Moving Cards (The rest of them)

I'm a bad blog mommy! I'm sorry, I have an excuse! 1 week from today we will be arriving back home in Utah at our new house! Which means, on Wednesday we load the truck, Thursday we clear housing (we live in Military housing right now and so we have to sign for quarters and then sign out when we leave, the housing office comes and inspects and everything) And on Friday we leave New Mexico and start the almost 900 mile trip to Utah!! So needless to I have been busy getting everything ready.

Anyhow, because I have been so busy I have been forgetting to post the rest of the moving cards. So here they are: This is the same set I used for last years moving cards but I wanted to use it again, since it is the only moving type card we have (hence why all the rest of the cards have been non-moving themed). So this time I made it an all white card by stamping the truck in the center and adding the guy driving and the moving items in the back of the truck. All were stamped with momento black tuxedo ink. I then colored the image using markers and a glitter gel pen for the hub caps, door handle and bumpers. I finished it off by adding the sentiment at the bottom. (Stamp set- Loads Of Love and Loads Of Love Accessories by Stampin Up!; cardstock- Whisper White Stamping Up!; Markers- Copic Markers; Gel Pen- unknown; Ink- Momento)
This next one I started out by printing the sentiment at the bottom of the cardstock (took a few tries on scrap paper to get the placement right) and then used the faux framing technique (also known as reverse masking) to sponge my Pale Plum ink all over. Once I got the coverage I liked I then stamped my images randomly using Perfect Plum and Mellow Moss. (Stamp Set- Heartfelt Thanks by Stampin Up!; Sentiment- My Printer; Ink- Pale Plum, Perfect Plum, Mellow Moss By Stampin Up!; Cardstock- Whisper White by Stampin Up!) The pale plum ink started seeping through the mask after 5 cards and I didn't want to make a new mask so for the other 5 cards I did this way simple (possibly too simple, meaning I might tweak it later) card:
This one was simple, as you can see all I did was stamp 3 flowers using Pale Plum, Perfect Plum and Mellow Moss. So simple, So easy. (Supplies are same as above card)

So there you have it. The rest of my We're moving cards. I didn't have time to send them out before we left so I will do that when we get there. Probably not till we're settled though. Anyhow, today we are taking a break from packing (partly because we can't do anymore. What we have left is the stuff we still need, like clothes, so that will all get packed on Monday and Tuesday.) Instead, we are going out with some friends of ours who are also hoping to adopt. We're going to try a new wing place in town. Should be lots of fun! :D I probably won't post again until we are in our new home so see you then!

Crock Pot Sunday- Caramelized Onion Pot Roast

O.k. so this is last weeks crock pot Sunday meal, but it has been a way busy week and I haven't had a lot of time. My crock pot is now packed so there won't be anymore Crockpot Sunday posts until after we are settled in our new home.

Anyhow, this recipe is also from that same Betty Crocker Slow Cooker Cookbook, but I put a twist on it. The recipe calls for Beer and we don't drink so I used Root Beer instead. The recipe also calls for Dijion mustard. We didn't want to buy any since we are moving so soon. So I used what we had which was Honey Mustard. I have to tell you, this recipe turned out soooo yummy! It calls for 4 lbs. of roast which is a lot, ecspecially when it's just my husband and I. But I ended up being able to cook the roast, and use it 3 different ways for 3 different meals and a lot of lunch leftovers. :D Anyhow, here it is:

Caramelized Onion Pot Roast
4 lbs. beef boneless chuck roast (I actually prefer the leanest roast I can find so, use whatever you like)
1 tablespoon Olive or Vegetable Oil
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon pepper
6 medium onions, sliced into thin rings
1 ½ cups beef broth
¾ cup beer (I used root beer)
2 tablespoon packed brown sugar
3 tablespoon Dijon Mustard (I used honey mustard)
2 tablespoon cider vinegar
1. Trim excess fat from beef. Heat oil in 10-inch skillet over medium-high heat. Cook beef in oil about 10 minutes, turning occasionally, until brown on all sides. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
2. Place onions in 3 ½ to 6 quart slow cooker. Place beef on onions.
3. Mix remaining ingredients; pour over beef and onions. Cover and cook on low heat setting for 8 to 10 hours or until beef is tender.
4. Remove beef and onions from cooker, using slotted spoon. Cut beef into slices. Skim fat from juices in cooker if desired. Serve beef with juices.


And as an added bonus, like I said, we ended up being able to use this for 3 seperate meals. The one we always use left over roast for is BBQ Beef Sandwiches. This is one hubby really likes to make.
All he does is takes the leftover roast, shreds it (which with how it cooks up in the crock pot it shreds beautifully)Then he puts it in a pot with BBQ Sauce, flavor of your choice and lets it simmer for 5-10 minutes. Serve with fries or something on the side on a toasted bun and viola! Yummy!
For this particular one hubby used Honey BBQ Sauce, and added a little honey and A-1 sauce. Good stuff!


