Love Chocolate?

I love chocolae, how about you? I grew up on a dairy farm...so ice cream always takes me back to childhood. We used to have Madison Shops Ice Cream drive out to the farm one weekend a month. It was always something to look forward to. There were usually seasonal flavors - my personal was blueberry, so when it was available my dad would buy it. We all had favorites, and he made sure everyone got theirs. My dad's favorite was chocolate marshmallow cream - available all year round and almost always in stock in our LARGE chest freezer. My sister liked Butter Pecan, and I always remember spitting out the nuts - didn't care for them when I was young.

I am willing to bet many people have ice cream memories. Do you? Our small town has a franchise restaurant called Culver's - known for their frozen custard. Granted, it is not a healthy choice compared to frozen yogurt or ice milk, but once in a while a visit makes the kids very happy. The restaurant is located at the corner of one busy intersection. We could avoid it, but somedays you just have to drive by to see what the flavor is.

This month's sponsor at the Scrapbook Playground is My Favorite Things, and they have fun stamp sets. Check out all the fun projects the design team has created with these stamps.

My set revolved around the theme of chocolate, sisters, and treats. The stamp set images are rather small, and ones first impression may be to use them for cards only. But consider creating a border with your small stamp sets - you konw...you all probably have those little $1 sets everyone was snatching up a while back. You can simply go around the entire edges of your page stamping small, themed images, or stamp them on cardstock and punch them out into a shape, such as a circle - like I did with the Sundae stamps in the layout above.

Another fun tip - hang out at a coffeehouse ever? If you have your stop may include one of those insulating coffee cozees around your cup. Some come in pretty cool textures. Our local stop, Crossroads Coffeehouse, has cozees in a texture that reminds me of grungeboard. Or in this case - a waffle cone.

By cutting felt to shape and rolling the bottom edge, stitching it in place, I topped the recyled cozee cone with a dollop of chocolate ice cream. I also have way too many of those standard, little white buttons. I painted them to match the line of Piggy Tales papers I used, and created sprinkles on the cone.

If you are addicted to scrapbooking like I am - you may tend to look at every item as a prospect for altering or to use on a page. It's hard not to! Think about creating a cone from recycled products like I did the next time you, or your kids, ae enjoying ice cream. And don't forget to think beyond the card when going through your collection of tiny stamp images.

Out of curiousity - I have to ask....which do you prefer - milk or dark chocolate? I look forward to your answers, and maybe the next time you visit I will have some exciting news to share.