Happy Halloween!

I thought I better get this card posted before it's no longer Halloween, ha! I adore Halloween images and I'm bummed that, once again, I didn't find enough time to create a ton of cards with them (because believe me, I own a ton!). But I did manage to make a fun little bat card...


The wings fold in, how cute is that?


I saw this card in a magazine and found the pattern on the Better Homes & Gardens website. Inside my bat I included my favorite little Hambo digi image - Wee Henry Vampire! Isn't he adorable?? I love vampires and I love bats. I'm very strange that way. :-)


Speaking of loving bats - my boy is crazy for bats these days! As a matter of fact, one of these days his mommy is going to hang a whole bunch of bats from the ceiling of his bedroom so he can live in his own Bat Cave...! So when he saw my little bat pattern, he wanted to make one too! Which was perfect, since we wanted to play along with the latest Children's Challenge, which was to make a Halloween themed card!


Like the dots on his nose? He was using a chocolate-scented black marker and got a little carried away with the sniffing, LOL!

And here's my little Batman himself. This was on Friday, when they dressed up to go to preschool. There was never any doubt who Carter wanted to go as! He's already talking about his plan for next year's costume, too - Robin. We'll see if that changes in the next year... :-)


Thanks for stopping by!

• Stamps: Wee Henry Vampire digital image, greeting (retired?) from Hambo Stamps, CL353 Happy Halloween from Hero Arts (small bat stamp)
• Paper: Stampin' Up black, Bazzill purple, GP white
• Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Stampin' Up Craft White, Copic markers
• Accessories: Bat pattern from BHG.com, buttons, black embroidery floss, Star Dust Stickles

My own LIVESTRONG challenge...

**VISIT MY LIVESTRONG BENEFIT ON EBAY!!**

This weekend the Livestrong Challenge bike ride is taking place in Austin. As most of you know, I'm a huge cycling fan, a huge Lance Armstrong fan - and like pretty much everyone else on the planet, I hate cancer with a passion! I'm also a crazy girl who likes to make cards inspired by cycling, and I bored you stampers with a bunch of them this past July!! :-) (Dying for a recap? You can see them all HERE.) Well I'm trying to do a tiny bit of good with those cards - make sure you read to the end of this post to find out what. But first I need to show you one more card:


This one is inspired by both cycling and breast cancer awareness month. My grandma is a breast cancer survivor. She fought it like a girl and pretty much kicked it's butt. The colors for this card were inspired by Livestrong (yellow), Breast Cancer Awareness (pink), and also the Play Date Cafe's 1 year anniversary challenge:


The bicycle image is Tim Holtz and the sentiment if from the wonderful Flourishes Fight Like a Girl set - love this set soooo much! I embossed a bunch of ribbons from that set right over the bike in a shimmery gold powder and then colored them light pink with a Copic:


I had fun grouping a ton of embellishments together on this card:


That felt flower was made with the MFT rolled flower die - love. I also love that little pink ribbon bead I found a while back at the craft store. The pink button says "live groovy" - that just makes me smile. :-)

Ok, now back to what I'm doing with all my cards!! I've decided to put them all on eBay, with 100% of the money donated to Livestrong. I know it's a teeny tiny amount of donation compared to what they can bring in, but I figure every bit helps. If you aren't familiar with Livestrong, here's a little about them:

At the Lance Armstrong Foundation, we inspire and empower people affected by cancer. We believe that unity is strength, knowledge is power and attitude is everything.We provide the practical information and tools people with cancer need to live life on their own terms. We take aim at the gaps between what is known and what is done to prevent suffering and death due to cancer.

Next fall I'm actually going to RIDE in the Livestrong Challenge with my friend Doug, who's currently undergoing chemo and showing cancer who's boss. It will be interesting - I'm pretty much a slug now, and want to ride 65 miles next fall. But if Doug can take on cancer, surely I can take on a little bike ride, right? HELL YES!

