Scotch Eggs

Hello blog friends!

Welcome back to my blog.

Today I'm going to show you something that

I made for our Labor Day picnic.

When we moved into this house, we had a 

big party and invited some of the neighbors.

The family that lived behind us at the time were 

very "into" their Scottish heritage and they brought

some Scotch eggs.  They went pretty quickly and I never

did get a chance to try one.

I've always wanted to try making them and finally

decide that I'd just do it.

So here we go.......

Here are the ingredients,

hard boiled eggs, flour, sausage, beaten eggs and bread crumbs.

They really are pretty simple to make.

First roll the hard boiled egg in flour, then cover it with

sausage.  I found it easiest to form a patty of sausage in the 

palm of my hand, place the egg in the center and work the sausage

up around the egg.

Dip it into the beaten egg then cover with bread crumbs.

Put them into a pan with hot oil and cook until the 

sausage is browned and cooked through.

Here is what it looks like once they are cooked and sliced open.

Here are my Scotch Eggs all ready for company.

Mine aren't as pretty as the ones our friends brought to the 

party all those years ago, but next time they'll look better.

After all, practice makes perfect.

As you can see, I did have a little trouble with a couple of them.

The sausage split open during the cooking process.

I'm not exactly sure why this happened, but I suspect that I didn't 

have to sausage pressed together well enough in a few spots.

My family really enjoyed having them and I found them 

quite tasty.
The one thing that I learned is that they are almost like a meal.

Unfortunately, you can't cut the eggs down in size before you 

cook them, they are quite large, between the whole egg and all the

sausage.  I felt that they were a bit much for appetizers, unless

people share them, which some of my family did.

But, all in all, I'd say they were a success.

I think they could also make a nice breakfast food.

Thanks for popping in today and spending some time

here.  I hope you've been inspired in some way

and maybe you'll give these a try.
Or maybe you'll try something else that

you've been wanting to try.

Until next time,

try something new and different!

Tree and Hearts

Hi and welcome back to my blog.

Sara's bridal shower is over with now and

I'd like to show you this project I made for the shower.

Here's how it came about,

I used to work in a couple paint your own pottery studios

and loved the idea of the plates we used to make for people to

sign.  There are special markers that you use on ceramics

that are permanent once they are baked in an oven.

I have made them before and wanted one for the shower.

I went to the studio and designed and painted the plate.

Two days before the shower, when I was supposed to pick it up,

I got a call from the owner, my plate had cracked in the kiln.

I know this happens sometimes, but have never had it happen

to me before.  So now I needed a new idea.

I went to the craft store and found a shadow box frame and

little wooden hearts.

I found a tree that I liked in my Silhouette library and cut that

with silver vinyl and the wording with purple vinyl.

I put the vinyl pieces onto purple card stock and into 

the frame.

I used purple and gray paint for the little hearts, 

as those are their wedding colors.

I chose some coordinating colored fine line markers.

At the shower everyone signed a heart to add to the

tree.

I glued all the hearts around the tree.

I'm very happy with how this turned out.

Especially since I had to come up with the idea

and make it in such a short period of time.

I think Sara will love how it turned out too.

Thanks for stopping by today,

I hope you'll come back soon.

Until then,

happy crafting!

First painting

Hi!  How's everyone doing?

Welcome to my blog.

I have always been a little in love with watercolors,

in fact when my kids were little, I took a class in 

watercolors through adult ed in our town.  

I didn't really have time to dedicate to it and after

the course was done, I didn't pursue it anymore.

Recently, I have had a resurgence of that interest and 

decided that I want to do more watercoloring.
I have been doing it in combination with stamping,

but not creating anything on my own.

Unfortunately, there isn't a course available to me right now,

but the internet is.  I've watched a lot of videos showing different

techniques.

(Let me apologize for the poor color in my pictures today.
The paper is not as yellow as it looks, it's actually much

whiter than it shows in these pictures.)

One day I was playing around with some watercolor paints,

thinking I'd make a background for some cards. 

When I looked at this, I could see hydrangeas, 

so I put it aside with the intention of figuring out how

to make it into just that.
I watched a video showing how to draw a hydrangea

and got the basic idea.

I practiced a little bit with some pencil and with great

trepidation, I picked up my Micron pen and put it to 

paper.  Once I got going on it, it wasn't so scary anymore.
It did take quite a while to put all those little flowers and leaves

on there, but it was worth it.

I'm fairly pleased with how it turned out, since

it was my first attempt at something like this.
Of course I have my criticisms of it and yes, I know

I'm really hard on myself,

but the leaves should have been bigger and the

shape a little different, fatter I think.

I would have liked to see the individual

"bunches" more defined and I could have been 

more consistent with the size of the flowers within each bunch.

Like I said, I'm pretty critical of myself, but 

that's how we learn, right?
Over all, I do like it and I'll be trying something

like this again.  But I do want to try some other

things too.

Any of you into watercolor?
Have you taken classes?
Learned from vidoes?
Just played around and learned that way?

Thanks for stopping in,

I hope you'll come again soon.

Until next time,

try something new!

Note the links are only to give a reference so you can

see what the products are.
I didn't necessarily purchase from these sites,

except where specified,

and you may find better prices elsewhere,

I am in no way promoting any particular site.

Savosaurus

Hi all!

Remember this card from a few posts ago?

Today I'm going to show you what I made that 

little guy for his birthday.

I decided to make him a bank, so I went to the store

and got a glass block made for crafting.

I found a free coloring page and use that to trace 

this dinosaur and all it's parts with my

Silhouette Studio Designer Edition software.

