Yep ... another belated card

All I can say is ... it's a good thing that I'm fun because I NEVER mail birthday cards out on time. I'm chronically late. This card SHOULD have been mailed last Saturday but here it sits, on my dining room table waiting to be wrapped, boxed and sent to the post office.

I think that my problems stem from the fact that I am easily distracted. Take today for example: I should be mopping my floor but instead I have organized my junk drawer, sorted mail, sharpened EVERY pencil in my child's room and done a variety of tasks that needed to be done but ... weren't the task that I set forth to do. I'm blaming my mom. I can't tell you the number of times that I would come home from school to find her in the yard weeding. And when I asked her what she was doing she would reply, "cleaning the house." Yep. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Supplies:
Stamps: All stamps by Inky Antics
Accessories: CB folder, nestibilities, copics, brad, pop dots

Get Well Soon Wen

My bestie is having surgery today and I am thinking about her, wishing I were with her.

I met Wendy in high school. Our moms were friends and kept talking about how much in common we had and well, wouldn't stop trying to get us together (apparently Claudia and Bev were thwarted matchmakers in another life). So in desperation to get them to just stop talking about how "nice" the other girl was ... we met. Guess what? They were right.

Almost 30 years later ... we're still friends, home girls, sistahs from otha mothas. We've made it through high school, college, dating, marriage, kids, divorce, diabetes and the ugly "c" word. I anticipate that we will have another 30 years of friendship. We'll be the two old bags at the home wearing mismatched clothes and arguing over whether "zoot" is an acceptable Scrabble word. Love ya, doll.

Ha-lloweeeeeen

I wasn't going to send Halloween cards this year. It's been a tough year and my creativity was waning ... but then today I caught the bug and started to work again. I made 4 cards over today and yesterday (and this wasn't even one of them ... I made this in July) So now I have 6 cards to show you all before Monday. Hmmm, how's THAT going to work out?

Right now my oldest is having a hissy fit. His teacher will let him wear a costume to school if he writes a report about the costume. So, being the non-student that he wishes he could be, he decided that he just wouldn't wear a costume (thus avoiding the report). I told him no-way-jose. He could choose not to wear a costume ... but he WOULD be writing the report anyway. He's not a happy camper right now.

Yay, another baby!!

My niece is preggers again. She's an AMAZING mom and I wanted to send a card to let her how excited we are at the prospect of another baby. I'm quite desperate for this one to be a girl (can ya tell?) I love my boys but I want to shop for a girl dog gone it!

Course I'm on boy overload right now. I'm having a play-date with four boys (a 9 year old, an 8 year old, a 6 year old and a 4 year old). All of them have a nerf gun, walkie talkies and a hard hat on. Normally I would bundle them up and send em' outside and have a happy and quiet afternoon to leaf through a magazine while waiting for my dinner to finish cooking. Curse you snow!

Supplies:
High Hopes Stamp
Nestibilities, lacey circle, copics, buttons, Memory Box die

SSMIS October

Vickie's challenge for us was a vintage Stampin Up image and to use the technique of water-coloring. As you can see, I failed THAT part! When I sat down to water-color I had to really think ... HOW do you water-color again, what tools am I using?? I finally remembered but let's just say that my efforts were ... not good!

When I first saw this image I thought it looked a little sad and I immediately thought of a sympathy card (of course it could be MY state of mind too). I loved the bird and wanted to emphasize it's message of hope.

Click here to see what my sisters did with this same image.

Supplies:
Stamps: Al stamps Stampin Up: Times and Seasons (retired)
Accessories: Ribbon, Label 4 Nestibilities, Crystal Effects, CB Swiss Dots folder, pop dots, copics

September Monthly Image

This is what I finally came up with for the Lockhart image that Pat sent this month for our Monthly Image Challenge. You can see the gallery of what the other girls did here. We have some AMAZING artists in our group!

Scenic images like this are soooo far outside my box that it was hard to come up with an idea. Since the image itself was so large, the layout had to be very simple. I used fall tones and doodled a bit to jazz it up.

