Just a Note to Say...

Oh how I love flowers, so when I see a new floral set, I'm always checking it out.  So...click add to cart on the new Reverse Confetti set and it quickly saw ink from me.  Florals and sentiment stamps are a definite go to in my stash.  Funny thing is though that I rarely have flowers at my house because I don't water them enough to keep them alive!

So...my card today is for two fabulous challenges.  ColourQ where I never play often enough despite loving the color combos and One-Layer Simplicity Challenge:  Floral Cards.  I think I'll be playing along with this one fairly often this month.

Before I go, I wanted to share two pictures of Ryan and me from yesterday. We ran the last two legs of the Flying Pig Marathon in Cincinnati. Ryan ran 7.5 miles and I ran 6.5.  The weather was absolutely perfect. I was very pleased with my finish time - averaging 9 minutes 32 seconds per mile.  Not bad for a 43 year old!

Here's our pre-race selfie at 5:45 am...

And our post race picture...our team finished in 4 hours 2 minutes.

I hope your week gets off to a fabulous start.

Congrats on Your Graduation

Happy Saturday my friends!  We have our sixth and final graduation party to go to today! Today it is our long time friends from high school who graduates.  She is going off to the University of Cincinnati to major in fashion design (where my niece goes too!).  We're thrilled for her.

So...I was out of graduation cards and decided not to go with any traditional cap and gowns for this trendy young lady!  Out came the colors for the ColourQ challenge and I was ready to roll.  Hopefully the weather will be perfect for baseball and an outdoor graduation party today!

 

A Quick Thanks!

I am very, very late in making thank you cards so that Ryan can write thank yous for his birthday gifts. We'll get them out this week, so it is less than a month since his actual birthday, but yikes!  I normally am much better about the boys writing their thank you notes!  So, yesterday I decided I needed to get them made and the color combo at ColourQ was perfect for pulling out my Craft's Meow Typically Teen sentiment and a Hero Arts sentiment.

And in other boy news at our house, Collin has decided it is time to where deodorant. He could probably wait at least another year, but he wants to do it!  So...we've had no less than 20 conversations about it in the last day or so.   Cracking me up:  "I'm going to take a shower and when I get out of the shower, I'll put on deodorant."  "I went to the pool, so when I get home I need to put on more deodorant."  "I'm going to bed.  I don't need to put on more deodorant before I go to bed."  We'll see how long he remembers to put on deodorant before we move into the conversations of, "Collin, seriously, you need to shower and put on deodorant!"

Edited to add later in the evening Sunday night: Here's a picture of the little man, who also decided yesterday that he would use hair gel after he took a shower.  Later in the evening her proclaimed, "I put on hair gel, but I forgot my deodorant."  The picture is fuzzy because he is refusing to let me take his picture these days :)!

 

Thanks...

Hello there...I'm going to keep this short and sweet today!  I'm typing this up on Sunday night and I really need to get to bed to get up early for work!  But...before the day could finish, I needed a thank you note to take with me to work tomorrow morning for a co-worker who went truly above and beyond over the weekend.  Out came the ColourQ color combination and my new Verve stamps for this quick thank you.

Hope your week gets off to a fabulous start!

Thinking of You

Yesterday, I had some time to craft while the little guys had their cousin over to play.  My craft room is in the basement and there was a serious game of swords going on right next to me!  I decide to play along with the first two Viva La Verve Challenges for January. As you can tell both of these are very CAS versions of the sketch!  The first one above is also using the ColourQ palette shown below.

This next card is for a dear friend whose mom passed away this week. I've looked at this sentiment for a long time thinking that although it is non traditional I think it is perfect for a sympathy card.  Life may be brief, but our love for our family that has passed away never ends.  My friend is certainly in my thoughts and prayers.

