Flower Card Set

Hello!  Happy Wednesday!  It's been a busy Spring Break over here!  This is our first Spring break with a child in school so it's all learning!  :>  Lots of fun things for the kiddies but it results in a tired mommy!  So thankful my little one still loves to nap since I can get some rest too!  Thank you for all your sweet comments regarding my citrus card!  I think it was the shades that bothered me.  I will have to give citrus a try again.  You are all so kind!  

Today I have a card set to share.  My goal this year is to make a card set a month and I missed February!  Oh well at least I did make one this month.  I want to be able to give card sets as gifts for friends and especially at the end of the school year to all the teachers!  I've noticed that my friends love receiving my card sets as gifts but when I don't have them ready I don't have time to make it for them!  Buying gifts is easy, giving one that I made is so much better.  I encourage you too to start making card sets to give as gifts, you will be surprised by how much they are appreciated!  

The talented Joy is having her first challenge of honoring someone!  There are so many crafty wonderfully talented ladies out there, I choose to honor Tami Hartley.  With being a Hero Arts hostess I "talk" to Tami all the time and she is so kind and wonderful! It's a pleasure! And she is crazy talented too, I always enjoy seeing her creations!  And I always am so inspired!  Last week on the Hero Arts blog her cards were so inspiring!  I especially loved this one and was inspired by it for my card set!  Here's my set:

It's so hard to figure out a good way to take photos of a card set!!! I made these all in one evening!  Making card sets can be daunting so I try to go with the same design.  I made them a bit different by changing the flower color choices.  I loved Tami's card but made it my own by: using three flowers instead of one; having it one layer instead of layering the big flower (and makes it faster); using perfect pearls for the flower centers and dots, this was also pretty fast; and instead of stitching using the ric rac die cuts (this was also faster since I had these precut from something else!)    My friend suggested that I give this to my daughter's music teacher, so I just might! 

I had the pleasure of meeting Tami at Scrapfest 09 and having dinner with her and other HA artists and flickr members.  Tami is just as wonderful as you think she is!  So Tami thank you for being you!  And for being so inspiring!  I hope I've honored you well!  You are part of what makes being a hostess so great!!!!! :>  Tami I hope you and Kelly come to Scrapfest this year again!  :>

Citrus Fiasco!

Hello!  It's me, again!  Yes how can it be me again?  I know I've probably been driving you crazy with all my blogging the last few days!  I can't help it!  I've been very creative lately and have a whole SLEW of cards to share with you in the next bit.  And I keep creating new ones too!  Today's is a new one that I made this afternoon!  I'll be honest I have warm feelings towards this card.  I wanted to do something new to me, a whole different color scheme.  I have been enjoying seeing so many citrus cards so I thought to myself why not give it a try?  So here it is, it was super nice and sunny outside today so when we went for our first bike ride/walk of spring I took it outside on the step:

I stamped the flowers with staz on watercolor paper.  I than colored the flowers with several distress inks and a small wet paint brush (stamped the pad onto an acrylic block like my bloggy friend Alice did!) It was fun coloring but I think I was so unhappy with how the colors were looking I may not have done the best job I could.  I need a smaller paint brush!  It was a fun technique and super fast!

Usually when I don't like a card I don't really mention it.  I think than I can pretend it's good.  But this makes me think of some bad hippie dress.  I may not be attempting citrus again!  Back to aqua I tell you!  :>  And don't' be surprised it this post disappears!

By the way as I am writing this post I look over at Carter who often comes downstairs with me and plays with his toys.  Today he discovered scissors and cutting!  He is currently cutting up my ribbon!  ACK!  Luckily I caught him just in time and he is cutting up some ugly ribbon.  I also discovered that his kid scissors is cutting ribbon better than my scissors!  :>  I should give him this card to cut up......

Project 365 my way, Week 1!!!

Hello!  And here we are at the end of another weekend! I've decided to start blogging about my week with the kiddies on Sundays. We have all sorts of fun over here and it would be nice to document it!  Especially with Ariel being in grade 1 and fulltime school next year it would be good to capture my stay at home life with them!  I've noticed that I wasn't taking as many pictures of my family so it's another part of my reason!  I've seen all sorts of other bloggers do it, like the wonderful Libby and loved the idea.  It's not the start of the year but better late than never. 

