Coasters

Hey yall. I hope you're having a great Sunday afternoon. Here's some pics of the coasters I made last night.

As you can see, I only have purple and green Stazon, so right now I'm limited in color. I am very pleased with how they turned out.

Thomas Kinkade Christmas card

I couldn't bear to color the Thomas Kinkade images yet, but I really wanted to use one. I used the most detailed image and made this Christmas card.


I'm happy with how this came out. I still want to color one of the TKs, but I'm just not ready yet. I still need a little more practice. I hope you enjoyed looking!

It's the Christmas season!

Good morning all my imaginary friends! I wanted to share a Christmas card with you today. I love Fluffles and recently received several Fluffles images in a swap. Here's one of the Christmas images.

It's kinda hard to see but the underneath layer is green so that the shorter top layer shows off the scallop edge. I used the Creative Memories fancy corner rounder for the image layer and matting layer. Thanks for looking!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! I am very thankful today that I have family and friends who care for me and support me. I hope everyone takes a few minutes today even if you are not in the USA to think about what you are thankful for.

I got a really cool tree stamp at Hobby Lobby not too long ago and used it on this card. I am very pleased with how it turned out. I had learned a while back the technique of stamping the 2nd time without reinking to make an image look further in the background. I think it worked well on this card. Thanks for looking and I hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving!

One last fall card

Here's a fall looking card that I guess doesn't have to be for fall. It's actually a masculine birthday card. This is one of the images I received in one of many image swaps I've done lately. I colored it with Prismacolors & OMS. It's a Stampin' Up set that features this covered bridge during each of the 4 seasons.

Meet Tails

OK--I finally have pictures of our new family cat, Tails. He likes to stay under your feet, so it's hard to get a picture of him.




Tails was named by Joey after one of Sonic's friends. Tails has 2 tails (duh) that he spins really fast to fly.

I hope you enjoyed getting to see our little family friend!

SBS24 Challenge from Last Week

Hey yall. I'm a little late on this one. This is not yesterday's challenge, but last Sunday's challenge. Our inspiration challenge was a cute bedroom with purple and turquoise. Here's my WreathABella.

I'm posting with a cutie pie wearing Scooby-Doo jammies in my lap. He's very excited because I loaded pictures of his cat on the computer. You'll see those tomorrow. Joey's got strep, so he's not feeling too good. Anyway, yall have a good evening!

Home Alone!

Hey yall. Just a quick post before I go to bed. Jason will be home late tonight after going to a ballgame and the kids are staying at my grandmother's house (Thanks Marty!). I really wanted to stamp the night away, but I have a headache so I think I'm gonna call it a night. I have this really fun Holter monitor I get to wear until tomorrow, so I hope I can sleep. It has 5 sticky things holding wires to various parts of my chest/stomach to monitor my heart rate since the old ticker has been running too fast lately. I'm sure if I take something to help me sleep through having this thing attached that it will skew the results and I don't want to have to wear this again. I looked like a freak in Hobby Lobby today judging from all the stares. Anyhow, have a good evening. Hopefully I'll post some of my cards tomorrow.

Goodies in the Mail!

I got some swapped images in the mail! These are my first Bellas and Thomas Kinkades.

I'm afraid my coloring is not up to par for the Thomas Kinkades, but I got 2 each of the 2 images, so I'm gonna try to color one.

Cards to Recycle

Yall have gotta check these out--my co-worker Suzette picked these up for me from her friend's grandmother's garage sale last weekend. The dark blue set in the middle still had the year on the box - 1967! I can't wait to play with these old cards and make new ones!

These are not just cards, they are card sets. Each one has anywhere from 10-20 cards. They have that wonderful old paper smell.

From Courtney's Closet #23

Hey yall. I finally got a chance this week to play along with Libby again. This is week 23 and this one was the most fun I've had yet! First of all, I've got pictures of Courtney and Carter.




I told Libby this was really gonna be a challenge for me since I didn't have any monkey stamps. I was able to improvise with what I did have. I actually made 2 monkey cards!

This first one is so cute! I used a monkey sticker I had buried in a drawer.


The picture quality on the second one is horrendous, but I think it's cute IRL. The sentiment is "driving by with a birthday hi." I love my camera for taking regular pictures, but I have a hard time with cards because I can't turn the flash off. I've never heard of a camera that didn't have a way to turn the flash off. I may have to switch to another camera for my card pics. Anyway, I hope yall enjoy!

