It's Monday

Caitlynn is back to school today after her Spring break vacation. We had a very active week. And to end it all with a bang, I took the girls to see Horton Hears a Who at the Summerville 8 theater on Ladson road last night. Their matinee tix are only $2.75 for children and adults. Gotta love that. Maybe that's the norm around here for movies but in Indy it's about $8/ea. So I was excited. The girls really liked the movie. Hayley got a little squirmy in the middle but ended up doing fine. And it's a super cute movie if you haven't seen it yet. Here is a picture of my girls by the movie poster at the theater. It's a little blurry. The girls wouldn't hold still and I just took my small point and shoot camera that's not very great with taking pics in motion :-)

I did also find a little time to stamp yesterday, but just a very little. This is my take on the CPS sketch for last week. I'm not entirely happy with it, but that happens sometimes. I love this stamp set and this is the first card I've made with it. I'm hoping to get to play with it a little more today.

Oh, and did I mention that Will's coming home day was changed to May 3. A whole 2 days earlier than what he originally was told, so that was a little bit of good news! And it falls on a Saturday, which is also very good news. 32 days to go until he's home!

Have a great Monday everyone!

Go to child

Here it is Sunday, supposedly the day of rest...right? Not so much for me :-). I was so proud of myself this morning, I was able to get up and get the girls ready and in the car to church on time. I got them checked in to their children's ministry classes and found myself a seat in the sanctuary. I thought we were in the clear. I dropped Hayley off without any major outburst from her, and though Caitlynn was a little unusually sluggish this morning during her drop off, that was uneventful as well. Just as I started to let myself relax and loosen my grip on the pager that the church assigns you if you have a small child, it goes off. "Go to child" is the message flashing on the screen. So I go. And I am greeted in the hall way by a woman who tells me that my child is having a tantrum. Lovely. So I go in and Hayley is bawling, tears streaming down her face, yelling. Her face is bright red, and her nose has run so she has "stuff" covering her mouth. SO gross. Anyway, I had to sit in there with her the whole rest of the service to get her calm. So much for a soothing religious experience this morning. So we will try again next week. I'm sure the poor 2-year old teacher is going to groan in agony when she sees me and my tantrum throwing toddler headed for her classroom again. So instead of feeling refreshed and rejuvenated this morning, I'm feeling stressed out and a tad bit on the lost side as to how to fix the problem that Hayley is having with other people. Granted, she is probably the youngest 2 year old in there, she's only been 2 for a couple weeks and she spends every waking second with me. But I have never seen her that upset before, which in turn upsets me. Any advice out there?

Ok, in other news I was finally able to do a little creating last night. Here is the result of my play time.

Yet another busy day

We had another busy Saturday today. We started off the day by going to the Pink House's MAKE 'N TAKE PLAYSTATION SATURDAY! It was a lot of fun. I got to play with the new crop'o dile big bite, the new Tonic tools, some acrylic paint, a fun corrugator, the Accucut, some Marvy nesting punches, and make this cute little shadow box tin and a tag using a wishblade cut title. So much fun. I now have a wish list about a mile long for new tools that I want!
Then we made a quick pitstop off at Patti's house to deliver some SU goodies that came in my huge shipment last week (that I still unfortunately have not had time to play with). And then our final stop was the Isle of Palms beach. It was gorgeous. The weather, however, was not. It was extremely windy and cloudy and not so warm. Caitlynn still insisted on getting in the water, but Hayley and I didn't even bother stripping down to our bathing suits. It was just too cold. Still a fun day, though.
I am glad to be home, and hoping that I'll have some extra time to play tonight before I crash because I know being outside for a lot of the day is going to make me fall asleep super early! Hope everyone is having a good weekend!!

So leave it to me...

