A little late.....

but we finally had mom and dad over on Saturday for Father's Day. Dad has been down in the states so this was the first chance we had to give him his gift.

I made a very simple card. And inside I included this (pictured below) cute little gift card envelope that I found the pattern to on this blog http://www.kwernerdesign.com/blog/
She has some great videos that explain how she puts it together as well. Very simple and dad thought it was really cute.



Gift Card Envelope. I tied the ribbon around to keep it closed. It can just slide on and off. Again very easy.



Back of Gift Card Envelope:

Making Strawberry Jam....

finally! I have been saying for a few years now that I am going to make my own Strawberry jam. And this Saturday, with the help of mom, I had three batches and they are delicious!. I couldn't believe how simply it was.

To make Freezer Jam:


Gather ingredients: strawberries, sugar, certo and lemon juice.



Mash strawberries down and measure out (including the juice) 1 3/4 cups. Add 4 cups sugar and let stand for 10 mins (we stirred at about 5mins as it started to separate). Then we added 1 pouch of Certo (liquid is the best) and 2tbsps lemon juice and stir for 3 mins. Once done...thats it!



All you have to do is pour into containers. You leave containers out (covered) for 24 hours and then put in freezer.



They last for 3 weeks in the fridge and about 6months in the freezer. A batch makes about 5 jars. Oh and a tip never double your batches always do separate.

I love the jam on homemade fresh bread, texas toast or the best is over french vanilla ice cream....so yummy.

Anyways it was very easy - I hope to do more this season and give away. From those strawberries I bought (5L's) I still have enough berries to make another 2 batches and we had strawberry shortcake on Saturday night - it certainly doesn't take a lot of berries to make the jam.

If peaches are good this year I would love to try to make peach jam....but one step at a time.

Back From the Cottage....

... and feelin' oh so relaxed. Yep Fred and I went away for a few days to Mark & Rhonda's cottage up north (about an hour and a half from the house). We left Sunday late afternoon after having a busy weekend (youth girls sleepover for me, Fred away at a Father and Son camping trip) it was raining pretty hard but we didn't really care -- we were on vacation! I had never been to the cottage before so I was thrilled when we pulled up to the cottage and it looked like this:


We had a really good time - the cottage had this great wrap-around deck that had a great view of the lake. Though there were a lot of bugs and the weather wasn't as good as we had hoped we still were able to sit out on the deck and enjoy the sun, canoe, kayak, bbq, play games, eat (we ate so well!) and just plan relaxed.



The cottage doesn't have any hydro so we used a generator when needed and they had a propane frig and stove. The only thing I couldn't get use to was not having my fan. Fred tried so hard to get one to work for me - but no luck, so sleeping at night was kind of tough.

Here is a pick of Fred and Abby headed over to an island for some fishing:


And me kayaking - so much fun. This was my first time in so I stayed close (plus I didn't have a life jacket on yet) but the following day I went out and did pretty good - didn't want to come in but my arms were getting tired after an hour!


Abby loved it at the cottage as well - as you can see from the above pic she loved getting in the water. Though she kept running away from us and we thought she was going to have poison ivy after running through the woods.

Anyways we came back Thursday afternoon because it had started to rain and well I was tired of the bugs and no sleeping :) What can I say I'm a resort girl ;)

So we continued to relax last night and today Fred has a youth event and I have been able to do some scrapbooking - love that feeling relaxed helps me to get creative!

Just 2 layouts for the pets books - very quick but fun!



So vacation time is quickly coming to an end but we still have dinner and a movie planned for Saturday and hopefully a relaxing weekend before heading back to work!

Cards for Africa

So I continue to add to the cards I hope to sell at the farmer's market this summer. This will be our third year selling potatoes to put towards our missions trip to africa and I hope to help out with my cards. If not - its fun!

So here are two more I made up this evening. Lovin' this set of Hero Art's Stamps. The stamp set is called Friends.