Hiatus

Thanks so much for the emails and comments ladies! I know I haven't been on and some of you have missed me posting stuff. The first week and a half I just hadn't been making time to get on the computer like I used to or even create, but after that Cait has been in speech therapy and then also getting diagnosed so we've been really busy with that. When she starts school I'm sure to go nuts since she'll still be in therapy as well as going to school. But she loves her therapy time and her speech pathologist is such an awesome gal so I'm sure it's just me that will go crazy with Cait having so much to do. Until I get some of my bearings back the color challenges and my art are most likely going to be on hiatus. I will post if I manage to make anything and I'm hoping that sometime in September I can start on the color challenges again and this time with the new colors!

Onto some family info, Caitlyn has finally been diagnosed. She had PDD NOS (Pervasive Development Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified). Basically she has some symptoms of both Autism and Aspergers but doesn't fit into either. PDD is on the autism spectrum disorders and Caitlyn has more of the Asperger symptoms than the Autism ones. She has above average IQ on her visual intelligence but below average IQ on her verbal. What the psycologist told me was that basically the right side of her brain is developing and working great but the left side of her brain is having a hard time. The good news is that with therapy and early intervention she should be able to attend regular school (she will most likely need speech therapy for the first few years of grade school still as well) and with our help can learn to cope with or overcome some of her learning challenges. She'll most likely grow up to be a fully functioning adult which was a big worry for us when we were told she could have autism, so we are happy to finally have an official diagnosis and a more specified treatment plan. Our speech pathologist had already started us on a great path to helping teach Caitlyn more efficiently and Cait has been catching onto social conversation so much quicker than before. And now with a diagnosis and some recommendations from the psycologist we can change her IEP to fit her even better for school too.

For some other good news, Paul's internship has credits now so he won't be doing a full load of school plus tutoring and then plus the intership. The internship will just take the place of one of his other classes, and since he's working on a documentary he'll be able to put his work from the internship on his professional resume :D That means he won't be gone from home as long which is a big deal to me. I love having my hubby around ^_~ And not to leave her out, Audrey is doing great. She's talking up a storm almost at Caitlyn's level already and is starting to learn to count. She still has trouble with some colors, but she's getting it and is finally letting me read more to her. It was so different with Caitlyn since Cait LOVED books even at just over one and always wanted story time (still does, lol. In fact she just got 3 more new books!). Audrey is also starting to be night time potty trained, yay! So the day of the diaper is almost at an end! All that plus their aunt spoiled them with stuffed animals this last week. There is a huge bear, bigger than Audrey, so Audrey didn't sleep in her bed last night, she slept on top of the huge bear on the floor, lol. Just some of what's been going on with us. Thanks for all the check ups everyone ^_~

Color Challenge #30

Alright, I'm up on time this week ^_~ Colors for the challenge are inspired by my hubby's wardrobe since this next week it's his birthday. To play use at least three of the colors and send me a link to your art so I can add it here to this post. Have fun!

Cranberry
Grey Wool
Black
Bamboo

Barb's Lovely Envelope Card
Marcia's Hot Bikahbella Card
Sparkle's Adorable Teachabella Card
Jami's Cute Fella and Bella Cards
Noelle's Classy Make It Count Card
Laurel's Sweet Oh-So-Pretty Bella
Jena's Darling Turn that Frown Layout

My Sample:


I was actually looking for a picture of Paul to use when I found this picture of Caitlyn. I have scrapped all her baby photos and this was a duplicate that had been changed out of a frame, but it fit so perfectly with the color challenge that I had to scrap this photo as well. Plus back then I didn't scrap the stories, so here was an opportunity for me to write a little about how much I loved to make Caitie wear hats ^_~ Thanks for stopping by and have a great week!

No Mojo?

So all week long I've felt like I've had no mojo. But after looking at all I made this week I'm thinking that I either I did okay without mojo, or I had at least some mojo, lol.


