Photo contest: I need your votes!

Hello,

so this is not a scrapbooking but a photo contest I entered. I took this picture of my daughter while on vacation in early January this year. So show me some love and please vote for my entry.

Here is the link. Easy, takes 30 seconds. Please share the link with your friends too!

http://apps.facebook.com/contestshq/contests/88088/voteable_entries/14757122?ogn=facebook

The picture I entered is for sure my fave one of our vacation......

Thanks for all the help,

T.

PS: it is -25 here in Aurora, sure nice to look back at the vacay pics, yes, I wish I could turn back time and still be there. :)

Ps again :) : I will post the scarpbooking page of this picture! :)

2011 CTMH Calendar January and February Pages

Hey, I have finally made 2 pages of my 2011 Calendar!

This was a blank 12x12 calendar from Close To My Heart. I am slowly turning the blank pages into my own calendar pages. :) I use last years pictures so I can reflect back on what happened the previous year. I had made one last year too, but did not post a lot of pictures of it.

This calendar makes a great gift too, so if you are smart you can already start working on your 2012 calendar. :) Just a thought....

So this is my January page. Not a great picture of it but hey, it is here ! Simple, not a lot of work put into it but I did not want to make it to fancy. I wanted the pictures to be the focus not the embelsihmennts. Last year in January we went to Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. I used CTMH stamps and ink for the month.

My February page: My son turned one. I also wanted to incorporate Valentine's Day and Love in the layout so I used some simple rub on flowers and red hearts and Jillibeans Alphas to write February.

I can not wait to take my old calendar off the wall and hang the new one up!

Take care, and thanks for stopping by.
Tunde

Christmas is almost here!

Hi,

Phew, I am so excited to say that my Beigli turned out great! I was baking all day even my hubby helped a bit - he was grinding the poppy seeds for me. I made walnut and poppy-seed beigli. This is always such a dreaded task to do at Christmas. AND how cool that the pastry did not crack either on the top! :)

Beigli, sometimes spelled bejgli is a Hungarian pastry consisting of a roll of sweet yeast bread with a dense, rich, bittersweet filling. The filling is a paste of either walnuts or poppy seeds. It is a popular cuisine in other parts of Central Europe, Eastern Europe and in Israel as well. Beigli is commonly eaten at Christmas and Easter time.

Hungarian Christmas sweets and pastries served at Christmas time are not numerous. In general no other pastries are served, and the traditional candy szaloncukor, large amounts of wrapped decorative fondant candies hung on the Christmas tree as a decoration, also consumed during the Christmas holidays. All Hungarian families serve both the walnut and the poppy seed rolls.

My favourite is the walnut roll - dios bejgli. :)
Here is a picture of my bejgli I made today.

Szaloncukor (literally: "parlour candy") is a type of sweets traditionally associated with Christmas in Hungary. It is usually made of fondant, covered by chocolate and wrapped in shiny coloured foil, then hung on the Christmas tree as decoration.

The tradition of hanging these candies on the Christmas tree started in the 19th century. It was named szaloncukor because the tree usually stood in the parlour (szalon in Hungarian). (Cukor means "sugar" or "candy").

The name comes from the German-Austrian Salonzuckerl, this is why the original name was szalonczukkedli.

Fondant candies originally came in a few flavours (vanilla and strawberry for example), but now there is a wide variety of different kinds of candies, including jelly, coconut, hazelnut and lots of other flavours. It is usually hung on the tree with strings or small metal hooks.

And finally here is one more picture of our Christmas tree with szaloncukor on it. :) Can you find them!?

Hope you all enjoyed your weekend.

Tunde

ps: I have 2 of my Calendar pages ready for 2011, hopefully I can post them this week!

The Perfect Man

It is Friday night, I am not feeling that great, so we decided to go out for dinner instead of me cooking something. Great! :) As I am getting ready I hear Chloe reading a book....The Perfect Man. I could not help myyself but laugh. You go girl, it is never too early to search for the perfect man!

It is created by Dean and Merril Buckhorn. Very cute little book, really it is little, probabli 3x3 inches. You can find your perfect man in this book for sure, one of the pages has your perfect man.

