Really quick...

Just a quick post! We went to visit Tomio's folks this weekend. He always takes them out to dinner for each of their birthdays, and his dad's birthday was this month. They never say thank you or anything, but I think they really are glad that he remembers each year. So that's what we did lol....but I do have a card to share :)

I really love stitching on cards. I think it add so much. But I don't do it very often- mostly because my machine is upstairs and faraway from my crafting space. And because sometimes my machine seems to have issues with sewing on paper... But, I decided to go ahead and try it some more, especially after seeing some especially beautiful cards with stitching lately.(Like at here. Her cards are so PRETTY) So, that is what inspired me to try some stitching on this card. It was really simple to do and I like how it turned out. I used some more of my favorite colors--celery and light purple :) I stamped the celery panel with CHF spanish script background stamp, but I don't think the photo picked it up very well.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by! Hope you had a fun weekend!

supplies: cardstock: white, green-pti, kraft-paper reflections; stamps-bird-pti, sentiment-verve, background-CHF; button-pti; ribbon-pti; ink-versamark, tsukineko: other-machine stitching

mojo time!

This week we had a choice of a circle card or a square card for Mojo Monday. Since I really never make circle cards, I was about to choose the square  version without even thinking. But, then I thought thid was the perfect chance to try out making a circle one. And I did :)

I really liked this sketch! It was super easy to work with. I love this spring rain cardstock from Papertrey, but I hadn't used it much, so that was the first thing I chose. The rest of the colors and embellies kind of just fell into place after that *smile*. I really had fun making this card, so I'm pretty sure I'll be making some more circle cards after this :)

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you enjoyed my card for this week!

supplies: cardstock-white, spring rain:pti, kraft:paper reflections, brown:bazzill; stamps-flower, sentiment:verve, polka dots: cornish heritage farms, ink-white-pti, brown-tsukineko; ribbon & buttons-pti; scallop circle-spellbinders; scallop punch-fiskars; circle die-quickutz, other-twine.

a card.

Have you been checking on all the fun new CHA peeks? I think it would be really fun to actually go and see all the new stuff and visit the booths. But I definitely don't see that ever happening lol. I still have fun looking at all the manufacture sneak peeks though. I'm always the most excited about new pattern paper and new dies. My other love is stamps, but my favorite companies don't do special CHA releases but every month instead :) I'm not sure what my favorite things so far are, but I love the new Quickutz cookie cutter alphas.  I really wish they would make more--or maybe not since I always feel like I have to get all of them *grin*.

ANYWAY, here is a card made this week:

A different color combination than I would normally do, but I like it :) I stamped the lemon tart scallop strip with my striped background stamp in Berry Sorbet, but very lightly. I used my new Quickutz embossing folder on the white panel. Lately I am loving thicker ribbon! I love the look of the big bows *smile*. And though I haven't perfected my bows yet, I am definitely liking them better. I've actually watched several tutorials on how really talented card makers like Dawn McVey and Kristina Werner make their bows. I found that I kind of take different tips from them all and combine them to make the kind of bows I like (if that makes any sense lol).

Thanks for stopping by!

supplies: cardstock: papertrey ink; pattern paper: papertrey ink; stamps: sentiment-verve, lines-cornish heritage farms; ribbon:papertrey ink; embossing folder:quickutz; scallop punch:martha stewart

a boyish layout.

Typical week here...glad it's not as cold as it normally is around this time of year here. And with our new house it is alot warmer in general. The living room gets TONS of sunlight is really toasty in the afternoons :) Since my biggest complaint about our old house was how cold it was, I'm a happy girl *smile*

I'm pretty sure I haven't shared this layout yet. I used Basic Grey's Urban Prairie line on this, and I decided it is probably my all time favorite line of theirs. LOVE these colors!!

I liked how these papers worked for this layout even though I kind of thought of them as a little more "girl-y". I rolled out the Quickutz heart 4 times (I think) and glued it together. I love how you can make your own chipboard shapes this way!  This is the kind of thing I wouldn't really scrapbook before when I just kind of did events etc. But I'm so glad I do now because I really want to remember all these sweet silly things about my kids that unfortunately I'm sure I won't... but at least now I won't have to *grin*

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you're having a good week! We got some oats at Costco over the weekend, so we're supposed to make "creature cookies" aka preacher cookies, aka no bake chocolate oatmeal cookies this week. One batch usually lasts about a day here :)

supplies: cardstock: american crafts, pattern paper:basic grey, die cuts shapes, letters-quickutz, buttons and brads:basic grey

what do you do...

