The Heritage Card Box

Today I want you to meet people from The Heritage Card Box - little shop on etsy.com specialized in greeting cards.

Beautiful shop banner don't you think?

https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TheHeritageCardBox

But my dear friends, we need to back to the point :) The Heritage Card Box is family thing, really.

So...

Meet: Kinslea, Jalen, Judith and Oma :)

Kinslea is shop owner and creator, Jalen is her older brother who dealing with technical side of shop, Judith - Kinslea and Jalen Mum - creator and last, but definitely not least - Oma - Kinslea's Grandma and cards' creator from whom all these story began.

That's right and you can read about it here: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TheHeritageCardBox?ref=profile_shopname#about

Family lives in Youngsville, North Carolina, USA.

photo found through Google search :)

Picturesque little town.

I decided to ask Kinslea few questions.

How old you were when your Oma start to teach you card making?

A. Oma, some of my cousins, and I started this as a creative project to work on together when we went to her house every other Monday afternoon. I would say we started making cards when I was about 9 years old.

Oma's craft room

One of cards sets you can find in Kinslea shop: https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/276686832/the-special-occasions-pack-1-baby-boy-1?ref=shop_home_active_6

Tell us bit more about your family - are all your siblings 'artistic souls' ?

A. My dad is definitely very artistic. My brother also got those artistic genes as well. He is self-employed as a website designer (you can visit his website at http://dominion-designs.com/). My other three brothers are pretty artistic on varying degrees. I think overall most of my family is artistic and creative.

Card made by Judith 

Card made by Kinslea 

Card made by Oma 

What do you like about your hometown?

A. What I like the most about my hometown is that it is fairly small and quiet. You feel like you are out in the country, yet you aren't.

Photo taken and copyrighted by Don Solomon Photography.

Autumn in North Carolina - beautiful photo - if you want to see more pics from area please check: http://www.donsolomonphotography.com/

You, your Mam and your Oma all enjoy cooking - what each of you love to cook?

A. My Oma is the best cook I ever met! Opa (my grandfather) says he has never tasted any of her cooking that he does not like. I have to agree with him. She is definitely a gourmet cook!!! My mom is also a very good cook, and is always finding awesome recipes. I still have a lot to learn, but I love experimenting with different recipes. My mom and I enjoy finding healthy recipes on Pinterest to make for our family. (You can view my profile here:  pinterest.com/kraed10/. I have a few boards with a collection of recipes).

Your family team loves to read - what kind of books do you read?

A. Oma, Mom, and I are all Christians, and the book we love the best is the Bible. Second to that, I enjoy reading the Lamplighter Collection ( a collection of old books that have been republished) and the authors Douglas Bond, John J. Horn, Sarah Maxwell, and others. My siblings and I were taught by my Mom and Dad at an early age to read, and all of us love reading!!!

Do you have any extra projects for Christmas?

A. I am not sure if I'm going to be doing anything specifically for Christmas yet, right now I'm focusing on making cards for a national event at the end of October that I'm going to be a vendor at. After that I am going to be working on setting up more listing and packs in my shop, and then I may offer Christmas cards. I may even run a sale, so stay tuned for that!!!

Definitely we stay tuned for that :)

Crafting and family time

Long break with writing again... really bad bad me :)

Last week was very fast, just started and finished in blink of eye.

I was busy making bracelet replacement and that lead back to playing with seed beads again - good thing :). Why? I decided to make another wrapping seed beads bracelet, but in half way I had some funny thought: 'Why not make wire weaved pendant with seed beads and put it on seed beads necklace?'. Result of this thinking? Check below :)

After that I made two more pendants with seed beads :)

Meantime Dom was playing with paints - I gave him watercolour paper, so I'll use his masterpiece as background for cards for his Nanas soon :)

Also catch time to make card for card swap in my FB group - theme: Friendship.

I love Marina Fedotova ilustrations and stamps :) Shame I have just few of them, really want to have more - reason: they are really cute :)

Yesterday had bit of time for colouring, so did this cutie for new Christmas card.

Late afternoon yesterday we decided to have active family time and we went outside to play with Dom's new kite. He received owl kite as a gift from one of our neighbours :)

Beautiful flying :)

Bit dark pic, but was very cloudy and also already after 6pm :)

Our owl is catching mouse on this pic :)

We were outside bit over an hour and even not realized that until we back home - we had great fun :) Dom loves his kite and definitely we will play with it again very soon :)

Mr King, digi stamps and bit of cooking

Looks like I have a bit to write about.

