Musings, Rambles, and Creative Expressions

She's 8

2010-02-03T15:55:00.002-05:00

I feel like I am suddenly the mother of a sixteen year old. She's 8. {Well 8 and a half if you want to get technical}. This child will be the end of me. I'm sure of it. Big time struggles in the morning, every morning make for an unhappy grump of a mama. This is our morning as of late...

Alarm goes off at 5:40 a.m. I hit snooze one time then get up.

Go upstairs and flip on the lights.

Pick out Hayley-Boo's outfit for the day. {Cait's too if she didn't the night before}

Pull Caitlynn's covers off.

Cait covers her head with a pillow and groans an alarmingly irritated groan at me.

I gently give her a little shake. Time to get up.

She grips the top of her bed, groans again-more irritated though.

Hayley pops up smiling, "Mommy! Chicken!!". yes. She says 'chicken' randomly. Started this two weeks ago and no clue how, what, why, when, where she picked that up, but she does it.

Shake Cait again a little more forcefully. Nothing.
Tickle her. Get a little flop out of her but she's still clinging to the bed.

I grab on to her ankles and literally drag her off the bed. Yes. I drag her. And she grumbles and mumbles but finally she stands up and I hand her her outfit and she trudges down the stairs. And she sits on the couch. And covers her head with a pillow.

We have wasted approximately 15 minutes at this point. So she has about 15 minutes roughly to get herself ready to make it to the bus.

5 minutes pass and she's still either wearing PJs or is just in her undies. I say you need to get moving you have 10 minutes and you still have to brush your hair, brush your teeth, put on socks and shoes, take your medicine, and get your coat and stuff on. To which she says "OK!" like I haven't just asked her 20 times to do it. Like she's already dressed and ready to go...only she's not.

It's not until we are down to 2 minutes to go that she somehow gets the lead out and even then it's only with prodding. Come on. Two minutes. Yep, you're late. You must put your coat on now. And then about 5 minutes after that she gets out the door and sprints to her bus stop.

Then Hayles asks me for a pop-tart...but not just any pop-tart. A brown sugar pop-tart and cartoons so that I can go get ready. And then we have peace for the 15 minutes I now have left to shower, dress, and make myself look less like Frazzled Mommy and more like Polished Professional.

Hustle Hayley out the door with whatever toy {or toys} she insists on bringing with her that day and get her to the sitter. Along the way she says Mom, can we go left? Is this left? Can you just go already? (which is at the same place EVERY morning because we get stuck behind traffic). Can I listen to Caits music, I don't like this song. Why don't you have it? You need to get it. Mom, where's Ella? Is she at school? Did Daddy go to work?
This is a 4 minute drive.

Drop her off. Then I sit in traffic. Lots and lots of traffic. And don't even get me started on it if it happens to be raining, or misting, or about to rain because any type of condensation seems to cause panic in drivers here and they start getting all crazy.

So long story short, by the time I get to work I am in need of a stiff drink. Maybe two on some days.

Couldn't I just get up earlier? Yes. I have tried. And then I endure this routine for just a longer stretch of time. That's right...to my child, more time equals more time to complain about being sleepy and that I am mean for making her get up when it's dark outside. She should tell that to the school administrators for making an 8 year old get on the bus at 6:30 am. Yes. 6:30.

She's 8. Heaven help me in 8 years.

A great weekend...

2010-01-25T10:15:00.003-05:00

I am not a big fan of Mondays. Especially after a really great weekend, going back to work is just not something I look forward to.

We had a fabulous family weekend; Caitlynn got to choose a place to have dinner Saturday night for her excellent report card and she chose...Subway. of all the places she could have picked, she picks Subway. Silly, silly girl. So we ate our sandwiches and then headed out to the Stingrays pack the house night. Hayley had a lot of fun dancing to the music and trying to find "Ray" the mascot through the entire game. We enjoyed it because there were a lot of people, which makes it a lot more exciting! The Stingrays won so we got free tickets to a game in February as well, which is just awesome because we love going! Then Sunday we watched football and ordered pizza--I will accept any excuse to get out of making dinner for a night, and actually managed to avoid having to actually cook a dinner all weekend-YES!

A quick card to share this morning...
I made this one using entirely scraps. I've been trying to do more of that lately so that I can reduce my scrap bin contents considerably--it's a huge mess and one of my biggest problem areas for how to keep it neat and organized.

Being productive at work

2010-01-19T09:06:00.003-05:00

Things are REALLY dreadfully slow at work right now. We are waiting patiently (or not so patiently in my case) for things to pick back up. In the mean time, we've had to bring in books or something to keep ourselves entertained through the work day. I complain a lot about this to my husband because I am really not a sit and do nothing type of girl. I have a to-do list a mile long for things at home that I could be working on instead of sitting at work doing nothing. But I decided to make the best of it and I've been bringing some crafting supplies with me to work and that's where I created today's card. Had some fun with this one, mixing up patterns and colors. I really love how it turned out. I used my SU! scalloped circle punch to create the flowers. Just punched them out, crumpled them up, flattened them back out again and adhered them together and topped them off with a PTI button. Easy peasy flowers. All of the papers and stamps are from PTI as well. Dark Chocolate, Spring Moss, Raspberry Fizz, and of course white.

Will is back to work starting today. Had to share the bathroom to get ready this morning for the first time in 5 months! CRAZY!!!! I'm so not used to that. Kind of messed with my routine a bit, but we all managed to get out of the house on time. That always makes me happy. Hoping to start a new book today, My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult. I know I'm a little behind the trend with this one, but I still wanted to read it...so that is my distraction today for the work day.

Hope you all have a great day!

Love you tons!

2010-01-15T08:32:00.003-05:00

It's Friday! It's Friday!
Once again, life got in the way of me posting yesterday again as I planned to, but here is the card I was going to share. This card was inspired by a card of Dawn McVey's that I saw a while back. I created the sentiment on my computer, but the rest of it is stamped using PTI stamps and inks. I have been pretty busy making cards, lately. Really enjoying the quick and easy of them right now as opposed to scrapbook pages. It allows me to do something creative, but not spend all day on it and these days that is definitely what I need. Things are so busy right now getting back into the swing of things with Will being back home and me working full time.
Hayley has been enjoying every minute of the last two weeks with her daddy. She just adores him and missed him so much. She is going to be very sad to have to go back to her normal babysitter next week when he has to return to work and I know he is going to miss spending the days with her. He gets such a kick out of her...she really is very funny though. Definitely will do just about anything to get a laugh, which keeps things pretty interesting around our house. Here lately she has had a lot of static so she knows if she rubs her head on the couch, her hair will stand straight up. She does this CONSTANTLY and it makes me crazy because it makes it impossible to keep her hair under control. But it is very funny. Its on my list of things that I absolutely have to get a picture of this week.

Caitlynn has bronchitis and has been coughing non-stop. Poor girl. She's been sick off and on since before Christmas. This South Carolina weather that can't decide if it wants to be warm or freezing is to blame, I think, because she is very rarely sick. Really hoping that this round of antibiotics gets rid of it for good so she can get back to her normal cheerful self.

Busy weekend for us, though. We are going to finally tackle this garage project that we've been putting off for months, and I'm getting a haircut tomorrow that I'm really excited about. Then hopefully some family fun at the bowling alley or movie theater plus lots and lots of football. GOOOOOO COLTS!!

Dusting off the cobwebs

2010-01-14T11:24:00.002-05:00

the blog has been at the bottom of my to-do list for quite a while. Life just keeps getting in the way. I have added it to my list of resolutions for things I want to put more effort into. I want to use it as more of a record of what is happening in the life of my family as well as a place to share the things I do creatively. So today is hopefully the jumping off point for that.

A lot has happened the last few weeks. Changes. Adjustment. Will came home from his 4 month deployment almost 2 weeks ago. It's crazy how those 4 months just drag and drag and then he gets home and his 2 weeks off from work FLY by!! We have been enjoying our time as a family, though, and just LOVE having him home.

As soon as my camera battery finishes charging, I have a card to share...be back before the day is out!

Fabric Basket

2009-10-16T23:32:00.003-04:00

Phew...long time no post. AGAIN! Sorry to those of you who still check this thing!! I haven't been too crafty here lately. Just too busy trying to clean house and have it actually look clean. Anyone else have that problem? I feel like I clean 24/7, finish a room and move on to another one and by the time I finish the second one, the first is a disaster again. I'm sure it's part of having kids and having to keep up with it all on my own while Will is away, but MAN is it frustrating!!!

I decided that enough is enough and made myself let go of the fact that my house just isn't perfectly neat and gave myself a break to do something just for fun. I got out some fabric and my sewing machine and got to work and here is what I came up with...

and the inside...

I know this is going to look awesome with some of my Amy Butler or Heather Bailey fabrics...YUM. But for now, I think this little polka dot one is pretty darn cute! I definitely didn't reinvent the wheel here, there are other people all over the web that have done these and I just decided on a whim to give it a go...thinking they might make some mighty cute gift baskets with some other stuff inside.

Look, the seams match up on my very first try!! I usually have at least some issues with this...not this time!

Pretty proud of my cute little basket! :-)

Happy Friday, everybody.

Got a little messy...

2009-09-19T21:01:00.002-04:00

I LOVE working with paint and canvas. I wish I could take credit for the design of this piece--I can't. I totally copied this whole idea from someone else. I saw it on the Living with Lindsey blog and thought it was such a cute idea and I love the quote because it sort of relates to my life with my hubby and such. Anyway, here is my take on it...

I got a few parts a little spattered with some black paint and I just kind of went with it and left it there. I figure it was just a happy little accident ;-). Besides it's just for me anyway. Just a way to get outside of my box and do something fun. I hadn't worked with paint in such a long time and it's so relaxing. I was so wrapped up in it, it was nearly 1 a.m. when I finished!! But I like it and for now it is gracing my lovely buffet table. I will probably move it into my studio/office at some point.

**Sorry about the flash on it, it was obviously dark when I finished it, so not a great picture, but you get it :-)

I almost forgot...

2009-09-11T21:49:00.003-04:00

Here is a pic of the finished buffet table! I can't believe I almost forgot to post it.

First, one more look at the before:

And after:

I am hoping to do some more crafting tonight so I should have more to share tomorrow! Happy weekend!!

A solution...

2009-09-10T22:09:00.003-04:00

Last night I set out to solve a problem. A big annoying problem that I have been having over the last couple weeks. See, my friend and I go for these long walks and I have to take the stroller, but Hayley is 3 now, so I use an umbrella stroller and got rid of all my other fancier ones and I was stuck with nowhere to put my water bottle, my phone, my keys, etc. while we were walking. My temporary fix was to use a purse but it was too bulky and got in my way, so I needed something better.

Here is my solution. It attaches with velcro on those tabs, since you can't see that from the picture.

Pretty cute, huh? I love this fabric! I bought it at http://www.aboveallfabric.com/. Well the swirly one anyway. The pocket fabric is actually just from a bandana I got at the craft store for like ten cents. My next one won't have such a deep pocket, though...I just wanted to make sure my water wouldn't fall out and I think even just a couple inches shorter on the pocket and the water would still be nice and secure.

