Well as usual I am behind on my Christmas cards.  But with the Snow Swirled stamp set I was able to make some elegant Christmas cards very quickly.  I used the SU kraft brown paper and made each card with one ink color .  Super simple!  I hope you’ve already mailed your cards for the holidays and not doing it at the last minute like me.

click for larger image

Stamp Sets:  Snow Swirled, retired So Swirly jumbo wheel (a good substitute would be the Whimsy wheel)

Paper: SU cardstock kraft brown, SU Old Olive , SU Very Vanilla and SU Ruby Red texture

Ink:  SU classic ink pads Real Red, Soft Suede, Old Olive

Accessories:  SU wide oval punch, SU scallop edge  punch, SU dimensionals, SU 1/4″ real red grosgrain ribbon, SU jumbo wheel, green and gold ribbon, green and red self-adhesive gems

Techniques: stamping, tearing edge

I recently tried a new pumpkin bar recipe that was really good. I found the original recipe on CookieMadness. We all really liked the bars, but as cheesecake is one of my favorite desserts, I think that next time I make these I will go heavier on the cheesecake marbling. It looked really pretty, and the cheesecake swirl helped make the  bars wonderfully moist, but the cheesecake part was not a real stand-out flavor.

These bars are made by preparing a pumpkin batter, which is spread into a 15×10” pan. The cream cheese layer is added to the top and then run through with a knife to create the swirled pattern.

An easy way to create a swirl is to start in one upper corner and run the knife back and forth diagonally across the pan to the opposite lower corner. Then start in the opposite upper corner and run the knife diagonally the other way.

Doesn’t that make a gorgeous swirl!

Below is the recipe that I adapted (a little) from CookieMadness. Next time I will add more of the cream cheese batter (maybe double).

RECIPE:

Marbled Pumpkin Cheesecake Bars

6 tablespoons melted unsalted butter
1/4 teaspoon salt
1  1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 cup canned pumpkin
1/2 cup buttermilk or kefir
1 tsp vanilla
1  3/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Swirl:
8 oz cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
1 large egg

Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray a 15×10 inch pan  with cooking spray.

Pumpkin Batter: Mix together the butter, salt and sugar. With a mixing spoon or whisk, beat in eggs, pumpkin, buttermilk and vanilla until well blended, scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Mix flour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, and nutmeg together; stir into batter. Reserve about 1/4 of the batter. Spread remaining 3/4 of batter evenly in prepared pan.

Swirl: In a second bowl, with a mixer, beat cream cheese, sugar and vanilla until smooth. Add egg and beat until smooth. Drop tablespoons of cheese mixture over pumpkin batter, then drag a knife through to swirl. Drop reserved pumpkin batter over the top and swirl again. Bake on center rack until pumpkin batter springs back when touched, about 30 minutes. Let cool completely in pan, then chill for an hour or more. Cut into 24 bars.

WHISPERSSSSSSS… IN THE DARK

by BridgetMarlane McDonnell

In the still and the dark of the night;
With moonlight casting an errie light;
The SwIrL Models come out to play
Flittering too and fro in the glimmering rays

February will be here soon.
Listen as the clock chimes the hour of 5 and noon.
BEWARE dear friends – keep your ears to the ground
Or you won’t hear – the whisperings, the sound.

Filipa Thespian has something spectacular up her sleeve;
Will keep us in awe, until the hour we leave.
She’s toiled through the nights as these formations
took place.
And guarantees us – she’ll have another Ace.

Shhhhhhhhhh – listen, do you hear them…
The Whispersssss in the dark.
Keep logging onto this site
And we guarantee your utmost delight!
Whisperssssss – whispersssssss in the dark!

Keep checking this site to be the first to find out just what these whispers are saying.  I shall whisper a little louder when I say this “It is going to be awesome!”

Pyramid Theatre and Shops @ Park Avenue

Tacos! Okay. I LOVE TACOS! They are the most delicous food on the face of the earth. Mexicans are just the best at inventing foods! The crunchy shell with the spicy meat,  crisp & cool veggies, and hot taco sauce is just THE BEST food I have ever eaten! Tacos are just delicous, and I recommend you eat one. Like soon.

