Mommy Scraps

Have a Happy Christmas!

2011-12-24T23:30:00.000-07:00

Just popping in to wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday season!

Hey, No Peeking!

2011-12-22T06:42:00.027-07:00

I love the vintage look of some of these tags. Of course to me instead of seeing them as vintage, I see them more as Pip Boy style from Fallout, lol. I guess that's just how nerdy I am ;) Either way, they made darling cards. I love pretty much all of them! The tags and borders were the most fun to work with in this set, probably because they are larger and more substantial. The stickers were cute, but most of them were a bit smaller so they didn't fill the cards quite as much as I like.

So that's the last of them! Our quickie Christmas cards that I made for this year. I do realize if I had prioritized a little better I would have made Christmas cards over Thanksgiving weekend and done the gift card sets after the semester was over. Ah well, live and learn ;) Hope you enjoyed them! Have a great day!

Have a Holly Jolly Christmas

2011-12-21T06:24:00.048-07:00

Here are some more of the Christmas cards I made. I got them all sent out on Friday, yay! Hopefully they will get to their destinations before Christmas. This batch is with the sweet color theme from the houses. I just love how candyland it feels. This one was one of my favorites. I love the text and the fun houses, it's just so cute and sweet!

For the most part these cards came together pretty quickly. The sewing took extra time, but I think it added that little extra something that keeps the cards from looking too plain. I did all 20 cards in a single day, so that's saying something for the quickness of them, at least compared to my usual cards ;) Of course none of them have any stamping either. I think if I need to do cards mass produced again I'll do a stamped up set. Maybe I'll make one just in case for next year, lol. Enjoy and have a wonderful Wednesday!

Sister Cards - Tulips

2011-12-20T10:52:00.001-07:00

I saved my favorite for last. I really love these tulips and the set is so fun to play with. I'm hoping to get in some time to create a fun little set for myself with these tulips ;) The colors speak very cozy to me, like a warm quilt and a cup of coffee. I know I usually think of spring and summer when I see tulips, but I kind of like that they are cozy here.

And this is the last set that I made. Everything else is just baked treats for our extended family. This year I'll be making cowboy cookies (peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip) and ginger chewies ;) Maybe I'll snap a pic of the gifty bags and their tags. I simply did another mass produced tag and paired it with regular kraft gift bags. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed seeing all these mini sets. Have a wonderful week getting ready for the holidays!

Sister Cards - Sweet

2011-12-19T10:17:00.002-07:00

Today is my 30th birthday! Is it strange that I'm happy to finally be in my 30s, lol? I've always felt older than I am, pretty much all my life. Now that I am 30, I finally feel more like my age ;) Anyway, I decided that since it's my b-day, I'd post the cupcake set I made for the sister cards. This was one of my favorite sets, mostly because I just love the cupcakes. This is definitely my go-to birthday stamp set. As for my day, I'm not doing much really and that's perfectly wonderful for me. The kiddos are still in school and I've been hustling to make the last of the Christmas prezzies. Today will be all about relaxing though. I'm planning on doing whatever I want, so probably reading, lol. The hubby will be taking me out to dinner tonight so I won't have to cook either ;)

However, I will be making a cake. For Cherry's b-day she had requested a chocolate cake with strawberry icing. I hate canned icing so I decided we'd just pick up some strawberry extract and I'd make the icing like I usually do. Only we couldn't find strawberry anywhere. But we did find raspberry and luckily she's an easy going girl and was okay with that. So I made chocolate cake with raspberry cream cheese icing and it was SO GOOD! So, I decided that for my birthday we'd double it up and make it a chocolate raspberry cake with the raspberry cream cheese icing (in addition to the hubs already taking me out to dinner and having dessert there as well, lol). So I'm excited for that, and a day off ;) Anyways, I hope you all enjoy the cards and have a happy Monday!

Sister Cards - Cheerful

2011-12-18T10:04:00.000-07:00

These colors remind me of summer and sunshine. Plus the stamps are just very cute. Cherry loved this set, probably because of the bright colors. I really enjoyed mass producing all these cards. There's something about seeing them all packaged up pretty. I stacked and wrapped them with a cardstock strip then added a punched out label that I printed out for the card sets. They look so nice and Paul even said they looked all professional ;)

My favorite is the bird, probably because I was able to fit in the text flourishes on those cards. Though I do love those little tea cups. I only wish my ink came out better. It's really faded or dried out or something since the last time I used them (which was probably over a year ago!). Ah well, they still look pretty cute and that's what matters ;) Enjoy and have a lovely Sunday!

Sister Cards - Woodland

2011-12-17T10:39:00.001-07:00

This set was one of the most fun to make. I just love animal themes, especially these cute woodland creatures. I don't use them as often as I should though (that probably goes for all my stamping stuff!) One of these days I want to go through the set and just make a least one card per sentiment since the add on had so many fun sentiments in it. This skunk is still one of my faves, probably because it reminds me of my girls. They are so cute and yet they can be such little stinkers, lol!

The sister that this card set is for seems to have more guy friends than girl friends, or maybe they just do more with her hubby's friends, I'm not sure. Anyway, I wanted to make a set for her that could work for both guys and gals just in case ;) My hubby says that just getting a card is awesome and that I shouldn't worry about it too much, but I know when I make him cards I want them to be more masculine. Anyhoo, thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful weekend!

Sister Cards - Elegant

2011-12-16T09:37:00.005-07:00

For my sister and sister-in-laws I made little mini sets of 9 cards each. I wanted to make them at least a little customized, so I picked different color schemes and stamp sets for each sister. That way, if they gave them to each other or to the same person, it wouldn't be the exact same card ;) Here's the first batch.

I used the same formula for all the card sets. One of the top card, using the last scrap pieces and then four each of the two 3-panel cards. I know everyone can use extra birthday and thank you cards so those were the ones I made. Just really quick and simple, but something fun to get aside from the yearly goodies I bake. This set came out the most elegant ;) I hope you enjoy. Have a fabulous Friday!

Snowman Christmas Cards

2011-12-15T18:23:00.000-07:00

I didn't have many Christmas cards already made so I pulled out this cute set from Cosmo Cricket that I got a couple years ago. I had kept a lot of the tags and stickers with the premise that I was saving them for scrapping Christmas pictures. But as usual, instead of using them I just kept them around and I figured since I needed some cards quick, I'd use the set - tags and all - to make a fun set of flat Christmas cards to send out.

These are the snowmen cards I got out of the supplies I had left. I ended up making 20 different cards which I'll be posting the rest of next week ;) Most of the texts in these cards was from the border paper sheet. I love how cute these little snowmen are! Some machine stitching adds a bit of interest to these flat cards. I made them without any embellishments that stick out so that I could just slap a stamp on them and send them out seeing as it's already half way through December! Thanks for visiting and I hope you're all having a wonderful Thursday!

With a Tea Theme

2011-12-14T09:20:00.001-07:00

These are the last cards that I added to my moms' sets. This stamp set is so fun and it's been a while since I've played around with it. This time I used some an easy stripey pattern on the cards with various colors from the green tea leaves paper set.

And that's all of the cards in my mom and mom-in-law's gift sets. I also made a few extras to go in some gifty sets for a couple close friends as well. I know they're nothing fancy, but I'm proud of them and it makes me happy to know they will be appreciated and enjoyed ;) I hope you guys enjoyed the cards too! Have a lovely Wednesday!

Tulip Set

2011-12-13T10:50:00.001-07:00

One of my favorite kinds of flowers are tulips. So when Papertrey came out with this set, I got it almost immediately. Unfortunately I haven't used it very much. So with my gifty cards I thought to change all that. These are part of the gift set for my mom and my MIL. Again I stuck with the 4 of each card so each set would have 2 of a kind.

They are simple like the other ones. I really loved playing with the set! And using up these green tea leaves papers is an extra plus. I love it when I use up supplies! Anyway, I hope you enjoy and have a wonderful Tuesday!

Quick Cards for Gifting and Giving

2011-12-12T10:49:00.000-07:00

I'm sorry for being MIA for so long! The last couple months have gone by so quickly and this week I will finish the last of my finals (yay!) Cherry's birthday last week was a blast and Thanksgiving was wonderful. I hope the fall and winter have been treating all of you well ;) So for my first post back after the past two months I thought I'd share a quick little Christmas gift to whip up. I've made these over Thanksgiving weekend but haven't had the chance to snap pics of them and post until now. Using one all around stamp set (I believe the 2010 anniversary set from Papertrey Ink), I created this first round of simple cards from supplies I already had on hand. These took a couple hours to make two sets - one for my mom and one for my MIL. There are 4 of each card - 2 per set.

There is just a 4x4 piece of pattern paper paired with a stamped image that's been punched out with a circle punch and matted on scallop punched cardstock. Some of the cards I used an extra strip of 1.25" pattern paper in the smaller print, mostly to use up extra paper I have on hand. I also added pretty little punched borders, but overall the cards are very simple and no fuss. Plus they are flat for easy mailing, something I've noticed my relatives have a hard time with if I give them embellished cards. They are fun little notecards for people who aren't as into the crafting scene as I am. I can make a lot of these really quickly too, which makes them great for a simple gift. This is just the first batch that went in the big set I made for my moms. I'll be posting the rest of sets I made them and the sets I made for my sis and SILs later this week and next. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy and have a lovely Monday!

Week 7 in Drawing

2011-10-13T08:54:00.000-06:00

18" x 24" - Skeletal Study - Skull and Elbow - Pencil - October 3, 2011

This was the last week of sketches before midterm and we worked on the skeletal form with our very stylishly posed yet somewhat incomplete skeleton ;) It felt perfect for the upcoming Halloween and I just realized with posting this that even my extra credit sketch is Halloweenesque! Anyway, this piece is simply whatever medium we wanted on the white. I picked pencil.

12" x 18" - Skeletal Study - Hip - White Charcoal and Conte Crayon on Black Paper - October 5, 2011

The real challenge came when we had to use a white medium on black paper. Trying to draw the light instead of the shadows was really difficult for me and I got very frustrated with this one, to the point where I ended with scribbling frantically with a lot of my marks. Everyone who saw it really liked it though, so I suppose it didn't come out as bad as I thought ;) After all, that 'sketchy' look is quite popular, lol.

9" x 11" - Extra Study - Crafted Raven - Ultra Fine and Fine Sharpie - Oct. 7, 2011

And here is my extra credit piece. The raven I used was actually missing an eye and he's a bit banged up, so I tried to improve him slightly in my picture. I at least gave him two whole eyes ;) Anyway, it's semester break and I'm really REALLY hoping to steal some crafty time - make a card, scrap a page, or sew something, while on break. So hopefully, I'll have something actually crafty to share with you soon! Thanks for sticking around gals ;)

Week 6 in Drawing

2011-10-12T08:37:00.002-06:00

18" x 24" - Marker Study - Organic Composition - Ultra Fine and Fine Sharpie - Sept. 30, 2011

18" x 24" - Marker Study - Garden Bird - Ultra Fine Sharpie - Sept. 30, 2011

In week 6 we continued with the markers and worked on a composition piece. Because I ended up with a little extra time the week before, I had started a second single study sketch of a bird and between coming to class early and staying a little later, I finished the stippled bird the morning before finishing the composition. There was actually quite a bit in the composition piece which was a large tree in a basket (I have the trunk with the vines around it here in my piece) along with a lot of little things scattered on the table and some birds in the trees (which I couldn't see from where I was sitting). I actually started to sketch more of the bottom area with the basket and items, including a pheasant, but I didn't like the way it was turning out so I refocused on the leaves next to the tree trunk.

9" x 12" - Marker Study - Pretty Mug Style #1 - Ultra Fine and Fine Sharpie - Oct.2, 2011

9" x 11" - Marker Study - Pretty Mug Style #2 - Ultra Fine Sharpie - Oct. 2, 2011

9" x 11" - Marker Study - Pretty Mug Style #3 - Ultra Fine and Fine Sharpie - Oct. 8, 2011

For our homework studies, this time we were to pick one single item and draw it three times in three different styles. This was really hard for me because I wasn't really sure how to come up with 3 distinct styles, but in the end, they worked out fairly well. My mugs seem a little off kilter, and I notice that I really struggle with that back curve on all three, but as a whole I think they were a fun experiment. Anyway, I've got one more week left to share with you and it's only a few pictures since we got to have that week as a make up sketch week. Thanks for stopping by ;)

Week 5 Marker Sketches

2011-10-10T00:37:00.000-06:00

18" x 24" - Marker Study - Pretty Ceramic Chicken - Ultra Fine Sharpie - Sept. 23, 2011

So I finally got around to taking pictures of my projects for the past 3 weeks, which is good since I have to turn them all in today for midterms and probably won't see them again for a while ;) Week 5 was the intro into markers.Talk about challenging! When we first talked about doing the marker sketches I was really excited. But then I realized my idea of sketching with markers is to create outlines so that I can fill the rest in with color! The challenge here is using just the black markers. Because I've only doodled with pens, and nothing serious mind you - just things on the margins of my notes, this week was filled with experimenting for me. My main project was a fun ceramic bird that looked like a pretty chicken. For this sketch I just kind of let go of my expectations for myself and simply played around with the marker, seeing what I could come up with. I actually really like how it turned out. It's like a huge doodle.

