Share Your (card-making) Love

After surviving cooking and baking for my 1st party since 2007 I had one more good deed to do.  Please join Etsy's Special Delivery project and make some valentines for City-Meals-on-Wheels!

You have one more day to join up: cards must be received by this Wednesday, so that means they must be mailed by tomorrow.  

You can also join the Flickr group here.

And for more cards, there's one more week to join my 100th Post Giveaway.  

Have a lovely Valentine's Day Prep week!

Let's Get this Party Started!

Ahhh....I am solely responsible for turning all of these ingredients into a lovely multi-course meal for 7 people tomorrow!  Those who know me have been very amused by my attempts at cooking, so we'll see what happens.  

Maybe Mila will help when she wakes up.  Happy Birthday, Aunt Liz, love you and see you tomorrow!

Bunny, Bear, Brownies and a Special Project

Happy Chinese New Year!  It's the year of the Bunny and Melinda the Build-A-Bear is all dressed up to celebrate with this little rabbit from Pearl River.

And with Belly, my friend Rachael's bunny: here she is after feasting on the holiday card I gave her this year.  She was too cute for us to be upset about it!

And speaking of Rachael I made her some birthday brownies this morning at 6:45 a.m.!  If you know me you know I'm not into mornings, so now you know how much I like Rachael.  My thoughtful friend Jenny had ordered me a subscription to Bon Appétit and on the cover this month:

Cocoa Brownies with Browned Butter and Walnuts from the amazing Alice Medrich.  Her newest book has the best title ever: Chewy Gooey Crisp Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies.  So, I got prepped cause I love my 10-piece glass bowl set from Williams-Sonoma for my mise-en-place.

You start by melting the butter and then watching it foam until it starts to brown.

and when you mix in some wet and dry ingredients it starts bubbling quite a bit -- kinda scary!  Then it's looking like regular brownie mix.

And adding eggs makes it all silky.

Mila was very curious about the whole process, but then waited patiently while they baked in the oven.

And I wish I'd gotten a better picture, but we were trying to surprise Rachael in the sunny conference room -- what a nice, warm day it was today for a change!

I have another birthday to get ready for this week with another Alice Medrich recipe, so more on that soon.  In the meantime, I found out about this awesome project from Claire at blah to TADA!.  Etsy is sponsoring another year of their Special Delivery "craftivism": Share Your Love 2011.

You can make greeting cards to be distributed by Citymeals-on-Wheels for Valentine's Day.  I love this idea and bought some supplies today.  And I love the knit heart on Etsy's link since I made some last year.

You have less than a week to join in -- cards must arrive at Etsy HQ in Brooklyn by February 9th (next Wednesday).  Happy card making and Valentine's-prepping!

100th Post Giveaway! (& my newest follower)

This is my 100th Post on Craftiness NOW!  

To celebrate I'm doing my 2nd giveaway: 12 greeting cards of all seasons made with Martha Stewart craft punches 

in hearts, flowers, leaves and snowflakes.  

My 1st giveaway was knit sushi for kitties, and speaking of kitties...meet Mila!

She's now the official blog mascot.  Strangely enough I just redecorated my bedroom in grey and then she came along and matches it quite well.

But back to the giveaway: the 3 heart cards say:

1) happy valentine's day (inside: to my one and only)

2) you & me (inside: meant to be) 

3) love to love you

The 3 snowflake cards say:

1) happy holidays

2) merry christmas to you

3) happy first snow to you (inside: and many more)

And...oh...uh oh, kitten card bowling, excuse me a minute...

Apparently if she's the center of attention she'll allow the photo session to continue.

Although she's thinking about knocking them all over again...I think...

Ahem...anyway, the 3 flower cards say:

1) miss you

2) happy birthday (inside: to you!)

3) happy day to you (inside: from me)

And the 3 leaf cards say:

1) i'm falling in love (inside: with you)

2) give thanks (inside: today & always)

3) thank you (inside: for all that you do)

And each card is stamped on the back with my new logo!  

Don't eat it, Mila...

OK, there's a better shot -- the stamp is from RubberStamps.net, highly recommended!

After the busy photo shoot she fell asleep, so now I can explain the giveaway:

1 entry will be given for each of the following:

- leave a comment with a favorite or unusual holiday you celebrate

- leave a (separate) comment with a crafty event coming up

- leave a(nother) comment with a great craft supply source

- be a blog follower

- follow me on Twitter

- like the Craftiness NOW Facebook page

The winner will be chosen at midnight 

on Monday, February 14th, Valentine's Day!  

Good luck and thanks for making Mila feel at home here :-)

Lightening Up Winter

It's been a chilly weekend, we're digging out from all the snow and waiting for more this week.  So, I made some of Bakerella's lemon bars to cheer me up, adding some toasted pinenuts.  The snow isn't all bad though, actually one very early morning it was quite pretty.

It was hard to see what was in the frame since I was just using my Blackberry camera, but I like this last snowy pic, it feels meaningful to me at this point.

And I received some really pretty orange and yellow roses today, so that made me happy too. 

Smells Good

Smell is a potent wizard that transports you 

across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived. 

-- Helen Keller

Can't sleep, I guess there's been a lot going on.  I'm thinking a lot about memories lately, how they can come up when you least expect it.  You can pass someone on the street and be thrown back into your past, catching the scent of maybe something your mother baked when you were little, or of a perfume worn by someone who used to love you.  These perfumes all bring memories back to me, at least for a little while.  I took the pics on a warm summer Saturday morning when anything was possible, or at least seemed more so than now in the dead of winter.

Fleur de Citronnier by Serge Lutens: a floral breeze

ELLE by Yves Saint Laurent: pink berries, lychee, peony, vetiver

 Fiori di Capri by Carthusia: carnation, lily of the valley, oak, amber

24, Faubourg by Hermes: floral amber, sun-drenched, glowing, sensual, light 

IF by Apothia: citrus, exotic flowers, clean pacific musk

Maitresse by Agent Provocateur: lotus, ylang ylang, osmanthus, jasmin sambac

Celestial Maracuja by Molton Brown: tuberose, jasmine, amber

White Patchouli by Tom Ford: citrus, coriander, jasmine, rose, sandalwood

Euphoria by Calvin Klein: luminescent, delicate, sheer, sensual

STELLANUDE by Stella McCartney: rose petals

Eau Parfumée Au Thé Blanc by Bvlgari: artemisia, white pepper, musk, amber

Kim Kardashian: bright, sweet, pale wood, vanilla musk

Flowerbomb by Viktor & Rolf: an explosive mix of a thousand flowers

Infusion de Tubereuse by Prada: petigrain bigararde, blood orange, dynamone

Chance by Chanel: sweet sensual floral