My baking disasters

Hey yall. I thought I'd post pictures of the food I made for Monday night's Heart 2 Home meeting. The truffle cookies kinda tasted funny. The biscotti got good reviews.

I also wanted to show yall the card I made Friday night. I found a cute acrylic stamp set at Wal-Mart for only $2.47!

Yall have a wonderful Tuesday evening!

Me + Baking = Disaster

Hey yall! I didn't get a lot of crafting done this weekend because I went to Aunt Pat's house and then to a family reunion. I do have an entertaining story for you. Those of you who know me are already well aware of the fact that I do not operate well in the kitchen. Jason is a much better cook than I am. On the way home from the family reunion, I took the boys to the grocery store. I have my monthly Heart 2 Home meeting tomorrow night and we are doing a cookie exchange. Heart 2 Home is an awesome women's ministry in which some of the older ladies of the church guide us younger ladies in small groups. Also, when we make cookies (and by we, I mean Jason bakes if I need them) we make the chocolate chip cookies from the roll of dough at the store. In this cookie exchange we are supposed to bring our recipe. I wanted to look competent, so I figured real chocolate chip cookies can't be that hard. We bought some chocolate chips, eggs (we were running low), butter (I didn't know how much we had), and flour (I didn't want to run out). We get home and I put the boys on the counter. I melt 2 sticks of butter for the cookies. Then I measure out the flour. The boys are fighting on who currently has the cooler bowl -- Anthony with the butter or Joey with the flour. I get out the rest of the ingredients and discover I have no brown sugar. I searched and searched and searched as I yelled at the kids to chill out cuz Mommy was stressed out. I finally decided to find a recipe that doesn't require brown sugar. Of course, all the GOOD recipes call for brown sugar. I finally find a recipe for Chocolate Nut Biscotti. I've never had biscotti, but was desperate. After our biscotti logs get in the oven, I decide there's a good chance they are gonna taste less than great. I find another recipe, Chocolate Truffle Cookies. They are round, do not rise, and also do NOT look desirable. Oh well, I tried. I can also prove I tried because I made 2 recipes, which is twice as many as required. I clean up the kitchen and as I am putting the last of the ingredients up, guess what I found??? Yep, the brown sugar. It seems I had put it in a tupperware container so it wouldn't get hard. Can I make the chocolate chip cookies now? Well of course not--I've used all the chocolate chips on the other 2 batches of second rate recipes I've made. I really did not set out to make this such a rant like last Sunday. After all, this is the day that the Lord has made and I will rejoice and be glad in it. Which means I better go craft to help me get in a better mood. Anyhow, does anyone else have a disaster story? If so, please leave a comment and tell me. There might be a prize for whoever can make my story look better by having a worse one. I'll be looking forward to reading your comments. And no, the prize will NOT be baked goods of any type. I've got some more interesting stuff to tell you this week, so stay tuned!

Happy Hoppers

Happy Friday faithful readers! I'm very excited about the card I have to share with you today. It features one of the Happy Hopper images I received in an image swap recently. I've been working really hard on learning to color and add dimension to my images. I really like how this one turned out. I put red and green apples because my favorite apples are Granny Smith apples.

I hope yall have a great weekend!

Happy Anniversary!

I want all of you to know that 9 years ago today I married my best friend, an awesome guy who has always treated me like the most important person in the world. Through sickness and in health, for better or for worse, after all these years he still thinks I'm beautiful. When he looks at me he smiles as if nothing else exists in this world but us. Happy Anniversary Jason! Thanks for all the wonderful memories we've had so far and the promise of a great future. I love you!

My first Fluffles card

Hey yall. I've done 5 one-on-one image swaps over the last 2 weeks. This has been a great experience because it has allowed me to get some images that I really only want to use once or twice. This is not true with the envelope full of Fluffles images I received. I want to buy ALL OF THEM!!! I showed my fellow stamper Debbie at work all my new images. I actually left them for her to look at and came back to get them from her a few hours later. She said the Fluffles images were the best. She was disappointed that I only received one of her favorite image. I told her I actually got 2, but I already made a card out of one of them because it was my favorite too! Enough talking about it, here it is!

Isn't he adorable!!! Anyhow, this paper is some that my friend Cherie picked up for me in the Target dollar bins the other day. The ribbon matches better IRL. Thanks for looking!

Found the camera & SBS-24 challenge

Ok, so Jason had the camera at the Cub Scout meeting. Here's a picture of Joey being on his best Tiger Cub behavior.

