BABY SHOWER FUN!

I am so excited to be hosting a baby shower for my husband's nephew and his wife's long awaited baby girl! We are all so happy and excited to welcome this precious sweetie. Wednesday my grand-daughter and I baked cut-out sugar cookies with Paula Deen's cookie recipe. Some of the reviews stated it was difficult to roll out, and tended to crumble. I have to agree. Maybe refridgerating the dough overnight made it too cold. The taste of the cookies was worth the hassle. We decorated with home made powdered sugar glaze, white and pink of course! We are serving Wild Rice-Chicken Salad, fruit, biscuits with jam and honey, and the cookies for dessert. We have "Price is Right" and "Name that Kid" for games. I purchased 10-12 items at Target and the guests will guess the price. Closest guess without going over will win a small prize. For "Name that Kid" guests will have to name the children in famous families. Person who gets the most right will win a prize. We served "Lemonade Punch" easily found at AllRecipes.com, contributed by "Baggy", and it went over very well. I used Yellow Tail merlot and frozen pink lemonade. My lemonade ice cubes didn't freeze hard enough, because there wasn't enough water in them. I tried freezing the concentrate in an ice cube tray, and it doesn't work. Comments included not too sweet, and there were requests for the recipe.

Reasons to Preserve your Photos with Heritage Makers: 1. No mess! You could cover an entire table with papers, embellishments, glue, pens, pictures, and still not have everything you need to complete the perfect page. With HM you can sit on your couch with your laptop and create all you want. 2. No need to go back through the years of scrapbook pages to fill in the story gaps you left because you didn’t want to handwrite the story and the computer wasn’t handy. Journaling is just as fun as the rest of it now! 3. No more trips to the photo store to resize, recolor, or reprint pictures. You can do it all with the mouse. What took 3-5 pages of scrapbooking can now fit into 1 or 2 page layouts! 4. All-inclusive pricing. Club HM includes all the embellishments, alphabets, paper, etc. that you will ever need. You have a scrapbook store at your fingertips. A lot less waste. And it’s cheaper in the long run! 5. You won’t get bored. Every month Heritage Makers adds new art and templates. The tutorials in Heritage Makers and the opportunities to learn new techniques and features are amazing. 6. You can fill gaps in traditional scrapbooks with digital pages from Heritage Makers. You can drag and drop into a template those events that didn’t warrant extra time to scrap. You can do a page in minutes and it looks fab! 7. You can make multiple copies of books, and your children will have a sense of history in storybooks that will last a lifetime.

Valentine's Day!

Don't send the same old cards this year! Create your own using Heritage Makers powerful publishing system "Studio". I've been playing around with a template, but you can also create your own, completely from scratch. "Studio" is like having a scrapbook store at your fingertips!
Check out my web-site for more ideas! www.heritagemakers.com/susan

My Next Career

Last April I was reading an article in Woman's Day Magazine called "Have a Party, Make Money." I wasn't really interested in a "party plan" direct sales business, but one caught my eye. It was a profile of a personal publishing consultant for a company I had never heard of called Heritage Makers, a company that allows clients to make their own professionally bound "storybooks," digital scrapbooks, cards, canvases, posters and photo gifts.
I went to the company's web-site, and the more I investigated, the more intrigued I became. I didn't do anything about it for a couple of weeks, but I couldn't stop thinking about the idea of helping people getting their pictures off of their computers, and into beautiful keepsake books and other items.
It's been about 2 months since I signed up to be a consultant, and I really feel like I found my next job. The challenge right now is finding time to work the business, as well as getting my own projects published. It looks to be an awesome hobby, with plenty of potential to earn money doing something I really love.
If this sounds like your dream job as well, check out my web-site and join my team!
www.heritagemakers.com/susan

Heritage Makers - Father's Day Card

Heritage Makers - My Newest Hobby and Career!

I'm No Martha Stewart...

...but making valances is a project anyone with very basic sewing skills can tackle. There are several reasons you may decide to sew your own curtains or valances. You may have odd sized windows, or a specific decorating scheme that you can't find just the right window treatments for. You may not necessarily find them cheaper than buying ready made, but you will end up with a unique look that you won't find anywhere else.

For a standard 15 inch valance, I start with two 27 inch lengths of fabric. This will give a 44 inch wide window double fullness. Make sure your fabric is cut square. I use a cutting board and rotary cutter to line the fabric up straight and square, and I use a yard stick to run the rotary cutter against.

Hem the sides first. I can't stress enough how much your iron is your friend when making curtains and valances. Trim any selvage from the two short ends, then iron a two inch hem. Fold one inch against the fold, creating a one inch side hem. Repeat this process on the other side, and the other valance piece. Stitch this hem down. There is no need to back stitch this hem, and I just sew one piece after another, not bothering to cut them apart until I'm done with this step.

For the heading iron down 6 inches on the top of each piece, then fold 3 inches against the first fold, so you end up with a three inch double heading. Stitch the fabric down, and then sew a second line of stitching one and one half inches from the folded edge. I put a piece of tape on my sewing machine to line the edge up and make it easy to sew a straight edge.

For the bottom hems, fold 6 inches and iron, then fold 3 inches against the fold to create a 3 inch double hem. Stitch the hem in place.

I find it quickest to sew these assembly style when making for multiple windows, doing all the side hems first, then all the headings, and then all the bottom hems. I like to use spray starch of the fabric isn't as stiff as you like.

If your curtain rod isn't a standard cafe style rod, adjust the rod pocket size. I can make a valance for a standard sized window in less than an hour.