A Couple of Cards...

Happy Monday to you! I hope you enjoyed a lovely summer's day. It was close to 90 here and not a storm in sight for the past few days. Yippeee! I guess we were on track for having the wettest June on record, but with no severe weather slated for the next few days, we might not break the record afterall.

Thanks so much for your lovely comments about the birthday goodies. I'm glad you liked what I shared. You can see the evidence of why I love blogs so much in the discovery of the brownie hamburgers and fries. LOL

Here's the card I just finished making today that we will use for Amy's thank yous.

The flip flops are an EK Success punch and it actually punches out one sandal part and one thong part. Then I glued the pieces together using a quickie glue pen. I had thoughts of putting some glitter or something on the thong part, but it's pretty small and my fingers are pretty fat, so I figured I'd mess it up for sure if I did that. The rest of it is pretty straightforward. The only thing you might not be able to tell is that I used pop dots on the circle piece and the crocheted flower. The cardstock is CTMH's Orange and Watermelon. The pattern paper is from K&Co's Berry Sweet pack. The "thanks" is from PTI's Mixed Messages set. I inked the edges with Watermelon and stamped the thanks with Topiary ink (CTMH). I used Swiss Dots and D'Vine embossing folders in my Cuttlebug.
Here's a sweet shot of Amy working on a beading project (after slip 'n sliding with Jessica just before she sat down. One of her gifts was a set of 10,000 beads. Yes, 10,000 and most of them are small. Yes, she's spilled some of them already and enlisted my help in picking them up...those babies can roll! LOL She made some bracelets and anklets (extra large bracelets that we discovered fit the ankle area perfectly) and thoroughly enjoyed herself. If you look in the lower right corner of the shot, you'll see part of another birthday gift. It was a Barbie Top Chef set. It comes with a sink area that has studio lights, a fridge (with food for the fridge) a camera and a Barbie. Both girls have been having a ton of imaginitive fun with this set, too.

Finally, here's another card I worked on yesterday, but didn't finish until today.
The image is a digi stamp from Squigglefly called Floral Frenzy. I was inspired by this first card on Holly's Hog Wild About Stamping blog. Actually, I really like the second card, too. *Ü* Anyway, I colored it yesterday and then ran out of time to finish it. I am not 100% convinced the paper I used (from DCWV's Citrus stack) is the right choice, but it sure beats the first paper I selected. LOL. The ribbon is CTMH's Orange organdy. Simple, but sweet, no?

Steve picked up a used bike trailer (the things you hook on the back of your bike and pull little kids in) over the weekend. He found it on Craig's List, I guess. Anyway, Amy has been having a blast pulling Jessica around in it. Today they wanted to ride bikes to swim class and lunch, so we did. Jessica rode in the trailer and Amy pulled her on her bike. She did a GREAT job! I was impressed at her endurance. We took a different route home and while it was an easier, less hilly, ride, the sidewalks were pretty narrow and I was afraid the trailer would tip over. So I took over the pulling and we made it home in fine fashion. I'm not sure we'll do that again with Jess in the trailer. We'll see.

Not much else to report today, so I will close for now. Thanks so much for visiting! I hope you have a great start to your week.

Cover of Alive Book...

I couldn't wait. I just took a couple of pictures and hope you can see the lights...so cool!

Flip Flops, Burgers and Fun!

Happy Saturday to you! It's been a fun one in our neck of the woods, as we celebrated Amy's birthday with her friends this afternoon. I won't be showing pictures of other people's kids, but they had a blast on the slip 'n slide, throwing a frisbee, hula hooping and hitting the baseball. Oh and I can't forget the water balloon toss! I picked the right weekend day to have the party as the skies were clear (actually it felt kind of hot) and no thunder rumbled. Tomorrow they say we might get some severe weather. Whew...dodged the bullet there.

I thought you might like to see some of the goodies we made.

The girls helped top our "hamburgers" with sesame seeds. More on that in just a minute.

They also did a great job decorating the cupcakes with "sand and water" and adding a paper umbrella after I added some chocolate flip flops I had made. Close up of that is coming up.

Here are the "hamburgers." I got the idea from a couple of blogs. Here's a link to the type I made. I saw the idea for these on Kimberly Crawford's For the Love of Paper blog.

You have to have "fries" with your burger, right? The idea for these came from Bakerella here. What a great idea, huh? Sugar cookies! Who'd have thunk?

