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!

More awesome blog candy to check out: http://lildebstampscrap.blogspot.com

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!

Blog Candy Alert

Check out this awesome blog candy: http://donkeysmiles.blogspot.com/

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!

Another trip to urgent care and a scrapbook layout

As most of you know we have been battling ear infections with Annabelle for months. She suffers from allergies or asthma or both which we think is the cause of all of these problems (we are seeing the specialist on June 5th). She started showing signs of a cold a few days ago and with every cold she ends up with severe breathing issues. The past 2 nights have been pure hell and finally this morning we took her to the urgent care. We now have a nebulizer machine that will hopefully help. The doctor also gave us a presciption just in case she gets an ear infection (because she ALWAYS does a few days after a cold and because next weekend is a holiday weekend). Bless that woman, she just saved us a $40 urgent care visit next weekend!
After all of that this morning we decided on a low key day. Tom did some work on our broken pipe (the one that froze and broke during the winter) and I got to scrap all day while the kids played. As I've said before, I am WAY WAY behind so these pages are from Thanksgiving 2006. My sister and her family were in Florida for Thanksgiving that year so it was just us and my mom and dad. The weather was crazy warm for Thanksgiving (I think it was something like 65 or 70 degrees) and we spent lots of time outside. Dad took Beckett for a ride on the 4-wheeler and we took some cute pictures!
The cardstock I used for these pages is SU!'s textured 12x12. I accidentally ordered this thinking I was ordering regular cs. I really like it but for $12 a package it is a bit pricey.
The designer paper is Archaic from Basic Grey...LOVE this. I have another layout that I will show you tomorrow that uses the Archaic paper also! I used my CM wavy trimmer to cut the wavy lines. The words were cut out with my Cricut. And finally...crazy as it may seem, I actually wrote something on the right hand page. I have the worst handwriting EVER and I NEVER NEVER journal on my pages for that reason, but I thought this 2nd page needed something. I didn't do too bad. I did wait to glue down the rest of that page just in case I didn't like my writing. I have to say, for once, I am thrilled with how these pages turned out. It was hard for me making masculine themed pages. Annabelle's pages are so easy because I can add lots of flowers and glitter, but Beckett's pages are definitely more of a challenge.



I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. Thanks for stopping by!]

It's Friday!!!

It has been yet another long week and I'm glad that it is Friday. I didn't get much of anything stamping related done this week with the exception of the sb pages that I made last night. Hopefully the weekend will prove to be more productive. And speaking of last night's sb pages-they honestly look 100x better in real life. I was just looking at the photos and they really don't do the pages justice. I thought they turned out pretty good, although I looked back at some older pages and all of my pages are starting to look alike. I need to get some sb pointers from Delia, her pages are always so terrific!
Thanks for stopping by. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Finally doing a little scrappin!

Tonight we had sloppy joes for supper. The kids aren't exactly huge fans of this particular choice so as a bribe (yes, we bribe) we told them if they ate their sloppy joes we would go to a carnival tomorrow night. You have to know I only gave them each 1/2 of a hotdog bun of sloppy joe. Well over an hour later Beckett was still sitting at the table. In the end he got so tired of sitting there he, well...fell asleep. Even though it was pretty early we took him upstairs to bed and I had the rest of the night to scrap! YAY! Annabelle actually did some scrappin of her own while I worked so I thought I would share her scrapbook page first. Because I wouldn't give her any of my photos (I only have one copy and no negatives or digital copies of these pictures so I have to be extremely careful not to waste them, otherwise I would have given her some pictures) she decided to draw her own. She went with a playground theme just like my pages but I think hers are much better than mine :)
Her pictures included her and Beckett going on a slide, crossing a bridge, playing basketball, playing on monkey bars, playing on a jungle gym and swinging. I thought it turned out simply lovely!
Here are the pages I worked on. They aren't complete (as usual). I think I may add some type of journaling on the left hand page, bottom right corner - just haven't decided on that yet.
I love these pictures of the kids. They are so honest and true. The kids were just having a wonderful time playing at the park.
Close-up of left hand page
Close-up of right hand page

The cardstock used was SU. DP was Basic Grey. Stamps and rub-ons are Heidi Grace. Flowers are from Petaloo. Nothing else.
Thanks for stopping by. Hope you have a wonderful weekend!

CF fundraiser update

I just thought I would give a little update on Chava's CF fundraising efforts. I just checked her site and she is at $1065. That is so awesome! I'm sure she is thrilled. I haven't talked to her since last week but when I last heard from her they were moving Alex out of intensive care. Hopefully things have continued to improve since last week. Thanks again to all of you who donated. I am in the process of making some thank you cards to get out to all of you; hopefully I have them out by next week. Sara, I sent your blog candy winnings with my dad when I saw him on Sunday so hopefully he has dropped them off to you or will do so soon.
Thanks again to all of you!!! Thanks for stopping by!

Wednesday already?

I can't believe how fast my weeks have been going lately. I seem to lose track of days more often than I lose my car keys. For some reason this morning I thought it was Tuesday.
I haven't stamped all week but I thought I'd share one of the cards I made last week. When my friend Kris asked me to make a bunch of cards for her, she requested some say "with love" or have a love theme. She was giving the set of 10 different cards to her 96 year old grandmother who is in a nursing home. I don't typically make "love" cards so once again another challenge. For this one I kinda had an idea of what I wanted to do so I picked the primas I wanted and then chose cs and dp to coordinate with them. The stamp set is "So Very" from SU!'s SAB last year. I really like that set. The dp is from a promotion SU had last spring, "Palette O Prints".

