Cloud Bread Recipe & Review

I've been seeing Cloud Bread a lot on Pinterest lately.

Source: blogs.houstonpress.com via Melody on Pinterest

Doesn't it look just like fresh yummy bread?

I'm supposed to be eating low carb/high protein for awhile, but I'm Italian.  I'm pretty sure my blood is made of carbs.  I decided to  make this bread to see how it turned out.

I ended up using this recipe BUT I googled a few recipes first, and added 1 pinch of salt to this recipe.  Also 1 packet of sweetener didn't equal 1/8 teaspoon, it's nearly two packets.  So, modified recipe below:

You need:

3 eggs
2 packets or 1/8 teaspoon artificial sweetener
3 tablespoons of either fat free cream cheese OR cottage cheese
1/4 teaspoon Cream of Tartar
Pinch of Salt

Recipe:

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

Take your 3 eggs and separate the yolks from the whites as carefully as possible.

Mix together the yolks, the cheese, the salt, and the sweetener until it's creamy and smooth.

In a separate bowl, beat the whites and the cream of tartar until they form stiff peaks.  This can take 5+ minutes of beating.

This is how a stiff peak will look.  Not drippy- doesn't fall over:

Fold the two mixtures together carefully.  You don't want to press the air out of the whites mixture.

Scoop batter onto greased baking sheet.  

I made six that were this size (this is batter, not baked)

Bake for about 30 minutes- your oven may vary!

Now you should have this!

I read on one of the recipes that they are better textured after sitting (sealed) overnight so into tupperware they went.  I honestly didn't notice a huge difference in poking them though.

The smell a bit eggy.  Almost like this is what is used for the bun of an Egg McMuffin.  On the other hand, they taste very light and have almost no flavor.  I think it would be great for grilled cheese or maybe a cheese/meat sandwich, but for my beloved and missed peanut butter sandwich, I wasn't all that impressed.

Thanks, Amy!

Amy over at Chomas Creations shared my post about thin fonts to use with your pen or marker holder.  You can check it out right here from her blog, or the original post right here.  If you like what you see, don't forget Amy sells pen and marker holders along with embossing tips, engraving tips, and other fun stuff for machines like the Silhouette cutters, Cricut cutters, Gazelles, & more, so go buy what you need to be creative!

I will be posting more as I find more thin fonts that work well.  I dislike the hollow font thing just as much as everyone else seems to, if my page views are any indication.  You guys rock!  Follow me & stop back soon :)

Happy 3rd Birthday to Vivi!

My good friend Val has a little girl who was born right around Frankie's original due date.  Vivi is the cutest thing ever and when Val asked me to make her some birthday gear I jumped at the chance to play with pink for a change!

Val had already found a picture that she liked, and using some scalloped circle shapes from the Silhouette Store we put this little design together.  Val tweaked it a bit, most noticeably adding the second circle around the "3," and then asked for matching stickers.  Those were really easy as long as I made sure that the only cut lines set were those of the scalloped circle and nothing inside!

Front of shirt

Val wanted a similar design on the back:

I don't know why it looks so oddly off center.  Bump in the shirt maybe?  I swear it's straight!:p

She also asked for matching stickers.  She is going to put them on party hats- how cute is that???  And some extra for people to wear like a normal sticker.  I even sent her some extra large stickers for decorating.  If I had a girl I would stick them on a vase, fill the vase with candy, and some pink flowers...ok, enough dreaming of pink!

I ran into two issues during stickers, and I fixed them both, which is why I'm sharing.

First issue- sticker paper settings on the Cameo are too rough.  So are vinyl settings.  I did not want the blade to cut through the backing paper.  I wanted a kiss cut, which is where the sticker is cut but the backing is intact, like a sheet of stickers.

I finally fixed this problem using the settings:  Blade: 1, Speed: 6, Thickness: 8.

I was so happy to see that fixed, but I then realized that this sticker paper was split in two places down the back, I'm assuming to make it easier to remove stickers?  Well, these stickers were getting mailed to Disney World, not used right away.

Stickers that I repositioned to be around the splits in the backing paper...

My fix was pretty simple.  After printing but before cutting, I put strips of packing tape down the back.

This worked like a charm.  The paper no longer split apart once I weeded the extra sticker paper from around the stickers, and as a bonus it didn't stick to the Cameo mat quite as badly.  My mat is fairly new and still sticky enough that if I'm not careful, it will rip paper when I try to remove it from the surface.

I hope Vivi has a great birthday!!!  I will update with pictures of the party hats and anything else that got the sticker treatment :)

Thin Fonts for Your Cameo & Your Pens

You may remember at the beginning of November I showed off my Chomas Creations Marker Holder and even did a giveaway because I liked it so much.  If you read that post, you read about how you need a single line font or else it appears hollow, since all you are doing is drawing the same lines that you would cut if there was a blade instead of a pen in your Cameo.

Well, now you have a few solutions.  One is to buy Make the Cut, which utilizes single line fonts (which Silhouette software generally doesn't).  Another option is to purchase fonts from the Silhouette Store.  This is a newer offering and I've seen fonts that are $2.99 (3 times more than the typical download) and I've also seen fonts that are not the whole font- you might get ABCDE for $2.99 and then pay another $2.99 for the next section, etc.  In the words of Cartman, laaaame.  Your third option would be to scour the web for thin fonts that don't appear hollow because of their natural thinness- they ARE hollow but the lines are so tight you can't tell.  And your last option, color in the font by hand after your machine is done outlining it.

I don't own Make the Cut yet, but I'm thinking about it.  I do have 2 fonts from the Silhouette Store and I like them ok, but the price and the sectioned alphabet isn't appealing.  And, if I want to hand color in every letter of something, I would just stick the card upside down in my printer and simply print it.