Supplies: Life Delights Paper Pack and Stickease; Tag Book; Chipboard Alphas and Flowers; Gold Eyelets; Lilac Mist, Blush, and Chocolate CS; Garden Green Safety Pin; Blush dot ribbon; All CTMH

I started with this tag book since I couldn't get in the mood to scrap earlier this week, but have been wanting to use up my old papers. I've had this little tag book since I signed up with CTMH almost 2 years ago, lol. Just easy peasy stuff using life delights and the matching stickease. It used up most the rest of my papers so that made me happy :D

Supplies: Life Delights Paper Pack and Stickease; White Daisy Paper Flowers; Hollyhock Accents and Ricrac; DE Bookplates; Boutique and Sans Small Alpha Stamp Sets; Chocolate, Cocoa, and Col White CS; All CTMH

I used almost all the rest of the scraps of my Life Delights paper with this layout. I have one scrap left. It's of the butterfly paper and I already have an idea of what to use it on. So one more page and my life delights will be another paper pack to add to the list of all used up ^_~

This was my huge use-up-all-of-this-paper-pack-now project that took me about 4 days. I have had this paper F-O-R-E-V-E-R, lol. So I thought I needed to just use it up. Here are the 7 pages I made from this paper. I created only one layout way back when and had nearly the entire paper pack to use when I started this project.

I used the Imagine book for this first one. I've never used this layout before because I was always intimidated by the slanted cut photos but they were actually really easy to do. Everything CTMH on this layout except the rubons on the Temple picture, they are from Basic Grey.

It's been a long time since I've used a Cherish layout and this is another sketch I've never used before either just because I usually like to only do 2 page layouts when I have 5 or more pictures. But I really wanted to keep this one open and even with all the space, I like the way it turned out. All products CTMH.

The layout that I did forever ago was of one of Audrey's Blessing portraits. She was holding a red rose and just looking at it and I had bought these papers just for that. These were some of her at home blessing pics and I thought I might just use these up to go along with the theme I started. This one uses a new Aug '08 pagemaps layout. I altered it to fit more pictures. The transparency overlays are by My Minds Eye, the rhinestones are just regular craft rhinestones and all the rest is CTMH. On all three of these double page layouts I used the B&T as my base pages as well instead of cardstock. This helped use up the papers quicker as well as not using up my cardstock which I want to use with new papers :D

And this was the last layout of this set to use up all those funny shaped scraps. I didn't embellish very much on this one since it already has so much going on with the layers, and it felt a bit like a quilt so I simply added some edge stitching to bring it all together. And yay this paper pack is now history! I'm going to try to use up a lot of old papers this month since the new CTMH catty has come out. I won't get to order anything this month, but hopefully by September I'll have a crafting budget again and can get some new fun stuff ^_~

Color Challenge #29

Colors were inspired partly by chocolate and partially by just boy colors. To play use at least 3 of the shades in a new project and send me a link to your artwork so I can add it here ^_~ And have fun playing!

Barn Red
Chocolate and/or Cocoa
Honey
Olive

Sparkle's Cute Changito Thank You Card
Noelle's Yummilicious Thanks a Latte Card
Barb's Relaxing Lawn Chair Card
Marcia's Adorable Friends Forever Card
Jena's Lovely Family Christmas Photos Layout

My Sample:

Supplies : Caprice Papers, Winter's Heart '06? Papers, Olive, Barn Red, Honey, Chocolate, Cocoa, and Col White CS, Lifes a Jungle and Paradise Stamp sets, Sunflower bigger brad, Chipboard Circles

I made one of those fun Joy Fold Cards that SCS has a tutorial for this week. I had fun but without my mojo I was really having a tough time putting this one together. This has been such a hard week for the color challenge, I'm telling ya, lol! If I had just done it while I was in my scrappin' groove over the weekend it would have been fine, but no I had to wait because I'm a terrible procrastinator. So getting past scheduling wasn't too bad, only that I realized when I finally got a chance to sit down that I had absolutely no mojo. Then I had a mom meltdown, we won't go into that, lol. So last night ended with nothing finished. Today I woke up feeling much better, talked and played with the girls a bit, had breakfast, then started the color challenge. I was having fun making the interactive card so that was good. But when I went to post, my hubby's mouse wasn't working (a problem he discovered earlier this morning and was trying to fix). So I get my mouse and plug it into his computer. I am going through all this trouble because he has my photo editing software on his computer. Then the entire computer freezes on me. I reset and try to work again and.... the keyboard doesn't work. It looks to be two things... either a virus, which I am doubting, or the ports are dead which is more likely since they sit right next to each other. And that really irks me because his computer isn't even a year old! Anyway, I retake the pictures (because now he is in safe mode doing a thorough virus scan just in case, plus he's on the phone with HP to try and figure it out, and my pictures were on his computer), upload the new ones to my computer, then take forever to edit them online in photobucket. *sigh* Hopefully you all will have an easier time than I did trying to get this done, lol. Thanks for stopping by and reading my tirade ^_~ And have fun with the colors this week!

