Hope everyone is having a great week. We have yet more rain coming our way today. I don't have anything to share yet today but hopefully after I get this house cleaned up I will find time to make those last 2 Father's Day cards for Kris. I hope you are all having a great day!

I actually stamped something!

I finally found a little bit of stamping time yesterday and I didn't even spend it staring at the wall. I have been in a huge stamping rut and the previous 2 times I went to stamp I just sat there...staring...accomplishing nothing....blank mind. Fortunately, yesterday I decided to actually stamp. My friend Kris has asked me to make 3 different Father's Day cards for her. This is the first one I came up with. The stamps are from Verve Visual and Stampin Up!. DP is Basic Grey and CS is Stampin Up!.

I hope everyone is having a great start to their week. We are headed to the zoo for a playdate with one of Annabelle's preschool friends and then this afternoon Beckett is getting a MUCH NEEDED haircut.
On the movie scene, I have only gotten 1 movie in the past several days and it was Mama's Boy...not great. Funny in a few parts but not one I would recommend. Hopefully I will have a couple more later this week. Tom started moving his movies to the top of the Netflix queue so I'm not getting as many of my movies as I would like. Thanks for stopping by! Have a great day!

I haven't had any time to stamp in several days so I thought I would share a card that I made about a year ago. Simple card but I liked how it turned out. Hopefully I will find some time this week to create something new.

Hope you all have a wonderful Monday. Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Friday!

Happy Friday everyone. Well our trip to the doctor with Annabelle yesterday turned out fairly well (at least for us, not sure she would agree). I had Tom take her to the appointment while Beckett and I did some grocery shopping (Beckett is TOO crazy when you coop him up in a tiny doctor's office). So we found out that along with asthma she is extremely allergic to tree pollen, especially maple. Fantastic since our sole tree in our yard is a maple and it is basically right out her bedroom window. The doctor said that trees typically shed their pollen at night so we should not be sleeping with our windows open. She is now on a steroid nose spray that she will have to take daily from March to July every year. They gave us a whole plan of action to follow. It has been a lot to take in, but at least we know now and can maybe help prevent these awful allergy attacks in the future.
Now, onto a new card. I am on a butterfly kick lately. I have always loved butterfly stamps and now I love butterfly punches. This punch is one from the Martha Stewart line that is sold at Michael's. When I first saw it I knew that someday I would break down and buy it. I'm so glad M's is now accepting coupons on the MS line. The stamp set used is a clear set from Heidi Grace. Other than that, the card is pretty simple...SU cardstock and dp and some Paper Studio bling (didn't throw the packaging away on these yet).
Oh and yesterday we watched Enchanted (again) and I still LOVE IT, plus I also watched The Devil Wears Prada (I thought it was good but not great). Definitely worth watching sometime when you don't have anything else going on but not one to plan a party around.
I'm sure some of you are wondering what the heck is going on with my movie watching frenzy and I have to tell you, I am loving it. I haven't watched ANYTHING in like 3 years (maybe 5 movies total during that time). I finally decided to take some time for myself and I am loving it. I usually put a movie in for the kids on the big screen in the living room and then I either watch mine on the computer in the office or on the kids' portable DVD player laying in bed. This totally beats me having to watch Dora Saves the Mermaid or Scooby Doo for the 20th time. So as long as we can keep it up I will continue down my list of chick flicks that you all so wonderfully suggested!
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Thanks for stopping by!

Check out that new blog banner!!!

I know this is my 2nd post in the past 12 hours but had to post something to celebrate my new blog banner. My AWESOME friend Kisa outdid herself with this one. I may have to start paying her. Yesterday I sent her a message asking if she could put together a banner for me with these pictures. I just LOVE it!!!! Thank you SO much!!!!
I also thought I would share another butterfly card I made. This is almost exactly like the orange butterfly card I posted a couple days ago. I honestly loved that card so much I thought I would try it in another color. I think I like the orange one better but this one still turned out pretty, IMO.
The butterfly is from the Inkadinkado set "Garden Delight" and the sentiment this time is from PTI's "Out On A Limb".