 

Christmas Eve {and Dare to Dream card}

I have hundreds...and hundreds of photos from Christmas Eve and Christmas Day...so I thought I'd pop in and share a few.  Here are the first few shots from my mum's house.  The after church photos (before the little boys started to change out of their "handsome" shirts).  Olivia and Jonathon are in the upper right hand corner.  They've gone back and forth over the years in height.  Right now Jonathon is a couple inches taller.  We'll see how long that lasts!

Then Christmas dinner with our annual Christmas Crackers...followed by the children anxiously awaiting present time.  Olivia loved her iPod case which was a horse - love that face!  You can see Marcel changed shirts into one of his presents...Ryan got a yukele and my mum is showing off her earrings Madeleine made...then last but not least the kids are playing their new game Headbands.

Of course if wouldn't be Christmas if you didn't model your new gifts.  Madeleine shows her new black coat (perfect for her internship in Alaska), Marcel shows off his machine gun (I wish you could hear him imitate the sounds!) and Elizabeth is showing off her new coat too.  The top right is all the cousins together!    So blessed to be surrounded by our families for the holidays.  I'll be back with pictures from Christmas day soon.

And before I go, I had lots of craft time yesterday and today...which I am so thankful for.  I simply love to create.  I have a super quick card using Verve's Borderline set and the current ColourQ palette.  This card will go to my niece, Madeleine, who will start her first internship in January for her fashion design major.  I'm so proud of her!

 

Love Comforts Like Sunshine

Hello there...it has been way too long since I've played along with a ColourQ Challenge but I'm back on track today!  I love the color combo.  I started off by making a non-Christmas card (needed a bit of a break from all the Christmas cards).  This will card be one in a set of six I'm making for a women's leadership group that I've been participating in over the last few months.  I thought it would be great to make a set of card for the six other women participating with me.  (I'll share the others over the next week or so...).   

And then...I went back to the regularly scheduled programming and the Verve snowflakes that I am very clearly love given the variety of cards I've made with them.  I quickly made about ten of this design.  I am almost there with my Christmas cards!!

Hope you have a fabulous Wednesday...I'll be traveling to and from Chicago today (flying this time instead of driving like two weeks ago)...so I'm hoping for easy travel and lots of sunshine despite the cool winter weather!

 

You Make My Heart Melt

Happy Monday my friends!  I have a four day work week this week so I'm hoping that the week zooms on by!  But of course, I have cards and pictures to share with you today.  The card above is for the current ColourQ Challenge.  I love the sweet little PaperSmooches heart.  So cute.  

And I used the colors again, but with a cream card base instead of white...

Before I sign off, I thought I'd share a few pictures from our neighborhood Halloween parade. Collin wasn't interesting in going (it was cold out!) but Marcel had fun.  

Think Mario is enjoying the cupcake?

And his little lady friends (Parker and Chloe) :)  could they be any cuter?

Happy Monday my friends!

 

Make a Wish

Oh was I busy in the craft room yesterday...I have a lot to share with you this week...starting off with two cards today!  First up is a card for our niece, Erin, who turns 12 this week!  And along with a little something tucked in the card for her, I'm sending her prayers for a recovery.  She suffered a pretty nasty concussion in gymnastics practice and has been out of school for a week already recovering.  For her card, I kept it very clean and simple and am playing along with the ColourQ Challenge along with the Paper Smooches WCMD Challenge to use pink on a card.

And the second is a baby card (and this was actually a reject from submission...but no worries there) and I'm entering this in the CASology Challenge.  I think these little Verve giraffes are absolutely adorable!

Happy Sunday!  Hope you have a fabulous day!

PS Be sure to stop by tomorrow for a week of Christmas inspiration!

Homecoming! (lots of pictures!)

Happy Monday!  We just finished up homecoming weekend.  It was a perfect fall weekend and although our football team didn't win on Friday night, the kids spirits were still high for their homecoming dance.   I have lots of pictures to share with you!   The first set of pictures are of Ryan and his date.  Don't they both look gorgeous?   I ended up button on Ryan's flowers...kind of hard to do on a button down shirt!  The bottom right picture is Ryan with his long time friend, Trevor.   

