Happy, Happy Day!

Hello, hello. I'm back from my technology hiatus (ie. vacay and start of the new school year).

I took some time to make a card based on this week's 2s4Y sketch - I think that I just made the deadline... nothing like waiting until the last day, right? I used a piece of scrap PP from my every growing pile (we all have that pile, right?). I didn't want to cut into a new one, plus I wanted to use a piece since I just bought a bunch of new PP collections last night so I want to make some room. I haven't bought in any in a relatively long time, but have been seeing so many awesome cards and scrap pages that I haven't been able to resist any longer. I also bought some new stamps... my first Hero Arts stamps ever. So excited for the package to arrive - hopefully the shipping time isn't too long for either of my packages!

Deets:

Stamps - Elzy Bells and Cornish Heritage Farms (sentiment)

CS: SU - Kiwi Kiss; Crate Paper-Zoom collections (both sides of Freeway) and PTI white

Ink: Memento Rich Cocoa; Distress Ink - Antique Linen

Other: PTI Scarlet Jewel button, dauber, prismas and gamsol and copics

Oh yeah, and here is the sketch I used. Thanks for a great sketch, Kazan! :)

Hello out there!

I've been on vacay (well, actually staycay, since we actually didn't go away anywhere) for the last week, enjoying the last week of summer and getting ready for a new school year. As a result, I've haven't been on the computer too much at all. But I think I'm ready to join the blog land again after my nice break. :) (you need that every once in a while... at least I do!). So I've been catching up on Google Reader and saw that I still had some time for Dawn's latest color challenge. I've fallen a bit behind... but hey, those things happen! ;)

Love these colors - they get me in the mood and mindset for fall! I think it times perfectly, because up until today, the weather has been kinda fall-ish. The mornings and the evenings have been cool, which is a sure sign the fall is around the corner. My littlest guy had 2 playdates that I set up this week at the park, and we had to wear sweatshirts both days (I even wore jeans on Wednesday!). Playdates are rare for my kiddies since they are in school full day and our weekends are chock full of sports, so it was a nice treat for my youngest, who is too small to go on playdates on his own still (he's only 4).

Anyway, back to the cards. I got ambitious and made 2 (yep, count 'em 2) cards for this challenge. These were for 2 birthday parties my kids had this week (love when the challenge works for real-life needs!) I haven't had much time for stamping in the last few weeks and have only made cards that I have needed (vs. just for fun or for challenges). For some reason the first card (the all-star card), made an impression on my oldest kiddo - he said it is his fave card to date (can you believe that... and it's pretty hard to impress a 9-year boy with cards! The second care is a little card - 3x3, which was sized for PTI newest/littlest envies. So cute. I love this size. Plus it is so quick to make a card this size - so little room to fill - LOL.

Well, hope that the end of your summer has been great. My kiddos start back up on Tuesday. They are excited. I just can't believe on another school year is here already... kinda bittersweet, but overall I'm happy. :)

Just in Time!

This will be short on deets to make the deadline, but I'm happy to make the Blog Hop this month. Thank you so much, Tina, for the reminder tweet! :) We were away for the long weekend and just got back this afternoon. So I just whipped up this card so that I could join in on the fun.

The theme was autumn and we were supposed to include texture. We have this wonderful bush outside our house, which served as my inspiration piece. I think it came out well all things considered - LOL.

Thanks so much and I can't wait to see all the wonderful creations! :)

TIC #6 - Better Late than Never

So it's a bit late, but I was inspired by the wonderful photo from TIC #6 to create this card. After a busy week last week, that left little time for creating, I was glad to get some time to craft last night. Such a great way to wind down a day, right? ;)

My inspiration starting point this time was the arches, which made me think of this oldie, but goodie from SU. I remember when this doodle set was all the rage. I still love pulling it out and using it (hence why I have a hard time parting with any of my sets - I still have almost every set that I have ever bought!). I love the line art look of this set. I colored it with copics that I drew from the pic - purple, grey, green and the pops of pinky-red from the flowers. I love purple... I need to use it more often - so thanks for the inspiration, Tina.