I have another butterfly themed card (don't worry, not the same card this time) to share tomorrow. Hope you all have a great day. We are headed out to the asthma specialist in about half hour. Wish us luck! Thanks for stopping by!

Wherever you go...

go with all your heart. I love the sentiment on this stamp. I knew from the first time I saw this stamp that I had to buy it. I'm not typically a collage-ish kinda stamper but like I said, I just love this stamp. The stamp is from Paperbag Studios. They carry a huge variety of collage/vintage style stamps.
Only problem with the stamp is that it is pretty big. It doesn't leave much room on an A2 size card for much else. The stamp is stamped on Basic Grey paper with Palette Noir ink. All other cardstock is SU. The funky stitched border is Daisy D's rub-on tape that I bought from JacksonBelle Embellishments (thanks to Kisa and her awesome creations, I had to buy some!). The gems are once again a mystery brand from Target.
I hope you are all having a terrific week. Tomorrow we finally get to take Annabelle to the asthma/allergy specialist. It seems like we have been waiting for this appointment FOREVER. I hope they are going to be able to tell us something. Cross your fingers for us!
Oh and before I forget, today's movies were:
Enchanted - LOVED IT...even with it being the 6th time I've seen it, still loved it... I'm sure I will watch it again since we own this one
Mad Money - it was ok, but I wouldn't recommend it. One of those movies that if there is absolutely nothing else in the world that you could do then maybe watch but don't go out of your way to see it.
Thanks for stopping by!

It's Tuesday, yay...

Well, it's Tuesday. Can you tell I'm thrilled...not. I'm a bit tired and crabby today. The house was really hot last night and I didn't sleep well, even with a fan blowing on me. We are trying to save money by not turning the air on in the house until we absolutely have to. I think it was 78 in the house when I went to bed...too hot! Plus as I laid in bed, my toe just throbbed in pain. I hope the pain goes away soon. I didn't think it looked as bad this morning but I am babying it BIG TIME!
The good thing is, today is our one day this week when we have absolutely nothing planned. No appointments, no swimming lessons, nothing. BLISS! Maybe I will stamp...or clean :(
Here is a card I made for the JacksonBelle Embellishments Inkadinkado challenge. The challenge was you had to make a card using Inkadinkado stamps that JB carries in her store.
I haven't used this Birds Assortment set in a while so I gave it a go. I also used the Inka set "Flowery Flourishes" (not sure if she carries that set or not). For the sentiment, I used the "what's the word, bird" sentiment from the Bird Assortment set but I cut it up into single words. I've found that with clear stamp sets this is totally ok to do as they fit back together and line up fairly easily on acrylic blocks. I colored the birds with Prismacolor markers. The paper is SU and the gems are from ??. I should probably stop taking stuff out of their orignial packages so that I know where they came from.
What do you think?


Thanks for stopping by today. I hope you all have a wonderful day!

Back to work

Well, it was good while it lasted but Tom's vacation is officially over. It was kinda nice having a little help around the house for the past week or so. With preschool done for the year I thought we would have a wide open schedule...nope. Not this week at least. Today both kids have a make-up swimming lesson and I have a PT appointment to try and fix my aching back. We have regular swimming lessons on Wed., Annabelle has an appointment with a allergy/asthma specialist on Thursday and I'm babysitting my 1 year old niece and a friend of Annabelle's on Friday. YIKES! I hate having such a full schedule. To make things worse....my toe still hurts, BAD! I was going to take a picture of it to share but then I thought that would be so gross. I won't expose you all to that.
I did get a lot of stamping time yesterday and thought I would share one of my cards. I made this card for the weekly challenge on the Hero Arts blog. They give a challenge (every Monday, I think) and you have a week to work on it. I don't own many Hero Arts stamps which makes the challenges even more of a challenge. This past week the challenge was to use Hero Arts stamps and incorporate a circle or circles on your project.
Here is what I came up with:

Stamps are all Hero Arts, Cardstock is SU!, Glitter is SU!, ribbon is misc vendors and that's all folks! Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a wonderful week!