9" x 12" - Marker Study - Big Fat Latte Mug - Ultra Fine and Fine Sharpie - Sept. 25, 2011

9" x 12" - Marker Study - LPS Hermit Crab - Ultra Fine and Fine Sharpie - Sept. 25, 2011

9" x 12" - Marker Study - Beaded Pumpkin - Ultra Fine and Fine Sharpie - Sept. 27, 2011

My first sketch was just more exploration with the marker. I did the bottom mug first, trying a more structured variation of what I did on the bird. I like the handle came out, as well as the very center of the inside of the mug, but the rest I'm not loving. Then with the other sketch I tried some vertical feathering strokes. I again really like the handle, but not much else, lol. So with my next sketch, which I just love because it's so stinkin' cute, I did a variation of structured parallel lines along with outlining the curves. Then on the beaded pumpkin in my 3rd sketch, I added some stipling to go along with my structured lines. Very fun and very different from the pencil and charcoal mediums we have been using. I'll be posting the other two weeks of projects later this week. Enjoy and thanks for stopping by!

Week 4 in Drawing

2011-09-25T23:47:00.001-06:00

Metal Pencil Study - Lancelot - Pencil and Graphite Stick - Sept. 16 2011

It's a week late, but I finally got pictures of my second round of pencil sketches. The subject for week 4 was metal, so all our sketches had to be of something metallic. I have to admit, so far this has been the hardest assignment for me. When I get to pick my own subject matter I usually go with cutesy or girlie things. Needless to say, after getting the assignment to stick to metal objects I was pretty stumped. In fact I was so stumped that I only finished that week's last sketch this Saturday. But here they are finally, lol. Luckily our sketchbooks aren't due every week. We'll turn in them in for midterms and finals. Here's the main piece we worked on during the week. We call him Lancelot ;) The armor isn't to scale, it's an artist rendition and I did have a bit of fun drawing him.

Metal Pencil Study - Top of Pepsi Can - Pencil and Graphite Stick - Sept. 18, 2011

Metal Pencil Study - Meat Mallet Smooth - Pencil and Graphite Stick - Sept. 18, 2011

Metal Pencil Study - Cabodle's Case Latch - Pencil - September 24, 2011

My first metal sketch was just the top of a pepsi can. I couldn't get the curves to come out the way I wanted and after countless tries and erasing I finally gave in and just went with it. So it came out alright but not as nice as I wanted. The second is my meat mallet. I did the smooth side. I really like the way the shading came out on this one, but I noticed afterward that I got some of the angles wrong. The last sketch, a lock on Apple's cabodles box, came out the best. It is, of course, my favorite of the bunch ;) We're working on marker now and I have just one more sketch to finish up before I share my pics on the old bloggo. Anyway, I hope you all have a terrific Monday. Thanks for stopping by!

Week 3 in Drawing

2011-09-15T00:11:00.000-06:00

Pencil Study - Crafted Owl - Pencil and Graphite Stick - September 9, 2011

This week we're working on using pencil and graphite. Instead of trying to do 3 sketchier studies of a single item we could opt to do one larger piece to work on the entire week. So I picked this owl I have been eyeing in the classroom and got to work on it. I think he came out pretty good. For the homework we had to pick 3 single items again. I got a little ambitious with the wisk. I think the idea was mostly how neat I thought it would look after it was done instead of what a pain it would be to draw all the wisky parts!

Pencil Study - Favorite Wisk - Pencil and Graphite - September 11, 2011

Pencil Study - Plastic Star Glasses - Pencil and Graphite Stick - September 11, 2011

Pencil Study - Leather Pump - Pencil - September 14, 2011

Later that same day I did the plastic star glasses. I was a little drawed out by then so they were a lot smaller (the wisk takes up the entire 9x11 page and the glasses are probably only in about a 3x6 section. Today I finished my 3rd pencil single study - one of my cute leather pumps that I don't get to wear very often because it's too much of a pain to wear heels when I'm walking all over campus! Anyway, hope you're all having a great week!

Week 2 in Drawing

2011-09-06T22:30:00.000-06:00

Study #4 - Charcoal Pencil and Vine - White Stork, Faux Log, Nuts - September 2, 2011

Our second week we've continued to work on using charcoal and now instead of single studies we've been working on compositions. The entire week was used to work on one large 18 x 24 composition, filling the entire, or close to the entire, page. Where we sat determined what part of the composition we could see. Of what I could see, this was part I chose to sketch - a wooden stork, a small branch of some nut like things, all set on the backdrop of a large faux log. The background was to be filled in with black. I finished early on Friday and used the rest of class to practice on the pine cone and little squash in the composition. My pinecone looks squashed, lol, but I think my mini pumpkin gourd thing came out pretty well ;)

Practice - Charcoal Pencil and Vine - Pinecone and Mini Gourd - September 2, 2011

The sketchbook assignment was to do mini compositions in our 9 x 11 book. Put together two items. We could do more, but no more than 3. I had a ton of fun with my projects and tried to pick out items that could tell a story of sorts, so a lot of toys were used in my sketches this week. The first one I want to add the quote to Vader, "Now you belong to me" and have a little "mew?" caption above the LPS kitten ears. The second is Apple's velociraptor playing the xbox. I have it on good authority that he was playing Lego Harry Potter ;) And last is the rainbow My Little Pony wearing 3D glasses. These were all both fun and frustrating, lol. They definitely taught me a lot!

Sketch #5 - Charcoal Pencil, Vine, and White - LP Vader vs LPS Kitten - September 4, 2011

Sketch #6 - Charcoal Pencil, Vine, and White - Velociraptor playing XBox - September 4, 2011

Sketch #7 - Charcoal Pencil, Vine, and White - My Little Pony in 3D Glasses - September 6, 2011

Anyway, I hope you enjoy these peeks into my drawing projects ;) Have a wonderful week!

Book Worm Ruby Book Mark

2011-09-01T22:46:00.000-06:00

I squeezed some crafting time in, mostly because of all the amazingly darling bookmarks posted on Sparkle's Stamp blog for the #58 challenge - anything but a card. After seeing all the fun inspiration, I couldn't put off making something any longer so I finally mounted my new stamps from the past two orders onto some cling and did a marathon stamping out session of all my new image goodies and even stamped out images from my oldies since I had only 3 pre-stamped images left. Because the bookmarks were what inspired me, I had to make one for myself. I adore how this came out! Colored with my usual pencils and white gel pen. I also used black ink in the hair as well and I really like how it turned out ;) Anyway, I hope you all have a fabulous labor day weekend!

Week 1 in Drawing

2011-08-28T21:39:00.000-06:00

I don't have anything crafty to share, but I have been logging a lot of time with my drawing class. Here are my sketches for the week - all studies in charcoal. I've never used it before and it's a bit messy as opposed to my fav, colored pencils. But I think I'm getting the hang of it. These 3 pages were done during class. The big challenges for me with these were getting used to the charcoal and also drawing from 3D objects, which I'm really not very good at, lol. These are all in my big drawing book, the pages are 18x24 inches.

Study #1 - Charcoal Stick - Wooden White Bird - August 24, 2011

Study #2 - Charcoal Stick - Ceramic Black Cat - August 24, 2011

Study #3 - Charcoal Stick - Faux Pear and Glossy Stone Apple - August 26, 2011

These other 4 are from my smaller sketch book which is 9x12. They are my at home studies so all of these goodies were actually found around our home ;)

Sketch #1 - Ceramic Bird - Charcoal Stick and Pencil - August 27, 2011

Sketch #2 - Charcoal Pencil and Vine - Turtle Sand Beanie - August 27, 2011

Sketch #3 - Charcoal Pencil and Vine - Littlest Pet Shop Fish - August 28, 2011

Sketch #4 - Charcoal Pencil and Vine - Silk Orchids Mini - August 28, 2011

The beanie turtle and orchids are my favorite of the bunch. I think I've finally come up with a method that works for me with the charcoal and that's to use the pencils and the vines. The stick is a little hard to control but it does give nice deep black lines and shades great for big surfaces. I forced myself out of my comfort zone and stuck with solely the stick on my big pad projects and then experimented with the others at home. Anyway, just thought I'd share. Hope you all had a wonderful week!

Altering My Sketchbook

2011-08-24T21:35:00.000-06:00

My drawing class requires two drawing pads. The octopus is on an 18x24 inch drawing pad and this one is my sketch book, just 9x12. I didn't really come up with a plan for these books ahead of time, instead they both worked out with one thing leading to another. With the octopus, it started with the blue pencil that led to a blue varigated D that led to fishes in the rest of the letters which led to the octopus. This sketch pad went much quicker mostly because it's quite a bit smaller, but also because the inspiration for the peacock came immediately after I finished coloring in the sketch of the girl. The colors I picked ended up reminding me of a peacock so I went with it starting with the feather and then drawing the bird's profile in the left corner. The colors are much darker and saturated in real life, probably because I used a flash again since it's late and I know I won't get around to taking any photos in the morning. Anyway, even though I'm not doing anything crafty, I thought I'd share ;) Hope you enjoy and are having a great week! Thanks for visiting!

Uniquefying My Drawing Pad

2011-08-23T21:37:00.000-06:00

All three of us girls have started back-to-school and it has been so hectic here for the past couple weeks! Apple and I started this week while Cherry began last week (kindergarteners in our district start a week later due to individual testing the first week). Unfortunately, because we're still getting used to the routine, our home has been in this perpetual state of looking like a tornado blew through. And of course instead of cleaning, I'm playing around with doodles on my drawing pad. After all, I don't want it looking like everyone else's pad, right? ;) So here's my fun huge doodle to uniquefy my drawing pad. The close up is to show you the fun little fish and bubbles I put in the letters. Just a quick post since I'm off to read for biology now. Thanks for stopping by and seeing what we're up to!

For the Hubs

2011-08-12T09:46:00.047-06:00

Paul's birthday was on Monday and we surprised him with some fun homemade banners, lemon cream-cheese cake, and gifts. These were my crafty creations for his day. Of course I had to make him a card. And I couldn't help but use birthday Josh. The girls demanded daddy have a goatee on his card so I did my best to replicate his face fuzz. Paul loved it, lol! Apple also wanted daddy to have his blue eyes so I added a very slight blue line next to the pupil. There isn't much room there to do that, but I think it turned out quite well ;)

My dear hubby is an avid reader like myself and I had found a bunch of thrift books right up his alley. The classics 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Treasure Island, both of which he hasn't read surprisingly, plus a bunch of 'literature' mini books on classic poetry and myths, just like some of his other lit books he kept from his classes in college. I know that sounds completely boring to most people, myself included ha! But he loves that stuff ;) So I made a new bookmark for him (he's great at losing those) for his new reads and a bookmark for his other project that I made...

... A book journal! He's been talking about keeping track of his reads better and so I took a composition notebook and covered it. I also covered the inside panels to have a little folder spot for him to slip stuff in. Then for the first half of the book I organized the pages, putting prompts for his book entries (Title, Author, Date, Rating, Plot, and Thoughts) along with list sections for what books he wants to read, favorites, etc. Because he loves writing as well I put in some fun poetry prompts for him and writing challenges. After seeing how cool his turned out, I'm itching to make one for myself! Especially since most of my summer has been spent reading rather than crafting, hehe. Anyway, thanks for stopping by and I hope y'all have a great weekend!

Crazy for Reptiles

2011-08-10T08:42:00.014-06:00

Though Cherry is usually the reptile fan in our family, Apple also jumped the reptile bandwagon while we were at the zoo. She really got into all the lizards, snakes, and turtles. She calls the huge snake she got as a souvenir "daddy snake". Paul and I like to call him Jake the Snake like from Rango since his tail jingles, he's got the evil viper eyes, and well Jake the Snake is just plain fun. I truly expected Cherry to get a snake since snakes are her favorite but she was really intent on bringing home a dinosaur. She picked out this very bright blue T-Rex which reminds me of blue raspberry icees. The T-Rex has yet to gain a name that actually sticks other than T-Rex, but we're working on it ;)

The zoo trip was just the girls and I. Paul had a few doctors appointments and some tests to do and it just turned out that they were on a day that I didn't have any classes. So we thought it would be fun to take the girls up north with us and I would spend the day at the zoo with them. They loved it so much that even after getting home late at night after a 5 hour drive home, Apple still asked the next morning if we could go back up to the zoo again, lol! They really loved seeing all those animals. We'll definitely be doing this again next year ;)

Elephants and Rhinos

2011-08-08T19:28:00.037-06:00

The elephants were so cool that the girls wanted to visit their exhibit twice. And I'm glad we did. The first time was for the elephant show which was really just the zookeepers talking about how they care for the elephants and the elephant demonstrating a few things. Both the girls liked the elephant, but weren't overly amazed about this show like they were at the bird show earlier. However, the second time we came back, the baby elephant Zoey was out. The girls loved watching her and her momma ;)

This is the last week before school starts back up for us, so we're definitely trying to make the most of it! Plus we still have our back-to-school shopping to do, eek! Anyways, I hope you all enjoy the pages and have a great Monday!

Kitty Skirt and Refashioned Shorts

2011-08-06T07:32:00.042-06:00

I've been trying to fit in some back-to-school sewing. This was some remnant fabric I picked up from Joann's probably 2-3 years ago. I'm sure I had some idea for a little blankie with it - back then all the fabric I bought was for potential kid's quilts. I also had this black floral fat quarter hanging around, which I probably picked up about the same time as the remnant. They've obviously been sitting around unloved for quite a while and since my girls aren't getting any smaller I thought I should get it used up. I whipped up a simple tiered skirt a la no pattern for Apple since she's our resident cat lover. I'm not crazy about the material, but Apple seems to make anything look cute so it works ;) Besides, she loves the kitties and I suppose that's all that really matters.