Now, finally, here's my submission for this week's SBS24 challenge - a sympathy card. This is one of the new images I swapped.

OK, so now I gotta schedule yall some posts so you don't get bored over the next several days. Oh yeah, check out my new thingy on the side of my blog--it's a traffic feed!

Slowly getting better

Hey yall. Thanks for all the well wishes after my monologue on Sunday. I'm still not as better as I wish I was, but I think I'll make it. I would LOVE to show yall some pictures of my latest creations (latest meaning several days ago) but I can't find the camera. I've taken pictures of the cards I made, but didn't upload them yet. I'm pretty sure I'm the one who lost the camera, but maybe Jason took it to Joey's Cub Scout meeting tonight. So anyway, yall are stuck with the recent pics that have been uploaded (my kiddos).

Here's Joey at his last flag football game. I don't think he's real sad it's over.

Here's Anthony with his latest school art project. His teacher said he really enjoys craft time and does great on all his projects. I wonder where he gets that from???

Hopefully I can get back on here later to show you my cards. Yall have a good evening!

Warning--rant ahead

OK--you've been warned in the title. This is gonna be a LONG post and I will NOT be offended if you don't read it, but it's gonna happen anyway. Lemme start from the beginning of this crappy weekend.

Friday I woke up with a sore throat. Not a scratchy little sore throat, but an I think I have strep sore throat. When I got off work Friday at 4:45, Jason aka Greatest Husband Ever picked up Anthony from daycare and took both boys tailgating and to the West Monroe ballgame so I could go to the after hours clinic and get this thing taken care of. It started out pretty good--no one was in the waiting room, so I was seen pretty quick. They kinda panicked when my heart rate was 135, but I assured them it's been this high for quite some time. I was "encouraged" by the nurse then the doctor to go get that checked out, which I promised I would. The strep test can back negative which surprised the doctor (nurse practitioner, whatever) because my throat was so red. I didn't have any sinus congestion, so I didn't need a steroid shot, just the antibiotic shot. They then made me wait 5 minutes so they could check my vitals again. By the time they checked again, my heart rate slowed to 129 (6 whole points) and I then had fever, which I didn't have when I arrived. I gave my insurance card to the pharmacy, picked up dinner in a drive-thru, and went home. Good part--I received 3 envelopes of swapped images in the mail!!! Bad part--I felt too much like crap to play with them. I had hours alone and only the strength to lay in the bed and watch tv.

I got up Saturday feeling 100 times worse than Friday. My grandmother came and got Anthony, Jason and Joey went to the flag football game, and I slept. Again, alone time wasted. I finally felt a little better Saturday evening. I made a card or two and then took Joey to go pick up Anthony. We came home, crappy feeling came back, I ate dinner and went to bed after taking 1 Nyquil gel-tab. Keep in mind this is a half dose.

I woke up briefly Sunday morning and told Jason I didn't think I was gonna make it to church. The next time I woke up was around 10:15am. I had dreams so crazy they couldn't have even been shown on the Sci-Fi channel. Jason was impressed I didn't kill anybody in my dreams this time. He knows how my Nyquil-coma dreams are. I felt much better than Saturday. I took a shower. For the next 2 hours I felt like I was kinda foggy and might fall out. I took a nap with Anthony, then got up and studied my lesson for my Sunday night class. Then the fever set in. Jason was in a meeting at church. Me and the boys went on up to the church about an hour early so they could play up there and hopefully not drive me crazy. I obviously looked as bad as I felt, so Jason gave me a package of Reese cups (my favorite) and told me I really needed to go home and rest. Cherie said she'd handle the class and Jason said he'd handle getting the boys home. So here I am. More time alone, and all I have the energy to do is lay in the stupid bed watching stupid tv. That's right people, I'm bitter. The only good thing right now is that I'm fixin to find some card layouts I like and add them to my sketch notebook. And Ace of Cakes is on. Of course it's probly going off and something I don't like will come on, forcing me to flip channels again.

If you ACTUALLY read all of this, then you just lost precious moments of your life that you will never get back again. You could have spent that time with your family, but instead you spent it with my ramblings. Thanks. And Jason--if you're reading this, we're out of chicken noodle soup and I can't for the life of me remember to tell you that in person.

