Merry Christmas

Two Christmas cards in one week...need to get on a  roll :)!  The current challenge over at One Layer Simplicity is Christmas in July...time to make some one layer Christmas cards!  I'll be honest and say my current Christmas stamps aren't inspiring me a ton, so I'm looking forward to some new ones coming out soon and doing a touch of shopping. I don't like to walk into Hobby Lobby or Target and see Christmas decorations, but I don't mind buying Christmas stamps in the summer.  How about you?  How are those Christmas cards coming along?!

Quick Crafting

Wednesday night I came home from work and I needed to get a couple of cards out the door. The first one was this top one:  You are Awesome!  I'm playing along with the One Layer Simplicity Challenge where the challenge is to show your gratitude. This card is going to an awesome co-worker who is leaving our company for a new opportunity. I certainly wanted to thank him for the fantastic work he has done for our team.

While I had my Winnie & Walter stamps out, I decided to make another quick card. This time for the Merry Monday Christmas Challenge.  Love gold embossing on red.

I hope you have a fabulous Friday. I'm working, but am attending a meeting where I'll get to catch up with one of my college roommates. Looking forward to it!

Happy Birthday Marcel!

 Popping in quickly before our family comes over to wish Marcel the happiest of birthdays.  No more single digits in our house!  He's celebrating the big 10 today!  Wish I could share with you how much this little guy (who really isn't that little but will always be my baby) lights up our life.  He always has a smile on his face, is hilarious (and doesn't quite realize it yet) and has a very kind loving soul. I kept his card simple....the smiley faces are in his favorite color.

Okay...off to get ready for our family coming over.

PS The card is being entered over at the One Layer Simplicity Challenge and Happy World Card Making Day!

One Layer Thanks

This week I was in need of several thank you cards...so I quickly made some one layer cards to give out as thank yous for a work event.  First up was a floral card using the theme from this month's One Layer Simplicity Challenge:  What's Your Number?  Love those fonts on the Ellen Hutson set.

Last but not least was another card for a co-worker. Thought these fall colors would be great for a few guys in the group that I needed to thank!

I have a senior...

{Ryan - 18 - from our vacation}

A new school year is upon us and it is hard to believe that it is Ryan's senior year. Time is flying by.  I find myself with thoughts of next summer when we'll be backing up to take him off to college.  A wide arrange of emotions go through my head, excitement, sadness, pride, nerves and most of all love.  I'm proud of the young man he is and will be.  Excited for what the future holds for him.  Encouraging him to cherish today as he looks forward to tomorrow.  So...to send him off to the start of his senior year (this week he starts his final year of show choir and is a senior leader for the freshman orientation), I wanted to make a card for him; encouraging him to be plan ahead, enjoy each day, cherish it, work hard and never forget the value of family.  Most of all...a message that will always be the same no matter what stage of life:  my love for him. Be you...dream big...my beautiful boy.

So here's his card; being entered over in the One Layer Simplicity Challenge.

{Ryan and I from our vacation...love his smile}

Thanks For Everything

Hello there...I've been pretty quiet around here. We've had a lot of busy weekends and continue to have a lot more coming up so I apologize now for the lack of commenting and the potential lack of posts.  We're going on our first college visit this weekend. Kind of strange to think in 18 months we'll be packing Ryan up for college. So, we're enjoying all of the high school activities he is up to right now (show choir and the play).

I had a bit of time to create tonight so I made a card for the current One Layer Simplicity Challenge where the challenge is to use blending on your card. This card is absolutely inspired by Ardyth as she is the master of blending on your card.  This would make a great guy thank you card.  Definitely need a few of those in the stash!

Hope you are all staying warm too...it's only 8:30 and the boys have already been called school for tomorrow.  Here's hoping the roads are clear for the morning commute!

Happy Graduation

 I love one layer card challenges and the current One Layer Simplicity Challenge is no exception.  On Friday night, I was getting ready for bed and the idea of stamping arrows in opposite directions popped into my head.  On Saturday morning I got up and my idea quickly translated to paper. I added another opposite (thanks Ardyth) by using a touch of blue which is the opposite on the color wheel of the orange.

I'll be needing a lot of graduation cards over the next year or so as my oldest graduates 18 months from now...that's crazy to think about!

How about you?  Do you like one layer cards are do you find them intimidating?

Masculine Thank You

Are you ever in need of masculine thank yous?  I quite often need them for co-workers at work.  I was looking at the color combinations for the current One Layer Simplicity Challenge and decided to use the berry inspiration/colors to make my card today.  I used my new Verve Peaceful Medallions set and took the cue from this card to stamp the medallion and then used the back of a different stamp to create a soft outline to the medallion.  This would be a great set to make it in a variety of color combinations (I'm thinking an all season thank you card set.)

The boys are all back to school tomorrow morning...school supplies have been purchased and we'll be getting back into a much early bed and wake up times!

