Easy Cooking for the Weekend

I had quite a few people ask me for the recipe for these little babies I made last week so I thought I'd share it with you so you can make it for the weekend. The ingredients are simple and it comes together pretty quickly!

CM Scanlon's Lettuce Wraps

Ingredients:

• 3 Boneless Chicken Breasts: Processed in a Food Processor to Mince into Chickenburger
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 2" of ginger, finely chopped (not grated)
• 2 tablespoons Olive Oil 

• 1 cup roasted peanuts chopped small with a knife 
• 3 green onions, sliced thin
• 1/4 cup fresh cilantro, rough chop
• 1 tablespoon PB 8 Peanut Butter Powder
• 1 cup minded mushroom
• 1/4 cup chopped red pepper
• 1/4 Cup Annie Chung's Korean Sauce
• Salt + Pepper to taste

• Romaine leaves, washed and dried

1. Heat olive oil and saute the onion, garlic and ginger together. Add the chicken and cook thoroughly
2. Add mushrooms and cook thoroughly
3. Add peanuts, onions, cilantro, peanut butter, red pepper and Korean sauce
4. Serve in Romaine Leaves (as pictured above).

There you have it, super easy and delicious meal for the weekend! Thanks for stopping by, ENJOY!!

the Whatevers Two -- May

It's that time of the month --  May Whatevers Two! We have a fun photo for you to play with this month. Hope you can join in. If you are not familiar with "Whatevers" You can read more about it here. But basically my friends...Vic, Nat, Cuchy, Martha and I have committed to a full year of bringing new life to forgotten photos. Each month we create a page and give it a story using that months photo. We share the photo with you in hopes that you will play along and join in the fun.You will find more info and details at the bottom of this post.

Here are the links to the other girls blogs so you can see their creations this month.

• Martha Richardson
• Vicki Chrisman
• Nat Kalbach
• Carmen Sanchez

For Cordelia it was love at first sight! The moment she set eyes on the tall stranger with red hair she knew that he was the man for her but how she'd let him know was another story. She was shopping for a new spring hat loaded with silk flowers. As she entered the shop she dropped her handkerchief and a kind man picked it up for her.

As their eyes met she knew. He was the one.

As the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months and she never saw him again Cordelia began to lose hope that she'd see the tall man again.

Meanwhile, Winston was still grieving over his sweet Morning Glory. He remembered her love of hats and silk flowers and walked by the Millinery store every chance he could. He cherished any thing that reminded him of her.

While the chance meeting with Cordelia was long gone, he remembered her kind eyes and beautiful face and sometimes found himself looking for her as he approached the millinery.

Winston still wasn't over the tragic loss of Morning Glory and his children, but it had been several years and it was time to move on and start a new life.

If only he could run into the beautiful lady with the big silk flowers on her hat again. If he did, he promised himself he'd say hello.

Here's how it works:

• Vicki, Cat, Cuchy (Carmen), Martha and I and I have made a one-year commitment to each other and picked twelve photos with Whatevers whom we will give a story.

• Every month – if possible always on the 15th –  each of us will do a post with an individual story that goes along for us with the same photo.

• If you want you can play along and we will have the photo for you to download and show us your version of The Whatevers. The photo will be posted at the end of our blogposts- not on Facebook!

• There are no rules to the story itself- it can be funny, sad, uplifting, breathtaking- WHATEVER
  There are no rules on the length or the form of the story- it can be a short sentence, an essay, a poem or a soap opera – WHATEVER

• There are no rules on the artform you choose – it can be a scrapbook layout, an altered art project, an artjournal page – WHATEVER

• Here is a rule though: if you take the photo you have to link back to us and show us your story.
   
• These pictures are from our personal stash and are for personal use for you only! If you want to use them for a publication whether a book or magazine in print or digital form please ask for permission

• If you want to participate we’ll have a linky list for each Whatever Post.

You can also join our The Whatevers -Facebook Page

An InLinkz Link-up

Cooking is Creative!

I It's no secret that I like to cook for my family. I cook a complete meal, from scratch about 5 times a week. The other days we are busy and eat on the fly (hint: ramen) or eat out. I'm not much of a recipe person when it comes to cooking -- much of the time I refer to a recipe just for process or to see what spices they use and the quantities to get the gist of what I should do.

 Last week I made bibimbop -- a Korean Rice dish. It was so delicious.