And look! It works on my elliptical too! And I plan on taking it grocery shopping to hold my coupon thing and my car keys so i don't have to dig through the purse for those!

One year later...

2009-09-06T19:52:00.004-04:00

Today is me and my wonderful hubby's anniversary! To celebrate the day since Will is gone, I took my girls to the beach where we were married and we spent the day there. Here are a few pictures from the day.

This is the aisle that I walked down a year ago today! Except this aisle now ends in a wall of sand that just drops off instead of the gentle slope it was a year ago. Amazing how much changes in just a year...not to mention that there is so much more grass here now when last year there was barely any. I had butterflies in my stomach walking through here though...I'm so glad I went there today. It was the best possible way to spend the day under the circumstances...and knowing me, I'll drag him back to this very same spot next year :-)
I love this beach. Today we decided to take a shell-searching walk and went all the way down to the end of the park area. We found some pretty cool shells, but even better was the complete lack of people down there! So peaceful. The ocean was so beautiful. This photo was on the first part of our walk but you can see that further down there was NO ONE there. It was awesome.

Happy Anniversary, Will. I love you!

Raspberry Suite Color Challenge 16

2009-09-05T22:49:00.004-04:00

Once again one of Dawn's challenges has brought me back to life with my creative side. I just haven't had time to sit down and do much for ME lately. Will left last Saturday for his deployment and it's been a little overwhelming to get into the swing of doing everything on my own again. Will had issues with the international service on his phone, so I've had to run around trying to fix that and he still ended up having to ship it back home to me to take care of it here. Then Hayley has had a really rough time with this one and is still not quite herself and Caitlynn is of course testing her boundaries again to see how far she can push me. It makes things really interesting, I suppose, but it also makes me really frazzled! So between the housework, yardwork, kid work, and my actual work, I haven't had very much time to just do something fun for myself. That brings me up to today when I decided that I needed to just take a time out for myself tonight and do something creative. Get my hands dirty. So I did. Once again I made 2 cards for this challenge. I had this image of what I wanted to do in my head, but when it came to actually putting it on paper, it didn't work out as great as I thought. It's just a little busy to me. You can't really tell in the picture but the circles are punched out of the kraft cardstock and then the designs are on the inside. So it has some texture and stuff on it...but it still just wasn't quite what I had hoped for.
So I kept going and churned out another one...And I'm much happier with the final result on this one.

Tomorrow is my wedding anniversary and we are spending the day at the beach where we were married. I thought it would be nice to be there, to just connect with the day and just let all of the happiness from that day wash over me. Hopefully the weather holds out! Hope all of you are enjoying your Labor Day weekend!

T minus 9 days...

2009-08-20T08:21:00.003-04:00

Will leaves in 9 days. For 4 months. Not at all looking forward to it. I know as soon as he gets his bags out and starts loading them up, I'm going to be an emotional basketcase. Happens every time he goes TDY for an extended period of time and it definitely happened for the last deployment. The hardest part about being a military wife. The goodbyes. I HATE the goodbyes. Blah. Trying SO hard not to focus on that happening here soon, so I'm trying to stay extremely busy with my crafty stuff. I have a couple cards to share today and an update on my buffet table that I've been working on sporadically over the last few weeks! ** I apologize for the not so great photography here...I was photographing these while the kids were eating so I didn't have a whole lot of time to play around and then crop and edit before they were ready to get up and play!

First the cards... some I made just for fun.

Used all PTI stuff on these. Friends Til the End, Women of Life, Polka Dot Basics, and Damask Designs are all the stamp sets I had pulled out for these. I used up a lot of my scraps from some other cards and projects which always makes me happy!

And here is the progress on my buffet table. The staining has begun. Hoping to have that wrapped up today so it can dry completely and then I can apply the polyurethane finish! And then it will be DONE and displayed in all it's glory in my entry way! WOOHOO!

A couple more hair flowers

2009-08-14T14:50:00.002-04:00

Here are the other hair flowers I said I would share. I am super excited because I actually sold these about 10 minutes after I made them and talked about them on facebook! (Thanks Ronee!) Now I need to go to the store and get some more supplies to make more and maybe I'll sell those too!!

Happy Friday!

Raspberry Suite Color Challenge 14 take 2

2009-08-13T08:21:00.004-04:00

Will decided to watch a scary movie last night and I'm not a big fan of watching those when I need to be guaranteed to get some sleep so I had to distract myself. I had some papers and supplies still left out in my studio from working on the challenge card I posted the other day, so I thought I would use those up and make another one. Pretty pleased with it! I seriously LOVE this Star set from PTI!

Here are the challenge deets again...And my 2nd take on the challenge...

So what do ya think? Pretty fun, right? I used a SU backgrounder on the large Plum Pudding piece and sort of mixed and matched stamps from a few PTI sets for this one. Some dots from Polka Dot Basics, the large stars and sentiment from Star Prints, and the small stars from Let Freedom Ring. I admit I didn't use much scarlet jewel, but it's in there! One of the large stars and the "you're my shining" part of the sentiment ;-) I squeezed it in!! And this card is a larger format than I usually work with, but I think I'll have to do it more often! It's a 5.25 in. square card.

That's it for now- I have some more hair flowers to share tomorrow as well as a couple cards I made for an old color challenge that I missed during my crazy summer hiatus :-)

Good thing I already have things done because a busy night ahead for us. I'm working today and then tonight we have Meet the Teacher Night at Cait's school. She is beyond excited to go back and see everybody and find out who all is in her class!

Playing with the sewing machine...

2009-08-12T10:02:00.004-04:00

I was playing with my sewing machine this morning and here is a new little something I cooked up. Saw something like this on the web and thought, hey I can do that. So I did a little trial and error and this is my end result. Now I want to make some more in some cuter fabrics to see how those turn out...and to see if I can re-create it ;-) It has an alligator clip on the back but I'm going to play around and make some on ponytail holders and the snap clips too!

By the way, isn't my little model the cutest?!

Raspberry Suite Color Challenge 14

2009-08-09T21:09:00.004-04:00

Wow it's been a while since I've been able to participate in a color challenge. Just too busy. I gotta admit, though, that I REALLY needed the alone time in my studio today. We had a crazy busy weekend...or well, I had a crazy busy weekend. I attended a coupon seminar on Saturday morning for a few hours, had to come home and bake like crazy for a donation to the Crisis Ministries soup kitchen, Caitlynn had a friend over, Hayley was attached to my hip all day...then today I had to drop the cupcakes I baked off to a friend who was going over there to volunteer (I baked because I wasn't able to actually go and help out and still wanted to contribute), grab my newspapers, cook a side dish for our squadron picnic, run some other errands, head out to the picnic where we spent 3/4 of our day...and then deal with a very crabby over-tired Hayley and Cait's friend came back over and on and on and on...

SO long story short, I needed some quiet time and I got just that thanks to Dawn McVey's color challenge! Definitely not colors I would generally create with together, but I LOVE how they came together. Makes me so happy when that happens!

Anyway, here is the challenge ...and my card...

Not sure why it's kinda crooked looking in the photo...I promise it's not in real life! I tried a new thing with the ribbon on the card edge and I really like it. Adds just a bit of texture :-).

Hope you all had a great weekend!

What I'm working on...

2009-08-07T14:45:00.004-04:00

Just a peek at what I've been up to over this past week.

Found this gem on craigslist for $40. I talked the lady down to $20. And the obsession begins. I seriously can. not. stop. working on this table. I want it DONE so I can have it in my entry way as planned!Here it is after Day 1 of sanding...which was about 4 hours worth of sanding with an orbit sander. We bought a beautiful red mahogany stain for it and some great square brushed nickel knobs. I can not wait to have it finished. I'll be sure to post a picture of the finished product when it's complete, which hopefully will be some time next week. I have a few other things that are in the works now too, so stay tuned...

Life

2009-07-30T13:26:00.004-04:00

This summer has flown by. I can't even explain what a whirlwind life has been the past few months.

Been spending lots of quality time with these adorable little people...

Went on a camping trip to Myrtle Beach for a week.

Been spending a lot of time at the pool watching my youngest little peanut do this...

hard to believe that at the beginning of the summer she was scared to even get in the water and now she's jumping off the side.

I've had around 10 kids in my house most days. Took on a few extras for the summer with my daycare. It's been NUTS, but tons of fun. I will not know what to do with myself when they all go back to school and life goes back to "normal". Well yes I do. I'll blog more, scrap more, stamp more, sew more... you get the idea :-)

So that explains my long absence. Thank you to all of you who keep checking in. Sorry for not having more for you to look at! I will be back, I promise! :-)

For now, though, go check the Making Memories Blog. They are doing TONS of giveaways and CHA peeks! :-)

For Today...

2009-06-22T08:55:00.004-04:00

Saw this over on Ali Edwards' blog...thought I'd try this method of documentation.

Outside my window... There is a swimming pool waiting to be filled with fresh water. If only the sun would make an appearance.

I am thinking... That I need a bigger vehicle to transport all these kids to the park to run off some of this energy! Life with 5 kids 24/7 is definitely different than life with 2.

I am thankful for... good friends who help me take a break now and then.

From the kitchen... made eggs and sausage for breakfast-HUGE hit as usual.

I am wearing... a yellow tank and khakis with no shoes. My toenails are painted red, which makes me happy.

I am creating... some crayon rolls for my kids to take on our camping trip next month. And probably a few extras to give as gifts and/or sell.

I am going... to have to do some grocery shopping this evening. We are out of milk and running low on juice and chicken.

I am reading... nothing at the moment. I seriously have NO time to do it. I'm lucky that I get to blog hop these days.

I am hoping... that Will's class finishes WAY earlier than 4:30 every day this week.

I am hearing... the girls chatting while they color, and the other group of kids upstairs watching Cinderella.

Around the house... there are legos all over the playroom floor. There is a pile of laundry ready to be washed, another pile ready to be folded and put away. I have literally a million things to do.

One of my favorite things... is that Will finished my blanket yesterday and I love the soft coziness of curling up on the couch with it.

A few plans for the rest of the week... work, try to finish some sewing projects, clean, go to the pool, maybe visit the park, and possibly invite some girlfriends out for coffee or ice cream or something to get out and socialize a bit!

A picture to share... (hasn't been edited yet, but I wanted a recent one and like I said I haven't had much time for extra hobby type stuff here lately...)

Raspberry Suite Color Challenge 9

2009-06-17T13:01:00.002-04:00

Ok, so I missed the deadline again. Ugh... life is just too busy these days. But here is my card anyway...

Tipjunkie.com giveaways...

2009-06-15T09:43:00.002-04:00

Its Tipjunkie.com's birthday bash giveaway! Go to www.tipjunkie.com to enter!! I LOVE giveaway # 9. This site has some awesome ideas on it...it's one of my daily reads!

Quilting...

2009-06-08T07:06:00.003-04:00

I have been working on my very first ever quilt! I'm pretty excited. I have to say, this sewing stuff is super-addictive! I already have quite the fabric stash going. Here are a couple pictures of how its coming along. I actually have the quilt top almost finished, but still need to photograph it, so for now here is just a little peek!! :-) This is the layout of all the squares. It's just random. Nothing scientific at all about the placement of these.

