First Annual Twitter Bacon Blog Hop

MMMM. Bacon

There's just something about bacon.

People love it.
People love to eat it.
People love to smell it frying.

People love to talk about it and blog about it (say what?)

Welcome! You've arrived to the final destination of the 1st Annual Twitter Bacon Blog Hop. We have 8 stops for your to browse and drool through (don't worry if you've arrived here first, I will bring you to the starting point of the Blog Hop at the end of my bacon rave).

First thing's first. As this IS a papercrafting blog and I'm committed to all things papercrafty, I just have to brag on this card I discovered while writing my blogpost. Bacon and papercrafts come together as one...sigh. CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS? It's a bacon and egg breakfast card! HOW happy would your eyeballs be to receive this?

Big huge thanks to Kathy (CAKath on Splitcoast) for allowing me to share her personal creation with you! You can see it here.





Bacon Blog Hop - How did this strange thing come to be?

So yesterday I'm knee deep in computer work and have tweetdeck open which allows me to categorize my tweeps (my twitter people I follow) and Lydia says something about bacon. Now, let me back up and say that I follow Lydia for her mad papercrafting skillz so the bacon caught me off guard.... and those who know me know that I'm one who can't resist putting in my 2 cents.

So I sent Lydia a message with an unconventional use of bacon. She replied back! Her office loved the idea. Really? Whoa. What have I stumbled upon here, but a cult-like following of fellow bacon lovers! How odd! How, how so very cool! Bacon lovers unite!

Over the course of the afternoon there were jokes of bacon bake-offs (a bac-off as Lydia called it, how clever!), messages of bacon recipies, and in the time it takes to fry up a pan of the good stuff we had a gregarious group of bacon foodies united through twitter. It turns out that we all blog so the natural progression to this new found bond would be to all blog about bacon, just to be cool, different and to share the love.

Let's take it one step further and we now have the 1st Annual Bacon Blog Hop organized and ready to take you an a small guided tour. Join us on each step of this tour and we'll share with you our thoughts on bacon, our love of bacon, odes to bacon, bacon stories and last but NOT LEAST each of us will share a favourite bacon RECIPE.

Let's take a moment to share a couple of video tributes to bacon, shall we?





Now this. Oh this had me busting a gut laughing. Watch the video and then I'll share something my good friend DG told me.




So my good friend DG, bless him, he's always sends me fun things and food for thought (literally). I posted a comment on my facebook page about the 1st Annual Bacon Bloghop and he posted this memory:

I once cooked off 3 pounds of bacon in the oven over a few hours one night in the oven, and when it was all cooled down, I put it all in a container and placed it in the freezer. I snacked on it off and on for the next couple days here and there, and when i wanted to use some for a burger, opened the container and realized that in 3 or so days, I ate all 3 pounds of bacon, except 3 pieces!

First let me say, what a brilliant idea. Often I want some bacon for my burger but don't want to dirty up another pan....or I've thought of it too late! Thanks DG, you da man! Second let me say, dude...you aren't the only one (mmm bacon) who would be guilty of this bacon snacking goodness.

Let's also give props where they are due and say that DG is also the very same person who led me to a site completely dedicated to all things bacon. www.bacontoday.com The cult of bacon lovers is bigger and badder than you ever knew! Recipes, jokes, a bacon babe of the day (not that I support this but hey, it doesn't come between me and my bacon, so whatevs!)


So I took the time to ask a few people how they like their bacon:

My hubby: a little bit crisp, in an egg sandwich (fried egg sandwich/rye bread)
My small girl: Wis mustard on it! (i know she's just going for the drama here)

My almost teenager: cooked. (hmm. The typical one word teenaged answer that can mean a multitude of things. 1. She'll take her bacon how and where she can get it as long as it's cooked. 2. She doesn't care to speak to me of such things. 3. She isn't speaking to me at all. 4. I'm lame. 5. There's bacon? Let's cut the small talk and start noshing!)
Me: BLT (oh baby oh baby) (on fresh french loaf, with mayo, fresh crisp lettuce, thinly sliced tomato, thick cut bayCON)

Graziela mentioned a spaghetti carbonara (and that made me drool)

Baba (my neighbour) gifted us with a MEAN dish of homemade pierogies with onion and butter and hunks of chopped up bacon love. I love when people reward my hubby's manual labour with home cookin'. OMG. It was comfort food utopia.

Lori-Anne said she didn't like it, so I think you all better change her mind....I said she's not doing it right. ha!


Now how about the unconventional? Something a little bit different? Tonight I will attempt to make the Dark Chocolate Bacon Espresso Cupcake. The thing about cupcakes is they need icing to be a cupcake....i'm a little concerned about this flavour blend, but how can bacon go wrong?

Dark Chocolate Bacon Espresso Cupcake Recipe

12 slices of your favourite bacon (the stronger flavour the better)
2 cups flour
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 cups white sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt (omit if your bacon is really salty)
2 eggs
1 cup cold STRONG brewed coffee
1 cup of buttermilk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tbsp cocoa powder for dusting

OPTIONAL: 2/3 cup dark chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 F/190 celsius

Cook 12 slices bacon to crisp, drain, cool then crumble. Crumble into small bits! Save 4 slices to cut up for garnish.

In large bowl stir together flour, cocoa, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Make a well in the centre and pour in eggs, coffee, buttermilk and oil. Stir. Put in crumbled bacon. Stir. Spoon batter into prepared muffin tin or foil cups.