I searched tacos in the Associated Press website and all that came up were pictures of Mario Lopez. :/

I was reading articles on Yahoo, and I read one about Domino’s (you know, the pizza place). Anyways - Domino’s is changing their recipe. I am pretty excited about this because i don’t really like Domino’s pizza. I think that if they change their recipe, it will be for the better. Apparently the new pizzas will be in all stores by December 27th (now I’m concerned- in store? shouldn’t they just have new ingredients. I guess maybe they’ll change the dough..?).

Okay, one last thing. I was at a basketball game for my brother whose in fifth grade. There was a little boy there singing and dancing to Lady Gaga’s song “Bad Romance”. Like literally, he was singing “ra ra romp ay ya rah rah bad romance you and me we could be in a bad romance”. And he was dancing. In the middle of the court. Not even kidding.

This is really cool: http://image-swirl.googlelabs.com/. It’s like a website that finds you more images siimilar to ones you like!  This explains it all.

image from blog.kansascity.com

(Inspired by this feature article.)

Old white skin is loose and thin, flimsy between my fingers, like chicken flesh made human. There’s only one patch of skin on a young white woman’s body that even compares to nearly every geriatric inch of an old white woman’s skin — only one… one remote, discreet patch that I can’t recall right now. The first time I stroked old white skin, it felt like the discarded pork fat that killed my pappy. I yearned for it more than Marion Berry craved an 8-ball of cocaine. That singular phrase, “I’m on it like white on rice,” can describe the transparent look and feel of that skin.

Oh, but I had reasons for my craving that were socially sound. For years, I hid behind the notion of young black men leaving their black women under the age of 40 for any white woman with a pulse. A black woman hitting puberty is like Kryptonite to a black man, so I thought. He goes young or younger, average girth or big, average-looking or UGH-LEH or drinks a 40 with his homeys and looking for trouble. Old white women are thrilled to get the black man that they couldn’t get with in their younger, baby-making years, for Civil Rights done happened. It’s not my fault; it’s those black women that wanted me so much that I had to run away.

Well that’s a damn lie. Truthfully, I attract a decent percentage of black women. Heck, some of them aren’t too shabby on the eyes

More than enough black women want me that I could split my paycheck for alimony for a fortnight, but I don’t want them.

I want old white women. And they want me. We look at each other and exchange a sultry glance of lust and fear, passion and purse clenching in those fertile few seconds. And our attraction is based first and foremost on race. Oh, we aren’t one of those pairs who “tear that ass up” with one of a different race or dutifully come together but out of a greater feeling of interracial brotherhood and sisterhood. Not as liberal hippie men and women do we seek each other out. The welfare lines has made it easier to get the mad hookup. Women advertise: ivory frisky for ebony. Men text: I WANT 2 HIT THAT OLD WHYT ASS. We aren’t the same people who cry: Race ain’t all there is, y’all. It is all there is. We want to get with the swirl.

Despite the fact that some amount — I can’t remember the source… let’s say 94 percent — of single Americans have dated outside of their race, that purposeful seeking of the specific other makes some, especially white men, more uncomfortable than Brokeback Mountain.

We are what they blacken and whip: black men and old white women who come together because we want that pasty and dark ass. They are bitter about us taking their unwanted women. Old white women are seventy six and a third times more likely to marry a black man than a white man is to marry one of those… black women. White men can grab statistics out of their air, too, in representing their argument. But in truth, white brothers, we’re after that wrinkled ass, not the commitment and they aren’t long for the Earth anyway.

Yes, that ass!

The men who go after the old white women is a spin-off of black-woman connoisseur Thomas Jefferson’s (also a U.S. president) “always take hold of things by the smooth handle,” for the black man’s handle is large and the old white woman’s handle glove is cavernous. According to some unnamed school of thought, black men turn to white women when baby’s lookin’ fine and they wanna — as the poet Ginuwine once said — “jump on it.” It’s a “damn, girl, you easy” reaction.

When we get to the “damn, girl, you easy” place, they know it, and they are already halfway in the grave. Old white women are more grateful, accommodating and easier to shut up than black women. They know how to cook meatballs, a nearly lost art among the rest of us. An old white women is so damned fine because she knows how to make some meatballs.

Old white women have something black women don’t have anymore: shawls. They clearly know that their necks are delicate. Black women appear to be waiting to catch their death of cold to learn whether they are resilient. Yet old white women know that they are fragile, one step away from fatal pneumonia, something black women would name their child. They make you feel like a man that needs looking after, after you grip it and rip it. I can go all out when I am with them. How many black women can treat a man like a gentleman and a succubus of life energy?