I hope that things settle down a little this week so I can actually sit down and do some more creative work. So hopefully I'll be back soon with some new fun stuff!

Been doing some sewing...

2009-05-27T07:15:00.004-04:00

I am officially addicted to my sewing machine. Yep, I will readily admit it. And my poor husband has to put up with me being a half-presence in the evenings when I really get to sit and focus on what I'm doing :-). So I thought I'd do a quick share of what I've been up to... here are the latest sewing projects I've completed.

A new purse design...

A key chain
A checkbook cover

Off to a training on the base today and feeling a little under the weather, so not sure how much I'll get done today but I started my very first ever quilt last night (well...getting the fabric cut for it anyway!) I'll share my progress with it hopefully one day this week! Have a good day, all!!

**I had to transfer pictures of the new stuff and they came out teeny tiny, so when I get home tonight, I'll fix that! Sorry, but you get the general idea for now!

Raspberry Suite Color Challenge 7

2009-05-24T22:07:00.003-04:00

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!! Unfortunately our weekend (not to mention the forecast for the rest of the month) is pretty much all rain so no BBQs for us. We did have a fabulous big dinner tonight at Will's request with turkey and mashed potatoes. It was YUMMY. And then I made him some chocolate crinkle cookies-his fave and my first try turned out pretty good. Thank goodness!!

So anyway, on to the challenge...

Another fun one at Dawn's blog. I stepped out of my box on this one and did this shaped card...

I used all PTI supplies on this one. Spring Moss, Avocado, and Raspberry Fizz. Plus the yummy spring moss buttons (love 'em!!) and the new Star Prints stamp set which I can already tell is going to be a favorite with the background stamped in polka dot basics. I punched the stars out and popped them up on pop dots for a little dimension.
Fun to do something a little out of the ordinary. Now it's your turn. Go try out the challenge!!

Raspberry Suite Color Challenge 6

2009-05-17T16:33:00.005-04:00

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. Lots happening here in our neck of the woods. We are looking to start building a home with KB so we've been spending a lot of time at the model homes and looking at floorplans, etc. Plus my step-children arrive at the end of the month, so we are preparing house for them and getting some old stuff together for a garage sale. Not much time for blogging, unfortunately. But I have been creating (otherwise I'd go completely crazy).

Another fun challenge over at Dawn's blog. You can find it here.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this one. She has such fun challenges.

Here is my card for this one. I used PTI Berry Sorbet ink, cardstock, and satin ribbon, PTI Aquamist cardstock, and SU Soft Sky, Chocolate Chip, and Whisper White cardstock and ink. The stamp set is PTI's Friends Til The End.

Raspberry Suite Color Challenge 4

2009-05-04T18:49:00.003-04:00

A new challenge over at Dawn's blog. It's been a busy week around here with Will being gone again, so it took me a little while to get a card made. Even though I didn't finish it in time, I'm glad I was able to play! These were my wedding colors, so I was excited to play with them again! I used SU paper and inks--soft sky(retired) and chocolate chip and then a combination of SU and PTI stamps and of course the cute little butterfly punch from Martha Stewart.

I'm not sure why photos come out looking so flat on here...I'll have to inspect that. It looks better in real life, though! I think I will give this one to my mom for Mother's Day even though the sentiment is from a Father's Day set...

Thanks for looking and hope you are having a good week! I will be back tomorrow to share some projects I've been working on for Teacher Appreciation week this week!

Busy busy...

2009-04-29T14:46:00.003-04:00

Yes, I've been creating like a mad woman the past week or so, but haven't had much extra time for posting. I'm gearing up for some birthdays, Mother's day, and a few thank you gifts that I was procrastinating on!

Here is a quick share of a gift I made for my friend Kathy for bailing me out last week when I woke up late and my daughter missed her bus and then my car battery was dead & Will was out of town on a mission. It was just one of those days and she came and took Cait to school and then helped me get my car jump started. So I made her this as a thanks. Everything in the gift is handmade, the purse, the card, and the box! I was kind of excited about having it all be made by me. I hope she likes it!!

And here is the box...
Hope to be back later to share some more! :-)

When the cat's away...

2009-04-15T17:50:00.003-04:00

Hubby is gone on a 6 day mission so I've been trying to find things to do to busy myself around here. I did a 30 minute workout on the elliptical, then did some strength exercises, and then even managed 30 minutes on my wii fit :-). So after all that working out this morning, ( and some really healthy eating) I decided to play a bit this afternoon and I made a couple cards. One to send my Mom and the other for a friend who is having a birthday soon.

LOVE this color combo right now...and still diggin' that threading water punch (obviously!)

Happy Wednesday, everybody!

-E

Because I haven't shared any in a while...

2009-04-12T13:57:00.004-04:00

Here are a couple scrap layouts that I did this week since I haven't shared any in quite a while!

I was kind of excited to make my (gasp!) first ever boy page! This is my adorable step-son, Shawn. Every time you take a picture of him he says "CHEESE & CRACKERS!!" so you get this big cheesy grin like in the photo. I wanted to scrap it as soon as I got the pictures printed. One of these days I'll figure out how to scan my layouts in instead of trying to take pictures of them.

Caitlynn is growing up so fast. I remember her baby chubbiness and how everyone used to say she was such a gorgeous baby. She isn't a baby anymore...but she's still such a pretty girl.

So there you have it...two posts from me in one day! Hope everyone is having a blessed Easter Sunday!

Kristina Werner Color Challenge #49

2009-04-12T13:47:00.004-04:00

Had a much harder time with this one. I could do 4 of the colors at a time, but had a really hard time getting that 5th one in there. I think my cards still turned out okay, but this was much much more challenging for me than the previous ones I have participated in!!

I made 2 cards for this one, too. I was hoping the more I played with the colors, the more mojo I'd get with using them. At the very least I have an extra card to share, right?! So here are my cards...

For this card, I started with a 4.25x4.25 square card in whisper white. Then I added the red with one of the star backgrounds from Papertrey Ink's Background Basics: Stars set stamped in Fresh Snow (PTI) ink. Then I used some basic black to mat the main image which is made up of a SU! sentiment and more of the PTI stars. The photo corners are from a sizzix die. The large button is from PTI's vintage buttons.

This card uses Papertrey's Wishing You stamp set. The green polka dot paper is from Stampin' Up, the border punch is Martha Stewart. Again used Basic Black, Ruby Red, Tempting Turquoise, Kiwi Kiss, and Whisper White (all SU).

You can find the challenge here if you are interested in playing along!

Kristina Werner Color Challenge #48

2009-04-06T09:44:00.003-04:00

These color challenges have been keeping my mojo alive this week. It's spring break around here and we have my step-children here visiting for the week so it's always a little crazy with 5 kids running around! Thank goodness I have these super-inspirational challenges to keep my creative wheels turning and forcing me into my creative haven for some "me" time.

This one is from Kristina Werner.

This is a color combo that I am pretty comfortable with. I've used this one quite a bit on previous projects. BUT I did try to pull out some stamps I haven't played with in a while to do it.

All the supplies for this one are from Stampin' Up except for that large polka dot stamp...that one is from PTI, and it was a leftover piece that I went ahead and used up on this one. Kiwi kiss, chocolate chip, whisper white, and baja breeze. The baja flowers are popped up on dimensionals and topped off with some self-adhesive bling. Also used the threading water punch on this one. Really loving that punch here lately, can ya tell?

Anyway, this challenge can be found here, if you didn't know already!

Happy Monday!

Raspberry Suite Color Challenge 3

2009-04-05T20:22:00.005-04:00

Another FABULOUS challenge over at Dawn McVey's Blog this week...

This one was a little more out of my comfort zone. I do LOVE kraft paper (luckily my order from PTI arrived this week and I had just ordered more) and it looks fantastic with these colors. I am definitely loving it with the reds. Anyway, here is my card for the challenge.

All of the paper I used was from PTI...Kraft, Vanilla, Melon Berry, Sweet Blush, and Pure Poppy. The stamps are Papertrey as well, the Heartprints set and the buttons were another part of my order, the Vintage Buttons! LOVE them. So all in all a Papertrey card (except for the ribbon, which I got at AC Moore, and the embroidery thread) I also used my threading water punch from fiskars for some visual interest at the bottom.

You can find this challenge at Dawn's My Favorite Things blog.

Hope everyone had a great weekend!!

Raspberry Suite Color Challenge 2

2009-03-30T10:49:00.005-04:00

One of my absolute favorite cardmakers/designers is now hosting a color challenge on her blog! Dawn McVey is known for her cool color choices on her cards and now she's sharing some more inspiration through the challenge. And did I mention that her new Damask Designs set at Papertrey Ink is my absolute favorite stamp set right now??! Here is the challenge...

And because I loved the colors SO much, I made 2 cards to go with it. I LOVE how they turned out (if I do say so myself!)

I had a little fun with this one...I used the Damask Designs set to make the flowers. First I stamped the large solid dot from Polka Dot Basics to give me a guide and then I used one of the small damask stamps and went around the dot to form the flowers. They had kind of a pointy "star" type look when I was done, and while I liked that, It didn't look very flower-like, which is what I wanted. So I just rounded off the tips and then roughed up the edges all the way around with the edge of my scissors and topped of the flower with a button in the middle. I used the swiss dots cuttlebug embossing folder on the whisper white card base and then used the large outlined circle from the Polka Dot basics set to create that pattern on the chocolate chip strip and then punched it with my fiskars threading water punch. The sentiment is from the Damask Designs set as well.

This one was harder for me to incorporate ALL of the colors fromt he challenge because I really did like it with just the spring moss and the chocolate chip and white. BUT I made myself add a little teal. This one is a whisper white card base, with a background of Damask Designs stamped piece of Spring Moss cardstock (I used Spring Moss ink). Then I added a piece of chocolate chip stamped with the polka dot designs and then one of the large images from Damask Designs in Spring moss topped with a sentiment from Damask Designs. The two swirls in teal are from the Wedding day set and then I just used some adhesive backed rhinestones to finish it off. (they are all blue...the picture makes the middle one look a little weird) I don't know the manufacturer of those because I won them in a blog candy last year :-).

I REALLY enjoyed this challenge! You should go play too! You can find the challenge here at her blog, My Favorite Things

Have a good day, everybody!

More than a month...

2009-03-23T15:52:00.004-04:00

More than a month since my last post here on my little piece of blog-land. So sorry. But I am here. Alive and kicking! Things have been kind of busy. I have been churning out stuff to add to my website when we finally get it up and running. Studio E Designs will be chock full of crafty goodness when we get it started. For sneak peeks at what I've been up to, you can check out the page on Facebook. I already had one job of designing a custom logo and business card for my talented cousin-in-law Kristen and her up & coming photography business in the Indianapolis area (Captured By Kristen Photography). Hoping for many many more of those opportunities to come along!!

Other than that, Hayley turned 3 and we had a party for that here and then another party in Indiana when we were home this past week. It's just been crazy busy. Here are a few pics of the birthday girl for now...more to share soon!

