Orange You Glad I'm Not Broken

This morning I got a call just before eight to find out my SIL had been in an accident in our car. She's fine, she says. The other car barely even had a scratch on it (she had rear ended them), the other girl was fine, and Paul already talked to the insurance and they were going to cover most of it. We only have one car and don't exactly have the means to get another one right now. Needless to say I started crying.

If it had been just the accident I might have been fine but this whole past month or so has been a really rough ride, well the year in general. And this last week really has been extra hard. We had spent $800 on repairs to the car, from fixing the AC to getting a cracked rim replaced, to new brakes, all just this last month. In addition to that, Paul's new 360 died this week, the one he got for Christmas that is also our DVD player. It's still under warranty so hopefully they will fix the problem with no charge to us. This last Friday, the week that Caitie's toe got hurt, she came home from school and then that night was really sick, was up until 1 while we tried to get the fever down, and then woke up again at 5. I took her to the walk in at 9 since it was Sat. and found out she had an ear infection. Sunday it became a cough and runny nose, and yesterday Audrey started with the ultra sniffles and some coughing too.

I've had minimal sleep with sick kids being up through out the night, what sleep I have gotten has been restless so I've been hanging by a thread all this past week. The time at Kay and Julie's really helped but I was still exhausted (btw the doctor had told me that Caitie didn't seem to have anything that was contagious, otherwise we would have stayed at home). That call this morning broke the damn and suddenly I felt as if everything was going wrong, that things just won't get better. I try to believe they will. Things break, kids get sick, we don't have any money but then again we rarely do, lol. It's not the end of the world, though while I was crying I couldn't help but to wonder how we'll manage, even though we somehow always do.

Add to that, that the MRI Paul got up north today says he has a new lesion in his brain. It's not active but they want him to come up again soon for some spinal tests since they think his spine might be degenerating now too. Paul says it's going to be okay, so I'm trusting him that it will be okay. Because by myself I can't believe it will be, but I have to trust that if he says it's alright, it will be alright. Without him I'd completely break down.

Anyway, what in the world does this have to do with the card, lol? Well, this was the sentiment I was thinking of after trying to help console my SIL on the phone. Life is how you bake it. Creating is truly therapy. I stamped a bunch of images for the girls to color so they could color while I made this card for the sketch challenge. I've tried to be happier throughout the rest of the day, because no matter what happens the only thing I have control over is myself. And I want to be happy. Even if things don't turn out right, I want to be happy about something. Paul won't be home for a while still, so I fed the girls noodles for dinner and baked myself orange rolls. Because on days like this, there should only be dessert.

This was the other card I made for last weeks sketch challenge. I used the same color palette just changing out the pink carnation for ocean. Oh by the way the colors in the cards are Orange, Sunflower, Pink Carnation (for the top), and Ocean (for this one). Mostly just scraps used on both cards. The top card's sentiment was printed with my computer and this card's sentiment is from the Totally Chic stamp set. Both bellas colored with CTMH markers and highlighted with my gel pen as usual. There was a bit of orange in both these cards, hence the title along with the fact that yes, I'm still running. Despite all that's happened I'm still able to create and am not broken... yet, lol. I really hope everyone's having a better week than I have been! Thanks for stopping by ^_~

Color Challenge #17

I went shopping for scrap stuff for someone else and found some super cute summer papers. So this weeks color challenge is based off one of these cute papers. To play create a new project using at least three of the colors. Remember to send me a link to your creation by leaving a comment or emailing me so I can add the link to this post. And have fun playing!

Edit : Sure you can Tracy! I forgot to put that if you don't have these colors just use what you have that is close :D

Holiday Red
Orange
Sunflower
Bubblegum

Marcia's Cute Birdie Birthday Card
Jenn's Stylin Dryabella Card
Sparkle's Sweet Flowerbella Card
Jena's Splish Splash Layout
Sue's Cute Puppybella Card
Sparkle's Summer Hanna Card
Jena's Fun Snow Layout

My sample:



Uses Paradise, Cottage Floral, and Spot on Backgrounds stamp sets. I was in a summery mood this morning. Image stamped in holiday red and colored in with orange, sunflower, and bubblegum markers. I shadowed a little with the orange marker so the picture wasn't so flat. That's all I've got this morning! Have fun ^_~

Turtles

Isn't this turtle a cutie!! I love turtles, they are such amazing creatures. This stamp is from Cornish Heritage Farms, the Kim Hughes Collection. I also got the U R A Hoot stamp set and the Sweet Treats one as well (I'll have some cards with those later this week). I had actually gotten them in the mail last week but hadn't cut them out until tonight. The turtle I didn't have to cut out, but I'm silly and won't stamp until all of them are done and ready. I used scraps for this one. Honey, Citrus Leaf, and Kiwi CS along with orange embellies and some hot pink eyelets I had. The sentiment I printed from my computer. I just love these summer colors :D

This one was actually the first card I made. I used one of the nestabilities scallop circles that Sue sent me and sort of pulled the colors from the layouts I did yesterday. I used indian corn blue and cranberry, then switched out door denim and put in olive and garden green instead. Both cards use about the same layout as I'm too tired to be very creative tonight. Enjoy!

Fourth of July Layouts

There's nothing better than scrappin' with a friend to help cheer you up. Yesterday we spent a good while at Kay and Julie's, our dearest friends. I feel more at home there than I do anywhere else aside from our own home, and it was so nice to be able to scrap with Julie again! We don't get to do it very often so each time is a real treat. And it was much needed after the week we had. Here are the pages I did last night.