The 3rd meal, I don't have a picture of, but we shredded the roast and put it in a pan with some taco seasoning (just the kind you get in the seasoning packet works great) and cooked it according to the directions on the packet of seasoning mix. And we had shredded beef tacos. Sooo good!

I love meals like this, where you can cook once and make a few seperate meals. *grin*
Stay tuned in the next day or two for another moving card. :D

It's Official!! We're Homeowners!!!

Monday, the sellers signed the papers and the papers were overnighted to us (since we are still in New Mexico). Tuesday we received the papers, signed them, had them notorized (thank goodness for JAG who notorizes for free to military), and overnighted them back to the title company. Wednesday (yesterday) we got a call that the papers had been recorded and funded and it was official!! We are homeowners!!

Our house is going to take work to get it to where we want it to be. We know that. That is actually what we wanted. We wanted a home that we could make our own. We didn't want to pay $20K more for upgrades that someone else did that may not be quite our tastes. The same upgrades that we could do ourselves for half that, and they would be our tastes. *big grin* We're sooooo excited! My mom went on the walkthrough on Monday and went over again on Tuesday to take more pictures. So here are some photos from that. The front of our house. It needs a good power washing to get all the dirt that collects over the years off the house. We are going to spruce up the landscaping and are considering doing maybe some flower boxes under those two front upper windows you see. They are too thin to me and need some help, so some simple window boxes should do the trick. This is our living room. This room will be painted a pretty taupe color, will have the flooring changed out (eventually, for now it will be covered with my gorgeous burgundy rug that Jacob got me while he was deployed to Afghanistan). This room will have the window coverings changes and will have my piano, my antiques and some furniture that my mom is recovering for us. This is our kitchen. We are going to refinish the cabinets, replace the countertops and backsplash and paint. In a few years we will redo the whole kitchen.
I will share more pictures later. For now I just wanted to share the good news!! I need to get some more packing and cleaning done. We are over halfway packed and in fact all 3 bedrooms are packed, empty and cleaned out with the doors closed. We're making progress. Just 2 weeks till we move!!!
I will also be posting this weeks crock pot recipe in the next couple of days along with another card. I haven't forgotten. I have just been so busy with phone calls and paperwork and everything that goes with buying a house long distance. Well, everything that goes with buying a house for that matter! LOL

Moving cards part 2

Crock pot Sunday will be a little late this week. But trust me! It will be worth the wait. *big grin* (hint, my version of the recipe involves root beer to make carmelized onion pot roast. Plus, I made roast, so you know what that means! Hubby is making BBQ Beef Sandwiches so I will have that to share too. I made my roast tonight, he makes the BBQ Beef tomorrow. I wanted to post them together so that's why I'm not posting tonight)

Until then, I wanted to share my next card that I did for our upcoming move.
Remember the announcements that I did for my brother-in-law and his new wife before they got married? Well, I had a ton of cardstock left because I over ordered accidentally. Luckily Night of Navy is a color I like to use. So I figured it would be the perfect color to use for this next card. For this one I used Night of Navy as my card base. I added some Brocade Blue to it down the middle of the card base. Then I added my stamped image (I used Stampin' Write Markers, not ink) from Garden Silouhettes (can you tell that's my favorite set?) I printed up the words Home Sweet Home for my sentiment onto Whisper White and added that at the bottom. I added some paper peircing (may be hard to see in the photo) and some ribbon down the side. Really simple and easy. I like how they turned out. I did 10 of these as well.

I thought Home Sweet Home would be a nice sentiment to use for some of my cards because it fits oh so well. First of all, we are not only moving, but we are moving into our very first home that we will actually own. Up until now we have always lived in apartments or military housing. This will be the first home that we have ever bought. As if that wasn't exciting enough, we are moving, not only to our very own home, but to our very own home back home! Clear as mud? *wink* Well, let's put it this way. For the last 6 years hubby has been in the military so we moved away from home to live in other states. Hubby is about down with his Active Duty status (he has joined the Reserves) so this means we can move back home to Utah. So to Utah we are headed. We have more family there then when we lived there before. So we are extra excited. And I thought that Home Sweet Home fit in so many ways for these cards. *big HUGE grin*

I will post the Crock Pot Sunday in a couple of days. For now, I'm heading to bed. Tomorrow I am packing my cake stuff since I don't plan to make any cakes between now and when we move (less than 3 weeks now!!)

