Monday, September 22, 2014

Homemade Tomato Soup

We had frost last week, so I pulled all of my green tomatoes to ripen indoors. Today I had a bunch of beautiful red tomatoes. My husband does so much for me and for our family that I wanted to make him one of his favourites~ Tomato Soup!


I started by washing and chopping the tomatoes into chunks. Placed them on a cookie sheet in a single layer, topped with sea salt, cracked pepper and olive oil. 

Baked them at 350 Degrees for 15 minutes and they turned out beautifully!
I use lots of veggies for my soup...tomatoes, onions, garlic, celery & carrots.
 I chop them into small pieces while heating a sautee pan on medium-high. I add olive oil to the hot pan and then toss in the onions for about 5 minutes, letting them caramelize.
I then add in the garlic, carrots & celery and cook them until they become tender, about 8 to 10 minutes.
Then I add a few pads of butter and some chicken stock (about 4 cups) and simmer for 10 minutes over medium heat.

 I put the tomatoes through the food processor so that they are not chunky and then strain it to remove all the peelings and seeds.

You're going to want to discard the seeds & peels. This leaves you with a nice, smooth tomato puree.

Add in the veggies that have gone through the food processor to create a nice, hearty soup. Finish it off with some additional salt & pepper as well as some tomato paste to give it a deeper flavour.





MMmmmmmm Good!!!!


Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Atlantic Heart Sketch Challenge

I'm so grateful and honoured to have been asked to be the guest designer for the Atlantic Hearts Sketch Challenge

Michelle designed a beautiful sketch for this week.
Here's the card I made using some of Close To My Heart's awesome products. I started with light, patterned paper from the Yuletide Carol paper pack, sponged with Cashmere Ink and the Designer Creations Ruby Paper Bags for the polka dot paper. 

I stamped the tree from the Best Wishes stamp set in Ruby, Topiary, New England Ivy & Ponderosa Pine Pigment Inks and applied them with our Sponge Daubbers

The "Winter Cheer" sentiment was stamped using New England Ivy Ink on a 1 3/4" scalloped circle that was cut from the Art Philosophy Cricut Cartridge in White Daisy Cardstock and then again at 2" in the Desert Sand Cardstock with some 3-D Foam Tape between the layers. I finished off the card with a Gold Bling Gem and some Bronze Shimmer Trim.





I finished the card off by stamping the inside with the sentiment, "Warm Wishes to you and yours." in New England Ivy Ink, adding a strip of the patterned paper and Bronze Shimmer Trim.

I hope you stop over at Atlantic Hearts and play along.

Monday, September 15, 2014

September Blog Hop - Our Favorite Things

Welcome to our September Blog Hop featuring our Favorite New Things.  To purchase any of the items seen in our blog hop today, contact your local consultant to place an order.

We hope that you will take the time to leave comments on our posts, as we love to get feedback from our viewers....whether it was something that you really liked or some new technique that was used that you would like to learn how to do....by leaving us comments, we get to hear what you like, and what you want to see. Thank you… now on to our hop!

If you have just hopped onto my blog, you can start here as this is a circular hop, but if you want to follow us across Canada then please start at the beginning and join Julie at 12 x 12 Travels. If you came from Chris' Creative Life then you are in the right place!

There are so many new products in this new Annual Inspirations Idea Book that I LOVE... some of them are featured below to get you inspired. There are so many new Picture My Life pocket scrapbook programs in additions to the ones previously available. This first card features the Chantilly Picture My Life (PML) along with Autumn Teracotta Cardstock, Slate Diagonal Ribbon, Teal Shimmer Tape and the AWESOME NEW mini staples!!


This next card also uses the same PML kit with Thistle cardstock and accented with Thistle Diagonal Ribbon.

Your next stop on the Cross Canada Hop is Sandra at Paper Sage .
If you get lost along the way, you can head to Michelle S Blog, My Creations with Michelle, as she has the complete blog list.

Thanks for hopping along with us - we hope we were able to inspire you to get creative using some of the designs, products and techniques seen along the way. We hope you will join us again next month when we will be featuring Trick or Treats,for Halloween.  So mark October 15th on your calendars and hop along with us.