Farmers Market Fun

Wow I've completely fallen off the wagon when it comes to sharing family photos! Not that most of you stampy friends miss them much, but I'm sure my family isn't thrilled with my performance! Oops! I'll try to get back on the Project 365-ish schedule this weekend, but today I thought I'd share what we did today to "kick off" our Memorial Day weekend - a trip to the farmers market!


I asked Courtney this morning if she wanted braids in her hair. I meant two braids. She said "Yes, five braids! If Rapunzel saw me with five braids, she'd say 'Courtney that's so cool!'" So, alas, my sweet girl was sportin' the Bo Derek look at the market...

We were only a few stalls into the market when we came upon a sweet little petting zoo! The kids loooooved it. They got to pet ducklings...


And sweet little bunnies...


Courtney wasn't quite sure what to make of this painted dragon.


Ok, he was a nice lizard afterall.


Here Courtney has a turtle, and Carter has a CHINCHILLA! Very cool.


Once the petting was done, Mommy got to have her veggie fix. Oh how I love farmers markets! I can't help it, I have to show you a few gratuitous vegetable photos...


Carrots, "Yellow Taxi" tomatoes, and beets. Just lovely. I ended up buying lettuce, cucumbers and a couple of those yellow tomatoes to make a salad for dinner tonight. Plus two stalks of gorgeous green garlic - I'll be making a tasty stir fry tomorrow!

After the market, we went to the mall for a fun Lego store visit, then had a picnic with some cheese we bought at the market, among other things. Then Daddy and Carter kicked the soccer ball around a bit before heading home. A good start to the weekend!

Thanks for stopping by!

The Play Date Cafe Challenge #83

Hello and welcome to another Play Date Cafe Challenge! This week we are bidding farewell to our friend and teammate Sarah Anderson - it's a sad day for us, but also a celebration full of joy as Sarah has such exciting things happening! I made this card for sweet Sarah:


Our sponsor this week is Stepping Stones Design, and I chose to work with their set Funny Coffee Vol. #1. It's full of hilarious messages, but I chose this one to say THANK YOU to Sarah for all she's done for this challenge. She helped to get the challenge up and running with Julie all those many moons ago. Sarah has created many beautiful color stories for us to work with over the months, but her own favorite are the color splash weeks, so we are using one of those this week during our tribute to Sarah:


Isn't this fabulous? I *love* the image that Julie put together. Remember that for a color splash, your card should be black and white with just a "splash" of a certain color - this week, green.

One of the many things I love about Sarah is that her art really looks like ART - not just boring cards like I make. So many of her creations have amazing texture, it makes me wish I could reach out and touch them! Here's an example from her blog:


So fabby. I'll miss seeing them every week in the PDCC posts, but I'll just have to frequent her blog for my Sarah-fix. :-)

The rest of my teammates are doing tribute posts for Sarah today too, so be sure and visit them. We're doing it up blog-hop style! Hop on over to Colleen's blog from here! And leave a comment on every blog for a chance at another prize from the PDCC menu...

**Andrea
**Libby <-- you are here
**Colleen
**Jaclyn
**Michele
**Jinny
**Savannah
**Tracey
**Fiona
**Ruby
**Julie Ranae

And of course visit Sarah's wonderful blog, she played along with the color splash as well!

Thanks for stopping by today, and I hope to see you playing along with this week's colors splash! Visit the Play Date Cafe Challenge blog for all the details!

Follow the Recipe #12!

Hello! Guess what, I stamped again! Yay! :-) And this time I played along with the Top Chef Quickfire for the Follow the Recipe #12 challenge! I also got to ink up my *gorgeous* Guiding Light set from WPlus9 - love!


Did I mention I loooove this set? So many gorgeous stamps to work with! I want to give a HUGE thanks to WPlus9 for this set, it's truly beautiful. Some of my caramel stamping didn't really photograph well, so here's another angle...


The inspiration card for FTR#12 is a real beauty from Grace Nywening.


I focused on several elements from her recipe, including:

• Colors – brown, blue
• Stamps and Stickers – nautical, light house, sentiment
• Color Mediums – stamp ink
• Embellishments – twine/hemp rope
• Tools – die cuts (tags)
  
• Techniques – make a scene
  
• Theme – masculine, Father's Day

The FTR challenge is so much fun - and so easy to play along! I hope you'll join us this week!

For the design of the card, I also played along with Tiff's Sketchy Sunday! I really love her tag inspiration.


Thanks for stopping by today!

• Stamps: Guiding Light from WPlus9, message from Flourishes
• Paper: Hero Arts kraft, My Mind's Eye Stella Rose DP
• Ink: Stampin' Up Craft inks (Creamy Caremel, Taken with Teal, So Saffron), Vintage Photo Distress ink, Memento Tuxedo Black, white gel pen
• Accessories: Twine, staples, machine stitching

Hamming It Up at the Movies! - a blog hop

Hello and welcome to Hambo Stamps' first ever customer blog hop!! Woohoo!! Today Hambo customers and the Bacon Bits Design Team are bringing you fun creations inspired by the movies! If you arrived here from Paula's sweet blog, you are in the right place! If not, you might want to start back at the beginning at the Hambo blog to make sure you are eligible for the hopper prize! A prize will be awarded randomly to a hopper who comments on all the blogs along the way. The winner will be announced on the Hoedown blog, as well as on the Hambo company blog, Talk to the Ham, on Wednesday, May 25.

