Today, I am not feeling so well. I have all this upper respiratory and sinus stuff going on and have feeling pretty cruddy since Sunday. I have been down since then and so I thought I would sit at my computer and update this today as to being on the sofa, as my body is sore from all the lounging around. Avery had 2 asthma attacks just over 2 weeks ago and scared the heck out of me. Although he has asthma he has never had such attacks. His first one I was pretty scared and thought he was going to pass out on me and so I placed him on his breathing machine and then ran him to the doctor. The next day was his birthday and we spent it doing some fun things the 2 of us. Then Friday came and he slept a lot in the afternoon which was nothing new when getting up early these days for school. When he awoke from his nap he as sitting at the table playing with his sis and he started having another attack... this time no messing around he went right on his machine and a call to the doctor to stress my concern with the seriousness of these. So we ended up at the hospital to get a chest x-ray and the confirmation of an pneumonia. So the last week he has spent getting better and I have spent the last week coming down with this stuff. UGH. It seems never ending in a family size such as this. So, with that all said, that pretty much brings me up to date on my blog with chit-chat and my creativity. I think I will go jump in the shower now and try to clear this head of some junk. Thanks for stopping by... LOL.. ha like anyone comes here, but the few that trickle by and leave luvins I truly enjoy seeing your comments and appreciate the fly by.... so off to get some more rest after my shower.

Magic Moments - "Embellish It"

For this challenge we had to create a layout about any subject you like but use as many embellishments as you can! Use up some stash and see how creative you can be. For every DIFFERENT embellishment you use, give yourself a point. A button equals 1 point or 5 buttons still equals one point, for example. I chose to do this cute picture of Rachel and her friend when she was about 5. This is a pic with all my Christmas stuff animals that I place under the tree and then move them around the presents as we start placing them under the tree. One day Kristin and Rachel decided to pile them on the sofa and hide in them. This is the pic I snapped way back many YEARS before I was a scrapper!! LOL.... There is a hidden tag next to the blue sequins that pulls out to the right of the pic. It is the blue torn edge with the ribbon on it. I still need to journal it though. Here is a list of the embellishments I use: 1. gold cord on the letter "O" in moment's 2. Felt star 3. Gemstone circle 4. Die cut snowflakes 5. Chipboard - frame around the word friends 6. Silver heart charm (bottom right corner with fiber) 7. Bluish spiral clip (bottom right side with fiber) 8. little candy cane (bottom right side with fiber) 9. tag with year (bottom right side with fiber) 10. pearls on red felt star 11. brad - blue bling under "M" in moments 12. clear buttons - down left side 13. Red & green flower bling - down left side 14. stamped, color and cut-out image - little hedgehog 15. Red fiber - with spiral clip - right bottom side 16. Rub-on - word "friends" in chipboard frame 17. Green magic mesh - behind magic moments and bottom right side 18. Red photo anchor - under "S" in moments 19. Little Green prima flower - bottom next to chipboard frame 20. eyelet - in the center of the little green flower 21. Red embroidery thread 22. Blue ribbon with small snowflakes - down the center of lo 23. Ice blue sequins - left side and right side of pic 24. Photo corner - bottom left of pic 25. Red Ric-rac - bottom right side 26. Christmas postage stamp - left side next to large snowflake 27. Silver word staple with "giggle" on it - bottom right side above ric-rac 28. Dymo label with the names Kristin and Rachel on it - above pic.

More Birthday Cards.....

This is a card I made my friend for her birthday. I scrap lifted these words from a magazine called Stamper's Sampler. They pick a template and then they have readers use them and submit what they made. This month's template was a crow. Some one had a tag with their crow and this saying on it and I thought it was a hoot!! So, I downloaded the template and made it to fit a 5x7 card and this is my crow card. You can find the templates at stampington.com on the left side you will find templates! The tag was on page 74 in the magazine. I wish I could take credit for the words because they make me laugh every time I look at this card with the crow, but I can take credit for my crow though and isn't her makeover just lovely! LOL... I cut the first crow out of black cs, did her tail with a white charcoal pencil. Traced a head out of the green old worlds pp and inked the edges drew her eye and cut a beak out of the red cs that I did her wing in and inked the edges of the beak added the line and then added diamond glaze to give it a high gloss look like lip gloss might; added a rosie cheek and a hint of red to her eyelid. I than embossed her wing that I cut out with the cuttlebug embossing file and added white ink to make it pop, then added the the row of paper studio gemstones - red; made her crown on my own, embellished it and then I cut down the crow's legs some because I wanted them slimmer and then drew her feet and added a dot of red fingernail polish to each toe. Added the words I printed off of my computer. This was a lot of fun, I encourage you to download a crow and do something with it yourself. I am going to do something for halloween too.. lol when I find the time...

