Raspberry Suite Color Challenge 16

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...

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

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

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...

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

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...

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...