Life is Good & You are the Best

We've made it to the middle of the week.  My three youngest are going to summer religious education so we're having earlier nights as they start at 8:15 each morning. We've been having really lazy summer days so the early wake up calls haven't been great :).  

I'm popping in with two quick cards. The first is for the current One Layer Simplicity Challenge:  be inspired by your flag. A clean, crisp, red, white and blue inspired cards.  And the second card is a Fusion reminder card.  This was my first card I made for our challenge.  I don't love the colors so made another one, but this will serve as your reminder to come play along with us!  Like me, I hope you are getting lots of crafty time these days!

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.

A New York Minute

Lately, I'm not doing a great job remembering when challenges expire, etc so I have been keeping a note pad right next to our home laptop where I typically go through Feedly each morning.  I'm chotting down challenge themes and the due dates so that when I do have crafty time (typically on the weekens) I know which ones are still current.  So...when I saw the current One Layer Simplicity Challeng:   Road Trip, I knew immediately that I wanted to pull out this little taxi cab from my PTI set.  Perfect easy card for this fun one layer challenge.  What about you, have any organization tips for keeping track of challenges where you want to play along? And...I'm curious, when do you get most of your crafting done? Mornings, evenings, weekends?

Happy Dancing for You {and weekend recap}

 

Happy Wednesday my friends.  The week is flying by...I called Pat last night on my way home thinking it was already Wednesday so I'm feeling a day ahead a a day behind at the same time.  This card above feels messy to me. I like it better in person than in the photo above, but I was trying to work with water!  I inked up my stamped and then sprayed them with water before stamping so that is why the inking is uneven. The purple stamps I stamped off several times and splattered them a bit.  Not sure what I think but I'm posting anyway.  This card and the card I'm posting tomorrow will go to my two oldest nieces. They both have awesome internships for the summer. Elizabeth will be interning at Georgia Pacific (engineering) this summer and Madeleine will be interning with The Limited companies (fashion design). They are both extremely talented and I'm so proud of them.  I'm entering this card in the One Layer Simplicity Challenge.



I also wanted to share pictures from our weekend.  We always have a ball when Andrew and Sara.  Unfortunately Marcel is not in any of the pictures as he had the stomach flu on Friday night. We kept him home during the day on Saturday so that he didn't pass it on to anyone.  Here are a few snapshots from the weekend.  Top left are Collin and Erin. Collin had a crush on Erin. It was adorable. They had a ball chatting with each other and dancing/singing their hearts out at the show choir competition.  Collin is pretty shy so he normally won't sing or dance in front of anyone.  He proclaimed on the car ride home, "I danced and sang out loud.  I never do that.  What the heck is going on?  Maybe I could go on stage and be in show choir, but that would be a lot of people to do it in front off."  So sweet and funny at the same time.  After the competition (bottom left), Pat and Andrew got our guitars out and were having a little jam session. It's the first time they've played together then we've been visiting. I have a feeling next time we get together, they will be down in the basement playing a lot!  Of course, Sara and I had a fabulous time catching up.

 

Ryan's team won grand champions for the competition. On the right, they are waiting for the daytime awards.  On the left, they are on stage celebrating their win on stage.  You can see Ryan's excited in the front middle. I think he might be singing! 

 

Jonathon's group did awesome too taking thrid at the competition. On right right, Jonathon came buy at night to see everyone. Love his smile...says it all.  Despite being up at 5 am to compete at 8:25 he was still smiles at 10:30 at night. And our niece, Kate, came to cheer on the boys too!  All and all a great weekend!

With Heartfelt Sympathy

Hello there.  I hope you had a fabulous weekend.  Ours was busy with the start of the baseball season and show choir rehearsals.  I also spent the afternoon at Hospice with my mum visiting one of her very best friend's daughter.  Betty's (my mum's friend for over 49 years) daughter, Jennifer, suffered a stroke last weekend.  Unfortunately, Jennifer is not going to recover.  It is the wrong life order to watch your child die.  At the same time, visiting with Betty, Jennifer, and Betty's son and daughter-in-law was very comforting.  There is something about a long time caring friend that knows so much about you and loves you so much that provides comfort.  My mum and Betty are very blessed to have one another.  Despite being a hard day, it was a very good day.  My wish is that Jennifer finds peace in heaven soon.

The card above is for one of my mum's friends who lost her brother to cancer this week.  She loves birds, so I wanted to make a clean sympathy card featuring a bird.  I'm entering this over at the One Layer Simplicity Challenge.

A One Layer Kind of Day

Hello friends...it's Friday...first full week at work in a long time and it's time to celebrate that it is Friday! I'm back with two cards for the One Layer Simplicity Challenge.  I love the current challenge...stock up.  I've made two cards for the challenge.  The first is a birthday card inspired by this awesome card from Maureen Merritt. I love Maureen's style.

The second is a card for Pat's cousin, Ryan, who has decided to enter the priesthood. He is an amazing young man. We're so pleased for him.

 I hope you had a great start to your weekend!