This is a refashion from Cherry's darling cordouroy leggings that she got for Christmas. She's just been so hard on clothes this past year. These were her favorite pants and they had huge gaping holes in the knees since she wore them all the time. Because they taper and are quite snug even on my little string bean daughter, I couldn't cuff them like I wanted to originally. So I found some matching fabric in my stash and proceeded to refashion them into shorts with a cute ruffle. Luckily for me, even though Cherry was upset at losing her pants, she was really happy with the ruffle addition. I'm hoping to make a matching pillowcase tank to go with it using the rest of the fat quarter print and some solid pink that I have onhand. First I have to either buy or learn how to make bias tape though. Anyway, thanks for stopping by ;) Have a wonderful weekend!

Big Cats

2011-08-05T07:55:00.002-06:00

Apple's favorite thing at the zoo was seeing the big cats. There was this beautiful leopard pacing right next to the glass of its exhibit. It both scared and delighted all the kiddos that were watching. Both the girls were more excited than frightened. Most of the big kitties were lounging in the shade or napping. Last week when we went thrifting we picked up the cutest white tiger for $1. It looked brand new but even so she still went through a cycle in the wash. Apple's named her Sasha. She's a great addition to all her other tigers!

Cherry has had a big thing for maps lately and she played our little navigator at the zoo. This page happens to be one of my favorites that I've made, even though it doesn't use my favorite pictures. I think I just like the sampling of all the papers and the fun little animal stack ;) Last month we picked up a yearly pass to the wildlife museum here. It's just a small museum, but every Saturday it has a fun kids club activity where the kiddos get to learn about a specific animal. The girls love it and it adds a little something educational to their week while out of school. Plus I think in a way it feels like an extension of the zoo. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy the page and have a fab Friday!

Exhibits

2011-08-03T07:28:00.029-06:00

Cherry and Apple loved looking for the animals in their exhibits. "It's like I-Spy!" Cherry said a few times. Of course her favorite was looking at the snakes. Apple was amazed with all the animals and got quite the fun surprise in the rainforest open exhibit as a bright blue bird flew right by her and up to a branch. It flew so close that it whooshed her hair up! The cutesy animal papers are from Sassfras that I picked up on clearance quite a while ago. I had no idea what I'd use it for at the time and I'm so glad I have it now! The alpha viper is from a darling paper I got years ago. The animals were all very boy and boy colored, but I just loved the embossed animals and alpha theme.

The girls really liked giraffes as well and it was a real treat to get to see one up close. The zoo wasn't doing a feeding activity today so we just watched as the giraffe walked around her exhibit. Cherry mistakenly read the height sign as 6 feet instead of 16. She shouted out "Woah, that giraffe is 6 feet tall!" lol, too funny! Thanks for visiting and enjoy the layout!

Braces and a Zoo Page

2011-08-01T07:07:00.018-06:00

Guess what Cherry got last week? Yup, braces! She's got a 'shark tooth' coming out - a tooth that's erupted into her roof palette. Long story short she had to have 2 baby teeth pulled (one still had a long full root) and had her braces put in to set her foundation for when the tooth has fully grown out. Then they will attach the shark tooth and the braces with pull it forward to the gums where it needs to be. The orthodondist said 6 months to 1 year and then 4-6 months wearing a retainer after that. Not all her permanent teeth have showed themselves so hopefully this will be the only 'shark tooth'. Cherry was super excited to get them and loves them even with all the extra weird brushing and floss stuff. I'm so glad she's happy about it because her attitude makes it about a million times easier for us to help her take care of them. Her favorite part is choosing the color of her ties, of course ;) She had purple and pink, but because one of the brackets came off (it was on a capped tooth) we had to go back early so she picked out new ones and is currently sporting watermelon and red.

Most of my time lately has been spent cleaning, reorganizing, and listing things to make for birthdays and Christmas (yup it's about time for me to be prepping for that already) plus a little back-to-school sewing. But I've managed some blog hopping time and came across a cute and probably old idea for talking about the kiddos online by using nicknames. As you've probably already noticed, I've come up with aliases for the girls here on the old bloggo - Cherry and Apple. I figure since they're such little fruitcakes, I'd nickname them after fruits. Obviously C is Cherry and A is Apple so nothing drastic ;) Anyhoo, it's been forever since I've actually printed any pictures and I figured I'd start with the photos I love right now - our summer staycation activities - to kick start my scrapping mojo. So here's the first page to the zoo part of what will be our summer 2011 album. Hope you all have a happy Monday and thanks for stopping by!

Birdies and Cupcakes Quilt

2011-07-30T09:11:00.042-06:00

Like with the Central Park charm pack, I bought this Hoot charm pack it seems forever ago! I had been planning to make a little quilt with it. Since it was my first charm pack, I thought that simply sewing all the squares together would make a big enough kid size quilt. It would make a darling baby quilt, but my girls are bigger now and so I tried to devise a simple pattern that would use just the fabric I had on hand. This is the turn out, with the final measurements at 50x60 ;) The top is actually quilted with blue, pink, and green threads. They aren't super noticable when just looking casually, but up-close it's a fun detail.

I think I love the back more than the front, lol. Even though I really like all the white space on the front of the quilt (plus it may give me the opportunity to embroider a few cute birdies and cupcakes in the corner squares later on), I really love all the bright fun colors and patterns on the back. In fact, these few patterns are some of my favorites that I've been hoarding. The cupcake fabric I bought a few years ago. It was just so cute that I had to get a bit of yardage. I still have nearly a yard in scraps left over even after the 3 aprons and this quilt. The little birds got completely used up in this and I have just enough apple fabric for something small and fun. My SIL saw the back and said it reminded her of one of our local cupcake shops. Their logo is a cute little bird with a cupcake ;) The sweet bit of yellow binding is left over from the aprons. It felt so good to finally use these fabrics up on such a cute project! Now I need to figure out what to make C since this quilt went to little A. Thanks for stopping by and I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Non-Madras Madras Bag

2011-07-25T07:36:00.006-06:00

Once I finished making the girls' library tote bags I really wanted to make my own tote bag out of some fabric I bought over a year ago and have just loved simply looking at. After seeing Noodlehead's Madras bag tutorial I figured that it would be perfect for what I was looking for and fit within the amount of fabric I had on hand. I call it my non-madras madras bag. I made the straps long enough to go across the chest for heavy lifting and I can tie them together to make it just the right length for a shoulder tote ;) Gotta love versatility in your bags! It's been great for the summer and I've used it for everything from pool trips to museum outings to long shopping days and of course library visits. Love it!

Library Book Bags

2011-07-23T11:22:00.013-06:00

The semester is finished, yay! I've got some crafty plans - scrapping our zoo pictures, playing in some card challenges, and of course lots of sewing - and I've got some family plans - days at the pool, picnics and park visits, plus some light hiking. I'm excited for my next couple of weeks off ;) Earlier this year I had picked up a Central Park charm pack by Moda from my favorite quilt shop. I have loved just looking at all these little 5" fabric squares but it was time to use them on something and the girls and I decided that something would be library book bags! I'm simply separated 2 sets of 9 charms for each bag, focusing on a blues and oranges for A's and purples and yellows for C's. I lined the insides with solid fabric I had on hand (A's is pale blue, C's is deep purple) then used some fat quarters for the straps. I also added some interfacing to make the totes a bit more sturdy. The girls and I love how they turned out!

At the beginning of June the weekly reading activity started at the library. The goal is to read 10 books a week (for the younger kids). Being that we usually check out anywhere from 12-18 books and I end up carrying about 9-15 of those, I thought some cute book bags would help encourage my little readers to help carry at least a few more of their chosen stories. Though I'm just getting to post the bags now, they've been well loved the past couple months and I'm glad to say that the plan worked out great! Now each of them can carry at least 5 books. Anyway, thanks for popping by to see what we've been up to and have a spectacular Saturday!

Summer Tier Dress and Leftovers Skirt

2011-07-21T09:01:00.000-06:00

I promised A I'd make her a dress this summer. So I picked up some fabric on sale at Joann's (2 yards for $7) and went to work. I used another of Sandi's patterns, this one is the Gracie pattern that includes a Jumper, Tiered Dress, Tiered Top, and Tiered Skirt. Some people are probably talented enough to make these without a pattern, but I really need the extra guidance, instructions, and pattern pieces. Being the wimpy seamstress that I am, I still haven't gotten up the courage to figure out the button hole settings on my machine so instead of fussing with that I made the tiered top v-neck bodice piece for the tiered dress instead of the original yoke version. Audrey loves it ;)

I had a little bit of extra fabric so I made a simple elastic waistband skirt with a white ruffle for C. I was a least brave enough to do this one without a pattern, lol. I've read, saved, and ogled enough tutorials on simple elastic waist skirts and shorts that even though I was petrified to not have a pattern walking me step-by-step through the process, I was able pull this together. Now that I have the photos uploaded together, the colors look different. That's what I get for taking pics of A's dress in the afternoon one day and C's early one morning, lol. Anyway, $7 for a darling dress and skirt isn't too bad ;) Enjoy and thanks for stopping by!

The Blue Remnant Dress

2011-07-18T08:49:00.011-06:00

I made this dress a few months ago, about a week after making the butterfly blouse. The dress uses the same pattern and uses all remnant fabrics I picked up from Joann's. Awesome, right? I mean who gets a darling boutique blouse and a cute peasant dress for less than $10? I'm glowing with frugal momma pride right now, lol. Anyways, I hadn't set aside a morning to take photos before school started again so I ended up doing a lot of catch-up shots this last weekend since I've sewn a few other pieces of clothing for the girls since then as well. The peasant dress and blouse that I made come from Sandi Henderson's "Claire" Portobello Pixie Pattern. Right now here patterns page on her site is down due to maintenence, so I don't have a link to it. Claire comes with 4 designs - the Round Neck Apron Dress, Petal Knot Dress, Peasant Dress and Peasant Blouse. The Peasant Dress and Blouse are the ones I've made so far.

C has worn this dress more than a dozen times since I've made it. In fact, it's one of her go-to dresses and she wears it practically the moment it gets out of the dryer, lol. I'm glad she loves the clothes I make her so much. The one thing that makes me sad is that after size 8 I don't have anymore patterns for clothing that will fit her. Anyway, I hope you enjoy and thanks for popping on by!

Our Store

2011-07-15T07:42:00.006-06:00

I have to admit that even though I love the Echo Park's paper lines, I really have a hard time using them for some reason - unless it's for making goodies for the girls' room, lol. They currently have a new fun paper chain along one wall of their room. I used up all those papers that I adored, haven't been able to scrap with, probably won't scrap with, but love too much to simply give away. Now they decorate C and A's room and it looks so very cute! I get to see the designs all the time now ;) Anyway, I did keep a couple sheets that I knew I'd scrap with and the background paper was one of those. The sticker sets come in ultra handy too, which I also used here. Another Susan case, you should probably expect that of all my layouts until my next summer break when I have more time to fuss over my pages, lol. Anyway, just a silly layout of my silly girls. I couldn't figure out what they were doing two years ago until C saw the pictures while I was scrapping. She cuddled up to me while I started putting the page together and said, "Hey, that's our old store!" When I asked her about it she told me the whole story of how they were setting up a shop for their dolls and animals. So that's what they were doing, lol. Now I know ;)

Pucker Up

2011-07-12T08:38:00.002-06:00

Can you tell I'd been in an American Crafts kind of mood? This layout was another basic sketch case from another one of Susan's layouts. Casing or using a sketch helps me to just create when I'm lacking in time, that way I can just play with my papers and goodies - not worry about layout design ;) Anyway, I've adored this funny puckered up pic of C for quite a while and finally realized the colors go perfect with the lipstick print paper I got forever ago. Lately she's been big into The Little Mermaid again and everytime Sebastain says "You got to bat your eyes, like dis... You got to puck out your lips, like dis," she puckers up and says the lines right along, laughing while she's trying to say them like the crab. I miss being at home with them so much. I know right now I'm technically not missing out on anything since they are home all day, but I can't help but feel like I just don't have enough time with them. Since starting back to school, I've been even more grateful for the time I had as a stay-at-home mom, to be there every moment when my girls were babies and toddlers. Gosh they grow up so fast! Anyhoo, I hope you enjoy the layout ;) And have a wonderful day!

Home Is Where You Are

2011-07-10T07:00:00.002-06:00

I must say I've been patting myself on the back ever since I finished these adobe layouts because I used up practically all my adobe papers and stickers. Yay! I love that feeling of completion. I just used the scraps to put this layout together and picked a home theme so I could use up more of my adobe stickers. Quite cute, though in retrospect I think I was supposed to use trade-in this photo for an older one in a frame. Ah well, I can always reprint another and this time I can make it black and white since I've had a b&w kick with my displayed photos lately. Anyway, just a quickie post - hope you enjoy! Have a lovely Sunday!

What's Cookin'?

2011-07-08T08:27:00.005-06:00

A few weekends ago I managed to get a bit scrappy ;) I cased one of Susan's layouts. I love her clean-lined, kid-friendly style and her layouts make great sketches for jumping-off points. These two cooking layouts were actually done without the photos because I didn't have the photos printed (and was out of ink in my printer) so they didn't get completed until a week of so after I made the pages.

This page was perfect for using up all those stickers that I adored but had no idea what to really do with. Both C and A still love their aprons and wear them any time I bake so that they can help, which, trust me, is quite often, lol! C is getting old enough to start helping cook just a little bit. I have her mix the saute veggies or help brown meat to try to get her accustomed to what it's like to cook. It's hard sometimes since she gets scared of the heat on the stove. Ever since Audrey burned her hand on the stove, both girls have been very wary of the range and oven. That can be good though. Being careful while cooking definitely isn't a bad thing ;) Anyways, thanks for visiting and I hope you enjoyed the pages!