...with cards you don't love? I can take forever to make just one card, and I want be really happy with it when I'm done. But I'm not always. Often I make cards that I'm not very happy with. What do you do with those cards? Usually, I will wait a little bit and see if it grows on me. Sometimes it will, but usually it doesn't. In  that case, I see if I can just add something--like a gem or button to help. If that doesn't work, then I will take it apart and make another card, using at least some of the pieces from the original. I thought I would show you one of the cards I made that I didn't like and show you what it ended up looking like :)

This is what I made at first. And I just never liked it. (yes, it's ok to agree with me.) For the life of me I could not get the cherry image to look good to me, so I added it to my scraps drawer. And I made this card instead:

The only thing I used from the first card is the base, but I saved all the other parts for another card. The white label on this card was actually rejected from a card I made before. I like this one SO much better. I didn't stamp a "focal image" for this one. But did stamp both the backgrounds and the sentiment. The butterfly punch is from Ek Success. ( Everytime I see the Martha Stewarts' butterfly punch, I want to get it. But I haven't been able to justify it since I have this one...sigh...you can't have too many butterflies can you?!)

So, what do you do with your unloved cards? Do you just move on? Do you fiddle and redo like me?

Thanks for stopping by! Leave a comment and let me know which version you like better :)

supplies: cardstock-papertrey ink; stamps-papertrey ink and cornish heritage farms; ribbon-papertrey ink; punch-ek succes; other-gems.

You had a bad day....

Did you ever have a bad day and manage to turn it around? I'll be honest. I'm a stay at home homeschooling mom of 4....we have our days. It's not always just roses and butterflies (in case you thought it was :)). Anyway, today was one of those days. For some reason nothing seemed to be going well. But after a morning of feeling frustrated about it, I decided to try to do something to change it. I started by cleaning the kitchen really well. And that made me feel like I COULD do something (remember, cleaning is not my strong suit *heehee*). Then I cut Rhys' hair, which is another thing that I have struggled with being able to do well. But I got it done, it looks nice and there was only minimal crying from Miss Emma too. Then after I vacuumed upstairs, I made apple butter and cinnamon rolls. And I put all 4 kids in the bath and we all enjoyed some quite delicious cinnamon rolls together. By the end of the day I felt much better. By trying to do things that normally can be hard for me, I managed to turn my day around. Nothing really changed, but I felt much better which actually DOES make the kids all happier too.

So I don't have a card to share today, but I do have some cute pictures of Miss Emma I took at the park the other day:

Thanks for stopping by!! I hope you are having a great day *grin*!

Have you ever assumed your kids know certain everyday things only to find out they didn't? Living in Japan ny kids don't experience all the same things kids their ages would in the US, and I realize that. But I was totally surprised when Nana said they were having lasagne for dinner and my kids had no idea what it was!!! I know, I was just as shocked lol. What kind of a mother am I not to give my kids lasagne in the first place?I mean, they eat squid, octopus and seaweed, but don't know what lasgane is.... I spent close to 5 minutes describing it to them. I think Leah, who loves everything was sure she would like it, while Rhys was not so quick to be sure he would like something new. ( I mean, there might be veggies chopped up and hiding somewhere in it.)So now lasagne is on my list of things to make in the next couple of weeks :) So has that ever happened to you?! Or is my family just weird...

 Here is another card I made that came together really quickly(yay!):

I absolutely LOVE this color combo. This pale lavender is SO gorgeous in person. I would love to decorate my bedroom with these colors(and maybe some celery green too...*heehee*) I wanted to be sure to use some of my older stamps too, so I got out this cute bee image from Papertrey. The sentiment is from the same set. Isn't the font cute?