I then cut it out with my Silhouette using a couple different colors of 

vinyl.  I used black and silver and layered them.

I cut a slit in the plug and the bank was ready to go.

Oh, except that it needed a bit of money inside.

I added some coins, then my kids added some

too.  It was a nice little start for his savings.

He loved the bank when he opened it and 

any cash that he received he put right into the bank.

Maybe I should have gotten the bigger glass block.

By the time he was finished with his gifts, the bank was full

of random cash!

I love making something a little different for 

gifts and I think a bank is a great idea 

for any kid.

I'm so glad you stopped by today.

Thanks, I hope you have been inspired in some

way and will come again soon.
Until next time,

have fun creating!

Pinata

Hey everybody!
How are things going in your world?

I've been keeping busy with wedding things,

as well as a bunch of other activities.

One of the things I was busy for a while

with was a pinata.

Jaryd and Sara thought it would be fun

to have a pinata at their wedding and asked if I 

would make one for them.

Then Sara came to me and asked if I would

make it for Jaryd's stag party instead.

Of course I agreed.

I have only made one other pinata and that

was for Jaryd's 5th birthday, I made it so strong

that even the fathers couldn't break it open.

They wanted this one just as strong.

I started out by getting a 24" balloon and

blowing it up.

I then mixed flour and water together to make

a "paste"  I dipped torn news paper strips into

the paste and put them onto the balloon.
Jaryd helped me tie some twine around the whole

thing, so it would be able to hang.

I made sure to cover all parts of the balloon.

We hung it from a nail on our deck to dry, 

which worked, except it cracked and I needed to do

a bit of repair work.

I applied a couple more layers and added more twine.

I wanted to be sure this baby didn't just fall.

After a couple more layers applied and dried,

it was time to remove the balloon, 

so I pulled it out a bit and cut a hole into it.

Then I cut a hole in the pinata so I could take the

balloon out and put the

prizes inside.

Here's the poor balloon that was inside.

Here are the prizes that I loaded into the pinata.

When I went shopping for them, I just wandered around

a couple bargain stores and picked up some fun 

prizes.

I also included a few "special" prizes. 

These had this note on them.

These were also for special prizes.

Yep, that's a picture of me! LOL

That pinata was pretty full.

I put the cut out piece back onto the pinata and

covered it with another couple layers of paper

and paste.

Now it was time to paint it.

I took it outside and gave it a couple good coats

of spray paint.

We live in the Buffalo, NY area and we

are big Buffalo Bills fans, so they wanted the 

pinata to be made to look like

Tom Brady so they could

Bash Brady.
This is what it looked like with his picture on it.

It took a bit of figuring, but I finally

printed the picture in 4 parts, pieced them 

together into one big picture and used

Mod Podge to adhere it to the pinata.

I also printed and cut out a deflated football

and Mod Podged it to the other side.

They loved how the pinata turned out.

The plan was to charge a buck to bash Brady 

at the stag.  

This was prize #1 for whoever picked up those

Carefree panty liners.

This was prize #2

It's a bottle opener that has a magnetic

bottom to catch the bottle caps and a 

six pack of Labatts beer.

Prize #3 was a tee shirt, a Buffalo magnet, a Buffalo

coaster and hot sauces.

Everyone loved the pinata,

but it didn't raise as much money as we hoped.

Brian, the best man, had a wiffle bat to hit it with,

but had brought a real bat along too.

He knew how strong the one I made for Jaryd's

birthday was, because he was there and still remembers

it.  He figured if they couldn't break it with the wiffle bat,

they would break it with the real bat.

Unfortunately, the first one to hit the pinata, saw the real

bat, put down the wiffle bat and used the real

bat on it right away.  Needless to say, it didn't last long,

with a bunch of guys hitting it with a real bat.

But they did have fun with it and that's what 

counts.

Thanks for stopping by today,

Have you ever made a pinata?
It's easy and fun, give it a try.

Come again soon,

you never know what you'll find on

Kristie Kreates.

Beauty and Plattsburg

Hello and welcome back.

Today I have a couple more layouts for the 

wedding scrapbook.

Sara's Mom is a photographer, so they went to visit her and she took

some engagement pictures of them.  They invited our daughter

along and pictures were taken of  brother and sister.
This layout is some of my favorite pictures from that shoot.

You can't see it in the picture, but those kind of smudged 

areas are there for a reason.  The entire sheet of card stock

is embossed with words about family.
I inked over the ones that I wanted to stand out.

At the bottom is says
"Family is Forever"

and through out the page brother and sister are highlighted.

Jaryd is Kelsie's little brother, but he is hardly that.  She calls

 him her big little brother and she is his little big sister.

This certainly fits since he is almost a foot taller than she is.

I just love these pictures of them together.

This layout is a title page, of sorts, about that trip.

Plattsburgh is where her Mom lives and 

the pictures are from Places......

......Pumpkins, People and more.
There will be more layouts with pictures from that

trip and the fun they had together.

Thanks for stopping by today.

Come back again soon, you never know

what you'll find on

Kristie Kreates!

Dino-mite!

Hi Everyone!
Today I have a card to show you.
I made this for a little guy who absolutely
LOVES dinosaurs.

The background is one from my stash.
I made it with alcohol inks and glossy card stock.
I seldom use any kind of sticker, but when I found
some dinosaur stickers in my stash, I knew I
had to use this one for Lennon.
The "Happy Birthday" was stamped with
Staz-On black ink.

Inside I used some of my alphabet stamps to
stamp this sentiment.
I think he'll love this card.

Thanks for stopping by today,
come again soon.
Until then
be creative!