Here you can see the flip flops I made from a mold and fun colored chocolate wafers. I found the supplies at a store near Denver called Cake Craft. I've never done this type of thing before and think I sort of figured out a decent way to fill the mold. I melted the chocolate in the microwave, then stuck the chocolate in a baggie, snipped one corner very small and filled in the thongs. Let that set in the freezer for a bit and went back with a different color for the sandal part. I kept them in the fridge overnight and put them on the cupcakes just before the party. I tried brushing in the melted chocolate (like the gal at the cake store said), but it was more annoying and not too pretty, so I tried the baggie and got better results.

Amy and her guests had a very good time today and I'm very thankful for our friends who came and helped celebrate her birthday with us.

She got the coolest book called Alive I've got to show this to you...

When you open this page, you actually hear the heart thumping! The whole book is full of neat pop-ups and terrific information. With Amy's fascination with the human body, you KNOW this one is a favorite! One the cover, there's a drawing of a head and it shows part of the brain. You push a button and little lights go one all over the brain like the electrical impulses (I think). VERY cool! I'll have to try to get a picture of the color and post it in a new post. Thanks, Becky, Aaron and Julia for the awesome book!

Thank you for stopping by. I think now you know why I haven't been posting the past few days. Been kinda busy. LOL I hope your weekend is going just as well as ours.

Amy & Rosie-digi layout

Well, this day has been interesting to be sure. I took the girls to Chuck E. Cheese, but once we arrived, Amy was in a "mood" and not very friendly. Maybe the "attitude" is starting already, or maybe, she was just over-excited (I prefer the latter to the former). It wasn't quite as much fun as I'd hoped, but not terrible. She has mellowed since we got home and is off playing with some friends. I think she has taken well over 100 photos with her new camera today. I'm sure the batteries are gonna be shot before the end of the day. LOL But, I'm tickled she is so thrilled with her birthday present.

I mentioned the other day we went to the Butterfly Pavilion and Amy held Rosie the Tarantula. I was bummed that the photos I took came out very over-exposed. I've been trying all sorts of things to make them look better, and finally ended up changing them to black and white with some adjustments. They still aren't great, but I wanted to scrap the occasion, so I am dealing with the less than stellar photos. Here's what I came up with...

I'm pretty sure if you click on the photo, you'll be able to enlarge it if you want. I searched my digi stash and came up with one spider amongst all my kits (that are tagged) and so I went to the file and lo and behold, it's from a Kay Miller kit (Cute Spooks)! Too funny. So, all the goodies you see are from that kit, except the gemstones, which are from Jeanelle Paige's Birthstone Gems embellishments (A Cherry On Top). I also used a layered template from Kay Miller's Collection 25. Fonts are Pea Tracy and Century Gothic.

I got an email today from a gal at Microsoft about my Live Writer issue and apparently there's been some sort of personnel change, so she's is supposedly handling the issues now. I decided to send her the log file she asked for and also let her know that now I cannot use the program at all because it won't stay open. (I tried again today and no luck) We'll see if she comes up with a fix. But, I'm not holding my breath.

Not much else to report at the moment, so I will close for now. If I get anything else created today, I may be back, otherwise I'll see you next time.

Thanks for your birthday wishes for Amy, we both appreciate them so much!

Happy Birthday, Amy!

How'd we go from this...

(This picture is Amy on the hospital bed when I had Jessica)

To this...

So darn fast?!!!

Hope you have an awesome 8th Birthday my little lovey!

Thanks for indulging me. *Ü*

Most of the pictures are taken from the scrapped photo albums I have.

The last two are from around 6:30 this morning. Amy woke up rarin' to start her birthday (hence the massive bed head hair). We got her a digital camera and she's been taking tons of photos in the past hour. LOL The absolutely adorable outfit, complete with balloon decorated flip flops, is from Auntie Kelly. {Kelly and I have been friends since kindergarten}!

Sweet Butterfly-Digi Layout

Back again!

The girls had been asking me ever since school let out, if we could go to the Butterfly Pavilion. They got some discount coupons as part of the Summer Reading Program at the library and I decided we could go today. I'm glad we went, as the butterflies were very active (much more so than in past visits). It was fun watching them flit and flutter around. One landed on Amy. This is the photo I was trying to get to work on the previous template. I like it better in the correct orientation.

