Sending Sunshine and Smiles

Hello!  A happy Sunday to you!  Having a pretty good day over here.  Started with a great message at church, some lunch than I went and canvassed our street for Heart and Stroke.  Was waiting for it to get warmer, but it wasn't happening!  At least I wore snow pants!  :>  We all had some nice Sunday naps and now I am getting my home ready for some company!  I am hosting a few girl friends over to watch the Oscar's!  Looking forward to some girl chat, the Oscar's and yummy food, it doesn't get better.  Oh wait it could if we fit some crafting in there!  LOL  Maybe I'll stamp a bit before they come....

Today I have a sunny warm card to share.  Over in the Hero Arts Flickr Group my fellow hostess Sally is hosting a color challenge, more info here.

Isn't it beautiful?  The rich colors, so warm and inspiring of what is to come when this winter is over!  I don't know if you've noticed but I was lacking in mojo the last bit and struggling to create.  It was frustrating as I had more time to create but just couldn't!  I've gotten some new stamps and such and feel like I am back with it and am brimming with ideas!  This color challenge was a great start as these are different colors for me and caused me to get out of my box, here is my card:

I stamped the Tall flower by HA onto some white cardstock and colored it with distress inks, than sprayed perfect pearls and water on it to give it shimmer, and to get it to blend better.  I love the way the flowers turned out.  I am playing around with my card layouts trying to be different and came up with this one.  I stamped the red scallop with envelope pattern in vintage photo, the red was a bit bright so it made it work better.  For the sentiment strip I did something new to me, I colored it with wild honey distress ink first than stamped the sentiment on top, to get it to match the yellow flower.  I was just going to do a kraft strip but am so glad I thought of this instead!  Here is a photo in the bright sunshine you can sorta see the shimmer better!

 

Well that's it for me, I gotta go and clean up my house and get started on dinner!  You know it's time when your youngest keeps coming up to you and saying hungry in there little voice saying it perfectly!  :>  And your husband reminds you that you had an early lunch remember?   Pulled pork sandwiches, so excited!

Operation Write Home

Hello!  Happy Saturday!  I hope that your doing better than me as I woke up with a headache!  Oy!  No fun, I had one for most of last weekend too!  I am here with the Wee Memories Scrappy Saturday Challenge!  This week our challenge is a very special one as we are doing it to honor Operation Write Home!

Operation Write Home is such a great cause which collects hand made cards from crafters all over the world to send to the wonderful men and women who serve in the military protecting us. It's a way for them to write back home to loved ones with cards that have a more personal touch. 

Our theme this week is United We Stamp!  Your challenge is to make cards to send to OWL to send to the troops!  We really hope you send the cards you create in. You can find all the details and requirements on the OWH website HERE, and a list of cards needed HERE, and the guidelines HERE (the biggie is no glitter!) for your cards and everything you can see on the OWH website. And thanks to Unity Stamp Co for helping bring this challenge to you!  

And for this challenge you may enter as many times as you wish!  :>  We would love to be able to have lots of cards to send to OWL!

This week we have a great sponsor who I know you've heard of!  Unity Stamps!  Unity has been so awesome giving all of us DT stamps for the challenge but unfortunately with shipping to Canada it hasn't arrived here yet!  Sigh Canada customs can make it take sooo long for packages to get here sometimes!  I do have a card to share today and will be back with my card later in the week with the Unity stamps.  Oh well more cards for OWL as I'll send this one too!

Here is my card, I went with a birthday card:

I embossed the flower by Hero Arts in white on the patterned paper and distressed the edges with some antique linen.

I really hope that you will play with us this week and make some cards for a great cause!  Please check out the Wee Memories blog and all the rest of the wonderful DT's work here.