Scrappy Art Garland

2011-07-05T07:20:00.001-06:00

Despite the lack of posts these past summer months, I have been getting a little crafting time in. Mostly sewing. This weekend I had a little time to take pictures and type up a few posts. These are a few quickie photos of the art garland I made for the girls' room. They have been wanting someplace other than just the fridge door to display their art projects (especially the funny shaped stuff), so I thought I'd pick up some clothespins from the dollar store and find some string or something to hang them up laundry line style. But I had a hard time finding thick enough string that wasn't ugly, lol.

So this last week I came across this tutorial for a storage softie garland linked via One Pretty Thing and adapted it to an art garland. The main differences are that I cut my strips 2" wide by however long my scrap was and I sewed up the strips right sides together and pressed them open for a more polished look. When braiding I simply twisted the fabric so that the zigzag seem was hidden in the back. So cute!! I love how they turned out and it was the perfect project to really whittle down my fabric scraps pile! The purple/pink one is C's since purple is her favorite color and the blue/orange one is A's since blue is her favorite color now. I let them each paint their own set of clothespins as well. They love that they have a special place to hang their art and I love that it looks way cute in their room! Enjoy and I hope everyone had a happy 4th!

Reptile Week for the Kiddos

2011-06-20T05:01:00.027-06:00

Since my summer classes are compressed (16 weeks of course material crammed into 8 weeks), it's become even harder for me to spend any real time with the girls. It basically makes my classes twice as long and homework twice as long, because I'm done twice as fast. Makes sense, right? Because of that I only took 7 credits, which is awful during the week with quizzes and homework each day and night, but quite nice during the weekends since everything is pretty much done during the week. Weekdays, I feel absolutely wracked with guilt because I don't have time to spend with my family, so much so that I can't even manage to cook dinner Mon - Thurs. But since the crazy study/homework/classes marathon really only runs Mon-Thurs, I'm able to try and make up for some of my lack of domestic participation on the weekends. This last weekend I decided to try a theme and that theme ended up being reptiles.

C loves reptiles. Her absolute favorite animal is the rattlesnake. So that was the inspiration the this last week's theme. We checked books out at the library, watched some documentaries, and best of all - created fun crafty reptile things from Fri-Sun. During the quiet times at home, after the hours at the pool, running errands, and sweating our buns off in the heat, it's been nice to have something entertaining for the girls to do indoors while I catch up on laundry, make a decent meal, or just collapse into my chair and surf the net. And just in case any of you other moms want some fun ideas to do with the kiddos, I'm posting our projects.

Accordian Snake:

Supplies:
Construction Paper
Tape
Pipe Cleaners
Googly Eyes
Scissors
Glue, Glue Dots, or Double-sided tape

The first I'll share is the bouncy accordian snake adapted from this pattern. DLTK had a great tutorial that we changed up to look a little more 3D-snake like. Instead of a straw, I used a pipecleaner tucked into the last accordian fold and taped up the back head piece. Fold down backward the top 2.5"-3" of the pipe cleaner and then the paper over that to make the head loop and tape down the edge. This way the neck and head can be bent around. Then add the heart piece like in the tutorial. We used glue dots to stick on the googly eyes and double-sided tape to stick the tongue to the bottom of the loop for the face.

Shaker Turtle:
Supplies:
Paper Plate
Paper or Foam Bowl
Paper Scraps, Construction Paper, Foam Shapes, etc.
Paint and brushes or markers, crayons, etc.
Double Sided Tape or Glue
Googly Eyes
Dried Beans (optional)

Take the bowl and place it upside-down on the paper plate. Trace completely around the bowl and then remove bowl. Draw a head, legs, and tail, then cut out the template (should be all one big piece). Let the kiddos color the head, legs, and tail with paints, markers, or crayons. Don't worry about coloring the middle as it will be covered up by the bowl. If you use a paper bowl they can paint it instead of sticking the paper scraps. We took paper scraps and punched out circles, but you can try squares or other shapes as well (or just use any shape scraps!). Let them glue the shapes on the shell. Just a note, with foam bowls we found that double-sided tape or gluedots worked much better than gluesticks or even liquid elmers school glue. By now if the kids painted the paper plates they should be dry (as long as it wasn't gobbed on). Glue the eyes on then using glue or double-sided tape and the circle you drew as a guide for the shell on the plate, go all the way around the inside of the circle with adhesive. Place a small handful of the beans in the middle of the plate then add the bowl on top. If you're using glue, wait until the turtle is completely dry before using. If you used strong double-sided tape they can play with it right away. With paper bowls you can add a few staples on the edge to keep secure. Admire the turtle and let the kiddos have fun with him!

Other Activities:

Foam Habitat: Using the pre-cut foam stickers that were on sale at Joann's the kids made two snake habitats - one desert, one jungle. I urged them to draw the habitat but they just wanted to stick the foam stickers on. You could opt to letting them tear construction paper to create a landscape background and plants before added their reptiles. The only foam reptile I found in our sets were snakes so that's what we used.

Coloring and Naming: After reading about many different reptiles I found a bunch of free to color pages online and tiled 9 reptiles on the page - crocodile, rattlesnake, turtle, iguana, cobra, lizard, chameleon, komodo dragon, and a viper. The kids colored the pages and then named the reptiles. Older kids (1st grade and up) can write the names of the reptiles underneath them.

Felt Puppet: We picked up these fun croc felt puppets at Joann's on sale for less than $1. Paper bag or sock puppets would be great substitutions ;)

Outside Side-Walk Chalk Activities: Lizard Hopscotch - Draw the hopscotch squares to represent a lizard. Anaconda's New Skin - Draw a long snake and section off. Each child can color in their own pattern on the snake.

Other Activity Sources: DLTK Snake Projects, DLTK other Reptile Projects, Busy Bee Kid's Reptile Crafts, Child Fun Reptile Activity Theme Page, Tie-Rattle Snake, Pet Rocks, Pillowbox Alligator Valentine, First School Printables and Activities (where I got many of my reptile pictures to print for coloring), PDF of Spiral Snake, Turtle Dot-to-Dot, and Reptile Anagrams, Reptile and Amphibian Links Page

Documentaries we watched: In Cold Blood by BBC (5 episodes), Ultimate Crocodile by National Geographic, Lizard Kings by PBS

Books we read (bright green books are story books, the rest were informational books): The Mixed Up Chameleon by Eric Carle, A Color of His Own by Leo Lionni, Where Should Turtle Be? By Susan Ring, Slimy Scaly Deadly Reptiles and Amphibians: Lizards by Gareth Publishing, Nature’s Children: Crocodiles by Peter Carver, Magic Treehouse Research Guide: Snakes and Other Reptiles by Mary Pope Osborne, Snakes Alive: Mambas by Colleen Sexton, World Book’s Animals of the World: Iguanas and Other Lizards, Nature’s Children: Lizards by Bill Ivy, Reasons to Care About Marine Turtles by Sara Cohen Christopherson, Boas by Mary Ann McDonald, Komodo Dragons by Joanne Mattern, The Gum Chewing Rattler by Joe Hayes, Yertle the Turtle by Dr. Seuss

Book to try: The Lyle Books by Bernard Waber, The Yucky Reptile Alphabet Book by Jerry Pallotta, How to Hide a Crocodile and Other Reptiles by Ruth Heller, An Extraordinary Egg by Leo Lionni, Verdi by Janell Cannon (one of our favorites), Miles and Miles of Reptiles by Tish Rabe, Cornelius by Leo Lionni, Magic Treehouse #45: A Crazy Day with Cobras by Mary Pope Osborne (for 2nd grade chapter book readers)

Hope you're all having a great summer! Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Father's Day

2011-06-19T16:49:00.003-06:00

Just a quickie post of my simple Dad's Day card for Paul ;) Since he's sick with the flu we're just having a laid-back, quiet day for him. Hope you are all having a wonderful Father's Day with the men in your lives!

Simple Stamping Card

2011-05-30T13:52:00.023-06:00

When I first started out with stamping, the big thing was to make our own paper to customize our scrapbook pages and cards. Usually we would random stamp images in coordinating colors to perfectly match our photos. I haven't random stamped or made my own paper in a really long time and it made me think about those cards where you just stamped and didn't layer much or color images etc. So here's my little experiment back into the days when stamped out paper was the focus of the card. Inspiration for this card came from a letterpress card I saw a few days ago. I really liked the one bigger/darker flower focal point and then smaller supporting flowers around. I couldn't help but to add some glitz and rhinestones to pretty it up ;) The main flower is very glittery IRL, I went around all the main petal edges with stickles. Enjoy the card and have a wonderful Monday!

Let It Snow - Snowflake Challenge

2011-05-29T16:49:00.000-06:00

I'm feeling so much better today which is a great sign since I start classes again on Tuesday. I reorganized my scrap stuff and found that I still have a ton of Christmas papers, lol. Since Sparkle's Christmas Card Challenge was up today, I decided to play with some of my Cosmo Cricket Christmasy papers and make a card. This week the challenge is to include snowflakes. I hope my photo came out alright. The last time I got online I used Paul's computer and my photos looked all yellowed. On my laptop they look just fine, but I'm wondering how they look to everyone else. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the card and have a lovely Sunday!

A Couple Thank You Cards

2011-05-24T12:08:00.000-06:00

Wow, I didn't realize I'd been missing for so long! My last post was over two months ago! The good news is I did great this last semester and aced all my classes even though the work load was more than I'll probably ever take again, lol. It's just way too hard to take 6 classes and still take care of a family, well for me anyway, especially since I feel like I have to give 100% to everything ;) The bad news is that I've spent the last 2 1/2 weeks sick and more than a week of it practically bedridden because I have both viral and bacterial infections to get over. I've basically been down and out pretty much the entire time I had for the semester break since I'm taking summer courses. But I am feeling a bit better now. After I lost my voice, my visiting teachers brought our family dinner for two nights plus enough to last for leftovers for a few nights more. I really wanted to make them thank you cards, since it helped us out so much. So I had logged on last week just long enough to check out Sparkle's challenge, which was to use flowers, and there was a sketch for a challenge site she was hosting that week too. Here's the first card I made. I used the challenges, but didn't enter in time since I didn't feel well enough to edit the photos or post to the bloggo before today.

And here's the second card I made. I really wanted to try those rosettes that Sparkle had made months ago, and finally got the chance to try them out. My first ones were a little tight, they look more like spirals than rosettes, hehe. These second ones look a bit more like rosettes. Hopefully they aren't completely out of style yet, since I loved making them and think they are darling! And I just realized after looking at the photo that I didn't finish shading in her shirt! I hope that went unnoticed since Debra is a crafter herself, lol. The cards have long since been delivered by my sweetie hubby who has spent the last 2 weeks taking care of 3 sick girlies (yes, my poor daughters were sick as well though thankfully not as badly as I was). I haven't hugged, kissed, or even gotten to hold my little cuties for nearly 2 weeks now! I just don't want to get them to catch what I have since it's been so bad. But since today I'm feeling much better, I'm hoping by the weekend I'll be well enough to make up on all those missed snuggles! Thanks for sticking around ;) And I hope you enjoy the cards!

Woodland Delight Dresses

2011-03-07T09:51:00.057-07:00

I heart this fabric so much and I'm so glad I've been able to get 2 full dresses out my scant purchase of it, lol. A couple weekends back, right before the kiddos got sick with RSV I made a couple dresses for C using the peasant dress option from the Claire pattern by Portabellopixie. Sandi doesn't seem to have any in the shop right now and even though she sells them online, I got mine from a local quilt shop during the summer. It's a great pattern and I've had fun with the peasant shirt and dress options so far. I haven't gotten pictures of the first dress yet even though she's already worn it about 4-5 times since I put it together ;) But here's the second one I made, using some of the leftover fabrics from A's dress last summer.

I sized up to an 8 with the dress, just like with the shirt pattern so that C can wear it a bit longer. While the first dress shirred great I was actually worried with this one since the fabrics are higher quality and so they are a bit thicker. I wasn't sure how it would shirr and after ironing, it seemed the dress would be too big. But a toss in the wash shrunk the shirring down a lot more than my simple blasts of steam and I'm happy to say C can wear it and has worn it plenty since it's been made!

Here are the girls together, both of them in their woodland delight dresses. I still have a little of this fabric left over ;) I'm looking forward to figuring out if I can get another full shirt or skirt out of what I've got left. Paul is all excited for Dragon Age II, which has it's midnight releasing tonight. He and Mark will be going to pick it up at midnight since we'll be leaving bright and early tomorrow morning for the drive up to SLC for the surgery. Of course being a guy his priority is making sure he gets his game before we have to leave, even if he doesn't get to play it right away, lol. I have to admit as his gaming-nerd wife that I'm excited too, but I'm trying to ignore it since I don't really have time to play with all the homework I've been bringing home lately. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this peek at C's newest spring dress and have a wonderful week!

