RIBBON BOUND BOOK

This little notebook is for a sweet friend who was hospitalized a couple of weeks ago with a brain hemorrhage. She is facing some pretty big life changes, as the doctors cannot operate on her to fix the problem.

For the inside pages, I printed off a lot of Bible verses that were an encouragement to me a few years ago when I was so sick. The doctors held out very little hope that I would even live, but Scripture is full of hope! And the Lord used His Word to comfort me when no one else could.

About half of the pages have verses of encouragement, all relating to God's care and healing, peace and comfort. The other half are blank. I'll be passing the book around at church for friends to sign with their prayers and well wishes before taking it to my friend later this week.



I used a couple different fonts inside.



Here's a view of the pretty paper inside the cover:



I let the paper peek out along the spine for a bit of pop on the outside:

HOMEMADE HARD CANDY

Our first attempt at ho-made candy was (mostly) a success! Made the lemon batch first, but didn't have enough corn syrup and didn't boil long enough, so it didn't set up. We weren't sure it would work to put it back on the stove, with the food coloring and flavor already added (as they are supposed to go in after taking the pot off the heat) but it did work! These hard candies are HARD! The pink ones are raspberry flavored.




Here's the recipe- it's super easy, but you have to boil it for a long time.

1 cup white sugar
3/8 - 1/2 cup Karo (corn) syrup
1/2 cup water
1/4-1/2 tsp flavored extract
1-2 drops food coloring
1-2 Tbsp powdered sugar

Put the sugar, corn syrup and water in a pot over medium heat, stir until sugar is dissolved, then let it sit and boil. And boil. It needs to get to 300 degrees F. It will start to look thick, and if you drop a bit into a glass of water, it should form hard brittle threads. If you drop some in water and you can't decide if it's hard brittle threads, then it isn't. Keep boiling.

When it's 300 degrees, turn off the heat and add the flavoring and food coloring. Stir quickly but thoroughly.

When you pour the candy out (we greased waxed paper and laid it right on the counter) it will look very bubbly. The bubbles seem to disappear as it sets up, but you want to see thousands of tiny bubbles when you pour it out. In about a minute or two, run a pizza cutter through it to cut into squares, diamonds, triangles...the shape is up to you.

If it's not setting up, by all means pour it back in the pot and try again! The waxed paper made this easy. We just folded the paper into a cone and let it run back into the pot. Then I ran two fingers down the length of the paper to squeeze out as much as I could. Toss that paper and grease a new sheet while it reboils.

Let it cool. It will be hard! Pull up on the waxed paper and rows of it will start to pop off. Break along the scored lines, drop into a baggie with 1-2 Tbsp of powdered sugar and shake to coat. (This is a good step for an excited little helper to do...or your husband!)

One batch makes enough to fill a 10 or 11 oz. jar. I heart fancy jam that comes in these cute, reusable square jars!

GIFT CARD HOLDERS

So...the sweetest boy in the whole world wanted to buy his dad an iTunes card for Christmas. But all they had at the store were multipacks of 3 $10 cards. $30 was not in his price range, but I loaned him the cash and told him he could give one to Dad & we could list the other two cards on ebay. Since they have no packaging (we busted them out of the multipack) we decided to craft these little card stock envelopes to make them more appealing and hopefully get our sweet moolah back on the auctions!

Easy Dipped Pretzels & Animal Crackers

The kids did a great job dipping and sprinkling these fun Christmas treats yesterday. The boxes were folded from 8.5" squares of card stock (blue) and glossy white heavy paper that Punk brought home from the office recycling bin. The boys prefer the curling ribbon trim on the white box. The wired cream colored ribbon is too fancy for them, I guess, but I think it's pretty!