My Love/Hate Relationship With Martha

I hate Martha Stewart, and I love her.


Whenever I make a recipe from her book, it requires either:

a) some weird ingredient that I cannot find in the surrounding 50 miles;

b) some weird technique that require me watching online videos for 20 minutes just to sort-of understand it; and/or

c) a new, funky piece of equipment that I will never, ever use again.



But, does any of this stop me?? Not really- I still want to do it all. I start looking around her site and 2 hours later I'm trying to figure out how to dry corn-husks ,or I'm convinced that I too can make a leaf-lattice pie crust. Regardless, she is getting more accessible... and I'm getting more realistic. I've set up my online profile at her site and have more projects/recipes than I know what to do with. But, here's just a taste of what's my Martha List:


Recipes:

Tex-Mex Chicken Stew

Chicken with Ginger

Gingerbread Snowflakes



Crafts:

Sewing on Paper

Monogrammed Boxes



I also get her daily emails about cookies, organizing, crafts, etc (thanks, Lara!) and even though I won't do even 10% of them, it's a great inspiration to do something creative. Even her emails look cute...

Making Cards

First off, thanks for all of the apple sauce recipes!! I now want to un-freeze all of apples and try again- this time on the stove top. I tasted my apple sauce again yesterday- way too much cinnamon. So, that'll be another adjustment!

I received such a beautiful, hand-made thank you card from my sweet friend, Juliet last week! The picture below does not do it justice, but she did so well mixing colors, themes, and textures. It isn't surprising, of course- Juliet is a genius with projects like this! So after a nice trip to Michael's, I decided to give card making a try...

Juliet's card: my inspiration!

I'd like to say that the picture doesn't do wonderful things for this first-ditch effort... the colors do look better in person. But, it's obvious I have a lot to learn.

This one turned out better... again, the colors didn't translate well in the picture. I like the ribbon aspect, so I may need to get some more ribbon options :)

I noticed that I really need a paper cutter and ruler- I cannot cut straight lines!! I think that I will also get a card making kit; it'll provide all of the coordinating elements and then I just to put it together. I think I was too ambitious in doing everything without any guidance. Hopefully I'll collect a good amount of papers, ribbons, stamps, etc over the next few months and can learn how to blend together. Once I get the hang of this card-making thing, I'll be sure to post some cute ones so you can see my progress :)

If you have experience in making cards, feel free to pass on tips!! I'm looking for all of the help I can get.