Random Act of Kindness...

I know, RAKs usually refer to cards in this papercrafting community I've grown to love :O) BUT, I didn't receive any cards from online friends, instead, some local friends of mine made my family a full course meal on Thursday, complete with salad and dessert, tulips and wine! It was completely random and according to my sweet friends they claim it was to "repay" us for the generosity we've shown them over the past year or so.

*You don't see the cookies and tulips in this picture because I left them in the kitchen and was rushing to take the photo so my famished husband could eat already :O) LOL

My daughter attends gymnastics with a great young lady, Shannon Murphy. Shannon is a senior in high school this year patiently awaiting responses from some of the best colleges in the nation. I mention this simply because we are going to miss her so much when she heads off after graduation :( Shannon is one of those kids you just love instantly. She has a great head on her shoulders, is brilliant and well-rounded in life. She calls me "Mom" as most of the older gymnasts do because I typically chaperone the older girls on our "away" vacation each year. They're my "kiddos" :O) Anyway, we've grown really close and I try to treat the girls like my own when we're at meets, at the gym or having a sleepover. I don't know what we did that was significant enough to warrant such a sweet, GENEROUS, random act of kindness, but it really made me feel special that someone would go out of their way to do something of this magnitude!

Shannon and her mom, Connie, prepared salad and all the fixings (packaged separately), homemade oil and vinegar dressing, spaghetti sauce, shaved parmesan cheese, garlic bread (a big loaf!), and homemade chocolate, chocolate chip cookies that are to die for!!! They also included some pretty, planted tulips (so they won't die in a few days) and a bottle of Pinot Noir. I've never had Pinot Noir so I'm excited to try it! I see it in the stores and normally the Pinot Noirs have the highest "scores" among all of the wines :]

They also included a box of thin linguine and penne pasta (our choice :O). So, all we had to do was boil some water and cook the noodles! What a wonderful surprise on Thursday! The bread was still warm when Shannon gave it to me at the gym before practice. Just thinking about how sweet they were brought a tear to my eye on my drive home.

I'll post the thank you card I made after I finish it up :O) In the meantime I hope you take a minute to think of those thoughtful, generous people that have touched your lives. I would love to hear about the random acts of kindness you have been blessed to receive!

Thank you soooo much, Shannon and Connie!!! We love you guys :O) Have a great weekend!

SFYTT - Ava

I made this card for Alicia Weiman's little girl, Ava, using Jen Del Muro's Saturday sketch (SFYTT). Alicia's son, Ethan is actually the one I originally set out to make a card for (since he's the one who's sick), then I decided the whole family needed a card. I made Alicia and her husband's card yesterday, and I definitely couldn't leave sweet little Ava out! Especially knowing that a LOT of people are sending cards to Ethan alone. I don't want Ava to wonder where her cards are :O) So, this one is for her. I know the main image is pretty simple, but I figured a little girl would be more interested in the texture and colors anyway :O)

Overall, I'm pleased with the girly look of the card, and I really hope she gets excited when the mailman arrives with a card for her, mom and dad, and Ethan :O) Next up is my card for Ethan...then off to the post office they go!

More details and supplies are listed in my SCS gallery.

Hope you had a wonderful weekend!

TLC212 - Family

I made this card for Alicia Weiman and her husband. They seem to have such an amazing family! Based on what I've read, their family is always around helping out and offering their support. Not to mention Alicia and her husband. It's obvious that they are great parents in the way they nurture their children and live each day to the fullest. Ethan and Ava are lucky children to have such wonderful parents! I really feel like this sentiment suits them in so many ways.

I made the ribbon frame using this week's Technique Lover's Challenge on SCS (TLC212). It was harder than it looked, but in the end, I really like how it turned out. I LOVE brown, I LOVE contrast, and I LOVE clean and simple...so this card is definitely a true example of my style (though I feel like I'm still figuring out what my "style" is :O) I used the Papertrey Ink Quilter's Sampler for this card. In the past I had a hard time creating something I really liked with this set. For some reason, it just worked out this time...thankfully!

I'm still finishing up the cards I'm making for Ethan and Ava...I have something special planned for them :O) Hopefully I can finish everything I want to do before we go to Tia's state gymnastics meet next weekend! Oh, and please keep Tia in your thoughts and prayers. She rolled her ankle at practice today and we're worried she might not be 100% for her state meet. If she does well at the state meet, she could qualify to go to the Regional meet...which is a big deal in the gymnastics world! She was pretty upset when I picked her up today...poor kid. With any luck, it's nothing serious and the swelling will go down before practice on Monday :| My fingers are crossed!

Supplies are listed in my SCS gallery. Hope you're enjoying your weekend!