Monday we stayed home all day!  I love Mondays as Ariel doesn't have school and we usually just hang out at home, relax, play and catch up on things!!  While I was doing something Ariel set up crafts for her and Carter on the coffee table!  That is her current purse, they keep getting bigger!  And as you can see Ariel is almost always wearing a princess dress (this is a fairy) at home or so weird combination outfit she made.

Tuesday Ariel had school and Carter and I hung out at home. That night we enjoyed a nice family night on the couch!  :>  Wednesday we went to Stay and Play.  It's at our church and I volunteer a lot!  My kids love it.  I realized that I have never taken pictures of my kids there and it's a big part of our lives.  We go almost every week.  And this is Ariel's last year going (sob!)  I enjoy it as a bunch of my friends go to, and I've made more friends there!  This week when we arrived 3 of Ariel's classmates were there and they all screamed out Ariel and ran to her!  How sweet!  Here are some pics, at the snack table:

Playing:

I took Ariel's friend Katya home with us for the afternoon as her mom had some appointments and asked if I could.  I didn't mind at all!  The girls played so well all afternoon and had a blast!

 Thursday we stayed home and played together all day.  The kids had a lot of fun playing in the snow we have left, here they are making a cake:

Ariel had ballet that evening and she burst into tears 3 times!  It was hard to see and understand, she said she didn't know why she was crying.  I think she may have been tired!  That night after ballet I went out by myself and went shopping.  I went to a scrapbook store on the other side of town and enjoyed hearing that the owner was getting into stamping!  And I picked up a 6 by 6 My Mind's Eye paper pack.  I find it hard to find 6 by 6 paper packs here!  :>  And I also found some cute new shirts for Spring!  :>

Friday was the last day of school before Spring break!  Chad called me and asked if I wanted to pick Ariel up for lunch and go to McDonald's with her cousins!  So we did but first I had to get some photo's of Chad and Carter in there new shirts of daddy's favorite NFL team!

Carter is so sweet!  :>  His cousins were dressed in there daddys' favorite team too!

 Fun fact Carter is 6 months younger than the cousin to his right and 2 1/2 years younger than the cousin to his left!  My kids are tall!  :>

Friday night Chad and I enjoyed a date night!  We went for dinner and a movie.  It's been too long!  :>  Saturday we enjoyed a day at home.  Did some grocery shopping and I may have gone to Michael's!  :>  Sunday we started with church and than some friends came over for brunch.  I made this yummy oh so easy pull apart cinnamon bun bake.  I realized that brunch is a great idea to have friends over, Chad does all the cooking!  He cooked the eggs, the bacon, the hash browns and sausages!  :>  Our friends hung out for most of the afternoon and my friend and I went shopping.  I got the cutest new top!  Hmmm I did a lot of shopping this weekend.  Well it's spring! Here we are all crammed in my dining room, I so need a bigger table!

And there is my week!  I realized that I am not in a single picture!  Well I will fix that next week.  I should have taken some photo's of my new tops, lol!  I hope you enjoyed this look into my life!

My Favorite Things

Hello!  Yay it's Saturday, and Spring break over here!  I am here with a new Scrappy Saturday Wee Memories challenge!  The weekend has had a good start over here.  Last night Chad and I went on a date.  It's been too long that we have gone on a date by ourselves, it's always double dates!  We swap babysitting with a couple friend of ours and it was our turn for a night out!  :>  We went out for dinner and a movie, it was so nice to reconnect with my hubby!  :>

This week our sponsor for the challenge is My Favorite Things!!!  They have such wonderful stamps and other crafting accessories (like great dies!!!)

Our challenge this week is Anything Goes!  It's been a while since we've had that challenge and it's always so fun to see what you come up with!  :>

I so love this stamp set, "Something Special Just For You" by MFT that I made two cards!  With all the birthday parties my daughter goes to don't be surprised to see me use it again!  It's soooo cute!

I really enjoyed paper piecing this with some Cosmo Cricket paper.  I could not find my silver cardstock so I did the silver crown with tinfoil!  I love that the set has so many sentiments that I did the inside of the second card too.  :>  So fun!  I loved every minute of creating with this set!