Wishing You Well

2011-03-06T16:46:00.000-07:00

It's not often that I try to make 'pretty' cards rather than cute cards ;) Though I love the look of pretty cards, they always seem formal to me, like I'm making wedding cards or something, lol. I made this card for two challenges, the Cupcake Insprirations challenge which features a lovely spring cupcake, and the ESS #120 sketch. The colors in the cupcake are so gorgeous, and just from looking at it I knew I'd be making something a bit out of my usual zone. Sure enough, putting this card together was really out of my zone. I had almost no purple paper and cardstock, which didn't really surprise me since I rarely use it, but I also had almost no green papers as well. That was a surprise given that I find green goes with quite a bit! In the end it was the stamps that pulled off this card, which aren't my usual image stamps of late either, and thank goodness I at least have a decent range of inks, lol. So now I've got to get back to working on my social-cultural analysis paper, but this was definitely a nice break from all my homework! Enjoy the card and have a lovely Sunday!

Have a Rockin' Good Birthday

2011-03-06T01:15:00.001-07:00

Today is our friend Mark's b-day and this is the card I made for him. I made the card with Sparkle's challenge this last week, which is to use punches. I don't really have any manly punches so I figured circles would have to do. I really like the way this card came out. It's just circles punched out and put on top of another piece of pattern paper, so the card is really simple, but the patterns make it so fun! Anyway, I've been bombarded with homework and life this past week, so finally getting to make this card was a much needed pick-me-up. At least for the next few hours ;)

Last Thursday we got a call from the dermatologist. They had gotten the results back on Paul's biopsy and the test came back that the mole was malignant, meaning it was a melanoma cancer. However, the good news is that it hasn't metastasized at all and he'll just need a simple surgery to make sure they get all of it out, plus we're getting an amazing doctor, apparently, for the surgery. We go up to SLC on Tuesday for that and they'll do a full body scan to make sure there are no more. The part that really sucked for Paul was that he called his mom to tell her about what was going on, and found out that his parents are getting divorced. My poor hubby. So far he says he's actually fine with it all and said he had seen signs of the problems mom had mentioned to him were the reasons for the split back 16 years ago when he lived at home, but I can't help but worry about the poor guy.

Then on top of the worrying I found out that the House passed a bill to lower the amount of Pell Grants given out, drastically reduce the amount any person can receive for the Pell, and completely cut out other student programs to help with funding. I wrote my letters to our senators against passing it in the Senate but it's hard to know what will happen. The Pell Grant has been the only way I've been able to afford going back to school, so I'm stressed about what we'll do if the bill actually passes. I really hope it doesn't. Add that to mid-terms week. Blah. Next weeks schedule promises to be busy still but after that it's spring break and I totally need it! Hopefully I can hold out going crazy with life until then. Anyway, thanks for letting me spout about our weekly drama. On a happier note, I was featured as the sketch artist Thursday on Eat Sleep and Stamp for my ketto card last week using the #119 sketch! So a definite ego pick-up for me ;) I hope you all enjoy the card and have a wonderful Sunday!

A Couple Cupcake Cards

2011-02-27T17:48:00.000-07:00

This first card is for the Cupcake Inspirations #100 Challenge! You should head on over since they have a great giveaway and super cute cupcakes for the inspiration pic. It's been a while since I've ventured over there to take a peek at the cupcakes that inspire the card challenges and just like always it made me hungry for cuppacakes and pastries! I tried to satisfy my sweet tooth by making this sweet card, but in the end I just had to bake something. Fortunately I chose to whip up some healthier whole-wheat applesauce muffins instead of cupcakes ;) It's rare for me to know right off what I want to do with a card, but with this one I instantly had the idea of a big sun in the background and some happy yummilicious cupcakes on top. The stamps are from Basic Grey that I nabbed for 50% of at Roberts last year and this is the first time I've used the set.

I had stamped out a half-dozen cupcakes to play with so I also made this card with a cupcake theme for the Corrosive Challenge. This week is distressing so I scissor distressed all the background paper edges (except the scallops of course). I also added a little sparkle to the cupcakes on this card for a little more fun. Some fun cards to finish off my weekend. Since I've finished my forever long take home test I'm going to reward myself with some co-op Halo Reach with my hubby ;) Enjoy the cards and have a great week!

Make a Wish Ketto

2011-02-27T11:00:00.021-07:00

I'm back with another challenge card! This one is for two challenges, again with the Corrosive Challeges, a magical creatures theme, and the ESS #119 sketch. I kept with the same paper since it was already out. The last long 4x12 strip I'm saving for a scrap page, since it has the big flower comglomoration in the corner that I wanted to use in a layout, no specific one mind you, just a piece I knew I wanted to use a page somehow ;) I used a fairy as my magical creature and of course no fairy is complete without some sparkles. I glittered her wings and crown baubles, then added some fun rhinestones for fairy dust. Enjoy and thanks for stopping by!

Bright and Happy Hello

2011-02-27T00:58:00.000-07:00

Here's another card! This one is for the Corrosive Challenge #103, a sketch. After making the thank you card, I decided I needed to play with some of my RAKed images. I heart my RAKed images so much and I realized that the best way to really love them is to use them instead of just oogling their cuteness, lol. I think sometimes I'm just afraid that I'll mess up coloring one and then I'll feel like I wasted it somehow, which I know is silly. So I took out this bella, since bellas are quick and easy to color ;) And I used this Sassafrass paper again, the fun eclectic print is the other side of the mini flowers. I think sassafrass papers are so fun and cute but I have a hard time using them since they are a different kind of style - another product in my stash I like to just oogle, lol. So here's to getting out of my box again and using stuff I love to look at in actual projects ;) Thanks for stopping by and have a lovely Sunday!

Warm Little Thank You

2011-02-26T23:00:00.000-07:00

I made this card for the Corrosive Card Challenges #102 and the CPS #207 Sketch Challenge. I need a few thank you cards so I decided to hit some of the challenge sites for inspiration. The fun hot colors in the Corrosive Cards Challenge : Red, Orange, Yellow... FIRE! was a fun jumping off point and the sketch from CPS helped me play a bit out of my comfort zone. I feel like I get so used to playing with images (like pictures in scrapping!) that I forget how to make cards without them. So this was a great way for me to step out and use some of my neglected (but very cute!) PTI stamps! Have a wonderful weekend!

Boys Rule Challenge

2011-02-23T23:12:00.001-07:00

Here's my card for the Boys Rule Challenge over at Sparkle Creations and for the CPS Sketch Challenge she's hosting! One of my nephews has a birthday this next month, so this challenge ended up being perfect for me. The girls and I have been doing much better, no one's had a fever for a couple days now. C will get to go to school tomorrow and, lucky her, she gets to take a unit reading comprehension test. I unfortunately have to take a test as well (for chemistry), lol. But fortunately for us we're both pretty good students and we've both done our studying ;) Anyway, enjoy the card and have a wonderful week!

Sweet Treats Paper Piecing

2011-02-19T23:30:00.000-07:00

I finally got a chance to play along with this week's challenge on Sparkle Creations, which is paper piecing! I have to say that it's been a while since I've done this technique and I've been a bit lazy when it comes to paper-crafting lately so it took me a while to get in the mode to make this card. I do love the way the piecing came out in the end though! This last week has been more crazy than usual for us, lots of appointments for Paul (dentist, doctor, and dermatologist, poor guy had to have a mole removed, he has a couple stitches from that, as well as a molar removed!), White Ribbon week at the elementary, 2 tests and a big project for me, oh and we all apparently have RSV - which we found out Friday night when the doc called us back with culture results. Little A has it the worst and she was coughing really bad, but the doc said she's doing alright and as far as risks go she's past the age when RSV is a real danger. Today she was doing a little better, so I'm hoping it will just be recovery from here on out. Anyway, a bright cheerful card to combat our dreary rainy weekend here and our sick little family ;) Enjoy and thanks for stopping by!

Guess who loves you ;)

2011-02-16T09:54:00.000-07:00

As usual life around here is a bit crazy and so I kinda, sorta, didn't get around to making my kids their Valentines until after Valentines Day. C shared some of her loot from class Valentines with A on the 14th and then yesterday they got Valentines in the mail from Great-Grandma and Nana came over to drop of more Valentines plus a couple balloons. I'm grateful for all that because I've had so much reading to do for my classes the past couple days. This morning I stole some moments to make their cards and they are getting their Valentines from Paul and I today. And tomorrow or Friday grandma's goodies should be arriving in the mail. So far they've been more excited about getting stuff spread out over a few days rather than sad at not getting these all on the Holiday ;) Which I am so thankful for! I'm so glad my girls have the same casual take on holidays and birthdays that Paul does. It makes my life so much less stressful, lol. Anyway, enjoy the post-Valentine holiday cards and have a wonderful Wednesday!

Quickie Valentines

2011-02-14T22:54:00.000-07:00

A quick last minute Valentine inspired by my heartfelt thanks card a little while back ;) I think sometimes as a crafter I'm a bit hard on myself. This year C and I didn't make Valentines. As we were picking out her treats for her class at Target, I found myself feeling overwhelmed and tired and just too busy to devote more than a minimal amount of effort to class Valentines. So I did the unthinkable. I let C pick out some from the store. I know, blasphemy! I mean cardmakers just do not buy cards, right? But I discovered something: we had just as much fun slapping on the cards to the candy and putting heart stickers on as we ever did putting together handmade Valentines from pattern paper and stamped images. And I realized, as C happily posed for a pic with her hoard of candied cards, that it didn't matter whether what we did was simple and short or long and complex - so long as we did it together. Hoping you all had a great day together with your Valentines! Happy Valentine's Day!

Pretty Spring Top

2011-02-13T11:49:00.000-07:00

My first sewn top! C has been growing out of her clothes like crazy and it seems a lot of the stores around here just don't have that many cute tops in right now, probably because we're still a little in-between seasons. Not quite spring, not really winter anymore (at least not here). We've gotten a couple of darling tees for her, but as for pretty blouses, we haven't found many that she really loves. This last month I picked up a few remnants at Joann's for less than $10 total. I not only cut out enough fabric for a dress (which I haven't sewn together yet), but also enough for this cute tunic!

I used the peasant top variation in the Portabellopixie pattern "Claire", which actually uses up quite a bit of fabric. Because my last size up with her patterns worked so well I did it again here, using a size 8 for C even though she's a size 7. This way she can wear it next spring as well.... hopefully, lol. She's the one who spotted the fabric while we were perusing the bin, and I love these shades of blue! Luckily there was this cute mini flower print and a blue matching solid as well that I snagged at the same time. Someone's must be making a darling project and I just happened to benefit from the end of bolt scraps!

Since the back looks very much like the front, I used a pretty ribbon for the inside tag and wrote the size and my initials beneath so C could easily tell which side was front and back, and so later with hand-me-downs we have the size number for reference. Both C and I were so excited when the top was finished. This was my first time shirring so I was a bit nervous, but it turned out to be so easy and fun! I definitely looking forward to seeing how her dress will turn out ;) Enjoy and have a lovely Sunday!

Sammified B-Day Josh

2011-02-12T14:07:00.000-07:00

We've had such a busy week, so I've been playing catch-up all weekend. One of these things was to make a b-day card for our BIL, Sam. So using the sketch challenge at Sparkle Creations, I whipped up this card during our complex's kids club Valentine activity. The girls made cute Valentines and I made a b-day card ;) After seeing a few different looks on the soft colored hair style, I thought I'd try it out. After I was done I just felt like his hair was missing something, so I added highlights with the white gel pen. It was fun to color his hair differently than I'm used to. I'll definitely try the soft look again sometime, maybe I'll get it looking right enough to leave out the highlights. Anyway, enjoy the card and have a wonderful weekend!

Stuck 2 You

2011-02-11T06:17:00.000-07:00

These pictures crack me up. One day I left the stickers down for C to use, A was 3 at the time. It seemed like I had just turned around when suddenly I see A has covered herself in stickers, lol! Toddlers are so funny ;) I'm certain C had been helping her as well. I love my silly girls. Since this was my last page at the crop, my mojo was starting to wane. I took inspiration from the 1x1 inch patchwork I did on the girls letters in their rooms and created a fun border. I love the way it turned out, like a mini sampler of all those cute patterns! The extra plus is that it really goes well with all the square stickers A had on her face ;) So that's all I have to share. I hope you enjoyed the pages. Thanks for stopping by and have a fab Friday!

Vegging Out

2011-02-10T07:08:00.000-07:00

The rick rack sticker that I used in yesterday's layout came from the Farm Fresh Sticker set from October Afternoon. This set also contained a bunch of fruits (almost all of which I have already used), some farm animals (which I've only used a couple), and other various things including... vegetables (which I hadn't touched). Truthfully, I thought I would need to do a dinner page or something to use up those stickers, but when I saw these pics of Paul and the girls just vegging out, I knew they were destined to be together. What even worked better was that those odd Girl Friday letters that I had left from the bedroom art projects, I also used here. The colors matched so perfectly, I couldn't have planned it better! I hope you enjoy the page and have a terrific Thursday!

Catching Some Zzzzzz

2011-02-09T07:02:00.000-07:00

My second layout from the crop. I adore watching the girls snuggle with their daddy, and A loves to snuggle with him while he naps. She doesn't nap along, much as we wish she would. Instead she lays quietly, watching him sleep. When she snuggles with me she likes to rub my arm. She says I'm soft, lol. This page came together rather quickly and was pretty simple. I love that it used up my feltie Sassafras birds as well as the rest of that rickrack sticker from OA. I also used a fun swirl that I had no idea what I would use on when I got the set. It ended up being just the thing the page needed to feel complete. Using up various thicker Zzzzs was also made me feel like I was getting the most out of my stash. This was definitely a scrappy layout ;) Enjoy the page and have a wonderful Wednesday!

Who's Who?

