Scrap Treasures Kit and Rhi's Ribbon Flower

I'm still using up the Scrap Treasures Near & Dear kit. I added some ribbon from my stash to make Rhi's Ribbon Flower. Also used a couple of the Michael's $1 clear stamps which I just HAD to have, but have mostly been collecting dust. LOL





Check back tomorrow. I'll be adding some layouts using the Wube Sew Cute collection!

Global Bumper Card Society

What a great idea from Geeta!! Bumper tag! I got tagged by Deb who I just recently met through my blog. She is such a sweetie to comment on the cards I've been attempting.

Here are the rules from Geeta's site:
1) Send a card to someone you know within 7 days! (family, friends, associates, cyber people, etc.) ANYONE!!! Doesn't matter who... just do it. Can you imagine the smile on their face when they open their mailbox and see a card from you?
2) Tag 5 people you know to do the same thing (Tag means tag them to send their own cards to their own people).
3) Proudly display this on your blog to spread a little sunshine and pass it on.








If you get tagged again (we can all hope, can't we), send another card!

We could keep playing bumper tag for a long time!!! I can't wait to send out a few cards this week! And I'm tagging:

1. Linda
2. Lori
3. Sunny
4. Melanie
5. Cheryl - a new message board acquaintance, but take a look at the beautiful cards in her gallery!

My first altered clipboard

A very good friend RAK'd me a ton of the Daisy D's School Days line. I used just a smidgen of it for my very first altered clipboard. I can't remember who makes that red paper, but it was left over from another school-themed kit. This is a gift for one of the Pre-K teachers who is leaving Addison's school this week to start teaching kindergarten. I tried to not make it too lumpy, cause I'd love for her to be able to actually use it.

One more card tonight

for Marie's Sketch Challenge #1. Still using up the Rhonna Farrer paper, stamps are SU Watercolor Garden, rubon from American Crafts.

Beate Sketch #12

I'm loving Beate's Weekend Sketch Challenge #12. I like the dash of bling, but I think I need more practice with Melanie's Ribbon flowers. Thanks for the sketch!

Remember this?

This picture was taken back in March when Addison was checking on the flower seeds we had started inside.










Here's what they look like today! I have never seen marigolds and (are those gerbera daisies??) so tall!!! I think she inherited her dad's green thumb.














We were even lucky to catch this picture of the beautiful butterfly paying them a visit today.

Reach for the Stars - Card Recipe

I needed a quick birthday card so I used this recipe I found at Reach for the Stars. The paper is Rhonna Farrer Splendid Splatters. I used my new scalloped square punch, an old SU sentiment, and Not Quite Navy ink. Thanks for looking!

Need your own CHA goodies?

Head on over to Daily Dose of Spazz and leave a comment in her blog entry for July 27 for a chance to win some great products from CHA! Don't delay - you need to post before Monday at noon CST.

Swimming Lessons - Day #3

Some pictures from the third day of swimming lessons at Vanderbilt Swim School. This teacher is making them work hard...and they're all doing great!

A wedding LO

I'm so far behind on our wedding album. Our next anniversary will be #10, and this is only the second wedding page I've ever done. But this month's Gettin' Sketchy challenge combined perfectly with this week's challenge at Paper Popsicles to create a layout titled "I Promise to". Maybe it's a good idea to take my time on this album. Working on this layout brings back to the front of my mind all those reasons I married him in the first place.

CASE-ing

CASE = Copy and Steal Everything.

I'm a big believer that there is absolutely nothing wrong with CASE-ing other people's work as long as credit is given where it is due. After all "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery", right?

So a few weeks ago I signed up for this great deal from the Scrapbook Trends folks. If you subbed for 12 months of Scrapbook Trends magazine you got 6 issues of Cards for free. These little publications are much more like idea books than most magazines. Just chock full of ideas and beautiful creations.

Since they're more pricey, I'm going to try to get my money's worth out of them. Here's my very first lift from the issues that started arriving in my mailbox this week. The CASE of a Jennifer Gallacher card in the August 2007 issue of Cards. I had all the stuff in my stash....and it always feels good to use up more stuff.

Beate Weekend Sketch #11

This morning I took my self-professed challenge obsession and turned to a card challenge. This is the first time I've done one of Beate's sketch challenges, and it was so much fun.

I had a hard time using this Kewl Stuff paper by Imaginisce on a scrapbook layout, so I thought I'd try it on a card. The stamps are from the Michael's $1 collection. I even pulled out my SU pastels and blender pens which haven't been touched in a very long time. And those deco scalloped scissors that I held on to all these years came in very handy.

Thanks for the challenge! The sketch is awesome and one I plan on using over and over. I'm thinking I should try more card challenges!

Blog Ramblings

I tested my blog:



I guess this is good information for those of us with young children.