And until then I'm doing my little auction to support the 28 million people living with cancer. LIVESTRONG! So make sure and VISIT MY AUCTION!! :-)


Even if you don't like the cards, just think of it as a donation to a great organization, and as a bonus you get a little card. :-)

Saturday Scrapbook Club - in search of zebras

Today's layout captures a day when my kids and I went on a quest to find zebras. Carter was on a big zebra kick and had been recently disappointed that we couldn't find any during a trip to the zoo. So we headed south of Austin to one of those drive-thru nature parks and got super duper up close and personal with some zebras and other animals. It was really neat.


That first image is clickable for more detail. And here are the two pages:


I don't like all that empty green space, but what can I say - I'm rusty. Or I'm stuck in my circa 2001 scrapbooking style. :-)

By the way, Carter's favorite animal is now the cheetah. Poor zebras...!

My scrappin' buddy Sarah made a page today too, hop on over and check it out! :-)

Happy weekend,


PS... Does anyone have hints for layout photography? Because I pretty much stink at it!

Friends with Flair!

Hi friends - guess what!! My left hand is healing nicely - I can type with no problem and I can also stamp!!! AND... I have none of the numbness that I used to have! I am so thrilled!! I'm trying not to overdo it, I did just have surgery a couple days ago - but wow. I never expected I'd be able to use it this fast.

So to celebrate my new bionic wrist - HA - I decided to play along with today's Unity Friends with Flair blog hop!! Woohoo!!! I looooooooooove Unity stamps, but I haven't done a whole lot to be part of the whole Unity world. But... it's a world I wanna enter, LOL! So this is my first little knock on their door.... :-)


When I saw this Classic Beauty stamp at Archiver's it was love at first sight for me. Gorgeous! I decided to embellish it up with some decorative pearls and a little ribbon sash. I did a bit of stitching along the scallop border, and then I spelled out the sentiment with my good ol' snap stamps. I realized I don't own any Unity sentiments!!! I need to correct that dire situation asap!

I also played along with one of the Hope You Can Cling To challenges over at Splitcoast - Julie's challenge to make your own embellishment. I decided to make a fabric flower, since I learned how to do these on one of Julie's fabby tutorials a while back! Fun stuff.


Now head on over to the Unity blog and visit the rest of the stampers doing today's hop! And thanks for stopping by today!

• Stamps: Classic Beauty from Unity Stamp Co, Karen Foster snap stamps
• Paper: SU Old Olive, GP white
• Ink: Memento Tuxedo Black, Copic markers
• Accessories: Blue gingham fabric, olive grosgrain ribbon, green felt, decorative pearls, EK Success punch, Iridescent Gold Glimmer Mist (on fabric flower)

What's Cookin' Wednesday - a winner and a repeat

Hi there! I'd like to send a great big thanks to those of you who shared your crockpot recipes with me last week - YUM!! I'll definitely be trying them all! As for the stamp giveaway, it goes to lucky number 8 - and the 8th recipe was Kelli:

I am IN LOVE with EASY Crockpot recipes... and this one... there aint none simpler...

Take a roast throw it in the pot, add a full jar (juice and all) of sliced Peppercini's and add enough water to get the crock 1/3 full, turn on high for 8 hours, serve on a hoagie bun... it's called Italian Beef and Kate (Celestial_Stamper) gave me this recipe... Family LOOOOOOVES it...

kj

Yummy, thanks Kelli! Email me your address and I'll get that stamp right out to you!

As I mentioned yesterday, I had carpal tunnel surgery. It went quite well - 24hrs later I can even type with that hand, wow! But, I shouldn't type TOO much so I'm going to repost a recipe I had on my short-lived food blog. Hope you like it! And thanks a bunch for the get well wishes yesterday, xoxo!
======================================================

Nutty Pasta!