And two cute birthday cards, I can so enter this into ABC DT Challenge!!!

I really hope that you join us this week at Wee Memories and play this week, how can you not it's such an easy challenge!!  Our Top Hoot as picked by the design team will win a $25 gift certificate to the My Favorite Things Store!!!  And we've also added a random hoot as a thank you for playing that will win a Wee Memories prize pack!  The challenge runs to Friday April 1st, 11:59 pm!!!  For more info and to see the wonderful cards by the design team (totally outdone themselves again!) Please go to the Wee Memories Blog here.  Happy Weekend to you!!!

Inspiration from my Dining Room!

Hello!  And a happy Friday to you all!  Did you see the Hero Arts blog today?  There is a Fresh Inspiration Friday challenge, and it uses one of my new dining room pictures!!

It all started when I shared with my fellow hostess "sista's" a picture of my new dining room pictures!  Tami suggested we make it the Fresh Inspiration Friday challenge!  How exciting is that?

I literally stopped in my tracks when I saw this artwork at the store and knew they would be perfect for my house!  I decorate in blues, browns, creams/beige.  I've always loved those colors and it matches my house also.  And ever since I hung them all I could think of them in terms as inspiration for cardmaking!  I kept thinking of the delicate leaf clusters stamp set by Hero Arts!  Here is the card I made:

I embossed the leaf in aqua embossing powder over the stamped envelope pattern in antique linen. The sentiment in embossed in chestnut.  I added a scalloped piece of brown cardstock and tied an aqua bow finishing with a teal rose!

My flickr friend Lin mentioned my dining room so I thought it would be fun to share some pictures.  I cleaned it all up!!  My dining room is the first room of my house beside the entryway.  Our house is mostly open but with the separate dining room.  We built our house almost 6 years ago, I enjoyed picking out all the flooring, colors etc in the house.  And making changes to the plan!  Before I had kids I really enjoyed decorating, since having kids not as much.  I may have been obsessed!  It's hard to take kids into decorating stores that I used to frequent.  And stamping gives me the thrill that searching and finding some perfect decor did!  :>   Although from time to time I do buy a few new things!

 It's hard to see but my mom made the curtains and they are beauitful, chestnut silk with black velor and sliver lines running down.  And I didn't take the best picture of this but we have an arch that leads to the dining room, a decorator told me to paint it brown, I never would have thought so but it makes it stand out so much!

 I bought these canvas prints of Paris soon after we were married, I really like how my mother in law thought to hang them.  Do you recognize them from my video?  I also love the silver wall sconces that I bought when they were new in the stores, they have three hanging crystals on them.  Sadly I broke the smoked glass holder on one.  Although I do have an idea to replace it....  Oh and like my candle holder (whats' the word for that?)   It's a hot Canadian brand Umbra, I specially ordered it years ago and paid I think $75, I couldn't believe when I saw the price more than double a little while later!

 I need more branches, Carter got into them when he was little, I just recently pulled the vase back out!

 Ariel took piano from when she was 2 to 4, we took a break this year, didn't mean to but a mix up with teacher's.  She will play again next year, excited as her school music teacher (who is really good) asked me to wait so that she can teach her!    I don't love my dining room table but with little kids no point getting a new one yet, I suppose (that's what Chad tells me)  This is what happens when your busy planning a wedding and making a fast purchase so it will be there when your married!

And a close up of my new art work and the inspiration!  I searched everywhere to find the matching pair to this one!  And you wouldn't believe how affordable it was, I think it's my best deal ever with home decor!

I also bought some really cute new pillows, look for those soon as they inspired me to make a card too!  :>

So I hope you are inspired by new pictures and create something too!

Simple Sympathy

Hello!  Happy Thursday!  I hope your week is flying by so the weekend gets here so much faster! I am just dropping in quickly with a simple sympathy card. Lately I've been inspired to make sympathy cards, my new Hero Arts set, With Sympathy is making it rather easy.  I like to have these on hand since when the time comes it's so difficult to make it.  The one I am sharing today is so very simple but sometimes that's best.  I think this one would work very well for a man.

I inked the silhouette grass with both peeled paint and shabby shutters distress inks and sprayed with water and stamped it on the envelope pattern in antique linen.  I embossed with sympathy in brown on top.

