Autism Dog Services Grad

So I volunteered to make and fill bags for the Graduating teams of Autism Dog Services for 2016. The Ceremony was held at the Parade of People and Pets that took place last Sat at Confederation Park in Hamilton and although the weather didn't cooperate, we had a nice large pavilion to take shelter in. More on the actual event later.

I made up cards with help from my friend Keri for the 10 families that would have their lives changed by welcoming a Service dog into their family. For such a small organization, this is a great accomplishment to match so many teams up.

And inside the card...

I also made a bunch of Chocolate covered Oreos for the bags and for the Silent Auction.

For the bags, I found a design on my Silhouette for both the dog name and the child's name and used my Lawn Fawn alphabet dies to cut out the actual names. I was happy to finally use the Silhouette again. I should be using it more often.

The bag was stuffed and topped off with tissue...

It was a fun day and making the bags was right up my alley. Although I'm very glad that this Event is wrapped up and I can move on to some other things, like CLEANING!

Parmesan Potatoes

I seem to be on a run in the recipe department. While I have been crafting, its for an event coming up this weekend so I don't want to show off the results of my work until after the fact.

I recently had some company and wanted to fancy up my potatoes to go with the yummy T bone steak and grilled veggies.

Parmesan Potatoes
Baby new potatoes (about 12, just guesstimate how many for your family)
Green onions (2)
Parsley
Red Onion 1/4 cup
Pepper 1/2 tsp
Salt 1/2 tsp
Olive Oil, 3 Tbsp
Parmesan cheese (grated) 1/2 cup

Mix up everything but green onions and parsley (which I didn't have judging from the photo), its only for garnish anyway.
Spread potatoes on a cookie sheet lined with foil and bake at 350F until tender. Stir occasionally to get all the edges nicely browned.
And then garnish (or NOT)

Butter Brickle Dessert

This dessert is a long time favourite but you better make sure that you have lots of company coming over because it makes a big batch and it will be calling your name from the freezer. You can amp it up and make your own caramel sauce but I opted to go with store bought. This recipe comes together very quickly and your guests will thank you for it.

Butter Brickle
2 cups flour
1/2 cup oatmeal
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup butter
1 cup chopped pecans
1 jar Caramel sauce
1 pint vanilla ice cream

Melt butter, add flour, oatmeal, sugar and pecans. Pat thin on a large cookie sheet and bake at 400F for 15 minutes. Crumble while hot and spread half on bottom of 9x13 pan. Drizzle half caramel sauce over crumbs. Spread ice cream over top. (I but it with a knife and just lay it on top). Cover with remaining crumbs and drizzle with the rest of the caramel sauce.

I like to scoop some extra caramel over at the last minute. You can never go wrong with lots of sauce!

August 30 day challenge

For this month's 30 day challenge, I borrowed the Die-namics 3 hole die from Keri and she borrowed the Penny Black Dog image from me. For the life of me, I couldn't find a picture of the die image but you can get the idea from the card. I cut this one the closest ever, leaving just 40 minutes to complete the challenge on time. I confess I took a similar idea from the Net because time was of the essence, if you know what I mean.
It wasn't my original plan to use the same Penny Black stamp set but it ended up quite well although the images were a bit of a pain to fussy cut....

And here is Keri's card using the Stampin' Up Grunge stamp and the larger Penny Black image. I totally LOVE it and may have to make a few more for my collection....

Super cute cards. Here's the stamp set that we used...

We've already picked our items for next month. Stay tuned to see what we come up with. Hopefully I won't leave it to the last minute again.