Mr King? Yeah :) Stephen King - I was reading his books ages ago when was teen :) and always that were horror/thriller things... Didn't realized he also wrote some nice fantasy... didn't till few days ago when I pick up book from library shelf and shock! no horror, but proper fantasy with dragon (in some point :) magician (very bad boy) and princes and king etc.

Very good book :) Now I'll be tracing 'Dark Tower' serie - I heard is really good, so want to check it :)

Meantime I became member of very nice cardmaking group on FB called Kit and Clowder. The girls helping there with colouring skills, encourage each other, organize giveaways and competitions and have lots of other fun activities and lots of chitchats :)

Thanks to group I find out lots of stamp companies I never heard before - honestly had no idea that so many people creating stamps - both traditional and digi.

Last weekend I decided to join some activities and thanks to that I have new stamp in my collection - digi stamp from Saga Stamps called From Me to You, but this is not all, girls start new competition - do project including this stamp, upload to team album to have a chance to win 2 more stamps :) I couldn't resist :) Here my cards:

I think I printed images bit too big, but cards turned out nicely :)

We had very 'foody' last weekend I can say :) Saturday with Moroccan twist and Indian Sunday - even Dom ate some of it :)

Beef tangine with dried apricots ( link to recipe in one of previous posts) served with pearl barley this time.

Fast Chicken Curry served with rice and naan bread.

That's all for today's writing, cause I'm starting to feel hungry only by watching food pics ;)

September already

Oh yeah... September.... Time flies... We just celebrate New Year and it is almost time to celebrate another one... Kids are growing up, we are getting older... Eh... Starting to be nostalgic or something? :)

I wasn't baking lately, so no new recipes unfortunately...

I was busy with preparing Dom and myself for new school year with some crafty moments somewhere between :)

From cardmaking front: yes I made few new cards :)

Autumny :) Browns, oranges and greens.

Purple 1920's :)

Below silver/blue Christmas set with fairy which I made for Marie from Lyon, France.

I was also lucky to be asked about adding matching earrings to one of my wrapping bracelets (with owls) which will be a Christmas gift :) So my completed white/silver/black set is now on its way to USA :)

chainmaille earrings

Bracelet/necklace

Yesterday I decided to add new section into my etsy shop: Up to 50% off, cause I realized that lots of my creations just kind of staying with me and I want other people to enjoy them.

This bracelet is one of the items I placed in this section, link: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TobisiasLilThing?ref=hdr_shop_menu&section_id=19894648

From not nice infos, when school year started yesterday we found out that during Summer holiday someone made lots of damages to school equipment and all repairs have to be paid now from school tight budget, which means money which supposed to be used for school trips and new equipment are lost... One of the parents start new initiative to raise enough money to cover needed repairs and we all hope we raise enough. If you want to know what was damaged and how much money was raised so far or help us, just check this link: https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/brian-wardle?utm_id=106&utm_term=9QQgd9Dpy

Tall Ships Regatta 2016 Blyth

That was crazy weekend, crazy and long!

To be honest with ya, we saw first ships on Thursday, late afternoon.

Dar Mlodziezy, Gdynia, Poland

Craziness started next day :) They were coming to Blyth Port one by one and all who were this day here could see them coming and docking in Blyth Quayside :)

Kapitan Borchardt, Gdansk, Poland

Fryderyk Chopin, Szczecin, Poland

Christian Redich, Oslo, Norway

People who came to Blyth this weekend could see and visit over 20 ships ( but they had to wait in long queues), I can say one thing - town was very busy :) 

Kids could enjoy Fun Fair and have made pics with our own Captain Jack Sparrow ;) - he is on his way to Gothenburg, Sweden on a board of Shtandart - beautiful replica of 1703  Russian frigate. Pic below.

The oldest ship in port was Oosterschelde from the Netherlands

Here information board about her:

Kids had a chance to see the biggest ship build from Lego bricks - that was a view! 

Dom enjoyed sitting in cabin of Royal Navy Rescue helicopter :) We had 3 of them in port area :)

Plus we saw very cheeky robot who was chasing nice looking girls :)

Three nights in row we had fireworks display in port - sorry for quality of pic.