2011-02-08T05:50:00.000-07:00

These are the old pictures I was talking about in my last post. The ones that had been in the frame. Before I took them down we had these fun pictures up on our hall wall: a set with me and a set with Paul. Both our girls looked so much a like as babies that you couldn't tell their baby pictures apart. So what we did for fun was put pictures taken in similar poses, during about the same ages (nope we didn't plan this but we took so many photos with both our girls that we just happened to have some that worked out this way), and framed them. This set was me with the girls. They are so hard to tell apart! If you look really REALLY close, A has slightly (very slightly!) different eyebrows and chin. At that age their noses were the same which is their biggest differencing feature right now (though a lot of people still mistake them for twins!) They are both 5 months in these pictures ;) While cropping at my friend Julie's, I decided to scrap this story of how we tell their baby pictures apart, which is basically to look at the clothes they are wearing ;) A was a little smaller than C. Instead of growing out of things a month early like her big sis, A didn't get to wear them until often a month later. I also used a bunch of scraps from the girls room redecorating project. In fact all the pages I made at the crop use at least some of the those scraps ;) Anyway, I hope you enjoy the page! Have a great Tuesday!

New Spring Decor

2011-02-07T15:35:00.002-07:00

Every so often I feel a little rebellious when it comes to doing my homework. Not so much that I won't do it at all, but that I'll do a whole lot of other things just to avoid doing the homework for as long as possible. This weekend, after 4 tests between Thursday and Friday, I was happy to note that the only weekend school work I had was some reading with a one page reader response. But instead of getting it done and out of the way, I somehow got it in my head that I didn't want to do it, which is silly since I found the articles fairly interesting when I finally did get around to reading them. Anyhoo, I decided to kind of redecorate my girls' room instead ;) Here are some fun photos of what we did.

The first item was the pendant banner which you see a part of in the photo at the top of the post. It was too hard to get a decent photo with the light coming into the room, so I ended up not getting a photo of the banner itself. From there I went a little batty with paper crafting decor in their room ;) I made this big "flower" as C puts it out of the funny end pieces from the banner triangles. I love the quiltish look of it. Then I made the fun circle paper fans or whatever it is that they're called to match. C calls them "daisies, because they have lots of petals," she says ;)

After that I couldn't leave their wooden letters out. For more over a year I've been telling myself I'd paint these white letters and just never got around to it. Friday, I sat down and cute 1" squares from scraps and covered the letters.

Here is A's fans. Since I only had enough leftovers from the pendant banner to make one large quilty flower thing, I made her more "daisies".

And I couldn't stop there. A while ago I saw a darling scrap page that used these Girl Friday paper letters from Cosmo Cricket. I happened to have scraps of the same alphabet and hoped I had enough to make some alpha art. As it turned out, I didn't have any Es or Rs. But I did have 2 matching Fs and a P and X that were the same pattern. So I fashioned my missing letters out of them. I put together the cute alphabet to fit a 8x10 frame, the girls singing the ABCs about 2 dozen times while I made it. The frame is one that I simply repurposed. It's been sitting in our closet with Paul's AS degree. So I put his in another repurposed frame (which had old pictures) and took this one for their room.

In addition to that frame I took the two 5x7 frames I had bought to go with it, but were still empty to this day. Using scraps and some fun stickers, I made some sweet papercrafted art to with everything. The left one says "Dream Big Dreams" and the sheep with balloons says "Shy girls are sweet girls". The shy one definitely describes little A ;)

I also made a quick little fun piece for their bathroom, which has been artless for quite a while. The colors match their little circo cups and towels. A big part of this piece was to use up some of the extra single letters I had left, since with the two other framed art pieces for their room, I had used up all the vowels. In this case, the extra Q and B were used.

And last but not least (and before I made the bathroom art actually) I made a fun magnet for C's hot lunch menu from school. My cheapy, but super cute, kitchen magnets aren't very strong so it takes about 4 of them to hold up the menu. So, when I saw that a few of my odd left over letters spelled out lunch, I just had to make a fun magnet! The other two words were 'big' and 'shy', then there were a string of odd consonants. Anyway, I did finish my homework, Sunday morning before I went to a friends house to crop (yay!) I hope you enjoyed this little peek into the girls newly decorated room. Thanks for popping by!

It's a Girl Thing!

2011-02-01T18:05:00.000-07:00

While this semester has given me a lot more busy work, I find that it has also gotten me to take more breaks. It's been really nice to reward myself with some me time after finishing a draft, or studying a chapter. Usually it comes in the form of some quick blog hopping through my fav sites, bookmarking and saving tutorials as I go. If I'm lucky it involves crafty time to make something fun ;) Today, after revising one of my papers, I sat down and played in this weeks Sparkle Creations Challenge. The theme is "It's a Girl Thing!" I tried pleating and stitching my ribbon to the card. While the pleating came out pretty well, I didn't realize while sewing that I was at a slant. So my ribbon is a little crooked going across. Next time I'll know to watch for that ;) Anyway, I hope you enjoy the card. Thanks for stopping by!

Simple Heartfelt Thanks

2011-01-28T17:09:00.020-07:00

I needed a quick thank you card. With Valentines getting close and the fact that I don't really get to make too many grown up valentines, I thought it would be fun to incorporate my v-day stuff into a thank you card! Super simple and quick, I just punched out big hearts, one from each pattern paper design in the Simple Valentine paper set from Papertrey Ink. The circle hearts were already cut out from my love you a latte Josh card (they didn't work out on the card so I kept them for later). Stitching adds just a little extra detail as well as some dimension since I flicked up the sides a little. Enjoy and thanks for popping by!

A "Lovely" Birthday

2011-01-26T22:12:00.000-07:00

The #27 challenge on Sparkle Creations is the theme "Love is in the Air"! I've been in the mood to make valentine's goodies but haven't had much time for crafting. In fact, I should have probably been revising one of my papers instead of playing around, but sometimes a girl just needs a break! I cased Sparkle's sample card so that I would spend less time thinking of a layout ;) This card is for my sister since her b-day is the day after Valentines. There are some fun sparkles on her dress ruffle, hat, and party horn. Enjoy and have a terrific Thursday!

Stamps: Celebrating Chloe from Sparkle Creations, sentiment from Cupcake Collection by PTI
Paper: Simple Valentine and cardstock in Pure Poppy by PTI
Other: white brads, Nestibilities, colored pencils, copic marker, white gel pen, Fiskars apron lace border punch, EK Success heart punch

A Camera Strap Cover

2011-01-25T22:31:00.000-07:00

My SIL came over this weekend and wanted me to test out her new sewing machine, so I made a quick little camera strap cover with the scraps I had from A's dress that I made in the summer. Next time I'll try for a wider one, since it was a pain to get this one turned right side out, lol. But it turned out cute so I won't complain too much ;) She's already made good use of my test run, as she called me to troubleshoot a couple things on Sunday. Sounds like she's already putting it to good use! Anyway, just thought I'd share real quick what I did craft wise over the weekend, since I didn't have time to post it then. I spent the rest of the weekend with homework, 2 take-home tests (which unfortunately for me aren't as easy as they sound), and I finished 3 of my 5 panels for a 2D design project I'm working on. Hopefully I'll have time during the week to play in a challenge or two, but for now I hope you enjoy my little project and have a wonderful week!

Birthday Chloe Inspiration Challenge

2011-01-20T20:47:00.000-07:00

This week at Sparkle Creations the challenge is to make a card from an inspiration photo of some darling Pottery Barn luggage. I finally colored up one of my b-day Chloe images. She has fun sparkles on her dress, hat, and party horn though the camera didn't pick it up. I just kept the card simple since I don't have a lot of time to play at the moment. I just needed a break from homework ;) Anyway, I hope you enjoy! It's back to reading textbooks for me. Have a terrific Thursday!

My Model

2011-01-19T05:38:00.003-07:00

I started and ended my crop pages with the pictures from the same session - C modeling the Analise Dress. C still wears this even in the winter. Of course she has a darling red sweater or her hot pink cardigan that she puts on over it ;) I've been going over some of my other dress patterns, the ones I bought during the summer but haven't made anything from yet. There are a couple I'm really excited to try out. Hopefully I have enough fabric onhand to make a few more dresses this spring, maybe over spring break, but we'll see. In the meantime, I'll just be happy my girls still love the dresses I made so much! That's all the layouts I made from the crop. I hope you enjoyed the pages! Thanks for visiting and have a lovely Wednesday!

Papers by Crate Paper and My Minds Eye; Print Flowers, Sticker, and Brads by Sassafras; Flowers by Imaginisce and Prima; Thickers by American Crafts

Fairy

2011-01-18T05:22:00.000-07:00

A loves Tinkerbell. She basically loves everything fairy, princess, or mermaid and she'll often skip or dance or twirl around the house. It's so stinkin' cute and I love having my very own little fairy running around in the house. She is also such a poser. A always wants me to take pictures of her and she'll really ham it up when I pull out the camera randomly, which is another goal I want to focus on. Once I started classes in the fall I almost never took pictures and I'm really sad that happened. So this semester I'm making a pact with myself to take out the camera at least once a week (hopefully more often than that) to snap some shots & to get at least a couple pics of me each month ;) Enjoy the page and thanks for stopping by!

Papers by Crate Paper and My Minds Eye; Rubons and Glazed brads by Bo Bunny; Rhinestones and rhinestone butterfly by Kaiser; Thickers by American Crafts; Butterflies from Basics 2 Slice card;

Modern Patchwork Razzelberry Apron

2011-01-17T11:01:00.019-07:00

I'm gonna shock you with some actual pictures of me, lol. After making aprons for the girls, for gifts, for my mom and my MIL, I've finally made one just for me ;) I've been eyeing the fun aprons at Pier 1 for more than a year now but haven't wanted to fork out the $20 for something that is more frivolous than practical, at least in my mind. When Kelly started posting tutorials this month for a bunch of different knock-off aprons, I knew I would end up having to try my hand at sewing one of them up! So this past holiday weekend I used her Razzelberry tutorial to make my apron. It has the halter top style like the aprons I had been looking at. Then I improvised with a modern patchy look, both for fun and out of necessity (most of the fabrics I used are scraps from other projects). I love how it turned out!

A was taking the pictures and wanted me to do a 'dance' pose. Instead I just tried to do a cute mini jump though I'm not sure if it turned out very cute at all, lol. You can't tell from the pictures but all the ties are white, as is the lining, and then the white ruffle at the bottom just pulls it all together. I did have to make some adjustments to the pattern in the tutorial, since I'm a bit top-heavy. I just added an extra inch to the bottom of the halter pieces and then a half inch on each side for more coverage. Since I actually sew with 1/2" seams it simply made the finished halter pieces about the same size as the pattern. Anyway, Kelly had a few tutorials on different types of aprons like the Charlie Brown Apron, the Sail-Away Apron, and the Sandalwood Apron, all of them were part of her Be a Cutie in the Kitchen - Apron Week. If you've got the sewing bug, I recommend heading on over to her blog and picking your favorite style of apron to whip up! Enjoy and thanks for stopping by! Have a fabulous Monday!

Tis the Season Josh

2011-01-16T11:42:00.000-07:00

Sparkle's Christmas Card Challenge called to me this morning and with such a fun sketch posted, I couldn't resist playing along! Funny that I made my order specifically to get birthday Josh and Chloe, yet I can't help but reach for little cafe Josh for my cards lately. I'm finding he's quite versatile ;) Eventually, I would like to get singing carols Josh but until then, I'll improvise. I'm using up some Cosmo Cricket Christmas papers with this. Maybe if I get some Christmas pages scrapped, combined with making cards, I just might use up all my winter papers by this next holiday! I'm hoping I do because it was so hard not buying any new holiday paper this past year. I told myself I need to use up the rest of what I have before I can get more. So far I only have 7 full sheets left, but I do still have quite a few big scraps. Anyhoo, I hope you enjoy the card and have a lovely Sunday!

Felt Food and Pink Milk Repurposed

2011-01-15T21:16:00.000-07:00

Today has been a lazy kind of day. I wanted to really get some hefty craft time in this weekend, maybe make one of the cute aprons that Kelly from Sewing in No Mans Land has been making tutorials for this past month like the Razzelberry or Sail Away apron. But today I ended up with a huge lack of motivation to actually do anything. After the girls lunch, I realized the pink milk (Strawberry Quik) jar was empty. It seemed too wasteful to just throw away, so I decided to cover it up with some Adobe papers from American Crafts ;) Then my mojo started to sputter back to life and I figured since I have this cute box now, I should make something to fill it with. I've been eyeing all the felt foodies online, planning to make some for the girls, but my hand sewing skills are pretty atrocious. Even so, I figured I could give some felt cookies a shot and I ended up making a full dozen! They are so addicting and a lot of fun. Plus, all I used for these guys were scraps. I'm excited to try making more felt food. I think next up is donuts, lol!

Hula Hoop

2011-01-14T05:10:00.000-07:00

C tried so hard this summer to learn how to hula hoop and she nearly got it down! I noticed that the smaller, lighter hoops were easier for her to use. She is so cute to watch! This page was the second layout I did at the crop. The Slice and Thickers title was the inspirational starting point for the page. I knew I wanted to cut the word hula out with that Basic Grey paper and then layer the Thickers over it but that was about it, lol. Luckily the rest of it just came together after that ;) I hope you enjoy! Thanks for visiting and have a great weekend!

