Good morning/afternoon/or evening!  Casharina here…and I’m so excited to be bringing you another Product Spotlight.  Aren’t these posts so fun?!  I know before I became a part of the Shabby Artist Team I loved getting to see the inspiration pages from the kits I had, or was considering purchasing.  It’s fun to see what others can do with the same elements, papers, and flowers but still create pages that are so unique and imaginative.

Today I’m spotlighting Autumn Chic…and this gorgeous kit will be ON SALE at the Shabby Shoppe for only $4.75 (for a limited time)

I know some of you aren’t getting to enjoy the beautiful weather of fall, but we have been and I am definitely trying to soak it all up.  I can’t wait to go camping and sit by the fire without having a heat stroke!  The colors in this beautiful kit are perfect for fall pages, or everyday pages that need the deeper, brighter colors of the season.  As you can see for my inspiration page, I’ve created a layout focusing on my little girl and her “reading habits.”  She’s so funny!  I loved the bright bold colors; they just added the perfect touch to the page!

 Let’s see what kind of inspiration the girls from the creative team can give you today.  First up we have a gorgeous page from Kylie.  Her use of the papers to create the perfect little banner, and all of her ribbons are an excellent way to make use of the beautiful elements included in Autumn Chic.

  Next up we have a beautiful page from Rosy.  I absolutely love the way she’s featured the alpha letter “A” for her little girls name, isn’t it the perfect touch.  Her stitching on the ribbon and paper circles are also a great example of the beautiful papers in the Autumn Chic collection.

Last, but certainly not least, we have a gorgeous layout created by Kim.  I love how she’s included the flower throughout her entire spread.  The tenderness you can feel in this page is portrayed through the photograph as well as the flawless use of flower clusters.  They’re a wonderful addition to the girly-ness of this page.

Thanks for stopping by the blog!  Join Kylie on Thursday for your October projectSCRAP templates.

CasharinaProduct Spotlight, Uncategorized 1 Comment

Pork, pineapples and rice…Yum!

 Okay well it’s me again, Casharina, bringing you another Food Friday post!  Although you know I love to do anything in the crock pot, but when the weather is warm, I love to bring out the grilling foods and this is one of our new favorites!  It’s a pretty easy one too, and can be cooked on the grill, or inside on the stove, your preference.  The first time we had this was while we were camping with friends.  I was a little weary that my kids wouldn’t love it, or us for that matter (we’re VERY boring eaters! LOL!) …but to my surprise my whole family likes it!  So, let’s get started.

Ingredients:

• ½ small onion
• 1lb stew pork pieces (I try to buy them when they’re on sale, and stick them in the freezer.)
• 1 each: green, yellow, red, and orange pepper (These can also be prepped ahead of time and placed in the freezer.  I have also found that Save-A-Lot carries a small frozen bag of these ingredients and it works GREAT, and they’re CHEAP, much cheaper than buying fresh, unless you’ve got a garden!!)
• BBQ sauce (your favorite flavor…I use Kraft Original)
• 2 cups of rice (Instant is what I use, brown rice works great too.)
• 1 can of diced pineapple (I usually buy “chunks” and then cut the chunks into smaller pieces.  I use about 3 rings and then I divvy the rest up for the girls’ lunches the next day.) Reserve some of the juice from the can for the sauce.

Preparation:

• Cut EVERYTHING into small bite size pieces.
• This includes the already small pork pieces, it just taste better to have everything on the smaller size.  I usually cut the pork pieces in half and trim off as much of the fat as possible.
• Dice onion, peppers and pineapple into small pieces as well.

I chose to purchase enough to make two meals out of the ingredients and went ahead and chopped each of the peppers and onion, placed them into a large freezer safe bag and laid it flat in the freezer to use at a later time.  When using ingredients from the freezer the veggies won’t take as long to cook before they start becoming soft so be careful when cooking them.  Also there will be more liquid in the pan as they will have ice pieces, it’s fine, no worries!

Hard parts done, now it’s time to cook!

• Place your pork a pan. If you’re cooking on the stove your standard kitchen pan is fine, OR if you decide to use the grill/bbq, an aluminum pan or other grill-safe pan should be used.
• Add a little BBQ sauce to the mix – enough to keep it moist and some of the pineapple juice from the can.  You don’t want it too wet but you want the meat to take in the flavors, so add a little at a time during the cooking process.
• Okay, begin your rice (seperately).  Like I said, I usually use the instant 5-minute rice and it works great.  If you are using something that takes longer, you may want to start it a little earlier and follow your prefered method!  I use a 4 serving size of rice for this amount of meat & veggies.
• Once the meat is thoroughly cooked add the veggies.  Continue cooking/stirring and keep an eye on it so that it doesn’t scorch.
• After the veggies are done, you are too!! YAY!  Now you can choose to either mix the rice in and eat, or spoon it over the rice.  I like to mix and eat because I feel like it goes a little further that way.  My hubby adds more BBQ sauce right on top.  Either way it’s DELICIOUS, and definitely one of our family favorites!!

And here is your FREE 4×6 recipe card.  You can CLICK HERE to download the card…or simply click the image below! Enjoy!

