Home Sweet Home

When we first moved to Ohio back in August we also started building a house! That was such an exciting time to see that house grow and know we were going to make it ours! I shared my weekly pictures of it's progress as a lot of people were interested but I realized - I haven't shown a final picture! Sheesh! What a slacker I can be! LOL! Here's a couple of them to show you the final product...for now! We changed the original front just recently too by having the front stoop redone with brick work and added some rather large (12') trees added in the back yard for privacy too!

If you click on the pictures they get bigger and you can see the beautiful pink flowers I planted that are taking off like crazy!




Well, that's "Home Sweet Home"!

P.S. - the window in the upper left corner is "my craft room", where I hide in the evenings with my toys, laptop and T.V.! My little heaven on earth! LOL!

Until next time....

Happy Bee Day!

Today was my youngest child's 16th birthday! My gosh time has flown by! I remember her first moment and where is she now?! At the movies with a BOY! UGH! My baby!! I tried to teach her boys are bad, stay away, join the convent! Seriously! LOL! I even dressed her up as a Nun for her first Halloween - she won cutest baby in the costume contest but, well, my plan obviously failed!
This child is the one who ALWAYS leaves me love notes, all over the place! I love surprises and still every one of them surprise me because I'm not expecting it! Now, she's into making BIG cards for different occasions and for Easter my card was a GIANT posterboard! LOL! So, anyway I decided to play her "big card" game and make her one for her birthday! I used some AWESOME Bee stamps that I ordered just to make her this card! See she's my "little b" and her Dad is my "Big B" - get it "B's"! LOL! Aaahh yeah, ahem, so here's my card;



I got the stamps from a company called "Alota Rubber Stamps" and let me tell you, Helene, the lady I corresponded with about these stamps - AWESOME! The stamps?! AWESOME! I went a little crazy and ordered 3 bee stamps but I also got one of their "grab bags" - the cheaper one if you want to know. I am here to say I am THRILLED to pieces over the stamps in that bag! I got GOBS of GREAT stamps that I could see no reason to not buy individually! Great deal, trust me! LOL! Okay so, I made this with SU cardstock, some awesome pink glittery paper I found at my LSS, and I colored it with my Koh-I-Nor pencils and Gamsol! I had these tiny little pom poms that were PERFECT for the bee's party hats and I thought little tiny rhinestones would be CUTE for their little noses too! I put Stickles on their wings too! My girl has to have her bling so I gave her as much as I could! LOL!

Well I'll leave you with a few pictures of her as she grew up, I swear she was just born yesterday.....












My baby graduates in 2 years....the tears are already trying to flow.....

Until next time....

Ready to Ride....

I purposely hunted this stamp down! I needed a motorcycle stamp to make a card for a special friend and it needed to do with motorcycles! I especially love this one as that is the coolest bike ever isn't it?! Flames all over and Snoopy looks SO relaxed just riding with his little buddy! Images of Snoopy remind me of my childhood cartoons and I just loved him! He could say SO much without saying a word!
So I decided to take the opportunity to make 2 cards! One is a thank you as my friend did me a big favor and is actually the motorcycle safety guy at work, also the computer guy and he's always helping me. The other, well I'm sure I know someone who would appreciate it! LOL!

Enjoy;





Sorry for the short post with this but, it's EARLY to work today - AUGH!

Until next time....

Like a Dream......

I gor my FIRST Magnolia stamp! YEAH ME! This stamp inked up like a dream too! OMG! I was able to actually use my first stamp off too! Now THAT'S awesome!! I just love tulips, pink tulips and when I saw this one I knew I had to have my first Magnolia and, now, I have NO regrets but have already figured on my next one! LOL! Take a look at what I did with it;



I used scraps, except for the base to create this little cutie. I also used my, new to me, Martha Stewart border punch and some little dot thingies (<-- technical term there!) from Bella! I colored her in with my Koh-I-Nor Pencils and my Gamsol. I chose to leave her dress white too as it reminded me of a dress my youngest had when she was little.....SOOO cute.... anyway! The image is cut out with my Coluzzle but since I didn't really want that much blank space around her I did the "out of the box" technique! If you're curious on what that is then check out the resource pages on Splitcoast Stampers. That place is an AWESOME wealth of information, friends, advice and SO much more!

Let me know what you think!

Until next time....

Miss Me?!!