I used a layered template from Kay Miller Designs' Collection 13. The page kit is called Blooming Crazy and was a collaborative design from Kay Miller and Manda Bean at Sweet Shoppe Designs. The font is Pea Tracy and the alpha is by Misty Cato and is called Homespun.

One of the reasons Amy really wanted to go is because she wanted to show me that she could indeed hold Rosie the Tarantula. I've got a decent photo, but it needs to be edited a bit before I upload it-it's kind of over-exposed...

Thanks for stopping by again! I sure appreciate your visits.

Sunsational Summer Fun~Digi Layout

I don't think I've mentioned it yet, but Jessica Sprague's website is celebrating its second birthday this week. As part of the celebration, she is posting freebies and challenges all week long. The freebies are available for 24 hours each day. Challenges are posted in the general forum for using the freebies, and today's goodie was a fabulous template created by the awesome LivE. I've been participating in the challenges and this layout is my attempt at using today's template.

Actually, this is my second attempt at using the template today. Most of my photos are taken in the horizontal orientation and the original photo I wanted to use wasn't working right. I didn't want to rotate the template as I really liked how Liv designed it. This photo of the girls on the slip 'n slide worked better, so I went with it. I used Mary Fran's Summer Splash kit (and the Solids pack) from Nitwitcollections as the colors worked well with the photo. Fonts are Century Gothic and PeaSarahloo. I'm tickled at how it came out. Wheeee!

In addition to the challenges/freebies, Jessica is offering a FREE Photo Editing Class. Registration is open for any and all who want to take the class, but for this week only.

To sign up, you just need to be a registered member of the Spraground (registration is FREE too!)

Free Registration for Photo Editing: Frame-ups and Special Effects – Just log in to your account (or create one), then click here and enter the code: FREECLASS062009 to be automatically registered! Then check out the class introduction in your My Classes link in the main menu. Registration is free through June 28, and class begins July 6!

I'm looking forward to it and would love to have you join in the fun!

******

Thank you SO much for your sweet comments about the stuff I do for my kids. I'm not trying to be a super mom or anything, just trying to encourage their imagination and creativity whenever and however I can. I hope they will have fond memories of their childhood, like I have of mine. *Ü*

Thanks, as always for stopping by. Who knows maybe I'll work on that other photo I wanted to use and post another layout before the day is done.

Got Lungs?

What's a mom to do when her daughter checks out a book on the respiratory system (which she initially called the respiTARY system) and she comes across this page in the book, and says...I want to do this!

Why, that mom goes out on the hunt for that 3 way connector and some tubing, along with poster putty, of course! We had the bottle and balloons and tape.

And finding that connector proved to be much more difficult than anticipated. Apparently there is not a huge market for an angled connector like that. I tried Home Depot and then Lowe's. I thought about going to Ace Hardware, but it was getting late (almost bed time for the girls) and I was tired of trying to explain the project to employees (although one was super excited about it at Home Depot). I also had an excited girl at home who wanted to do this! So, I found a connector that had valves (I didn't want valves on it) and the tubing and went on my way. Thankfully, Walmart (for the putty), Home Depot and Lowes are within a mile of each other and only a couple of miles from my house. LOL
We put together the model and Amy's getting ready to try it out!
Finally, we got BOTH sides to blow up (sort of) at the same time.
Trying again near where Daddy was hanging out. Turns out the valves were a good thing as we tweaked them to get both balloons to work at the same time.
Yes, even I tried! Amy took this (not so flattering) picture of me (or, egads, is that what I REALLY look like???)

She took the model to bed with her. And oh yes...now she wants to add a heart to the mix....oh my! Maybe Daddy can handle that part!

Barbie's Got a New Dress!

I started this dress a long time ago and only got about 4 rows into it before getting distracted by other projects. I took some time the past few evenings and finished it up.

I didn't have a pom-pom in a color that I thought would work, so I made one with a little pom-pom maker tool I have. It's a smidge too big, but given how Barbie's hats rarely stay on her head, I didn't worry about it too much. It's a skating dress and tam according to the pattern. I don't have any Barbie ice-skates, but that's where their imagination comes into play, right? *Ü*

Look who was snoozing right next to Barbie (and the cards I took pictures of today). I'd been moving her from bed to bed earlier today while I was changing sheets and didn't have the heart to disrupt her again, so I worked around her.