Love You a Latte Josh

2011-01-13T20:57:00.000-07:00

I got my Sparkle Creations goodies in the mail yesterday and I've been anxiously waiting a break so I could use them. Which is why I'm so happy I didn't have much homework today! After getting new tires on the car (my big errand for the day) and of course making dinner and reading stories to the girls, I finally got a chance to sit down and play with my new stamps! There are so many cute Valentine cards getting posted right now that it got me right in the mood to do my own ;) So here's love-you-a-latte-Josh Papertrey Ink style! I used The Sweetest Thing's #99 sketch challenge for the layout and then all Papertrey goodies to put the card together since I'm all excited for their release this month! The tiny treats birthday set looks too cute and I'm hoping to snag a sentiment set as well. The sentiment on this card is my own handwriting. I'm trying so hard to improve it, lol. Enjoy the card and thanks for popping by!

Twirl

2011-01-12T05:57:00.002-07:00

Right after the New Year I printed out some 2010 pics so I could crop with Julie. I picked out all my papers and embellishments and then chose photos to match before printing. I had a total of 13 pictures and I'm so proud to say that I scrapped them all at the crop! Twirl was the first page I made. While cleaning up my folders on my laptop I found inspiration in a very cute valentine layout and committed the things I loved about it to memory specifically for this page. I love how it turned out! Enjoy and have a lovely Wednesday!

Paper by Crate Paper and Basic Grey; Ribbon by Pebbles Inc.; Stitched Brad by Sassafras; Glazed Brads by Bo Bunny; Rhinestones by Kaiser; Thickers by American Crafts; Flower by Imaginisce; Just Chillin card on Slice by Making Memories

Sketch Challenge - SCRS

2011-01-11T20:48:00.001-07:00

I finished up my homework tonight and had some time to play! One of my nieces has a birthday coming up next week and I need to get a card out in the mail soon. So I grabbed one of my prestamped Chloe images and went to work. This card is super simple and flat so that I can just slap a stamp on there and send it out. We'll be putting some fun stickers inside for her as well as a couple images to color ;) She's a year younger than A so I figure she should enjoy about the same things. Everytime I stamp out some images for later, I end up having to stamp some out for both my girls. They love Chloe (she's their favorite) so I'm sure they'll be extra excited when my new b-day Chloe gets here. I know I will be! Anyway, this card is using the sketch challenge going on at Sparkle's Creations this week. The sketch is super cute and so easy! I'm sure I'll be using this one again in the future. Enjoy the card and have a great Tuesday evening!

Covered Containers

2011-01-10T08:29:00.001-07:00

I know this is nothing new, but I thought it would be fun to share. Lately, the girls have loved collecting little containers and since we like to repurpose things when we can, I gave them cleaned out Stephen's hot cocoa jars to store stuff in. But they're rather ugly to look at, unless they have hot cocoa mix in them of course ;) So I decided to cover them up all pretty! This is a great way to use up that leftover paper as well. Gotta love that!

Here's my jar. I used a cleaned out honey roasted cashews jar. It's perfect for tossing in my scrappy trash when I'm making cards and for sharpening my pencils so I don't get shavings everywhere. You can use these jars to hold paper clips, pens, tape, or whatever little bits and bobs you may have! It's a great way to organize without breaking the bank ;) I'm back in school today but I still have some layouts I did from my crop that I haven't shown you yet so you'll all get a few more posts before I go MIA in bloggo land. I hope you enjoy and have a happy Monday!

Cupcake Inspiration Guest Designer

2011-01-09T12:21:00.003-07:00

This week I got to be a Guest Designer on Cupcake Inspirations! Here's the card I made for the challenge. I have to say, that site is dangerous! Everytime I visit, I end up wanting to bake some goodies, which really isn't good for my waistline ;) Anyway, I hope you enjoy the card! Thanks for stopping by!

Tie It Up Challenge

2011-01-09T12:01:00.004-07:00

It's the last day to play in this weeks challenge on Sparkle's Creations and I finally got my card together. This one was a real stumper for me. I love ribbon and baker's twine and I actually have quite of bit of it, but I do have a hard time using them on my projects. Thankfully the design team's cards were full of inspiration on that ;) This is my card. I'm so happy with the way her dress and hair came out! Enjoy and have a lovely Sunday!

Our Snow Day

2011-01-07T23:21:00.001-07:00

Click here to view this photo book larger

Christmas Challenge #5

2011-01-07T20:19:00.001-07:00

I thought it would be a great idea to get a head start on my Christmas cards for this next year, at least so I've got enough for the ones I need to mail out ;) So I'm playing in Sparkle's weekly Christmas Card Challenge. This week is embossing. It's been so long since I last used my embossing folders! I forgot how fun it could be ;) Anyway, we didn't get snow for Christmas, but we did get some right after the New Year! It was nearly all melted by noon, but we got out there early at around 8:30, so I got a lot of super cute photos of the girls as well as some of Paul and me! I'm hoping to remember to always get pictures of Paul and I throughout the year and I'm so happy to have a good start. The big plus is I had a free Shutterfly 8x8 book to make, a gift from a friend, so I used those photos to create a fun book and it's on its way! I'm so excited to see how it turned out ;) Anyway, enjoy the card and have a fab Friday!

Watch Over You

2011-01-03T09:19:00.002-07:00

I've finally gotten around to printing some photos from 2010, lol. Maybe I should add to my resolutions this year to print and scrap more of the current year ;) As I was looking for photos to print I realized there are a ton of darling 2010 pics, so I printed out 16 that coordinated with some papers and got to work. This is my first page of 2011. I actually printed all my photos to go with a single set of papers, but when I saw the big and little elephants in my Sassafras chipset I knew I had to use them on this daddy/daughter page! Thanks for visiting and have a lovely Monday!

Hooray for the New Year!

2011-01-02T09:08:00.000-07:00

I hope everyone had a great Happy New Year! We had a fun casual get together and then yesterday I spent our usual first weekend after Christmas to take down all the decorations. I also managed to get in more organizing - hitting our closet and underbed storage, the junk drawer, and the laundry room, yay! My goals this year are to really concentrate on enjoying and appreciating my family. When I started back to school in the fall, I noticed that I didn't spend enough quality time with my girls during the week. It got to the point where they wouldn't come to me anymore if they needed something because I was 'busy doing homework', C says. I don't ever want my girls to feel like I'm not there for them, so my main goal this year is to find a balance where I can manage school while still giving my family the time and attention they need. I also want to maintain a 3.8 GPA or higher (I'm at a 4.0 right now) so that hopefully I can get a scholarship this fall. And I also want to take time at least once a week to do something for myself. Just a few goals, but very important ones to me ;)

After Christmas I've been in an organizing storm and each day I take on a different part of our home. So far, including what I did yesterday on the 1st, I've organized the armoire that holds my scrap stuff, our entry closet, the girls' closet, our outdoor storage closet, our bedroom bookshelves, and our living and dining areas. It's amazing how much a freshly organized space can motivate you to create! I'm sure it also helps that I haven't had the time to papercraft as much as I used to, lol. I used these same papers to decorate my binder and dividers and I'm really proud of myself for using up all the leftover scraps in these pages! This page is of A helping make the green coconut grass topping for her B-Day cupcakes back in '09. Look at those chubber cheeks!

Here's another of A the same year. She practically lived in her swim 'soup'. The only time she wasn't wearing it was when it was in the washer! Of course we live in a desert where summer seems to last from April through October so it completely makes sense, hehe. It's so fun to make something pretty at the beginning of the New Year. Today I even get to go over to a friend's to crop! I haven't done that since August! I hope you enjoy the pages. Good luck with your own goals this year and have a wonderful weekend!

Organized Art Totes, an Owl, and B-Day Gifts

2010-12-30T14:04:00.001-07:00

While in my crazy late-night-trying-to-be-sneaky sewing rush to make the last few Christmas presents, I didn't get pictures of a couple of the fun goodies I made for the girls this holiday - Organized Art Totes. They completely got me in the mood for my New Year's purge and organizing marathon ;) You know how much I love organizational goodies! This one is A's.

Here's the inside. I found working with crayons harder to design than pencils, but I think her tote came out alright. Because it was the first one I've ever made and I didn't have a pattern, there were a lot of mistakes, but of course she didn't notice one bit ;)

You can tell C's is more refined. A lot of my first time mistakes were remedied this time around and well, the pencils were much easier to design for. I love how professional looking hers turned out.

Of course I did still make a small boo-boo with hers as well - the books are a tight fit. They still slide in and out alright, but it is pretty snug. A half inch more would have been better. Other than that I only wished I put a big pocket on the outside of them both. They love them so much and carry them everywhere that it would have been nice to have an extra pocket for their dolls or special toys to take too ;)

One of my favorite parts about these aside from the darling remnant fabrics the girls picked out, was my double stacked PTI buttons. They turned out so well I know I'll be using this on other projects! Overall I'm very happy with how both totes ended up turning out and even more so with the reception they got from the girls Christmas morning!

This little guy was one of A's Christmas prezzies. She loves owls and I bought the Hoot & Annie pattern back in the spring. I've been wanting to use it and thought now would be the perfect time to stitch it up! I think I'll be making more of these in the future, they are so easy to put together and are perfect for using up scraps!

Next up is C's momma snake that I made for her birthday earlier this month ;) C is so into snakes, she just got another snake book this Christmas, this time it's one of those National Geographic ones with all the fun facts. She loves talking about all the cool stuff snakes can do!

Momma snake is even taller than C!! C loves her big snake so much, it makes me so happy to see her play with it and cuddle it so often along with her lovie snake that she's had since she was a baby. The lovie has now been deemed 'baby snake'. So cute!

And last up is A's mermaid doll that I put together a couple months ago for her b-day. Her entire birthday was mermaid themed as she absolutely loves mermaid everything right now! I didn't have a pattern so she was very trial and error with the tail and swimsuit. I think she turned out darling though!

A's b-day just so happened to be right around mid-terms so I didn't take the time to snap shots of her mermaid doll until now. Of course A had to name her Ariel ;) Now that I have the Wee Wonderfuls book I have a lot more fun dolls to try making as well as a mini-mermaid! Anyway, just thought I'd share these fun sewn goodies while I've got the time ;) Thanks for stopping by!

Cupcake Inspiration Challenge #91

2010-12-29T23:15:00.001-07:00

Did everyone have a great Christmas? We had a fantastic one, the girls had a blast and Christmas dinner with Paul's family went wonderfully! Since then I've been on an organization marathon. Each day I tackle a new part of our apartment. Anyway, I thought I'd take a break and play along one of the Cupcake Inspiration Challenges now that all my scrappy stuff is all reorganized ;) The challenge cupcake is so pretty and the flower has lovely gold centers and edged petals. I don't have any gold ink so I used some stickles to add sparkle instead. It didn't show up very well in the photo so you'll have to imagine the fun glitter in the center. I used colored pencils on colored cardstock for the flowers and pencils on the green dot paper for the leaves, I love how pretty this came out! I hope you enjoy the card and have a great Thursday!

Snuggly Owls

2010-12-24T08:44:00.004-07:00

The girls are so excited for Christmas. I was going to make them wait to play with these until Christmas morning but it's hard to be sneaky when they know I'm sewing stuff up. These darling owls were made from this Snuggly Owls tutorial created by Ashley from Make-It and Love-It. So fun and easy! I made my owls all with fleece I had on hand, their fluffy front feathers are inspired by Target's Circo owl pillow. They have so much fun texture!

To make the front loops as well as the wing strip texture, I cut strips of fleece 3/4" wide. Since fleece doesn't fray there's no need to finish any edges. With the loops I simply pinned up each row of loops then sewed them down. The wing strips are really simple, just line them up straight, pin, and sew a line down the center. I added my textures before sewing the pieces onto the owl. Enjoy and I hope you're all having a Happy Christmas Eve!

Christmas Cards - Pink, Blue, and Red

2010-12-23T09:25:00.001-07:00

I've been sewing like crazy trying to get the last minute gifties all whipped up. There's a lot of fun projects for decor and gifts that I wanted to make, but didn't have the time to this year. Luckily, I got a lot of the fabric for these projects 50% off or more so I can work on them during the next year for next Christmas ;) With even just this bit of sewing I've been doing though, I'm sure I'll be wanting to make spring and summer projects before long, lol.

As for the cards I'm hoping to better play along with card challenges this next year. I really want to rebuild my stash of on hand cards which is currently at nil. And since I don't really have any art classes (technically I have 2D Design but all I have to do is 4 more projects since my Design class this last semester covered all the rest of it), I won't have anything at school using up all my creativity ;) Anyhoo, thanks for visiting and have a happy Thursday!

Christmas Cards - Red and Pink

2010-12-22T09:09:00.003-07:00

Hot cocoa is one of my favorite parts of winter and fall. It gets so hot here during the spring and summer, and well part of the fall here too, that most of the year I don't want to drink anything hot. No coffee or lattes, no tea or hot cocoa. For 8 months of the year I stick to iced chai lattes, ice tea, and icy water, so it's a welcome change when the weather gets cold and I crave the comfort of warm drinks and creamy soups.

My other favorite thing about the cooler weather is my fall/winter wardrobe. I always feel like it's so much cuter than my summer one, lol. I love layers and scarves and boots ;) And even though I like the cooler weather better than our super hot summers, I can't imagine living someplace that gets too much colder than it does here. I'd hate to shovel snow, drive in snow, or be stuck in snow, lol. Anyhoo, I hope you're all ready for Christmas ;) Our girls have been asking if it's Christmas yet every day since school got out, lol. Enjoy the cards and have a wonderful Wednesday!