I've been getting these interesting emails, and today a text asking "when are you updating your blog"! LOL! It's nice to know you guys care and that I was missed! So.... where was I?! I started my new job last week and boy did I hit the ground running! Trying to figure things out, get to know people, I also have been given the job of editing all documents prior to submitting them to the 4 Star <-- now that makes me nervous! I also had 2 runs on Wednesday and the second one was in the rain. Guess what my reward was for that one?! I got a nice, nasty chest cold that just sucked the life out of me! I know, pretty picture right?! I had pneumonia really bad once so chest colds make me nervous!I went to work and did nothing else! LOL! I'm all better now though and here I am!
Our Father's Day celebration today was rather low key as we all took naps, together, like little monkeys in the bed! It was probably a rather hilarious site if you had been that fly on the wall too! I won the award for sleeping the longest....yeah me! So when we got up, I made dinner and boy was it good tonight! Mmmm! We had roast chicken & red bell pepper sauce over wheat noodles, a green salad and some Ghiradelli brownies! I don't understand the hype over these brownies though, they're not all that good - ugh! I prefer Betty Crocker ones with chocolate frosting if I have to eat some! LOL! Then again, I'm not a chocolate eater!
Okay so the best part of Father's day here?! We gave Brian a card/album we made using some of the BoBunny products we picked up at our LSS! Have you seen the album's made where each page is a letter?! I think at Marko's you can get them with the individual letters to spell out anything! Ooooh the possibilities there! This one came as a kit and turned out SO frigging cute! Here's some pictures!

Outside/closed


First 2 inner pages


Close up of the squirrel...yeah...long story but he liked it!


Next couple of pages...


The back...


The "giver" & her Daddy!


This book should have only taken me a couple of hours but it took me days! I could only do a little bit at a time for the obvious reasons! LOL! Brian really liked the final product too so, in the end, that's all the really mattered!

Until next time....

I hope you like it!

Weekend Fun...

Oooh this was a fun weekend! I love company and my DH's sister and her family came to visit! I love these guys - they are the COOLEST! No, before you ask they don't read my blog so I'm not trying to rack up any points here so it must be true right?! We haven't seen them since before we moved to Ohio back in August so it was awesome to have them stay even for the night. We had lost time to make up for so we managed to celebrate birthdays, visit, go shopping, eat out, eat at home twice, go see the USAF Museum (the boys LOVED the airplanes!) and I just loved having them here! Needless to say I'm a little tired today, not to mention 4 mile runs each day and today's was midday so I came home with a little souvenir - sunburn! YEAH me! I start my new job tomorrow and am a little nervous so relaxing was good this weekend! So, keeping this post "craft related" I thought I'd share my one claim to fame! In addition to my addiction to paper crafting I also have an addiction to sewing. I've sewn forever, for myself and family. I've taught quilting and once made costumes for a play company. I've been a pattern tester for a couple of ladies and my sample work is published in their books. My biggest, to me anyway, is having my work hang in a museum! I had my good camera with me this weekend and got a good shot of my contribution to the Air Force's 50th Anniversary quilt! I get tickled when I look up and say "I did that"!

Here's a picture of the block;


My sister-in-law and I in front of the quilt to show how big it is;


Our Godson Kyle and his cake (handsome guy isn't he?! Obviously I need help in cake decorating...)


Our nephew Luke and his cake (cutest little guy ever - love those eyes!)


Now if only they lived closer, there was more time to visit......Christmas is SO far away!!

Ready to Ride.....

Well after he learns to walk perhaps! LOL! Who is the cutest cowboy ever...at least in his "Bella's" eyes?! Why Logan of course! My daughter went to a yard sale and found a cowboy hat tiny enough to fit this handsome fella and then took pictures to show me! It's like falling in love all over again with every picture! Here he is in all his adorableness.....



So...since he is SO cute in his cowboy hat you know I couldn't resist a cowboy stamp when I saw it right?! Well Bella, the stamp company, has these adorable little turtle stamps now and one just so happened to be a...yep! A cowboy! LOL!



I colored the image using my Koh-I-Nor pencils, that have had some Prisma's migrate in, and my Gamsol. I think that is getting to be my favorite coloring technique! The shape I'm sure you can tell is cut with the Nestabilities. I used my JustRite stamps for the word "Howdy" but the block was so big and the square so small it was hard to line it up so, close enough had to do! I also used hemp twine to make the "lasso"! Every cowboy needs one right?! I think he used it to lasso my heart! Just love this little guy - can you tell?!!

I'm off now to do my daily run, the marathon is still a couple of months off but I still gotta maintain my girlish figure! If I don't watch it my DH won't either! LOL!

Well I hope you liked my card for today!

Until next time....