Category Archives: Pie’s Cricut

Card Making and Cooking; When Two Perfect Worlds Collide!

Posted on June 23, 2011 by apieceoflifespie

This week is VBS for my three-year old! While volunteering in the classrooms, I volunteered to bring a dish for one of the nights for the volunteers. Last night was my night and I made a recipe that I more or less made up with a little help from our local Trader Joe’s.

Since the dish would appear non- descript, I decided to make a fun “calling card” for the dish. Apparently the dish was a huge hit, and was gobbled up in no time flat. So if you are looking for a fun and yummy dish to take to your next potluck, here is an idea!

Chili Corndog Bake

Ingredients:

1 Box of cornbread mix (follow the directions of the box to make)
2 packages of hotdogs (16 dogs) * I used turkey dogs
1 cups of shredded mild cheddar cheese
2 cups of mozzarella cheese. You can substitute jack cheese. I like mine super cheesy that melts smooth and creamy so I use mozzarella.
3 cans of chili with beans of your choice. * I used turkey chili with beans.
Diced red onions (optional)
Diced jalapeno for garnish (optional)

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees
Grease a large casserole dish or aluminum throw-away bake and serve dish with oil spray.
Empty contents of chili cans into the dish.
Cut hot dogs in threes length wise and dice into small pieces and place in dish.
Add 2 cups of shredded mozzarella or jack cheese to dish.
Combine all ingredients and spread evenly.
Sprinkle top with 1 1/2 cup of shredded mild cheddar cheese.
Follow the directions on cornbread box and make cornbread in a seperate bowl.
Spread cornbread evenly onto chili mixture.
Place in oven and bake for 45-55 minutes or until a toothpick comes clean.

Card:

Base: I cut a piece of white cardstock down to 12 inches wide and 8 inches long and scored it to fold in half (new measurements 6×4)
Paper: I cut down a piece of design paper from Die Cuts with a View, Summer Stacker to 6×2 2 1/2.
Cricut cartridges: Simply Charmed (Shadow setting on hotdog and hot dog bun and mustard set at 3 inches)
Cricut cartridges: Schoolbooks Plantain. Typed in the words “chili corndog bake” at 1 inch setting.
Stamps: Peachy Keen Big Eyes Boy
Stamp Ink: Stampin’ Up Classic Black
Ribbon: Used some scrap I had.
I attached the hot dog with dimensional.

Birthday Card for a Boy!

Posted on June 17, 2011 by apieceoflifespie

For some reason making cards with more of a girl theme comes easy, but when it comes to a boy I really had to get my thinking cap on. Here is an idea that I created for an upcoming birthday boy!

The Card:

(Click on Image to Enlarge)

Card: I found the pre-made plain white card in the $ bin at Michael’s. They came in packs of six with envelopes.

Paper: I used a piece of textured paper scrap for the solid color on the card and used additional scrap for the outfit, hair, club, and dinosaur. For the striped piece of paper, I used Die Cuts with a View, Summer Stacker. You can find that at Joanne’s. For the glitter #4, I used Die Cuts with a View Glitter Stacker.

Ribbon: I used some ribbon I got through the ABC catalogue about 4 years ago.

Cricut Cartridges: Paper Dolls (Cave Boy setting) and Sweet Treats (for the # 4).

Stamps: For the face of the cave boy’s face, I used Peachy Keen stamps (Big Eyes). For the “Birthday Fun”, I used The Pink Stamper, Simply Sweet Occasions.

For ink, I used Stampin’ Up Classic Black.

* I used the My Pink Stamper Faux Chipboard concept (which I love) for the # 4!

* For the 3-D look, I used dimensional under the cave boy and the dino.

Card Making! My New Found Fav!

Posted on June 15, 2011 by apieceoflifespie

Well I started getting crackin’ at the whole figuring out my Cricut Expressions and I have to say I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE IT! Here is one of my most recent projects I made.

The Card:

Paper: Michale’s

Tulle: Joann’s

Stamp: The Pink Stamper

Cricut Cardrige – Sweet Treats

( I made the crown doing a quasi chip board method that I learned on The Pink Stamper’s Video Blog)

Scrap Page:

Paper: Michaels

Tulle: Joann’s

Cricut Cartridge: Story Book

Life’s Cowgirl Theme Birthday Party on a Budget!

Posted on May 6, 2011 by apieceoflifespie

My oldest just turned 3 and she had a fascination with Jessie, from Toy Story, and she requested a Jessie and Bullseye themed party. I thought, “Not a problem” until I found out that to just limit the party swag to just those two characters was going to be tricky if I was to buy anything commercially and stay on a resonable budget.

I took matters into my own hands and started doing my homework and managed to be able to throw a cute and on budget themed birthday party that looked like a good amount of money was thrown at it.

For invitations, I had a friend that is a graphic artist design me a custom invite that looked like a movie stub that I could sent the file to Costco Photo and have two invitations printed out on a 4×6 photo. I then found a plain primary colors note card with envelope set at Target for $3 and I printed out directions and other important information on those that the invitation could not support.

Made to be able to print on a 4x6 photo then cut into two invites

For decorations, I found a Cricut cartridge on Ebay that had all the Toy Story characters that I could manipulate for my benefit to make my own decorations (I bought it for $23 band new in the box and sold it one month later via Ebay for $26). I made cupcake toppers, banners, and accents to table settings.

Banner

I went to a local feed store (which was a fun side-trip with the kids since they had a few farm critter residence that were fun to meet) and found out that I could rent out bails of hay for $6 that I used for seating and ambience. I added banners and bandana material to spruce it up.

On advise from a friend, I decided to put my effort on decorations this event and buy pre-made cupcakes. Albertson’s has a wonderful chocolate cupcake that was topped with delectable fudge icing and mini chocolate chips. I purchased 36 cupcakes for about $20 dollars.

I raided the Michael’s dollar bin and lucked out on finding markers and crayons that were Toy Story themed. I did the same at Target’s dollar bin and found the tin buckets for the goodie bags and place settings.

I found bandanas and cowboy hats at Oriental Trading Company and sheriff pins on Ebay for the goodie bags.

I order my mylar balloons off of Amazon and had them filled while I was picking up regular balloons for only $1. The total savings I had on the mylar balloons was $6 a balloon.

For eating areas, I opted not to rent table and chairs sand I borrowed a couple of kiddie picnic tables from friends and covered them with butcher paper and a bandana material table runners and secured with raffia to add a more “rustic” feel. I found the material at a fabric store on sale and used my pinking sheers to make the table runners. I went the no-sew approach. I added the mini tins filled with the markers and crayons that I enhanced with sheriff stars to each place setting. This was a built in craft idea for the kids. Now they could color on the table using the butcher paper.

I did have a jolly jump that I got for $64 for 10 hour period.

As far as food, it was a party that served lunch so we stuck with dogs and burgers and the typical side dishes of chips, veggie platter and potato salad.

For thank you notes, I recycled the banners I made for the party by simply adding a back to them and tieing together with ribbon. When I was at Costco picking up my invitations, I asked for a pack of their envelopes and used those to mail them in. I got a lot of feedback that everyone loved the thank-you notes!

It was a bit time-consuming, but at the end of the day I saved close to $300.00 by cutting these corners and getting creative. I had an attendance of around 35 which included about 13 kids. I only spent $350.00 and that also included food and beverages (I did offer sparkling wine and beer to the adults).

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