Mojo

I think there is a chance I might get my scrapping mojo back.  I just did my kids' pages for the in-laws' Christmas Calender.  It was fun and I enjoyed making them.

Both were made with templates from Andrea Gold and paper and elements from Becki Kress.

Coconut Banana Bread with Lime Glaze

The Man With No Name's co-worker directed him to the BEST gluten free recipe for banana bread. It was perfectly dense, moist and delicious.

I was directed to a divine sounding* recipe for coconut banana bread with lime glaze.

*sounding - because I will never actually make the recipe to know if it tastes as good as it sounds.

And so I used both to make our own Gluten Free Coconut Banana Bread with Lime Glaze recipe. And our version makes two loaves!

Yes, there was only half of one loaf left to take a picture of.

We really did consume it that quickly.

Gluten Free Coconut Banana Bread with Lime Glaze
adapted from Gluten Free Mommy and Our Best Bites

Ingredients
1/4 C Quick-Cooking Oats (I just ground some old fashioned oats a little)
1/4 C Almond Flour (I used the pulp left over from making almond milk, dried it and ground it down to powder)
1/2 C Sweet Rice Flour (aka glutinous rice flour - which contains no gluten)
1 C Tapioca Flour/Starch
1 C Rice Flour
2 Tbs Flax Meal
3/4 C Brown Sugar
3/4 C Sugar
1 1/2 tsp Xanthum Gum
1 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Salt

6 Tbs Butter, melted and slightly cooled (to avoid cooking the eggs)
2 Eggs, whisked
1/2 C Yogurt, Plain or Lime flavoured
1/4 C Milk or Lime Juice
1 1/2 tsp Vanilla
3-4 Bananas, mashed

3/4 C Shredded Coconut

Topping
4 Tbs Shredded Coconut

Glaze
3/4 C Powdered Sugar
2 1/2 Tbs Lime Juice

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix together dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, mix together wet ingredients. Add wet mixture to dry mixture until just combined. Stir in the 3/4 c coconut.

Pour into two (2) greased/sprayed 9 x 5 loaf pans. Sprinkle each with 2 Tbs of coconut for topping. Bake for 55-60 minutes, covering after 40 minutes when the coconut topping is toasty. Cool the bread for 10 minutes in the pan than remove.

Whisk together powdered sugar and lime juice and drizzle/pour over both loaves. Cool another 15 minutes. Slice and devour!

No Jump Start

As anyone can tell, the card did not jump start my scrapping. I got a job I can do at home using my PhotoShop program. It's great, because it has paid for the program and the new computer we bought. It is also going to cover our Christmas last year and this year. It's not so great because it takes up my PhotoShop time, and I don't want to fiddle with my settings while I am working on a specific project. When no work is coming in I am ready for a break from PhotoShop.

To add to my list of excuses, in my last move I lost my scrapbooking list. That's my list of the specific pictures/events that I want to scrap, and then cross off when I have. It's gone and has left me feeling a little lost.

I have managed to make some wallpapers for "the man with no name" I can share. He has two monitors and likes to use them as the picture frames on his desk. I like to make them coordinated.

September Sun by Laura Alpuché Designs

February's Visiting Teaching Message

I haven't scrapped in a long time. To get back into the swing, I made another Visiting Teaching card.

Digi Keepsakes by Monica Evan

I do have hopes of getting some more scrapping done. I have a dream of a couple Shutterfly books, or whatever company I choose to go with. Of course, I have to make that decision first so that my pages are a perfect fit.

Visiting Teaching Card

Just a little something I made for the ladies I Visit Teach.

credit: Doreen Stolz' One Moment in Time
crown by LJD

And ACTION

This week I designed my own page. I don't mean I made the layout or chose my own elements. I mean I DESIGNED my own page.

Inspired by the colours the Little Gunner was wearing,


I chose my colours from the site I mentioned last week, Big Picture Scrapbooking. Using the shape tool in PhotoShop I created a grass and a tag.


Using 11 of the actions available from Atomic Cupcake, I created this!

Credits: ME!!

See what a little pristine chipboard, torn vellum, simple tear, fabric, old brass, stitch, cardboard, tea stain, sketched and painted, cutout, and crinkled action can get you? Thanks, Atomic Cupcake.

Have no fear. I do NOT intend to become a designer. I much prefer to use designers' kits for their colour combinations, paper designs, and element choices. I even like to use other people's layout ideas when I don't have any of my own.

Have you ever used an action?

Words

The Princess Pea is 3 and has an extensive vocabulary. She also makes up words to pretend she is speaking another language. When asked what her gibberish means she will give a translation. Yet, some words she never gets right, even after we say them. I told YTBN (yet to be named) that we would want to remember these so we wrote an email to ourselves. I lost the email and realized we needed a better way to remember. This is one of the reasons for scrap-booking.

The words on journaling strips was an easy decision. I also envisioned a profile picture of the Princess Pea and journaling explaining how she confused these words and couldn't even understand why we were correcting her and would often correct us. I choose the snazzy title, "The Things You Say." A google search got the better of me. I needed to know if there was a word to define what she was doing. When I saw what a nice definition it was, and how well it explained all of my journaling, I knew this was my new title. With the title placed I could see that a picture would clutter the page. It wasn't her face we were remembering anyway. It was the words. Therefore my page became one of only words. I think it worked very well.

credit: Cars Go Beep Beep by Becki Kress
staples by Traci Simms - Summer Shabby

I have an online friend that went camping, but forgot her camera. Using a camping kit, she made her scrap page anyway, with no pictures in the frames or on the mats. The journaling explained the events, including the missing camera. It was a wonderful layout that was fun to look at and preserved the memory. It demonstrated what scrap-booking is about.

Have you ever tried scrapping a picture-less page?