Thanks for stopping by! Can you believe the week is half over already?

supplies: cardstock: white, lavender, kraft-pti, brown-bazzill; stamps-bee, sentiment-pti, background-cornish heritage farms; ribbon-pti; inks-tsukineko; scallop punch-ek success

just a quick post....

Things didn't go too badly, considering it was Tuesday. There was a large amout of chocolate consumed today though *grin*. (Don't knock it, it really does help!!) I'm still working on trying to get Miss Emma to go for longer without me so I can get some things done. Some days she's fine, others not so much. (And when I say "without me", I mean with me not holding her...)

I DO have a card to share though! Yay. Using, surprise, surprise--my new polka dot background. Hope you're not sick of it, 'cause I'm afraid you're going to see alot more of it *smile*. I love the colors on this card. LOVE. This card came out pretty much like I had pictured in my head, which actually almost never happens for me. The damasks are so pretty I wanted them to be the main focus. Also, I've been trying to get my bows to turn out better too, and I like this one :)

Thanks for stopping by! I'm SO hoping to get some stamping done today. But I some snuggly time with Tomio would be nice too hee hee :) He's had to bring home work for the pas few days, so I'm hoping today he won't have to :)

supplies: cardstock-papertrey ink, stamps- polka dots-cornish heritage farms, damask, sentiment-papertrey ink, ink-tsukineko, ribbon-papertrey ink, button, twine-papertrey ink, scallop punch-ek success

goals

It's the beginning of a new week, and Mondays are usually good for me. I know I mentioned a little before about my 2010 (which is it btw, "twenty-ten" or "two-thousand-ten"?) new goals. For me most of them might not really be "new", but continuations of things I kind of started at the end of last year. One of the main ones has to do with cleaning :) I'm the youngest in my family( the ever-so-slightly-spoiled-baby)and organization and such does not come naturally...and well, Tomio is VERY neat :) SO, I have been working at keeping things neat and tidy all the time...you know, so you don't have to feel like you have to throw your whole room into a closet when the doorbell rings :) I've been trying to raise my standards so to speak. Now I've been doing it more in steps than all at once so I won't get overwhelmed or burned out. And I can honestly say I can tell a difference. My bathroom closet is SO neat now, I actually like opening it and seeing how nice it looks lol.(yes, I am weird.) Oh, and my scrapbooking space is SO tidy too. I realized how much I enjoy working in a tidier place heehee. And I can honestly say that there are no toys or dust bunnies under my sofa, and if you crawled under my bed you would not get covered in dust :)These may not seem like huge things, but to me they are a big deal.I'm proud of myself and inspired to do more.  And that's a good thing.

Anyway, here is one more Christmas layout I did. ( I can't promise this is the last one, but I THINK for now it is. I've been working on some birthday layouts instead lately)

I always do a layout of Christmas Eve too. We have a fun family celebration at home on Christmas Eve, so I always like to document that. The kids love it--well, actually I do too :)

If you look at the bottom and side you can see I am still really into paper piercing lol. It just seems to add the right touch--subtle, but still noticeable.

Thanks for stopping by! I hope your week is starting out well too! Do you have any goals that are going well? Although Mondays are usually good for me, Tuesdays sometimes aren't, so I'm hoping to continue with my positive outlook tomorrow. We finally got all the toyboxes and furniture for the boys' room and I am hoping to finish arranging everything tomorrow.

supplies: cardstock: bazzill, pattern paper: fancy pants, diecut letters:Quickutz, diecute snowflakes: cuttlebug, ricrac:basic grey, brads: we r memory keepers, oval tag: Quikutz

now we have some mojo...

So it took a little longer than I thought, but here is my Mojo Monday card. And yes I do realize that it is Friday...in Japan it's actually already Saturday :) But here t is anyway:

I had hoped by posting this later I would have a chance to take the photo during the day, but no such luck lol. I used 2 of my new ABSOLUTE favorites right now. One is the polka-dot background from Cornish Heritage Farms. So perfect for just about everything! My other fave is Papertrey's Everyday Button Bits. So fun and adorable!! Even the images that I wasn't too sure about (the bicycle and hot air balloons, for example...) are SO cute! I can't wait to use them all heehee:)

Anyway, thanks for stoppinbg by! Just a quick Mojo post :) Hope your weekend is starting out great :)

Oh, but since Miss Emma just turned 8 months, I have to share some pictures of her :)

Isn't she too cute?! lol

supplies: cardstock: kraft-paper reflections, white and yellow-papertrey ink, brown-bazzill stamps-papertreyink, ink-tsukineko, buttons-papertreyink, basic grey, ribbon-papertrey ink

no mojo yet.