Layouts from the Weekend

Supplies : Sugared Paper and Glazed Brads, Basic Grey; Buttons, Mind's Eye; Burgandy Flowers, Petaloo; Foam Letters, Thickers; White Flowers, White Ricrac, Baby Pink and Garnet CS, Sketchy Alpha Stamp Set, and Textured White CS by CTMH


This was my favorite layout of the weekend. It was the first layout I put together at my friend's house, and it was so fun to finally get a chance to use my Sugared Basic Grey paper and brads! These pictures are so special since it's rare for me to catch Audrey on film treating her Mao the same way she does everyday. That poor little tiger deals with a lot of tough love, but he doesn't seem to mind :D The title comes from Mao's name. When Audrey was not quite one she couldn't really say 'meow'. It always came out as 'mao'. After a while she just began calling her tiger 'Mao' and the name has stuck. Even two years later though she can mew, meow, and growl like nobody's business, she still calls her tiger 'Mao'. The cat's meow has stuck... or in this case, the cat's 'mao'.



Supplies : Foam Letters, Thickers; M photo corners Chipboard, Rusty Pickle; Little felt flower, Making Memories; Large felt flower, RAK from Jenn; Large Yellow flower, Heidi Swapp; Noteworthy CS journaling prompt, My Minds Eye; Expedition Papers, Autumn Terracota Ribbon Rounds, Black and Chocoalte CS, Autumn Terracota Textured CS, Autumn Sunflower Paper Flowers, Autumn Buttons, Chocolate Waxy Flax, Sunflower Bigger Brads, Sans Small Alpha and Extreme Alpha stamp sets by CTMH; Punch Label font printed in black for journaling

I created this layout second at her house as well. This one was a lot of fun. I had planned the title for the picture on the left for quite some time and had just never made the leap of turning it into a layout. I love the way it pulled together with the expedition papers and mish mash of embellishments. Since I don't have a label maker I just used one of the free fonts you can download online. It did however take quite a while to cut out all the words and adhere them to the page, lol, but it was definitely worth while since I really like the effect for this layout. The journaling is all about Mao's first time outside in the yard. I'm really paranoid about losing the girls' lovies so I usually make them leave them inside the house. Audrey had a blast with him and he looked like such a sad pathetic little tiger that I loved the idea of using an ironic title for his page.



Supplies : Pattern Paper, Mini Orange Label, and Blue File Label by My Minds Eye; Chipboard Letters by Rusty Pickle; Textured Orange, Pale Blue, and Teal CS by Bazzil; Chipboard label, Silver Accents, Sweet Leaf and White CS, Rustic Alpha, Atomic Alpha, Extreme Caps, and Sans Small Alpha stamp sets all by CTMH; 39 Smooth Font for Journaling

This cutie is one of my nephews. Isn't he just a charmer? I have to say that this was the most difficult page for me to do since I usually don't do boy pages. I kept wanting to put flowers and ribbon, well maybe the ribbon would have worked, but he is such a boyish boy that I didn't want to put any froo-froo on the layout at all, lol. In the end, I think I did a pretty good job with his layout, but I was more than happy to return to making little girl layouts again!!

Supplies : Pattern Paper and Buttons by My Minds Eye; Foam Letters by Thickers, Chipboard Flower Buttons by American Crafts; Textured Orange, Teal, and Green CS by Bazzil; Felt Flower by Making Memories; Dotted Flower by Doodlebug; Chipboard Photo Corner by Rusty Pickle; White Ricrac by CTMH

These pics are so funny because they were taken right after Cait and her cousin finished a battle over his new toy truck. Cait wanted to play with it and he most definitely did not find that at all acceptable. But it wasn't long before they were watching a movie peacefully together, lol. I went ahead and used the same boy papers as my All Boy layout but added flowers and the ricrac to this one since Cait was in the pictures with him.

