This chickpea salad became a staple recipe shortly after reading the Eat,Shrink and Be Merry cookbook.  It super easy, cherry tomatoes, mini boccocini balls, balsamic, lemon juice and olive oil.  For the full recipe, you should buy the cookbook.  The writers are from Ontario and totally deserve to reap the rewards for this book!

It’s even boy friendly.

I stopped at Chapters tonight to pick up some reading material and got stuck in the bargain book area.  I picked up this salad book that has FULL page colour photos for every.single.recipe.  And bonus, the recipes look really good.. and best of all, really simple!

Bring on the summer, I am all about fancy salads.

After reading CaiLun’s tutorial for this business card holder, I knew that I had to try making one.  Finally, a good use for all my little bookboard scraps!

I made it to suit my own needs and tastes – grape bookcloth with a little ivory ribbon detail.  The inside features that famous quote from Ugly Betty, “You are an  attractive, intelligent and confident business woman.”

Things are shaping up nicely.  My order of ribbon easels arrived today and are the perfect fit for the photo cards and accordion albums.  I didn’t even know where to begin to find “nice” and professional ways to display my work – I tried Staples and the art store without any luck.

After some Googling, I found a nice retail display company online and placed the order!  Thank you internet for online shopping.

Was it ever hard to stay indoors to work this weekend.  Because of other committments, I need to get everything done for the Ladyfest Craft Sale this week!

I’m starting to really enjoy the process of making these tiny accordion books.  I like that they’re a little more “permanent” than greeting cards.  These little books could become keepsakes.  When I start thinking about all of the different things you could record on their pages, it makes me really happy.  Like these little baby books – how sweet would it be to mark down all of those “small details”?

Or wouldn’t it be nice to have someone write you little love notes all wrapped up in pretty white and red paper?   Oooh!

My paper delivery arrived today JUST in time for some marathon crafting this weekend.  I am over the moon with these prints – and I haven’t seen anything like them in Ottawa.   Yay!

I am brutal to my magazines.  Often, when I sit down to read them, I do so with a pair of scissors by my side.

In the past, I used to clip articles out of magazines only *after* reading the magazine from cover to cover and letting it sit around until I got sick of seeing a stack of magazines.

Now, I cut out the pages during the first read and organize them into inexpensive portfolio books or plastic sleeves.  (I’ll call this the “clip and slip”)  This method is especially good when it comes to wedding magazines.  Once you buy a dress, those magazines are 75% garbage! (err.. recycling!)

I have binders of clippings organized by home decor, entertaining, paper crafts, food styling, beauty/fashion, and a BIG binder for recipes.

I love being able to easily find recipes and ideas without flipping through advertising.  Or those annoying subscription cards.   Ooh I hate those.

I have a love/hate relationship with my web stats program. This is one of those lovey times. It’s always interesting to see what combination of keywords will lead people to my site.

This time it was “accordion photo albums”. Makes sense. I’ve posted a lot of albums in the last couple of months. So, I Googled it to see where my site turned up in the search results and was pleasantly surprised to see that Lana Stewart outranked Martha Stewart!

Stewart versus Stewart!

Things I do not outrank Martha Stewart in? Wait, how many millions does Martha have again? Sigh.

Here are the three photo cards I’ve created for the Ladyfest Craft Sale. I especially love the background on these first two.  Can you tell that it’s a stack of colourful plastic straws?

I just returned from picking up a new batch of prints for my photocards.  I realized this week that the Ladyfest Craft Sale happens the day before Mothers Day!  So, I created some new cards for the occassion.  I haven’t assembled them yet, but they’re going to look great! (toot toot!)  I’ll post some photos soon and hopefully you’ll consider buying your Mothers Day card from me at the show!