See you tomorrow with something inspiring! 

Embossing in Chestnut and a Recipe Share!

Hi!  Happy Tuesday!  I hope your week has had a great start!  I am listening to howling wind and there is foretasted some snow today!  At least it's not the big storm they were calling for yesterday!  Ariel is at school and it's just Carter and me!  He is sitting on the potty and watching the cars movie (he sits so nicely than), I will outlast him!  He keeps getting naked lately and taking off his diaper!  I figure I  may as well start potty training and slowly work on it.  And work on me not getting frustrated! 

Today I have  another card to share with you using the getting ready stamp by Hero Arts.  I also got some Zing chestnut embossing powder!  But this one so gave me a run for my money.  This card is far from perfect and I considered not sharing it but I figure I may as well.  I tried over and over to emboss the image (onto some cute paper by my mind's eye) with no mistakes around it that I may have used a lot of this pp up!  I think I may just go back to the aqua powder..

I don't know what it is about this image but it just calls out to me to ruffle ribbon!

And I may as well enter this into the Birthday Challenge at ABC DT Challenge!!  I love Birthday challenges!

I also wanted to share with you a muffin recipe that we are very much enjoying here.  Ariel asked me about Strawberry Banana muffins and I thought oh what a good idea, so I googled it and found a great recipe.  I love that it's different and doesn't call for chocolate chips!  I like to have muffins in the freezer for school, to have at home when they need a snack, or that I can quickly put some in my purse when we are running out for them. You can find the recipe here, I try to use very ripe banana's.  I can't wait until Strawberry picking season to make them!  It will be even more amazing!

(Of course the ones that are left and not frozen hardly show the strawberries!!! lol!

Oh and I wanted to share a funny photo of my two. Last Thursday when I stopped at the mall on the way home from the playplace,  I only had my single stroller with me.  Ariel was upset and had to sit in the stroller so I had both kids in it.  I got a lot of strange looks but whatever!  The last store I went to was new to our city and kinda warm.  The kids were quiet but I thought it was at the wonder of what store.  All of a sudden I look and Carter's head is bobbing!  We were close to the long line for changerooms and the girls in line were laughing so hard at Carter fighting sleep!  Here is both of them after mommy tires them out:

They love each other so!  I hope you try the muffins, so good!  Hope your week is great!

Best Wishes Ribbon Flower card

Hello!  I hope you've had a great weekend!  We've been enjoying having hubby back home!  It's been raining all weekend so here's hoping Spring is here to stay!  Now for the snow all to disappear, so much this year it may take a while!  As I write this the kids are playing beside me, Carter in a shirt a diaper and rubber boots! LOL  I remember when Ariel was that age and now Carter is here loving rubber boots and wearing them ALL THE TIME!  :>

Today Ariel and I went to a shower for  hubby's cousin's fiance.  We did a group gift with his family and I made the card.  I thought that the aqua ribbon flower from my video was a perfect starting point and here is what I came up with:

I may be slightly into this color combination currently!  But this is what happens when you leave something to the last minute!  I pretty much threw this card together!  I had the rough idea in my head but had to work on it fast!  To me this card screams spring! You can see how with this flower I played around with how I twisted the ribbon giving it more dimension.  The bride loved it and showed it to all the guests!  :>  I thought that the Best Wishes was a good sentiment for a shower, right?

I wanted to let you know how much you all touched me with your kind comments here and on the HA blog! And I've been thrilled to see some creations with the flowers:

I love how Barb did it with two different ribbons, you can see it here.  I love what she put in the middle of it here.

My fellow hostess Linda made one with her favorite colors purple, check it out here.

And I love seeing the ones that Nat made, can't wait to see them on a card, check it out here.

Please let me know if you make some too!  :>

Well I can hear my little ones running amock in the house so I better run!  But I do want to leave you with a cute photo I took of them on Monday, hopefully the last time we will play in the snow:

I went to take a photo of Carter and Ariel came up and put her arms around him so quick and it worked so well!  They love each other so! Don't you love there hats?  I have a thing for cute hats!!

A Co-Challenge!!

