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Monday, September 17, 2007

Boring you all with another ultrasound photo...

I had my 20 week ultrasound today, and she actually cooperated for a nice profile shot, so I thought I'd post it since it's so much better than the freaky skeleton-face shot I posted previously. As you can *clearly* see from the photo, she is going to be the most beautiful, smart and artistic baby girl ever...! ;-)

Oh and btw, she didn't have three arms or anything, so apparently the gamsol sniffing didn't do any major harm...

SOMEDAY I'll actually stamp and have some new cards to share with you... and I also have an extremely exciting RAK to share - just need to find the energy to take a photo. I'm soooooooooo tired, all the time! My google reader says I have 738 unread posts at the moment - *sigh* - someday I'll comment on your blogs too...!

But now I'm off to bed. At 8:30. Geesh. Night night.

Friday, September 14, 2007

If you happen to be in the Austin area...

Some friends and I have cleaned out our stamp rooms and are purging a TON of stuff we no longer use! We'll be having a garage sale this Saturday, September 15, from 9am-1pm. There will be MANY Stampin' Up sets at roughly 1/2 the catalog price. And there will be other stamping, scrapbooking and crafting items galore - inks, pens, paper, embellishments, tools, paint - you name it! I alone will have nearly 50 stamp sets up for grabs, and there are eight other girls adding to the sale!!

The sale will be at 3317 Burks Ln, in the Steiner Ranch neighborhood. It's also the Steiner Ranch community garage sale that day - so come ready to shop!

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Passing along Charmaine's Public Service Announcement...

Charmaine mentioned in this post yesterday about Gamsol being harmful when pregnant or nursing! I pulled out my bottle and read the label - yup, it says it right there!! I knew it was a 'petroleum distillate' and I suppose being a chemical engineer and all I should have realized this may not be a good option, but since it's odorless it didn't even occur to me! I knew there are other things that shouldn't be done while pregnant... like purposely sniffing my black StazOn (mmm love that yummy almond smell!)...! I have heard that baby oil works as a Gamsol alternative but have never tried it - now I'm going to, and I'll let you know how it turns out. (check Charmaine's post, that's what she used & it looks great!)

As you can gather from this post - yes, I'm pregnant! It will be 20wks this weekend, we're expecting a baby girl on February 2. This isn't how I planned to "announce" this to my blogging friends - I was going to make a cute baby girl card or something - but I am freaking out a bit about this Gamsol thing so I thought I'd pass along the info, in case anyone else out there isn't reading their bottles!

And fyi... I've mentioned my messy room in the past, and other things about why my stamping productivity took a nose dive this summer - but this is the true reason. The first trimester was rough - feeling crappy and completely drained of energy (especially during my typical late night stamping time). I'm not nauseous anymore (thankfully!) but I still feel quite tired by the end of the day. So there you have it! The whole story!! :-)

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Prismacolor Froggie

Yesterday's Try a New Technique challenge on SCS was "Make a little (Gamsol) magic" - to try the Gamsol Magic technique. I'd like to say I've been keeping up with SCS challenges and this is what I made specifically for TLC133 - but this is just a happy coincidence! I just love this technique and use it all the time! Actually, I'll be showing this technique at my hostess club this Thursday - this is the card we'll be making (hi girls, hope you don't mind the sneak peek!). I chose a simple image to color, with just one color, since they are a bunch of first-timers. :-) I love this little froggie from Unfrogettable! I colored him in but then was a bit stuck trying to figure out what to do with him! So first I checked the Sketch Challenge archives, and went with SC97! I have the Word files from this post saved on my computer so I can just scan through them when I'm stuck - very helpful! Next I couldn't decide on a color combo, so today I went to the cool color combo website - I knew I wanted to use Glorious Green, so I selected that and hit search, and liked this option it spit out - Glorious Green with Tempting Turquoise & Real Red. I added a little black to make it pop even more. So... I may give the impression of being highly creative, but I just know which crutches best support me... :-) I stamped the green base with the Polka Dot background in Craft White (and remembered that I am too impatient for craft ink - a couple dots are a bit smeary if you look closely!). The turquoise strip is SU's textured cardstock, and I ran the red piece through my Cuttlebug. The black scalloped edges were done with Fiskars scissors. And that light turquoise polka dot ribbon is the Michael's cheap stuff. Oh and one last fun thing - you can't tell in the photo but I colored the centers of the froggie's eyes with my black glaze pen to make them even more buggy! Thanks for visiting today!!!

Friday, September 7, 2007

100th Post and Blog Candy! (but not mine!)

Well this is my 100th post!! Can you believe it? Can't believe I'm rambled to you all 100 times now. Amazing. I was hoping to have a wonderful card to post for you and some blog candy to give away to mark this occasion, but this week has been busier than expected and it just hasn't happened! Darn it! I do hope to get a couple cards made this weekend though!

