Oh Baby!

Pat's cousin just had a baby boy...and I have zero cards in my stash for a baby. I love this sweet little Reverse Confetti set with onesies so I decided to make a quick card to celebrate baby Ethan.  Looking forward to doing a bit of shopping to pick out a gift for him too.

The Just Us Girls challenge was he perfect color palette for a boy card!

How Sweet It Is to Be Loved by You

Zero valentines had been made until yesterday...and there are quite a few people in my house who needed one from me!  So like usual I popped over to some of my favorite challenges to look for inspiration.  First up was a card for Pat....I love this sentiment from Verve. Perfect way to convey my love for him!

Keeping in short today....but I'll be back tomorrow with another one!  Thanks Just Us Girls for the inspiration.

With Sympathy

Happy Saturday. I woke up super early this morning and have been catching up on fun things like paying bills, reconciling payments for my volunteer treasurer role for my kids show choir and perusing blogs!  And now it's time to pop in and share a card with you.  Just Us Girls has an Anything Goes challenge which is perfect to share this card I made last week. Love that gorgeous font on this Lil Inker set.  I am sending out two sympathy cards today to friends who have lost a loved one.  I also seem to need to send out so many this time of year.

On to a much lighter subject, Ryan's band performed at a local bar down by the University of Cincinnati last night. I rarely get to see him perform live since he is off at school, but it was absolutely awesome!  Here's a quick (and very poor shot of him on stage). Love him and am oh so proud.  Tonight we'll have performances by Collin and Marcel as show choir season kicks off today.  In my mind, a perfect weekend of watching my kids do what they love!

You Are Appreciated

Happy Friday Eve!  I'm working tomorrow, but will be heading out in the afternoon to West Virginia for Collin's show choir competition. It is strange to not have a high schooler in show choir, but I'm happy to have Collin in the middle school show choir. He's having a ball this year performing. He looks so short next to the girls.  

But onto my card!  I'm popping in to share a card using the fabulous new dies from Frantic Stampers February release.  Love these stitched blooms.  They will definitely get used often as I am a flower loving girl!  I made two of these to add to my thank you card stash. This card also goes perfectly with the Just Us Girls photo challenge.  Please do stop by and check out all the gorgeous dies in the new Frantic Stamper release!

 

Irish Blessing

Happy Monday my friends.   We had a relaxing and fun weekend.  Started off the weekend by sharing a couple of glasses of wine with my dear friend and neighbor on Friday night sitting on my back patio.  On Saturday, we welcomed Jonathon home from his mission trip.  It was an amazing experience for him. It was wonderful to hear what he learned and how it helped him grow in his faith as well as experiencing truly serving others.  He has an amazing heart.

Yesterday was relaxing.  Watching the Tour de France and British Open (wow!  was that an amazing display of golf!) and finishing the day with our parents coming over for dinner.  On Saturday, I also tried hot yoga with Ryan and got in some crafting.

This card is going to a friend who lost her daughter last October.  Her parents continue to be in my prayers and thoughts and I wanted them to know that we're thinking of them.  Played along with Just Us Girls color challenge using PTI and Verve stamps. I hope your week gets off to a great start!

 

Thanks

All of you know how much I love floral stamp sets. I realized I hadn't used this PTI stamp set in a while, so it was the perfect time to pull it out and create a thank you card for this week's Just Us Girls Challenge to make a thank you card.   Of course, in my go to colors of coral, orange and yellows.  Finished off the card with a Clearly Besotted sentiment.

We're back to the boys activities starting up this week. Ryan and Collin are in full swing for show choir with the first competition happening next weekend, Marcel is starting a new play:  Will Rogers Follies as Will Rogers Jr. and Jonathon is active in a computer programming club.  Love seeing all of them shine. I'll be sure to post pictures soon!  Speaking of pictures, I worked on catching up our scrapbook over new years.  I love Project Life.  Makes scrapbook page creations go so much faster.  I'd much rather be making cards :) but love having the books all caught up.

Peace, Love & Joy

Yesterday, Marcel had since first wrestling match of the season.  He did really well - one the first match and lost the second by two points.  Pat and I love watching him out there.  It takes so much confidence to be out there by yourself competing.  But...during wrestling matches there is a lot of time in between waiting for your turn.  I took the opportunity to start addressing my Christmas cards.  Then I came home and counted how many more I have to make...a lot!  So yesterday afternoon I spent time making cards.  Today I have two cards.  The first one is for the MUSE Christmas Visions challenge. 

Second up was a card for the normal MUSE challenge and Just Us Girls water coloring card. I think you can see how I was inspired by Michele's fabulous card below.  How about you?  How are those Christmas cards coming along?

Have a Bright & Merry Christmas

I have been purging a few of my Christmas stamps and trying to use those that I have before I buy some new ones. These Simon Says Stamps haven't seen much ink yet, so it was perfect to play along with the challenge over at Just Us Girls:  A One Layer Card.    The snow banks were made with my Zig markers again.  

Eat Cake!

I have been truly in just in time card making mode lately (and this one is late...but the recipient is on vacation for two weeks so I'm okay!).  I originally started to make this card with the sketch for CAS(e) this Sketch in mind...but it didn't turn out following the sketch that closely!  So instead I went for the challenge over at Just Us Girls to use balloons!  Love when things work out!  Still loving the combination of gold and black together.