View from our garden.

Visitors could enjoy live music on 3 different stages around town, lots of food stalls and other attractions.

North Tyneside Steelband in front of Frameworks Art Cafe in Blyth town centre.

If you want to know more about ships which were here this weekend, check: http://www.tallshipsblyth2016.com/

Overall we wish that Blyth town could host more events similar to this one in future. 

South Shields, korma and potato pancakes

I should write this post yesterday, but my boy had a little accident which left him with a cut near his lower lip.. Hope that stop him from climbing everywhere he think he can or want.. At least no stitches were needed, so no extra stress for him and me.

Back to the post theme...

We were once more in South Shields. Dom likes metro and ferry :) We decided to check properly the town and find park and beach I saw once back in 2005... Not easy task, believe it or not :)

From town centre we directed ourselves to the seafront with short stop in a restaurant called Indian Essence for lunch - best chicken korma ever for me :)

After yummy food we found South Marine Park - beautiful place with miniature steam train, boating lake, crazy monuments, band stand and nice playground area for kids.

This strange looking piece fascinated Dom.

We were lucky that day - live music welcome us in the park :) Boys were playing 60s, 70s hits eg. The Beatles :)

Then we found a beach - huge, 'American style' as my partner described it :)

No comment for this :)

Near beach - holiday park, restaurant in train coach and amusement park. Plus from the beach we could saw Tynemouth Priory and Castle remains on our left side and beautiful cliffs on right. I was looking for one more thing there which I was remember from my first visit in South Shields years ago - funny looking stone monuments and...

we found them on Littlehaven Beach and Promanade :)

I couldn't forget that chicken korma we ate so my man said: 'find recipe and try to cook it from scratches, sauce from the jar never give you this taste', he was right... So... I searched net and found recipe which looks nice - great pics and writing - result of my cooking... Yummy!!! If you want to try this recipe, here link to Anetta's 'The Wanderlust Kitchen' blog post: http://thewanderlustkitchen.com/indian-chicken-korma/

Sorry I'm not putting pics of 'my korma' here, but we were more eager to eat than taking photos :)

We like potato pancakes ( some call them latkes), usually I was making them the same way my Mum is doing them, but... then I saw little different version, and now I'm making my own version :)

Ingredients: 

few potatoes (about 3 nice sized is enough for us), grated; 

finally chopped small onion or 2-3 spring onions;

2-3 slices of ham, diced (can be any other piece of deli meat you like eg. salami);

few spoons of sweetcorn (from can :);

1 egg;

about 1/3 cup of milk;

flour - enough to make pancake batter

pinch of salt

about 1/8 of teaspoon of black pepper

plus optional:

1/8 or more of teaspoon of powdered garlic

nice pinch of powdered allspice

First mix egg, milk and flour and don't worry about amount of batter, then add rest of ingredients and mix until all will be coated nicely by batter and then fry your mixture on good amount of oil until golden and crispy, drain from excess of oil and serve the way you prefer.

Bit of frying :)

Draining :)

On the plate with garlic sauce ( natural yogurt with crashed garlic) and little tomato salad :)

Just experiment with recipe, add more spices or less, resign or add more ingredients - who knows - maybe you'll find your own version of them :) Enjoy!

Dom's masterpieces

Wow, this is my 100th post... Still couldn't believe I'm writing so long :)

I decided to show you my son's paintings today, cause I think this is good theme for 'jubilee' post ;)

Dominik is 4 and obsessed with painting lately. One of my friends said that is good for him, cause thanks to painting he practicing grabbing objects like brush, pencil or pen in correct way to be ready for school ( he's starting reception in September).

Dom created over 40 pieces in about 2 weeks time - quite a lot, don't you think? Dom calls lots of them 'Rokokos'.

'Rokoko'

Looks like a bison for me...

Racing car?

Flying duck?

Flower?

Hmmm, bug or maybe dinosaur...

No idea... but I love it :)

Vase with flowers?

Rocket?

Leaf or flower?

One of  ladies who lives few streets from us says I should start selling his paintings, but to be honest I want to keep them for him, to show him later how much he loved to paint :)

Am I wrong???

By the way... Thank you all for reading my posts!