to promise to post "tomorrow" and then actually not do it! Ugh. Sorry. It was for good reason, though. Will ran the shuttle mission, which means that I got to talk to him for a few hours last night and then again early this morning (I woke up at 3:30 just for him, he is so lucky I love him!). We are down to 37 days before he comes home. His homecoming date was bumped up 2 days, to May 3. I'm very anxious for him to get back home. We have so many wonderful things planned for this summer. It's going to be a really exciting time for us. Have I mentioned how I am one of the luckiest women in the world because of the fact that this man loves me? He is just incredible and I am blessed to have him in my life every day. This deployment has been pretty rough on me emotionally and he has been very patient and understanding about it all. I have an emotional meltdown about once a month and he does some emotional hand-holding while I sort through it. Such a sweetie. Plus, I happened to mention a few weeks ago in a casual email about how I wanted him to take a picture of the "crappy tent" in Kuwait that he stays in when he does the shuttle. It is because of this crappy tent that I get to talk to him because it has wireless internet and I want to scrap it because it has been monumental in maintaining my sanity through this deployment. Anyway, I asked him about bringing his camera on this shuttle trip and he said of course he brought it and I asked why he said it like that and he said that he had to take the picture of the tent for me. I was so excited that he remembered without me having to ask him again. I know that's a small thing, but in the land of me, that's a big deal because he was actually listening to what I had to say and I haven't had that luxury in the past.

Anyway, here is a page that I finished today. The picture isn't the best because I don't have good lighting after dark in my house. And I had to use the kodak easyshare camera instead of my Nikon D50 because the D50 is charging. So bear with my photography there. I'll try to replace the picture tomorrow when I have better lighting. I just couldn't do a post without a picture of a project! :-)

I got a whole boatload of new Stampin' Up goodies today. My new favorite person (our local UPS driver) delivered 4 boxes of stuff today for my sale-a-bration order. I have lots of new sets to cut out and mount so that'll keep me busy tonight and hopefully I'll be able to get some cards done with some of them tomorrow! Stay tuned! Hope everyone is having a good week.

Whirlwind weekend...

Happy Easter everyone! I hope everyone had a blessed day in celebration--He is risen!!

We had a wonderful Easter weekend. My ex-husbands Dad and Step-mom were in town to see the girls, so we had dinner with them on Friday, then went to the Children's Museum (SO much fun!!) on Saturday. We also ate lunch at Joe Pasta and stopped off at Cupcake. If you haven't been, and are in the Charleston area, I definitely recommend it. There is one in Mt. Pleasant now too! The website is here. I had the chocolate chip cheesecake one...SO so good! The flavors change daily so you can check their site for more info. But the shop is adorable and they have cute t-shirts and stuff as well. No pictures allowed in the store or I would post some. You'll just have to see it for yourself. And then today we went to church at Cathedral of Praise. WOW. The service was amazing. I was moved to tears more than once. Just incredible. The choir was fantastic. Cait had a great time in the children's ministry as well.

And then we came home and played with our Easter basket goodies and I made a huge Easter Sunday dinner. I roasted a turkey for the first time in my adult life...or for the first time all by myself and it turned out very good. Will made the turkey for the most part for Thanksgiving with very little help from me, so I was nervous. But it was very good.
I have had zero time for anything crafty this weekend, but I am hoping to get some time in for that tonight before I crash, so I promise to post tomorrow!

Happy Good Friday!

Today is Good Friday. The start to the Easter holiday. A lot of people have been off work today, I sadly am not one of them. And I may be pulling double duty tonight because one of the moms of a child I watch had to go to the emergency room today and her hubby is deployed. SO I may be keeping the baby overnight tonight. And I have family in town to visit with the kids, AND I haven't done my bunny shopping yet! AHHHH!

I did manage to squeeze in this project today as a gift for the girls' grandparents who are here to visit. They are my ex husband's parents and they are really the only ones from his side of the family that take an active interest in how the girls are doing. SO, here are my little gifts for them.

They are magnets. It's hard to tell that from the picture. I just thought these would be cuter to display on the fridge than just a wallet size picture would be :-) And I felt like scrapbooking, but didn't have time to do any layouts this week since we all had the flu and now all the craziness of the weekend going on. I hope you and yours have a safe and happy Easter weekend!

Technique Challenge Card

The technique challenge on SCS involved inking up a Cuttlebug embossing folder on the negative side (the side with the Cuttlebug logo on it) and then placing the paper in it and running it through the cuttlebug. I use mine in a regular sizzix machine and it works fine.

This is the card I made using that technique. I inked the embossing folder with blue bayou ink, and then used whisper white cardstock in that. I love how it's kind of faded looking. I'm going to try this with the other embossing folder I have with a circle pattern on it too. I only have 2...I'm a little behind in the Cuttlebug craze! :-)

Some new inspiration

I decided today to try something different. I went in search of different patterns and colors to inspire me. I always see different inspiration challenges on other people's blogs, so I thought I'd find some to challenge myself. You are welcome to play along if you'd like. And I'd love to see what you come up with!

