Outing!

I am in Virginia Beach this weekend...woohoo!! I packed up my swaps and my family and we headed up here for the weekend for a Stampin Up! regional! What a fun day!! I had a great time! I was so excited to bump into and meet one of my very sweet SBS2 Sisters! It was a total surprise! I recognized Lori from her blog picture and was so tickled to meet her! : ) She is sooo adorable! It was really great to meet you, Lori!

I learned a ton of fun new things today and got to meet Shellie! I also spent the day with some of the sweet demos from my local area! : )

I am wiped out, but wanted to share the swaps I made with you! I will be brief tonight, but will be back soon! : )

Have a great night!

Roses for my Grandma!

I have been thinking about my Grandma a lot lately and so I thought I would make her a card today! : ) I used the accordion style template from Scor-Pal. It is such a pretty finished product and is easy peasy to put together! You start with a piece of card stock 5 1/2" X 12" and score it on one side (starting on the right hand side!!) at 4 1/2" and then 9 1/4". Then you flip it over and score (also from the right hand side) at 6 3/4" and 10 5/8" to create two mountain folds and two valley folds. Then you decorate until your heart is content! LOL I used Stampin Ups! Bella Rose paper and A Rose is a Rose set. I pulled all of my colors from the paper and added two vellum butterflies for some 3d goodness! I think it came out kind of pretty! Am hoping to bring an extra big smile to her sweet face! : )

I hope that you all have a wonderful day! : ) I will be back soon!

Recipe:
Paper: SU Pink Pirouette, Old Olive, Very Vanilla and Bella Rose DSP
Ink: ST Old Olive, Real Rose and Pretty in Pink
Stamps: A Rose is a Rose
Extras: Vellum, Ribbon and sparkle bling

7 Random Facts!

Hello! One of my super sweet SBS2 Sisters tagged me last week *Hi Carol!! *waving like a mad woman!* and so I thought I would play along! (I secretly LOVE these things!) : )

The name of the game is 7 Random Facts, so....

1) I love the color pink! LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it! It is so soft and feminine looking!

2) I auditioned for an acting school straight out of high school as my plan was to become a star! Big cheesy grin!! I was accepted, but my life went a different direction, so I did not go.

3) I love the thought of a cold beer and a cheese and sausage and mushroom pizza, but despite my best attempt never seem capable of actually drinking the whole beer! LOL The pizza, however, does not seem to be a problem! LOL

4) Fall is my favorite season of all time!

5) I like to exercise!

6) I don't like to diet! LOL Which makes #5 kind of counter productive!

7) I met my hubby-to-be when I was 12 years old and we just celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary....awwwwwwwwwww!

Well, that was totally fun! : ) If you would like to play along please consider yourself tagged!
Thanks for thinking of me, Carol! Big hug!

Will be back in a little bit for another post! : )

A couple of cards for my folks!

Hello and happy Sunday! I have had a wonderfully lazy day today! : ) We were going to go to town and watch a soccer game at a semi-local college, but my kids are all just worn out! My youngest has a touch of a cold too so we decided to stay home and veg! It turned out to be a great decision! It has been a looong time since I have done nothing! I have really enjoyed it!

So, what is a girl to do when she purposely ignores the laundry, sticky floors and piles of dishes?! Well, she stamps of course! : ) I have had a pretty productive stamping day too! I finished up my ATC swap commitment and got those big guys ready to mail! I made my folks each their own "Just thinking of you!" card and I started an organizational system for my clear stamps! (a much needed to do on my list!!) I am peeling them off of their sticky plastic coating and am organizing, grouping and putting them into jewel cases! It is kind of a big job because I have to stick them all in the jewel case to be sure they fit and then take them back out and stamp an index sheet for them and then put them back in! LOL Once I get it all done though it will make finding the perfect stamp a breeze! LOVE that! I am kind of kook-y about trying to keep things organized, so once this is done I will be tickled pink!! I am also going to print out some new card sketch ideas when I am done with this post! So, see...pretty productive stamp day! : )

