So Miss Emma is officially no longer a "tiny baby". I don't know about everyone else, but for some reason, 3 months seems like a big milestone to me. Once she hit 3 months, she is a big baby :) 3 months is a big deal--she'll start rolling over soon, she holds her head well by herself, she stays awake happily cooing for longer periods of time--and the biggest one of all is course no longer needing to sterilize her bottles :) I realize of course that the 3 month mark is no magical number, but still for all 4 of my babies, I faithfully sterilized the nipples till they reached 3 months. Then I stopped :) I make a point of taking a picture of Miss Emma on the 14th of every month. So here are some of her official 3 month photos :

Now I realize I may be just a TINY bit biased :), but seriously, isn't she absolutely adorable?! She smiles all the time now, which of course brings joy to everyone who gets to see it. Rhys will come up to me and say "Mama, Emma did a really big smile for me!!" I love how much all three of them love Emma.

And because you always need to have something crafty:), here a couple more cards I made for the Verve challenge last week:

I don't really like how the balloon one looks in the photograph. The colors are much prettier in real life. oh well... I used a gem to hold the strings together at the bottom. Its always nice to have a little more bling, right? These papers are just some from stash that I have had for ages. The balloon stamps are Verve. The strings are made from PTI'S rustic twine.
I like how this one turned. Alot of it is how the colors go tother--I love any shade of pink or purple with brown. And there's a butterfly:) These pattern papers are from K& Co. The sentiment stamp is Verve. The butterfly is Quickutz (of course:) )
Thanks for stopping by! I hope you are staying cool :)

verve fun :)

This week Verve was celebrating their 2nd anniversary and had lots of challenges and games going on. I just started using Verve stamps recently, but I really love them!! And since I have been doing their Mojo Monday challenges too, I thought I would join in on all their fun and games :) It was alot of fun, and I got 5 cards done too! Here are a couple of the cards I made based on the sketch challenges they had :

I had trouble choosing my papers and colors for this one, but I really love how it turned out. The focul image is from Verve. I decorated the inside too. I am really liking having the inside done up all fancy too. I haven't gotten as good at it as I would like yet though.




This layout is something I definitely wouldn't normally have done! But I had alot of fun making it. I did alot of sponging on the pink and blue papers. I love how sponging can add so much depth. Without it this card looked way too flat. And I did the inside of this one too :)

Anyway, thanks for stopping by! We are headed out to Tomio's parent's house for a couple of days :)

let's party!

We make a pretty big deal of birthday's at our house. It started when Tomio would spoil me on my birthdays while we were dating :) And now that we have kids, we always make a big deal of their birthdays too. We have a party at Nana's house where all the cousins are invited, I make a cake and Tomio draws a picture on it of whatever they want. Then we also always celebrate as a family on their actual birthday. Tomio takes off from work, we buy them a cake of their choice and usually go out to eat too. BUT, this year, I was in the hospital having Emma on Levi's birthday. Well, Emma was born on May 14th and Levi's birthday is the 16th, so I was still recovering from my c-section. Which means, I wasn't there to celebrate his REAL birthday as always. Of course, Tomio did get him a cheesecake so they could celebrate, but it wasn't like normal. We hadn't had a chance for him to have a party with a homemade cake yet either, since we were swamped with the move before Emma came. So, to make up for it, he got to have a "bonus" real birthday where Daddy got another cheesecake so we could celebrate as a family :) Which of course Levi loved. But we still hadn't a party yet either. And since it is already 3 months late, and there just wasn't anytime that the cousins etc could get together, we had a party at home this week. After much thought, Levi chose to have a "yellow AND chocolate cake" with "Mr. Incredibles" on it. And that is what he got :) This is the yellow AND chocolate cake, with Mr. Incredible drawn on it in chocolate pen :)

The cake was very much enjoyed by everyone :) Except Emma, as everyone pointed out lol. But they said at least she slept through it so she wouldn't notice :)

Levi was very excited to blow out his candles. I think it only took him about 3 puffs lol!

Levi didn't think he was going to get any presents since he had gotten some at his other birthday celebrations. He was SO thrilled when Daddy brought his presents in:)

Levi showing me his NEW "blue cars" along with his matching red one:) He was SO happy to finally get the "blue cars" as he calls it. Everyday now he says to me "I'm so happy I have blue cars now" :) Daddy also got him a Cars puzzle that Levi has been making at least 3 times a day:) Daddy always knows the best presents to get!