After we picked up Erin, we went over to one of the girl's houses to get pictures of all their group.  From top left:  the guys...the girls...all the kids...and then bottom right...those going with dates and the family dog!  I love that the kids weren't worried about whether or not they had a date.  Definitely a much more relaxed atmosphere than when we went to school.  

The kids all went out to dinner at Iron Chef and in between dinner and the dance there was time to kill. At first they were shopping in Best Buy and Rue 21...but I suggested that we go down to downtown Loveland to take some pictures.  We were the first group to arrive down there.  The two other guys were hitting the restroom when Ryan is posing with the ladies in the bottom left photo. :)

Then the remainder of the group showed up...a few more pictures (with pumpkins being held up in the back)...and off to the dance they went).  They had an absolutely awesome time!

And, if you've made it this far...thank you!  And here's a quick card for this week's ColourQ challenge. 

With Heartfelt Sympathy

Oh how I love getting inky!  I was out of town last week so I had a week of withdraw from my craft room :)  Yes, yes...I know I am weird, but seriously crafting is so relaxing to me.  So, I was so happy to craft and make a card for this weeks ColourQ challenge.  I've been getting my money's  worth out of these Verve flowers!  I decided to use the emboss resist technique to color these flowers using my Ranger Distress Inks.  They are off a bit from the colors in the inspiration, but I love the effect.  

Edited to add...I'm also linking this up to the Simon Says challenge to emboss!

Hope your Monday gets off to a fabulous start!

 

Heartfelt Thanks

Happy Sunday...I'm popping in with two quick cards for this week's ColourQ Challenge.  I got a new set with borders from WPlus9...so I thought I'd play along and use my new stamps. 

First up...a gradient ink pattern using stripes...the ink wasn't applying just right, but I am okay with the grainy feel.  Question for you:  do you prep your stamps?  I never do...wondering if it helps?

Second up...is my attempt at create a plaid pattern. I think I need a grid stamp to do this well or maybe a Stampamig...but I don't have one...so they are not quite lined up perfectly!

Well...I have to run now...running a bit late and need to start getting ready for the day...Ryan has a baseball double header!  Hope you a relaxing Sunday!

Thanks Ever So Much (and a shopping question)

Happy Monday!  We had such a beautiful weekend here.  The Fall weather arrived after a very hot and humid week and it was so welcomed!  Saturday night was really nice as we went over to some great friends and sat around a bonfire and caught up.  The perfect way to spend the evening.

I loved the color palette for this week's ColourQ and was happy to be able to play along with the challenge.  Thanks Arielle for keeping it open through Mondays!  At the same time, I'm using the sketch from Retro Sketches.

Now...onto my shopping question:  what is your favorite on-line store to shop?  I tend to go direct to stamp companies but am shopping less and less at Archiver's and am wondering about the on-line stores that sell paper packs, dies, etc.  Do you have a favorite?  Do they have good search capabilities?  I find some of the all in one on-line stores a bit overwhelming.  Your thoughts are welcome!

PS For those whose responded a few weeks ago about how they clean their stamps, I have moved away from the Stampin' Up cleaner and pad to baby wipes and have had significantly less inky fingers!  Thanks so much for the suggestion!

Happy Birthday Colour Q Style

 Happy Sunday...last week was card set week on the old blog...and I think this week is going to be Verve week along with Moxie Fab and another challenge or two!  I had a lot of time Friday afternoon to ink up my new Verve...and I'm loving every minute of it!  So...onto my card today. I need to replenish the birthday stash!  So...I have fun with the new Verve border set up and made up the birthday card below using the awesome ColourQ colors and am also entering it in the Moxie Fab Asymmetry Challenge.

 And here's another card using a different color combo and a similar layout.  Hope you have a fabulous Sunday!!