Ok, some deets about my cards! The first one is for my step dad! He is the greatest guy ever! They (he and my mom!) live in Alaska and they have already had their first and second snow of the year! I thought this would be a cute card for him! I used my new Cuttlebug Snowflake background and the very first rubber stamp I ever bought for the main image! It is from Stampin Ups! Flaky Friends set. This is the set that started my happy addiction! LOL I used a sentiment and image from an adorable set that I got from Paper Garden for the inside. I just love this set! One of my very sweet SBS2 sisters owns Paper Garden and she offers tons of fun stuff and excellent customer service! : ) I think the inside makes this card! That snowball fight image makes me laugh every time I see it! : ) Hope he likes it!

The next card is for my mom! She is so wonderful! I was having kind of a bad week last week and so she did what any good mom would do...she had a ton of chocolate sent to my door step! She is the best!! I kept this card simple, but I think it came out pretty! : ) It is my thank you card to her!

Wow, guess I had a lot to type! LOL Thank you if you managed to make it to the end! I will be back soon with some more to share!

Hope that your weekend was a sweet and wonderful as mine! : )

Recipes:

Card #1
Paper: SU Whisper White and BaJa Beeze, generic Midnight blue and a strip of patterned paper
Stamps: SU Flaky Friends and Paper Gardens Let It Snow
Ink:SU Tempting Turquoise and Pacific Point
Extras: SU Top Note Die, Cuttle bug snowflake folder, gold brad, baby blue ribbon, bling from Target Dollar spot and Stickles

Card #2
Paper: SU Whisper White and Pretty in Pink, generic rose paper
Stamps: Inka dinka doo Personal Impressions rose stamp and generic sentiment
Ink: SU Tempting Turquoise and Rose Red
Extras: SU Top Note Die, Cuttlebug Swiss Dots folder, paper piercer, SU round spiral punch, butterfly punch, SU Ice brad and baby pink ribbon

Spooky sweetness!

I found these adorable little spiders one day while blog hopping! I believe they were on JanTink's blog! All punches are Stampin Up! and they are wrapped around Peppermint Patties...yummmm! I couldn't resist whipping up a few of these for our Home School Halloween party! I have also seen them done with wiggle-y eyes, but liked the big eyes the punches gave to it. Tooooo cute!

Also included are pictures of my scary, funny, sweet and gross children at their hs party! Kid #1 was a Vampire-ess (only went through about 512 costume choices before she settled on this one!). Kid #2 was a totally gross 'dead guy' (notice the fork in his fore arm....eeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwww!!). Kid #3 was a 'dorky' clown (last minute throw together outfit! She came out absolutely adorable!) and Kid #4 is my son as my son! : )

Happy, happy Halloween everyone! Hope that everyone has a safe and fun filled evening! : )

See you soon! : )

Well, I survived!

I am sorry I have been MIA! I have been SOOOOOOOO busy, but I did it!!! I made it through the soccer season!! We put the finishing touches on our season with tournaments played in the pouring down rain and inches of thick, icky, gooey red mud!! The kids LOVED it!! It was cold and wet and a super long day, but it was fun! : ) We had our Coaches Appreciation Dinner and Tournament meeting. We had all of our final end of the year parties and dinners and now it is time for me to step down! I have been Vice President of our local chapter of soccer for our community for two years, but stood in as 'acting' President this year due to hubby's work schedule (he is the pres!). We have been involved with running soccer for 7+ years though and so it is time. I have gotten to the point of burn out. I LOVE the sport and LOVE the kids and I will truly miss it, but I am feeling the need to focus inward for a while. I want to spend some uninterrupted time with my kids and get my house back into shape (it is amazing how quickly things unravel when daily maintenance gets thrown out the window! LOL) I want to get back into a workout routine...I have packed on 8 pounds this season (AAAACCCCKKKKK!!!!) and I want to become a regular blog poster again! It is such good therapy for me to stamp and create and I want to become more involved!