I was inspired by this:

And I created this card.
The stamps are all Stampin Up, the sets are Pretty Amazing (for the stems), Baroque Motifs (large flower), and Define Your Life (sentiment), and Seeing Spots (small flower).

Back in town

We are back in town. We arrived yesterday at around 4 into Charleston, but then got stuck on I-26 about 10 miles from my exit and sat there in what seemed like a parking lot for an hour and a half. UGH. After 11 hours of driving, that was the very last thing I needed when we were finally so close to home.

So now it's laundry and putting things away and just getting back into the swing of things. And Hayley, bless her heart, seems to have caught a little viral bug of some sort and got sick all over her crib this morning when she woke up. And Cait's bus didn't show after we waited for it for 40 minutes. So it has just been VERY crazy since we got back. I did, however, get my SAB order put in before the deadline and I am SO very excited to get the product back in. There were 140+ items in the order. Not all mine, of course, but still it's going to be like Christmas in my house again! :-)

I will have something crafty and creative to share tomorrow. My sis and I did some stamping while I was at her house over the weekend. We stayed up til 12:30 am the night before I left because that was the only time we had left to do it! She has a new baby who requires a lot of attention--he likes to be snuggled-- so our time was limited to the late night hours! I made a couple cards and helped her finish a layout. Here are a couple photos from the weekend so I don't go leaving you all without some visual interest. There are a couple from the park we went to. I had to document it because Hayley usually HATES the park. She usually fights to stay in the car and cries when we pull into a parking lot of a park. This time she actually played and had some fun. Maybe her irrational fear of playgrounds has passed! YAY! Can you tell this kid gets her picture taken a lot?? She's my little model. Always striking a pose when the camera comes out. We're going to have lines of boys after her soon...dreading that.The usual park-a-phobe actually smiling and enjoying herself on the playground equipment!The newest member of my family...my absolutely adorable nephew Logan. I wanted to bring him home with me. My sister said no :-(.

Hayley eating her special birthday cupcake and making a mess with frosting on her face to make her cousin Natalie laugh.

And last but not least, our fabulous super star chef from Sapporo in Indianapolis. We LOVE this place. It is our tradition to eat there whenever we are all in town together. This picture is of him doing the volcano out of an onion. If you ever go to Indy, you should try this place. The food is to die for, the service is impeccable, and you can't beat the atmosphere with them cooking right there in front of you.

Basic Pomegranates

I finally actually have the colors to participate in an SCS color challenge. This week's challenge was to use Basic Gray, Basic Black, and Purely Pomegranate. Love this combo, and really like the way my card turned out. I wanted to only use stamps, ink, and cardstock so I limited myself to just those supplies and I really like the result. I'm obviously really loving having the Baroque Motifs set. I also used one of the itty bitty backgrounds to add some texture to the pomegranate background.

I will be absent from blogging until probably Monday. Traveling to Indiana to visit the fam and have Hayley's birthday party. I also get to see my dearest friend, Alaina, who is more than a best friend...she's a sister. And I miss her. (I get to see my actual sister too!). Have a great weekend everybody!

Another card to share...

Good morning, blog land! I am still not adjusted to this daylight savings time change, so this week is a sleepy one for me. Anyway, I was able to squeeze some time in this morning to make this quick card using the SU Baroque Motifs set. I LOVE this set...so glad I got this one. The cardstock is Blue Bayou and the inks are blue bayou and soft sky. If you can't tell, I'm really liking that color combo right now.

But I only have 8 SU colors so I'm a bit limited until I get some more :-). I love the way this card turned out. It's simple, but pretty. I am definitely enjoying simplicity these days with Will being gone and a household to run and two children to play with!

Oh and yesterday...I won a blog candy on Silke's blog. She has the most BEAUTIFUL cards...just discovered her last week, I think. And I never win anything, so this was very exciting for me! :-) Go check out her blog. This card is my favorite of hers since I started reading her blog. So so pretty!

Anyway, I'm off to spend some time with the birthday girl. I can't believe she's 2 already!! AHHH. Have a good day everyone!

Happy 2nd Birthday, Hayley

Hayley Lauren turns 2 at 4:30 am tomorrow. This slide show is dedicated to her. I can't believe how much she has changed and grown over the last 2 years. Seems like only yesterday that I was screaming at the nurse for my epidural (that never came because Hayley delivered so quickly). It goes by so fast. So happy birthday to my baby tomorrow!