This one is a two page layout. I bought these papers Friday to use specifically with these pictures. The three pages I did last night all used the same Mind's Eye Confetti set. I also used one sheet of bazzil text CS, CTMH CS, and CTMH embellies & ribbon.



Last year we didn't get to really celebrate on the fourth and these were the only pics I took. Audrey had a fever along with a small staph infection and Caitlyn is afraid of fireworks anyway, so we just hung out at home and watched some movies. At least I dressed the girls patriotically for the day! The mini stars are from a mini stamp stamp set that is the hostess reward for the summer CTMH catty.

Some Stuff

Finally played in the Bella Color challenge for this week. I still have the sketch to do. The colors this week were any shade yellow, any shade orange, and a neutral. I picked Buttercup and Sunflower for my yellows, Goldrush for my orange, and Parchment for my neutral. Cuppacakebella colored in with CTMH markers. I think I made a mistake when making my card though, and grabbed vanilla cream CS instead of Parchment when putting it together, but that's okay it still matches :D

Here's the layout I started last night. We had a rough night and I'm not wanting to go into details about it. Anyway, I finished it up this afternoon once everything finally got settled down. The paper pack is Enchanted, one of my favorites. Now I have approx 16+ pictures of Caitlyn in her costume to do. Halloween 2006 could have it's own book I took so many pictures, lol. But it's more than half way finished scrapped now ^_~. I used a Page Maps book layout, using an extra picture instead of just one huge picture.


And this was a fun RAK sent to me by Sue, a bunch of fun nestabilities cut outs! Thanks Sue! Hopefully, I'll get to play with them soon. The card was one she did for one of my color challenges, if I'm remembering correctly :D The sparkles on the card are so fun! It's so neat to see people's cards in real life since pictures have a hard time capturing just how great they are. I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Floral Tapestry Layouts

I made the one layout last night and got to thinking about how I have really been wanting to use up my old CTMH papers. I used papers from the floral tapestry paper pack and stickease and wondered if it might be easier if I tried scrapping by paper pack rather than by pictures at least every once in a while like this.

I did this one last night, starting with a modge podge of pictures. These were just a couple here and there that were taken and sadly they just weren't the best of photos, lol. But they were all in the same month and I thought just to get them scrapped I'll do a simple page with these few crazy moments. Since there were no real stories to the pictures, it was easy to simply document what was happening since it was just that - Crazy Moments in August. I also wanted to start using up the stickease Sparkle had sent me since I had already used some of the papers by themselves in the packet for other projects and there are a lot of fun CS stickers on those 4 stickease sheets.

This picture was already out on my table. I was planning on using it for one of Pam's OOYB challenges with a quote about love being the fruit that's always in season, but doing some sort of play on just Caitie loving fruit. She's eating an apple in the picture. Anyway the layout isn't as stark in real life, I think my camera has a hard time with lights and brights mixing together. That and I was using the flash. You can hardly tell in the pic but the chipboard letters are actually stamped with the spot on backgrounds in crystal blue that show up quite well in RL. I was still trying to get back into my scrapping groove with this one, so it didn't quite turn out the way I had it in my head, but it did come out vibrant and fun like I had wanted.

Nothing like a good sketch to help me along. I have looked and looked at these pictures and kept thinking they would make such a big dent if I could scrap them, lol. I have lots of groups like this where there is just a huge plethora of photos from a single event. I used a sketch from the Page Maps book, stickease, and some CTMH white daisy flowers. I really LOVE how this one came out. It showcases the pics of Caitie so wonderfully and they aren't that great of pics. Some were blurred, others with yucky background noise in the photos, but the cropping eliminated nearly all that and simply highlighted her face.


This was the quickest layout. I used my Image (Jazzy Combination), switching out the cutting to fit the paper scraps I had. Stickease and bigger blooms made filling out this layout a breeze. The only non-CTMH item on this layout is the purple primas. I'm quite happy with the results. I still have a bit of stickease but only 2 full sheets left of the paper pack and a few scraps. I'm thinking of trying this again until I get my paper stash down a little more to my liking. I've been getting some new papers here and there but want to use them with the photos I still haven't printed yet, lol. I also found a new scrapstore yesterday and just got a little bit of ribbon, some flowers, and 3 sheets of paper, and it was awesome! They had an entire corner with toys, books, a mini flat screen TV with disney movies on, and an easel for the kids to play in. My girls didn't want to leave and so I was able to peruse the entire store without hardly any interruption! Anyway, until I get more caught up on my older photos, I'm afraid to print my newer ones because I'm pretty sure I won't have the motivation to scrap the old stuff when I get to play with my new digi pics!

Totally off topic, we did watch Cloverfield. I was so disappointed! It was a good movie but I really really wanted to know where in the world the monster came from! It looked like it could of come out of the ocean, but either way I was way more interested in the mystery that surrounded the monster than seeing how everyone died :P Paul said he wanted to see someone win whether it was the monster or us. I want to know what the dang thing is, where it came from, and why it's there. Oh well, lol. So that's what I've been up too.

And I can't remember who, but someone asked what stamp it was that I used in my 'oh where oh where has my mind gone' post. The stamp is Serenity Now, a mini set by My Favorite Things (MFT). Someone else said I should take a picture of Caitie's toe too. I'm not squimish when looking at wounds but I definitely have no desire to document them, lol. So no pictures. I might take one with the bandaid all wrapped around her toe, but it's bad enough having to remember a boo boo like that let alone immortalizing it. Anyway I still need to catch up on the bella color and sketch challenge for this week and I'm behind on my scrapping (just 4 pages ^_~). Thanksfully, finals are done for Paul so I'll have my hubby to help a lot more around the house again and that means more time for Mommy!