A little birdie....

reminded me that I've been neglecting my blog. Wow, this has been an INCREDIBLY busy May!

This little guy is a Tufted Woodpecker. (It helps to have an wildlife biologist in the family - my BIL - who knows this stuff!) We've had your standard "Woody the Woodpecker" type woodpecker since last year. This guy just started showing up this spring. They certainly do make an odd couple. It's fun to see what birds our feeders attract. (The woodpeckers are fond of the suet feeder.)

Rather than trying to store all my scraps, I'm trying to use more of them in my projects. This first card is a birthday card for my niece. I'm happy to say that it's made entirely of scraps! (I love that floral paper! It's by Doodlebug Designs, which explains why I think it's so cute.)


Next is a graduation card for this same niece. She is graduating with her Bachelors' degree and going on to med school to become an osteopath. I used images from Stamping Bella to illustrate her journey from shiny new grad to D.O. (I see a lot of sleep deprivation in her future, that's why I used Grumpabella to represent that middle step!)

Lastly, this is a quickie anniversary card for my in-laws. (Their anniversary was last Monday!)

Secretaries Week Celebrations

I found these adorable little Marjolein Bastin/Hallmark photo holders at my local dollar store a while ago - what a great deal! I thought they would make a cute gift for the secretaries at my youngest daughter's school. (They are all such sweet ladies.) Time was short and I've been itching to try to use up more of my paper scraps, so I decided to embellish some brown paper bags. (I'm proud to say I didn't cut any new sheets of paper, and really did use only scraps.) I used Juliette paper and the Flower Collage Trio set, all by TAC. Both are a favorite of mine. The top of the bag is a piece of Brown cardstock, cut into 4 1/4 X 5 1/8 pieces, then folded in half lengthwise. (The Scor-Pal is perfect for this, as has a 2 1/8 mark for scoring.) I cut about an inch off of the top of my paper bags, but that was just personal preference. I used my Crop-A-Dile to punch the holes, since it let me punch through all of the layers at once. I colored the images with my Prismacolor watercolor pencils and a Dove blender pen. It was fast!

As for me, I got the royal treatment at work this week! Our principal actually served all of the secretaries lunch on Wednesday, with a little help from some of the other administrators. (Our principal is a really nice guy!) I support two departments and each departments gave me a card and gifts. Someone asked me if I preferred "Secretaries' Week" or "Administrative Professional/Assistant Week". I like the former better because it's shorter, but I don't care which you call me, as long as you respect me. All of the people I work with are really nice and really appreciate me. I'm very lucky!!

Stamp projects

It's been so long since I posted any stamped cards! I have been stamping, so I'll share some recent projects.

Here is a card I made for a Scor-Pal swap. This card is from the Scor-Pal site, although I don't remember where. I was happy with how it turned out (and I didn't think I would be), but it's too small for regular envelopes. I'll have to try that Scor-Pal tutorial for making your own envelopes.

Here it is open:

I am happy to say that I've finished my first Christmas present! I made a set of cards for my frient Karyn, using her favorite colors of peach/pink and green.

You can see close ups of some of them at my Splitcoast gallery.

I hope to start posting more regularly and sharing more cards with you again.

Spring Cleaning

I wish that my big accomplishment over spring break was to get a ton of projects done for the charity bazaar I'm doing on Saturday. But, I am just as happy that I finally got my craft room cleaned (again). I gave away a ton of stuff, as well as throwing away some things. (Why do I have such a hard time throwing away scraps of paper?!) I managed to get the whole family involved. DH hung up a few things. Jess and Ali helped me with organizing in exchange for some extra money. Jessica is donating her money to a service project for her French class. Ali appreciated the chance to earn a little extra spending money.

Here's a before picture:

Here's the after:

This is just one side of my craft room. (Sad to say other parts of the room were even worse before the cleanup!) I am so much more productive now that I can find stuff!

Relax!

Relax / Don't do it / When you want to, go to it... Sorry, I can't say that word without thinking of that song by Frankie Goes to Hollywood. :-)

Now that the insanity of preparing for the family Easter dinner is over, RELAX is the theme of the rest of our spring break! Here's Dixie taking the idea to heart:

When we bought this chair for last year's Easter dinner, we did worry about the cat laying on it. However, I really didn't think that the *dog* would lie on it. Not our 70+ pound dog. Ha! She just curls herself up (sometimes I think Dixie thinks that *she* is a cat!) and lays her head on the arm. Apparently the same logic that said the dog could never fit was as sound as the logic that told us that a cream colored chair in a house with pets was OK in the first place. (Photographs do lie - the chair doesn't look quite as clean in person.) Oh well, she does look awfully cute in that chair. :-)

Considering how early Easter was this year, we didn't do too bad weather wise. We only had a few snow flurries and I swear it felt warmer than last year (which was ridiculously cold for April). Ali was very happy to find the dark chocolate Easter bunny that Peter left her. Ali will eat any chocolate - blame it on all the ice cream cones I ate at Denville Dairy during my pregnancy - but she really loves dark chocolate best.

Does Easter have a Scrooge?

Well, it should. And it's ME! Ugh, I can't believe it's almost Easter. I hate when Easter is this early. Well, normally I wouldn't mind, but this year our school spring break falls the week after Easter. We host the annual family Easter dinner and it would be so nice to have that week off to get ready. This week, every time I thought I have a free evening or day to do stuff, something came up. I'm getting stressed and grumpy!! (Hmm, guess I need to make a Grumpabella card for myself? lol!)

I haven't had much time to stamp lately, but I did make this card last weekend to submit to Rubber Hedgehog's annual Greeting Card Contest. It would be great to win this contest. I love their animals stamps and often use them for the cards that I donate to my animal shelter.

Have a nice week! I can't wait for spring to arrive on Thursday. Let's hope Mother Nature takes note of the calendar!