My cute little business card

I just played around this morning while I was waiting for kids to arrive and came up with this cute little business card. So my first 10 look like this, no telling what the next 10 will look like! :-)

Obviously the blacked out part doesn't actually look like that, but due to the completely unprivate nature of the internet, I didn't want to publish that info. No random weird phone calls for me, thank you! :-)

WSC38

Here is my card for Beate's sketch this week.

Woohoo, I'm getting a lot done!

Ok, I've finished 2 more cards using my new SU kit stuff. I'm so excited. I'm going to break up these posts because I want to put the one for Beate's sketch separately. SO, here is the second card I've finished tonight, and also a picture of the projects we made at Stamp Camp yesterday at Patti's...

This card uses only the Baroque Motiffs stamp set. I wanted it to be simple and easy.

And here are the projects that we completed at Patti's stamp camp. It was so much fun. I'm definitely lucky to have found such a wonderful upline!

Another busy weekend

Wow, I can't believe how quickly this weekend went by. We had TONS of stuff going on. Friday night I babysat my friend Julie's little girl. You should've seen my house when I finally got the girls all to go to bed. There was popcorn from one end of my living room to the other, Littlest Pet Shop pets everywhere, etc. It was madness, but we did have lots of fun. Then on Saturday, Julie picked Tori up at around 9, the same time that the babysitter for the girls showed up to watch them for me to go to Stamp Camp at Patti's house. We made super adorable cards and a little easter bunny basket that is really cute too! After that, I stopped at the Pink House and picked up my next project, a Scalloped Tab Clear Acrylic Album by Clear Scraps! I'm so so excited to get started with it, so I'll probably start on it tonight.

Ok, so after all that, I got home around 3:15, just in time to catch Will online during his crew rest from the shuttle mission!! YAY! We got to talk for about 6 hours on AOL IM. It has been a God send during this deployment. We only get to talk on it when he does the shuttle, so we always hope that he gets one. Since he's been gone, I think he's done it maybe 4-5 times and we get to talk for several hours, which is wonderful. And around the same time I started talking to him, Caitlynn left for her sleepover with her friend Chrissy.

THEN, today I got up and totally forgot about the time change. I was so confused because my clocks all said something different. Obviously I figured it out. But I've been "off" all day. After Cait got home, I decided to take the girls to Chuck E Cheese for lunch just for the heck of it. We had a good time, but Hayley was crabby so we didn't stay too long. I had to promise Cait we'd go back some time soon to use up the rest of our tokens and cash in our tickets. And now we're back home, the girls both crashed and I made my very first card with my new SU goodies! So here it is...

I used the Pretty Amazing stamp set and stamped the flowers and stems on Whisper White with Chocolate Chip ink, and sponged the edges with chocolate chip as well. The scalloped trim is done using the slit punch on soft sky paper. I stamped the flower on whisper white with soft sky ink twice, then cut out the top layer on one of them and used a dimensional to stack them on top of one another. I finished the flower off with a rhinestone brad. The hummingbird is chocolate chip ink on chocolate chip paper. For the blue border, I used one of the itty bitty background stamps in soft sky ink and then stamped the Amazing in chocolate chip on top of it. I got the idea for this card here: http://heatherpulvirenti.blogspot.com/2008/01/always-on-my-mind.html. She used a couple different stamps sets for the background and sentiment and also used some DP, but the idea is pretty much the same and I think the overall look that I accomplished with mine is just as pretty. The ribbon is not SU. I have to order some SU ribbon, this is just some that I had in my stash from Michaels.

I hope everyone had a great weekend!

So tired

Phew, it has been a long long day. I had a friend of mine's little girl here tonight to spend the night so that my friend could have a night out and go to a concert. I'm worn out. We ate Chick-fil-a, we had some ice cream. There was popcorn from one end of my living room to the other, we painted little wood shapes that I got at Moore's 6/$1. We watched High School Musical and danced around the living room, and had some hot chocolate. Now finally after getting jammies on and our teeth brushed, the girls are finally all in bed. And I'm beat. I have a couple more projects to share, but I'm too tired and frankly feeling lazy tonight so I will post pictures of them tomorrow at some point. I have a crazy weekend ahead so please bear with me! My SU kit did finally arrive and I have been oohing and ahhing over all my new goodies! Can't wait to have some workshops and get started so anyone in the Charleston area that wants to host one, contact me and we'll set something up! Ok, goodnight everyone. I promise, much more interesting things to share tomorrow!