Supplies:
Stamps: Image: Lockhart, Phrase: Memory Box
Accessories: ribbon, copics, ribbon, Nestibilities: tags, brads

Happy Birthday Deb

(sigh) Yes, I know ... another belated birthday card to show. This one I'm blaming on a lack of Mojo. I started making this card Friday afternoon, when it WOULD have been on-time. I began coloring a cute Penny Black cow image and started working with my lay-out but the image was too big. Hated it! Went away, grumpy.

Saturday morning, I set out again. I scrapped the cows and started looking for a cool retro sewing stamp set that I own. That set would have been PERFECT for Deb. But I couldn't find the stamp set. Went away, grumpy.

Sunday afternoon (on her actual birthday) I forced myself to find another stamp set (it's not like I don't own a billion other perfectly good stamps). Initially I had wanted to make a card in Deb's style: retro, grunge, and CAS but in the end I just settled for finished!

Stamps: Stampabilities
Accessories: Bo Bunny paper, ribbon, brads, sewing machine, lacy circle nesties, flowers

Yep, another birthday

Happy, happy day Carol!

Another card from my September birthdays. Technically, this should probably be a belated card since I only mailed it yesterday BUT I'm going to count it as on-time since I mailed it prior to her actual day. I suppose I'm being cheesy, like the airlines when they count a plane that arrives in the destination city's airspace on-time but then circles for 20 minutes before landing, but I can't have any more belated cards go out this month. My husband ALREADY says "all" my cards are late.

Supplies:
Stamps: SU
Accessories: Lacy squares, nestibilities; copics; blue bayou ribbon and paper; embroidery floss

Oh Nuts

September is such a busy month.

Aside from the start of school and the craziness of that schedule change, I am lucky enough to know 9 people with birthdays this month. I feel like I walk around this month with a perpetual "Oh nuts" expression on my face because of all the birthdays I seem to miss. Thank heavens for the little reminders from facebook "You have 4 friends with birthdays this week" that come to my e-mail or I'd be sending out MORE belated cards than actual happy birthday cards this month! Confession time, I've already sent out THREE belated cards!

Hope it was happy Jackie.

Supplies:
Stamps: Inky Antics
Accessories: Lables 11, nestibilities; copics; ribbon; MS punch

Thanks

I needed a quick thank you card for the principal and office staff at my oldest's new school. They all worked sooo hard to get him registered for classes today. I feel incredibly grateful for their speedy efforts. Oldest's new teacher is amazing and reminds me of Mrs. Frizzle. Today she was wearing neon orange shoes with lime green socks. Kooky!

I was laughing with DH this morning that if I ever go back to teaching, I will be lucky to be hired. I'm calling in all my markers and even burning a few educational contact bridges. Oh well. When you have a special needs kiddo, you've got to be a bit of a mama bear.

I wanted the card to have a school days feel so I turned to By LORi Designs. I love her little Landon and Lucy series. They are PERFECT for teacher/school stuff. Thankfully I don't have to mail this card ... I know that the post office would freak out over the puffiness of the pencil that I used to decorate the card!

Supplies:
Stamps: By LORi Designs, SU
Accessories: Ribbon, pencil, brads, nesties

August Secret Sistah

Susie's challenge was to create the perfect local stamp store. When I think of a great store I want it to be open all the time (thus the Eat, Sleep, Stamp sign ... those are it's hours, pretty much open 24/7), it has to have great stuff (check out all the goods in the window) AND everything has to be on sale, marked down or on clearance.

I also needed an "I love you card" for the hubby. He's been a good sport while the kids and I went to Arizona to see my mom. I know it's hard for him to hold down the fort, feed our assorted menagerie of animals and be alone. Soo, I combined the SS challenge and a "love ya" card and made this.

I totally cased Patti's cute window treatment. You can see her wonderful card here or the entire collection of local stamp stores here! Fun challenge Susanne!

Supplies:
Stamps: Art Impressions
Accessories: wire, brad, pop dots, copics, Banner Nesties, SU word window punch

Going to the Chapel ...

"and they're gonna get mar-harried." I guess you're kind of glad that sound isn't a part of my blog otherwise you would be required to listen to my off-key singing of The Crystal's "Going to the Chapel of Love" song.

