A. Russ Original

I have a special friend who is celebrating her birthday this week and to aid in the celebration I embellished a journal for her. She is a very talented writer and I'm hoping that this gift will give her hours of enjoyment. Target has a number of cute journals, but for this refined young lady I needed something a little less 'Lisa Frank' and a little more 'Vera Wang' if you know what I mean...  Found a nice black leather bound book with a handy pocket in the back cover, so with it and a few black sparkly items from Micheal's... the book has a unique personal touch that I hope she'll enjoy!  Only a sophisticated card would go with the embellished journal, so I created this 'A. Russ Original' to commemorate the special day!

Baking again... I recently made Fruity Cookie Cups for an event we went too... they turned out GREAT! It is amazing the things you can make with refrigerated cookie dough! Here's the recipe from Pillsbury.com I made it according to the directions with no deviations and would have to say, that I'll be making these again... I'd like to take them to the Friday Family Dinner... as soon as our friend is back on dairy!    Waiting for the oven... What you'll need: 1 roll (16.5 oz) Pillsbury® refrigerated sugar cookies  Generous 1/2 cup whole almonds, ground to 1/3 cup 2 containers (6 oz each) Yoplait® Greek vanilla yogurt 1 cup fresh fruit (chopped kiwifruit, pineapple or mango) What you need to do: Heat oven to 350°F. Spray 12 regular-size muffin cups with cooking spray.  In medium bowl, break up cookie dough. Stir or knead in almonds. Roll dough into 12 balls. Place in muffin cups. Bake 15 to 20 minutes or until golden brown. Us

The long awaited Russ Garden update is ready! First, this photo here shows the cilantro that we are growing in a pot on the front porch. We've started it from seeds and have two different batches in the same pot, that way we should have cilantro all summer long! The garden patch has been growing at gang buster speed! Just goes to show that you can never go wrong when you use good garden soil, pay a little more and get the good stuff, you'll be glad you did! As you can see the 4 tomato plants are taking over! the cucumbers are making thier own way up the bird netting, there on the left... NEXT year I'll be sure to get the bird netting down before the cucumbers attach to it!! The green peppers are having to fight for sun from the tomatoes... Mike says that next year we will make 4x4 bed just for tomatoes.  I noticed that ONE of the little cherry tomatoes has started to turn pink... so we will have our own little tomatoes SOON!  Several folks have been intrested

To honor our Mothers for Mother's Day 2012 , I created this little card to accompany their gifts as they travel through the USPS! Hope they enjoy them ... Happy Mother's Day to all the Moms out there!

Can you really make a delicious cupcake with only 2 ingredients...? I wasn't convinced... Yes, I've seen all the post on Pintrest that show how you can make everything from cup cakes to brownies out of nothing but a store bought boxed mix and a can of soda pop. But I wasn't sure... what would it taste like? ... would it rise? ... can you believe everything you read on the Internet? We have a Friday Family Dinner with friends on alternating Fridays... I love to bake and always like to take a cool dessert for us to share. One of our friends is off of dairy right now while she nurses her new born, So finding desserts that don't have dairy can be a challenge... to add to that, another friend has recently found out she is allergic to CHOCOLATE... can you believe it!! So when you take out dairy AND chocolate, dessert choices can get pretty slim... so here's where I had to reconsider this 2 ingredient recipe and just go for it! It's strawberry season here in ou