Punny DIY Valentines

It's the week of love friends! Time to whip up your Valentines, buy some chocolates and show your loved ones you care. For us, Valentine's day wasn't just for lovers, but was a day that we showed love to our siblings, our teachers, our friends, our peers. Save yourself a few dollars and try to make your own cards. Today we bring you:

Some Punny Love!
Are you a fan of puns? Our brother John loves them and so we dedicate this post to him. These cards are super easy to make and sure to bring a laugh!

You Will Need:

cardstock
cardboard
red paper
glue
scissors
black sharpies
creative juices

Charlotte drew our designs and we outlined them with sharpies. Keep the drawing simple, if you need a template just search online.
Write out your pun and there you go! Instant Valentine!

With Gratitude

Mondays are not our favourite. We find it so hard to get up and be energized for the start of the week. Especially during the Winter, when it is so dark and cold, it is easy to get started on the Monday rant. Our usual Monday rant starts around 7:15 am, sitting in traffic, on our way to work and school. The song Ciao Monday plays on the radio, and the lyrics "Ciao Monday I'm done with you," drum through our heads all day long. Definitely not the most positive start to the day, and one we are now trying to change.

Our Mama says there is always one thing you can be grateful for, and so this week we are battling the Monday rant with gratitude. Take that Monday!

We are grateful for:

A beautiful sunny Saturday spent at the Curious Winter Art Festival! It was held in an old church hall right smack downtown, and the first twenty people received free gift bags. I (Renee) loved the gift bag incentive and was glad to receive one.

We are grateful for:

All the support and encouragement Charlotte received at the art festival. Truly Charlotte did very well overall, and her stuffies are now in the homes of many new friends. Thanks everyone for coming to visit us!

We are grateful for:

Meeting and spending time with creative artists! We met Brandy from Salvage Jewelry and loved chatting with her on and off all day. Check out her site if you are looking for vintage jewelry that has been revamped. It's gorgeous and you will fall in love. We promise. We also loved Zoe's Corner, a local soap maker who makes the most fragrant lavender soap and lovely creams.

We are grateful for:

The sunshine!! On Saturday it was so bright and sunny, you couldn't help but be happy. It reminded us that Spring is coming, despite whatever that groundhog says.

We are grateful for:

A Sunday spent with family. With the busyness of the week and life, it is such a treat to eat dinner altogether. Our favourite time is just sitting around after we have eaten and chatting.

We are grateful for:

Dr Oz's chocolate bark! Our Mama brought home his brand new magazine last week, and made his bark recipe this weekend and added cranberries. It is delicious and we will share it soon.

What about you? What are you grateful for? Happy Monday!

A Friday Ritual

One photo without explanation. A moment captured- a time to be still, to breathe and remember.

Happy Friday!

Tasty Roasted Chickpeas

Does that title sounds like an oxymoron? How can toasted chickpeas be tasty other than in hummus and bean salad? Well a few weeks ago a fellow blog reader and dear friend the Duchess, sent us a message with this recipe. At first we were skeptical, hmm really how could toasted chickpeas taste good? They are bland and flavourless! We forged ahead and made them, curious as to what they actually taste like. What was the verdict after an hour of roasting?

Toasted Chickpeas Are:

*Crunchy

*Tasty because of the amazing BBQ flavour Charlotte tossed them in! 

*Filling! 

*reminded us of a healthy crouton. 

If you are looking for a a healthy mid afternoon crunchy snack, try these tasty roasted chickpeas! They are very easy to make and are fully of protein. You can eat them alone or toss them in a salad. Thank you Duchess for sharing with us! We are always on the hunt for new recipes, if you have one, share with us! We love hearing from you. 

Tasty Roasted Chickpeas 

Ingredients: 

1 15 ounce can of chickpeas 

olive oil to coat 

salt and pepper 

1tsp garlic powder
1tsp onion powder
2tsp smoked paprika
1/2tsp dried parsley
1tsp sugar

How to make them:

Step 1:  Preheat oven to 400' F 

Drain, rinse and pat dry chickpeas (we used a paper towel to dry, takes a few minutes) 

Step 2: In a medium sized bowl, toss the chickpeas with olive oil. Add spice mixture, salt and pepper 

Step 3: Spread the chickpeas on a baking sheet and bake for a good 50 minutes, stirring often so all chickpeas get nice and toasty ( At first we only baked them for 40 min, but the chickpeas weren't crunchy, you definitely want the crunch factor, so keep those babies in the oven!) 