I almost forgot...I watched some pretty good movies this past week:
Avatar Book 3, vol.3....LOVED it!!! Highly recommend!!!
Evan Almighty...this was pretty good. Suitable for the whole family. Pretty funny in parts.
27 Dresses....LOVED it! Actually considered watching it a second time yesterday but decided to stamp instead.
In the queue this week...P.S. I love you, The Devil Wears Prada and Mad Money. I'll let you know how they are.

Happy Sunday! It is sunny and beautiful here today. I thought this card would be a great card to share on this beautiful 1st day of June (I can't believe it is June alredy!).
I love this black eyed Susan stamp and unfortunately I have no idea what stamp company it is from. It is one of the many purchases that were enabled by threads I've read on SCS. About a year and a half ago I saw a thread about a stamp company having a half price sale on all of their unmounted rubber...of coarse I couldn't resist. I bought a few stamps but never kept track of where I actually bought them from. If anyone recognizes this stamp and knows where I got it I would love to know. The cards details are as follows: CS=SU , DP=DCWV , Sentiment= TAC (I think from the set Rose sentiments), Gems= Target (I took them out of their package so I don't know the manufacturer), Glitter= Doodle Bug, Coloring=Prismacolor markers.

I hope you all enjoy this wonderful day! Today is Tom's last day of vacation so we are going to try and get a little more family time in before he heads back to his hectic work schedule tomorrow. Thanks for stopping by today!

Saturday stampin!

I finally got some time tonight to play in my stamp room. Unfortunately, before I got started I stubbed my toe(s) on my Tonic cutter (which I had sitting on the floor under my stamp table). OMG did that hurt! I actually cried and had to yell for Tom to come downstairs. I cut one toe really bad and I thought I broke the same toe and maybe another. After a few bandages and some ibuprofen, I'm doing, OK, but it still hurts. I can't wait to see what it looks like in the morning. So even though it was a rocky start to my stamp night, I did manage to make 2 and 3/4 cards. I have to finish up the 3rd one tomorrow.
This is the first card that I made. Unfortunately I was in need of a sympathy card as a friend of mine from High School's brother died this past week. I am not very good with sympathy cards. I never know what colors to use, what kind of stamps to use, etc. The cardstock used is SU Rose Red and Black and Shimmery white. DP is SU and DCWV. The stamps are PTI's "Out On A Limb". All inks used are Palette (can't remember the exact colors off the top of my head). Black gems from Target.

I hope you are all having a wonderful weekend. Thanks for stopping by!

Not enough time in a day!

I need about 6 extra hours in a day. Even though Tom has been home for a week, there still doesn't seem like there is enough time to get everything done lately. I do have to say my laundry is completely caught up and the house is pretty clean, but that is a minute by minute situation. These kids can destroy a house faster than a tornado.
I did find a couple minutes yesterday to make a card and I have to say that I LOVE this card. The picture doesn't do it justice. It is very vibrant in real life. The stamps used are clear stamps from Inkadinkadoo (my current favorite stamp company). The butterfly comes from the set "Garden Delight" and I can't remember the other set right off the top of my head. I think it also has "garden" in the title. I cut the "Get well soon" stamp so that I could rearrange the word layout. The background is done by inking the smooth side of the cuttlebug folder before putting the paper in and then running it through the machine. I LOVE this technique but have found that it works best with the lighter (soft subtles) colors. I tried doing it with Only Orange and it gave a really grainy look. This is also another "first" card for me. I have never used these hodgepodge pieces on a card before. I think it added a nice touch. The butterfly was done exactly the same way I did the little monsters a month or so ago. I stamped the butterfly on a transparency sheet, ran it through my xyron and added glitter to the back. I layered it over the same image (stamped on white cs) to give it a 3-D look. So what do you think?
We have a busy weekend ahead of us again so I'm not sure when I will have more to share. Hopefully soon though. Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful weekend!

We're home!