Teacher Appreciation

Hello!  Happy Thursday!  The weather has turned to unbelievably cold today!  Apparently tonight will be one of the coldest this winter!  Thankfully I've been home all day with no plans on going anywhere!  This week it's Staff Appreciation at my daughter's school and a letter was sent home asking if we the parents would like to provide a meal, dessert, fruits, veggies for one of the lunches for the staff.  Also on the Hero Arts flickr group my fellow hostesses and I decided to have a cooking up hostess challenge in the flickr group, you can see it here.  I decided to combine the two!  I made an oreo cheesecake to send for the Staff for lunch!  It's a super easy recipe and I know everyone loves oreos and cheesecake!

 

So yummy!  I love that it doesn't have whip cream on top, I feel that it takes from the flavor anyways!  :>  Here is the link to the recipe.  I hummed and hawed over what I should send Ariel's teacher.  I decided on some fragrance body lotion that I have and made some tags for her teacher and for the EA (Education Assistant)  Here are the tags:

Out for Publication!

Yesterday I took Ariel to see Disney on Ice, Mickey and Minni's magical journey!  She loved it!  We had such a wonderful time!  Here are some photos:

I took this one of the two of us during intermission.  I love that she put her arms around me!

 I think this was my favorite part when the clamshell is opened and Ariel's sister's come out in the Little Mermaid part of the show!

 I didn't take many photos of the show (I wan to enjoy the show!) but had to take this one of course!

 Ariel wore her Ariel dress!  I figured why not dress up?

This is Ariel and her new chickie.  I wasn't too thrilled with what was for sale at the show, along with the outrageous price tags ($22 for a light up toy, once we bought one and it broke that night so never again!)  Last year we bought a necklace with an Ariel pendant and I don't know what happened to that (oh it tarnished bad!)  I told Ariel that after we would go to the store and she could pick out anything she wanted, a toy, a craft, or a book.  This is what she wanted, I would have got her a princess doll but she wanted this and was thrilled!  We had so much fun and I am so glad that we went!  I love having a little girl!

Green Leaves

Hello!  Today I am here with another great Wee Memories Scrappy Saturday Challenge!  I so love being part of the Wee Memories DT!  This week our sponsor is the great online store, Oh my Crafts!  Our challenge is super fun, Source of Inspiration! I know I am not the only one who gets super inspired by papercrafting magazines! 

I was inspired by the current Issue of Stamp It, by Lisa Johnson's gift bag on page 82:

Not too sure if I should take a photo to show you but I have seen others do it so.....  Here is my card, I am working on my male birthday card stash.  I need one this weekend for my FIL!  I made it more spring leaves:

You can see how I was inspired by her but I made it my own.  Basically had I not shared where I was inspired you never would be able to tell!  When I was working on my design and stamp layout I played with the stamps on the paper to get how I should stamp it. I am not one of those people who just play around it never works for me, I have it in my head:

But you can also see how after I stamped all 3 of those leaves I thought to add the fourth smaller leaf!  I love all 4 of the different colors of leaves so green and so spring!  Soon!

We have such a great challenge for you this week and I can't wait to see where you find your source of inspiration!  Make sure to head on over to the Wee Memories blog to see the rest of the amazing DT's work!  You have until Friday February 25th, 11:59 pst to play!

silhouette grass birthday

Happy Friday!  After a gorgeous week with spring like weather winter has returned!  Last night I had to work my one shift this week and they were calling for blizzard like conditions!    Only 5 to 10 cm of snow but with gusting wind at 50 km to 100 km an hour!  My drive home was crazy,  I could barely see ahead of me!  Thankfully I only live 5 minutes away!  This morning Ariel told us that the snowman's hat in the front yard was in the back yard, you could just see the top she has some eye sight actually being able to spot it!  Today it's cold but thankfully not windy!

In my last post I mentioned making a male birthday card with the same patterned paper as in that post so I did!  I need more male birthday cards!

Products used:  All Stamps Hero Arts, friends def, Silhouette Grass, sentiment. Buttons PTI, dies ric rac mat stack PTI, pp My Minds eye.

