Two little lovebirds sitting in a tree

Well, no tree, but aren't these little birds adorable? When my order from The Cat's Pajamas arrived a couple of days ago, these birds in the Puppy Love set immediately caught my interest. I paper pieced the birds using two of the papers in the Basic Grey Eva 6x6 pad, which is also where I got the super-cool dotted paper at the bottom of the card.


Details: stamps -Puppy Love (The Cat's Pajamas), Mailbox Greetings; paper - rose red, kiwi kiss (Stampin' Up!), vintage cream, Eva (Basic Grey); ink - Memento Tuxedo Black (Tsukineko), Copic markers - R29 for the hearts and YR09 for the birds' beaks; accessories - 1 3/4" circle punch, scallop circle Nestabilities, kiwi/vanilla satin ribbon (Stampin' Up!)

Here's a fun use of some of my supplies that we came upon at our house recently. We have four identical mp3 players, one for each member of the family. We were looking for a way to distinguish them from one another. Enter my stash of rub-ons from Stampin' Up!

I got out a bunch of different packages of rub-ons and gave everyone their choice. We decorated the backs of our players and now they are all easy to tell apart! Here's mine:

Birthday girl

Today is my older daughter's birthday. I can hardly believe that she's eleven years old! We had a wonderful day. Juliette decided that we should eat dinner at Cold Stone Creamery, which serves only ice cream. So the girls both had ice cream for dinner and then cake at home for dessert. I'm pretty sure they'll be starving at breakfast time. But birthdays only come once a year, so the sugar high was well-earned. Darrell and I opted to skip the ice cream and have some actual dinner before our cake. We also went along with Juliette to the local game store, where she spent all of her birthday money on game cartridges for her Nintendo DS. She's a very happy kid tonight.

Here's the birthday girl, crooked ponytails and all.

And here she is at about 16 months old. She's always been a cutie.

And here is her birthday card. Juliette loves cats and black is her favorite color at the moment. She can purr just like a cat, so the sentiment on this was "purr-fect"!


Details: stamps - Cats (Inkadinkado); paper - ruby red, basic black (Stampin' Up!), white, Scarlet's Letter (Basic Grey); ink - ruby red (SU); accessories - Nestabilities - classic rectangles and classic scalloped rectangles.

Moving on to non-holiday stamps

I don't know about you, but I'm ready to leave the Christmas stamps alone for awhile! I got in the mood to make something bright and floral today. I was born and raised in Kansas, and am partial to sunflowers, which are the state flower. The Floral Frenzy set makes really great sunflowers! I stamped a few panels of flowers, then figured out what to do with them after I was done. I'm really happy with the nice variety of cards that I ended up with.

The following supplies were used for all five cards: stamps - Floral Frenzy; paper - vintage cream, pure poppy, summer sunshine, ripe avocado, dark chocolate; ink - pure poppy, summer sunshine, ripe avocado, chocolate chip (Stampin' Up!). Other supplies used are listed under each card.

Additional details for this card: stamps - Thankful Blossoms (Verve Stamps); ribbon - ripe avocado polka dot satin, Cuttlebug Embossing folder - swiss dot


Additional details for this card: stamps - A Little Somethin' (Stampin' Up!); ribbon - ripe avocado polka dot satin, 1 3/4" circle punch (Stampin' Up!), Nestabilities - classic scalloped circles

Additional details for this card: stamps - Thank You Kindly (Stampin' Up!); Cuttlebug Embossing folder - diamonds in the rough; scallop edge punch (Stampin' Up!)

Additional details for this card: stamps - Thankful Blossoms (Verve Stamps); scallop edge punch (Stampin' Up!)