So, I went with option 3 and scoured the web for thin fonts.  They are all FREE save 2 and I've compiled the links for you.  Aren't I nice?  Aren't I lucky that my toddler takes 4 hour naps?

 All fonts are 38 point.  There are lines at the top where my pen dragged- that is because I lost the popsicle stick that came with my marker holder and was guessing at the pen depth. Not every font you see is going to appear solid- I was testing out a lot and remember, if it's slightly hollow here, it will probably be solid at a smaller point size.

Fonts were drawn using a standard black felt tip pen I found in a desk.

This started out as 3 columns and then I fix extra text wherever I could to max out the info per sheet.  I am going to attempt to list these going in columns from top to bottom, left to right, but it might not be perfectly organized.  If all else fails, google the name of the font you want, which is written in the font.

Albemarle Swash

Pea How Sweet Eats

Amy Lou $1.99

Architect's Daughter

Aunt Jana Sketch $1.99

Boys on Mopeds

Brannboll Small

Calamity Jane NF

Calibri Light

Cast Iron

Champagne & Limousines

Christmas Eve

Sweetly Broken

Simply Glamorous

Pea Tidy Mom

Monotype Corsiva

Claire Hand

5th Grade Cursive

Clipper Script

Curly Shirley

Riddle

Kenzie

Smiley Monster

Take Me Out

Zombie Checklist

Vanilla Twilight

MTF Cool Kid

Stars From Our Eyes

MTF Donna

MTF Magical Marilyn

MTF Colleen Cursive

MTF Cupcake

Daddy's Girl

English Essay

MTF Notebook

MTF Skinny Jeans

MTF Mikayla Print

Lemon Chicken

Pea Our Best Bites

Sunshine in my Soul

Talking to the Moon

MTF Cindy

Inspiration

MTF Cutie Patootie

MTF Becki

KG One More Night

MTF Hello Again

Love Ness Three

MTF Queen of Sketchyland

Live Laugh Love

MTF Akhn

Whew!!!  Be sure to read the terms of use on any font if you're planning to sell something using it.

Also, while we're on the subject of fonts, some shameless post promoting- I found this AWESOME app (and no, they aren't paying me to say that, I doubt the developer is even aware that I wrote a review) that lets me use my iPad to make custom fonts and wingdings that work GREAT with the Cameo.  Check it out here!

So, I promised a clothing post

Uh...remember back in October when I said I was going to start posting my outfits as part of a challenge to myself to put the yoga pants on the back burner for awhile?  I had that initial post, and a second post...and that was it.  Yeah...oops.

Well, I took lots of pictures on my vacation between Christmas and New Year's and decided to pretend that counts as catch-up!

Shirt- Kohls Pants- Hanes Shapewear Shoes- Hibbet Sports

Shirt- Belk Jeans- Nine West for Belk Shoes- well I didn't have any on for the photo but I wore tan Croc wedge heels.  They're not THAT ugly, and they're comfy :)

Shirt- Belk Pants- Belk Shoes- Nine West

Shirt (sweater)- Cable & Gauge Pants- Michael Kors Shoes- the tan Croc wedge heels mentioned above :)

Shirt- Cable & Gauge Pants- Belk Shoes- Christian Louboutin black pumps- a surprise Christmas gift!

My outfits are really nothing special but my days normally consist of yoga pants, college t-shirts, and flip flops.  Since I'm either at the gym or chasing around a toddler I can justify the outfits, but I need to make more of an effort.

Vinyl Tumbler Decoration

Yesterday my Cameo went crazy.

It started randomly cutting dots and dashes and despite all my best troubleshooting efforts, it won't stop unless I disconnect it from the computer.  This makes crafting difficult but not impossible.

The Cameo has a "Cut from SD card" feature and I learned how to use it (though I hope I won't have to very often- it's a longer process).

First, you have to save every part of your design to the card separately unless you want more than one piece in the same color/material (in my case, anything orange was one file, turquoise another, & white was a third file).  Just put what you want on your virtual mat and hit "Save to SD card."  Name it something obvious so you can find it.

Now, go ahead and put your first material on your mat and load it.  Then pop in the SD card.  You'll see that you have to hit "Pause" for the SD card settings.

 Go to "Select File" and hit enter (eek, ignore my nail polish!!!)

Scroll down until you see what you want to cut and hit "Enter" again.  The photo is NOT the image...at all.  This particular file was the small orange border piece in the middle of the turquoise part.

Now you'll see your file name where it previously said NONE.  Scroll down to Cut and hit "Enter."

And it will cut!  Then you will just find your other files one by one as you reload your mat.

Tedious, but it works in a pinch.

I'll be changing the X.  The flourish looked better on screen.

This file is actually a coffee cup wrap and can be found in the Silhouette online store

3rd Birthday T-shirt

Someone is turning THREE years old over here! Where did the time go???!!!

I wanted to make him a t-shirt to wear to preschool on his birthday. I already had a black t-shirt and bought some Jolee's heat transfer paper for colored fabrics. I then wasted 2 sheets of it as my Cameo would not cut the design properly.

 I switched to some flat (regular) and flocked (thicker and kind of fuzzy). A lot of people don't like the flat HTV that Silhouette makes. I can see why. It cut ragged and it stretched when weeding, meaning again I trashed the cut.

However, the flocked HTV cut great!

 I had some Siser Easyweed left over from a shirt I made for my husband. It wasn't a color that I wanted to use but it was all I had left. I did end up liking the final product.

The green is Siser Easyweed and the yellow is the flocked Silhouette HTV.

I tried to take a photo of the flocked vs flat as well


I have a few other crafts to post, a lot to do, and even a bunch of stuff for What I Wore Wednesday- shocking, I know!

Thanks for reading, as always!