Thanks for stopping by today. Hopefully I get to stamp something today so that I have something to share tomorrow, unfortunately I first have to tackle a lot of laundry, dishes and toys. Wish me luck!

An old card

Nothing new to share, again, so I searched through some old pictures for a card that I made over a year ago. I have always loved this stamp from TAC's "Flower Collage Trio". I've made this card in many different versions. Of all the versions I've made, I like this color combo the best. The background is SU "French Script" and "Canvas".
The colors used are SU chocolate chip, Ruby Red and either garden green or always artichoke. I don't actually have this card anymore so I'm guessing the colors from looking at the picture.

I hope you all have a terrific Tuesday! Thanks for stopping by!

Another Monday

I hate Mondays! I had so much to do today and I got next to nothing done. I showed this same card in different colors a couple weeks ago but I since I have pretty much nothing else new to share I thought I would share this version. I am totally loving this butterfly stamp from Inkadinkado. The dp is from DCWV. I got a smudge of ink in the bottom right corner so I added the gems to cover it up. Hard to see in the picture but I added glitter to the circles and lines on the main image. The pink base cs is retired SU Positively Pink and the right cs panel is SU Pretty in Pink.

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. I spent Mother's Day relaxing on the couch watching a chick flick and stamping for a few hours (along with doing a little laundry). For those of you following my new movie watching addiction, I've seen a few good ones lately:

The Jane Austen Book Club (This is what I watched yesterday) - I loved it - very chick flicky
Juno -Seen it twice - loved it! Actually ended up buying this one.
Dan in Real Life - a good movie
Stardust - a little slow to get going but overall a really good movie
Martian Child - I really like it but it is a little slow.
Across the Universe - VERY weird
The Upside of Anger - Interesting. Kinda depressing.
Transformers - not really a chick flick but I really liked it!
Superbad - Some of the humor was a little too crude for me, extremely funny in some parts, a little too much profanity/sex talk for me.

My next couple coming up in our netflix queue are:
Avatar Book 3 vol.3 (I LOVE Avatar and I can't wait for this one to get here...unfortunately it has a very long wait on netflix right now)
27 Dresses
Becoming Jane (I'm kinda on a Jane Austen kick lately)
Always
and about 25 other chick flicks.
I'll let you know what I think of them!

Thanks for stopping by - hope you all have a wonderful week!

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to you all! I wanted to get this posted before we head off to church because I'm not sure if I will get time later today. Annabelle is in the children's choir at church and they are singing for the last time today until choir resumes in the fall. I can't wait to hear them. This morning when she got up Annabelle gave me this card that she made. She made it last week and kept it hidden under her bed until this morning. I thought it was so sweet! I hope you all have a great Mother's Day!
Along with being Mother's Day, today is also our 6th wedding anniversary. Our wedding day was exactly like today...cold, windy, raining. It has been cold, windy and raining on every single May 11th since we got married. The weather for today says rainy, winds 10-15mph, high in the 50's. I think on our wedding day the high was only in the 40's, VERY windy and pouring rain. Funny thing is we were going to get married in November or May and Tom looked in the almanac to try and figure out which month would have better weather for us...obviously we should never let a man do important research like that. November would have been much better weather! Anyway, I thought I would share a couple pictures from our wedding. I don't typically show pictures of myself but since these are the pre-children skinny days I don't mind showing them. BTW, our wedding photos pretty much sucked so I don't have many good ones to share (our pictures sucked but at least we had a rockin cake!). I also have to apologize for the crappy quality of the photos. We got married before digital was all the rage so I had to scan these pictures this morning on our not so great, dusty scanner.
This first picture is me coming in at the back of the church with my friend Kelly.
Here is a picture from the ceremony from the back of the church.
This was the one and only great picture our photographer took. I have it in a black and white version framed and hanging in our living room. The scanning quality wasn't great and Tom's tux looks extremely dusty...it wasn't.


I hope you all have a terrific day! Thanks for stopping by!

Pink, Green and Gray Challenge

I made this card for a pink, green and gray challenge hosted by one of the new Jacksonbelle DT members, Amber. I had been hoping to do this all week and just never found the time.
Nothing like waiting till the very last minute. For this card I used SU cardstock, Basic Grey DP, Basic Grey brads, a stamp set from Inkadinkadoo , some SU ribbon and misc. fibers, and of coarse...GLITTER! I actually may try to add a sentiment to this card but I wanted to get it in by the deadline so I stopped at this point to take a picture. I love this stamp set from Inkadinkadoo. I typically don't take the time to paper piece but I love the extra wow the dp adds to the butterfly wings. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you all have a wonderful night!

It looks much better in real life

I finally found some time to actually make a card today. This card is a CASE of a card that Kisa made for our monthly card swap a long time ago (I can't find the card in her SCS gallery so I will take a picture of it later today and add it to this post). The card she made has always been one of my absolute favs (along with all the other cards she makes). Mine didn't turn out quite as elegant looking as her card but it is ok. The background is done using one of the new cb folders (don't know the name). The flower is done with SU large oval punch and a 1" circle punch. The stem is cut freehand. Of coarse there is glitter and a little bit of some funky green fibers. The sentiment is from PTI's "Out On A Limb" set.

I hope you are all having a terrific Friday. We did a little garage sale shopping this morning and I am hoping to find some time to make at least one more card yet today. We'll see.
Thanks for stopping by!