 I also made a PF Chang style Peanut Lettuce Wrap. I didn't refer to any recipe on this one, just went from the several times I've enjoyed them at PF Changs. They turned out great. I will also note that Chang's uses iceberg lettuce but I used romaine -- because of the thick vein in the center of the romaine leaves it was much easier to load it up with the chicken mixture like a taco and eat it without having it fall apart.

Most of the time I fly by the seat of my pants when I don't have a recipe and then try and write it down later if it comes out good.

You can be creative in the kitchen too, from food photography to experimenting with spices and textures!

Have a great day, and get in that kitchen and make something!

Flowers always Inspire!

Last week I visited with a friend I haven't seen in a long time. We spent a little bit of time talking about business and a lot of time catching up. As I was leaving I noticed a watercolor painting I had done YEARS AND YEARS ago (sometime around 2001) hanging on her wall. It made me happy to see it -- and to be reminded that I am still doing what I love -- creating art.

The narcissus in this painting happen to be flowers from bulbs that were originally in my grandmother's garden. I transplanted them to my garden a few years ago and I think the moles must have eaten them because they haven't bloomed since. Seeing this painting was a lovely reminder of my grandmother and now much I loved her flowers.

My Mother invited us for dinner on Mother's Day and I snapped this picture of a bouquet of daffodils she picked from her garden. As I was processing the photos on my computer this morning I thought the composition of this photo looked similar to the narcissus painting above -- I think it might become the inspiration for a new painting. Only bigger, and in acrylics.


Thanks for dropping by, enjoy your week!

Throwback Thursday: Mother's Day Quilt Art Tutorial

Good Morning, since Mother's Day is this weekend I thought I'd share a super easy, and relatively quick project you could make for a cherished Mother in your life. This is a project I created for Sizzix last year, but that Hexagon Die never gets enough use so I thought you'd like to see it again!

The overall size is 11 x 14, including the frame.

 

I created a base quilt from a piece of black cardstock and arranged the hex's in a random pattern on top to cover it completely. I used a re-positionable adhesive to attach them -- that would allow me to move them around easily if I got stuck with two of the same pattern side by side when I was laying them out.

To make sure the Hexagons stayed in place I used my sewing machine with a straight stitch to sew each one to the base. When I had that done, I decided it needed a pretty floral image.

 

To create that image I used the Mini-Tickets Die with the Base tray to cut the larger tag from cream card stock. So I could mat it on a piece of coordinating patterned paper I trimmed about 1/16" from each side and used a tiny circle punch to trim the corners so it would mat nicely on the original sized ticket. When I was certain it would fit on the Mini-Ticket cut from patterned paper I stamped a pretty flower on it from the Flourishes the "Year of Flowers" with Black StazOn Ink.

I used a small watercolor palette and a tiny brush to paint the image to coordinate with the papers of my quilt.

To complete the focal point image I attached the image to the patterned paper Mini-Ticket with Foam Tape. To help it stand out from the paper quilt I used the ATC Die to cut a piece of black cardstock to mat the pretty image on. With a piece of pink ribbon sandwiched in between it is the PERFECT embellishment for my paper quilt!
 

To finish the design I stitched the paper quilt to a piece of the pink patterned paper from the Lily Bee Designs Paper Pack layered on top of black cardstock.

It looks AMAZING in an inexpensive 11 x 14 white frame from Target!

  

I'm going to feel nice and cozy all summer every time I see my beautiful paper quilt! I love it and it only took an evening to put together! This would make a beautiful baby shower -- bridal shower or gift for any occasion!

Thanks for stopping by, hope you like my fast and easy paper quilt! 

Blast from the Past: Free ATC Tutorial

I've been organizing files, saving documents and planning some cool things for the future and found this little ATC tutorial that I made a VERY Long time ago that I thought you'd enjoy! Have fun!

Dream ATC with Catherine Scanlon

ATC’s, or Artist Trading Cards – are little works of art that are usually made in sets and traded with friends – either in person or by mail. They are sweet little pieces of art that you can make in batches to have ready to swap with friends.