Today's recipe is my version of something I saw on French Food at Home on the Cooking Channel. I didn't have all the ingredients she used, so I made it work with what was in my pantry. And I'd say it worked quite well!


This recipe couldn't be easier! All I did was boil up some spaghetti as usual - I always salt my cooking water. Then while that was going, I put 3 oz sliced almonds, 3 oz pecans and a handful of Italian parsley into the food processor. I whizzed it up until it was a fine, chunky blend - like this:


I put the mixture into a large pasta bowl, added the spaghetti, added a few glugs of good extra virgin olive oil and seasoned with some salt & pepper. Mixed it up well and then added fresh parmesan once it was on the plate. Yummy! One thing the original recipe had was a bit of orange zest at the end - I think orange, or a little lemon, would add an extra bit of brightness to the dish. When I make it again hopefully I'll have some citrus in the house to try it!

My kids don't love nuts, but this was a good, easily adaptable dinner - I just pulled out some of the spaghetti for them to serve with butter & parmesan, and made the rest nutty & delicious for mommy and daddy.

Going under the knife...

Hi blogging friends! Just wanted to pop in and let you know that once again I'm missing my Texas Tuesday post! Ugh, boo me! But this time I have a fairly decent excuse. I'm spending this Texas Tuesday in a Texas hospital having carpal tunnel surgery on my left wrist. This also means I won't be posting on here much in the short term - I'm not sure how long exactly but at least for a bit - stamping and blogging are a little tough one-handed. At least for me. But the good news is - once the surgery is over and done with, I'll be able to stamp without my hand going numb! Woohoo!! Watch out stamping world, I'll eventually be back with a vengeance.... ;-)

So today, why don't you hop on over to Mark's blog - you know, the owner of Deadbeat Designs? He always posts something Texas-y. And while you're there check his sidebar for the Texas Tuesday team and visit my Texas friends. Make no mistake - I love Texas Tuesday and I'll be back at it soon! I've also had a couple requests to join us - OF COURSE you're welcome to - it's just been a lousy week with the surgery coming up and a nasty stomach virus making it's way through the family this past week. I'll catch up on emails real soon!

Happy Stamping,

Saturday Scrapbook Club

Back before I started stamping, I was a scrapbooker. I put together scrapbooks of the trips my husband and I went on before we had kids. I would joke that I wanted to have kids because they'd be so much fun to scrapbook! Then a couple things happened. I started stamping, and enjoying the instant gratification that comes from finishing a card (hours) vs. finishing a scrapbook (days, weeks, months!), and I also got it in my head that my kids' layouts had to be perfect. I'm trying to put that silly notion behind me now and just get them done, before my kids are grown and I've forgotten all the details of the thousands of photos I've taken! By the way, that's another thing that's been holding me back - the sheer volume of photos, all sitting there on my computer taunting me. It can be truly overwhelming! So in an attempt to get more scrapbooking out of me, I decided to start posting my layouts here on Saturdays. I don't claim to be any sort of master scrapbooker, but I just want to force myself to make time to DO IT. I figure if I target posting at least one layout here each week, in a year I'll have 52 layouts done - not too shabby!! And today I even have two to show you, woohoo! These were actually mostly done at a crop many weeks ago, but had been sitting unfinished since I got home from the crop that night. Now they are FINISHED. Yay!!

First up is one of Carter camping last March (inspired by a sketch in Scrapbooks, Etc magazine.):


And here's one of my sweet little ballerina, from her first day wearing her leotard and ballet slippers at dance class:


In the future I'll try to be better about keeping track of products used and all that. But for these I was just trying to get them done & didn't pay a whole lot of attention.

My friends Sarah and Michelle are getting in on the Saturday posting action too, although Michelle isn't starting until next week. But make sure and check in with them on Saturdays and see what they're up to. Anyone else want to join us?? Do you have a gazillion photos that you need to get off the computer or out of shoeboxes and into books?