So instead I thought I'd link you to a really fun new (to me!) blog I've found, Mel Stampz! And it so happens she has some really cool blog candy she's giving away right now - hurry on over there if you love BLUE and much as I DO! :-) I love how she makes "homemade primas" - so cute. :-)

Have a great weekend - and I am approaching 25k hits sometime soon - I'll try to get together some AWESOME blog candy for that milestone, so stay tuned! :-)

Monday, September 3, 2007

This may sound goofy, but...

... I inspired MYSELF with my last post! I mentioned that I loved how AmyR's ribbon was all sorted by color - well I realized I could do THAT, even if I don't have the cool shelves that she has! So this is how I spent my morning after I posted - organizing my ribbon!! There was a little more reason to do it - in a couple weekends I'm hosting a huge stamp/scrapbook/craft supply garage sale - a bunch of friends and I are cleaning out our stamp rooms to get rid of stuff we bought and will never use, to try to make some extra cash - cash to buy MORE stamps and supplies, of course! LOL! So I set aside some ribbon I don't especially love anymore and want to get rid of, and added some spools I had in other places. Now my ribbon looks so darn pretty, I just had to share. Have a good week! :-)

Storage Solution Sunday - a day late...

Sorry I'm a day late with this! What can I say, it's the holiday weekend - we made a spontaneous decision yesterday morning to pack up the car and head to San Antonio to visit the zoo. Carter had so much fun (for a little while, anyway) - got to see all of his favorite animals - lions, tigers, bears - OH MY! :-)

So today I'm going to talk about ribbon storage! *Some* cardmakers and scrapbookers out there have been known to have a bit of a ribbon fetish... you know who you are! *wink* Ok, I'm talking about MYSELF! But I'm sure I'm not alone in this! So what to do with all that ribbon!?!?!

The solution pictured to the left I found at Home Depot, but you could find any number of places - paper towel racks! But I pretty much have a love/hate relationship with this solution! I sort of love it - because I love this easy access to my ribbon, it hangs just to the right of my desk. Plus I love to just look at my ribbon and say "aaaahhh, ribbon is so pretty!". But I don't love it for a few reasons: the spools have been known to spontaneously unwind since they can roll on the rods! I typically put a little piece of tape on the ends to hold them in place (which you can see I'm lazy about replacing at times!). And the other issue is that if I want to take a spool off a rod, to take to a crop or a workshop, I have to unscrew the ends and remove the other spools to get to the one I want - somewhat of a pain! So, I can't say I'm highly recommending this solution - it has it's pros & cons. :-) And this is not all of my ribbon either - you may remember I posted this box a while back, I keep some of my Michael's cheap ribbon in there. The photo to the right is another solution I use, that I rather like. This is a box I picked up at Joann's for storing embroidery floss, it comes with little pieces of cardboard to wind the floss (or ribbon!) on, and I used it to tidy up my various bits of ribbon I've collected from ribbon shares, etc. It took a bit of time to get them all wound on the cards and into the box, but now that they are there, they make me very happy (and more likely to actually use them!). I bought a second box recently, I plan to tidy up my various scrap ribbons into that box. This box also fits the mini-spools quite well (I have some along the left side of this one) - I may get a third box because I have a bunch more of those floating around a pencil box at the moment. :-)

I had already planned to post about ribbon this weekend, and as luck would have it, there's been talk of ribbon storage on a few other blogs this week as well:

Sharon published an article on Craft Critique about the SU ribbon holders
Julia posted about the Cropper Hopper Ribbon Storage (C'est bon - according to Julia!) :-)

But what I think I'll do, someday when I put together my dream studio, is what I saw on Amy's blog. This looks like ribbon heaven to me!!! I love that it's all sorted out by color, and those racks would solve my spontaneous-unwinding problem. Ahhh, someday...! :-)

If you've posted about your ribbon storage solution that you love, or have seen other great ideas on various blogs, please link 'em up in the comments - since I'm not completely in love with what I have, I'm always on the lookout for better ideas!!

Birthday RAKs!

I wanted to share some amazing birthday RAKs I received in the mail over the past couple weeks. I am SUCH a lucky girl!!! I loved each of these cards when I originally saw them on their respective blogs, and was THRILLED to find them in my own mailbox!!

The first was from Leslie. She originally posted this on her blog here. Her photo is better, so take a look! I just love this Cake Decorating 101 set from Flourishes, and this card is just beautiful (and YUMMY!) in real life. I love the silver embossing on the cake stand.

Next I had a BIG surprise from Rose Ann. Not only did she send me this GORGEOUS card (originally posted here) but she also sent me that Cake Decorating 101 set that I LOVE! Rose Ann is just the sweetest, I cannot believe her generosity! The other thing that made me super happy was that I got both Leslie's and Rose Ann's cards on the same day - what a glorious Infuse mail day!!

Finally, this ADORABLE card from Corie - I've loved these smile flower cards she's been posting on her blog, they are so happy and fun. Corie also included some stamped poinsettia images, I can't wait to play with those! (although I'm nervous, I often mess up when coloring and have to start over - well at least she sent two so I can hopefully not mess both up! LOL!)

Thank you ladies - this was such happy mail!!!!!

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