We survived our waterpark mini vacation. This adventure was much more enjoyable than last weeks camping excursion. If you have never been to the Kalahari resort in Wisconsin Dells, I highly recommend it. I am not a swimmer or a water lover but this place is awesome. This is big, coming from someone who would normally rather die than put a swimming suit on. A swim suit is definitely a sacrifice I will make in exchange for the awesome time my kids had (plus most of the women there were a lot heavier than me and a lot of them wore bikinis). The rooms at the Kalahari are first rate and the indoor waterpark is fantastic. For extremely fair skinned people (like us), indoor anything is a bonus! The kids had a blast. Beckett was unstoppable. He would go up and down the water slides all day. Annabelle prefered to practice her swimming skills in the pool. They both loved the lazy river. I loved seeing them having so much fun! Unfortunately we forgot to take our camera. We still ran into a little bit of an issue with Beckett wanting to sleep at "his home" instead of at the hotel but he was SO tired after 5 hours of swimming and water slides that he made a fuss for about 30 seconds and then fell asleep. Overall it was an awesome time!
Now that we are home we are finishing up our list of fix-it jobs before Tom heads back to work on Monday. I haven't had any time to create anything crafty but hopefully tomorrow I will find a few minutes to play. Until then, I hope you are all having a wonderful week! Thanks for stopping by!

Recognize this picture?

It is the picture on my blog banner. Another one of the Christmas pictures we had taken last fall. This is the 2nd of the 2 pages that I made during the last couple days. I am loving the 1 picture pages. I have a ton of 5x7 pictures that I just didn't know what to do with...I know now. I love how this page turned out. The poinsettias are a TAC stamp and I colored them with prismacolor pencil and gamsol (never considered if this was scrapbook safe, opps, I guess I better check into that) and layered them. Then I added some more of those Prima poinsettias. I'm almost out of the red *yikes*. All of the paper is Basic Grey except for the red (from my SAMS club pack) and green (SU!) borders. I am so in love with Basic Grey paper. I have a lot because I used to be a hoarder. I'm learning to use what I buy instead of saving it for a "someday". The word "Christmas" is from a Christmas sentiment stamp set from See-D's and I cut the word Joy using my Cricut (it is definitely getting a work-out lately!). I printed "Annabelle & Beckett 2007" on the computer and cut it out with my CM cutting system. I think that is it.
This may (or may not) be my last post until Tuesday. We have a lot going on these next few days. Tom is still on vacation all of this next week so I need to take advantage of this and try and get some much needed house projects done!
I hope everyone is enjoying this beautiful holiday weekend! Thanks for stopping by!

We survived, barely...

So our camping trip wasn't quite as successful as we had hoped. We got there and set up and camp and all was well. The kids played at the playground, we made a fire, had supper and got ready for bed. After reading 6 books to the kids it was lights out time. At that point Beckett realized we weren't going home which caused him EXTREME distress. He likes his home and his bed and was VERY determined that that is where he was going to sleep...sorry, no. After about 15 minutes of crying we convinced him that if he just laid down for a little while we would go home. Thankfully he fell asleep fast. That little episode was the start of a horrible night. The temperature Thursday night ended up being A LOT lower than we had expected. Before we left home Tom called to make sure they camp sites left and they told him they only had a dozen left and they were going fast...this sent us into panic mode since it was a 45 minute drive to get to the park. Because of the PANIC MODE we failed to pack some essential items, like the extra blankets I had suggested. We did not have near enough sleeping bags/blankets to keep us all warm. Annabelle would have slept on her own little Dora air mattress but Tom didn't want her to get cold so all 4 of us crammed onto an almost queen size air mattress. It was SO cold. I couldn't sleep (at all) and finally at 3:15am I started to cry (I'm not normally a crier, nowadays). I was SO cold and SO miserable and I wanted to go home. I ended up putting on a coat and managed to get a couple hours of sleep. When Beckett got up on Friday morning the first words out of his mouth were "I want to go home", Amen to that! We had paid for 2 nights but thankfully we were able to get our money back for the 2nd night and we headed home to our comfortable warm beds! I did manage to get a few good pictures while we there:

This first picture is about 5 minutes after we got there. Everyone is still having a great time!
This is the next morning. Annabelle, had a great night. She slept sound except for one coughing attack. She can't wait to go camping again.
Getting ready to pack things up. Smiles all around knowing we will be going home soon.
I'm sure we will go camping again someday (but definitely not someday soon).