Ok-so I wanted to post my Mojo Monday card, but I haven't had a chance to take a picture and upload it yet :( I did make one though, so hopefully I will get it up tomorrow! I do have some layouts to share though. I have been making Miss Emma's pages that go in my album all along, but I hadn't been making HERS yet. I have a small 8.5x8.5 album for each of the my kids that I intend to give to them when they are older. They all get to look at them now of course. They love looking at them. Leah and Rhys like to read the journaling, while Levi just likes looking at the pictures. They complain if it has been too long since I added new pages too lol. Anyway, I wanted to go ahead and get started on Miss Emma's before she got too big. So here are a couple of the pages I made:

I love these pictures of Miss Emma :) She's not even 1 month here. This page actually came together really quickly, but I'm happy with how it came out :) I used 2 of my favorite Quickutz fonts- Maddie Anne and Chocolate. I'm also really into light purple lately, so I liked the felt accents from Fancy Pants too. The little flower in the corner I just hand cut out of kraft paper and crumpled it up :) I used some green buttons from Autumn Leaves for the leaves.

I have a page kind of like this for all my kids for when they came home from the hospital. I loved this picture of Tomio holding Emma! I used my new Cornish Heritage Farms stamp on the background of this layout. ( I absolutely LOVE them, btw! They so nice, easy to use...so glad I got them! ) I didn't like it with the mauve paper all flat, so I stamped the polka dots in versamark and inked the edges with burgundy. Love how that adds just the right touch :)

I didn't have a good place to put my journaling, so I used a hidden tag. I actually like the white peeking out of the top of the layout too. I used Doodlebug glitter on the heart. The 2 fonts on this page are 2 of the new ones I just got- Rollerskate and Jaqueline. Love them both :)

Thanks for stopping by! I hope to have my Mojo card up soon!! Oh, and my new Papertrey order just arrived today, so you know what I will be playing with hee hee :) I just got the Everyday Button bits, and I already LOVE it. I have to admit, that when it first came out, I thought "cute, but...nothing I really want" lol. Unfortunately, I usually end up really wanting something that I first think is "just ok". Am I the only one like that?! And almost always, I also end up LOVING it and using it all the time. (case in point, Quickutz Diesel and Mary Jane, my ALL TIME faves that I thought were *gasp* kind of ugly lol. Now with the Button Bits....) please tell me I'm not the only one :)

a card.

I have gotten little more crafting time. Emma is very much at a stage where....well, let's just say she's very attached to her mama :) I don't really mind, of course. But I have managed to work in some crafting time here and there. And here is a card made in a few spare moments:

Lots of Papertrey on this one. Since I {heart} using my Papertrey Cupcake stamps so much, I try to use them on as many different cards as I can :) I used to be a little afraid of green lol, but I have been really liking it lately. I used Damask designs for the background in Versamark. I stamped the text stamp in Papertrey's Scarlet Jewel. I really like the heart sprinkles for the cupcake--just the right touch.

Thanks for stopping by! How are your New Year's "goals" going? SO FAR, mine are going well. I'm trying to gradually work them in so I don't get burned out.

supplies: cardstock:green, pink-pti; brown-bazzill,  stamps: pti, ink:pti and versamark, ribbon: pti

party time

I really wish I had more time to craft on the weekends. But really I almost never do. As all mothers know, the weekend may mean time off for Daddy, but it doesn't mean time off for Mommy :) So as usual I didn't get to make anything new on the weekend. We were extra busy with a certain little miss's 9th birthday party, though :) Leah is SO into golf right now that she insisted on having a "golf party". It didn't make for nearly as exciting of a cake as normal where Daddy draws a picture of whatever character they want on the cake, but it did make for fun games :)

Lots of fun of course :) All the cousins came to join in the fun. And the party was at Nana and Papa's as usual :)

Rhys was very excited to get his ball in the hole!