And at the Indiana Party... Soaking up ever second of being serenaded! :-)

Simple Thank You

2009-02-17T20:03:00.004-05:00

A SUPER simple card I whipped up and then produced extras of for Thank You notes from my kids for their Valentine's presents from their grandparents.

American Crafts Romance pack of papers made this so easy! Then I just stamped the sentiment and the frame (both Stampin' Up), adhered it, and done! And I think they are pretty cute.

A little bling...

2009-02-10T12:33:00.004-05:00

Who doesn't love a little bling sometimes?? I actually really love this card for whatever reason. It was a sketch over at CPS last week and even though I forgot to upload my card on their site, I had a lot of fun making it.

When I first saw the sketch, I thought I was going to have a really hard time. But once I started stamping and getting things laid out it just sort of fell together, just like the sketch is supposed to do!

Card Recipe

Cardstock: Stampin' Up

Patterned Paper: Stampin' Up

Stamps: Papertrey Ink

Accessories: Rhinestones from AC Moore

Papertrey Ink Connect the Dots Challenge

2009-02-07T17:25:00.003-05:00

Another challenge over on Nichole's blog! Today the prize up for grabs is a whooooooole 'lotta ribbon!! And if you know me real well, you know I LOVE ribbon! :-) I have tons of it...it's all over my craft room, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed on this one! If you'd like a chance to win, head on over to her blog to get the details!

Here is my card for the challenge:

I used all PTI stamps again and SU cardstock & ink. Brads are by MM. Pretty basic as far as the supplies are concerned.

Wish me luck for the contest! ;-)

Over the Rainbow Challenge

2009-02-06T19:56:00.004-05:00

Another challenge day over at Nichole's blog in celebration of PTI's 2 year anniversary. Here is the card I created for the challenge. I used all PTI stamps, and Stampin Up cardstock and inks since I have all those on hand.

I really like this color combination. I'm sure I'll be using it again. The colors are so happy and fun. Don't forget to visit the blog for your chance to win a year's worth of PTI cardstock!!

In the bag

2009-02-05T11:10:00.003-05:00

Have you been over to Nichole's blog for Papertrey Ink? If not, you are missing out. They are doing a bunch of great giveaways in celebration of their 2 year anniversary! You can find the blog here.

Today's giveaway is an embroidered bag & a $100 gift certificate to PTI! In order to enter, you have to alter or embellish some kind of bag and then link it on their blog.

Here is my bag. It's just a white lunch bag that I dressed up with some American Crafts paper, PTI stamps, buttons, and ribbon. Easy peasy!

Just a quick one today

2009-02-03T10:01:00.003-05:00

This card literally came together in less than 10 minutes. I usually take the time to thread the buttons, but only had a couple minutes to work on this so I skipped that step. And while I enjoy the more finished look of the threaded buttons, I'm okay with this. My guess is that the intended recipient will not even notice :-)

Have a great day everybody!

First Layout in a while

2009-02-02T14:36:00.003-05:00

Finally a layout to share. I made this based on a page map. I love sketches for scrap layouts. It makes it so much easier to get a layout finished in no time at all!!

Supplies

Patterned Paper: My Mind's Eye

Cardstock: Paper Co., Stampin' Up

Accessories: Sizzix, Jolee's

Ric-Rac Trim: Making Memories

Stickers: Making Memories, Martha Stewart

whew, Slacker!!

2009-01-29T17:07:00.005-05:00

So I had every intention of posting EVERY day this week because I have cards made for every day this week and of course life just has gotten in the way. My hubby not being here really throws life out of whack until I can get back on course. Anyway, here is my card for today...

This card was the first one that I actually made when I got on this little hot streak, and I really like it. The colors just make me happy. I enjoy the dark pink with the orangy yellow and brown. Who doesn't love brown? :-)

I am actually pretty excited because I get to go to a LONG overdue Mom's night out tomorrow night and we're going to see New In Town. I can't wait!

card recipe

Cardstock: Stampin Up

Patterned Paper: Polka dots-SU, Sliced circles-American Crafts

Stamps: Papertrey Ink

Ink: Stampin' Up Purely Pomegranate

Font: You Are Loved

Felt Heart: Die cut with my sizzix primitive hearts die

Other: button, silver cording

Never knew love

2009-01-26T12:24:00.003-05:00

Here is the second card from my burst of creative craziness the last few days.

Card Recipe:

Paper: Stampin' Up

Die Cuts: Sizzix

Punches: Stampin' Up (scallop), EK Success ( lg. corner rounder)

Font: Georgia

Embossing Folder: Cuttlebug (Swiss Dots)

Other: Ric-rac trim, bling

In other news, Hayley has caught a cold from this crazy weather. Warm. Cold. Freezing. back to warm again. Grr...wish it would make up it's mind, but I'll be happy to see the return of 70 this week!

Will made it safely to OK last night. Then today they had an ice storm. SO thankful for the small blessing that the storm hit today instead of yesterday.

After a few days off...

2009-01-25T23:31:00.003-05:00

I had a creative explosion today! My husband left (again) for a training in Oklahoma. 7 more weeks on my own. I took a few days off to spend extra time with him before he had to leave because we will be apart so much this year that it seems such a waste to spend the days we have together doing anything other than just enjoying time with one another.

Anyway, now that I'm back in the creative mindset, I was able to really churn out some cards. I am starting to experiment with my style a little bit because I'm forcing myself to create with only my scrap paper--because I have a HUGE tub of it. I'm still using whatever embellishments I want, but I'm using die cuts as much as possible because that still uses up some of the smaller scraps!

I have a post ready for every day this week--gasp! I know...I never have that many in a week, so be prepared ;-).

Most of the cards I'm going to be working on are to stock up for when my hubby deploys in August. I'm going to try to send him 1 a day for the 4 months he's gone. I wanted to do it last year and I wasn't very prepared or organized. This time I'm doing the work well ahead of time!

Here is card #1...

Card Recipe

Patterned paper & Cardstock: Stampin Up

Flower: Making Memories

Brad: Making Memories

Tag: Sizzix

Chipboard: Target $ spot

Stamps: Papertrey Ink

Other: Ric-rac trim & bling

I LOVE my new sewing machine!!

2009-01-10T19:31:00.004-05:00

Ok, so these projects are far from professional, but they are the first "real" things I have done with my sewing machine...and I didn't even have patterns!!

I made this camera strap cover for my camera--

(The fabric is Amy Butler)

And this crayon holder for my purse or diaper bag for when we have to go out and the girls get restless. They love to color and this is sooo much cuter than my usual ziploc baggy of crayons! I used Amy Butler fabrics for this too and then it has a velcro closure. Like I said it's a little "wonky" but at least I can use it for it's intended purpose. Not too bad for a first try at it! (in my opinion anyway)

Here it is all rolled up.
Not too shabby, right? :-)

Hooray for having a full on craft day today!!

Stationary Set

2009-01-07T18:20:00.004-05:00

I saw something similar to this online and thought I could come up with a way to make this box on my own. It took me lots of trial and error as this is the first box I've made without instructions, but I figured it out and got it to look the way I wanted it! Then of course I just HAD to make some cards to match! :-)
I received the American Crafts paper for Christmas from my Mom. I just love the contrast of the bold colors against the white paper. I'm happy with how these turned out.

My other big surprise for Christmas was that Will got me a sewing machine! I've been talking about it for months that I wanted to take lessons and learn to sew. Well he got me a machine that came with a DVD showing how to use it. I haven't used the DVD and I still managed to make some little purses for the girls. I was so excited! So I'll have some sewing stuff hopefully to share soon too once I get the hang of it.

Project 365

2009-01-05T17:57:00.004-05:00

Happy New Year everyone! It's such an exciting time. To me, the coming of the new year means that we all have a clean slate and a fresh start. I love that. I am slowly recovering from the madness that was our holiday season and finally digging out from the mountain of housework that I had waiting for me after the craziness was over. It's coming along. School starts back tomorrow & Caitlynn could not be more excited...I'm waiting for the day when she starts whining that she's not ready to go back yet--I know it's coming.

Anyway, last year I participated in the 30 layouts in 30 days challenge and that was fun, but exhausting...so this year I wanted to do something like that but on a much simpler scale. SO, I decided to participate in the Project 365. You can read more about it on Becky Higgins blog or in the January issue of CK. I'm not using their kit, though, because frankly we just don't have the room in our budget right now to do that. Instead, I am creating my own digital version. Here is the first page...I started my 365 on Jan. 1.

I basically started with a blank 12x12 canvas in photoshop elements and created a template so that I can just sort of drag my photos to it. I'm still learning with photoshop and this project is great practice for figuring out how to do different things to make it look like I want it to. I'm thinking that at the end of the year I'll have this printed in one of the shutterfly books. I'm really excited!! The pages will all be formatted this way, but I will be flip flopping the elements around a bit so the larger spaces house the journaling and some smaller photos, etc. I'm trying really hard to just let it stay simple like this...I have a really big urge to embellish more. We'll see what happens ;-)

So much more than my Grandpa

2008-12-15T09:45:00.002-05:00

I will not be posting much over the next week or so. My grandfather passed away yesterday morning and my daughters and I will be flying to Chicago for the funeral.

Losing my grandpa, or "Pa" as we called him, is a devastating blow. We lived with my grandparents for several years when I was little after my parents divorced. My grandpa became like my dad. He's been sick for several years, but he just kept hanging on. So as the years went on, we just thought he'd keep going and going. Thankfully, I was able to see him over Thanksgiving and he was in good spirits, joking and laughing and telling stories. I'm so glad that I will have those final memories of him, that he was able to finally meet Hayley and see Will and I together. And the last thing that I said to him was that I loved him, and that brings me more peace than I can say. He passed away in his sleep, which was how he wanted to go and I know that he is in a place where he can sing again, where he can walk and run and do all the things he loved.

I have been creating though and will have more to share when we get back. Take care everyone!

Some mojo

2008-12-04T11:59:00.003-05:00

I have been in a craft funk lately. No real motivation to go back to my studio and create. Well, in an attempt to get out of it, I decided to participate in the KWERNERDESIGN.COM color inspiration challenge for this week. Her blog is one I check all the time, but this is the first time I've actually made a card for the challenge :-). It's laziness because her challenges are always awesome color combos!

This weeks challenge was:

And a not so great picture of my submission because I'm rushing...

I am in a hurry with this stuff today because I have to clean my studio and finish organizing Cait's room to start making room for the new stuff coming. Christmas is creeping up quickly!! Have a great day everyone. Hopefully my mojo is officially jumpstarted so I can have more craftiness to share later!! :-)

Feelings of Gratitude

2008-11-19T13:10:00.002-05:00

As Thanksgiving rapidly approaches, I am thinking about all of the things in my life that I am thankful for. This year I am giving thanks for a wide range of people, places, and things.

My family: I am so incredibly thankful for my amazing husband. He works so hard and sacrifices so much with his work. It's an entirely different list to name everything about him that I love and am grateful for, so I'll save that for later. But having him in my life makes every day brighter. And on that note, my children...both my biological children and my step-children light up my life and bring so much joy. They are such different people, each with his/her own personality quirks, strengths, and weaknesses. Seeing them interact with one another and watching them grow is such a blessing.

