Chocolate Velvet Cheesecake

What could make you say "Mmmm!" more than a chocolate cheesecake? For those that know me you know that I LOVE cheesecake (NO fruit in, on or around the cake, please!) and I am a darn good baker as well. Here's the recipe I tried this week and is my new favorite.

Chocolate Velvet Cheesecake
Jolene Worthington

Oreo cookie crumb crust, prepared (I smashed oreos and add a bit of butter then pressed into the spring form pan and froze it while I worked on the rest of the cake)
12 oz chocolate chips melted with a bit of butter
3 (8 oz) pkg of cream cheese
1 C sugar
3 eggs
2 C. sour cream
1 tsp vanilla

Beat cream cheese and sugar. Add vanilla, chocolate, mix well. Add sour cream. Beat in eggs one at a time until just blended (do not over beat—don’t want to mix in too much air).
Pour into prepared pan.
Bake 300 degrees for about 45 minutes (DO NOT OPEN OVEN DOOR), turn off oven and let cake cool 1-2 hours in oven. Take out of oven and finish cooling before placing in refrigerator. Add toppings (caramel dip—found next to the apples in the produce aisle.) to cover cracks.

If you make one please let me know how you liked it!

Clear Dollar Stamps Guest Designer Call

Here is my entry for Clear Dollar Stamps Guest Designer Call for the month of August. The challenge was to make a card with this layout: 3 panels or 4 ribbons on one side and a shape on the other. Sentiment was optional. My first wonderful idea wasn't working and took too much time. Hey, I was busy making a deliciously smooth cheesecake at the time. I then thought about this wonderful Asian patterned paper I have. The three panels are actually from one sheet of paper, just different sections of the paper. I wanted the tree so I made sure I cut that portion out of the paper. I was going to add the CDS Asian plants potted bonsai tree in this card, but it just was not fitting. I needed a bigger image on the left so I got out my panda. Bought him at Ace Hardware of all places! Yes, they have stamps, yarn, fabric and all of your crafting needs there. Crazy isn't it? My first image on the left hand side had smaller characters on it and it just was not quite right. I tore that off and played around with Stampin' Up's Kanji stamp set. I used my black marker to ink just the character and not the english translation. Something was still missing! But what? I am not a huge ribbon person and I don't have a large selection. A brad? an eyelet? BAM! It was the framed "tranquility".
It was 8:30 pm on my second night of working on this so I quickly ran outside to try and catch a bit of sunlight to take the photo. Awful, awful photos. Inside wasn't much better. I ran over to my neighbor, who is a professional photographer, and he snapped a few pictures for me. What a difference! I would like to thank Mike Caufmann for taking the photos. I will try and remember his webpage address to give you a link to his business.
Let's try this: 5th Street Photography if that doesn't work, I will try and find it.

Here's the link back to Clear Dollar Stamps

Paper: ballet blue, vanilla, patterned asian paper
ink: stazon, bashful blue, old olive
accessories: brads, metal window, pearl buttons
stamps: Kanji by SU and Panda by ??

Hey! thanks so much for looking and don't forget to leave a really nice comment so CDS thinks I am the best!

Oh and by the way, the cheesecake is absolutely delicious. One of my best yet!

I won! I won!

Finally! I figured out how to get this picture here! Now for the story.

My dear friend, Beth, gave me this award and here is what she wrote about it on her blog.

This award is passed on to other bloggers who, in the opinion of the bestowed, feel the bloggers creations are brilliant. I certainly don't think my work is brilliant....maybe brilliant with a little DORK quality added in the mix....making it more dorky than brilliant! :) I do thank you all for visiting and for looking at my work.The conditions or this award are as follows:1. I must thank the person who gave me this award and post a link here for you all to go and visit her blog... you will be doing lots of drooling over Paula's work...it's simply scrumptious!2. I must list 10 honest things about myself.3. I must put a copy of the Honest Scrap logo on my blog.4. I must list at least 7 worth bloggers to pass this award on to and list their links.5. I must notify the blogger of their award.

Beth's blog is: Here

Here are 10 honest things about me:

1. I am a dork. I am Queen Dork.

2. I have met a bunch of wonderful women on SCS. We have created a bond that I can't explain.

3. I have had the privelge (Peggysue, how do I spell that?) of meeting Peggysue, Lois, Beth, Cathi and Laurie.

4. I am excited about my knit-in date with Peggysue

5. I wish I could meet some more SCS dorks.

6. I love to do paper, fiber and reed crafts.

7. I can't sit still and that's why I can buzz through projects pretty quickly

8. Because I like to craft I don't have a clean or tidy house.

9. I can't wait until I hit 20,000 posts on SCS so I can give myself my preferred title of "Queen Dork"

10. I am a bit worried about the amount of Dorkdom in the midwest, specifically, Wisconsin. It seems we have a high percentage of the SCS dorks from Wisconsin.

I will have to find some blogs to send this award on to. Not quite sure who that will be since Beth used all of the SCS dork blogs!!!

Baby Blanket and Card for Ulliana

This is the blanket I made for my friend Jim and his wife, Tonya. They had their first baby on June 30. I had dinner with them just 6 days prior. After having dinner with them I ran to Walmart to go buy the yarn to make this blanket as they knew they were having a girl.
My plan was simple, I was just going to make 6 squares each of 4 colors/designs. I was thinking of doing single crochet for each block. Something simple that was going to be done in no more than a week. HA! for those of you that know me well I just can't do something simple, I need a good challenge.
I spent about 1.5 to 2 weeks designing each of the squares while I was making squares at the same time. I quickly noticed that I was going to run out of yarn so back to Walmart I go and changed one of the colors. The light pink was originally a dark color. This light pink really makes the blanket and so much better than the darker color.
I picked the patterns for each square from a variety of sources. I found one on the internet and the others in dish cloth pattern books.


Here is the card to go with the blanket. **I CASED the card from SCS. I couldn't tell you from whom. I CASED it at least 6 months ago(??) when I bought the set from The Angel Company. Hey, Clear Dollar Stamps, if you are looking please note that I DO stamp. I know that it looks like that all I do is knit and crochet. Also, if I should win next months Guest Designer Call, I will be putting away my needles and getting inky.

Hey, What's up??

My friend Jen and I like to stamp together. We rarely get time to, though. Today we spent about 1.5 hours together. I wanted to try my Clear Dollar Stamps barn stamp. Haven't really had a chance to use it. This is what I created. I think you can see by the shadows of the sun that the cow and haystack are on pop dots. I wanted to add a ribbon, but that darn barn is so big it doesn't leave much room for anything else. I then decided to cut off the corner so my pretty patterned paper and the ribbon could be seen.
After making this card the family headed to the pool. I swam with my SCS friend, Lori. Lori lives in Texas. She likes to piggy back on my workouts so she doesn't have to workout herself. So, yes, I swim just by myself, but Lori is with me in spirit. Hey, Lori, we only swam a half mile because I wanted to play with the kids for a bit before the pool closed.

Stamps: Barn from clear dollar stamps
paper: real red, pp from michael's, white
ink: stazon
markers: red, so saffron, creamy caramel, chocolate chip
accessories: brads, oval window, ribbon.