OK. This show is called Ace of Cakes, not Cake Guy Swimming with Sea Animals. And who names a shark-ray Sweet Pea? Oh cool. The next show is about Dr. Seuss inspired cakes. Maybe there's time for this day to turn around. Alright, as much as I have enjoyed chatting with you, my imaginary friend, this laptop burning my lap is not helping my fever considering this is the fever stage where I'm sweating. Hopefully I'll get my weekend cards uploaded in the next few days. Thanks for reading.

Total Drama Island nite

Hey yall! Nothing new going on here. Joey and I have our Total Drama Island time at 8pm and I still have lots to do before then. No new mail today, but maybe tomorrow. Anthony is helping me type this, so he wants me to put 2 happy faces on here. Yall have a great evening! :) :)

Anthony's new bed

When Joey was 2, Jason's dad Marvin built him a really cool fire truck bed. It fits a twin size mattress.

Now that Anthony is 2, Marvin built him a really cool race car bed that fits a twin size mattress. Anthony is so proud of his new bed!

Look at my mail!!!

Hey yall! I'm super excited because I got 2 image swap envelopes in on Monday! Here's some pictures of my new stuff.

I immediately started coloring some of them with my Prismacolors & Gamsol. What's even more exciting is that I have 3 more swaps that are on their way!!! These are all from one-on-one swaps. I'm also in 2 other image swaps (it's pretty addictive). One has to be received by November 15 and the other by some time later in November. If any of you want to swap some images, let me know or go out to Split Coast Stampers and sign up!

Election Day

Hey yall. I hope you all went out to vote today. Here's the other Christmas card I made this weekend to show Michelle.

She had mentioned that she liked the look of red with kraft paper, so that's what I did on this one. Thanks for looking!

First Christmas Card of the Year

Here's the first Christmas card I've made this year. I made it for Michelle, who has asked me to make her Christmas cards with my Nativity Snowmen set.

I made this using one of the recent SCS Sketches. The snowmen panel is raised on pop-dots. This was not the one she liked the best. You'll see it tomorrow. Here's a picture of the boys at Kiroli Park this afternoon.

I really try to be fair with my boys and show pictures of both of them equally, but isn't Anthony just so cute in this picture!

I've Been Tagged!

Tess tagged me several days ago. The tag says for you to put the 4th picture from the 4th folder on your blog. Here's my picture.

This is in the April 2008 folder, so it's kinda recent. This was taken on March 15, Anthony's birthday. After his party at Kiroli Park, he played outside with his new dirt toys. I have no idea why this picture was in the April folder, but whatever. Anybody reading this, try this on your blog. It's fun!

Happy Sunday Afternoon!

Hey yall! I wish I could play some audio to let yall in on the noise over here--all I can here is the clothes dryer! Jason took the boys to Kiroli park and I will meet them at church in a little bit. I don't think I told all of you (my blog readers are collectively one imaginary friend--just play along), but the other day I was asked to make someone's Christmas cards. This excited me so much, but then scared me. I've been terribly nervous and the nervousness killed what little creativity I had. I finally managed to make 2 very cute cards to show her tonight at church, so I feel much better now. I would show yall, but Jason took the camera to the park. I'll show you soon, though. Hopefully she will like them. I did more image stamping for swaps than crafting this week, so I don't really have anything to show, but I should get some images in soon and will show you those with great excitement! As much as I'd love to sit here and chat, I really want to do some more crafting while I can. Peace out girl scouts!

Yes, I'm still here

Hey yall. Yeah, it's been a while. Yeah, I know. Yall told me you'd be surprised if I actually kept up with my blog, but I really have been busy! Enough excuses, here are a picture of what's going on at my desk right now.

Anthony was playing with all my stamps I had out, but now he's pouring beads from one cup to another. With each pour, he loses some beads, but the quiet activity is hopefully slowing him down for nap time. All my house mouse stamps are on my desk because I'm swapping images with several people. I've sent off 3 envelopes full of images already and have a few more to do. Everyday I ask Jason with great anticipation, "Did I get any mail today?" and everyday he assures me my swaps will come, but they just didn't come today.

I also have some Halloween pics for yall. Joey and Anthony were Mario and Luigi. Not everyone knows these Nintendo characters, but you could always tell who recognized them. I got a little embarrassed (ok, so REALLY embarrassed) because at each house, Anthony would look in his bucket at what candy had just been dropped in and say, "I want more." Of course, everyone gave him more when he asked, so he kept asking. That kid has got it all figured out.

OK. It sounds like he's down to about 3 beads in the cup now. Gotta go before he decides to make a moustache out of my Stazon.