Have a Bright & Merry Christmas

Day 3 in a row of the Christmas cards challenge.  Playing along with Just Us Girls sketch challenge this week.  A very CAS inky card with a small strip of patterned paper.  Not sure I love this one...so I only made one of these, but I definitely love the color combo of pink and green.

I also made this card with an extra snowflake die I had laying around. It was inspired by this gorgeous card from Ardyth (I'm lucky enough to have the real live card in my possession!)

Tomorrow I'll be off Christmas cards with new Time Out and Fusion challenges!

Celebrate

I think I have officially turned the corner and am ready for fall colored cards versus summer flowers (although don't be surprised if switch back to flowers soon!).  The inspiration photo below was simply gorgeous. When I went to get started on this card, I looked for a loopy leaf and flower die for about 15 minutes.  No luck....no clue where they are, so I went with some leaf dies that were already in sight!  Used some gold double backed paper to cut out the die cuts, a strip of left over distress inked paper, a sentiment and a few gems and we were off to the races!

A Masculine Thank You

 When I first saw the color combination over at Just Us Girls, I thought I'd play along making a Christmas card, but that all changed when it came time to put the ink to paper.  I decided to make a masculine thank you note for a co-worker who will be celebrating his 5 year anniversary with us in a few weeks. It all came together very quickly with a few PaperSmooches stamps.  Love when cards are almost all inks and stamps!

Thanks!

At the beginning of the week, I said I was working on updating my stash of thank you cards....this resulted in the perfect time to play along with the Just Us Girls Challenge. I had this touch of polka dot vellum in my extra paper stash at the end of my desk that had not been put into the scrap files just yet.  Love how it softens the pink just a bit!

Enjoy LIfe

It has been way to long since I have written to Pat's aunt and uncle. I like to pop them a note every couple of months and I think it has been about five since I sent them one...so this weekend I made a card with the intent of getting it in the mail this week.

Loved the fun inspiration at Just Us Girls this week..you could pick up all kinds of ideas including the fun little truck. I went with the plaid and the fruit inspiration!

Thinking of You

When I saw the inspiration photo over at Just Us Girls, I knew I had to play along.  I already had this photo pinned in my Pinterest board as I loved the combination of navy and pink. As always, love, love, love floral cards so I went to my newest flowers from Reverse Confetti to play along with this week's challenge.

In other news, Jonathon has successfully built his first computer. He is thrilled.  As he said, "I did a lot of research and I loved it."  The smile on his face is all I need to see.  Can't wait to see what he does next!

Two Cards to Share

Kara is having a super fun challenge to be inspired by her Friday Inspiration Files. If you don't follow Kara on Pinterest, you should!  I love her style and am constantly repinning cards that she has pinned.  Her challenge for us is to choose a card from her inspiration file.  I choose this card from Jaquie.  I loved it...didn't have any circles so I swapped out the circles for some stitched rectangles.  Thanks so much for having such a fun challenge Kara!

My second card  is almost exactly the same as my card here, but I wasn't quite ready to put away the vellum or the polka dots!  Instead of a thank you note, I made a Christmas card. It was the perfect card for the Just Us Girls word challenge of winter.  Another easy Christmas card for mailing.  Love making cards that slide easily into the envelope!

Thanks for Everything

When I saw the challenge over at Just Us Girls this weekend, I knew I needed to play along.  My polka dots don't look pink in my icture, but I promise they are!  Pink and gray is one of my all time favorite combinations so I had to play along.  The layout for my card is inspired by this card of Laura Bassen's.  Love how she added more to the sentiment with a touch of solid paper.

So what are your plans for New Year's?  We'll be staying close to home tonight with our little guys. I hope 2015 brings you much happiness.

Birthday Wishes

Happy Monday my friends. Yesterday was simply beautiful. The humidity has gone away and it was a beautiful day in the mid 70s.  Love that type of weather.  I spent most a few hours of the day getting my Project Life albums caught up.  Our family album is all done via Project Life and I keep it very simple using standard PL cards and journaling.  No extra embellishments. Thankfully it makes the scrapbook go quickly which I appreciate as I'd much rather focus on making cards.  For the boys albums, I do traditional scrapbooks with their school pictures and activities focused on just them. Their layouts are very CAS.  I am about six months behind but have everything organized so it shouldn't take too long to get them caught up!

Now...back to my card today. I'm entered this for two challenges:  CAS(e) this Sketch and Just Us Girls. Erin should take credit for this as she's been making several fall cards and the burlap was a gift from her. Thanks for the inspiration Erin!

Many Thanks

On Saturday morning before we hit the road, I was up a little earlier than I needed to be, so I quickly created this card for the current Just Us Girls Challenge.  I love ribbon, but haven't been using it as much as I'd like to lately.  So...here's a quick stamped card with a touch of fabulous May Arts Ribbon.

PS Ignore the ink blob!

Happily Ever After

Happy New Year my friends!  Since we spent our new year's celebrating a wedding, I thought it would be fun to make another wedding card.  The color inspiration from the Just Us Girls photo below was what inspired the card. I stamped the patterned image on vellum and then embossed it with gold embossing powder.  I added the sentiment and heart to the black strip.  It is a bit messy since I had used my PTI linen impression plate before stamping the sentiment.  Woops!  I'm happy with the end result.

I hope that the new year gets off to a great start for each of you and that your year is filled with a lot of love and blessings.