Hello all!  A Happy Saturday to you!  We have the most exciting Saturday for you!  Wee Memories is teaming up with Lawnscaping for a fun challenge!!!  And our good friends over at Lawn Fawn are sponsoring this challenge!! And even extra exciting we have Kelly Marie  from Lawn Fawn and Kathy from The Daily Marker  joining us for this fun and exciting challenge!!  

This weeks theme is all about CUTE and CUDDLY! What says cute to you? Or cuddly? You can incorporate either into your projects!! Here is my card, I went with cute! 

I love this girl with her ipod!  She is perfect for teenagers!  I know my niece will love this!  :>  

Another cool thing about the co-challenge? You have the the opportunity to win TWO PRIZES every time you enter! Why? Because we are offering a prize here and Lawnscapings is offering a prize there! That's a lot of winners! And you can enter at either blogs and your entry will appear on both challenge blogs. So be sure to join us this week for this super fun challenge so you don't miss out on these wonderful prizes!!

I am so happy my hubby is on his way home (he comes home late Friday night)  I kept busy with the kids this week. On Tuesday Ariel had school and Carter and I went over to a friends and than shopping, that evening we went to my parents for dinner.  Wednesday we went to playgroup than swimming and dinner with some friends.  Thursday I organized whoever was interested in going to Kidcity (a big indoor playpark on the other side of the city!) Than we visited my mom at her work and shopped a bit.  Friday Ariel had school so Carter and I went shopping!  And Friday night the kids went to my inlaws, she had all the little kids for a sleepover tonight so I went to dinner with my inlaw siblings!  I think I may have been to busy but it just worked out that way!  I can't believe how tired I have been this week!  I am so excited to see my husband, I really missed him!  :>  I thought keeping busy would help with missing him, my kids usually ask about him a lot and in that way it really worked.  But it didn't help me at all!  As I mentioned earlier in the week, it would either be a week that I get lots of crafting done, or not much.  I didn't get much done!  I was just exhausted every night!  :>  I have ideas though and really that is good too!  :>

And how can I not enter this into the ABC DT Challenge??  

I really hope you will join us this week and play!! For more info and to see all the lovely DT"s work please go to the Wee Memories blog!  :>

Twisted Ribbon Flowers!

Hello!  Happy Wednesday!  It's a very exciting day for me!  I don't know if you saw but this week us Hero Arts Hostesses have taken over the Hero Arts blog this week!  For my day I made a video for the blog!  You can see it here.  So very exciting and terrifying at the same time!  Because I am a mom to two young kids I had to film it when they are asleep to have some quiet background noise!  By the time hubby and I got it all ready and figured out we realized the batteries were dead!  It was nearly midnight by the time it was filmed! This is my first ever video and to have it on the Hero Arts blog is crazy!  I can't tell you how it feels to hear the Hero Arts music and see the intro before my video!!!!  I thought it would be fun to do a bit of an intro at the beginning, fun and different!  Sadly when it was being uploaded to youtube there were some problems with the sound being on time so the quality was lowered to get it to work.  :<  But it's really not that bad still!  Phew I may have been a bit worried!!.  It was a true labor of love!  (At least it wasn't as painful as my other labors were, lol!!!)

I really hope that the video was clear and easy to understand for all of you!  I hope that I explained it properly and I hope I didn't come across as a total geek!  I kinda wanted to film it again but than I lost my voice!  I really hope you will make some twisted ribbon flowers!!!  I cannot wait to see what you create!

I also have some other quite exciting news, you can see it here.  How exciting is that?  I can't wait to be a guest designer for GCD Studios!

Here is the card:

I have been enjoying my time with the kids while Chad is gone!  Yesterday I dropped Ariel off at school and than Carter and I went over to a friends for a playdate.  After that Carter and I went shopping!!  And I found some crazy deals and bought a pair of pretend snakeskin flats and a dress.  I need a dress for a wedding in April and the first one I try on, and a crazy good price!  After I picked Ariel up from school we went to my parents for dinner!  Today we've gone to stay and play (play group) and are going swimming this evening with some friends!!