My nephew Logan is getting married in four days so I needed a card. I totally cased the card from Francis' blog. If you haven't ever been, I highly recommend it. I loved how she used the two hearts and dressed them in wedding duds. I changed it up a bit and the inside reflects the heart theme with the verse "Two Souls with but a single thought, Two Hearts that beat as one." I usually hate my wedding cards but this one ... I gotta say, I like. Thanks SS for the ribbon bow tie. It was absolutely what I needed.

Now if only I could manufacture something for ME to wear.

Supplies:
Stamps: Stampin Up, Wordsworth
Accessories: button, baker's Twine, scallop punch, CB folder, All other accessories from Michaels: pearl, bling, one flower, bow tie.

Shoulda, Woulda ... Coulda

So the youngest turns 6 and we planned a big bash. I had just received my monthly images from our SSMIS hostess (Lena hosted this month) and she chose THE cutest little dragon space image. It was right in keeping with the Space theme of the party... so I planned to make 12 little cards to send out. This is the proto-type.

I made a slider card.

But it got busy and we ended up sending generic Hallmark invitations (insert horrified gasp here)

And I arranged to have a friend make an R2D2 cake. Here is the picture of the cake before the devastation. Poor R2 was a victim of the heat and died in a heap of cakey rubble. We had a supermarket cake (it was delicious, stop beating yourself up Mary ... he LOVED it).


Then, the party was supposed to take place in the basement of a local store with A/C. But ... there was NO air ... none!


So the darling astronaut costumes that the kids were to wear lasted all of 15 minutes before the kids stripped them off, gasping for cooler temperatures. This is a picture of the birthday boy "using the force" to whack the balloon. He was having a blast because anytime you can whack ... is good!



But the alien cake pops were cute.
The kids had fun.
The birthday boy was excited and happy.
Mission accomplished.

Supplies:
Stamps: High Hopes, Stampin Up
Accessories: Pop dots, copics, Star punch Circle Nesties, ribbon and CB embossing folder

Diving into the SS stash

(Sigh) I'm thinking that I would be kinda happy if my DH's abs looked like this (the legs kinda creep me out ... but I could do with the six-pack abs). My lovely geeky husband can be called many things but a dumb blonde is not one of them.

I'm sending this card to a friend who has cancer. It's ironic because when she was diagnosed, I kinda fell apart and she ended up comforting ME! My friend is one of the strongest, bravest people I know. Go Team Wendy!

I also wanted to post a picture of the bane of my existance ... Buzz Lightyear. I mentioned to a friend the other day about how I spent a significant portion of my Saturday trying to put this guy together for my soon to be 6 year old. I grew up with Barbies so the finer points of lego building elude me. By the time I started to work on him, the youngest had already lost a piece in his arm and one in his foot. He's together but looks kinda goofy with that replacement red piece in his arm and foot.

In my next life ...

I've decided that in my next life I want to be Stampabella. She's unbelievable thin, always doing something fun and she just looks like a kick in the pants to know.

I'm kidding.

I had some time to waste and some new supplies begging me to use so I made this card for my bestest friend ever. The new items I used were the baker's twine and the pennant dies from Nestabilities. I used some images that I snagged from my friend Deb. I think it's Cosmo-bella but I'm not 100% sure.

Have a great day

Supplies:
Stamps: Stampabella, SU
Accessories: Bo Bunny paper, copics, nestibilities, ribbon, bling, MS punch, SU hardware

Ahhh, to sleep, perchance to dream. Nope!

I couldn't sleep on Monday night. It was too dang hot. So where do all crafters go when sleep is elusive ... the internet. I finally caught up on all my blurfing (wow, y'all are making some be-yooo-tiful cards out there!) and then, when one of them caught my eye ... I decided to CASE it. I didn't crawl back into bed until 3 in the morning (made for an ugly Tuesday) but I DID enjoy my "me" time.

I'm still in my paper tole phase so I popped his little jammies up. This is a thank you card for one of my friends who went above and beyond the call of duty.

Here is the beautiful card that inspired me. You can find Kathleen's AMAZING work on her blog Will Stamp for Wine.