I thought it would be different to use only a portion of the silhouette grass by having a die shape of it.  I have a few more ideas doing that!  I usually go quite simple when making male cards but this one has a bit more to it!  I think it's because I let it sit on my craft table for a bit while I studied what I should do to it!  I still kept it clean by not distressing any of it with ink! 

It's been a bit since I shared any cute stories with you!  The other day I was holding Ariel in my arms (and loving every minute) and telling her how much I loved her.  And how having her was one of the best days of my life.  Ariel than tells me "The best day for me was when you had Carter!"  How sweet is that?  She loves her brother so much and when she said that it reminded me of how happy she was when we brought him home!  They are adorable together and love each other so much and I am so happy about that!  I have shared this photo before but I think it really shows the love and joy she had when we brought him home:

This picture always makes me melt!!!  Well I am off we are having company tonight so I gotta clean up the house!

Friends are Treasures

Hello!  I hope you all enjoyed a wonderful Valentine's Day!  We sure did!  I enjoyed the day at home with the kids and Ariel had a friend over to play too so that was fun!  The weather warmed up this weekend so we have been enjoying some fun in the wet snow!  On Sunday Ariel went to her first movie party to see Gnomeo and Juliet!  She had a great time!  Chad and I also went on a double date to see the new Adam Sandler movie Just Go With it!  It was pretty good!  Fun weekend!

Today I have a card to share that I made for the current challenge at Hero Arts!  I am so excited about Hero Arts pairing up with Basic Grey and having matching stamps and paper that it made me look at some patterned paper I have had since the summer and haven't touched.  Now that I have I can't stop!  Here is the first card I made with this paper, it's by My Mind's Eye and it's a double sided sheet that I used both sides:

Products used: Stamps all Hero Arts, Silhouette Spray, Magical Background.  PTI ric rac and Mat stack die, My Minds Eye PP, PTI buttons, white embossing powder, inks: SU Chocolate Chip and versamark.

I think the magical background works really well with this paper!  And I think that the green button makes the card!  I think I am going to attempt to make a manly card with this paper also!

I hope that your enjoying your week, I think that February is flying by way too fast!

Valentine Treats!

Hello!  Happy Saturday!  The weekend is here again!  Last night we began our weekend with babysitting our friends 3 kids!  It was insane!  Potty accidents, kids running around, screaming for fun, crayon on the closet door, and a baby who cried a lot and was hard to put to sleep!  Needless to say Chad and I crashed on the couch when we finally got them all in bed!  We were rewarded this morning by the fact that our kids slept in (the others were picked up late last night) 

Today I am here with another Wee Memories Scrappy Saturday challenge!  We have a fantastic challenge this week:  Live, Laugh, Love!  

Our sponsor is the fantastic stamp company which everyone knows, Penny Black!

It's a great theme this week and I have an interesting project to share.  The cake pop's I made for Ariel's class for Valentines!  Her class celebrated yesterday as she doesn't have school on Monday.  I loved the marshmallow snowmen I made at Christmas time and wanted to make something fun like that again so I decided to make cake pops.  Cake pops are all the rage these days but in case you don't know what it is let me tell you!  It's a full cake that has been crumbled in a bowl and icing mixed with it, than formed into balls, a stick is stuck in it and you dip the whole thing in chocolate!  

 A close up of a few above, and all of them wrapped below:

 A close up of them sorta look like lolly pops!

 All of them!

 Here you can see the cake inside:

I wrapped each and cellophane and tied it with some metallic string.  I also made banners for them stamping Happy Valentines Day on the front and a little heart on the back writing Ariel.  She still gave paper Valentines too! I glued it by wrapping it around the base and than curling it a bit with my fingers!  It was crazy!  And it took forever!  I love doing these things for my Ariel and being that mom but next time I won't be doing cake pops!  :>

I hope you join us this week at the Wee Memories Blog and play!  Don't forget to check out my fellow DT members great work too!  You have until Friday February 18th, 11:59 pst to play!  :>

Valentine Card Exchange!