Christmas Cards - Pink and Plaid

2010-12-21T09:47:00.004-07:00

The BG Eskimo Kisses paperpack is probably one of my favorite Christmas lines ever - the colors are so festive and the patterns can be fun or gorgeous. This plaid has been hard for me to use simply because I like it so much. The first cut is always the hardest. I'm not sure why, the finished product is always so much better than the paper by its lonesome ;)

Both images are from Stamping Bella. I heart this one so much because it reminds me of my girls ;) This year the girls attended their first symphony concert. I was so excited. They got tired about half way through and A fell asleep in my arms, but C was really good and patiently watched the whole thing, we were there about 2 hours. She was really excited to see all the instruments and asked me all about them. Thankfully I can tell them all apart and explain what each did since I was such a band geek ;) The second to last piece was her favorite because we got to sing along and because the Deck the Halls was one of the songs. She loved singing out Falala lala lalalala! Anyway, enjoy the cards and thanks for stopping by!

Christmas Cards - Red, Green, and Pink

2010-12-20T10:32:00.001-07:00

I finally got my cards mailed out Saturday. I only had a handful of super simple cards I made throughout the year, like 6 lol, so I had a few more I needed to make. Lucky for me, I read about Sparkle's method of coloring many images at once. She picks her papers, chooses her colors to match, then colors the batch! Sounds easy enough ;) Thursday I spent a couple hours coloring some images while watching a flick with Paul and then Friday I put together the cards. So Saturday they were mailed. Hopefully they'll get to their destinations by Christmas. If not, they'll be a post Christmas treat! I'm seriously making the resolution to add Christmas card making/writing/sending to my Thanksgiving weekend Christmas decorating tradition.

The first card is using Sparkle's Rin with Snowman stamp. It's also my card for the Cupcake Inspirations challenge. The inspiration cake is an amazing Santa Cake, you should check it out! This image is so fun to color and this card ended up one of my favorites that I made! The second one uses a fun hot cocoa cup from Stamping Bella, such a cute image and it's really fast and easy to color in. I really liked making my cards this way, it was fun to color them freely and also to see what papers ended up working out with my images the best. Anyway, enjoy and have a wonderful Monday!

Cider Mini Gifties

2010-12-19T10:13:00.003-07:00

It's my b-day today and all I can really think about is getting stuff ready for Christmas, lol. I do so enjoy making mini gifts. They're fun and easy to put together and who doesn't love a special little treat? Last year I did hot cocoa, and while I know I could probably do cocoa every year I thought it would be fun to try out ciders this year. These are the finished baggies, complete with tags, candy canes, and peppermint kisses.

And here's the little cider bags themselves. I kept to simply making enough mini gifts for the family we're mailing out to this year. Family close to us will get baked goodies with fun tags like these as well. And don't worry, I won't spend my whole birthday making gifts for other peeps ;) Have a lovely Sunday!

A Little More Christmas

2010-12-18T13:01:00.003-07:00

I've been having a bit of frugal fun with decorating for Christmas this year ;) Here's our medium sized Christmas tree in the corner.

I created treat cones for the tree a couple weeks back using cardstock, paper, and ribbon I had on hand. I used Thickers for simple monograms and then punched out snowflakes for a couple generic cones. Last year I made the fun star/pompom garland out of felt, paper, and leather string.

The chipboard snowflake is from BG's Eskimo Kisses set. Just punch a hole, add some baker's twine, and viola!

I also thought it would be fun to wrap our presents to match and I created monogramed tags from the same paper set, along with a few matching bits of October Afternoon. The wrapped prezzies on the piano from a couple posts ago used up the last bit of wrapping paper from last year. This year I delved into all the saved packing paper and paper bags I stashed away just for this sort of repurposing ;)

And I tried my hand at making a banner with that cute new flag style that's been going around ;) I think it came out so cute! Enjoy and thanks for visiting!

Easy Fringe Fleece Scarves

2010-12-17T15:20:00.000-07:00

Aren't these just so cute! I've had a stash of fleece remnants hanging out in one of my fabric bins for a while, so I thought it would be fun to see what kind of tutorials are out there for fleecey scarves. This Easy Fringe Fleece Scarf tutorial caught our eyes and I knew immediately that we needed to try it out. The girls picked their colors from the stuff I had on hand, which was super fun for them. Then they watched me whip them up!

I ended up making theirs 6" wide by about 45" long. I just cut selvage to selvage and then trimmed the selvages off. Right sides facing out (note that most fleece doesn't really have a 'right' side - mine had a fluffier and flatter side, so I used the fluffier side as the right side), sew a seam down the long side middle to hold your two or three colors of fleece then cut strips all the way down one side of the seam taking care not to cut through the seam itself. I gave myself a good inch away from the seam. Repeat on other side of the seam. Shake up your scarf, both to mix the fringes as well as shake off the extra fleece fluff ;) The fleece won't fray and these are super quick and easy to make! It took less than 30 minutes to whip them both up! These would make great handmade Christmas gifts for the little girls as well! If fringe isn't your style Grosgrain and One Pretty Thing have a wonderful list of different style scarves to DIY. I hope you're all warm and cozy this winter ;) Thanks for stopping by!

Rin with Snowman

2010-12-16T16:46:00.002-07:00

It's so nice to color a small image! The art projects for my design class had to be on 17x15 inch drawing paper, so coloring anything took a really long time! I made this card for Sparkle's challenge, this week it's stitching - faux or real. Rin is colored with pencils, the background is pencil with gamsol, the shading is with a copic, and highlights are done with a white gel pen. Anyhoo, I'm off to make some dinner - french toast, lol! Enjoy!

Holiday Greetings!

2010-12-16T00:06:00.003-07:00

I just finished my last final today, YAY!! So now I have time to post the stuff I haven't had time to these past few weeks. Even though it's been hectic, I have been able to squeeze a tiny bit of crafting in here and there. These are some cute little paper ornaments I put together for the girls' mini Christmas trees. I love these little MME eskimos, they are so cute. And what's even better is that I got the fabric this week for 50% off!! It'll make such a cute Christmas quilt and pillow cases for the girls ;)

These are the mini tags I made from the little punch tags in the cutouts. They were all really quick and easy, just some 3D foam squares and a little added bling!

Here are the other two bigger ornaments, the little boy eskimo and polar bear.

This is the top of the piano decorated with the girls' Christmas trees. I thought it would be fun this season to put some fun holiday mats in place of our regular ones. These were so easy to put together, I simply punched snowflakes out of old BG Christmas paper, added PTI wooden buttons, and matted it all on kraft paper. A fifteen minute uplift for the holidays!

Here's a little closer look at the trees. This one is the one C mostly decorated. I added the tags after making them.

And here's the other side. A decorated this one. We're planning on either making more paper ornaments and/or dividing the ornaments between them again with all the colors and giving A some of the MME ones ;)

And sitting happily as well as matching nearly perfectly, is Sparkle's darling card! It's the first one to arrive this season. Isn't it so cute? Thank you so much hun! This reminds me that I need to get on the ball with sending out my Christmas cards this year too ;) That's it for today. I hope you're all having a wonderful holiday season!

Frugal Christmas : Crayon Holders

2010-11-24T16:58:00.001-07:00

My first Frugal Christmas gifts were for adults, but we also drew a niece and nephew as well for our family's get together. I usually keep some coloring books on hand for our girls and last year we ended up with a lot of extra coloring books, which is perfect for some frugal giving. I had also bought quite a few boxes of crayons with the 2009 back to school sale - 20 cents a box! While a box of crayons and a couple books would probably be fine, it's much more fun to have something to put your crayons in! So here's my second Frugal Christmas project - crayon rolls. The particular tutorial I used was one I downloaded a long while ago and can't seem to find the original post, but Fiskars has a darling simple roll tutorial designed by Susan Weinroth, and Skip to My Lou has a fun ric rac version as well if you want to make your own ;) Since I didn't have extra batting hanging around I used some extra fleece scraps I had in lieu of batting, it worked great!

Here's the inside of the roll. These are so cute and fun, the girls have been begging me to make them some too, so you can probably bet that I'll be making some for them as stocking stuffers ;) We'll be heading to my SIL's tomorrow for a Thanksgiving BBQ and then Saturday we'll have a traditional thanksgiving at my MIL's. Friday will be our usual Christmas decorating fiasco! Anyway, thanks for stopping by and I hope you all have a fabulous Thanksgiving!

Frugal Christmas : Rice Hot/Cold Packs

2010-11-21T16:01:00.000-07:00

Thanksgiving is nearly here which means Christmas isn't far off. For us, buying thoughtful gifts just isn't feasible this year and with me in school I need projects that are quick to make! One of my gifting projects is rice heat packs. Not long ago, Paul hurt his back pretty badly. Long story short, I made him a rice heat pack and he loved it! That little pack helped his back so much during the day when he couldn't be on the muscle relaxants, and even now it helps with minor aches and pains or if my feet are really cold ;) We drew Nana and Paul's brother for Christmas this year (our family draws names for Christmas instead of everyone trying to gift everyone) and neither of them have a handy little heat pack, so these are going to be our gifts to them. I adapted the pattern in One Yard Wonders for the obi-inspired heat pack and simply took the heat pack part and the pocket and to make these. Total time - about 45 minutes for one (I'm a slow seamstress). If you want to try the same type of thing but don't have the book, Sew Mama Sew has a great tutorial for a darling set of heat pack goodies! It's a little more complicated, but super cute if you have the time. For a really quick heat pack Real Housewife has a longer wrap around rice heat pack that is amazingly easy to whip up! The best part, all these were made with stuff I had on hand! How's that for being frugal ;)

And this here is my little draft snake that I whipped together using Simple Sewing's easy peasy instructions. I sew on my dining table, sitting close to the window. It's been windy and rainy here and I noticed a chill draft cutting in while I was making the heat packs so using some scraps I had sitting out I made this little guy quick! These are so simple to make, cut your fabric 7" tall by how wide you want, or use scraps to get the width. Right sides together sew one short end and then the long end. Turn right side out and fill with rice or dried beans. Fold under the open short end and sew closed. Viola! No more drafts ;)

A Little Thank You

2010-11-15T20:43:00.002-07:00

I was so happy today when we went to C's SEP. For one she's doing great! I can't remember if I mentioned it, but back in October they fully integrated her into the class and put her on monitor status, which has both some benefits and drawbacks. C's been thriving though and the only concern is that she can't test independently and get a real score. Basically if you give her a test to do on her own in class, she does poorly. But if she has someone directing or keeping her on task, she scores at 100% or near there. Anyway just the fact that she's doing so well in school and is even a little ahead in her reading is so wonderful, especially since we wondered if she'd ever do okay in school with her PDD. We are so proud of her! The second thing was the book fair. We've been anxiously waiting for the book fair this fall since they always have some really fun new books in paperback. We picked up the new Skippyjon Jones (Lost in Spice), Goldilicious, another pinkalicious level book, and Llama Llama Misses Momma. After reading them all my fav has to be Skippy, but then again it always is, that cat is too adorable! Anyway, enjoy my quick little card ;) Thanks for visiting and have a wonderful Monday!

Another Fall Chloe Card

2010-11-10T17:25:00.002-07:00

Two cards in a single week, I feel like I'm on a roll ;) Sparkle's weekly challenge this week is to make a card to hold a gift card. I needed an extra b-day card for this month and since I already had another Chloe stamped out I decided to play with her again. This time I tried for some polka dots on her scarf ;) Here's the inside:

Unfortunately I'm catching a cold or something, which means that I don't feel like doing much of anything. Making this card was a little bit of a pick me up but already I'm feeling worn out again. I've been trying to take it easy at home so that I don't miss class. Luckily I busted my butt this weekend and got a lot done for my art class so I'm not falling behind with all this lazing around, trying to get better. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the card ;) Thanks for popping by and have a happy Wednesday!

Fall Birthday

2010-11-06T23:23:00.005-06:00

Another month has flown by and it's so nice to finally sit down and craft. Can you believe I haven't bought any crafting stuff in 2 months?! I guess that's what happens when you've got a family and you go back to school, lol. I feel like all my free time is spent trying to get time in with them. I had gotten a few goodies back in August but haven't gotten to touch them and my desk still has the Halloween papers I was going to do more crafting with from back at the beginning of October. While this isn't new paper really, it is paper I hadn't cut into yet ;) This card is for Sparkle's #17 stamp challenge. Both Sparkle and LHM are doing this sketch challenge this week. I'm in need of a few fall b-day cards so Chloe was up again. She's been my go-to stamp for birthdays. It felt so nice to play with some paper and glue!!

The weather here has finally cooled down enough to be called fall ;) We had a pretty hectic October and unfortunately the girls didn't get to do any trick or treating this year. C came down with a bad bug and by the Thursday before Halloween she sounded awful and was running a fever. The doc said no school or trick or treating unless the fever was gone, not only was she very contagious but the cough was moving down into her chest. So she ended up missing school for a couple days and also Halloween. Because they didn't get to trick or treat (A still got to go to one Halloween party with a friend), I made a fun witch/treasure hunt game for them. It lasted about an hour and a half and they used nerf guns to shoot down ghosts, found hearts to turn their zombie dolls and animals back to normal (we made little cardstock masks and taped them to their faces), and had to follow a map to find the Witch's Watchtower, shoot the witch down, and blow up the tower with golden grenades (candy they collected throughout the hunt). The girls had a blast and it was fun to make up a role playing game for them to enact. Thankfully, C's cough was much better by Monday and her fever gone. It always worries me so much when they get so sick like that! Anyway, tomorrow I'll be getting them in their costumes to take pictures, now that C is all better ;) Thanks for visiting and have a lovely weekend!