The Big 13

Today's the big day in our house. My youngest daughter turns 13 on Sunday and she's having her birthday celebration with friends tonight (dinner out and a sleepover). While bloghopping the other day, I ran across this great inspiration her birthday card: Teenage Birthday. (Coincidentally, Terri was one of my team mates on the Sweet Sketch Wednesday design team.) My daughter is also into the Goth look. Must be the preteen/teen thing, probably thanks in part to the "Twilight" series.

I really liked the papers she used, so I checked out the Crafty Chaos Designs website. I fell in love with so many of the papers! I wound up buying "Halloween Bride" for Ali's card. I knew I wanted to use this cute Pinky image from Tiddly Winks and thought these papers were a good fit for the image - girly yet Goth. Here's the finished card:

Supplies: Halloween Bride digital paper (Crafty Chaos Designs), Pinky (Tiddly Inks), Labels 4 Nestabilities, Palette Noir ink, sponge, Copics, black and pink cardstock scraps, ribbon, black brads, Cricut with Winter Woodland cartridge.

Isn't she sweet? (In a Wednesday Addams kind of way! lol!)

Go check out Crafty Chaos Designs! I'm not sure how long the sale runs for, but right now if you buy 3 items, you get 2 items free! Just be sure to use the code "CCDbonus" during checkout. See site for details.
Lisa

Surf's Up!

I'm back from my whirlwind, two week vacation which included 3 days at the beach! We didn't do any surfing, but still, I couldn't resist using this cool new Tom image, part of the July Offer of the Month.

And now that I've jumped back into cardmaking, I wanted to participate in a few challenges. So, I'm entering these two card challenges:

• Pink Elephant - Fun in the Sun
• Craft Your Days Away - Summertime

And here are a few pictures from one of my days at the beach:

I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer!
Lisa

Eek!

No, that's not the cute little mice on Ali's birthday card saying "Eek!" - it's me!

(Sorry for the fuzzy picture - not sure why my photos came out fuzzy last night.)

Keeping up with Jessica's volleyball and social schedule this year has kept me on my toes. Then it was time for Ali's birthday last Friday, so I added cleaning, shopping and cake ordering to my "to do" list. Eek!

Here's the birthday girl and her cake:

That's her friend Devin next to her. They are funny together - they have a sort of brother/sister relationship. He was the only boy at the party but he seemed to revel in all the girls' attention, despite his occasional "protest". ;-)

A Walk in the Park

This was a fun day! I had a nice afternoon with the girls and got in a little cardmaking tonight. I made this card for Priscilla's Midnight Madness challenge #10. I missed the deadline but I really enjoyed making the card, so all's good. :)


I'd had this Lilly Anna paper forever but never used it. I thought the fun, girly colors were perfect for this image from TAC's "Just Dream" set. (Other supplies: Lilly Anna ribbon, flower & buttons from the Audrey Embellishment Jar, green Scrapper's Floss, Prismacolor pencils and OMS, SU! paper piercing/stitching template and MM paper piercer.)

This is my favorite part of summer. Summer school has ended and the back to school stuff has not yet begun. The girls and I took advantage of beautiful weather and a free day to visit Rock Bridge State Park.

Rock Bridge was once its own community. You can see the foundation of a house that was stood on the property. (You can see Ali hiking along it on the right.)


We're not quite sure what this is, but it was kind of cool anyway...

Dixie thought this was a pretty great way to cap off a long walk - with ice cream! :)


(Unfortunately for her, her day would ultimately end with a brushing and a BATH, but she didn't know it at this moment, lol!)

Happy Father's Day!

Here's a cute card that could be used for Fathers Day or a birthday, depending on what greeting you put inside. I used one of the adorable bunnies from TAC's Some Bunny set. It's one of my favorites. I also used some Winchester printed paper and cardstock (also from TAC) as the colors are very masculine.


We celebrated Fathers' Day early with a trip to the lake yesterday. Here's Ali relaxing on the dock with a book.

Happy Birthday, Jessica!

Jessica turned 15 today. She got her driver's permit, so I wanted to use some kind of car image on her birthday card. I used this cute little Tiddly Ink (Stamping Bella) image that I received in a swap a while ago:

Wow, where does the time go. When did this chubby cheeked little toddler...

turn into this willowy, beautiful, taller-than-her-Mom teenager?


Tonight we celebrated her birthday with dinner at TGIFriday's. She celebrated her birthday with a few of her closest friends last Friday. We had dinner at Shakespeares Pizza and then went to the movies.


Here's a picture of her being silly with her friends Tessa and Jessie:


Ali brought a friend so that she had someone to hang around with (and would leave her big sister and friends alone!). She and Hunter had fun making a pizza with some dough they got to play with:

Lilac & Lemon and a Sketch

Crafting time has been hard to find this week. I worked at a school baseball tournament on Monday and last night we had a "double header" of our own - Ali's school musical and Jessica's band concert. I did manage, though, to make a card tonight that combined two different challenges. I always feel like I've accomplished something extra when I can say that!