"Just when you thought he did not exist, the perfect man emerges. Here at last, is undeniable proof that male perfection is all around you: the Gingerbread man, who is quite and sweet and does not mind if you bite his head off, the snow man who actually knows how to use a broom."

They are all perfect. They are all male.And unlike most guys, they are right here when you need them. The Perfect Man is a complete guide.

Get the book to find your perfect man!

T.

I am smarter than a GR 1 student

This really made my day. On Thursday I got to go and help out in my daughter's class. Did some "work" for the teacher and also helped reading with some kids. It was an awesome opportunity to do something different and observe my Gr 1 daughter in class. She is a sweetheart. :)

Anyway, I take this little girl out of the class room and she directs me to head to the computer room, which is next door. Noisy, but we get to sit on chairs which is a bonus ( yay I get to sit down for 7 minutes and 32 seconds ) and we start reading. A bunch of GR 3 students are staring at us occasionally, but we just focus on reading. This book is about flooding that this little girl is reading - lets call her "A"....We come to a scene in the book where the pictures show a man in a motor boat, and a family standing on their balcony of their house, the roads are flooded. "A" stops reading and looks at me wondering: "Why do they need a boat? " Hmmm...good question...So I start explaining...well, the roads are flooded, the water is deep, they might not know how to swim, they need to go to a safe place...bla bla bla....so when I am done explaining she say to me with a serious but happy voice: " You are very smart".

I guess I am smarter than Gr 1 student. :)

The only thing I kept thinking of that day was this sweet comment....It really made me smile and made my day.

Bicycle Double Page Layout

Hello my fellow scrapbookers!

Hope you are enjoying your weekend. I am not doing much at all today just laying low, feeling very tired. Pretty much a lazy couch kinda day. Trust me it is a bliss, since I do not get to lay on the couch a lot and do nothing with with 2 kids around, but we are visiting at grandma's so she was busy with the grand kids today.

Here is a double page layout I made for my daughter. She was getting ready to go out for the frst time on her two - wheeler. All summer long she kept asking us to take off her trainig wheels which daddy was not keen on - worries too much. :) So he just kept adjusting the training wheels so it felt like Chloe was riding a two - wheeler once she was in balance. So to our excitement just before school started this fall we took her training wheels off and she took off no problem! She was very proud, and we were too. :)

Bye for now,

T. :)

Easy Chicken Broccoli Divan With Fusilli

What a beautiful day! I am enjoying the sun shine through the huge glass doors up north in grandmas living room.I tried to take a nap in the arm chair, but grandma and toddler boy was too noisy playing with bells and listening to videos recorded on grandmas phone. Oh well, I got some rest anyway. Everybody is busy outside so I took the opportunity to write this post while it is peaceful in here. :)

So here is the recipe of this divan I fed, well try to fed my family last night. :)


Ingredients:

3 cups hot cooked broccoli florets
2 cups cubed,cooked,skinless chicken breast
1 can cream of broccoli soup or mushroom soup
1/3 cup 1% milk
1/2 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
2 tbsp dry bread crumbs
` tsp margarine or butter, melted
3 cups of uncooked tri-coloured fusilli

1. Arrange broccoli and chicken in 1.5 qt ( 1.5 L ) baking dish. Pour in mixture of soup and milk. Sprinkle with cheese. Top with mixture of bread crumbs and margarine.
2.bake at 425 F ( 220C ) until heated through - about 25 minutes.
3. Cook fusilli according to package directions,omitting salt, and serve immediately with divan.

Bon Apetite!


here is the tofu version.....just cubed up some tofu and fried it until golden brown.
Here is a picture of the chicken version.

I used an organ can of Amy's cream of mushroom soup....lol...it was a mistake. Next time I will try this recipe with cream of broccoli since my daughter hated this dish. I liked it. My toddler dude had a good amount for dinner. The husband picked out all the mushroom pieces into a small dish...So over all since my family is not a mushroom lover unlike me this dish was not a hit. As I said next time it is going to be made with cream of broccoli. Other than that it is a great weeknight dish.

Have a great weekend!I am off to join the family outside now. :)

T.