Friends: Both new friends and old friends that I've had for decades. My friendships nourish my soul and enrich my live. The love and support of my friends means the world to me and I thank God for them every single day.

Our home: By home I mean both the structure in which we live and also our nation. Our house is warm, and inviting. I have a whole room for a studio. My children have a yard to run and play in. As the economy struggles and our country feels the effects I am grateful to be an American because it is in these hard times that we reach out to one another and help each other through so that we can stand united and rise up again. The food drives, the Christmas giving trees. All reminders of things to be grateful for.

The Military: Being a military wife is both a blessing and a struggle. My husband has to be gone quite a bit for his job. Between trainings and deployments and multiple trips through out the rest of the year for days and/or weeks at a time, it adds up to a lot of time away from home. However, he is spending that time away doing a job that he loves and also protecting our country. The military provides a stable work environment and a lot of wonderful benefits that make life easier for us. Free healthcare, tax-free shopping, stability...

Starbucks: Nothing brightens a drab day than a caramel machiato with extra caramel and whipped cream and some good conversation with a friend. Time to unwind, revitalize, and be someone other than Mommy for even 20 minutes. A small blessing, but still a blessing.

My hobbies: They keep me sane. 'nuff said :-)

The fall foliage: HELLO Gorgeous! Walking outside and seeing all of the beautiful colors is an instant mood enhancer. I love it!

The drop in gas prices: My bank account is so thankful for the break :-)

Ok...I could literally go on all day here because my journal entry for this was pages and pages long. So just a sampling.

Happy Wednesday!

Some Enabling

2008-11-17T11:51:00.005-05:00

I've been doing some random searching online (LOVE the internet) for random things. Home decor. New scrap supplies, etc. I thought I would share a few favorites for some shameless enabling!

First, I totally love this new Paperie line from Making Memories. SO fabulous. Here is a peek at one of the paper pads.And then there are these vinyl home decor products from Once Upon a Design. Jennifer McGuire has some posted on her blog (one of my faves), which led me to the designers site and there are so many designs to choose from. I found one to hang in our entry way, one for my studio, and a few that I could use on some gifts. They come in a variety of sizes all for very reasonable prices. You can find them here.

I took this photo straight off their site to just show what they look like. Nope, this is not my scrap space, though it looks beautiful in the pictures! (. (Stampin' Up offers something similar in different designs and they are also wonderful.) You can see more photos of them at Jennifer McGuire's blog here. Her studio is AMAZING! Love all of the storage ideas and little touches.

And finally, I LOVE all of the holiday gifts over at Pottery Barn Teen. Especially these adorable hair dryers...a little pricey for me to buy them just for cuteness when I already have a perfectly good (and kind of expensive) hair dryer already. But they are definitely cute!

And the Dottie Watch, which I may just have to pick up for myself at some point...or add to my Christmas wishlist.
That's all of my enabling for the day...Happy Monday, everybody!

November Gathering

2008-11-16T16:54:00.004-05:00

The November Gathering of the Carolina Girls mini-group swap was today and it was my turn to be the hostess. We had a nice time chatting and exchanging ideas and of course eating! Here is the project that I planned for everyone to make.

It was a 4x4 inch pizza box. We used the Always and Upsy Daisy stamp sets for this project. It's super simple to make these, and lots of fun. They are a bit addictive. There are tutorials for this on Splitcoast, I think, but basically what you do is

Trim a piece of cardstock to 6x11. Then use your Scor-Pal and score the long edge at 1, 5,6, and 10 in. Then turn it to the short side and score it at 1 and 5.

Then you turn it back so that you're on the long edges and cut the score marks in to the 1 in. score mark to make flaps. Then you just fold all your score lines, put some adhesive on the flaps and stick it together and you have a box. Then you decorate it however you want to. And we made these 3x3 cards to go inside. Very easy.

Trying times as a Mommy...

2008-11-13T11:09:00.004-05:00

I have been participating in the stories in hand class over at JessicaSprague.com . Just reading through the prompts for the class brought back so many memories. It's been a little overwhelming. So many stories left untold. So I feel like I'm catching up on a lot of recording. But before I forget my exact emotions for this week, I wanted to record this story.

Yesterday started out like any other day. I got up at 6 am and woke Caitlynn to get her ready for school. I was a little surprised to not find Hayley asleep on the couch because it has become her ritual over the last couple of weeks to wander from her bed at night to curl up with her blankie on the couch and go back to sleep. So I woke Caitlynn and told her to be extra quiet because Hayley was magically still asleep in her own bed. It didn't last, though, and Hayley was up within minutes of me waking Cait, despite the fact that Caitlynn was tiptoeing around and was literally using SWAT team stealth to move around the house in her morning routine. So I made breakfast and on with the daily tasks of getting Cait off to the bus stop and getting Hayley and i up and dressed for the day. Hayley fed-check. Hayley dressed-check. Hayley's hair combed and pulled back out of her face-check. Cold medicine administered-check. So, my turn to get ready. I shower at night, so I just had to straighten and fix my hair and get dressed. This took me approximately 8 minutes. I noticed that it was extraordinarily quiet in the living room where I had left Hayley to watch a movie while I got dressed. When I didn't find her on the couch, I immediately went to the office (the one room in the house that is completely off limits to the kids) and found Hayley in the midst of dumping containers full of glitter all over the floor and my office chair. This is just a glimpse of the catastrophe that was my office/studio. Glitter literally everywhere that made it impossible to scoop up and salvage. So I sternly remove Hayley from the office and put her on the couch so I can clean up the mess. It takes me about 10 minutes to get everything vacuumed and for the most part glitter free. I go back into the living room to have a chat with Hayley about the incident and she is scribbling with a marker on the windows and back of our old couch in the sunroom. Mess #2. This time I put her in time out and started cleaning up that mess. After serving her obligatory 2 minutes of time out. She got up and skipped in her merry sing-song way down the hall and into her bedroom. Okay great, nothing she can tear up in there. SO I scrub the windows and sill to get the marker off. Thankfully it came out. I finish that task and here comes Hayley holding her hands out saying "it's icky! I poop!" She is pull-up-less (naked from the waist down) and has poop on her hands. My guess is that she went into her room so she could have some private time to potty and then decided to try and change herself instead of telling me like she usually does. Her pull up is on the bathroom floor and there is a bit of a mess where she tried to clean herself. Mess #3. I clean that one. And about this time Will gets home from being at work. So all of this happens before 11 am. What a morning!

Mommy is completely worn out, broken down, and downright overwhelmed. I am feeling bad for being mad at Hayley. Feeling like a bad mommy for having this child who can cause so much destruction in just a matter of minutes. And feeling like a failure for having an overall sense of defeat before noon. My day did not improve much from that point either. I know someday I will look back at the pictures of our glitter-covered cat, Jack, who will probably still be sparkling 2 weeks from now, and laugh like a crazy person. But for now I am searching my memories trying to think of a time that I could possibly have caused my Mom or Grandma (who watched us while Mom worked when I was Hayley's age) similar grief so that in some way I would deserve the experience of having to clean it all up. The what goes around comes around theory. Nope. Can't think of any. I had my fair share of naughtiness I know, but I don't recall anything like this.

A day for the record book of my life. And a story I look forward to telling Hayley when she has her own child who makes a mess of similar or (with hope) greater magnitude than this one! Does that make me a bad person? Ha...I hope not. But I think this whole thing would have been slightly hilarious had it happened to someone else and NOT to me :-).

Election 2008

2008-11-05T09:54:00.002-05:00

I am a little disappointed in the way that my county handled the election process. First we were separated by precinct into two lines. Ashley River (who's line by the way was EMPTY when I arrived) and Coosaw (a line of about 1000 people). I stood in line for 4 HOURS. The first hour of that was spent outside where it was chilly and rainy. We then get inside and wind around inside the building in line and a man randomly walked around calling people who's last names began with N-Z to the front of the line. Great for them, HORRIBLE for those of us who's names fall ahead of that and had been in line probably hours before them. Then when you finally get to the room where the booths were, the two lines of Ashley River and Coosaw combined, so it didn't actually matter at all which line you were in to begin with. So I stood in that forever long line for absolutely no reason because I could've gotten in the super short Ashley River line and been done way sooner. Did I mention that I had my kids with me during this whole ordeal??! They were troopers. Very very well behaved under the circumstances (Hayley had 3 shots that morning, and Cait had been at a sleepover--both were tired and a bit cranky). We arrived at the school, my assigned voting location, at 3:30 pm. Didn't get back home until 7:45 pm. I was not a happy camper.
Now I'm not usually one to complain much about such things, but that was ridiculous. So thank you for allowing me to vent my frustration.
Onto the actual election...I do not wish to offend anyone with comments made here. I think the day after the election is always the worst because no matter who wins, people are disappointed. My vote went to Obama, though my state went to McCain. While I do not agree 100% with Obama's ideals and beliefs, I agree with him on much more than I do with McCain. I am happy with the outcome, I am ready for our country to see some changes for the better to improve our present and solidify our future. And a new day has come. We will move forward. I hope that those who gave their support to McCain can do as he did and concede with dignity and grace. We are all Americans and divided we will fall no matter who is leading us.

"In this election- in this moment-

let us reach for what we know is possible.

A nation healed.

A world repaired.

An America that believes again."

--Barack Obama

I for one am thankful that we live in a country that allows us the freedoms and blessings that surround us every day. That we have the right to choose our leaders and have our voices be heard. God Bless America!!!! I believe.

Happy November 1

2008-11-01T14:54:00.003-04:00

I cannot believe that it's November 1st already. This year has flown by, most likely because so much has happened this year. And the older I get, the quicker it all goes.

I am pretty excited for this week, though. I am signed up to join in on the fun for Jessica Sprague's new class. If you haven't seen it and want more info, check it out on her blog, here. I'm really looking forward to it. I also have been busy getting some product together to start on a December Daily album like this one I saw on Ali Edwards blog, here. I am going out on a little bit of a limb and designing some of my own digi embellies for this project. (I think I am getting a little more confident in my photoshop abilities.) And I'm excited to do my first actual hybrid album.

We had a fabulous Halloween, the girls looked ADORABLE!

Here is Hayley as Tinkerbell

And Caitlynn as Jasmine

Hayley did great with trick-or-treating until we ran across a group of boys that had some scary masks on and then she was much more cautious about walking up to the doors to trick or treat. Will or I had to take her up each time after the "monster scare". Poor baby. But she survived and ended up with tons of candy for putting on a brave face and getting through it. We managed to avoid the scary boys the rest of the night until of course we were at the house right across the street from ours on our way home and there they were again. Will wasn't quick enough about scooping her up and shielding the scary boys from view. So a little more drama right before we finished up for the night. All in all it was a great Halloween!

Updates

2008-10-29T21:08:00.004-04:00

I have decided that I am going to blog even when I don't have anything crafty to share. I thought about starting a new one just to post the daily happenings of my family, but I think it's all part of the same larger picture. My family and the memories and the day to day details of our life is the reason that I create in the first place. So, you will more than likely be hearing much more from me in the days ahead.