I often felt in my Black period that only during lustful sessions of freakin’ it that the connection between me and the world was as light as cornbread, encompassing my intimacy like a cast iron skillet. It takes a lot of sexin’ for two black people to be in the same room together. These old white women, so alive by the waning days on their calendar, slice through that cornbread and latch on with their delicate bodies, freeing me and I can truly get with it. I am like the driver of a Cadillac hooptie with a fine-ass bitch that can shoot a gun out the window. I know I can yell, “Move bitch, get out the way!” but there’s no need. On the other hand, the last time I waxed some black ass, we chugged along on a crowded bus, and she was like Mabel “Mama” Thomas from What’s Happening, Raj and Dee’s mother that disappeared sometime after the first season and never came up in conversation for some reason.

My current girl, a spry Medicare recipient, seduced me via butterscotch candy at a senior center while I was doing community service. Without saying a word, she felled me under her spell, presented with her drawn-in eyebrows. She didn’t motion me over or ask me to see pictures of her grand kids until she knew that I wouldn’t take her Social Security check. Both quaint and hip, she has a butt that won’t quit. I was asking her if she wanted to go downtown 30 minutes after that candy.

Another afternoon, in that same senior center, a different old white woman, a spry pensioner, asked me to help her off of her feet.

I don’t doubt that there are some old white women who can’t get down on it or make meatballs. Personally, I have not experienced one that can’t. (True, I am not dating some broke-ass woman, but I didn’t do that when I dated black, so clearly and without doubt, I am an equal opportunist.) They look better than black women, they hold, coddle and top it off better than black women. Statistically, their vaginae are only a fraction of a meter larger on average, but they seem friendlier and whiter.

Black women under 40 still have their waistlines and standards — if they ever had them. They carry youth, courage and firm breasts above their plump asses. Perhaps a good part of that firmness is their courage. Even the youngest ones look courageous somehow and deeply fearless. They soldier on despite any setback that would fell the whitest of women. Surely, our culture as much as biology has made them braver, grittier, less-pushover versions of themselves just at the point where black men and old white women and Eskimos are browbeaten within an inch of their lives. Society undervalues the black woman, leaving her scrappy and bold when she realizes under the age of 40 that she’s all that.

With the exception of some college women at Freaknik after a few Mad Dogs, black women don’t turn me on anymore.

That admission put me in the same grouping as the unpopular geek only interested in Asian women. While black men my age will shake their heads at me, not understanding why I’m not chasing down a young, thin white woman, I feel a kinship with the dorky nerds. We are the same, me and that awkward geek, drawn to the exotic object of lust, not caring that the forbidden fruit doesn’t know about the term “baby mama” or prenuptial agreements.

Break down the roots of attractions all you want — like so-called scientists will do, just because — and you won’t be able to formulate a good answer why we want to sink the canoe. Desire pours out like a 40 on Dre Day, and it is delightfully oblivious to others who just don’t know. Yet until just now, I opined that my passion was like affirmative action, because it was a reward for my suffering.

Halfway through my last booty call with a black woman, I realized that little smoke rings of courage and audacity were escaping her ego like fur from a wolf shot down from Sarah Palin’s helicopter. This woman was at least mildly secure in herself, and I wanted to tell her to go fix me some food, submit to me and cater to my every whim. I would have climbed off her and told her to get her ass out, but she seemed to expect that — like she wanted to start a fight. I couldn’t give into her desire and make her louder and angrier. My Northern cousins would describe her general aire as “uptight” or “like the president.” Into the second double dip of ass-freakin’, I wanted to get my ass out and I didn’t notice that she said that she was late because she stopped taking her pill.

What did she think would turn me on more: That I didn’t know she was late because of her not taking her pills since Clinton was president, or that she wanted me to be the father of her baby because we already had three kids?

I cannot even imagine an old white women having a baby without the horrific black magic of modern medicine.

That was my last token black women. I recently came out of my race-exclusive closet and told my friends, “I love old white women. I’m not attracted to uppity black women under 40 and I am not dating them anymore. Really, I don’t love them hoes.”

Nobody was dumbstruck.