Off to work - hope that you have a great day! :)

Happy, Happy Day

Hello, hello and good morning! Little neglectful (think I just made up a word!) of the blogette, but I did have a card for this morning. I've been working on thank you cards for my littlest's birthday party from a couple weeks ago, and it is a bit slow going... but I'll get there eventually. So I have yet to get to any challenge cards this week (maybe tonite...).

I made this card over the weekend for a birthday party that one of my kiddos is supposed to go to today from 11-2. Well, I say "supposed" to, because he was invited. But unfortunately, he won't be going. Now I know there is no rule that birthday parties HAVE to be on the weekend, but it makes it very hard to partake when it is in the middle of the day during the work week - and you (meaning me, in this case) work. But then again, it's their party and you can have it when you want to, and there is a great part of the population of SAHMs and kiddos that are able to take advantage of it ... I'm just not one of them - LOL! Plus it's the summer, so I do get it in the whole scheme of things. So no complaints - luckily this doesn't happen too much so the kids don't often miss out. I'll be dropping off the gift at some point this week - just not during the day!!

Anyways, I hope you have a great Wednesday, no matter what you are doing! We're almost to the back half of another week already...

Mind your manners...

And say thank you.

It's been a few days, but tonight I have been spending my time saying thank you (well, actually making cards that say it) to all the wonderful camp counselors that have taken great care of my kids. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I can never say thank you enough to these wonderful peeps that teach, entertain and play with my kiddies while I'm at work. Can't believe the summer is on the back end already. Tomorrow is the last day of camp and then we enter the part of the summer when we have to piece together coverage through weekly camps until I am off for the last 2 weeks before school starts back up again. Gotta get creative since I can't take 4 weeks off (could you imagine?? LOL)

This will be a quickie, so here is one of the cards I made. Used a little Basic Grey goodness to pretty much make this card and finished off with a PTI sentiment, nestied Enchanted Evening CS and some buttons. Gets the message across, no?

Well, off to bed... it has been a long week for me work-wise. Lots of late nights to get everything done (altho it never is "done," it seems, but such is life, I guess). Looking forward to the weekend... but then again, who doesn't ;)

Beach Inspired Birthday...

Whew- how weekends just fly by!! I felt like it was Friday evening... and then I blinked, and now suddenly it's Monday night.

This past weekend, we celebrated my littlest one's 4th birthday. We celebrated a month later due to the hectic baseball schedule that ruled our schedules for most of July. I wanted to pick a date that I was sure we'd have all 5 of us free. Have to give everyone their time and I am a firm believer in celebrating birthdays to the fullest - after all, you just get one a year. And at the age that my boys are, there aren't very days that are more important in a year ;)

But I did make a point of carving out some time last night to get inspired. We had a beautiful pic for this week's TIC. Can you imagine having this scene out your front door? It is certainly different from the view I had in suburban America as well. The closest thing that I've seen like it in person was in Hawaii on my honeymoon. What an amazingly wonderful place to visit. We keep talking about going back, but we laugh as there is a part of us that doesn't want to go back for fear of ruining the image of Utopia that we have built in our memories. It probably will be quite different going back to visit with 3 kids - haha. I'm definitely NOT to the point where I'd be ready to eave the kiddos for an extended period of time. We've only taken one airplane trip without them, but we were still on the continental US.

Anyway, so back to the card... the first thing that jumped out at me was of course the color of the ocean and sky, but also the tropical foliage in the bottom right corner. I'm guess that is palm leaves and some other tropical plant. So those are the main elements that I used to create my card. I used this SU die of the branches and leaves and layered it on two different shades of blue. The color looks like a light blue closer to the shore, which I mimic'd with the bitty dots paper on the PTI EE card stock. And lastly I stamped the sentiment in vintage cream... like sand.

And there you have it. Thanks, Tina, for the challenge and thanks, Claudia, for the inspiration pic :)