Caitlynn had a half day from school today so we went to Wannamaker Park with some friends for some afternoon fun in the sun. It was the perfect fall day--cool, crisp, sunny. The kids had a blast playing at the park and making some new friends.

It was report card day for Caitlynn. She had a GREAT report card this time. She earned all A's and 1 B in Social Studies. The only negatives on her report were that she is very "distractable" so sometimes she doesn't seem to be paying attention. My little social butterfly. So to reward her for her excellent report card, I'm planning on taking her to see High School Musical 3. She has definitely earned a little bit of a treat--I am so proud of her.

Some Halloween Goodness...

2008-10-25T17:54:00.005-04:00

I have not had a whole lot of time to blog lately. Will has been gone for about 24 days over the last month, which has left me lots of house/kid stuff to do. I even had to miss my Carolina Girls get together because of one of his trips. I was not a happy girl. BUT, he's home now and things are starting to slow down a bit so here I am.

We were blessed with a no school day this past Friday and of course it had to be pouring down rain the entire day, so the girls and I did some Halloween cookie baking for some rainy day fun. We had a blast. Check out some of our creations...

And we also have a new addition to our family. This is Shelby. She is a rescue dog...someone found her and her sister in the parking lot of a preschool and listed them on craigslist. If someone didn't take them before the end of the day, they were going to the pound...SO, Will sent me to go check her out and I cannot stand to see puppies or any animals in those little cages...the SPCA vet came out and looked at the puppies and determined a breed for me. She said that Shelby is a Ridgeback, and after looking up the breed online, I think she was dead on with her assessment. So far she is doing okay, but I think it's going to take her some time to adjust to being in a loving family. She is still very wary of us, but is awesome with the kids. She gives lots and lots of kisses.

Looking forward to some pumpkin carving tonight!!

As promised...

2008-10-01T20:19:00.002-04:00

Back to show a quick project. I still have a few more to share that I haven't photographed yet because I was too busy hangin out with my hubby after he got home. It felt like he was gone for a month so we did a lot of talking and lounging and hanging out with the kids today.

So here it is, a simple gift bag and tag that I made as part of some prep work for a teacher gift. (sorry for the bad photo...I was in a hurry!) Of course there is more to share when I get a minute! I have a job interview tomorrow, so wish me luck!!

Thanks...

2008-09-30T13:35:00.001-04:00

Thank you for your patience...I know I said tomorrow on my last post and it's been a few days. My hubby gets home today from being gone for the past 9 days so it's been a little hectic. I promise I'll have the post I promised up tomorrow with all my other fun projects I've been working on!! Hope everyone is having a good week!

Lots of fun stuff to share...

2008-09-25T16:10:00.003-04:00

Hi Everyone! I have been creating a lot this week to keep me busy. My hubby is on a ten day trip to Germany and Iraq so this keeps my mind focused on other things! I am having a workshop at my house on Saturday and I plan to show these items at the workshop just as little creativity boosters for how to use the stamps other than just on cards.

I actually saw a scrapbook page like this on the SU demo website, and thought I would try it. I don't usually scrap 6x6 so I enjoyed the little change in pace.
I made this little clipboard using some old chipboard that I layered and glued together for sturdiness, covered that with some of the Bella Rose dp, and then stamped some lined paper. This is actually going to be part of a teacher gift. Something simple, but I think it turned out cute.

And last but not least, a paper bag album. I have been wanting to try this for a while now, and finally just decided to take the plunge and do it. Much easier than I thought! :-) So a little mini-book to celebrate the wedding.

I will even have a few more things to share tomorrow! ;-) So stay tuned. This is just the beginning of what I've gotten done this week. Maybe it'll make up a little bit for my MIA status on the blog. I plan to get back to posting daily, but like most people I'm searching for that mysterious and ever elusive balance in my life. Time for me, time for my kids, time for the things I am passionate about.

I usually do some blog-hopping during Hayley's naptime and I've noticed that a lot of people are talking about things that inspire or enrich their lives and how to readjust so that those things are given more importance. I have given a lot of thought about what I am passionate about and how to re-center my life around those things. At first I thought, oh well my passion- it's my kids. My kids are my reason for living. But really, that's just kind of a flippant sort

of off the cuff type answer, not too deep. Anyone with children probably would say that same thing and honestly, my children aren't the only defining part of my life. So I thought a little harder and came up with a list of things that I am passionate about

1. my kids--they are pieces of me, beautiful rays of sunshine on my days. I do so much of what I do to benefit them in some way shape or form.

2. my husband--he inspires me to be better; to laugh, to cry, to accept me for me. I love him for that and I am passionate about working on our marriage, building on our future.

3. photography. always learning. always trying new things.

4. travel. I want to go everywhere, see everything.

5. faith. I admit I don't go to church every Sunday, that I don't read the bible as much as I should. But I pray constantly. I believe. I have faith and I leave my life in the Lord's hands. This journey that I take every day--the struggles, the successes. I have been blessed. I want to feed my soul with spirituality and faith.

6. knowledge. Just in general. I read. I explore. I research new things. I try new activities. My interests are so far spread and there are so many. I live to learn.

And that's just a sample of my list...the tip of the iceberg if you will. But that simple exercise, thinking about who I am and where I'm going, what I love. It was a cleansing thing for me. And I'm thankful for other bloggers out there that really made me sit and question myself and I am taking it all in and making plans to help get things back on track.

For those of you still reading, thanks for taking the time to read my rambles! :-) Hope you are all having a good week. More to share tomorrow!

Finally

2008-09-15T16:47:00.003-04:00

able to get some cards made this past weekend. And by some, I mean A LOT. But most were all of the same card. I belong to a monthly swap group (love my Carolina girls!) and we meet next Sunday and the theme is embossing, which believe it or not was something i had not yet attempted. I ordered a heat tool last week because I felt like trying something new, but ended up having to borrow one (thanks, Cindy!) to get my cards done for the swap. SO, I had to make cards for the swap and also I am a bit behind on my SCS RAK Welcome cards to the lovely ladies who have been recently accepted because of all my wedding craziness. So I made extras of my swap cards to send them because, well...it was convenient and the assembly line style of making swap cards just worked to get me all caught up for my welcome RAKs.

Phew, that was a mouth full of words for something really simple. I made 20 of this one card...

using my new Pocket Silhouettes stamp set ( LOVE!) and I also used a stamp from the Baroque Motifs set. The new Kiwi kiss paper and ink and clear embossing powder. The main image is embossed. The scallop circle is cut with my nestibilities dies, but the scallop border is from the new SU scallop punch. It is seriously a must have. I love this thing!!

Then for the other card, I was just playing one day during nap time and came up with this one just for giggles, also playing with some new stuff that I have accumulated since my last free crafty time :-). They are actually kind of similar...I'm really enjoying the color combo with the blues, browns, and greens...those earth tones are just speaking to me lately so they are always the ones I reach for first when I go to create right now. I do have a perfectly gorgeous pack of the new Bella Rose patterned paper and Pink Pirouette cardstock that I haven't even opened yet...possibly a wedding layout to come soon with those because I love love LOVE the patterned paper. I want like a gazillion sheets of every single pattern in that pack. All of the new SU paper is just scrumptious ( fun word, had to use it).

So there you have it. My first contribution to the world of craftiness in more than a month (wow!). Happy Monday, everybody!!

A lot has happened...

2008-09-10T09:17:00.006-04:00

since my last blog post. I am now officially a married woman! WOOHOO! Here are a few pictures from our absolutely beautiful wedding. We couldn't have asked for a better day, so thanks to everyone who prayed that Hanna would move out of here before Saturday!!

The beach was incredible. Completely empty except for us. It was a little windy, but that helped to keep us cool so no complaints at all. The flowers were beautiful. We had dinner at Miyabi in West Ashley. Wonderful as always. Then we did the tourist thing with my family on Sunday. It was an amazing weekend. The best ever.

As if that weren't enough, we had another milestone this week as well. Caitlynn started riding a two-wheeler without training wheels. She put up quite a fight the first day, but by the end of the day was able to ride to the end of the block and back without falling. It was actually really funny to hear the excuses that she gave to not get back on the bike after her first (extremely minor) fall. "I'll go to bed, Mom!" "I'll go clean my room??" "I just don't feel like riding right now!" It really reminded me of when I learned. I remember I ran into a tree and decided that was it for me. My grandma spanked my bottom and made me get on that bike. We had to use similar tactics with Cait. God Bless my grandmother for teaching me to ride my bike. Not an easy task.!! Then we went out for lesson #2 yesterday and she can now take off and stop on her own as well. We were up and down the road for hours and she cried when it was time to come in. Here is a photo of her new accomplishment!

And one of her celebratory bike ride with Will at the end of the day. He has so much patience with her. I am so thankful, because I have zero tolerance for whining and quitting. He did a fabulous job teaching little miss to ride her bike like a pro!

And now I am actually off to try to accomplish somethign crafty. Should have more to share soon!!

Hurricane Hanna

2008-09-02T08:16:00.003-04:00

Well here we are 4 days away from the wedding and hurricane Hanna is being forecasted to hit us late Friday night... what is it about natural disasters and my wedding day?

I know it will still be beautiful and that it will all be fine no matter what the weather, no matter what the location but I still wish we could have things go as planned. I know, I know it never happens that way...just darn my rotten luck with these types of things.

__ _

I had my wedding hair practice appointment last Friday. Here is the result of that...I love the back. I am still debating about the front view, though I think that the weird camera angle and the fact that I was having a horribly un-photogenic day has a lot to do with it.

For the actual day, it will also have some individual pearls pinned into the curls in the back to give it some more detail and polish.

__ _

The move is almost complete. We spent most of Labor Day at the old house finishing up some painting and cleaning so we can have the inspection with the management company and hopefully get our full deposit back. The new house is coming along. We have most of the boxes that are inside the house unpacked and put away. The garage, however, is a completely different story. It is jam-packed with boxes and miscellaneous stuff that has not been brought in to be sorted out and put away. I hate moving. This is our third move in less than 2 years...we really need to get out of that habit. But now that we found a place we really like that has all of the features we have been looking for, maybe we'll stay for a while.

__ _

Ok, enough rambling...time to get back to the task at hand...UNPACKING!

Lots going on

2008-08-25T07:05:00.003-04:00

Caitlynn started 2nd grade last week. We went to meet the teacher night on Tuesday night and she met Mrs. Coury and also got to see who was in her class. She had a few friends from her class last year, so she was happy about that. Her actual first day was Thursday. She's been having a blast picking out her clothes and stuff for school and FINALLY being able to wear the precious but up-to-now off limits "School clothes". Here are a few pics of her from the events last week...

We've also been extremely busy with moving into the new house. We will be all moved in by the end of this week and are very excited about getting settled over there. We spent a good part of the morning there yesterday putting some things away and starting to get more organized. I'll have pictures of that to share soon. And hopefully I'll have some crafty things to share sometime in the very near future as well!