This is another card I made another girlfriend of mine. I stamped the bird with flowers (inkadinkadoo-birds galore) with a bright pink and added clear embossing powder, cut it out added the dark blue with a gelly roll sparkle pen, crimped my heart I hand cut, inked the edges, attached the heart and bird. Cut the bottom of my card off, added the scalloped edge, added my ribbon (thanks LA, you're the best) and added the flower with the little tag with the word happy. the background pp is actually wrapping paper that I just adore and I wish I had tons of it in wrapping paper and scrappy paper!

Five things I Adore

Here is a layout on five things I adore. Of course, there are plenty more than these five things, but narrowing them down was not that easy so I just went with these. Under each pic is a little paragraph as to why I adore each of these items. This layout is for my BOM.

Friendship Cards

Here are a few cards I just made for a few friends that I got to meet off Scrapbook.com. They are from the thread that we are a group on called the Eiffel Tower Group. One of them lives in Tenn., two in Ohio and one in Sweden. We all met at Achievers in Columbus, Ohio back in August. We had a lot of fun and I hope we can do it again sometime. I made them each a card after we met. They all came bearing gifts and me nothing... I kind of felt like a dweeb, but oh well, what do you do? So, I decided to make them each an cute card and send them a thank you. These are the cards I made them.

Halloween ATC's

These are some ATC's I made to swap... I decided to make inchies. they are always a lot of fun to make, both inches and ATC's!

Birthday ATC

This is not a great pic, but this is a birthday ATC I made my friend for her birthday instead of a card.

This layout was a challenge of not using any storebought embellishments at all.. it had to be all cardstock with everything being made.

This is a layout of my oldest daughter and her best friend this past Halloween. ok.. so I did want to lock them in their rooms and not let them go to this party, but then you just have to let them grow up! This layout was a layout where I made my own paper. Everything here had to be made from card stock using paint, chalk or whatever you just had to create it yourself. I had seen some paper that I really liked so I tried my hand at recreating it. I started off with a black piece of card stock and added some blue and white paint in the middle and then blended it with a sponge brush until I got it to the blend I wanted. let it dry drew my grid with a white charcoal pencil and then I stamped my flowers with foam stamps and then outlined them with my white pencil. I cut and outlined my arrowed with my white uniball pen. Punched out my stars and outlined them too. The circles are actually just a really thin piece of card stock twisted and shaped and stuck on the paper. I added a punch of red to match the girl's lips and then there is hidden journaling when you lift the picture. I thought this turned out grand.

It's more than a name - It's ME

This layout was done for a challenge we were suppose to use adjectives for each letter of our name to describe ourselves. So the whole layout had to revolve around our name somehow. I chose to use a picture of myself when I was about 5 years old. I also did a lot of white space which is hard for me sometimes. This is simple and clean and I really love it. I find it hard to scrap myself and now with this thread I am on I am starting to make pages for a BOM for myself, which I just love and would probably not have done it on my own. And for those of you who do not know what a BOM is, it is a "Book About Me". I think most scrappers scrap other and not themselves so this has been a real out of my box for me and I am really loving the pages that I am starting to turn out because of these challenges! My adjectives were: Nutty, Inquisitive, Naughty and Authentic and above my pic has the meaning of my name.

