Therese's Crafty Cabana

So at the beginning of October, my husband and I went to Asheville for our second trip to the Biltmore Estate. We went in 2009, and absolutely loved it, but didn't have time to see everything. This trip we saw everything we missed last time, including all of the gardens and the Butler's tour.  I always recommend this place to everyone, it is so beautiful in the Blue Ridge Mountains, definately worth the trip! So, on to my Biltmore inspired project.  I had a bunch of pictures...of course!  And I wanted to use them all!!! But I could only pick my favorites and chose an explosion box to show case them. This is my first time making an explosion box, but I loved it! I used SVG Cuts Explosion Box set, but since I only have a 12x6 Cricut...I had to hand cut the actual boxes, using the template as a guide. I did cut the box cover out on my machine just fine though. For starters, I picked all of the pictures that I wanted to display in my box, I have a total of ...

Ok, so it's been fall for a while, but I always put up my fall decor after Halloween, since my place is always decked in Halloween goodness all of October.  So this was a picture taken on our way down the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina.  I have a project inspired from this trip with the pictures I took from this trip coming soon... Stay tuned!

Trendy Twine has a challenge where you have to use a pumpkin or Jack O' Lantern and some Twine on the project. For my project I used SVG Cuts Pick a Pumpkin kit to create this great candy holder...It just needs candy...I ate it all :o I did some embossing on all sides of the pumpkin, and I used K&Company's Halloween paper pad to add different papers to wrap around it.  I also used different Halloween ribbons that I got at Michaels and some black and orange Trendy Twine as well as some wire around the stem. Have a look see: I wanted to be able to pick up the pumpkin by the stem without the lid falling off, so I added adhesive backed black velcro dots that I got in the craft department at Walmart. The candy corn is aslo from SVG Cuts, their Vintage Halloween Party Bag kit. Happy Spooks to you!

These are some party favors I made using some of SVG Attic's designs. I made a girl favor and a boy favor, guess it's pretty obvious which is which.   I used the Mad Tea Party set to make the mad hatter hat...only I made the base flat because I wanted it to fit over the rosette with no gaps since the "favor" is hiding under the hat.  The witch hat was made with a freebie from SVG Cuts and I added stars that I found in my MTC shapes library and I added sequins on them.  I added a piece of wire to the top of the hat with a star for some extra fun. The base of both are from the banner rosette in the Mad Tea Party set. Then to finish it off I added a scrap piece of orange and black cardstock that was already in the shape of a triangle along with some purple and black ruffled ribbon that I got at Michaels. I used K & Company's Halloween papers and Recollections black paper.  One side of the had has a flower decorate...

So this weekend I had my sister Clare over and we had a crafty weekend.  We made two of Mary's Elmhurst Hollow's Haunted Houses over at SVG Cuts. Now, Mary is a crazy talented SVG designer, and I absolutely love all of her SVGs, but I have to say, making these houses were a  blast!  There are so many things you can add to a haunted house, and we used some extras in the set, such as the bats, but we also used some elements from other sets.  I'll link you to those if you want to know which ones as we come across them....Scroll to enter our haunted abode!  So the two houses together look like a little village, but they are so totally different.  The colorful is my sisters, she picked the papers out and added her ghosts and other embellishments. All of the SVGs are from SVG Cuts I used the ghosts from the Spooky Silhouettes  set. The spiders are from the Dreadful Halloween Cupcake Wrappers set. The spider webs are a freebie from...

I made my sister this birthday card using SVG Cuts Edisto Island Cards SVG kit which I think is so summery and fun.  This style of card is called a lever card because the design (in this case the butterfly) is on the cover of the card, but when you open it, the butterfly becomes part of the inside of the card. Her birthday was in August, so it definitely worked for the season, plus I thought the butterfly turned out so pretty with the colors.  I actually designed the papers that I used to make the butterfly with in Adobe Photoshop, mixing greens and blues until I liked it.  Then the black ink around the edges really helped it pop out.  I used blue twine from Trendy Twine to wrap around the butterfly outline. A few silver brads inside the flowers finish it off... Oh, that and glitter... Stickles to be exact.  I just love Star Dust , but I just discovered Crystal Ice Stickles , and that glitter is bigger chunks of the Star Dust glitt...

Today my husband and I had the day off together, so we decided to make it a homemade kind of a day.  My husband makes the best Chicken and Rice Soup with his simple recipe which consisted of: 1 whole chicken 8 carrots 1 entire head of celery (leaves and all) 1/2 white onion salt and pepper to taste First he makes the broth, so the carrots, celery and onion in this part will be discarded after the broth is made. Combine the leaves and complete bottom part of the celery (leave the good parts for the soup), 4 carrots and 1/4 of the onion into a large pot and fill with water to about 1" below the rim.  Bring it to a boil on level 5, and then simmer on level 2 for about 31/2 hours. Now for the real work, time to strain the chicken and vegetables from the broth.  We poured the broth through a strainer into another 5 quart pan that we had sitting in the sink just in case there was splashing.  Next, allow the chicken and vegetables...