The wedding is coming up in just under 2 weeks...time is flying! Definitely looking forward to the day and all that it brings with it, and I'm starting to get that anxious excited feeling in my stomach about it.

A little blog makeover

2008-08-20T14:01:00.002-04:00

So I was getting a little restless with my blog header, so I changed it up a little. My studio is in boxes at the moment getting ready to be moved over to the new house, so I am not able to do any creating until things get all set up over there. But you see where my priorities are because my studio is the first room boxed up and ready for the move :-). Naturally that's because it will be the first room to be unpacked and functional...or well, first after my kids are all situated. Really, the whole house needs to be set up, functional AND pretty because our wedding is in just 16 days and the house is our back up location in case of rain and with this tropical storm/hurricane headed in our general direction, I'm starting to wonder if the beaches are going to be in "wedding" condition. Just my luck, right? Oh well, it'll work out okay.

No time for blogging these days...

2008-08-12T09:12:00.002-04:00

This summer has been absolute madness. I've said it over and over and over again, but it just keeps going and going. Just in August alone, we've been to Indiana for 4 days, came back home and decided that we're going to move, found the house and did the paperwork...then found out we got the house, so now we're in the midst of getting a move together to be completely out of our current house by Sept. 1 and actually hopefully into the new house before school starts on Aug 21!! And did I mention our wedding is one week after that Sept. 1 cut off date?! AHHH. We are major over achievers with this. So I am just a touch overloaded right now. Hopefully things will start to slow down after that so I can finally get some {crafty}stuff done! Thanks to those that are still reading despite all the absences!

Acrylic Album

2008-07-21T11:17:00.004-04:00

I was given this assignment FOREVER ago at the Pink House. And well, time just completely got away from me and I didn't get around to doing it until last night. In my defense, I did tell them that it would probably take me awhile to get it done, but I never imagined it'd be this overdue. The craziness this summer has definitely taken it's toll on my crafty time! I am proud to say, though, that I started this last night and finished it this morning and I'm completely thrilled with how it turned out. My first acrylic album!! YAY!

Recipe:

Clear Scraps acrylic album

Doodlebug Designs Hopscotch alpha stickers

Bazzill buttons

Daisy Bucket Designs Patterned Paper

Zip Dry Adhesive

Stazon Ink

Some digital practice

2008-07-15T22:35:00.003-04:00

I had a kind of stressful day today. You know...one of those days where the kids don't listen, everyone is cranky and whining and you have a list a mile long of things that you needed to accomplish that day?? Yeah that was my day today. My kids were INSANELY cranky today and forgot their "listening ears" on their pillows this morning, I think. It was just really one of those days. Enough said on that. Anyway, Will is busy studying for his promotion test that he takes tomorrow and has been basically buried in his books for the last few days so I've been kind of flying solo again with all the housework and kid duties and all of that. Needless to say, I really needed some crafty time tonight to unwind from my crazy day and to just sink myself into something that makes me feel good.

That being said...

I spent somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 hours playing with Photoshop Elements 6.0 today. I am determined to get familiar with this program and all the cool things I know it can do. God bless Jessica Sprague and her blog and website for the amazing tutorials and freebies and all sorts of wonderful digi-goodness. After lots of trial and error, I finally came up with this page...

I have very limited digital supplies, and am a complete novice with the program...so yes, I might've used a different combination of papers if I had done this the "regular" way, and things might have been laid out just a touch differently, but I am pretty happy with how this came out. If you have any interest in going digital/hybrid, you must check out Jessica Sprague's blog. (there is a link to her in yesterday's post!).

I'll have a few cards to share tomorrow--I got some new goodies in the mail today!

Wild Pomegranates True Friend

2008-07-14T12:20:00.003-04:00

I made this card today for another RAK to send out for the SCS Random Acts of Kindness Group. I still need to make 2 more...hopefully I'll have some more creative play time later this afternoon, but for now I'm happy to have gotten this one done! I want to use up some of the Spring/Summer In Colors as the new ones come into play next month. I've put in my first order for some new stuff--I ordered the new scallop border punch, and a couple new in-colors paper and ink pads. Now if I could just find some customers to share it all with, haha. Oh well, I'm feeding my own stamping addiction.

Card Recipe:

Cardstock: Stampin' Up! Chocolate Chip, Whisper White, Purely Pomegranate, and Wild Wasabi

Stamps: Stampin' Up! Sanded Background Stamp, True Friend

Ink: Stampin' Up! Chocolate Chip, Purely Pomegranate, and Wild Wasabi

Ribbon: American Crafts

Photo ShaZAM!

2008-07-13T19:50:00.003-04:00

I am a Photoshop newbie. I have had this program for about 2 weeks now thanks to my sister who insisted that it's impossible to navigate and figure out. So she gave it to me to figure out so I can teach her how to use it. :-)

I am slowly learning a few things with it thanks to some AWESOME tutorials on Jessica Sprague's page. If you are trying to work with this program, check her out, she's incredible! Her site can be found here.

I was playing around today with her lastest Photoshop Friday topic, Photo ShaZAM. Here is the result of my tinkering today...before and after

Something scrappy...

2008-07-12T17:08:00.002-04:00

It's a sad day in our house today. Will's kids went home for the final time for the summer. They won't be back at our house until probably Spring break next year. It is VERY quiet. Too quiet. If you've ever been in a house with kids for an extended period of time (long enough to get used to the messes and the noise) you'll understand what I mean. So having his 3 gone is a drastic change. I've been cleaning house and trying to restore some order to our home after their visit and trying to take my mind off of how much I miss them already. I'm looking forward to seeing them again in a couple weeks, but this time it'll be in Indiana.

In other news, I am happy to say that I ordered the supplies for our wedding invites and favors. I got some really great stamp sets from Papertrey Inc. I know, right? I'm supposed to be a demo for SU and I chose PTI stamps over SU, but their wedding selection was a lot more diverse. I did order the cardstock and stamp pads from SU, though, as I am more familiar with those colors. We've decided on Soft Sky and Chocolate Chip. As I start receiving the shipments and get to work on the invites, I'll post some peeks... thankfully we're having a very small wedding so I can do it all by hand!

I also managed to get some layouts done during the craziness this week as well. So here they are...

Sorry for the wait...

2008-07-08T11:31:00.003-04:00

Here is a picture of my BEAUTIFUL ring. I love it. I took one look at it and started crying. And Will gets all the credit because he picked it out entirely by himself :-) I'm hoping to get some better pics later with Will's hand in it too, but I've had several people ask to see it, so this is the quick peak!

More later!! Love you all!!

I'm engaged!!

2008-07-06T14:46:00.002-04:00

Just had to share my happy news...Will officially proposed last night. We've been planning for a few months now, but now I have the ring on my finger! I promise to post some pics and more details later!! LOTS to do! :-) Hope everyone has had a great weekend!!

Big Post...Playing catch up...

2008-07-02T10:55:00.004-04:00

As usual, I'm behind with things I need to be doing with how crazy life is this summer. I finally had a chance this morning to get all of my welcome cards done for the SCS RAK group. Thankfully I was only behind by two people, because I was assigned two more yesterday. I'm feeling accomplished to have gotten all of them done and to have four different cards to share. Usually when I get behind, I just mass produce one design. Today I decided to take my time and play a little more since I haven't had many opportunities recently.

In other news...my sister finally made it back home to Indiana late last night. It was so great to visit with her and spend time with my niece and nephew. I've missed them all so much since I moved out here. I love love LOVE being here in SC, but being away from family is hard sometimes, so I am grateful that they were able to come spend a week with me here.

And my wonderful sister took a complete family photo for us! Here is the result of that!

Family visits

2008-06-30T09:50:00.003-04:00

There are ten people in my house right now. Yes...ten. My sister and her two kids were here all week and were set to fly out last night and their flights were cancelled. SO, she is staying on with us til Tuesday. I'm happy for the extended visit, though I'm sure she's cursing the Atlanta airport since she's stuck in my house with 7 children! :-)

We've had a busy few days. We spent ALL DAY Friday at the IOP beach. We packed a picnic lunch, ate there, and then spent hours on the beach. Saturday we hit the Tanger Outlets for some bargain shopping (got a BOATLOAD of school clothes for Cait and only spent $21--LOVE that!), went to Cupcake in Mt. Pleasant (so yummy), and then went to Wannamaker Park to let the kids play in "The Sprinkler". They loved it. Even Hayley. I about cried when she ran right in there to play with the other kids. She's usually terrified of all things unfamiliar, so it was a big deal. She actually had a big day. We've been working slowly on potty training and she told me twice that she had to go yesterday and went both times! I'm so proud of her!! Anyway, so after the park, Will got home with his three kids who are back to join us for their second visit of the summer. We ordered pizza and then the kiddos went to bed. Then Sunday, we got up and went right to the beach (Folly this time) for some seashell hunting and a morning swim. We even saw a dolphin! Very exciting.

So that's been the last part of this week in a nutshell. Here are some favorite photos.

And a few more...

Finally a page

2008-06-25T17:32:00.002-04:00

Wow...I have to just catch my breath from this past month. It's been craziness. My poor sister has been here cooped up in my house with me because I am SO worn out from having Will's kids here, and then the traveling, and just no rest for the weary to be found around here. Luckily my sister and I were able to get some scrappin time in the other night and I completed this page, otherwise I wouldn't have anything crafty to share yet again! How disappointing that would be! We are planning on doing some more scrappin another night this week, so hopefully that will be a productive crop as well! I need to get some cards done and I am determined to do that this week! :-)

Anyway, here is the page...the photos are from a trip to Libby Lu while we were in Indiana. The girls had a blast and looked so so cute! Sorry for the bad photo of the page...again, my laziness and lack of attention span to get a great shot! :) I'm just happy to be able to share something!

Home again

2008-06-23T15:51:00.002-04:00

Phew...we are FINALLY home again! And on round 2 of visitors for the summer. My sister Stacey and her two kids, Kylie and Logan, are here to visit for the week. More craziness...and hopefully lots of stampin time because my sis is a stamper too! She is actually the one the got me into it. And I teach her my scrappin' tricks. Lots of fun stuff planned for their visit...so I'll be in and out this week too, hopefully back to normal daily posts starting on Sunday!

Hello From Indiana

2008-06-16T21:58:00.002-04:00

We are in Indiana for the week, so not much posting happening this week (sorry!). I'll have lots of photos to share when I get back home on Saturday. We are having a great time visiting with family and friends. It's always a scramble to fit everyone we want to see into our schedule so we're doing lots of moving around. We spend Friday and Saturday night with Will's dad and step-Mom. During the day Saturday we had Cait's birthday party with family and friends. Saturday evening, Will and I went to the Taylor Swift/Rascal Flatts concert in Noblesville. (It was WONDERFUL!). Then Sunday we had to split up--Will to his mom's for visiting and dinner and me to Evansville to meet up with my ex-inlaws for them to see the kids and then to my Mom's for dinner. Then tomorrow night back to Will's Mom's house. Wednesday back up to his Dad's house in Fishers...thursday dinner with Alaina, Friday Cait is going to Libby Liu with my sister to get a makeover...AHHH! :-) Crazy busy...we'll definitely be ready to be back home! Hope you are all well...lots to share next week!