I hope my cardmaking friends will forgive me for this Saturday scrapbook intrusion. :-)

Happy creating!

What's Cookin' Wednesday - in the CROCKPOT!

Today I'm sharing a couple crockpot recipes - and hoping you'll help me out with favorites of your own - but before I get to that, I want to show you a delicious little card I cooked up!


I have enough food & cooking-related stamps that I thought WELL DUH - I should make cards for What's Cookin' Wednesdays every now and then too!! This cute set is even called What's Cooking!! It's another Hero Arts cutie that I love. I paper pieced the apron, and then made the background paper with some of the fun utensil stamps in the set. I love that I also had some utensil embellies to go with it!!! Happy.

I even played a couple challenges that I love, which also makes me happy! The fabby colors are the latest Color Throwdown (or closest I could come, I don't have all the Stampin' Up colors), and the sketch is 2 Sketches 4 You. Well, 2S4Y-ish, my circle creeped up more than it was supposed to. :-) But it was my inspiration for sure!


Now onto the COOKIN' part!! I've been using my crockpot a lot lately. Wednesdays are my work days, so I don't really have time between getting the kids & getting dinner on the table to do much cooking AT dinnertime. So the crockpot has become my new best friend. I have two recipes that I go to a lot, which are quick, easy and quite yummy! The first is Dr. Pepper Roast...


For this one, just mix together a can of Dr. Pepper (No, REALLY! Trust me. It's good!) (Or any other sweet soda, actually), a packet of onion soup mix and a can of cream of mushroom soup. Pour it over a 4-lb beef roast in the crockpot and cook on low for 8 or so hours. It comes out tender and delicious! This can also be done with a 4-lb pork roast, but I didn't like that as well. And I've also thrown veggies into the pot too, as you can see. :-) But I recommend you try it first with just the meat, so you can see how exceptionally moist it can be!

The other one is a whole chicken in the crockpot! I first heard of doing this from Mary Dawn, and I also found a Lemon Chicken recipe in a Weight Watchers cookbook. I modified it a bit - they brown the chicken in a skillet first - pffft, too much hassle! If you like a crispy skin on your chicken, this isn't for you. But if you discard the skin anyway, this is awesome - the chicken turns out so moist and delicious!


For this one, mix together 3 minced garlic cloves, 1 Tbsp olive oil, 1.5 tsp dried oregano, 1 tsp salt & 1/4 tsp pepper and rub under the skin & into the cavity. Stir together 1/4 c chicken broth and the juice from one small lemon. Stuff the leftover lemon halves into the chicken cavity. Pour broth over chicken and cook on low for 6-8hrs. About 20 minutes before dinnertime, combine the juice and zest of another lemon and pour into the slow cooker, cover & heat until fragrant.

Now for the favor I'm asking from you. Do you have a favorite crockpot recipe? If so, please share it in the comments!! I'd love more ideas for family-tested-and-approved recipes! My family is getting tired of these two, LOL!

To sweeten the "pot" just a touch - I have a cute little message stamp from Hero Arts I'll send to a random commenter from all the crockpot recipe comments (because there will be lots, right? You won't let me down will you??). ;-) I thought this stamp was fitting, because if you have an awesome (busy!) mom who cooks yummy crockpot recipes, you truly are lucky! hee hee


Happy stampin' and happy cookin'!!

• Stamps: CL333 What's Cookin' from Hero Arts
• Paper: Chocolate Chip, So Saffron, Old Olive from Stampin' Up, red from Bazzill, GP white
• Ink: Vintage Photo Distress Ink, Memento Tuxedo Black, white gel pen
• Accessories: Slit punch (SU), TPC Studio So Delish metal accents, SU ribbon, sewing machine

Share the Joy

Today I have a quick and easy Hero Arts card for you:


I love this new Get Merry! set. For the background rectangle, I began by inking up an acrylic block - yes, just the block! I learned this trick from my friend Sally on the Hero Arts blog, and Lisa also shared it in a tutorial. Then I just stamped Falling Snowflakes in the same shade of blue right over the rectangle - I love how it looks like a blustery cold little scene!