I love this layout! This came to me because I could not for the world of me get this song out of my head for what seemed like weeks. The more I sang it the more I kept thinking of this layout. So, I finally found time to put in on paper and then the song went away too! LOL.. thank goodness! I cut this pocket out of a pair of black jeans that we getting ready to go to goodwill and then I stitched the word sunshine on the pocket. I actually created my pattern paper you see in the sun with stamping and heat embossing. I wanted it to be swirly and sunshiny so I decided to make my own and I loved how it turned out. I cut the pattern paper at the bottom out of some K&Company's paper I got in a big box and of course I just had to add some stickles. I added that yellow felt flowers to add some pop to the bottom and isn't Millie dog awe soo cute there and lookie there, she is smiling too! hehehe The pictures are of my family and they certainly are my pocket full of sunshine! The little laser cut butterflies I received from my friend Laura from Sweden and I just love them!

Puppy Love

This is just a cute pic of my youngest daughter that I scrapped....

Right Here Right Now

OK.. This is a kind of off the wall kind of crazy page for me, but this is how I was feeling back at the end of June going into July. This was done for a challenge on a thread that I am on regularly. We were suppose to do a page reflecting "right here right now". So, let me fill you in which might explain why I have not been around for June and July. So, back in June I go to have my first mammogram ever... and let me tell you ladies, don't put this off, if you haven't had your exam, please do it. So, with that said, I truly had a friend that would not stop bugging me about going to get this done and being 47 and never having one I finally took her seriously and did it. Well, needless to say something came back and it was an extremely stressful process. Not only did I have my breast exam I also had my yearly girly exam which I had put off a couple years too, which I normally always did yearly. Needless to say both exams required more testing and weeks of waiting for results and scheduled appointments. My girly exam required an ultrasound which in the end showed that everything was just fine, thank goodness... but the waiting was stressful crazy. The breast exam revealed that I had a lump in my breast. For this being my first exam it was really scary and worrisome. Needless to say I was scheduled for another x-ray and with that it was confirmed there was something there. Then I had to schedule another appointment to have the lump aspirated and wait for those results to come back. So... may layout here is about the craziness I felt at that time and how crazy I feel at time with all the running around of children and their schedules let alone just the day in and day out things in life. I felt scattered, felt stressed and truly tried not to think of the what ifs. But my time seems to fly soo quickly these days with 4 children and sometimes I just feel like I am being pulled in all these directions. Well, I must say all this testing ended with great results and my lump was just a cyst that needed to be emptied, but can and might come back. Needless to say I will not be missing anymore yearly exams. I have for the most part always been healthy and to be looking at being sick in a very serious way sure wakes you up and truly makes you cherish all the craziness around you. OK.. enough about all that... yep, kind of a crazy layout, but I truly love it!

Millie Dog

Haven't done too many layouts of my little dog Millie. She has this under bite that always makes her look like she is smiling or some think it makes her look mean. I personally think it makes her unique. I love this picture of her and she is soo pretty her with her bright eyes, perky ears and of course her lovly smile. Eric and I have had so many conversation about if a pet smiles or not. I think they do, he thinks they don't. Well, as you can see, Millie does! If that is not a smile, I don't know what it is! LOL These papers are from the DCWV pet stack. I totally feel in love with them and they were perfect for Millie's coloring. This was a pretty simple and quick layout, but I loved how it turned out!

Note Card Box with Cards

This is the little note card box I made my mom for her birthday. She was soo cute and told me she wasn't going to give them away! I told her she had to otherwise what was the purpose of having them! LOL.... I could tell she really enjoyed them and of course that just thrilled me. She told me if she had to give them away they were to only going to extra special people... I received one as a thank you!! LOL.... gotta love your moms!

I also made one for my friend Laura from Sweden, but I failed to take a pic of them... it was just as cute.

Note Card Box with Cards

This is the little 4x4 notecard box and cards I made my girlfriend for her birthday. I found this project at split coast stamping under their resource tab. Thiers was 3x3 and I wanted mine just a little bigger. The link to the site in on the right side of my blog if you are interested in making one. I also made little envelopes to go with each card.

Assortment of Cards

Ok... Even though I have been absent from my blog for the last 3 months I have not been absent from creating things. Instead of listing all these cards individually and explaining some of them in detail I am just going to post them for viewing. Some of them are tri-fold cards and some are pop-up cards and some are just cards! LOL.... so enjoy!