Busy, busy, busy!

Sorry I have not posted in a little while it has been busy around here. I have gotten a cleaning bug and have cleaned out a closet or two plus the kids toys box has gotten a little cleaning too. Then thrown in there I have been thinking since the daycare is going to be closing at the end of the summer that maybe it would be a good idea to look into some career choices. So my first one was to look into the travel agency business since I did do that before the kids came. And not sure how many of you have started any crafts for Easter but that is another thing that is keeping me busy. Lots of paper flying around this house. Then to top it off our car is in desperate need to be traded so we can have a little bit of a more reliable car. Just seems that my idea of what we need and would be comfortable in is a little different from what my husband and our bank accounts feel we can afford and enjoy. (LOL) This past weekend we did go and have a look at a few different models. The girls had a field day getting in and out of a few of them. Here is Rosie pretending to drive in a Kia Rondo, which may I add is my choice. Chris' choice is the Hyundai Elantra Touring. But I have talked him into next weekend test driving the Rondo. Should be fun we will leave the girls with my mother in law and bring my father in law with us for his opinion.

 
Now that I have rambled on about non crafty stuff. I want to show off the wreath I made for my sister. I believe she is going to hang it on her front door for Easter or Springtime. I have really been enjoying making these. Using my cricut and the art philosophy cartridge from Close To My Heart has made it a breeze. I can be rolling the flowers up as the next page of them is cutting. It doesn't take much time to roll the flowers but the glueing takes a little more time. She wanted different shades of blue. I had a hard time finding ones that matched up the way I had it visioned but I think that this one turned out pretty darn good in the end. I have listened to a friend and purchased some krylon sealer for them since they will be outdoors. First time I have used it so hopefully I have gotten it all over the wreath and it will be protected. I do have a few friends that are requesting ones in certain colours, and I even have a facebook friend saying I could sell online. Not sure I am confident enough to do that but nice that someone thinks so. Thanks for checking in on me and hope to see you back here real soon with another crafty project.
Thanks.

Easter Crafts

So, there was a video on youtube that I watched that was demonstrating the rolled flowers you can make from the Art Philosophy cartridge that Close to My Heart sells. And she showed a lovely wreath she made using these rolled flowers. Well you know me I figured how hard could that be. So last weekend I went and picked up some of the empty wreaths and some pastel paper 12x12 paper. Then started to cut out the flowers on my cricut. I think the longest part of the process, which this youtuber didn't mention was the inking of the flowers and waiting for the glue to dry. Now of course I could have used hot glue to make the flowers but didn't think they needed to be that secure. Rosie was looking for stuff to do and always likes to help me when I am up to my elbows in a  large crafting project, so I let her ink the edges of the flowers. Then as she was done them I  rolled and glued them. We both ended up with coloured fingers, lol. Once they were dry I was able to hot glue them to the wreath ring. Now I am not very good at doing the random placement of things, so I did find this a little out of my comfort zone cause it did worry me to make sure I didn't have too many clumps of the same flower touching. But as you can see below I didn't do too badly of a job to keep them spread out. I hope you enjoyed your weekend and I really appreciate you stopping by and checking in on me. Presently I am making a wreath for my sister and will post how that one turns out tooo.
Thanks,
Amy

Crafty Night

Well it is great when the crafty mood takes you over and you just have to rush into your craftroom and create something wonderful. I have not been inspired to make any Easter cards yet, but was searching online for some and came across a really nice St Patty's Day card. I knew I had the stamp set from CTMH, but didn't have the embossing folder they used. It inspired so much that Monday evening I ran, not walked to my craft room and made my own version of it.  Funny cause I knew if my husband posted them on the next morning that they would reach the recipients in time for St Patty's Day on Saturday. I hope you enjoy and thanks for looking.

P.S. I apologize for the bad lighting, I was using my cell phone camera and was in our family room!

Looky what I did this weekend!

I know the weekend is not over yet, but I just didn't want to wait to show off these few cards I had made. Plus I have not posted for awhile do to a cold that I have been fighting. Really do think that getting into my crafting room has helped a little with this cold with the exception that I did get on a roll and went to bed later than I should have. So each of these cards I was using my copics for the coloring, the paper is a combination of Michaels Recollections and Stampin Up. I did use some of my spellbinders to cut the shapes as well as the sixxiz dies I had. Two of the cards have a technique called recessed images that I learned how to do on the Stamp Tv youtube site. The other card is just a typical image cut with an oval die and a scalloped die to mat. The little girl in purple I have also blinged up with some liquid pearls around the scallop and the two little friends in the flowers I did also bling up with my stickles for the center of the flowers in case you can't tell from the picture. I hope you enjoy looking as much as I enjoyed creating. Guess my next project will have to be for Easter. Have a good rest of the weekend and thanks for checking in on me.

