Taylor Made designs

Adorable Davis

Here's a photo that my sister Nicole took of Davis on Mother's Day with her camera phone. How sweet does she look?

Sweet William

My sister Renée just sent me this great photo of William. She hosted Mother's Day at her lovely home. We had such a great time. I had a pretty awful week last week so I really needed a nice + relaxing day.

I'm just getting over another crummy cold :( Can't wait for the warmer weather. Anyway, I have been working on a bunch of things. Hopefully I will find some time this week to show you. Till then, enjoy your day!

Lemon Squared

I made lemon tarts + bars last weekend, just because. OK, not really. I actually made them because I have to provide the snacks for coffee hour at our church this weekend and thought these might be yummy to make. I never made them before, and decided a trial run might be smart.

Boy, am I glad I did. The bars did not set correctly. I mean, they tasted very good, but they looked all goopy. Something went amuck. The lemon curd just did not set properly. So when you cut the bars, they oozed all over the place. Making them very sticky and hard to eat.

However, the little tarts I made came out awesome. William loved them. Very easy to eat. I think because there wasn't a lot of lemon curd, they cooked better. So I think instead of the bars, I will just make the tarts. They take more work to make, but I am ok with that.

Here's the recipe if you want to try them. Let me know if you have better luck with them than I did :) If you have any insight on what I might have done wrong, do let me know!

Ridiculously Addictive Lemon Squares

2 cups of flour plus 4 Tablespoons
1/2 cup of powdered sugar plus more for sprinkling
1 cup of butter (melted)
4 eggs
2 cups of sugar
6 Tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon baking powder
Dash of salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease a 9 x 13 pan with butter or cooking spray.

Crust:

Combine 2 cups of flour, 1/2 cup powdered sugar and butter.  Make into a dough and press into a 9 x 13 pan.  Bake for 20 minutes until edges are golden brown.  Let completely cool.

Filling:

Combine eggs, granulated sugar, lemon juice and salt.  Whisk together.  Fold in 4 Tablespoons of flour and baking powder until combined.  Poor mixture over all ready cooled crust and bake at the same temperature for 25 minutes.

Sprinkle powdered sugar over the baked lemon squares while still hot from the oven.

When completely cooled, cut into squares.

:: Karate Will ::

keyyyhaaa!

That's typed phonetically...I have no idea how to spell the words that the kids have to say as they perform their moves :) All I know is it's really cute to see eight 5 years olds yelling, jabbing, and performing their very best during Karate.

This is Will's third week of Karate and he's totally loving it. I can already see how much he has improved since his first lesson. His favorite part? The obstacle course. I just know, in his mind, he is Indiana William, trying to escape from the evil guys.

Speaking of Indiana Jones...William is waiting, oh so patiently, for the movie to come out. I am praying it is not too scary or violent of a movie, as Neal has promised to take him with a friend on the day it opens.

As for me, I can't wait for the Sex in the City movie! What about you? Any favorite movies you can't wait to see?

Packing + Shipping

Mailed three packages out in the beginning of the week and have three more to do today. I think wrapping and packaging up stuff is one of my favorite things to do. For some reason, I get so much satisfaction from it. Silly I know :)

I can't believe tomorrow is May 1st. How fast is this year going? I feel like it was just February. Anyone else feel that way?

Ribbon Ribbon Ribbon

The rain has made it difficult to shoot any decent photos :( But you get the idea... ribbon ribbon + ribbon. I've been doing a lot of custom silkscreening ribbon orders - in fact, I'll be doing another one later this week.

Cheri will be able to get @ 90 tags from this spool as her name/logo was a lot wider than the initials done below. For those of you who are curious, I matched Cheri's Etsy Header for her store. (which many times I can do) She happen to know the typeface she used and I was able to download the font and recreate her logo for her. I created a little shamrock to match. The gocco doesn't like little heavy areas, but as I continued printing, the shamrock became cleaner and sharper. I made labels for the spool and for the packaging that matched her Etsy store. Overall, I think a really nice tag + package. If anyone has any questions, feel free to email me or leave me a comment. I'll get back to you.

Happy Tuesday everyone.

Another Custom Ribbon Order

Just finished this custom ribbon order this past Friday for the lovely + talented Mary Ann over at A Very Mary.  She ordered this ribbon for her grandmother who makes handmade quilts. (is she sweet or what?) She is planning on them being tags. For those of you who are interested, (I get a lot of emails asking this) she'll be able to cut out @ 150 tags from this spool of ribbon. Not bad :) You can order ribbon by emailing me directly or by visiting my etsy store.

It's a cold and rainy day here. But I'm not going to complain. We had such great weather last week. Plus, the rainy weather allowed me to read more of my book while waiting to pick up Davis from School. (normally I chat it up with the other mums while the kids run around in the playground, but this time I sat in my car and read) Over the weekend I finished reading, "The Curse of the Spellmans". A silly + lighthearted book I picked up at the library. And now I am half way through "Interpreter of Maladies", and really enjoying it. It's such a quiet and thought-provoking book. I have placed a bunch of books on hold at the library. I hope they will be available soon. Anyone reading anything interesting? Let us know!

Back to School

Could they be any cuter?

I snapped the above photos before they left with Neal to go hit some golf balls on Saturday. William has a pretty nice set of clubs that we got him a year ago. Neal said he has improved so much since last year + that he definitely has the "taylor" golf genes. {my dad is quite the golfer... he plays oh, 36 holes a day} So I think some golf lessons are in his future :)

It's back to school this week :( The kid's holiday week went by so fast. We had so much fun together. I can't get over how much we actually did! We couldn't have asked for better weather. This week looks like rain and temps back down in the 50's. I do hope it's not raining on Monday so the kids can play on the new school playground.

I hope everyone has had a terrific weekend and will have a fantastic week ahead.

12::30 Macro Photo

Here's #12 :) I've been using my old Olympus digital camera for the last few macro shots. I don't think they look as good as my macro photos done with my Sony Cyber Shot. Can't wait for that camera to be back. It's so tiny and easy to use. My Olympus is bigger and bulkier and only 5.0 pixels. Only three more weeks till I get it back from the shop!

Today we have a birthday party in the morning for Davis to attend and William has Karate in the afternoon. Friday we have the long awaited playdate with William's favorite friend. Everyday he wakes up and says, "only xx more day till I can play with Ty."  They play so well together.

We slept with the windows open last night. oh so sweet. I swear I slept like a babe. Yea that spring is finally here!

11::30 + stuff :)

#11 in the macro challenge. I broke away from the seaside theme. These stickers were sitting on my work table.I loved the way the light was hitting them and their arrangement. 

Here's a photo of my side door. A few years ago I cut some forsythia branches and then stuck them into a pot... and they actually rerooted themselves. So now I have this beautiful plant in a pot ready to be showcased by my side door. I did cut some additional blooming branches to fill it out. Pretty huh?

And can you believe how grown up William + Davis look? I swear, they were just little kids not so long ago!  Erin from Dani be Good is right... they grown up in the blink of an eye! I can't believe it is already Wednesday!