Bake for 25 minutes for average muffin and 30 minutes for jumbo. Or until middle springs back when lightly pressed. Cool on wire rack. Frost with favourite chocolate or (creamcheese vanilla frosting) and dust with cocoa. Insert a piece of bacon into the top for garnish.
NOTE: next time I may try this recipe with maple extract and pecans.


Now, if you're ever in Edmonton, AB, rumour has it that Kerstin's Chocolate was selling chocolate covered bacon strips. I'm not kidding. I would never kid about bacon.

I'm officially the last stop and as I promised, I'd link you back to the first stop on the 1st Annual Twitter Bacon Blog Hop where you will be visiting a fellow stamper and bacon lover, Leslie. You will find her bacon bloggy goodness at The Crooked Stamper.

Thanks for stopping by!

Wanted

Rewind to last Saturday..... my good friend DG had arranged and booked a Stampin' Up! workshop and a few of his close and wonderful friends were coming, which was exciting and fantastic....

So how do you balance a workshop for one dude, a few lovely ladies, all mixed interests and levels...and none I've previously met. Would feminine projects offend? Should we scrapbook? Make cards? BigShot? Small things, big things? Oh dear...

Stop thinking and start doing...just do what Stampin' Up! says to do...share what we love!

WELLLLLL, I loved the faux wood technique that I featured in a previous post...and what stamp set and colours would go with that 'look'? The stamp set...WANTED....check it out...

This starts off with an 8.5x11" piece of Kraft cardstock for the base scrapbook page. The supplies used are Kraft cardstock stamped with elements from Wanted in Ruby Red, Bordering Blue and Night of Navy. Then....sponged with Close to Cocoa, and Whisper White to give it 'grit' baby...I'm feelin' OLD WEST!

Here I've added a Very Vanilla strip along the bottom, and layered it on to a 12x12" piece of textured Chocolate Chip cardstock. A very special thanks goes out to my husband for playing a 'villainous' model so that I could have pictures for my western themed scrap page!

This would be an idea of what everything would look like with extra 'outtakes' and pictures or journalling and memorabilia added to the page. The embellished vanilla block at the top can be used for another photo or a nice journalling block!

I hope you enjoyed this other take on 'faux wood' technique and to see how easy it is to progress from small scrap page to large!

Here's the Wanted stamp set which you can order online (and all other inks and accessories as well*), even in your jammies right now, my store is always open (Canadian orders) here!





*husband not for sale, I'm keeping him as he is very WANTED

Cards for Dudes

I (heart) this card so much. It was fast, it was easy and it was WAY FUNKY! Punchy cards are all the rage. I am constantly amazed by what my sistahs who stamp keep making with simple punched shapes!

Check out this card that we made in the Manly Men Class (I'm saving it for my hunny). He always fixes things around the house, big or small and it never ceases to amaze me how talented he is. I (heart) him too :)




All Supplies are Stampin Up! (of course)

Stamp set: retired <---- sniff...this is WHY it's important to get your wish list items before they retire! See the scoop on the current retiring lists by going to my AB FAB website HERE

Cardstock: brushed silver, Real Red, Kraft

Accessories: Large Grommet, silver brads

Inks: versamark, black Staz-On, circle punches, paper snips

Stamping Technique Faux Wood

Awhile back I did a fun and funky Manly Men card class. All projects had a masculine touch and were geared towards the men and boys in our lives. It can be difficult to create these types of cards (or find projects to CASE). CASE= copy and share everything. Yep...we stampers and scrappers have a secret language...

The first card I want to share is the faux wood technique. We used this technique and paired it with the Stampin' Up! retired Stamp set Ahoy Matey! , which is in my stash of adorable things that I am hoarding. My customers are lucky I'm such a hoarder...they can still play with old sets from time to time. NOW, I also envision using this technique with my 'western' sets....Wanted with the cowboy would look REALLY good.

Have a look at the photos and then tell me what set you think would go well with this technique!

Here's a close-up of the wood....it looks strikingly similar to my piano wood! Isn't it brilliant? I also particularly enjoy my distressed and inked edges and that itty bitty library clip by the parrot.



Here is the card straight on. I CASED the project from Dawn Griffith, stamping guru. Her website is here Dawn's Stamping Thoughts.

In a nutshell, you start out with a piece of Stampin' Up!s More Mustard Cardstock. Swipe a More Mustard Classic inkpad in continuous, long, straight lines across the cardstock. Repeat with Close to Cocoa Classic ink. Repeat again with Chocolate Chip Classic ink (swipe swipe swipe). THEN....swipe with Whisper White CRAFT ink. NOT too heavy now....just enough to add some highlight/contrast to the magical wood colours you've just created. Then I drew in the planks with a ruler and black Stampin' Write Journaller. Do dots of ink for the nails and nail holes, I happened to have an old silver ink pen so i used those to make my nails. Pretty neato huh?




If you do try something with this technique I'd love for you to link back to me or send me a message so I can come and see yours!

So, for those who know me personally and KNOW that I'm a girly girl and a ribbon-a-holic. NONE of my manly projects had ribbon. Now, let me point out that yes..this one has cotton twill tape, but it's TAPE my friends, Stampin' UP! says so!!! Besides it lends to the 'nautical' theme of the card.

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it! I hope you like the technique!

Toodle-oo
Dreena