did make her this height cart. Most 4 year olds I know want to know how tall they are on a minute by minute basis, so this chart includes a Sharpie for mom and dad to mark the date and height with a mark.

The Other One drew the picture, and I painted it.
Day 1, sky

Day 2, 1st coat of the bodyDay 3, final body coat

Day 4, all the rest
Hopefully, she digs it. She can't get any taller than 5'5" before she outgrows it...

Lovely Quote

Today I received a comment on my blog that surprised me! It was from someone that inspires me to create things. I've been following the

blog belle and burger.

for a while now, and she held a giveaway for a book in which you had to answer the question "Why do you love to make things?".

"Belle" chose my answer as one of her favorites! This was more rewarding than winning the book, of course. See her

post about the winner and my quote here.

Sunshine!

I created a sun stamp to make some wrapping paper to send my

Little Miss Sunshine dotee.

The stamp process.

Stamped wrapping paper.

Sending my whales

I worked on packing up some swaps today. One was the whale swap that I've been posting baout lately.

This is the plush killer whale I made. He is Inuit inspired.

I stamped some of my own wrapping paper to wrap the whale and stationary set in. They are different colors and there is one whale on each one that is spouting.

My partner also like big flower hair clips and vintage colors so I made her this surprise :
ps. my face looks crazy in the corner!

Octopus and Dish

This mad octopus will be in the shop as soon as I can get it up.
I love how the blue created a marbled affect when fired. It was unintentional, yet wonderful because it reminds me of seaweed.

He is crying/sweating.

The back.


And this is a change dish I made for the Other One. He requested green with browns.

A closeup. Most of the sections look like this. I dig it.

I added little plastic feet to the bottom so it wouldn't scratch the table.

Call me Ishmael

As I said a few swaps ago, I am doing a swap that is dedicated to whales. I made a whale stamp and I decided to do Moby Dick inspired stationary.

I went and bought some brayers and block printing ink, and set to work. Here is my work station.

My first practice print. Worked out alright!
I used this really slick, not flat plate for the inking. Not the best idea, but it worked for this time. I mixed some white and purple ink for the whales.
These are all the finished pieces. Lots of envelopes, cards, and mini cards.
Depending on the type of paper, the images turned out differently. Some were more inky (the shiny paper ones), and some were perfect (cardstock). These are my favorites :
And the ships! Can't forget the red ships, mate!

Finished Napkin Rings/Bird

Finally these retched napkin rings are done! All 50 of them.
The newest ones turned out a more solid color, which I like.

But the old, reglazed rings turned out differently than I expected. Some, not so nice. But some turned out amazing. Like this one!
A view from above. I had to leave the tops and bottoms unglazed so that they wouldn't stick to the kiln when baking. I would have preferred to have them all covered... but oh well!

Another thing that finished in ceramics was my bird! This will be in the shop once I get some outside photos this weekend, and also fix the tail. The longest feathers were broken off, but its definitely fixable! A preview -