Since we got home a day earlier than expected I took advantage of the time and did a little scrappin. This page is definitely not my typical page. The paper is all Basic Grey (my current favorite dp brand!). The quote is a rub-on. I had originally thought I wanted to put some glitter rub-ons on but they didn't look good and I had to try and doctor the page up by covering them with flowers. The flowers are a mix of Maya Road, Prima and Bazzill. I made one other page that I will share tomorrow. We have TONS of housework that we need to get done so I may not get anymore stamp/scrap time all weekend and Monday we are heading to WI Dells to the Kalahari Resort (indoor waterpark). I hope you all are having a happy and safe weekend!

Thanks for stopping by!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Happy Thursday! Today we have Beckett's preschool closing ceremony and then he has his first ever dentist appointment. I'm praying he doesn't have a mouth full of cavities.
After that, we are taking a road trip to Governor Dodge State Park for a couple nights of camping. This will be the kid's first camping trip. Before they were born Tom and I camped all summer long when we were mountain bike racing, but our last camping trip was when I was 7 months pregnant with Annabelle. This should be an interesting trip. The kids have been SO excited the last couple days. They can't wait to go camping. I asked Annabelle yesterday if she knew what camping meant..."No". Wonder if they will be as excited when they realize we have to sleep on the ground.
I don't have anything craft related to share today and I will be MIA until at least Saturday, but hopefully I will get some stamping time soon! I hope you all have a fun and safe Memorial Day weekend! Thaks for stopping by!

Christmas scrappin

I had planned on making a couple cards today but when I finally got to my stamp cave I was in the mood for scrappin. As I've said in the past, I'm WAY behind in my scrapping, so this is a good thing that I have been in the scrappin mood. I always make 2 page layouts with multiple pictures on a page but I have seen so many cool pages with only one picture so I decided to try it out. This picture is probably my favorite picture of the kids ever. They just look so stinkin cute! The base paper is Basic Grey. The flowers are Prima poinsettias. I love these. I bought them in 3 different colors: gold, pink and red. Love them. The pearls are from Target. I got the swirly die cuts from my friend Delia. Title was cut using my Cricut machine. I love this page. It is beautiful in real life. The picture just doesn't do it justice. I have a difficult time photographing 12x12 pages.

As always, thank you so much for stopping by. Your comments always put a smile on my face.

More awesome blog candy!

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A Big THANK YOU!

Happy Tuesday everyone! Today is Annabelle and Beckett's last day of preschool (with the exception of closing ceremonies that they have during the next couple days). I can't believe how fast the school year went by. Yikes. Only one more year and Annabelle heads off to kindergarten. Double yikes!! Beckett heads to kindergarten the following year. Triple yikes!!! I can tell you now I will be the mom who cries and waits in the parking lot the whole day when my kids go to school. I'm so not ready!
I just wanted to give an update on Chava's fundraising efforts. I believe her walk was last Saturday and her fundraising total ended up over $1800. Hooray!
Thank you again to all of you who donated. I have thank you cards going out in the mail today to all of you. It really means a lot to me that you all donated! Thanks SO much! Have a great day!

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Another Beckett layout

Here is the 2nd layout I did yesterday. This one is pretty basic but I thought it turned out pretty cute. The cardstock used is SU Old Olive and the designer papaer is Basic Grey Archaic. The little squares are from the Basic Grey Archaic chipboard sticker pack. Title letters are cut out with the Cricut. It is a 2 page 12x12 layout, with the word "the" split with the "t" on the left hand page and the "he" on the right page. This was the first scrapbook page ever that I did not put mats around my photos. Believe me, I tried though, it just didn't look quite right so I took the plunge and mounted them without mats. Funny, it is a pretty basic layout and it still took me 3 hours.


I hope you all have a wonderful Monday. This week is the last week of preschool for the kids and Tom is on vacation starting Wednesday so it should be an interesting week. Thanks for stopping by today!