Time Out: Thankful, Grateful, Blessed!

Hello there!  It's time for a new challenge over at Time Out!  Our theme for this challenge is festivals.  It immediately made me think of Thanksgiving in the US...so out came gratitude stamps. Certainly a time to celebrate all we are grateful for! 

We have an optional twist to add bling!  Would love to see you play along and see how the word inspires you!

We sure to pop on over to Time Out to check out the design team's work! And of course, you'll be entered to win a fabulous prize from Craft Tangles!

 

Time Out: Give Thanks

We are back at Time Out with a gorgeous inspiration photo. I, of course, loved the pumpkins and the chevrons, but went with a bit more of a subdued pattern versus a bold one....and yes I colored outside of the lines!  

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/233765036883459311/

Be sure to pop on over to Time Out to play along with us!  We have a fabulous guest designer, TaeEun, be sure to pop on over to her blog to check out her gorgeous work.

Thanks a Million {more Thanksgiving pics}

In yesterday's post, I mentioned I needed to quickly create two thank you cards. This is the second one that I made last week. It is based on the current sketch over at CAS(e) this Sketch.  I'm back to my go to PaperSmooches Reflections set (and I'll have more cards using it later this week).  Not completely in love with this card, but it is already written and out the door!

Below are more pictures from Thanksgiving weekend.  On Friday, we were at Pat's parents house for dinner and relaxing.  Pat's dad asked Ryan to bring his guitar to play a song to the family.  It was absolutely fabulous. Ryan sang a few songs as did Pat. Then Jonathon surprised us by wanting to sing in front of everyone too. He was awesome. Jonathon is in show choir too, but doesn't sing very often in front of us so it was great to hear him by himself.  Pat's mom had a go too!  The girls had perfected their dance routine from Thursday and were ready to perform too!  Love the smiles of everyone watching the performances.  This type of time together truly makes my heart happy.

Thankful & Blessed

It's day two of the CAS-ual Fridays sneak peeks!  Before we blink, we'll be celebrating Thanksgiving, so just in time to celebrate, Michele has designed an awesome new set called Amber Waves. It is so versatile including fabulous sentiments, individual images and background images.  

For my first card, I used three fall colors to stamp a background, stamping off with each color, tilting the background panel and adding the sentiment.  

For my second card I highlighted the smaller of the two grain images.  I embossed the image with clear embossing powder and then added distress inks to provide more definition.

 

 When you pop over to the CAS-ual Fridays blog you'll see the variety of sentiments and images in this set and I'm sure you'll fall in love!

Happy Thanksgiving

 

Happy Thanksgiving my friends!  We're hosting Pat's side of the family today...so we'll have a houseful of family - 13 children and 12 adults.  We love to entertain, so it should be a great day.  Here's hoping the weather is nice so that the kids can run around outside too!

My card features a gorgeous Craft's Meow set from the super talented Karen Baker.  I love the flourishes on the leaves.

There is so much to be thankful for today and always...be sure to tell someone why you are thankful for them!  Happy Thanksgiving...I am thankful for you my fabulous blog friends!

 

Merry Christmas

I simply adore Karen.  And when I saw the awesome sketch she did for the CAS-ual Friday Challenge I was itching to play along.  When I first made this card (using my new Verve again), I didn't have any of the gems on the card and it just didn't look right to me.  So, I blinged it up!  Wanted to make it look like it had a bit of snow.  I'm still not positive, but...it's done! 

And, as promised, a few more pictures from Thanksgiving to share.  This collage features got old fashioned play time!

From top to bottom: 

• Will & Marcel jumping from the basement steps.  We stopped this after a couple of jumps :)  NO need to have any broken bones! 
• Lots of card games...this time Apples to Apples...later Gin Rummy, War and others.
• Good old fashion boy toy playing.  Jakey was in heaven with our trucks and guns...
• Dance fever.  Never a shy bunch to show off their dance moves!

Oh how I love when the cousins are together!

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends!  I hope you are having a very blessed day filled with lots of love!  We're spending the day today with the Mangan side of the family.  It is the first time in 20 years of marriage that we are hosting Thanksgiving.  Thankfully everyone is bringing a dish to share.  Most importantly though we get to be together.  Since we won't be spending the day with my side of the family, we'll be having everyone over again on Saturday.  We'll be making chili on Saturday instead of turkey...a bit easier :)

In honor of Thanksgiving, Collin is sharing his "snowman" turkey today! He was very proud to take pictures of it for my blog. And I have a Thanksgiving card for all you inspired by this week's ColourQ challenge.  I used my Verve New Mercies set and had fun using the fall colors to ink up the leaves.  This is very similar to my card here.  Don't you love when a set is so versatile?

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  So much to be thankful for especially my family and dear blog friends!  Take care!  I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Cards for All Seasons

Hello Wednesday.. I thought it would be fun to do a cards for all seasons post...one card for each of the seasons...  First up is Spring = Easter...and some sweet little bunnies.

 Ingredients:  Basic Grey Paper; PTI Daily Design Sentiments and Daily Design; Kaiser Kraft Gems; Stampin' Up Pink Pirouette and Marina Mist Ink; Bazzill Basics Cardstock

Next, is a bright and cheery summer card.  This card was inspired by Susan's post on masking here.  Have to say...this is my favorite of the bunch.  I stamped the text background by masking the outside edges and applied a little distress ink to the edges as well. I then colored the floral stamp and stamped it off to the side.  I've entering this for the current Moxie Fab challenge to stamp with markers.