For my movie creations, I decided to create a little tribute to my favorite decade, the 80's! I'm a total child of the 80's - I'd show you what I looked like back then with my two-toned hair and gummy bracelets galore, but oh darn, my photos are all packed away in anticipation of our move... ;-) I've mentioned before my love for 80's music - well there are plenty of great 80's movies too! Let's get to it, shall we?

This whole idea started when I saw the new Amish digi. As soon as I saw Monica (or Tim?) post it on Facebook, I had to have it, it's just too cute & funny. I wanted to use it immediately. Then it occurred to me - hellloooooo, Witness! Ahhh, classic Harrison Ford. *swoon*


Then I started thinking about other movies I loved in my youth. One of my all time favorites was Pretty in Pink. The girl from this Dress Up stamp is rather pretty in pink, wouldn't you say? And I thought this sentiment was perfect, because in the end Andie's sweet adorable friend Duckie did indeed make it better. (Favorite line: "This is an incredibly romantic moment, and you're ruining it for me!")


Next up, one of my all-time favorites. Are you ready for it? The Lost Boys!! (I know I've shocked you in the past with my confessions about loving vampires, long before they were sparkly...) I had to mask off the pumpkin in Vampire Pig's hands to make this card non-Halloweeny. And I created my own sentiment using a line from the movie. And if you're wondering, the answer is NO, I have absolutely no idea who I'd ever actually send this card to with that sentiment. LOL!! Just being silly...


And finally - Weird Science. It's impossible to own the Mad Scientist digi and not make a Weird Science card for this hop. In my book anyway.


I haven't been stamping much lately so I'm super duper rusty - I needed to lean on a sketch challenge to get my creative juices flowing. All of these cards were inspired by this week's Mojo Monday sketch, turned on it's side.


Ok I've kept you here for FAR too long. Now I'd like to send you on your way, over to Heather's fabulous blog!!

Happy Hopping!!

The Play Date Cafe Challenge #82

I really love this week's Play Date Cafe colors. Really really. Here's what I did with them:


And here are the fabby colors in Ruby's color story:


The trunks in the image are very old-timey, and made me think to pull out my Hero Arts typewriter set My Type. For a little added fun I popped up the paper in the typewriter, and used a notebook paper-edge punch and crinkled it up a bit.


This week's sponsor at the Cafe is Discount Cardstock!


And the fabby guest designer is none other than Laura Davis - wowza! Be sure to head over to the Play Date Cafe site to check out what she made, as well as my PDCC teammates - and check out this week's fabby prize!

Happy Stamping!

A Game + A Hop!

Hi there! No card from me today - I've been up to my eyeballs still in house stuff, but hopefully it will calm down very soon, I'll be back to regular stamping and you'll have stuck with me...!! I'm so ready to be settled, but we still have a little ways to go.

In the meantime I wanted to give you a head's up about a couple FUN Hambo happenings! Today at the Hambo Hoedown blog there is a little guessing game going on!! The fabby samples from the Bacon Bits are just numbered - think you can figure out who made what? :-)

The prize is a card from each of the Bacon Bits! I didn't make a card for the game, but I will be sending out a card to the winner. Fun!!

And... on Friday is the Hambo Customer Blog Hop!! It's going to be funnnnnnnnnn!!! I hope to see you then - I *will* have a card posted on Friday!!

Oh and tomorrow I'll be here too with my Play Date Cafe Challenge card. Woot!

Thanks for stopping by! And for putting up with me! :-)

The Play Date Cafe Challenge #81

This week's Play Date Cafe Challenge is sponsored by a company I loooooove - Stampotique!! YAY!! Just look at this adorable little guy...


I love how unique their stamps are, their site is just FULL of fun stuff. I want it all. I need to win the lottery. :-)

The colors this week are awesome. Look at my blog banner - now look at the colors - yep, of course I love purple and green!!


I had to make a sparkly green heart just because I love sparkly green hearts!


Be sure and hop on over to the Play Date Cafe blog - there's info there about the PRIZE from Stampotique (I wish I could win it!!!) and our fabby guest designer R. Maria Sabina! And of course the gorgeous samples from the rest of my wonderful teammates.

Happy Stamping,

Play Date Cafe Challenge #80

It's time for another Play Date Cafe Challenge! This time I saw orange in the inspiration photo, so I pulled out my adorable Hero Arts fox!


Isn't he sassy? Love him! The cute little message is from Lawn Fawn. Not sure who I will send this to... hmm, maybe one of my foxy stamping friends? :-)

They colors of the card were inspired by this week's Play Date Cafe color story:


Of course I nearly made a flowery card - it was hard not to since the flowers in this photo are so pretty! I may have to make another card this week - we shall see if that happens...!

This week's sponsor at the PDCC is none other than Paper Smooches!!! Love this new stamp company, the images are ADoRABLE! Which of course is no surprise since they are designed by the mega-talented Kim Hughes, former Go-to Gal for PaperCrafts Magazine and creative genius. AND, our guest designer at the PDCC this week, woohoo!!

So head over to the Play Date Cafe blog for all the details - to see what my teammates came up with - and to hear about the fabby PRIZE this week! I hope you'll join us!