Thanks! {two more Fusion cards}

Hi there, on Sunday, I had a little inky time and had to play along for a second time again with the Fusion Challenge. I loved the color combo on the photo part of the challenge.   My second try was the card above.

I wasn't thrilled with it, so I tried again with the card below. I had fun doing a touch of masking for these cards.  And this also is an entry for the One Layer Wednesday Challenge to use three of something...three flowers...three colors...three sets of leaves.  I love one layer cards!

What do you think?  Do you have a favorite?

Blogger Questions

Happy Thursday.  I'm popping in to share a card for this week's One-layer Wednesday Challenge.  It's been way too long since I've played along. The challenge is to create a mini-masterpeice.  It has to fit in a 2 x 2 space.  How fun is that?  I punched out a 2" circle as my mask and stamped on the inside with a touch of inking on the outside.  Yes...I am using these WPlus9 stamps a ton!  Love when I use a set a lot!

And now I have a random questios for you.  Is anyone having problems with following blogs and the blog isn't showing in your list of followed blogs or in your Google Reader?  I wouldn't have realized this was a problem, but thankfully Kerry sent me a really sweet note that prompted me to head on over to her blog.   I readded her blog to blogger and can now see it, but I'm not sure why I couldn't before when I could see myself in her follower list.  Any ideas out there? :)

With Sympathy

This afternoon I'll be heading to a visitation for a co-worker's father. Her dad passed away very quickly from lung cancer. My heart breaks for her as she lost her mom not long ago to the same type of cancer. I did not have any sympathy cards in my stash and wanted to make something with soothing neutral colors for her. I used the PTI anniversary set along with my new WPlus9 set. She and her sisters are certainly in my thoughts and prayers. This card is for this week's One Layer Wednesday to use three or more stamps on a one layer card.

On a lighter note, we have a quiet weekend ahead and I'm looking forward to that! Ryan has volunteer work for confirmation and the little guys have Pinewood Derby raises. Hears to sleeping in at least one day this weekend! Hope you have a fun, restful weekend too!

Thinking of You Today & Always

Good morning and happy Friday to everyone!  I'm popping in with a super CAS card for you today.  It's been ages since I've played along with Susan's One Layer Wednesday.  Her challenge for us this week is to use white and gray with a pop of color.  My pop of color is a deep purple although it looks black on my screen as I type this.  

I'm off today.  The morning will be errands:  oil change and dentist and then the fun begins.  A pedicure with my mum.  A lunch date with Marcel after school and then off on our girl's weekend with several other moms to watch our children compete in their first official show choir competition!  I can't wait!  

Hope you have some fun weekend plans...even if it is just relaxing around the house...sometimes those are the best ones!

Thanks

Good morning!  Quick share this morning before we get out in the sunshine for a couple of baseball games.  My card today is for the first challenge over at CAS-ual Fridays.  Michele has done a fabulous job launching the new challenge site and the design team consists of so many of my favorite bloggers.  I'm looking forward to playing along as much as possible.

My card today made me happy.  It was one of those times when I had an idea in my head and it actually translated to the card!  I could see using this design with different colors for quick and easy teacher card sets.

I'm also entering this for this week's One-Layer Wednesday Challenge to use circles.  Pop on over to Susan's blog too, she always offers great design tips!

Hope you have a beautiful Mother's Day Weekend!

Ingredients:  Paper Company Cardstock; Stampin' Up Cherry Cobbler and Basic Black Ink; Kaiser Kraft Gems; PTI Text Backgrounds and Beautiful Blossoms; Hero Arts Thanks Sentiment

My Favorite Ten Minutes (and a couple cards)

On Sunday, I was walking Collin over to a friend's house in the back of our neighborhood.  I normally would have driven him (yes...very lazy...but I had locked my keys in my car and Pat wasn't home with his keys to unlock it.)  Thankfully, I didn't need to go anywhere important. When we were walking over, I put my hand out for Collin to hold my hand as we walked.  We don't hold hands much anymore.  He's seven (sure to tell you that he's seven and a half..) and nine times out of ten, he is running after his older brother or friends and not interested in holding mommy's hand.  It was the best ten minutes of my weekend...wishing I could freeze time for a bit...and keep holding my sweet little Collin's hand.

Onto a couple cards...this week's One Layer Wednesday Challenge was to make a card using music.  I've had these Jenni Bowlin' Rub Ons for a really long time...so I decided to cut them up into three pieces.  I was thrilled with how easy they went on...and then I added my stamp...woops...little crooked! 

Ingredients:  Paper Company Water Color Paper; Jenni Bowlin' Rub Ons; PTI Daily Design Sentiments; SU Cherry Cobbler Ink

I then decided to make another Just A Note card.  My mum's friend who is purchasing a set of cards from me is Irish...and loves shamrocks.  I'll put this note in her set of cards to thank her!

Ingredients:  Kitchen Sink Company Shamrock Stamps; SU Old Olive and Basic Black Ink; SU Whisper White Paper; PTI Daily Design Sentiments