Crafty Pay-it-forward

One of the blogs I read regularly is Nadia's Crafting Adventures. Yesterday she made a pay-it-forward post. Being one of the first three people to comment, I am now making my own.

What you need to do: Be one of the first three people to post here. Then make a similar pay-it-forward post on your blog.

What you get in return: a crafty goodie from me. Free. In the mail.

(Picture note: My hamster drinking from his new water bottle. He's cute but escaped from his cage last night, and was standing in a skirt that was on my floor when I woke up. He wasn't that stressed when I picked him up and put him back in his cage. He was very thirsty though.)

(Another picture note: I added a picture of the truffles to the last blog post. I was also thinking making thenm with strawberry cream cheese would be another fun variation.)

off topic?

I noticed that no one has poted recently, so I am going to. It's not about crafts though (at least by most definitions) and it's not about maked (although the girls might get some on sunday).

First a little on topic update. We had a great time at the December Portobello west. and it was a great ending to the winter craft fair season. We sold out of the hot water bottle covers that never even made it to a photo session. That was a great feeling for us.

We also met a few days before Christmas for brunch and exchanged gifts. We all got awesome stuff, and everyone got something fiber related. Since then we haven't seen each other. We are recovering from Christmas and plan to get together before the end of the month to talk about what we se for Maked in 2008.

SO the off topic part is that I made "healthy" truffles last night. I'll probably make another batch on Wednesday too. The recipe is adapted from a weight watchers one, so if you're going to indulge this is a good way to do it. Plus they are really rich so two or three is all you need.



In a deep bowl (the taller the less mess you'll make) miz the following ingredients with an electric mixer on medium speed:
1. 1/2 cup of unsweetened cocoa powder
2. 7/8 cup of icing sugar
3. 1/8 cup of cinnamon
4. 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract
5. 1/2 cup of low fat cream cheese (room temperature!)

Once the ingredients are mixed together, roll the mix into little balls (3/4 inch in diameter?), coat with cocoa powder and place in the fridge on a plate or baking pan covered in wax paper. After about 3 or 4 hours, place then into a container. Share and enjoy them over the next week or so. I got around 30 of them out of the recipe.

While typing I had the idea to change the cinnamon to icing sugar and replace the vanilla extract with perpermint extract. You could just generally play around with the cinnamon and the extract for different flavors. or replace the cocoa coating with coconut, ground nuts, and the like. So many possibilities.