Happy Birthday Card – For My Brother

Hello everyone, happy Thursday!

I hope you’re all well.

This week I made a card for my little brother who is turning four on the 15th of June.

With this card I took part in the following challenges:

Friday sketchers challenge – lay out

Stampin for the weekend – make someone smile or cheer them up

Sew Many Challenges – anything goes

Ooh la-la challenges – Bright and Cheerful

My time to craft – Vivid Greetings Cards (bright colour)

One Stitch At A Time – Furry Friends

Digi Doodles Challenges – Anything goes (they have a blog hop)
Simon Says Challenges - Pink or blue WITH green and brown

A Spoon Full of Sugar -Celebration card
Little Red Wagon - Birthday
My Partner in Crafting Crime - Happy Birthday
Whiff of Joy Challenges - Brown and Yellow

Here is the creative Friday Sketchers Challenge by Jeanette

Here is my card, I just love the paper!

I used a stamp from my Whiff Of Joy collection.

It look’s just like my brother Andrew and he makes me smile a lot.

I cut out a few of the animals of the back ground paper and popped them up.

I also used my Cuttle bug to give the green paper an animal skin look.

The zig-zag edge I’ve cut out with my silhouette.

Have a blessed week and thank you for all the lovely comments I’ve received the past few weeks!

Crafty Greetings

Happy Birthday Card – For My Little Sister

Hello every one, I’m back with another card.

I took part in the following challenges:

Friday Sketchers Challenges – Lay out

Pollycraft Monday Challenge – Summer blooms

A spoon full of sugar – cute and girly

My time to craft – under the weather (cute cards)

Totally Gorjuss - round and round

Crafty Catz - Petals and Pearls

Digi Doodles – ribbon
Your Next Stamp Challenges - Cut it out and Pop it up!
Practical Scrappers - Patterned Paper
Woopsi Daisy Challenge - As you like it
Paper Take Weekly Challenge - Say it with flowers

Here is the interesting Friday Sketchers Challenges by a very creative Tanja

I think it’s one of my best cards I’ve made.

I made it for my little sister, well she is probably not so little any more. She’s turning seven on the 14th of June and she loves it when somebody gives her a card or gift.

I used a stamp called Country Garden from my Sugar Nellie collection.

I know my sister loves it because she always asks me to stamp this particular stamp for her.

I put some glitter on the girls hair band and on some of the flowers.

I embossed the dark pink triangle and then put a few pearls on some of the dots.

This is a strip of beautiful paper I bought long ago, but I could never find the right card for the right person and event to use it for. It is so glittery and makes the card look very pretty.

My mom made this beautiful bow for me.

Our first language in the house is Afrikaans, so I’ve written ‘Lekker Verjaar’ which means ‘Happy Birthday’ on the circle and put it on a pop up. I also stuck a pearl on the ‘j’ of ‘Verjaar’.

I hope you all have a blessed weekend

Crafty Greetings

Thank You Card For A Lady

Hi every one, I hope you had a wonderful Saturday.

I made another Thank you card.

The card is for a very special lady, so I made her a very pretty card to say thank you.

With this card I took part in the following Challenges:

The Sugar Bowl – Lay out and recycling

Papertake Weekly Challenge – Shiny, Sparkly & Special

Polka Doodles Challenge – Summer Blossoms

Cute Card Thursday Challenge – Someone Special

The ABC Challenge –unused stash

Totally Gorjuss – Pink and Green

A Gem of a Challenge – burgundy, pink and green

Crafty Angels Challenge – One for the girls

Whoops Daisy Challenge – As you like it

Here is The Sugar Bowl Challenge’s lay out.

And this is my card.

Above, I put two small and one big glittered flowers,to give the card balance.

In the two opposite corners I put small pink shells that came from a necklace. My Mom once bought it for my little sister at Knysna while being on holiday. She has so many necklaces and since she seldom wore it, I asked her if I could have it to use as decoration on my card.

I’ve written Thank you in Afrikaans because the lady is Afrikaans speaking.

I cut it out and put in on a pop-up.

This lady is a friend of my Mom, who came to our home, every day while my parents were in Mauritius - to cuddle the little ones!

Josua (9 years) and David (3 years)

She painted, played with play dough, made cards, played outside and lots more with the little ones.

Danika (6 years)

We had to dress them in old clothes, because painting with little ones is always a big mess!

Andrew (4 years) painting a black helicopter.

Daniel (21 months) in deep concentration

David (3 years) wanted Josua to paint for him

On Thursday night we invite them for dinner and gave them a small present with the card.

We prepared them a home cooked meal. Leg of lamb (my oldest brother, CJ, can roast a leg lamb most deliciously), rice with gravy, green beans in white sauce, butternut, a mixed salad and carrot salad.

For pudding we prepared individual chocolate souffle cakes, with custard.

The whole family around the family meal table - we had a blessed time together. Our friends also helped feeding the little ones and didn’t get irritated with all their demands at the table, while eating. They really love children.