I did oodles of projects over the past week, but unfortunately in my haste to rush from one event to another I just didn't have the time to photograph most of it. I did snap a few quick photos of this project though and thought I would share. I wanted to do a little something for my coaches this year to say thank you. We had 29 teams and each coach had an assistant (or two!) so it had to be simple and semi quick! I figured since one of my favorite all time things is chocolate...I would share the wealth! : ) I made 76 of these big guys and passed them out at our Appreciation dinner! They were a big hit! I cut up 12X12 sheets of soccer themed paper into fours and wrapped each quarter around a Hershey bar. I crimped the end and took a bite out of each one with half of the spiral circle punch from Stampin' Up! I wrapped a belly band around each one with a soccer ball, ribbon and thank you note! They were a fun project! : )

I will be back soon with some more fun things!

Hope that everyone has a great day! : )

Snowman ATC

I must be insane!! I have NO extra time in my life right now! In fact, I have less than NO time! Sooooooo, I did the most logical thing ever! Signed up for yet another ATC swap! I am addicted...what can I say! The theme this time is Snowmen! I LOVE snow and I love snowmen! They are the sweetest thing ever! I think it is so much fun that every snowman is different and seems to have his/her own personality! When I saw these cute little snow people at Paper Garden I fell head over heals for them! This image has a faint little heart shape in the snow in front of the snowfolks, but unfortunately it wouldn't fit on this tiny canvas. I used my new Cuttlebug swiss dots folders to emboss the polka dots and then ran my white ink pad over them gently to create snowflakes. I stamped the image, cut it out
and layered it onto the snow background. I added a torn edge paper to make a few inches of snow and then added some 3d snowflakes and a lot of sparkle! I took this photo while the Stickles were still wet-ish! It is much cuter once they dry, but I was losing light and wanted to post this tonight! I will be making a card using this set tomorrow and will share as soon as it is finished!

Have a great night! See you tomorrow! : )

P.S. One more week of soccer and then color me done!!! WooHoo!!!

Fun boxes!

I found this template on Lauren Meader's blog! She has started a new product line of templates and is giving the first one away for free! This template is one of the three she is has released this month. They are A-W-E-S-O-M-E!!! I have already made these two gifts from one of the templates! LOVE it!

The first one is going to one of the mom's in my home school group! She is so nice and has had a rough week. I just wanted to do a little something to try to perk her up! The second one is for one of my favorite soccer coaches! She has been a joy to work with this season and I wanted to make her a little token of appreciation!

I used generic paper (the second one was made to match the coaches team colors!) and all of the stamps are Stampin Up! I added some sparkle and popped up some butterfly's on the front of each box. I tied a vanilla ribbon on top of each one and filled them with chocolate!

They made very quick, very happy little gifts! These are just screaming to be made into Christmas gifts! : )

Hope that everyone is having a great week!

Christmas Tag and Ornament Swap-a-roo!

Hello! How are ya?! I went to my monthly demonstrator 's meeting today and had a really nice time! I was feeling a bit blue this morning because hubby left for another business trip, so my meeting was a pleasant distraction. I meet with a super group of ladies!! We had our usual monthly swap, but this time it was kind of a monster commitment! We were supposed to make 9 ornaments and 90 (nope, that is NOT typo!!) gift tags! Now anyone that knows me knows I am a procrastinator!! I had decided early this month that I was going to start and finish this commitment early, well....between soccer and hubby being gone it seems I am waaaay behind on everything! LOL So, I was up late last night and up early this morning trying to beat the clock! I made it though and here are my swaps! Pictured first is my ornament and then all of them together. Next is a group shot of all of the tags I made. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...!

More tomorrow! Have a great night!