Black and White Birthday

I made this card for the SCS sketch challenge (SC219). No particular reason other than the sketch and to increase my small stack of birthday cards on hand :O) I've also been wanting to use my MK black and white DP so I put it to use with this card. Supplies are listed in my SCS Gallery.

Hope you had a nice, relaxing weekend. I sure did. I went to Michaels last night and found the cutest stamp set to use on the card I'm making for Ethan Weiman. It's not finished yet, but I'll be sure to share as soon as it is! Please keep him and his family in your prayers.

Have a great week!

Prayer Request...

For those of you who follow my blog you may recall one of my posts from last November about a benefit for Ethan Weiman. I'm sad to say that little Ethan's cancer has progressed recently, and his family is uncertain about what direction God will send him in this battle. In short, please, PLEASE, pray for Ethan and his family. Please ask your friends, church groups, family - everyone, to also pray.

I'm heartbroken thinking of what this little guy has been through and the battle he continues to fight. The picture above is Ethan with his sister, Ava. Aren't they sweet?

If you would like to make a card (or something fun) to send his way, please leave me a message or send me an email. I'll happily share their address to keep the well-wishes rolling in.

If you would like to read updates about Ethan and his family, please stop by his mother, Alicia's blog or the Caring Bridge site they established for him (look for the journal half way down the page). If you are interested in helping defray the costs the family continues to incur as a result of long and short trips back and forth to the hospital (think food, gas, lodging...) please go to this page of the Caring Bridge site.

In Ethan's parents words, they "would appreciate prayers for Ethan's complete healing and for Ethan to not have to endure any pain."

May God bless Ethan and his loving family.

Proud Mom :O)

Check out Tia's beam routine from her meet yesterday! She got an amazing 9.7! Her highest score ever on any event. I'm so proud :O)

Serene Birthday - Two Challenges

I finally finished a card using the Taylored Expressions Cupcake Challenge sketch (TECC57) from last Friday and the Color Throwdown challenge (CTD31) from last Wednesday! Talk about a day late and a dollar short :O) Or two...or three! The card was for my co-worker's birthday on Wednesday. I didn't have a chance to post it on my blog until now though :(

All of the details about how I created it and the supplies I used are listed in my SCS gallery. Oh, and I'm proud to say, this is a Stampin' Up only card! Not sure if I'll post this weekend or not. Tia has a meet tomorrow and Carl (DH) gets back from Hawaii on Wednesday...so, I expect I'll be cleaning on Sunday :O) LOL I'm sure I'll squeeze in some stamping time though. Especially considering the one thing I really need to clean is my craft room!

Hope you have a great weekend!

Thank you, Anja!

I wanted to post a quick thank you to my dear friend, Anja :O) She presented me with another award that I believe she created herself! I LOVE the look of it! She's very talented and has an amazing ability with different techniques. Please stop by her blog and check out her wonderful creations! She's amazing :O)

Have a great week! Tia and I both have a snow day today! Yippee!!! How often does that happen? Especially in conjunction with a weekend :]

Sleepover...and a blog update

My husband has been in Hawaii for about a week and a half and won't be home for another week and a half! Sooooo, Tia and I are having a sleepover with a couple of girls from gym and one of the coaches :O) I know, it sounds funny, but being old school, I asked one of the gymnasts if she had ever seen the movie, "American Anthem". She never heard of it! OMG...I LOVE that movie! LOL. I explained to her that it was the original gymnastics movie (before "Stick It") with Mitch Gaylord. Needless to say, she never heard of Mitch Gaylord either! Of course she hasn't...that would make me feel YOUNG...not like an old hag :O)

So, we set a "date" for the sleepover to watch the VHS movie, American Anthem. I hope I can figure out how to hook up the VCR to the new TV :| LOL...my husband will kill me if I mess up his TV :O)

Oh, and a quick blog update if you didn't notice. I found that I have a lot of family and friends who swing by my blog but don't get into a habit of posting comments. Sooooo, I added a chatbox to my left side bar. Please feel free to leave me a message! I'll respond directly in the chatbox so that you can refer to it later.

Okay, I'm off to clean house, bathe the puppies, and wash my car. Hopefully before I pick up my daughter from practice :O) Now that's FUNNY! LOL Knowing me, I'll walk by the craft room and end up making a card instead!

Wish me luck!

Birthday Posies

I guess I'm on a birthday card kick this weekend :O) I fell in LOVE with the card that Debbie Olson had published in the recent Paper Crafts' Card Creations Vol 2 magazine (page 57). I love the background paper she created using Lisa Johnson's PTI Flower Garden stamp set. So, I CASEd the handmade DP and created a birthday card. I'm quickly finding that I can never have too many birthday cards on hand!

I stamped the flowers with Pink Pirouette, and stamped both the leaves and the swirl with Mellow Moss. The sentiment is stamped in Riding Hood Red. I added vellum over the DP to soften the look, scalloped and folded over the Mellow Moss CS, added some satin ribbon (from Michaels) and adhered to the base Pink Pirouette CS.