And that is all for now, have a blessed weekend!

Crafty Greetings

Thank You Card - For A Male

 Hello everyone, thank you for stopping by.

Before I start this week’s card I would like to say thank you for all the lovely comments I received in the last few weeks!

It makes my day!

Last week I won the Friday Sketchers Challenge!!!

I could not believe it.

You will get your chance too, even though it may only be next year. It will come when you least expect it!

Now let’s get back to this week’s card.

My parents and little brother Michael (3 months now) went to Mauritius for a week.

My dad won the holiday!

So my older brother and I took care of all the little ones!

You can read more on my mom’s blog

Now, I have to make thank you cards for a lot of people!

The first one is for Garth Kent of Sevenpointfive, from whom my dad won the competition as Franchisee of the Year!
And it is the card I show below.

Friday Sketchers Challenge is 2 years old this week! So they had a blog hop!

Be sure to take a look at their blog!

I also took part in the following challenges:

Friday Sketchers Challenge – Lay out

One Stitch at a time – going dotty

Whoopsi Daisy Challenge - As you like it

Crafty Cardmakers – distressing

Stampin For The Weekend - A Card for a Male

This week’s challenge is by Jacque, here is her lovely sketch.

Oh boy, my mom and I struggled with this lay out!

Here is my card. It is plain, but for a male it is better not to have it full of frills.

I used a little boy stamp from the ‘Whiff of Joy’ collection.

I stamped the stamp twice and painted one of the stamps completely and the other one only painted the wood that the little boy holds.

Then I printed Thank You on the wood and put it on a pop-up on the first stamp.

As I said, it is a plain card but I think it is very pretty!

Have a blessed week.

Crafty Greetings

Baking a Chocolate-Chocolate Truffle Cake

It is quite long ago that I did a posting on baking, so here we go......

The real name of this cake is Devil’s food cake but I did not like the name at all!

The little ones has a movie called Punchinello and The Most Marvellous Gift, it’s a movie for little children and the little boy, called Punchinello’s favourite cake is a Chocolate-Chocolate Truffle Cake. So I decided to name the cake a Chocolate-Chocolate Truffle Cake.

 Yes I did bake this cake!!

 This rich, deeply flavoured cake can be frosted with chocolate frosting, such as buttercream or whipped ganache, to reinforce the chocolate effect, or a contrasting frosting, such as a kirsch flavoured buttercream, white chocolate mousse, white chocolate whipped ganache, or mousseline, to balance the chocolate.

 Makes 2 round layer cakes (9 by 1 inch)

Or 1 round layer cake (9 by 2 inch)

 Ingredients:

Butter and flour for the cake pans

1 cup cake flour (if using spelt flour 1 1/3 cups)

1 ½ teaspoons baking soda

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder ¼ teaspoon salt

½ cup butter, sliced at room temperature

6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped

1 cup sour cream

¾ cup sugar (or xylitol)

3 eggs

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F or 280 degrees C.

Butter and flour one or two cake pans. (We used two)

 In a bowl stir together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.

 Combine the butter, chocolate, and sour cream in a heatproof bowl and place the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water.

 Stir until smooth, remove from the heat as soon as the chocolate has melted.

 In a large bowl whisk together the sugar and eggs until smooth

 Stir the chocolate mixture into the egg mixture.

Sift the dry ingredients over the chocolate-egg mixture while folding with a rubber spatula. 

 

 My mom always takes the pictures of my baking, with Michael in the Ergo baby carrier, and by accident Michael’s face got covered with flour! He didn’t even notice, he was fast a sleep.

Isn’t he just so cute?

 Pour the mixture into the prepared pans.

 

 Bake 1-inch-thick cakes for about 25 minutes or a 2-inch-thick cake for about 40 minutes, or until the cake springs back to the touch or q toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

 Let the cake cool for 5 minutes and turn then out onto a cake rack.

I decorated the cake with buttercream and whipped ganache.

 To make chocolate buttercream:

Add 2 ounces of bittersweet chocolate or 1 ounce bitter unsweetened chocolate per one cup buttercream.

 Chocolate makes the buttercream firmer, because it hardens when cool; bittersweet and unsweetened chocolate also makes buttercream less sweet.

 Cut each cake into half and put the first one on your cake stand.

 Put your first layer of buttercream on the bottom layer.

 Add the layers, with buttercream in between, till the cake looks like this.

 Now start spreading the chocolate whipped ganache al over the cake.

To make chocolate curls, slide the back side of a pastry tip along the chunk of chocolate while pressing down firmly.

Sprinkle the curls on top of the cake, and on the cake stand, so that it looks like this.

Tip:

My mom has a very nice way to cut a cake.

Take a sharp, long knife and cut a little circle in the middle of the cake.

Like this

Then cut slices around the circle.

This cake is not so sweet as many of the chocolate cakes in restaurants.

It is a delicious cake.

My dad does not really like sweet chocolate cake, but this chocolate cake he loved!

So did Daniel!

Bon apatite