Here's what you need to gather to make it:

• Cream Cardstock
• Patterned Paper (My Mind’s Eye: Lush Pink Damask)
• Vintage Book Paper
• Black StazOn Ink
• Inchie Stamp Set (Inkadinkado)
• ATC Signature Stamp (Cat’s Life Press)
• Floral Stamp (The Artful Stamper)
• Watercolor Pencils
• Paint brush
• Water
• Sewing Machine
• Marker
• Artist Trading Card Rules

Here’s how I prepped my papers for this ATC:

• I stamped the signature card on cream cardstock and trimmed it to 2 ½” x 3 ½”
• Trimmed the pink scrap of patterned paper from My Mind’s Eye to 2 ½” x 3 ½”
• Cut the vintage book paper to 2 ¼” x 3 ¼”.
• I stamped the cherry blossom image on cream cardstock and trimmed it as close as to the image as possible.
• I also stamped the inchie stamp with the StazOn and punched it out with the 1” paper punch.

To get started, I I glued the signature card and patterned paper together using a glue stick – with the backs facing each other. Then I layered the book paper mat and the cherry blossom image on top and now I am ready to start adding color to the cherry blossoms stamped image with watercolor pencils.

If you don’t have watercolor pencils – you can use crayons, regular markers, Copic markers – or even regular watercolors. I prefer to use the pencils – sometimes I color right on the image and use a paintbrush dampened with a little water to smooth out the color. Other times I scribble the color on a scrap piece of paper and dip a paintbrush in water and pick up the color and add it to my image. Either way you apply the color it works great.

You can see when I color right on the image I don’t worry too much about coloring neatly – as the water smoothes out all the scribbled lines nicely.

Once the blue was dry I added pink to the cherry blossoms and then orange to the stamens – and smoothed the color out with my small paintbrush. To prepare the stamp of the woman, I colored the background with a red marker and the woman’s face with the pink watercolor pencil.

The space to the very bottom right on the cherry blossom image was the perfect spot for my inchie.

I used this tiny word stamp to stamp on cream cardstock and cut into a strip that I added to the bottom of the ATC with a glue stick.

To finish of the design of this ATC I stitched around the border of the inchie and cherry blossom image with white thread. I added the ATC details on the signature card and my Dream ATC is ready to trade.

Here’s the completed ATC:

Thanks for joining me today, have a creative day!

Going Back....to My Roots!

I made this when I was in high school. I don't remember the assignment -- that was nearly 30 years ago but I do remember how I made it. I also remember how excited I was as the image started to take shape and how I couldn't wait to work on it everyday and how proud of myself I was when it was complete.

This is a piece of muslin that I drew the flower and butterfly on. then I painted the design with procion dies. When the painting was complete I washed it and machine quilted it. Can you see a little bit of what I do now in what I did in the mid-80's? I can!

I think we always return to the things that we are passionate about. For many years after high school and at various times in my life I've put no brush or pencil to paper to create art and during those years I always felt like something was missing from my life. An emptiness I guess.

On days when I don't find or make time to draw or do something creative I feel crabby and rushed. But when I draw and paint and color everything feels right with the world.

I'm going to try and find some other pieces of art that I created during my high school years and share them.....I think they are still at my Mother's house.

Have a great day, thanks for dropping by.

New Beginnings!

From the end springs new beginnings.

I do believe we are finally experiencing spring and the end of Winter is officially here, I'm so happy! Have a great weekend see you next week.

Throwback Thursday -- Art Journaling!

This blast from the past is from May, 2012 -- I thought some of my newer readers would enjoy seeing some of my earlier art journaling. Looks like I am feeling the same way this year as I did last year, maybe it's my process of shrugging off the long winter. I'll have to look at other years and see.

I have had a lot of things on my plate for a while now, juggling this that and the other thing. Add to that feeling like I am living on a roller coaster of my emotions and internal struggles, self-doubt -- lack of this and that -- and I have felt a little on the crummy side lately -- like a little hermit. and a lot on the crabby side.

 

There is something to be said for making art in the mayhem of life. It soothes me, comforts me, gets me through it all. 

Each pencil line, brush stroke, inked leaf is like a light that lifts me. Lifts me and lightens my heart.

the bright colors and pretty flowers that come from inside my head satisfy and heal me, making me feel 100% confident that everything will be ok. in the end. 

confirming to me that there is definitely a LOT of comfort in making art. 

Certain areas of each painting and piece of art I create are little spots of happiness. I don't know about you, but little spots here and there really please me. 

 --------------------------------------------

If you like this post, you should check out the two art journaling classes I'm offering at Merrymeeting Art House.

• Art Journal Toolbox One

• Art Journal Toolbox Two