Tomio and Leah..

are gone the rest of the week. Leah made it to the all Japan Junior golf tournament (actually 2 of them!) this year. They are far away, though, now that we moved to Kyushu, so they won't be back till late Saturday night. Praying the weather holds out, she does her best and has a great time :)

On to today's card:

This card came together really quickly. I liked using all the bright colors--made such a cheery birthday card. The cupcakes are from Stampin' UP! and the banner is from Papertrey Ink. Everything's popped up for a little dimension.

And that's it for me today. Thanks for stopping by!! I hope your week has been going well!

pirates!

We had a fun weekend :) It was full of strawberry picking, bowling, pirate parties...and presents too of course :)

Will Turner on his cake--Daddy drew it, of course :)

Everyone had their own personal bottle of "rum" :)

Red velvet cake.

And the birthday boy himself, with a surprise present of all the Dragonball mangas.

some decorations.

"Happy Birthday" time.

And some pirate games.

Oh, I do have a card today. I thought I would share a more masculine one to sort of go with the pirate theme today.

Here it is.  I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out...but it's pretty good I think.

Okay--that's all for today, everything goes back to regular scheduled programming this week.
Thanks SO much for stopping by today!!

yay!

My kids all had their swimming tests today, and all 3 passed :) So proud of them. (Emma doesn't start till she is 4.) I wanted to make sure we found them a new swimming class that they liked right away when we moved out here. That's why I started looking for one as soon as I heard we were moving. I'm thrilled that we found one they all enjoy. Emma likes coming and watching with me, and she is pretty excited about starting when "she is a big girl" :)

And here's today's card. Can I be honest? I really like this card :) I like the subtle woodgrain. I like the silhoutte flowers. I like how the white embossing turned out for the sentiment. And I like the colors :) Plus I just started stamping and it came together really quickly and smoothly, so that was fun too :) The flowers and sentiment are from Unity, the butterfly is from  Stampin' up!, and the woodgrain is from Hero Arts. Huh... I just realized there are no clear stamps on this card. That is rare for me....
Anyway :), thanks SO much for stopping by today!! I'm off to do some party prep for my big boy that is turning 10 this week *sniff* :(

well it's over.

the weekend, that is. I've noticed that school on Mondays always seems to take a little longer, and attitudes seem to be a little more pouty.... I haven't come up with a way to remedy it completely yet, but at least I'm not taken by surprise when it happens :)

I've been getting a lot of card making done this last week or so (yay!)
This is one of them. I like the red and black together. It was a little tricky to mask of the edges when I stamped the flowers, but I think it turned well :) The poppy image is from There She Goes stamps, the frame is from Waltzingmouse and the sentiment is from Papertrey Ink.

Thanks SO much for stopping by!! I hope you have a super day!!

I'm so happy...

the weekend is here :) I'm always glad when the weekend arrives. I usually spend Saturday morning doing some cleaning and straightening, but I did that last night. So now, I got to take it even easier this morning.  extra fun :)

Here is a card I made yesterday. I hadn't used this pretty flowers from Unity in a long time, so I had fun breaking them out again. You can't see it very well in the photo, but I embossed the black panel with a woodgrain pattern.

I popped up the black panel too, for some extra dimension.


Thanks for stopping by today!! I hope you have an awesome weekend!!

how about

another birthday card?

Pretty Clean and Simple again, I think. I actually masked off the middle of the white panel when I stamped the polka dot pattern to keep the middle plain. The huge gems are from Doodlebug. I'm still on the fence about them....But I guess they'll stay :)

Thanks for stopping by today!!! I hope you are enjoying some warmer weather--we sure are :)

a simple

birthday card.

I feel like we had a pretty busy weekend, and I didn't get to go in my stamp room at all. But I do have this a card I finished earlier to share. Just a really simple, somewhat masculine card. I like how it turned out. The really perfect "Happy Birthday" stamp is from Sweet 'n Sassy stamps. The label shape is from Papertrey Ink.

And, that's about it :) Thank you SO much for stopping by!! I hope you had a great weekend.

Not so...

clean and simple today. As I've said before, I mostly make clean and simple cards. But every now and then, I like try something a little different.

This was one of them. I often end up and the fence out this kind, but I think I like this one :)I used stamps from Papertrey Sweet & Sassy, and Stampin' Up on this one.

Pretty short and sweet today. It is pretty late, and I need to head to bed :) Thanks SO much for stopping by! I hope you have an awesome day!!!

good :)

Today turned out well :) It started out a little too "Monday"-ish. You know, kids not starting school or chores on time, feeling overwhelmed with all the things you need to get done that day...But it worked out ok :) I managed to remind myself what was really important during school so as not to get too frustrated when things didn't go *quite* like I planned. And I was able to go to the city office and deal with the kids' medical stuff and get all their vaccination stuff figured out. She was actually really helpful, and when she realized she forgot to give me one of the papers I needed, she mailed it to me right away. Oooh, and we went to the post office, got some groceries, and the kids' new socks. AND I still managed to get dinner on time and take Leah to her golf. Maybe not earth shattering stuff, but it felt good :)

Anyway here's my card. I used some pattern paper on this card(!) I really have a hard time working it onto my cards...but I think it works here :) I really like these flowers and their matching dies from Papertrey Ink. I usually try to add a little bit of shading to the flower. It seems to "finish off" or something, I think :)

Ok, that's it for me today. Thanks SO much for stopping by!! I hope your week starts off well!

new things.

I like "new" things. As in, I like change and having to do new things. That's I wasn't too worried about having to move and find new everything-- doctor, dentist, church, hair salon... I just think it makes things exciting :) But sometimes it can be hard, and you end up having to keep trying to find ones that suit you and your family. Leah wanted to get her hair done, so she and I tried out a salon. It can be hard enough just to find a place that you like, but it is even harder to find a place that knows what to do with non-asian hair. Unfortunately, it didn't really work out well *~* She really messed up Leah's long hair.....So we tried a different salon.  And after having him cut my hair, Levi's hair and Leah's hair, I'm am pertty impressed :) He totally saw what was wrong with Leah's and fixed it, made Levi's look cute, and even colored mine nicely. yay :)

see? :) Aren't they cute? :) There was a really big difference in how I felt after I left the salon. It was nice to feel like he actually listened and did what he could to give you what you asked for.

I know it probably doesn't seem like a big deal, but it was just nice to feel like I found one the many things we needed here. So today, I'm happy :)

And I do have a card too. I used stamps from Unity, Hero Arts, Impression Obsession and Papertrey Ink on this card. I thought about adding a sentiment, but I just couldn't seem to find a place to put it that I liked, so I just decided to go without.

Thanks for stopping by today!! I hope you are having a super fun day :)