Ingredients:  PTI Text Styles and Beyond Background Basics; Hero Arts Stamps;  Stampin' Up Markers; PTI Twine 

Recently, I've been inspired by a variety of cards...in particular this card by Karen, to stamp on patterned paper versus plain cardstock.  For this card, I stamped three distress inks on the wreath and then stamped in on the card.  Love the fall colors.  The Hero Arts wreath stamp is really versatile for any season.

----Thanksgiving---Removed for Publication in November 2011  - Cards Magazine

 Ingredients:  Stamps:  Hero Arts and Verve; Range Distress Inks; Crate Paper Restoration Paper; Button and Twine:  PTI; Felt Leaves:  Hero Arts

My final card is my first Christmas card for next year and another card where I stamped on patterned paper.  Love the simplicity of this card...I'll need to make some more of these.  It's always nice to have Christmas cards that don't require a ton of postage.  The Verve stamps on this card are newer too.  They'll be getting lots of use.

Ingredients:  Paper:  Crate Paper Restoration Collection; Ink and Paper:  Stampin' Up Cherry Cobbler; Stamps:  Verve; 

Hope you've enjoyed the tour of the seasons!

Black Friday Madness!

Good morning, how many of you are heading out into Black Friday Madness today?  I'm heading out with my mom early this morning. It's our after Thanksgiving tradition.  I actually don't have too much to shop for, but definitely have a list!

I've been having crafting madness around my house!  My crafting to do list this for the holidays feels pretty long, but I love it!  I've been working on teacher gifts and have many stacks of cards ready to be monogrammed or packaged up.  Below are a few of the works in progress!

Note pads using PaperTrey Inks Just Notes stamp set and Fancy Pants paper!

Stacks of cards (over 100!) for school and religious ed teachers waiting to be monogrammed!

Tags to wrap up all these goodies for the teachers!  Very simple tags with the snow flake cut out from my Cricut and a cut button in the middle!

I hope you are all enjoying Black Friday whether you are out shopping in the madness or relaxing may you have a wonderful day!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!  I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving!  Many bloggers have been writing about what they are most thankful for this year.  I would like to do the same!  I think I could write an entire book on this topic, but at the top of my list is:

My husband, Pat.  We've been together for 17 years (23 if you count the years we dated before we got married) and I have love him more and more each year.  He gets me and I get him...does that make sense?  He sees when I am stressed and calms me down.  (Earlier this week asking me to leave him a list for the next day to help me get a few things done...)  He loves me for who I am.  We love raising our boys together. We worry and laugh together about how each of them is changing and growing into beautiful young men.  He challenges me to be a better wife, mother and friend.  I am so very blessed to have Pat as my husband.

My mum and Hank.  How wonderful that they are getting married next weekend?  To find love again after both being widowed is just fabulous.   We couldn't be happier to be welcoming Mr. Hank (as my boys call him!) into our family!

My dear sister-in-law Cindy. Every year Cindy has our families over for Thanksgiving.  She loves to entertain and we have a wonderful Thanksgiving every year because of her (and my brother's) generosity of welcoming us into their home.  We are very blessed to have family so close to share both special and every day occasions with.  Thank you to Cindy and Neal for having us over today and every Thanksgiving. As a thank you, I prepared these little note cards for Cindy.  Thanks to Geny for the card idea (I copied it almost exactly).

I could go on and on (I'm thankful for my beautiful boys, health, wonderful friends and community, a job I love...) but I'll end with a very big Happy Thanksgiving to all my blogger friends!  May you have a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving!

Ingredients:  PTI Turning a New Leaf and Signature Greetings, SU Stamp Pads, Hero Arts Gems

Pumpkin Tutorial

I was asked in a comment how to make the pumpkins from this post I did last week.  I thought I'd go ahead and share them here! 

Ingredients:

• 8 - 6 inch by one inch strips of double sided paper
• 8" of brown 1" grosgrain ribbon
• 6" of thin ribbon
• Circle with sentiment stamped on it
• Scalloped circle cut from the double sided paper
• Twine
• Small hole puncher
• Double sided tape
• Scissors

Step 1:  Cut the paper into 8 1 inch strips; 6 inches long

Step 2:  Punch holes about a 1/2" from the end of the strips on both ends.    Tie a knot at the end of the brown grosgrain ribbon.  Feed the ribbon through the paper, alternating the pattern on the paper.

Step 3:  Then feed the other end of the paper through the brown ribbon.

Step 4:  After feeding the ribbon through both ends of the paper pull the ribbon through until you have the size pumpkin you would like.

Step 5:  Tie the smaller ribbon around the brown ribbon and tie a knot.  Trim the end of the brown ribbon off.

Step 6:   Attach the circle to the scallop with double sided tape and then punch a hole through it.  Put the twine through the small hole punch.

Step 7:  Attach the twine sentiment to the brown ribbon. It's complete!

Thanksgiving Decorations

I don't have too many Thanksgiving decorations...but one of the things I love are these adorable little pumpkins.  They were so easy to make.  Cut one inch strips of paper and punch holes at the tops and bottoms.  Feed ribbon through the bottom and top of each strip and there you have it!  I made some sweet little Thanksgiving sentiments to go with them.  I love walking by them in my kitchen!