Crock Pot Sunday- Swiss Steak Supper

Sorry that this post is late! We have been busy packing. Yesterday I posted one of my Moving cards that I made and I will post another one soon. If you missed it, be sure to scroll down to the next post.

Anyhow, on to this weeks Crock Pot meal.
Also from the Betty Crocker Slow Cooker cookbook--

Swiss Steak Supper
1 1/2 lbs. beef boneless round steak
1/2 peppered seasoned salt
6 to 8 new potatoes
1 1/2 cup baby carrots 1 medium onion, sliced
1 can (14 1/2 ounces) diced tomatoes with basil, garlic, and oregano, undrained
1 jar (12 ounces) home style beef gravy
Chopped Parsley, if desired

1. Trim excess fat from beed. Cut beef into 6 serving peices. Spray 12-inch skillet with non-stick cooking spra; heat over medium-high heat. Sprinkle beef with seasoned salt. Cook beef in skillet about 8 minutes, turning once until brown.
2. Layer potatoes, carrots, beef and onion in 3 1/2 to 6 quart slow cooker. Mix tomatoes and gravy in a bowl. Spoon over beef and vegetables.
3. Cover and cook on low heat setting 7 to 9 hours or until beef and vegetables are tender. Sprinkle with Parsley if desired.

This meal was so easy, and oh so yummy! I did up some croisants to go with it. (the picture is hubby's plate, it looked better then mine) I will post another card soon so stay tuned for that! Now to get more packing done! Only 3 weeks till we move!!

Moving cards part 1

I haven't forgotten about Crockpot Sunday. I will post this weeks recipes later. I just wanted to start sharing my moving cards. This first one I have for you was just for fun. I was joking around about how we moved less than a year ago and I sent out "We've moved" cards then. So now when people get these new cards they are going to say "again?" So for fun, I made up some cards that say this:
This card is a no stamp card. I printed the sentiment on my printer using Very Vanilla Cardstock and then mounted it onto Taken With Teal. The printed paper is from a paper pack I got when I did the recipe tin a few weeks ago. I layered it onto Taken With Teal cardstock and then stitched it using my sewing machine and red thread. Chocolate Chip cardstock was used for the card base. Simple, quick and easy. *grin* I did 10 of these.

I also have a few other designs that I did that I will share later. I need to space them out because my craft room is now in these: All 4 of those boxes are my stamp sets. I have about 14 boxes total of my craft stuff and several rolling cards and cabinets that we just saran wrapped and taped closed (we saran wrapped them so that scorpions and other nasty things don't crawl into them and stow away. Yes, we taped our boxes really well too *wink*).

Crock Pot Sunday- Beef Stroganoff

Our family takes turns cooking. Hubby's nights to cook are Monday, Thursday & Friday. Tammy cooks on Wednesday nights. That leaves me cooking on Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday. Since Sunday is church day and a day of rest I try to make that day as simple as possible for meals. What easier way to do that then in the crock pot! (I love my crock pot!).

So I thought I would make a weekly post on my blog with my Sunday Crock Pot recipes. :D
This Sunday I did Beef Stroganoff. I have made this one before and it turned out better last time, but it was still oh so good! (I do have a version of beef stroganoff that only takes about 20 minutes, but sometimes it's nice to do this yummy, melt in your mouth version.) It serves 8 so this recipe makes two meals. I cook it all at once and then freeze half of it. The night before I want to use the frozen portion I take it out of the freezer and put it in the fridge and then heat it on the stove before serving.


From Betty Crocker's Slow Cooker Cookbook:
Beef Stroganoff
2 lbs. beef stew meat
1 large onion, chopped (1 cup)
1 can (10 3/4 ounces) condensed cream of mushroom soup
1 can (10 3/4 ounces) condensed cream of onion soup (our local grocery store doesn't carry cream of onion so we do 2 cans of cream of mushroom and it's delicious)
1 can (8 ounces) sliced mushrooms, drained
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, cubed
1 container (8 ounces) sour cream
6 cups hot, cooked, noodles or rice, for serving, if desired

1. Mix beef, onion, soups, mushrooms, and pepper in 3 1/2 to 6 quart slow cooker.
2. Cover and cook on low heat setting 8 to 10 hours or until beef is very tender.
3. Stir cream cheese into beef mixture until melted. Stir in Sour Cream.
4. Serve beef mixture over noodles or rice.

Serves 8

Isn't that simple! Seriously, the prep time is less than 10 minutes. Perfect for Sundays. Just set it all in the crock pot when you wake up in the morning and it will be ready by dinner time!

I do have about 5 different cards to show you so stay tuned for that!

Today is also my Hubby's and my 8th wedding Anniversary so I just wanted to say Happy Anniversary honey!