Happy Birthday, Caitlynn!

2008-06-10T08:55:00.004-04:00

Seven years ago today at 4:59 pm, Caitlynn made her way into the world. (6 weeks ahead of time!!). She had a rough start, having to spend weeks in the NICU, but you'd never know it looking at her today. I am a naturally nostalgic and emotional person, but looking back to see how far she has come since those days always makes me tear up.

Happy Birthday to my baby girl!

Another onesie card

2008-06-05T07:51:00.003-04:00

Wow. Life is crazy with 5 children in the house. It's messy. It's loud. It's 6 am wake up calls. It's triple the temper tantrums. Double the food bill. But...it's also triple the hugs and kisses, triple the laughter and happy banter. It's crazy and chaotic yes...but some how still a very beautiful thing. This messy, crazy, beautiful life...I love every second of it. And while I thought this might make me change my mind about wanting to have another baby, it actually makes me want one even more. How insane am I? :-) Probably pretty insane. But that's okay. I am blissfully happy this week.

Anyway...here is another onesie card. I have SO many friends that are pregnant or just had babies, so I am loving these cards! They are super easy and super cute!

And here are a couple of my favorite pictures from this week so far!

They're here!!

2008-06-01T14:58:00.004-04:00

Will's kids have arrived safe and sound. We had an interesting night last night to get everyone adjusted, but we are having so much fun. The kids are really enjoying each other and playing SO nicely together. I definitely love having a large family like this. Meal time is the best, seeing them all sitting together with us, interacting and laughing with each other. Love it. I am making it a goal to take TONS of photos while they are here. I started on that today. We played outdoors a lot this morning. Will was tossing a ball and the kids were trying to hit them with their new bats. And then after lunch we ran through the sprinkler and had some popsicles. Here are some photos of our day so far...

And here is a page I finished yesterday when my friend Maddie came over to scrap with me for a little while. Things are pretty busy, so this is a quick post, but I'll have more to share later!! :-) Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

A Double Post

2008-05-30T08:51:00.004-04:00

Hi Friends
Sorry I didn't post yesterday, time got away from me. So I'm going to share 2 cards today...the one intended for yesterday and one I made this morning.

This first card was made for the SCS RAK group. I'm on the welcoming committee and fell a little behind with my welcome RAKs...so I mass produced this one and all of my welcomes are the same this time. A bit of a short cut...I usually like them to be more unique.

Card Recipe

Format 4 1/4 x 5 1/2

Stamps, Ink Cardstock: Stampin Up

Ribbon: Offray

This one is the first Father's Day card I've done...I played around with this for a while and I still dont' think I'm entirely happy with it...more to come, I'm sure. I do love this stamp set, though. My first Papertrey set and I LOVE it. It's called Father Knows Best.

Card Recipe

Cardstock & Ink: Stampin Up

Stamps: Papertrey Inc

Ribbon: American Crafts

Brads: Making Memories

Happy Friday, everyone! It's going to be a busy weekend in my house. My soon-to-be (well, hopefully!) step-children will be here starting tomorrow for 3 whole weeks. We have lots of exciting things planned for their visit. VERY excited!!

New Baby Card

2008-05-28T10:01:00.003-04:00

Hi everyone! Happy Hump Day!

My friends Justin and Jennifer welcomed a new baby girl this morning, Irelyn Rose Hartman was born at 5:38 am! I am going to see them at the hospital tonight, so I wanted to make her a card. I finally got to try one of these cute onesie cards found here. I added some bling to mine because...well I just felt glittery this morning! I will probably make some variations of this soon...several of my friends are expecting right now!! :-)

Here is the recipe:

Format: 4 1/4 x 11 w/ fold at the top

Stamps & Ink: Stampin Up ( So Many Scallops SAB set)

Button Brads: Making Memories

I'm baaack :-)

2008-05-27T11:04:00.002-04:00

Ok, so here I am, back as promised with a page to share. I am actually having some girls over next Saturday to paper craft with me. I am so so excited. It's been a long time since I've had scrappin' buddies. I do have WONDERFUL card-making buddies here in Charleston that I am so thankful for. So I'm hoping that now this will be the start of a scrapping group for me. Because, well...Will isn't always the best judge of my pages. He tries, bless his heart, to put up with my questions about photo or embellie placement, but yeah...he's not a scrapper. :-)

So anyway, this is a page that I have all laid out to put together on Saturday. I know, I'm sort of cheating, but I'm hoping that this way, having a plan (which is SO not how I normally scrap) will help me get more done and still have lots of time for chatting, which is generally what happens at crops! So this page is not adhered yet, it's just kind of...the plan. I may change it around or add or take away...but this is the first time I've sat down for a page in quite some time now.

Here's the recipe for the page:

Format: 12x12

Paper: KI Memories

Cardstock: Stampin Up!

Stamps & Ink: Stampin' Up!

Flower: Prima

Punches: Stampin Up!, Fiskars

Brad: Fun Expressions

So there you have it...pretty simple really.

I did also go to a get together at Patti's house on Monday and we made some fun stuff there too, that I can't wait to add photos to. So hopefully I'll get some pics printed for that at some point today...or maybe I'll share them without the photos first...we shall see how much time I have this afternoon.

Hope everyone has a great day!!

Wow...it's been a while

2008-05-25T18:22:00.002-04:00

Hey everyone,
Sorry for the long absence. Yes, I'm still alive and kicking. I've just been enjoying having Will back home after his 4 month deployment. We had a wonderful Mother's Day weekend and have been enjoying lots of family time. His kids arrive to spend 3 weeks with us next weekend, so we've been preparing for their arrival as well. Busy busy.
I WILL be getting back to paper crafting starting probably this evening, but definitely tomorrow, so I'll have lots to share very soon! Thanks to those that are still reading and I promise I'll be back with more projects than ever starting this week!!

a not so pleasant discovery...

2008-04-24T10:31:00.002-04:00

We have poison ivy growing in our front yard. It is attached to a tree that is dead, that was supposed to have been removed last fall (we rent this house). I run a day care out of my home, and my daughter and another of the children were messing with the plant growing on the tree last week. I was repeatedly assured that this was not poison ivy and that the tree would be taken care of because of the safety risk with having an extremely tall, skinny, dead tree in the front of the house that could break and fall on the house (which would damage one of my children's bedrooms) OR the driveway smashing either of our vehicles or both of them. Anyway, after playing that evening I am giving Cait a bath and notice she has a brown spot on her face that would not come off no matter how hard I scrubbed it. Eventually I just gave up thinking it was tree sapp or something just being stubborn. A couple days later, I sprout this horrendous rash on my neck and arms and get a phone call from the other girl's mother asking about Caitlynn because her daughter has a rash. So i start treating myself by taking benadryll and putting cortizone cream and zinc oxide on the rash. Now, almost a week later, the rash is not only on my neck and arms, but my chest, stomach, back, and legs as well. And I did not even have direct contact with the plant!! So my oh so NOT pleasant discovery is that I am extremely allergic to Poison Ivy as an adult, when as a child I could literally roll in it and not have it affect me at all. Thankfully Caitlynn has not had a reaction. As a result of all this madness, I have gotten zero sleep, and zero accomplished from my to-do list, AND I had to cancel being able to attend my big shoe box swap event this weekend. Not to mention a lack of blogging and anything recreational. Grrr.....

Hopefully I will make a full recovery and come back to scrapping and stamping soon. I am craving some creative time, but am too miserable to actually sit and do it!

Feelin' Rusty

2008-04-14T10:18:00.003-04:00

Wow, so I feel like I haven't done anything really creative in AGES. I sat down to make a card this morning to send to Will...the last one before he comes home. AHHH! Did I say that? Here let me say it again, the LAST card before he comes H-O-M-E. Home!!! We have 18 days left til he's back. Can I just say that I am so so so glad that April is flying by?

My parents came into town and helped me to get some "house stuff" done. I took my kittens (well, they're a year old, I suppose they aren't really babies anymore) to the vet to get booster shots and to be tested for feline leukemia because of the conditions they were living in before we rescued them. Both tested negative, YAY! And they are getting 'fixed' this week as well. Good times.

SO, needless to say, life has been a bit hectic. My parents were here for a full week, and I was also working that week, so I had very little time to just sit still and relax let alone get anything really crafty done. Back to what I was saying, I sat down to make this card this morning for Beate's sketch #43 and I was feeling very very rusty. I enjoyed my little creative release, though. Hopefully I'll keep being able to squeeze time in around everything else I'm trying to accomplish before Will comes home.

Here is the card I did today.

Ingredients:

Stamps: SU! Boho Backgrounds

Paper: Whisper White, Tempting Turquoise, Gable Green

Ink: Tempting Turquoise, Gable Green

Accessories: SU White Grosgrain ribbon, Scallop Punch, Slit Punch (for scallop border), silver brad, and photo corner

Yep I'm Braggin' mini-album

2008-04-04T11:44:00.003-04:00

I had some extra time last night after doing some crazy house cleaning and laundry while the girls watched Alvin and the Chipmunks. I wanted to make a "brag book" mini album to carry around in my purse. I have pictures of my kids on my zune and a couple other places, but nothing really crafty and cute to share on the spur of the moment. So I sat down with one sheet of 12x12 cardstock and worked out this little album. Now this wasn't rocket science, so I'm sure there are other people out there who have come up with something extremely similar to this, but I am really happy with the way it turned out. I'm planning on making a few more of these as gifts, but obviously the gift ones will be blank on the inside. If anyone is interested in a tutorial on how I made it, let me know and I'll try to get one together to post later! Here are some of the inside pages...

Have a great weekend everybody!

Absentee blogger

2008-04-03T09:10:00.003-04:00

I may be an absentee blogger for the next few weeks. I have a lot of stuff going on this month to prepare for Will coming home. We have 29 days before he gets back. My parents will be in town all of next week. I have carpet cleaning people coming to clean our downstairs carpet, I have some painting to do to finish up our downstairs bathroom, I need to completely reorganize the garage because my parents are bringing all of my stuff that was left in Indiana for lack of room on the moving truck. I'm taking the cats to the vet to have shots and some tests done, and then to the spay and neuter clinic to have them both fixed. Not to mention all the normal every day stuff like work and feeding and bathing my children and laundry...blah blah blah. You get the idea!! So I'm going to be stretched pretty thin time-wise already. I will post when I can and create when I can and thanks in advance for your patience!!

It's Monday

2008-03-31T07:44:00.004-04:00

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

2008-03-30T11:01:00.003-04:00

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

2008-03-29T17:11:00.003-04:00

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...

2008-03-26T20:17:00.003-04:00

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...

2008-03-23T20:10:00.002-04:00

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!

2008-03-21T15:30:00.003-04:00

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

2008-03-19T08:48:00.004-04:00

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

2008-03-18T13:56:00.003-04:00

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

2008-03-17T20:44:00.002-04:00

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

2008-03-12T12:54:00.003-04:00

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...

2008-03-11T09:56:00.002-04:00

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!