Hope your week is great hopefully if I get a chance I am going to create with the two leftover flowers from the video!!!!  :>

Aqua Telephone

Hello!  Happy Monday to you!  I hope that your adjusting well to the time change!  I was doing all fine until last night when I just wasn't tired.  Add some coughing to the mix and I didn't fall asleep until past 3:30 am, thankfully my kids slept till 9 and I don't seem to be doing all that bad.  I bet I will crash tonight!  Tomorrow Ariel has school and will have to wake up earlier so I hope that goes well.  I'll get everything ready tonight for school so she can sleep as long as possible!  Chad is gone this week, he's gone on a trip of sorts to help his friend go to Cleavland to pick up a van!  Tons of people here buy vehicles in the States and go to pick them up and save lots of money!  I think they will have a great time together!  I will be driving Ariel to and from school which I usually don't so that may be an adjustment!  And I've planned playdates and some outings to keep myself busy.  I think the hardest time is when the kids go to bed.  I am a bit of a night owl and don't go to bed that early so it's a bit lonely than!  I think it may go two ways, either I will get lots of crafting done, or not much at all!  We shall see!

I am still loving my Zing aqua embossing powder and have been cooking up fun colors that go with it, today orange!

First I embossed the telephone from Just Saying Hi in the aqua, I masked it (stamped the telephone on a post it note and cut it out) and stamped the Classic Fabric design in orange over top.  I traced the envelope flap from a HA envelope onto the mocha strip and hand cut it out (got the idea from Shari's video on the HA blog!) Added some twine and a orange flower I got at Michael's! 

Last week I went with Ariel's class on a field trip, rollerskating!  It went so much better than I imagined! Almost all of the kids were able to figure it out and quite a few skated on there own!  I helped Ariel for a bit but once she figured it out she didn't want my help at all!  She would skate for a bit get scared and go down, not fall down but go down and than back up and than back down and so on.  But she never complained and she stayed in the rink the whole time!  She wants to go back!  I also really enjoyed rollerskating!  I can't believe that I forgot to bring my camera with me!  But luckily my friend emailed me some pics:

As you can see by Ariel's pants she helped clean the floor!  Not too impressed with how dusty the floor was but oh well!  :>

I better run and give these kiddies a bath!  I took them out to play in the snow for a bit before dinner, I hope I've tired them out to go to bed easily with this time change!  Hope your having a great week!

Big Bunch of Love!

Hello it's Saturday which means I am here with the newest Wee Memories Scrappy Saturday Challenge!  I hope your having a great Saturday!  We spent the morning at the mall as Ariel went to a build a bear party!  Looking forward to some quiet time and than dinner with my family tonight!  

This week's theme is all about March. With Spring almost here (around here its already here yay!) and St. Patrick's Day here this is a theme we thought would be very fitting for this week! Your challenge with this theme is to create cards with a 'spring' theme or 'green' theme ... green colors, green anything, flowers, birds, trees, butterflies, etc. Anything that says Spring or Green to you!!

Our sponsor this week is Annabelle Stamps, and they were so kind to provide a very cute set, Lil Bee's Big Flowers for some of the DT to play with! (I am so eyeing there easter set,  such a good one!)

Here is my card:

Isn't it cute?  I paper pieced the flowers and colored in with pencils the bee!  So fun!  I think my card just shouts Spring!

I hope that you will join us this week!  I cannot wait to see what you create!  The challenge runs until Friday March 18 11:59 pst!  For more info click here and to see the rest of the lovely DT's creations, including our March guest designer Sally Sherfield!!! 

You're old school and cool

Hello!  It's Thursday already, boy is this week ever passing by fast!  Today I am going rollerskating with Ariel's class!  It should be an interesting field trip, two kindergarten classes of 5 and 6 years old going rollerskating!  And for probably most of them it will be there first time rollerskating!  I bet it will be a lot of fun, and maybe even a bit crazy!

I am still very much enjoying playing with my Zing aqua embossing powder by American crafts!  I love this typewriter stamp by Hero Arts and very much enjoyed making this card!

I can't help but love this sentiment "You're old school and cool!"  It's so fun!  I loved curling the paper too!  :>  At first I was going to use Kraft as my card base but love how the Mocha layering paper by Hero Arts goes so well with these colors!  :>

I hope that the rest of your week is great!  And I hope to catch up on your blogs later, if the rollerskating doesn't do me in!  LOL!  See you!  :>