Order an dari Hesty dapet dari tokobagus.com, untuk anaknya yg lagi ultah, Ben 10 and his alien force cupcakes.. Ada tambahannya, bisa gak ada foto Ikhsan di tengah2nya? Bisssaaa…makanya yg di tengah2 itu ada foto anak yg lucu hihi… Cupcakesnya sempet jalan2 dulu di Senayan City sebelum sampe ke tangan yg order

Sms dari Hesty: Ikhsan suka apalagi buttercreamnya gak bikin neg, sampe sayang mau makan gambar edible nya hehe…

Happy birthday, Ikhsan

Hey every one! for us still in school next week is the last one before christmas vacation! to celebrate heres a little test design I did for the curly lines effect!

Merry Christmas!

Dekor cupcakes and cake nya terserah aja, yg penting PINK.. Yg terserah kayak gini malah buat bingung yg buat kue Akhirnya setelah semedi 3 hari 3 malam (halah ), jadi lah cupcakes yg temanya girly seperti tas, lipstick, pink eye shadow, kaca, butterflies dan flowers, lots of flowers

Cape banget hari ini, maceeettt dimana2, antar in sendiri order an yg ini sampe ketiduran di mobil, sampe bangun lagi, belum sampe juga, huiihhh

Fotonya rada gelap, foto nya di kamarnya Divo yg notabene cat dindingnya warna biru, hmmm, gelap deh foto2…

Cupcakes iseng, buat iseng2 dmakan hehe.. Flavour of the month: Vanilla Blueberry.. Vanilla cupcakes filled with blueberry jam.. Yummmyyy apalagi dmakan anget2, br keluar dr oven, pas lg hujan, dtemenin with a cup of hot tea, earl grey please

Namanya Colourful Choco Velvet Minicupcakes, tp yg colourful papercups nya n sprinkles di atas cream cheese frosting nya Dalamnya red/choco velvet cake. Kenapa mini cupcakes? Soalnya yg order maunya cupcakes yg habis sekali makan, n gk terlalu kenyang atau buat eneg

Floral Swirl Brushes

OK. Finally a new set!!! It has been a while. I have been so very busy.

This is a set nine (9) High Resolution floral swirl brushes.  Below you can see them as well as their size.

These brushes can be used Royalty-Free for any reason or project, personal or commercial.
Click on thumbnails to see bigger brush!!!

Buy Clicking here you will be redirected to PayPal. Download will begin as soon as payment is complete.

Buy Clicking here you will be redirected to PayPal. Download will begin as soon as payment is complete.

OK. Finally a new set!!! It has been a while. I have been so very busy.

This is a set nine (9) High Resolution floral swirl brushes.  Below you can see them as well as their size.

These brushes can be used Royalty-Free for any reason or project, personal or commercial.

Buy Clicking here you will be redirected to PayPal. Download will begin as soon as payment is complete.

And All of the images above I was just goofing off with the full size brushes. You can really see some of the detail below.

Buy Clicking here you will be redirected to PayPal. Download will begin as soon as payment is complete.

A softserve cone
swirl
half-anger, half-denial
sprinkles of shock
and after it goes down
smooth and creamy
lactose-intolerance
acid-reflux

the hearth in my chest
cannot be fed with sugar
and the kindling is screaming
as the fire dies down

..tak się kończy sprawdzanie świerzo ściągniętych pędzli do shopa
(thanks to DesignFruit)

The Stairs

Originally uploaded @ Flickr by fazliana zawawi

The heavy rain doesn’t allow me to go out for a walk. So there I was, snapping some photos inside the house. This is the circular stairs inside the house.

Le célèbre moteur de recherche vient de lancer dans ces labos le développement d’un système de recherche pointu lié aux images.

Celui-ci permet de rechercher des images , mais surtout il affine la recherche par palier, c’est à dire que si on clic sur l’image de la tour Montparnasse (comme j’ai fait dans mon exemple), il va écarter les infos qui ne correspondent pas sans pour autant les effacer de ma recherche (comme le film la tour Montparnasse infernale). un système de recherche pyramidale qui permet donc de trouver un panel d’image lié à ce que l’on cherche réellement.

Ce petit moteur bien sympathique tourne en Flash, ce qui montre bien que cette technologie peut-être très puissante avec un bon moteur d’indexation derrière.

images dans la suite

Source : Vendeesign