Well it's Friday!  Yay the weekend is here!  And the one leading up to the day we celebrate Love!   I was thrilled when I saw one of my doily cards from a while back on the create blog today for the doily challenge!  You can see it here.

I don't know if I have ever blogged about this but as a child I has "bad luck" on Valentines Day.  It started in grade 3 when the boy who I liked (and he liked me I thought!) pushed me over the tunnel outside and I landed on my nose and boy did it hurt and leave a bruise!  Grade 5 when I was bringing my teacher roses in our classroom that was in a temporary classroom my hand was wet and got stuck to the cold metal door!  Grade 7 I was sick on Valentines, Grade 8 my teacher and the whole class played a prank on me about a rough draft essay being due, they said it was the final draft due!  I deserved that one I would often jokingly trick my classmates about schoolwork, I cried, the teacher felt horrible.  Hmmm I think grade 10 the boy I had a crush on found out!  Those were some bad Valentines Day!  But in 1998 on Valentines Day while I was in my first year of university it all changed!  I met Chad!  This year it will be 13 years ago that I met my hubby!  Wow kinda crazy!  We didn't start dating right away even though he liked me, we officially started dating September 1999!  Even with all the bad stuff (well bad at the time not soo bad looking at it now) I still liked Valentines Day as a kid and really love it now!  Ariel too loves Valentines she has been milking us pretty good with the stickers, and pencils, and heart straws and chocolates! LOL

Today I have a card to share with you that I made for the Valentine Hero Arts Flickr card exchange I organized!  I sent this to Robin!  I will be honest I love to organize things so I enjoy organizing the two exchanges I have done there!

I wasn't able to get a great pic when the light was really good!  I stamped the stems and grass from Be Happy by HA and added some die cut hearts that I stamped with background stamps as the flowers!  I masked it all and stamped the clouds over it, and distressed with antique linen.  I stamped the side with the cling dots and the sentiment is an old one I have!  I recieved the most beautiful card from Greta in the mail:

Isn't it lovely and soooo romantic?  :>  I love these card exchanges, they are so much fun! :>

I hope that you are having a wonderful Friday, I will be back tomorrow with my Wee Memories post!  I can't wait for you to see what I have made!

Winnter Fun Birthday

Hello!  I hope that you are having a good week!  Things over here are going okay.  Ariel stayed home sick from school today as she had a fever and sore tummy!  She sick but not terribly, seems to be fine for a bit than spent the afternoon on the couch!  I hope she gets better fast as Friday is her Valentine's day party at school and Ariel loves Valentines Day!  There is one good thing about when your kids get sick, all the extra cuddles! 

On Friday I realized that I did not have birthday cards for the two birthdays we had on Saturday!  ACK!  How did I let this happen to myself again?  Than I had to go work Friday night so I had to make them Saturday morning by noon!  Both parties were for kids, one a classmate of Ariel's and the other our nephew.  Both parties were outside, fun in the snow parties (it was a nice winter day thankfully!)  I decided to make similar cards and I wanted to make them wintery but not Christmassy.  And I had to make them fast!  I also had to wrap the gifts, why do I always wait until the last minute with that too, oh I know because Carter would open them!

I thought that the Lawn Fawn sledding bunny was perfect for a winter fun party!  I embossed the snowflake background to go with the winter theme, and used some kiddie patterned paper!  The girl is cosmo cricket and the boys is kauser kraft from ages ago! I paper pieced the scarf and the bunny is adhesive felt that I stamped and cut out!  I stamped the bunny and sentiment and colored it before embossing!  I added some fun yellow twine by The Twinery to the girls card as it need it but I thought the paper alone was good for the boy card!  I am happy with how these turned out, especially under pressure!  By the way Ariel had a lot of fun at the girl party with her daddy, I enjoyed some time with Carter at home and we both had a great nap, lol!  The second party was right after and was fun too, Carter loves being outside too!