These are pictures from the actual party, but Leah really got 3 days of celebration this year. They always get 2 days because Tomio takes off from work on their actual birthday and we have a cake on that day too. But this year, Leah's birthday was on Saturday and Tomio was already off. So he took off Friday instead. And he took all the bigs kids to see a movie. Then Leah got to celebrate at home on Saturday too and have a party on Sunday. It was a full, busy weekend. I can't believe Leah is already 9!!!! wow.... since I had her when  I was 20-almost 21,  I'm sure you can figure out how old I'm going to be this year....lol.

ANYWAY :) that is what went on at house this weekend. So nothing crafty to share..sigh. But hopefully I will have something this week.

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you had a great weekend!

scrapping goodies :)

I was just so excited that I had to share :) Look what I got in the mail:

Lots of crafting goodies :) My SWEET :) hubby knows that I like scrapping and stamping stuff best. But he also knows that he couldn't choose what I wanted. So for Christmas, even though he gave me LOTS of presents including a gorgeous necklace and some adorable earrings :), he gave me some money to spend on whatever I wanted. YAY! Of course I knew what I wanted to spend it on. This is actually only about half of what I got. I have a couple more packages on the way and several inks that I bought because ink the one thing that I can actually get here. Some of the things I most excited about are these:

I have been wanting some background stamps. I only have a couple of clear ones, and they aren't the full size of an A2 card, so you have to stamp theme a few times and line them up. I still like them of course, but I really wanted some that I could just stamp at one time. So I decided to try these from Cornish Heritage Farms. They are really reasonably priced and they had several that I wnated. I loved this polka dot one of course :)

I also was really excited about this music one. How fun is that?! It is actually 6x6! HUGE! These are goind to be so fun :)

Other than these, I also got some 4x8 Quickutz alphas and some embossing folders. Now if I can just finish the party prep and little Miss Emma doesn't mind :) I have some fun new toys I want to play with :) Have you ever gotten any stamps from Cornish Heritage Farms? I was very impressd with their service and the stamps look wonderful :) Anyway, thanks for stopping by! Hope you enjoyed seeing my new goodies heehee :)

too late for Christmas?

I know its January and I'm sure just about everyone has taken down their Christmas decorations...But is too late to show Christmas layouts!? I didn't think so :) I personally like to work on my Christmas cards and layouts all year long. These are from last year's Christmas, well, no actually from 2008's Christmas :) And no technically I am not "caught up" in doing my Christmas pages, but I don't mind :) I used to. I used to do all my layouts chronologically and I felt like I was behind and needed to "catch up". But then, 2 years ago I think, we went to see some really pretty flowers and I got some great pictures of the kids. I told Tomio that I couldn't wait to scrap them, but that I had to...because of course I had to do my older pictures first. And then he said "why?". And I thought "hmmm... why not?" lol. AND, I did it. I scrapped those pictures right away! It was SO much fun. I loved scrapping memories that were so fresh.Ever since then I've been scrappig whatever pictures I want, whenever I want. While I always loved scrapping, I can honestly say I fell in love with it all over again and enjoy it a 1000 times more now that I do. I so enjoy scrapping whatever I am in the mood for :) How about you? Are you a chronological scrapper? Do you have another method for choosing your order? Do you feel guilty for not being caught up like I did lol?! Let me know!

ANYWAY :), here the layouts I made:

We always have alot of fun putting up the tree, so I try to get lots of pictures. I know I've mentioned my love for 2 page layouts lately :) And I especially like them for all my Christmas layouts with so many fun pictures I want to include.

The cardstock is Bazzill and the pattern paper is from We Are Memory Keepers. All the diecut letters are Quickutz. The little tree is BossKutz.The buttons are from Basic Grey. The little noel embellishment is made with Papertrey stamps and spellbinders label die.

More pictures of our Christmas traditions :) All the diecuts on this layout are Quickutz. I love these ornament dies! So fun :)

These fun pattern papers are Cosmo Cricket. Love the music print!!

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you enjoyed a little bit of Christmas cheer :) I've got a birthday party to prepare for, so I don't know how much scrapping I will get done this weekend.