This card combines the color challenge on DareU2Digistamp - Lilac & Lemon and the sketch challenge over on Card Positioning Systems. All the DareU2Digitstamp challenges require the use of a digital stamp, so I used one of my favorites - Lilly from Digistamp Boutique. I've made a concerted effort to cut down on the amount of scraps I have, so the papers are all just grabbed from my scrap collection.

Here's Ali and her friends at their play, a musical about the early American history. There were a lot of songs and lines to memorize and the kids did a great job.


And here's Jess after her concert for a goodbye snapshot with her band director, Mr. Sweeney.


(Gosh, she's getting so grown up. Yikes.)

"Formal" Events

Last night was Ali's recorder concert. The kids all did a good job. They played some pretty complicated songs for 4th graders with recorders, including Amazing Grace and Ode to Joy. I can't say anything because I *hate* to get dressed up, but I wish my kids got dressed up more often. She looks so pretty dressed up! (Not that she isn't always cute, but you know what I mean...)


Tonight was the big event - Jessica's 9th Grade Formal. Her friend Tessa's parents are members at the local country club, so the kids met there first for pictures and appetizers.


My "baby" all grown up. (Well, almost.)


It's a good thing she was happy with that dress because it sure did take us a LONG time to shop for it! ;-)

Girls Gone Wild!

Well, not exactly, but let's just say today's photo shoot did not go well. I needed a picture of Jess and Ali to put in the "Nana" frame we'd bought for my mom's Mothers' Day gift. At one point, Ali stormed inside in tears. Even Mother Nature was uncooperative. The overcast weather was good for picture taking but we could've done without the gusts of wind that kept kicking up!

Here's Dixie showing how it should be done:


Just look at Mom and smile. Very easy, right Dix? ;-)

Whew! Much aggravation later, here's the final shot, as chosen by DH and me:

Jessica doesn't like that shot because Ali was standing on her toes so she looks taller. Ali, however, found it quite amusing:


In a rare show of solidarity, the girls agreed that this one was their favorite:

Great! Alison finally agrees with her sister just when DH and I were counting on her not to! ;-)

I'm printing off 4X6 prints of the additional shots and making a mini accordian style photo album. I'll post that as soon as I get it finished.

Locks of Love

Jess and Ali both got their hair cut today and donated it to Locks of Love.

Here's a photo album with some before, during & after pictures:

Locks of Love '09

Aren't they cute? :-)

Weekend project

As her reward for (finally!) keeping her room clean, we have been getting ready to redecorate Ali's room. (Jess & I spent a day and a half in there this summer and came away with 3 tall kitchen garbage bags of garbage and 6 brown paper grocery bags of books, toys & clothes to give away. The big clean up really helped inspire Ali to keep it looking nice.) Here's a before picture of Ali's room, as well as a closeup of the wallpaper border.

As you can probably guess, we have not decorated Ali's room since she was a baby. (Hey, she's the one who wouldn't keep her room clean! We've heard lots of whining over the past few years, but have held firm.)

Originally, I thought I'd get the room prepped and get the first coat of paint on the walls Friday night. (Why do I always get these crazy ideas in my head?!) OK, that wasn't happening, but surely I'd be able to get the room all ready to start painting first thing Saturday morning, right? Ha ha ha... I'd overestimated how much energy I would have left by Friday night and WAY underestimated the amount of stuff Ali had taped, thumbtacked and otherwise fastened to her walls.

Anyway, I did finally get to start actually painting Saturday afternoon. Ali wanted stripes to coordinate with her new comforter (http://www.target.com/gp/detail-tab-popup.html/ref=in_de_detail-item-display/601-3112146-2690557?ie=UTF8&parentStoreItem=0&asin=B0016A7CQ8&tabToSelect=additionalImages). Here's the sketch of what her striped walls will eventually look like:

I got the inspiration for the pattern from this blog: http://family.go.com/blog/princess_peg/painting-stripes-that-won-t-make-you-see-red--261964/. I was disappointed that she had not included dimentions for the stripes - I was left still struggling with that. So, I first planned mine making all the stripes equal to 1, 2 or 4 notebook paper lines. I divided the # of inches in my wall (140) by # of the notebook paper lines (20), so come up with stripes that were 7, 14 and 28 inches wide.

Here's Ali hard at work sanding (we had to do some spackling where there was residual glue from the original wallpaper border): Here's one of the partially completed walls:
When it's all done, Ali's room will have 1 white wall, 1 "Muted Fuschia" (pink) wall and 2 striped walls (white/pink/brown).

After an entire weekend of prepping and painting I will be so glad when we're done! Ali is SO excited about her new room, though, so it's all been worth it. She is certain that she is going to have the BEST bedroom!