Thanks for checking in with the Blog today…we’ll see you all on Monday for the Layout of the Week.  Have a lovely weekend!

CasharinaFood Stuff, Free (not desktops), Uncategorized 2 Comments

Good Monday Morning!  Casharina here bringing you another layout of the week post!  This week we’ve had SO many gorgeous layouts to choose from.  It was very inspiring and I’ve added a lot of them to my favorites file.  But at the same time, it made my choice SO much more difficult.  Too bad I only get to choose one…and after TONS of consideration I chose Rainbows by kris_t.

Not only is this layout absolutely stunning, but it also shares a greater message.  Her kiddos made these beautiful rainbows to send to a little girl who is sick in the hospital who hopes to receive a rainbow from everyone in the world. How precious is that?  And, the page was inspired by Beckie’s recent rainbow-inspired post; it couldn’t have come at a more perfect time!

Isn’t the cluster of brilliant colored flowers, buttons and other elements just superb?  You all know what a sucker I am for clusters and this is just fantastic.  I love how she was able to make the cluster flow down the entirety of the page, it’s perfect and really helps give meaning to the pictures!  I heart it!!

 Once again congratulations kris_t and thanks for sharing your layout with us!  Please be sure to check your email along with your spam folder for a $10 gift card to enjoy some shoppe’ing fun!

Join us tomorrow when Kylie brings us another Product Spotlight featuring another one of the Shabby Shoppes beautiful kits!

CasharinaLayout of the Week, Uncategorized 5 Comments

Hi everyone!  It’s me, Casharina, and today I’m bringing a Product Spotlight! YAY!!  This time I get to spotlight the very beautiful GRACIE collection.

To date, this is one of the largest kits you’ll find in the Shabby Shoppe.  It is packed with all sorts of goodies, including beautiful, bright colored papers, tons of embellishments that I find myself using on all sorts of pages, and word art to help complete that special layout!  The stitching elements included are some of my favorite pieces in this kit, and I seem to consistently add them to my pages.

Gracie will be ON SALE for a limited time!  That means you can pick up all this beauty for just $6.75 – right HERE!

To show you just how gorgeous this kit is the team and I have created a few layouts to share!

 First up I’ve used the Gracie collection to create a page focusing on my girlies and their interaction with one another during a small photo shoot.  I love the word art at the bottom, it was the perfect element to finish this page, and don’t you love the vellum pocket?  So cute!

Rosy has outdone herself this time creating a two page layout for us!  I absolutely adore her use of the stitching and flowers to help our eyes move along through all of the beautiful images included in the layout.  I also love how she has taken advantage of the tapes and hearts to tack down her lovely pieces of paper surrounding the page, super cute!

Kim does an uber great job of showing off different ways to use the gorgeous frames included in Gracie.  I have to say I “love” the way she’s tacked the hook and key as well, SO creative!

 Once again Kylie has shown her hand at how utterly amazing her pieces can be with her skills of clustering.  I love how she has used many of the beautiful papers to cluster in around the focus image on the page, and don’t you just love the little butterfly peeking through the flowers, a perfect touch!

Thank you girls for the beautiful layouts!  Check out the gallery to see more information about each of these pages and don’t forget to add your layouts to the gallery too!

Thanks for stopping by the blog!  Tomorrow Kim will be sharing some photography fun, so don’t miss that!

CasharinaProduct Spotlight, Uncategorized 1 Comment

Hi all!  Casharina here!  I am so excited to share a new trick with you that I have JUST recently learned…so let’s get started shall we??  As far as I know this trick can only be done in Photoshop CS5 or newer…so apologies to those of you that don’t have that particular software…but for readers that do have CS5 or CS6 it would be a shame not to share my latest trick with you guys!!

• First of all you need to get your straight item.  You can do this while working on a layout if you choose, but for this tutorial I’ve chosen to open only the element.  I’m using the straight pink ric rac from the beautiful blossom collection.
• Next, go to Edit -> Puppet Warp

• You’ll see a weird looking grid show up on your element, don’t worry, it’s normal!
• Next you’ll want to place your cursor on the outer edge of your ric rac, the cursor will turn into a pushpin-type illustration.  This is simply a step to “pin” the ric rac in place and not allow that spot to move.  Pin each side of the ric rac.

• Then you’ll put a pin in the center of the ric rac.  If you’d like to make it curve here you will simply drag this pin downwards/upwards and you will see the ric rac start to bend.  In previous versions when elements were transformed the pixels would warp – this new trick avoids that icky warped look.

• If you choose, you can add another “pin” to another spot along the ric rac and drag it down.  This is helpful if you’re trying to attach the ric rac to a banner etc.
• Once you’ve got your element curved the way you want it simply hit ENTER and you’re finished.

How simple is that…I’m SO excited to start using this trick in my scrapbook pages.  I’d love to see your finished layouts showing off this new tip…so don’t forget to load them up to the Shoppe Gallery!!

Be sure to stop by tomorrow when SP brings us the latest projectScrap check-in!!

CasharinaTips and Tricks, Uncategorized 12 Comments