Enjoy! 

DIY Valentine Cards

It's the month of love friends and that means St Valentine's Day is around the corner! A few weeks ago we shared how we love to make and exchange St Valentine's cards. Today we want to share with you a few more ideas. We love pop out cards, and really who doesn't? They are so much to open and close, open and close..haha We found a couple of ideas on Pinetrest and turned them into tiny pop up cards. They are easy, fun and super cute!
Time to save yourself five bucks from Hallmark, and get your card making skills on!

DIY Pop Up  Card 

You will need:

card stock paper of different colours
stamps
scissors
glue
some creative juices

How to make them:

Step 1: Fold a white piece of card stock in the size of card you want to make. Take your scissors and cut out six slits along the fold. (check out picture)





























Step 2: Open the card and pop out those slits of paper you just cut. Pick another piece of paper that is a tiny bit bigger then the actual card, cut and glue it on the outside of the white card, covering the holes.

Step 3: Pick out what you want to do with your card..we have some ideas below.


Bee Mine 

Stamp a bee, or draw one if you don't have a stamp, and glue it on to the pop up part of the card. Write the words Will you...Mine Valentine? 



Thumbody Loves You Pop Up Card







































































































Using paint or ink, stamp your thumb on a piece of white card stock. Make it into little people and write the words Thumbody Loves You. How cute is that?



These are just a couple of ideas we played around with..really you can do so much! Have fun!

Pop Tarts *dairy and wheat free*

Did you love Pop Tarts as a child? We did and have fond memories in our wheat/dairy/chemically eating days of loving Pop Tarts. The icing, the pastry, the fake pie filling: SO delicious!!
Even our chef papa has memories of loving to eat cherry Pop Tarts for breakfast.
We haven't eaten them for years and years, and thought they were a food of our past, one we would never eat again. Charlotte changed all that when she created this absolute best Spelt Pie Crust. Last week she just decided to try making Pop Tarts, and they are: OUT OF THIS WORLD!!

Charstar's Perfect Spelt Pie Crust

Ingredients

2 1/4 cups of spelt flour
1 tsp of salt
3 tbsp of sugar
1/4 tsp of cinnamon
2/3 cup of shortening
6 tbsp of ice water

1 can of pie filling (we used strawberry)

How to make them:

Step 1) Preheat oven to 400'F. Mix together all the dry ingredients: the flour, salt, cinnamon and sugar.
Step 2) Cut in shortening until the pastry is crumbly.
Step 3) Add the ice water and mix with clean hands or with a fork.
Step 4) Sprinkle flour on the counter, and roll out pastry with a floured rolling pin, until an inch thick
Step 5) Using a pizza cutter, cut out rectangles.
Step 6) Add  2 tbsp of pie filling in each rectangle, and fold over, pinching the ends.
Step 7) Bake the Pop Tarts for 20 minutes












































































We love our Pop Tarts with a glaze and so use the following:

Ingredients

2 cups of icing sugar
2 tbsp of meringue powder
1 tsp of vanilla
3-6 tbsp of water

Mix all the ingredients together and ice the Pop Tarts when they are cooled.






















































Enjoy!!

Exciting Truly Charlotte News!!

This weekend we celebrated some very exciting news: Our very own Charlotte was featured and published in STUFFED magazine, which is now ON the shelves in Chapters!! We are so thrilled and excited to see her own designs featured in an international magazine. Her adorable vikings, mommy cats, cupcake ladies, chicks and penguins were all chosen to be a part of STUFFED. Charlotte sent a box of her stuffies to California back in July, hoping and praying they would be considered. They did and it's SO neat to see their adorable faces in print.

STUFFED is available at all Chapters and Indigo stores, as well as other local magazine shops. ( but that's only if our Mama doesn't buy them all first)  We are so very proud of you Charstar!! We can't wait to see what comes next..





















































In other news, Charlotte was accepted to be a part of the For the Love of Winter  show, here in Ottawa next Sat Feb 8th from 10-4pm. For the Love of Winter, will be showcasing local artists from the Ottawa region, and is partnered with Winterlude. Charlotte will be selling a new line of stuffies that are so incredibly cute, you will want to snatch them all up and secretly buy them for yourself. ( I have four)




























You can  find her stuffies at our favourite local shop Peaberry here in Aylmer and of course check out her Truly Charlotte etsy account as it is always being updated.

What are you waiting for? Go look for STUFFED magazine and find our favourite Truly Charlotte vikings.