Supplies : Pattern Paper, Friends and Tag Element by My Minds Eye; Ribbon unknown - cut by the yard from my LSS; Foam Letters by Thickers; CS by Bazzil; Spiral Flowers, RAK from Jenn; Chipboard Photo Corners by Rusty Pickle; Chipboard Letters and Arrow from CTMH; Apple Butter Font used for Journaling

These have got to be the most adorable pictures I've gotten at the waterpad. Audrey had found a little boyfriend, or rather he found her. They walked all around together holding hands, laughing together, he even had his hand on her back while watching the other kids play at one time! It was so sweet and I'm so glad my camera has such a good zoom because I don't think I would have caught this little romance if I had been closer. I used my pagemaps book for the layout, converting on of the 8.5x11 2 pagers into a 12x12 2 pager. Then I swapped the places of the pages. I finally got to use some of these adorable spiral flowers that Jenn sent me too. I had been trying to find a way to use them that I really loved and the gold ones she sent worked perfectly with this layout! The yellow and green CS in this layout are actually the back sides of the pattern paper. Anyway, that's what I did this weekend! I haven't gotten around to making my sample for the color challenge yet with all the scrapping I was doing so it might be a little late. Cait has her first formal speech therapy appointment tomorrow so the color challenge might not be up until Monday night or Tuesday morning. Thanks for stopping by!

All About A Princess

It's Princess Time!! I didn't even realize I had been doing this, but all these pictures are from Halloween. These pinky layouts have pics from Halloween '06 and the next set are from Halloween '07. They are all of Cait and she's been a Princess the past two years. She'll probably be a Princess this year too. I let her pick her costume and she ALWAYS wants to be a Princess, lol. What can I say though, she is my little princess after all ^_~

Paper : Sweet Leaf, Hollyhock, and Blush CTMH CS, My Minds Eye, Bo Bunny

Accents : My Minds Eye Paper Accents, Ribbon from LSS, CTMH Chipboard swirls and letters, Stampendous Pink Glitter, Bazzil fabric flowers, Unknown flower, Craft Rhinestones

I LOVE how this layout came out and all the pattern papers were scraps! This was the second layout I made today and I was really in the mood to bling it up especially after my first layout which is coming up next. Journaling was printed using my computer in deep pink and chocolate colors using the Apple Butter and Chocolate Box fonts.

Paper : Kiwi and White Daisy CTMH CS, My Minds Eye,

Accents : My Minds Eye Paper Accents, Heidi Swap and Bazzil Flowers, Ribbon from LSS, Rusty Pickle Chipboard, Craft Rhinestones

This was the layout I did last night, or rather very very early this morning since I was after midnight when I made it, lol. I loved this picture and had some scraps that I thought went well with it. After I finished the layout I added some fun doodling which I haven't done in a while :D

Paper : Vanilla Cream CTMH CS, My Minds Eye, Bazzil CS

Accents : My Minds Eye Paper Accents, Rusty Pickle Chipboard, Bazzil Fabric Flowers, American Crafts Big Brads, Hollyhock Ricrac (CTMH)

One of the 2-page layout I started the Saturday before last while I was at my friend's house. After almost 2 weeks I finally got around to finishing the journaling on these layouts while at her house again today, lol. This one uses an older 8.5x11 pagemaps layout that I extended to fit the 12x12 papers ^_~

Isn't this toad such a cutie! Kelly L, an awesome SBS4 sister sent a few images of him to me during our Secret Sister Image RAK and I am just now getting around to using at least one of him. I colored him in with Twilight and used the blending pen to lighten up the ink a little. I wanted to put something in this fun Minds Eye die cut circle and just couldn't find anything until I came across this little toady. He couldn't be a more perfect fit, he's even looking up at the picture of Cait!

Paper : Vanilla Cream CTMH CS, Bazzil CS, My Minds Eye

Stamps : Building Blocks Alpha, Sans Small Alphas, Atomic Lowercase Alpha, and Playful Flourishes (CTMH), Toad is from an SU set (can't remember the name) the image RAKed to me by Kelly L

Accents : My Minds Eye Paper Accents, Bazzil Fabric Flowers, American Crafts Big Brads, Hollyhock Ricrac (CTMH)

And the other 2-page layout I did at my friend's place also using a pagemaps layout. The title for this one is "Sleeping Cutie". Ever since Cait has seen Sleeping Beauty she has called her Sleeping Cutie. Even now, she still says she's sleeping cutie, lol. Julie said I just had to put that somewhere on the layout and so I did ^_~ I made it the title and the journaling is all about how Caitie calls Sleeping Beauty, 'Sleeping Cutie'. And that's all I've gotten finished this week so far. I've been a bit slow with my scrappin' but I hope that'll pic up soon ^_~ Thanks for dropping by!