Impatiently waiting...

for the UPS man to bring my SU goodies! It was supposed to come yesterday, but was delayed because of the bad weather on Tuesday and now is supposed to get here some time today. So I keep looking out the window for the big brown truck of happiness to come rolling down the street! Not here yet, though.

I am feeling very productive this week, and the week has just flown by. Others that have or have had deployed hubbies know how great it is to have a week pass by quickly. I am hoping because of my crazy busy March schedule with birthday parties and a visit to Indiana and people coming here to visit this whole month will fly by. So far, it is. YAY! Because the rest of the 2 months he has been gone have just been creeping along so it feels like 6. I'm lucky that his is only a 4 month deployment, I know there are many others who are gone for 6 or 12 or even longer. The bad thing is that once he gets home, he'll be here for the summer but then will get sent out again for another 7 weeks in the fall for instructor school and air drop training. Wish they could do that while he's gone already, but no such luck!

Anyway, enough of my complaining...here is my layout for today. This actually came together rather quickly. Last night I started getting sleepy around 9 pm again, and I was determined to make it until 10, so I wanted a quick project to keep me awake! It actually only took me about 15 minutes to do this, but picking out the pictures and stuff took a little longer. I've scrapped other pictures from this same event, but I had extras printed out, so I figured I might as well use them. So the pictures may look familiar if you've been a regular visitor, but I promise the layout is new!

Creative Day

I got a lot of projects done yesterday. I finished 3 cards, a scrapbook page, and a little tote bag! I was on a roll and had I not had to get up early for work this morning, I probably would've been up til the wee hours of the morning doing even more stuff! Before I share my projects, i just have to share this picture of my oldest, Caitlynn. She came home from school yesterday and knocked on the door (of course, it's a little unusual for her to do that) and when I opened the door, this is what I saw...."Mommy, I picked these beautiful flowers for you because it's Tuesday!" How cute is that?? A fist full of weeds just for me! :-) I could not have asked for a better bouquet. What a little sweetie. I will miss these days when dandelions are considered the most beautiful flowers...and she picked them just for me. Makes me get all teary eyed. Ok, before I burst into tears thinking about my baby getting to be a big girl...here are my projects from yesterday...


This is Hayley's new "thing". She is constantly trying to jump. I kept trying to capture her with both feet off the ground but it only lasts a split second, and instead of that, I managed to catch her with her tongue hanging out a-la Michael Jordan. Love it! I've been wanting to try out a circle card for a while...and I must say, this was really fun! I liked working with a different shape. I have resolved to make more of these...and I get my kit from SU today, so I will have new goodies to do it! YAY! Ok, that's it for today...happy hump day, we're closing in on Friday already. And 60 days til Will comes home!!!

A day off

Whew, I have the day off and I have had such a productive morning. But this will be a quick post anyway since All My Children is about to start, haha.

Ok, here is my card that I just finished making about two seconds ago. I don't have any real fun inspiration story or anything for it. It started out with me trying to do the chalkboard technique that was on SCS, and I don't have the right ink for it, so it wasn't working. But I really liked the way the white flower looked on the black paper. SO, that was where this card started. But without the green touches it was just too bland for my taste. So there ya go. I used Doodle This and the sentiment on the tab is from the Office Accoutrement set (both Stampin Up!).

And because no one else commented for a chance to win the blog candy (I'm still just shocked! and a wee bit embarrassed I must admit) Katie is the winner by default. Hopefully by the time I do another one, I'll have more people commenting. Katie, I'll send your stuff out to you hopefully by the weekend! Maybe we should just think of it as a late birthday present! :-)

My SU starter kit is supposed to arrive tomorrow. I'm so excited I can hardly wait. of course it couldn't come today while I'm off could it?? Ugh! Hope everyone has a great Tuesday!

Blog Candy Update

Ok, sorry guys that I haven't posted pictures of the goodies I got...BUT I did pick some stuff up. My camera battery is dead from a weekend full of picture taking, so it's charging. But the candy is as follows: Some American Crafts Ribbon, some bling, alpha stickers, and some stamps! I've only gotten one comment so far, so where is everyone?? Otherwise, Katie I guess you might automatically win for being my A+ commenter! :-)