Another Pair of Earrings

Here's another pair of earrings that I made recently. I picked up the carved turquoise looking beads in Shipshewana this summer (just made of plastic, I think). I combined them with bali silver beads- kinda fun looking!

Blue Topaz Crystal Earrings

Last week I decided I needed a little break from my lesson plans. I hadn't made any jewelry since summer. Earrings are fast - I can do a pair in under a half hour usually. I made these out of swarovski crystal to go with this necklace. Easy Peasy! It felt so good to do something non-school! And then, I actually made 2 more pair, so I actually have something else that I can post hopefully sometime soon.

Rosemary Parmesan Biscuits

It has been so long since I have blogged here - I wonder if everyone has stopped checking in to see if there is something new???? Teaching fifth grade still has left me with hours of preparation and little time for anything else. But this weekend I wanted to take a break and leave at least one post to let everyone know that I was still alive!

I'm hoping to make this recipe for biscuits again today. It is based on a recipe from the USA Weeekend Magazine from February 2008. It has a neat trick where you grate frozen butter into the dough which makes these biscuits easy and flaky! I have added fresh rosemary and parmesan cheese to make them savory, but you could leave that out or add different flavorings.


Rosemary Parmesan Biscuits

2 cups unbleached flour
2 tsps baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
6 Tablespoons unsalted butter, frozen solid
1 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup parmesan cheese
1 Tablespoon fresh rosemary, chopped

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. With a fork, mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. Using the large holes on a grater, grate the butter into the bowl. Add the cheese and rosemary. Use your fingers to mix the ingredients. Add the buttermilk and stir with a fork or hands until just mixed. Add a bit additional buttermilk if needed.

Turn out dough onto a floured board and pat into a square about 6 inches across. Cut the dough into 9 squares. Shape each square into a roundish shape and then set on a lightly greased cookie sheet. (I use an airbake pan to keep the bottoms from getting too brown.) Bake for about 15 minutes or until golden.

Hanging Around Clever Karen - Episode 19

Broken Teacup Necklace with Soldered Edges

Sorry I haven't been hanging around very much in this corner of the blog world. All my clever energy is being consumed at iFifth - posting there, planning lessons, correcting papers, and all the wonderful and mundane stuff that is a part of being a classroom teacher. Hope you all are well - I miss being here!

Toile Provence Smock Apron

If you have a really good memory, you may recall the story of the upside down toile apron from last Christmas. That project was tucked away to be finished in the summertime, and I made another provence apron to give as a Christmas gift.


So here is the completed apron in all its upside fabric glory. I put red bias binding around the edges - not sure if I love it. But the style of the apron is wonderful.


My favorite part is the criss-crossed straps in the back.


The pattern comes from A Is for Apron by Nathalie Mornu. This book has the cutest apron ideas! And here are the directions on how I used the Block Poster website to enlarge a scan of the pattern from the book.

Belgium iPhoto Book

One of my last projects of the summer was finishing up the digital scrapbooking pages about Belgium and getting an iPhoto book printed with the pages. Ah, you may ask, wasn't your trip to Belgium 2 years ago??????? Blush, yes it was. I've decided that digital scrapbooking takes too much time for a busy teacher. I think from now on I will just do photo books for trips and maybe scrapbook just a few pages.



I am very happy with how the book turned out. IPhoto is not a cheap option, especially when you make lots of pages, but the end result is beautiful!


FYI - I scrapbooked the pages in Print Shop, saved them as jpegs, and the imported the jpegs into iPhoto to create the book.

Quartz and Turquoise Necklace - Remixed

Here's another necklace that I recently designed. This is a long necklace with quartz and turquoise beads that I made a couple years ago. I changed the piece that dangled down at the end. I added a circle from a toggle bracelet and then attached a long pendant with more turquoise and quartz. The orginal dangle was too small - this works much better!