Scrappy Saturday February Blog Hop!

Hello!  Welcome to Wee Memories Scrappy Saturday's February Blog Hop!  You should be arriving here from the ever so lovely Wendy's blog!  If not please join us in our fun hop and start at the Wee Memories blog!  Today we are introducing our new DT member's!  I am so excited to have Stephanie, Wendy, Giovanna join us on the DT!  And this month we have the ever talented Sarah Moerman as our guest designer!  We have so much fun in store for you!

For this challenge Michelle's Scraps is our sponsor!  Please make sure to check out her site here!  Some great stuff!  Our challenge this week is to "dust off those scraps!"  

I was very excited about this challenge until I realized that my beloved daughter actually takes A LOT of my scraps!  Whenever she sees some left over piece she asks me innocently with pure excitement, "can I have this mommy?"  and well she's adorable so how can I say no?  I was stressing a bit but realized I did have some things:

The musical stamped paper is leftover from when I was making Christmas cards and I made the flowers from scraps left of red paper!  Using paper that I had stamped before made this card faster, rolling my own flowers made it slower!  :>  I inked up with Antique Linen the doily to have it blend in better!

Thank you for stopping in today!  I hope you have a terrific weekend planned!  Are you as into sports as my hubby?  I am so excited for the NFL season to be over so Football on Sunday's is done!  I did not enjoy football from after church till bedtime!  :>  We have 2 kid outdoor in the snow birthday parties today!  Thankfully the weather is beautiful and even more thankfully I convinced my hubby to take my daughter to one of the parties!  

Your next stop on the hop is the talented Ann!  Ann should have something beautiful to share as she was home for 3 days with a blizzard!  Hope your doing better Ann!  See you next week for another great challenge!

Pink and Black Flower Birthday Card

Hello!  And it's Friday!  What a great week it has been!  Wednesday was amazing with the announcement on the Hero Arts blog about me being a hostess! (And you all made it that much better with your sweet kind comments)  Thursday I went shopping and went to a local scrapbook store!  Than I went to see a movie with two girlfriends and had some girl time!  Today I am waiting for another girlfriend and her sweet baby girl to come over.  I made our favorite beef dip for dinner last night and called my friend teasing her that she should come for lunch as it's her favorite, it worked!  Oh and on Wednesday night I wasn't tired so I went online late.  I tend to be a little silly on facebook late at night and when I read another friend's status update who wasn't friends with a lot of the same people as me I quickly copied and paste it:

Were EXPECTING AGAIN! I know, I know, it's crazy isn't it? I can't believe it myself. I wasn't going to put it on make it official. I mean who would have guessed that we are expecting AGAIN!! Yup it's official.. We are expecting snow today and AGAIN tomorrow!!

Well that resulted in a flurry of comments!  I do think it's kinda mean, but it's sooo funny!  And on Thursday morning when I dropped Ariel off at school one of the dad's congratulated me and called me a baby machine!  At first I didn't get it and than I realized, I told him he must not have read the whole status!  Oh the fun of facebook.  I am currently on guard because of my good blogging buddy Virginia is planning on getting me back!  And she has a teenager and child in university who I bet have some good ideas!

Today I have a birthday card I made for my fellow DT member at Wee Memories, Jinny.  I am soooo lucky to be on the DT for Wee Memories, Jenny is awesome and the other DT girls are the greatest!  So proud to be DT with them!  I mailed this card to Jinny a bit ago and didn't want to share it on blog land until she got it, which she did last week so here it is:

I actually was lacking mojo when I made this so I made it easier for me by using some patterned paper!  I also wanted it to be flat so it would be easy to mail!  I stamped with pink pigment ink and clear embossed my favorite flower stamp ever by Hero Arts on the pp in the corner!  I punched the sides with a punch I got in September and hadn't used yet! Used a PTI sentiment and tied some pink bakers twine by the Twinery!  I love the color pink!