Additional details for this card: stamps - Thank You (Green Grass Stamps); ribbon - pure poppy polka dot satin, Cuttlebug Embossing folder - textile texture

I want to show you a peek into my index book. I don't index every single stamp I have, but I have started to stamp various categories, especially sentiment stamps. This makes it so easy to find the right size or shape of words to fit the space I need to fill. This is one of the "thank you" pages in my book. Under each stamp, you can see that I've handwritten a code, such as V21. Each of my stamp sets has a code on the spine of the CD case. All of the "V" codes are for Verve Stamps, the "S" for Stampin' Up!, and so on.

Here's the spine of one of my CD cases. You can see the "P8" label, which corresponds to the codes in the index book

Here's the CD rack holding my stamps.

Holiday treats

I have a habit of making some kind of little gift for every person on the staff at my kids' elementary school. We love their school so much, and after four years there, the girls and I have worked with so many people that it's impossible to be selective in who we give to, so I make a whole bunch of something cool but relatively easy. Here's this year's treat.





These little boxes are a snap to make. Each takes a half sheet of 8 1/2 by 11 cardstock, plus embellishments. While surveying my stash, I found that I had hoarded three full packs of last year's retired Christmas paper, Dashing, from Stampin' Up! So that made my decision of what paper to use very easy. The stamps are from 2008 Holiday Tag Collection.

Here's the whole basket of treats, ready to go. There are eighty of the little boxes. Each box contains ten Hershey Kisses. The best part is going to the school and stuffing everyone's mailboxes!



Details: Stamps - 2008 Holiday Tag Collection; paper - Real Red, Old Olive, Very Vanilla, Dashing (all Stampin' Up!); ink - Real Red, Old Olive, StazOn Black; accessories - 1 3/4" circle punch (SU), 1/4" circle punch (SU), Nestabilities classic circles and scalloped circles, silver elastic cord (SU)

Time to play with my new toys

Boy, have I been in a stamping slump lately! I've been in the craft room playing with my stuff, reorganizing and labeling things, but every time I sit down to make something, my mind wanders. But today I finally stuck with it long enough to make a card. And it only took me an hour and a half! Eek. I'm going to have to improve on that if I want to get my Christmas cards made.

I had to have this stamp when I first saw it over a year ago - how often do you find a Christmas stamp that mentions yoga? I never managed to make anything with it, though. The huge size of it made it difficult. But look what happens when I use it with the new Top Note Sizzix die. Wow! And the new Basic Grey Wassail paper - double wow! I had some difficulty deciding on an embellishment, and I'm still not completely happy with my choice of a Build-a-Brad (with a small piece of a fourth pattern from the Wassail paper pack). Maybe a small piece of ribbon tucked in under the brad would help. Who knows. But I do really like the way this turned out, so maybe it will help get me out of my slump.



Details: stamps - unknown sentiment; paper - Wassail (Basic Grey), Confetti White, Metallic Gold (Stampin' Up!); ink - cranberry crisp (SU!); accessories - Top Note die, Build-a-Brad, 3/4" circle punch, dimensionals (all SU!)

Halloween fun

Each year on Halloween, the girls want to make jack-o-lanterns. Each year, they choose a pattern and help me "gut" the pumpkins. But the sliminess soon gets the better of them, and they leave me to finish. Fortunately, I've come to really enjoy carving them each year. They're really not that hard to do. Just purchase one of the little carving kits that comes with a few simple tools like tiny little saws. They're only a few bucks. Then find some patterns. The carving kit will probably come with some, or you can do what we did this year and look online. I found dozens of web sites that had patterns. These are from Jammin' Pumpkins - a membership giving access to all of their patterns was only a $5 donation.

Swans again

Maybe you're here looking for some stamping pictures. Sorry to disappoint you this time, but I wanted you to see this. Remember the swan family we watched over the summer in England? I wrote about them back in June, again in July, and once more in August. My husband took some more recent photos for us. This one is from late September. Look how big the babies are now! I'm amazed that they're still gray, but I guess they'll be white soon enough. I've learned a lot about swans since watching these guys grow up. I found out that swans are one of the slowest bird species to fledge their offspring, with the young usually staying with the parents for about seven months. Since we first met them in early June, they're at least five months old now.