TE Key Ingredients Challenge - November

It's the 15th of the month and that means it's time for another Taylored Expressions Key Ingredients Challenge!! I have to tell you that I think this just might be my favorite Key Ingredients yet!! This kit, featuring October Afternoon's Modern Homemaker papers, is so much fun!! And the coordinating cardstock, ribbon and other embellishments will make it so easy to whip up fantastic cards and other projects! You can see a photo of the kit contents and read more details about the kit on the Key Ingredients Blog.

For those of you not already familiar, each month, Taylored Expressions mails out a new Key Ingredients Kit to subscribers. When you subscribe, not only do you receive your kit on your doorstep each month, you also get a 10% off coupon delivered to your inbox - good for anything in the TE store!

Now for the November Key Ingredients Challenge...There's a modern homemaker in all of us, right? For our challenge this month, you should create something to spice up your kitchen, or anything featuring kitchen icons or food (food stamp images or real food!). Should be fun and yummy too, right?

Now, I should explain to you all that I don't cook. Like, AT ALL. Seriously. Joel does ALL of our cooking (which he enjoys AND he's pretty good at it, so it's a win/win for all of us!). However, I do almost all of our shopping. But we're not always the best planners when it comes to grocery shopping and I'm pretty bad with the whole impulse buying thing. I'll admit that there are times when our cupboards are bare so I go to do the grocery shopping, spend $150 (which is very easy to do on Maui) and somehow come home with nothing but Dr. Pepper, ice cream, Oreos, a bag of mini pretzels, some beer, some wine, and some garlic powder because I remembered Joel mentioning something about needing some garlic. Then Joel's grumbling because he doesn't have anything to cook for dinner that night (and what? NO! garlic powder is NOT interchangeable with real garlic apparently) and he doesn't agree with me that mini pretzels, Oreos and beer makes for a perfectly acceptable dinner.

But I digress...my point is that we were in dire need of some help in the whole meal planning / grocery shopping / budgeting department. Enter Jen's Kitchen Planner:


Cute, yeah? There's a tabbed section for Menu, Groceries, Coupons, and Receipts. The idea is that Joel and I will sit down each week and he'll plan what he wants to cook each night (in the "Menu" section) and go over with me what I need to buy and I'll make my Grocery list (in the "Groceries" section) - hopefully eliminating a lot of wasteful purchases and multiple trips to the grocery store each week, the goal being cutting our grocery budget down some each month. Then there's the "Coupons" and "Receipts" sections, which have little envelopes to hold those self-explanatory items.


I purchased the cute little Kraft spiral notebook for $1 at my local Ben Franklin several months ago (I stocked up on several of them). I used some of the Modern Homemaker DP, ribbon, letter stickers and chipboard pieces from the November KI kit to alter the front of the notebook. I also used my Take Note stamp set and coordinating Take Note Die 3 for the large label on the front. And those tabs on the side marking each section of the book? I used the Keeping Tabs stamp set and the coordinating Keeping Tabs Die. But my favorite part of the notebook has to be that adorable apron! For that I used the What's Cookin' stamp set and coordinating Apron & Pocket Dies. Finally, I added some straight and zig-zag stitching all around the edge of the front cover with my sewing machine to finish it up.

The rest of the Key Ingredients Design Team are sharing their November Challenge projects with you today as well, so be sure to stop by each of their blogs to see what they've done - I know I can't wait to see! Check them out:
Jessica Diedrich
Lisa Hjulberg
Lynn Put
Melody Rupple
Rosie Hughes
and of course Taylor VanBruggen

Also, don't forget to stop by the special Key Ingredients Gallery full of fun project ideas using this month's kit!