Another Crafy Post

Well I have to say it is just down right crappy out there today!! The snow is falling not even pretty like, and the winding is whipping around the house. It makes me happy that we don't really have to go out much today, except to pick up a kindergartener at the bus stop. Which means as long as no unexpected disasters happen today I will be able to get into my craft room. Now that I have said that I have probably jinxed it but I hope not. Anyways I do have another two page layout that I have completed in the last couple of days that I wanted to show. Again this from a few years ago but I am not a chronological scrapbooker, more a grab the time and motivation as it comes. This was Thanksgiving at my sisters a few years ago. Of course I was there but was holding the camera but I am not sure why I don't have one of my Dad there or even of us around the table. But I have to say I am pleased with the way it came out. I believe the pattern paper is from a Recollections stack of fall papers, and some recollections cardstock. The journaling is on a stampin up top note die. The borders and images were all from the Recollections stack as well. Hope you enjoy and thanks for checking in.
Thanks

Our Little Star

Actually she would be very upset to hear me calling her our little star since she really isn't little anymore at almost 11 years old. Wow how fast it goes. Katie has never been much of a sports fan, we could not get her interested in playing soccer or softball or even really a proper game of basketball. But as we said to her this fall she needed to do some sort of an extra-curricular activity and so she choose volleyball. So since Oct we have been getting up Saturday mornings or her to go and learn and play volleyball with a group of girls her age. Well one day she came home and said about trying out for the school team. I was very pleased because I enjoyed volleyball when I was younger too. Now I was like her not much of a sports person but volleyball was one of my favorites when I had to do it in gym. Anyways to make a short story long Katie's grade 4/5 split team won silver last week. She was disappointed that they had not won gold but is more motivated to try out again next year and do better. The cutest part is that she wears her medal around the house quite often. It is nice to see her so proud of herself and have a little more self confidence too. Lucky enough for us Chris was able to take some time off of work to see her play a little so this week I will print off the pictures and scrapbook that into an album too. Not sure if it is going in the 2012 album or if it will just go in her school album. All I know for sure is that I am happy I picked up some volleyball paper when I was at Hobby Lobby, lol, must have known they were going to win, LOL. Hope everyone is having a good day and here is a picture of our star! We love her!
Thanks for checking in.

Is it just me or did that weekend go by really quickly. I for sure could have done with a few more hours sleep this morning. Well no use keep going over that since nothing we can do just thank goodness it is a short week this week. Well at least for me, no kids on Friday. Now hope everyone had a good weekend. I found ours was busy and we seemed not to be just sitting around like we have in past weekends. So we had our usual volleyball ( oh which reminds me I have a side story on that), and hip hop dance with Rosie too. And then on Sunday I went to weight watchers and yippee I am down 3lbs. I was expecting a loss but nothing as good as that. So feeling a little more motivated this week to get to the gym and maybe use my exercise bike during the day while the kids have quiet time. Then Chris took us out for brunch at Dennys. I know not the healthiest brunch we could have had but I did make sure to substitute my whole eggs for egg whites so that wasn't too bad. After that I am pleased to say I got some crafting done before we went for an hour skate with the girls. I am pleased to say that I was able to get 2 two page layouts complete. And both were events that took place back in 2010. So I am happy to say that there are two less layouts for me to complete. One of the things I did last week while tidying up in my craft room was to use my tag maker and put dates on my scrapbooks. So now once I have done a layout I can just go to the shelf and pull out the album that the layout belongs in. Looking at the shelf I do need to grab another album or two from Michaels since I only have from 2005 till 2010 done. Since I am not a chronological scrapbooker  and really just scrapbook in phases it helps to have the albums up to date so that no matter what event and when I am working on at least it has an album to go in. So I have pictures of both these events and be warned they are not typical colours for the events that I am scrapping but... I do have girls and so they colours they do wear on our outing don't always coordinate with the typical colours of the event, if that makes any sense. The layouts were taken from the close to my heart books for layouts, and the papers are random patterned paper from my stash as well as recollections from Michaels. I also used stickles in a lot of the layouts, and my ATG gun. I hope you enjoy and thanks for checking in. I appreciate it!
Thanks