She doesn't look too thrilled about being woken up though, does she? LOL

That's it from me today! Hope you have a great start to your week.

Slip Slidin' into Summer!

As I mentioned in my first post, the girls got a new slip 'n slide today. Not only is it a slip 'n slide, it's a dual one! With "boogie boards!" I thought it would be more fun for them to slide in tandem, instead of always taking turns. Here's some of the fun they had...

I was quite impressed at how much Jessica got into it. She's usually our hestitant one, but she was all over playing on this today.

Some of the pictures look a little dark because there was the requisite thunderstorm brewing when they started sliding (it didn't amount to much, thank goodness). I took a ton of pictures, but thought these represented the fun they had very well.

Thanks so much for visiting! Happy Summer!

Sorta Simple Sunday...

Hello There!

I hope you all have had a super Father's Day Sunday. Ours was low-key as that suits Steve's style. He took the girls to the "big park" and they were gone for a few hours. When they got back they told me that they went on the paddle boats (there's a lake at the park) and they played in the water feature that shoots streams of water up from the ground. Sounds like they had a good time. After they got back the girls asked me to set up their brand new slip 'n slide and they broke it in in fine fashion. As for me, I worked on laundry because I let it get away from me this past week and in between loads, I made some cards. Yep, a good time was had by all today! *Ü*

I was in the mood for coloring with my Koh-i-noor pencils and odorless mineral sprits. I picked up a few fun digital images recently and decided it was time to get some colored.

First up, in honor of the changing of the seasons, let's welcome summer!

I got this image from Squigglefly. It's an easy one to color as you can see. I added some white Shimmerz paint (the link is for you, Sarah~although I found mine at a local scrapbook store) on the butterfly's wings. I also added some Liquid Glass (CTMH) to the center of the flower. I was inspired by this card on Holly's Hog Wild About Stamping blog. As you can see, you are able to mask off the sentiment and put in your own if you want. I used a scrap of Watermelon cardstock that was on my desk (and the Fiskar's Apron Lace border punch) as well at Dutch Blue and Clover Meadow cardstock (all CTMH). The dp is from DCWV's Summer Stack.

This next card was inspired by samples shown on the All That Scraps blog. I was so excited to see that they were offering these adorable pixies in digital format. I've got to admit that this card is one that I really like. I love the summery colors and I am tickled at how the coloring came out. I pulled out my Berry Sweet paper pack from K & Company. I also added someOrange and Watermelon cardstock. I added the Martha Stewart border punch, which you can't see too well, since the image covers up a lot of it. Oh, and I thought an orange crocheted flower would look cute so I made one (hee, hee). I had my CTMH Just Blooms Summer Posies on my desk and thought the leaves from it would look nice, so I added those as well as a glittered pink brad. And for shimmer on the wings, I added some Crystal Stickles.

And finally, a birthday card...
This fun card was inspired by this card on Chavez Designs blog. I don't remember how I came across the blog, but after seeing this great card, I added it to my Reader. She's got some really neat creations there! You definitely want to take a peek. I haven't used this Happy Birthday Cuttlebug embossing folder much, but was happy I had it in my arsenal. LOL I used Ocean cardstock for the background. Because those embossing folders don't fill up the entire 4 1/4 x 5 1/2 inch card front, I decided to use two pieces of cardstock. One to cover the card front and the 4 x 5 1/4 piece to run through the Cuttlebug. Then, because I got more white cracking through than I wanted, I used a sponge and Ocean ink and I rubbed it all over the embossing. I like the depth it gave. Can you tell I'm happy summer is here? LOL I used Orange ink for the heart image from CTMH's Soulmates stamp set. I also used the happy birthday image from their Birthday stamp set. Some scraps from that Berry Sweet paper on my desk seemed to fit the mood and I used it for the scallop square. A flower from that Archiver's freebie with an orange glittered brad finished off the card.

I've been working on these cards most of the afternoon. I kept getting interrupted by laundry, the phone and the kids (after they got home from the park). Typing this up got interrupted by dinner (yummy steak, corn on the cob and baked potato) on the deck.

Thanks so much for stopping by! Remember that silly news story I told you about where there was talk that summer weather might pass us by? Um...not happening here. I heard we are to be in the 90s all week! Welcome Summer!