I've just discovered the Google Reader, and I'm adding more blogs to it daily. I love knowing I'm not going to miss a new post. And I'm getting SOOOO much inspiration from so many super-talented gals out there. So I'm determined to spiffy up my blog a little bit over the next few weeks. I added a counter today so I can see if anybody is even listening to me talk. LOL

And tonight I finished a layout using Sketch 18 from one of my favorite sketch blogs: Valerie Salmon's sketches. I combined it with a monochromatic challenge and came up with this. It looks crooked but I think it's the way it stitched. *sigh*

Sketch Contest with an Awesome Prize & The Pile

There's exactly two weeks left to get your entries in for the sketch contest from My Sketch World and Scrap Treasures. Check out the details on Lucy's sketch blog, upload your LO to the Scrap Treasures gallery, and comment on the blog with your link. It's a great sketch and a drool-worthy prize....so go get busy!!! LOL

Tonight I am working on "THE PILE".

THE PILE = a stack of stuff that needs to be put away. I start stacking when I'm in a hurry to move on to the next layout/project. So in this stack are LO's to be put in albums, finished cards to be put in my card filebox, kits, papers, ribbons, etc. that needs to be put back where they belong, sketches I've printed during my fury that need to be put in the sketch binder, photo scraps from cropping pics that should have already gone in the trash, some pictures I didn't use that need to go back in the photo file, a swap I got in the mail, and at the very bottom, a 12X12 LP frame I'm going to put a LO in to hang on the wall.

Do you have a pile??? Wanna keep me company?

Quiz

57%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

Not sharing much tonight

The Scrap Treasures sponsor for July is Wubie Prints. I finished up a couple of layouts today using the Wubie Sew Cute collection (available in the Scrap Treasures store). I can't share them here but you can check out the Gallery to see all the DT creations.

I also had a horrible experience trying to trim Clark's hair tonight. I accidentally got his ear in the scissors!!! I've been assured by several moms that this does happen with boys. I took a picture of it (after it FINALLY quit bleeding), but I can't even bring myself to download it from the camera. I'm afraid I would feel sick all over again. I'm sure he'll be fine, but it upset both of us for quite a while.

My scrap table looks like a bomb exploded. With the two LO's I finished today, I now have scrapped as many pages as I did in all of 2006! But no more scrapping for me until I get some of this stuff put away. That could take all week!!! LOL

Zoo Night

It was member's night at the Nashville Zoo, which just means they stay open a couple of hours longer for members only. It was nice to go without fighting the sun and the mid-day heat. We only stayed a couple of hours...long enough to visit the elephants and the giraffes

and spend lots of time at the Jungle Gym. Picking up a family pack of yummy pork bbq on the way home put the icing on a quite enjoyable evening!

Why was I ever worried?

I guess it's normal for a mother to compare the development of her children. Addison was such an early talker. Her vocabulary at 15 months was unbelievable. Clark was no where near having the same fondness of hearing his own voice at 15, 18 or even 20 months. Clark's pediatrician reassured me at his 18-month visit that his 10-12 word vocabulary was totally normal. But recently, Clark is expanding his vocabulary daily and has started repeating everything!! It's SOOO cute when he shrugs his shoulders and says "I doen know". But I'm not sure I'm quite ready for the word he introduced yesterday.



Momma: Clark, it's time to get out of the pool and go inside.

Clark: No.

Momma: (after taking a minute to comprehend what she just heard): C'mon Clark, let's go inside.

Clark: No!

Momma (thinks to herself): Oh boy...the 2's are already starting. Life was so much easier when he just agreed with everything we told him. I'm not sure I'm ready to handle yet another opinion in this family.

Tagged on the 4th

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!!

I've been tagged by Linda

Here's the deal:

1-post these rules
2-each person tagged must post 8 random(... hopefully interesting) facts about themselves
3-tags should write a blogpost of these facts
4- at the end of the post 8 more bloggers are tagged and named
5-go to their blog and leave a comment telling them they're tagged

OK....I never think any of my facts are very interesting, but we'll see:

1. In high school, I was a majorette for the marching band and played keyboard percussion in concert band.
2. I have steel stirrups in both my ears (remember the hammer, anvil and stirrup?) I lost a great percentage of my hearing in my early 20's because the ones I was born with weren't vibrating enough. Now I have no idea if I can ever have an MRI.
3. I am a true homebody. There's nowhere I'd rather be than home.
4. Carl and I got married in a church that was built in 1860. Typical of churches in that day, there was a partition down the middle of the pews to separate the seating areas for the men and the women.
5. I have worked for the same CPA firm for 20 years!!!
6. I have two great-grandfathers (on different sides of the family) that were struck and killed by lightning.
7. Someday I want to take a train ride across Canada (or at least the Canadian Rockies).
8. I hate hot weather.

So who should I tag???? 8 ??? That's alot!

1. Jolynn
2. Denean
3. Kirstie
4. Amy
5. Julie
6. Kathy
7. Lora
8. Jenni

Divine Day!

Yesterday, we headed out to Opry Mills and the Opryland Hotel for some family fun. After some very quick purchases in OshKosh and Stride Rite, we headed over to the hotel to see the mother of Addison's classmate perform. She recently changed jobs, but she was there yesterday for one last performance as Divine. If you've never seen this performance at Opryland or Animal Kingdom in FL, watch the video. It is amazing. I'm glad Addison had already seen her perform at a "private" performance for the preschool or it might have been somewhat frightening for her. Carl and I spent lots of time just watch the crowd of onlookers with their jaws hanging open in awe of her fluid movements. Here are some pics....and it's very easy to miss her in the family picture.