Supplies are listed in my SCS gallery. Hope you had a wonderful weekend :O)

Happy Birthday - OCCC

This morning I had a ton of creative ideas, but not a lot of time! Tia had her high school state gymnastics competition today so I only had a couple of hours to spare. We just got home an hour ago...Tia did a wonderful job at the meet! I'm so proud of her :O)

I decided to play along with Our Creative Corner Challenge (OCCC) for the first time. The challenge was to use a tag on our card. This is what I came up with. I needed a masculine birthday card so I finally cracked open the Lovely As A Tree set that I ordered over a month ago :O) I used the misting with markers technique and filled in the trunk of the tree with my Creamy Caramel marker. I cut the main image using my Nestabilities, covered the debossed edges with post its and sponged the background. For the tag, I used my large and small oval punches. I punched an additional large oval using Kraft cardstock to cover the reverse side of my DSP (that doesn't match :O).

This is a Stampin' Up! only card. Supplies are listed in my SCS gallery. Hope you have a great weekend!

Best Wishes...MOJO74

I created this card for a close friend who is moving up in her career to bigger and better things :O) The layout is from the MOJO74 sketch.

I used the Wet Watercolor Crayon technique for the main image. Basically, I colored the stamp with Stampin' Up watercolor crayons and added shading on the right edges using a darker hue. I spritzed the stamp with my stamp cleaner and pressed it to the paper. Pretty easy when all was said and done...it was really a matter of putting the shading in the right place. I probably could have added a little more shading in a few spots, but overall I like the end result :O) Supplies are listed in my SCS gallery. Everything is from Stampin' Up! except the butterfly with pearl rhinestones, the ribbon and the lace border punch.

Hope you had a great week! All the best for an even better weekend!!

Cherry Blossoms

I made this card for my co-worker who had a birthday this week. I sort of used the colors from the Color Throwdown challenge last week (CTD28), but added Kraft (and used variations in the shades of color they chose). It wasn't until I uploaded it in my gallery that I realized it's basically the same color palette as the card a made a couple of weeks ago (four posts ago on my blog :O). Oops! Well, we're off to Florida for a week on Friday so I don't know when I will post again (not that I have been posting frequently or anything :O). I hope you're having a great week and finding lots of time to express your creativity!

Supplies are listed in my SCS Gallery.

Blog Update

I wanted to post a quick message about the changes on my blog. For those of you who follow my blog - THANK YOU :O) I'm humbled that you think my posts and/or creations are interesting.

You may have noticed some obvious...and some less obvious changes on my blog recently. The more obvious changes included removing a lot of sidebar information from the main page of my blog. Some of this information was simply relocated, and some was removed altogether. My blogroll for instance. It used to be on my right sidebar. The list was pretty long and I kept wanting to add blogs, but I was hesitant because I wanted to keep my blog semi-clean and uncluttered. So, I moved it to the navigation tab labeled "Inspiration" under my blog header. This seemed like the perfect option to retain all of my favorite blogs without continuously expanding one of the sidebars.

My labels are now in a dropdown box to keep that list clean. This is actually what I wanted to do with my blogroll, but I haven't taken the time to figure that out yet. It took a while to move all of the links to the navigation tab, believe it or not! LOL

I also moved my About section, my blog Awards, favorite Challenges and Shopping links to the navigation tabs under the header. This REALLY helped to de-clutter my sidebars! The Stampin' Up! link simply takes you to the Stampin' Up! site right now, but this too will be changing. My plan is to make it a useful "business" page with current information about incentives, hostess clubs, and workshops.

I'm gettting there...slowly but surely...thanks to the amazingly talented Amanda at Blogger Buster. She's very good at simplifying her instructions for the basic user.

I really like how my blog looks now...and expect I will continue changing it to better suit my personal style :O) Hope you like the updates!

Birthday Anchor

So, I needed another birthday card for a friend at work. It took me over a week to make it, but I finally finished it up last night :O) I kept messing up the main image, and thinking about how gorgeous Donna Baker's design was. The template is one of Taylor Van Bruggen's sketches (TECC52DB) from her anniversary challenge last week. I didn't even come close to meeting the Thursday deadline, but at least I finished! LOL

I have details about how I masked the boat, cloud and water on the post in my SCS gallery. Supplies are also listed there.

Hope your Monday went well! I still felt icky most of the day, but...I hesitantly say...I've felt a little better over the past two hours (other than this increasing pressure in my ear). So, hopefully that's a good sign and I'll be back to normal in no time. Thanks for your well-wishes!

Oh, and I promise to edit my previous post or create a new tutorial soon with instructions on how I made the woven heart :O) I'm so glad you are actually interested! LOL

Have a great week!