Thanks for stopping by!

Congratulations, Jenny and Jason!

Today a sweet member of our Hero Arts Flickr family is getting married! Great big congratulations to Jenny (aka weememories!) and her new hubby Jason! To celebrate, we're throwing a little "virtual wedding card shower" for her over on Flickr.


There was an optional challenge to include all the traditional elements of a wedding on the card, and I did!

Something old - the silver ink - so old, in fact, I was worried it would not work!
Something new - the sentiment stamp that I used with the silver ink!
Something borrowed - extra vellum flowers from my swap card
Something blue - the card base

If you'd like to see all the cards for Jenny, you can search the Hero Arts Flickr Pool for "weddingwishes4jenny". I'm so thrilled for the happy couple - yay!! Oh and check it out, their wedding date is 10-10-10!! There should be no forgetting the anniversary! LOL!

Happy Stamping!

Thank you, Canada!

Because Monday is Thanksgiving Day in Canada... and because the NHL season got underway this past week... I thought I'd make a card inspired by the thing I'm most thankful that my wonderful neighbors to the north shared with the world. That's right - HOCKEY! :-)


Isn't this the cutest little hockey player you've ever seen?? It's a Hambo digi image - Wee Henry Hockey. LOVE IT! I know I didn't keep with the Canada theme by saying "go wings" on the card, but I couldn't help it. I grew up in Michigan, and the Red Wings are my team. And I wanted to send this card to my brother-in-law Darin, the biggest Wings fan on the planet, to celebrate hockey's return to Detroit. And being a Detroit fan helped me honor Canada - thanks to the fact that I grew up in Michigan watching hockey, I can sing along to all the words of the Canadian national anthem. Michigan is so close to Canada, we may as well consider ourselves partially Canadian anyway. Eh?

I used my "mesh" Cuttlebug folder on the background - I thought it looked kinda sorta like a goalie net. Yes? Maybe? IRL there's also Glossy Accents on the helmet, to give it some plasticy shine.

I played along with Taylor's latest sketch challenge. I can always count on her to help me find my way out of creative-block-due-to-time-away-from-the-stamp-desk with one of her fabby sketches!


So in summary, thank you Canada, for being all frozen and cold and for having your bored inhabitants get creative on the ice back in the 1800s. And thanks to the rest of you for stopping by today! :-)

Swappin' with the Girls!

Would you believe I've been sitting on this card for a week now and haven't gotten around to blogging it? Ugh, I am the worst blogger ever! Is anyone even reading anymore, or have you all given up on me? :-) Anyway - I made this card because last weekend I got to escape and spend the entire day Saturday hanging out with the girls, making cards at the Austin Splitcoastampers Shoebox Swap!! YAY!


This card idea was borrowed from my incredibly talented friend Heather (heather maria on Flickr) - she is the master of beautiful vellum flowers with this Hero Arts Large Flower stamp. Check out this card or this card or this card - see what I mean? *swoon* Heather you should know, I got tons of compliments at the swap - thanks for the inspiration!!

I had to keep my card fairly quick and easy to make, as there would be about 10 minutes or so to make it. To simplify things (and to avoid a major embossing powder mess!) I pre-stamped & embossed all the vellum flowers. For 40 stampers. So yes, 80 flowers. Remind me to think of something less time consuming for the next swap! LOL!

And speaking of ~40 stampers (there were a few short of 40, actually) - here's the whole lovely group of us!



And here's a little collage of photos I took throughout the day with my phone...

Clockwise from top left, that's Lydia, some cards, some inky fingers, Brenda, Suzy, Lisa & Michelle, Bev, Karen, Rae Anne, Rachel, Christy and of course me and Lisa in the center.

Yay! Good times!