Ornament Recipe:
Stamps: SU!'s Snow Swirled
Paper: Handsome Hunter, Real Red and Very Vanilla
Ink: Old Olive and Rose Red
Extras: Word Window Punch, Top Note Bigz Die, Gold Brad, Very Vanilla ribbon, Gold Pen and Crystal Stickles

A day at the park!

I did not have the chance to stamp today so I thought I would share a photo from our day at the park over the weekend! We had a really nice time! We went for a drive on the parkway and stopped at Mabry's Mill to listen to some music and walk around! The leaves have started to turn and Fall was in the air! We topped the day off with ice cream from a fun little store called Poor Farmer's Market! The only thing that could have made the day any more perfect was if my oldest son could have been with us! He was driving his sweetie back to college. This is me and three of my kiddo's and then hubby with the kids!

Have a super night!

Stationery Box to go...!

One of my very special, super sweet wonderful friends had a birthday yesterday and I wanted to make her a little something special! I have been so short on time lately that I had to put the finishing touches on her gift in the car going down the road! We had a home school field trip yesterday/today and because it was 3 hours away we decided to drive down early and stay the night last night in a hotel! We were meeting our friends at the hotel and I wanted to be able to give her the gift then!

I made her this stationery box using Jackie Topa's wonderful directions! It was a breeze to assemble, but took quite a while to complete all the little details! I used DSP from SU! called Bella Rose and added the stamped rose on the front to all of the envelopes to pull everything together! The box holds 4 cards, 3 note cards and 4 tags. I also tucked in a gift certificate to a local coffee house and a card that I am kicking myself for not getting a photo of! I am sorry about the stinky quality of these photos, but I had to snap them quickly and was in poor light.

She is such a wonderful friend and I wanted her to know I love her! : ) Happy birthday, Cindy!!

A get well gift!

One of the little fella's that plays soccer for me broke his arm this week! Poor little guy! He is the sweetest little thing ever so I wanted to do something special for him. It was a bad enough break that he is supposed to remain fairly still while it heals...yeah right! ( 9 year old little boy...stay still?! You do the math! That's just not going to happen!) I hoped that if I made him a few sit still activities that it might help! I made a simple puppet stage inspired by Mel's awesome post here. I stamped several stamps from several different sets and colored them in and affixed them to Popsicles sticks. There is a knight, a princess, a dragon, two different pirates, a pirate ship, a cowboy, a teddy bear, two soccer players and two moose! Should offer lots of variety for an active imagination! I made a box using my soooooo cool new Scor-Pal to house all of his new puppet friends! I added bright, happy fish paper to the outside and lined the inside bottom with matching paper. I made a belly band with his name on it to hold it all together! Next I used Stampin' Up's retired All Mixed Up set to make a flip book! I left all of these images plain and included a box of crayons so that he could color them in! He can flip these pages back and fourth to make a tu-tu wearing alligator ballerina or a space duck or an inter tube wearing webbed footed little girl! I made a little card to go with it using Kiwi Kiss and Very Vanilla from Stampin' Up and an adorable soccer star image from Me and My Big Ideas! I was going to try to add a little cast to the arm of the little guy, but ran out of time! I bagged it all up and delivered it to him before his big brother's soccer game and he was soooo excited! He screamed, " I got puppets. mama!!" He is such a great kid I was really pleased to be able to make him happy!

On another happy note...this Saturday marked the half way point with soccer!!! 42 games down and 42 left to go! I have to attend them all to be certain that our refs show and that everything goes smoothly. We supply gatorade for our refs at half time and so I run back and fourth from field to field during the games! Three weeks left and then I retire! : ) It has been a successful season so far, but I will be relieved to see it come to an end. My poor house is in shambles and I have had very little stamp time. : ( I am looking very forward to getting some creative me time back!

Hubby is home this week and we are discussing some fun family time for the day! Hope that everyone is having a wonderful weekend! Thank you if you made it to the end and are still reading! I tend to be a little long winded some days! You guys are the greatest! : )

Get well gift (the rest of the photos)!