It was alot of fun. I was really glad that Levi got to have his party and cake. He was SO happy. But now he keeps talking about his NEXT birthday... which I am afraid is a rather long way off :)
And here is layout I did of Levi the other day. He was so LITTLE here! I can't believe he is 3 now!

The pattern paper is Basic Grey. The base CS is American Crafts, and the blue cs is Core'dinations. I embossed it with the Cuttlebug Spots and Dots folder (I think that is what its called!)For the white frame around my picture I first scored around the pictures to know where I wanted it to go and so I could have a groove for the pen to go in and write straighter :) Then I just wrote in the groove with my white gel pen.

Thanks for stopping by!!

finally!

I have been doing Dawn McVey's Raspberry Suite Color Challenge for the past few weeks, and each week I've struggled with it. Although I have come up with something each time, I've never loved any of them yet. But at last I have been able to make something I really liked:) I did struggle with it at first, but I like the end results :)

Here are the colors for this week:

And here is my card:
I never really use a color like raspberry fizz, or scarlet, really. I don't have PTI's Button Bits set (yet!), so I used a Fancy Pants stamp I had and then put buttons on it like flowers. I think it worked pretty well. The cs is all just random pieces I had in my stash. I used the Martha Stewart doilie punch again. You can't really tell in the photo, but I stamped tiny polka dots all over the background with the scarlet color too. I think it helped the base not look too flat.

Thanks for stopping by!!

summer

Tomio's summer holiday started yesterday. Everyone is SO excited, because Daddy's "big holiday" means going to the pool, playing with Daddy, going to the park--and no school :) I must admit I was looking forward to their break from school too. I really do love teaching them at home, but having a break is really nice. Since Miss Emma is still little, we don't have any big travel plans this time. I hope to get the boys' room organized and do lots of scrappy stuff :)

I have been working on a couple of layouts, but I haven't quite finished them so I can't post them yet:) But here are some cards I made:

I LOVE this Cupcake stamp set from Papertrey !! The images are so cute! But, I hadn't been able to make more than one or two cards that I liked with it. So I was determined to use it to its potential, and just set out and stamped a whole bunch of tops and bottoms in different colors and styles. Then I just chose some favorites and combined them. Since I LOVE pink and brown together, this was easy to choose :) I really like how it came out. I used my nestibilites for the scallop frame and a Martha Stewart doilie punch.

For this card, I started by choosing the papers I wanted to use first. Then I stamped this adorable stamp from Stamp Avie and colored it with my copics to match the salmon and aqua colors in the paper. ( This paper is from Inque Boutique). And I also wanted to try decorating the inside this time:


Not too elaborate or fancy, but I like how it matches the front. I have seen some GORGEOUS cards with wonderfully matching insides that inspired me to try it. I am not in the habit of it, but I do hope to get the hang of it and do it more often.

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

I can't believe

...it's August already!!! Where has the summer gone?! Miss Emma will be 3 months in just a week! She keeps growing and growing. I put her in her first dress yesterday :) She looked so cute :) But wow, she looks just like Leah did! I didn't notice it at first since she was just so tiny. Now that she has filled out a bit more, you can really tell how much they look alike. I have gotten Miss Emma's 1 month old layout done already! I was quite proud of myself :) Trying to keep up with hers and scrap some of the hundreds :) of pictures I have been taking.

Isn't she such a cutie? I was really happy with how this turned out. I used Basic Grey's Sugared collection for this. I love these papers! They have some adorable designs for baby girls. The heart, crown and alphabet are all Quickutz (This is Diesel, one of my all time favorites!). I did just a little machine stitching in some light pink too. I really like how the colors went with the kraft background.

I also did a card for this weeks Mojo Monday sketch. I really enjoy these sketches. They are really pretty, but SO different from anything I would have come up with on my own. So I like doing something new :) Here is what I made:

Once I choose these papers, it didn't take long at all. The sentiment is from PTI's cupcake set. I just mounted it on a curve on my acrylic block. I had never tried that before, but I was pleased with how simple it was :) The focal image is Fancy Pants. I used my nesties to make the circle and scallop frame :)
Thanks for stopping by!

i did it...

I finally got this color combo to work! I love doing the Raspberry Suite Color Challenge that Dawn McVey puts up every week. But I have a hard time with it! I just don put red and pink toghether well lol!! But after struggling for long time, half deciding not to do it this week, I finally got something that I liked :) So here is what made this week:

I used Papertrey's Butterfly Kisses (again!) . I stamped it in white on the red cardstock and then heat embossed it. I also dry embossed the white with my Cuttlebug swissdots folder. It is simple, but I think it turned out ok :) Thanks for stopping by!