Cartoons and Caricatures

 Hi everyone. Happy Thursday. 

Today it is once again time for Rain's Art and Dinner Date. This week she is asking for cartoons and caricatures.  

My photos aren't great, but my drawings in my daily journal are definitely cartoon-like. I don't spend a lot of time drawing them. That is my daily journal "rule", basically so I can keep up with daily journaling   I color them with some water based Faber-Castell markers.

And you can see why I'm not happy using a  Moleskin journal this year as you can see ghosts from the other side of the page. GRRR.

And for food this week, let me share this homemade coffee ice cream shake or what we here In New Hampshire call a frappe (pronounced frap). 

I love ice cream when it's hot, but one of the problems going out to buy a cone or dish is that you usually get more than you really need. Now don't get me wrong, I still love going out for an ice cream Sunday lunch, which is what my husband and I do weekly during ice cream weather. But sometimes during the week, I would just love a few bites to take the edge off my sweet tooth.

I have an ice cream maker I can use with my mixer, but it does entail freezing the bowl and beater, which means making room in the freezer. Then I need to make and chill the base, turn the base into ice cream in the frozen bowl and then freeze the newly made ice cream. When I noticed that there was a new Ninja Creami ice cream maker on the market, I was curious and looked into it.

This ice cream maker was a little more than I wanted to spend, but then Amazon Prime Days came along and they had it for $70 off, plus I had an Amazon gift card, so I decided I could get the price down to where I wanted. Now I can make pints  of ice cream without quite so much fuss. To use the Creami, you make your mix and then pour it in to fill the pint container to the fill line. Then freeze for 24 hours. After a few minutes in the machine, you have a pint of ice cream.

Yes, I could go out and buy a pint of ice cream, and I don't really  need another appliance on my kitchen counter, but at least now my husband and I can customize what we want. Plus it is fun to make your own ice cream. As I explained to my husband when I bought it and he was looking at me with one of those you're wasting your money looks, I can make all kinds of flavors of lighter ice cream and fruit sorbets, which aren't always easy to find at the store.

Now the hubby is into his own private pints of chocolate chip and cookie  ice cream, and I haven't seen that you're wasting your money look again. Smile!

I made a batch of coffee ice cream with 1 tbsp cream cheese, 3/4 of sugar (or sugar substitute), 3/4 c. of heavy cream, 1 c. of coffee flavored whole milk, and 1 tsp. of instant coffee granules. I put them all in a bowl together, heated them for just over 1 minute in my microwave and then used a whisk to mix them completely. Once mixed, I pour them into my Creami pint container and put it in the freezer for 24 hours. The next day I made my pint of coffee ice cream.

The creami has a milkshake button (a big selling point for me-grin), and I put 3 small scoops of ice cream and a 1/2 c. of skim milk into a clean pint container, ran it through the Creami and ended up in a few minutes with this very yummy coffee frappe. 

And I might add, a frappe that is not as big as one bought at the ice cream counter would be.

And no, I am not advertising or getting any money for writing this. I'm just excited to be making little ice cream treats for myself.  And I hope my waistline doesn't mind all little treats either-smile again.

Maybe  in the long run my new appliance will be collecting dust on my counter, but then again, maybe not. Only time will answer that question.

Thanks for visiting!

A Scratchy Drawing and Other Art

Hi everyone. Happy Thursday.

One thing I have to share today is a page to share for Wendy's challenge Doors and/or Arches at Art Journal Journey. 

I started my page with a piece of ledger style paper and  a wet rag that had the remains of some bronze colored paint on it. I rubbed the rag on the paper to give it that light glazed effect.

  On the left side of my page, I used a bit of left over deli paper that I had painted and  had also wiped off a stencil onto. 

 Then I took some watered down black paint and an arch stencil and added that to my page.

I thought some vintage people were needed, so I added the  TH group of ladies. I also added the orange flowers. I thought they really carried over the orange from the painted deli paper.

 The tiles are stickers (one complete and one cut in half) that I found in a sticker book of vintage images . This sticker book is one of those items I found in the mess  while cleaning out my supplies. I liked how these tiles worked with the colors on my page, plus they reminded me of some church floor tiles I have seen.  Since my ladies could well be a church social group, (that Gothic arch is making me think of windows in an old cathedral), it all works. 

I am also linking up to Rain's Thursday Art Date where this week the theme is Scratch Drawings.

I don't have any of those scratch boards, (the kind where you scratch off the black to reveal color underneath and make pictures doing that scratching), but I did play around with my Gelli plate and pulled 3 prints that  remind me of  scratch boards. I used black and bright colors because that's what you often see if you have a scratch board.

And lastly in the art department today, I have a bear that I drew in my daily journal. It somewhat keeps with Rain's theme because I used lots of scratchy lines to draw him.

It is hard to use markers and draw something black because the black is so dark you lose a lot of the details. When I wanted to draw a black bear, I thought that instead of going with grey markers to shade in the details, I would just draw a lot of black lines. 

It's not pretty but it works.

And I have no exciting food photos because one day I will start making more delicious looking food again. Lately we've been having salads and with something grilled or else sandwiches. My cooking interest has been traded  to my garden as of late. 

That's my post. I might not get by to visit other people's posts until tonight or tomorrow (Friday) as I'm not around today. Thanks for visiting, and I hope everyone has a great rest of the week.