Well I better run!  I will see you tomorrow with a new fun challenge from Wee Memories!

Exciting News!

Hello!  I have the most exciting news, in case you haven't seen it check out today's Hero Arts blog here!  I am thrilled to become one of the newest Hero Arts Hostess!  I can't tell you how excited I am!  Ever since I found out I have been thrilled and it's been hard to sleep!  When I wake up in the morning before I even open my eyes I get  huge smile on my face! I am so happy to be finally be able to share the news with you as my hubby doesn't get it!  And I know you do!  I love Hero Arts!  There products are amazing!  The company,  the artists and workers are all great!  I love being part of the Hero Arts flickr group!  Everyone is great and kind and sooo talented.  And the site is easy to use for anyone! 

Tami asked us to create a friendship card for the blog with our announcement.  What a perfect theme for a card since I have made such great friends in the flickr group, many I have been able to meet at Scrapfest last year!  I love having crafty online friends as before I got involved in the flickr group I used to talk poor Chad's ear off about techniques and this product and that product.  Although I don't feel all that bad about it, I hear a lot about sports and a NHL hockey team coming back to our city!    I do have a lot of friends who are crafty too but not as into it as me so they got me but not like my fellow flickr friends.  Plus my flickr friends love Hero Arts like me!  

I can't tell you how nervous I was about making a card for the blog!  I wanted it to be a good representation of me and perfect.  I worked on it for days!  I may have made 5 different versions taking photos of each and studying it!  I am happy with it how it turned out:

For this card I adhered the clear stamp backwards on the block and inked it and stamped that first, than the stamp over top!  I went with a hot pink, light pink, orange and brown color scheme as it's my favorite!

Becoming a hostess right now for the next 3 months is the perfect time for me and my family!  It's winter and freezing outside and I try to stick home more.  I hardly work too since it's that season!  I find myself more crafty too!  And I won't feel bad about not taking the kids to the park or outside as I can't it's too cold!  So awesome!

Thank you to all my blog readers!  I am so thankful to you and your sweet comments that you leave me!  :>  I can't wait for what the next 3 months has in store!

sunshine and chocolate chip cookies

Hello!  Happy Tuesday!  Well it's freezing over here again!  I guess the one good thing is that at least when it's so cold it doesn't snow!  I don't remember the last winter where our snow drifts were so high!  Driving has been fun, itching forward trying to see and not get hit!  I hope that spring is not fast this year as they are calling for a flood!  Living in the city we are protected by the flood way but I have a few friends who do live out of town who may have to evacuate!  

With it being so cold Ariel has had indoor recess a lot the past few weeks.  She has come home with a lot of energy and I can't imagine what it's like for her teacher with 23 little kindergartners full of energy!  Yesterday I baked some chocolate chip cookies and as I did I thought it would be nice to send some to Ariel's teacher and the EA.  A little treat!  I made a tag for them too:

Excuse the not so great photo's I took them quickly this morning!  I whipped up these tags last night before bed.  I made the tags nice and springlike by stamping the clouds background and sun by Hero Arts. The sentiment is perfect, I wrote on the back that spring is on it's way! Oh and used my new die by PTI, love it! Chad dropped Ariel off at school and told her teacher that I sent something for them and he said she got excited!  You know it wasn't that hard and it totally puts a smile on her face!  And it's always nice to get a treat, plus I like her teacher!

As I am writing this Carter who is playing with toys starts hopping over to me on his hands and knees saying ribbit ribbit over and over.  He loves frogs and often when we ask him what animals say he says ribbit for everyone of them (even though he knows!!!)  I pulled him up into my lap to cuddle, he is sooo cute!  And he told me "I love you much!"  My sweetheart!

Well I better get back to cleaning! Oh the joy!