Happy…

Day 6-A picture of something that makes you happy

These guys…

My favorite recipes…

Day 5-Your favorite recipes

This could get long. I print out a lot of recipes from the Internet. I slip them all into a magnetic file on the side of my refrigerator. Every now and then I go through and toss out recipes I only used once and didn’t really love.

Smitten Kitchen’s Best Cocoa Brownies

Smitten Kitchen’s Best Birthday Cake

Chicken and Dumplings

Mrs. Field’s Sugar Cookies

Hershey’s Perfectly Chocolate Cake & Frosting

My parents…

Day 4-Your parents

My parents are currently planning their latest globe-trotting escapade. They’re planning to head to Hawaii next week. I love that they travel so much. My mom is a bit of a  perfectionist at work and it stresses her out. She also suffers from some of the “no one else will do it, so I guess I will” syndrome that I have. My dad has worked for the same company for more years than I’ve been alive.

They got married young. Had me young. I was quickly followd by two siblings, so they had them young too. Much of the beginning of their marriage was keeping a young family above water – financially, morally, educationally (is that a word)?). When my brother graduated from high school and joined the military, my mom was only 43. That’s only 8 years older than I am. Wow. Anyhow, they had begun traveling before then, but traveled more frequently once no kids were home.

Now they have six grandkids and are the most fun grandparents ever. They spoil the kids rotten, just as grandparents should.

Red Velvet Cupcakes…

Among my baking weaknesses is Red Velvet Cake. Tom’s aunt brings a Red Velvet Smith Island Cake to family functions every year and I’ve become addicted to that cake. Add to that the Red Velvet Cheesecake from Cheesecake Factory and now RVC is like cake Kryptonite to me.

Which is why when I volunteered to bake cupcakes to take to an event, I thought RVC would be perfect – I get to eat a few and take the rest away from my house. Unfortunately (not) the recipe made more than I anticipated and we were left with at least a dozen at our house. So sad.

Seriously, how was I supposed to resist this beauty?

Recipe: McCormick Red Velvet Cupcakes and Em’s Magnificent Cream Cheese Frosting.

My first love…

Day 3-Your first love

My first love? This should probably be a  person, huh? And yet I know the real answer. Books. I’m a reader and have been since I was four. My grandma taught me how to read Go Dogs, Go! when I was four. Really I probably memorized it, but I still loved the power of telling myself the story.

I began to read everything in sight after that. I’m one of those people whose eyes just can’t stop themselves from reading. It makes me sort of nosy, but if my eyes see words, I have a compulsion to read them. And I have 20/10 vision (and possibly better – that’s where they stop measuring) so I can see pretty far away.

I tend to go in trends. Right now I’m on a historical romance novel kick. I suppose they’re nothing but fluff, but well, at the end of the day (which is when I read), my brain wants fluff and a happy ending. What can I say? I am a natural worrier so most of the “book club” books seem like they would just fuel my tendency to fret.

I also like to read cozy mysteries, meatier historical fiction, and biographies. I used to read true crime, psychological thrillers and straight-up mysteries (I don’t know the technical definition, but in my mind cozy mysteries are lighter, less gruesome reads). But then I had the 10PM Epiphany and I haven’t read those genres since.

The 10PM Epiphany? Why, that’s the realization that I worry less and sleep better if I go to bed without watching the 10PM dramas (I’m on the East Coast – remind me sometime to explain my theory about why Midwesterners tend to be nicer). A – my blood pressure doesn’t spike from the tension and get me in a pattern of getting all stressed and B – I don’t watch the news that comes on after it and trust me – that’s helped immensely. I’ve found that I can even tolerate waking up early in the mornings (and by that I mean before 9) since I had the Epiphany. Sort of. Still not a morning person, but I’m better.

I think once my kids are older and I sleep like a normal person (rather than being woken up by a two-year-old who can get out of her crib and wants to watch “Ooh-Ooh” - AKA Curious George – at 4AM tapping me with the remote), I might venture back into more literature type reads. In large print. Or maybe I’ll check out a Kindle for the text-enlarging feature. Yes, I have fab visual acuity, but a terrible attention span. Large print has less info on a page so I can absorb it better. Not a problem for fluff novels, but I need smaller chunks for the heavy stuff.

My Blog Title

Following a 30-Day Blog Challenge from HERE.

Day 2-Meaning behind your blog name

Creating Christy started in my mind as an adjective gerund describing what I do. I create. Therefore Creating Christy. Then I read it again a few months after I started it and realized it has another meaning. It could also mean the creation of me. And then I really liked it. Because that’s what this is about. A form of self-discovery and becoming of me.

My subtitle is /Crazy, crafty, creative/ and I will readily admit that there are times when I’m not at all crafty or creative. I’ll plead the Fifth on the crazy part. But even if I’m not actually creating, there is within me a need to be creative and probably crafty as the result of that creativity.

Scout Tuesday…

Last night our Brownies worked on the Art to Wear Try-It. We didn’t do the same t-shirt project as the Daisies did a few weeks ago and it didn’t turn out as well. I printed a design and inserted in each shirt. Then the girls traced that design with puffy paints. It was hard for them to figure out how hard to squeeze. So we had some mishaps and the paint didn’t dry well. Oh, well.

The other project we did last night was a mask. I found a really cute mask made from handprints. We made tracing their hands our opening activity. They cut them out and then we moved to the t-shirts.

Once those were done, we moved back to the hands. I cut out eyeholes and stapled them together to make a mask. The girls folded some paper to make handles. They were adorable. Plus, they made use of my paper scrapbooking supplies, which I’m thrilled to not have just sitting around now that I prefer digiscrapping.